Recipes for a Perfect Marriage (13 page)

It was a more familiar pain. But it was still pain.

I was sitting on the rocks, when I thought I saw him walking along the pier. He wore a brown suit, his black hair licking his collar in glossy waves. He was the same in that way that young love never gets the chance to age.

I didn’t see his face, but I knew it was Michael.

The shock did not paralyze me as it does in dreams, but propelled me towards the pier. My feet slid across the rocks; I did not even stop to think of taking the proper path up. That would have meant turning my back to him, and I could not let him out of my sight. I did not call out or think of what I might have said when I reached him. Barefoot and perspiring, I was driven towards him in a straight line.

When I heard Niamh cry out from the beach behind me, I am ashamed to admit I was torn.

I went back, of course, and rescued my child. I comforted her about the jellyfish sting, and carried her back to the boarding house, bathed her in salt, cajoled and placated her. But my head was on a wild swivel searching for a glimpse of him again. I was irritable for the few days left of our break, but in a way that I know comforted James, in that he could see my deeper sadness had dissipated.

The sea had taken one dream and carried it away, sending me back a more familiar one. For weeks afterwards, I dreamt of Michael. What might have happened when we met. What we might have said. How our eyes would have searched the other’s face for unlocked memories, a habit of love reborn in our eyes. How we might have brushed cheeks when we said good-bye.

We always said good-bye.

Michael meant everything to me still. I burned for him and would always, even as a wretched old woman. James was my husband; I hated him for it, reviled him often. But the years and a child had glued us together. Time and nature had bonded me to James against my very will, beyond what I wanted, what I felt. Although I often wanted to escape, I knew I never could.

Wife. Mother. The very words had become webbed into the fabric of my soul.

*

Many years later, when Niamh left for college, I realized that another child would not have been the answer. It would have been double the joy, but also double the pain of letting the child go.

I was a good mother, but I was not a selfless one. I gave and while I never asked, I was always waiting for something back. I craved those moments of surety a child’s love gives you, was always ready for Niamh’s reassurance and admiration and always disappointed when it didn’t come on cue.

I was never destined to have more than one child. I know that now. I think my desire for another was just greed for the easy joy I had felt with James when Niamh was born.

Joy did not come naturally to me. I always grabbed so hard that I crushed it. Examined it until I found a flaw; or tried to make it more than it was. It would always turn too quickly to disappointment. I found that when happy, I held my breath and waited for it to fly away. I waited all my life for joy to come and kidnap me as it had when I met Michael.

The one place I never bothered looking for it was inside myself.

It all started to go wrong on the Thursday evening when An-gelo rang and asked Dan if he wanted them to send us their driver.

Dan was furious. He thought Angelo was implying that we couldn’t afford a car. I tried to explain that when you are as enormously wealthy as the Orlandis, you employ a full-time driver and that we would be doing them a favor in giving him something to do for the day. I consoled him with the fact that I often had a driver when I was working and that it was no big deal. Angelo had certainly not meant any offense and was just trying to be helpful.

Dan didn’t buy it. I didn’t really know how to deal with this sudden testosterone surge, but I knew right away that I handled it wrong by defending Angelo. Dan then spent the rest of the day washing and waxing the car, and I overheard Gerry encourage him to borrow a vintage Harley Davidson from one of their mutual biker pals, a plan that, thankfully, did not make it past the plotting stage.

The trip there was tense. Their house in Irvington was homey, rambling rather than grand, unlike the mansion on their farm in California that made the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport look like a shed. I was looking forward to a quiet weekend, just them and us, as I really wanted them to get to know Dan.

“So what is this guy—an Italian?”

“Well, his parents are.”

“Yeah right—a rich Italian. What is he—mafia?”

“No, he is one of the most successful organic food producers in the...”

“If these people are such good friends, how come they couldn’t make it to the wedding?”

Dan was making it obvious that he did not want to go and I was getting irritated with his attitude. The Orlandis are fantastic hosts.
Anyone
would want to go and hang out with them for the weekend.

“They are incredibly busy people.”

“Hell—so are we!”

“I mean important...”

As soon as I said it I knew it was wrong.

“So we’re not important?”

“That’s not what I meant...”

“Making our wedding was not important enough for these important, incredibly busy people?”

One part of me wanted to bury a pickaxe in Dan’s forehead. But another part of me was thinking,
Wow! We are having a fight
—just like a normal couple.

It wasn’t nice, but it felt like progress. Like we felt secure enough with each other to argue.

“At least they won’t be feeding us frozen mystery meat.”

I knew immediately that I had taken a step too far. Dan’s expression froze and his hands tightened on the wheel.

“I’m sorry, Dan. That was out of order.”

He waited before replying. In the face of my apology, he played down my bitchy comment about his mother.

“Family is different, Tressa. You have to stick by family, no matter what. These people are strangers.”

“Jan and Angelo are very good friends of mine...”

“So you keep saying.”

I wanted to tell him that no one on the planet felt stranger to me than his family, and that the Orlandis were more my kind of people—educated, stylish, erudite.

But I thought I’d better keep that to myself. We had the weekend to get through.

To keep myself calm, I tried to get inside Dan’s head and decided that he was simply feeling insecure. These people were wealthy, they knew me and considered me a peer. That must have been very threatening for him and that was why he was being so defensive.

What he didn’t know was that Angelo and I had had a brief fling before Jan and he had gotten married. My first job was as Jan’s assistant. Although not quite five years older than me, she was a food editor and I admired her hugely. I guess I had a kind of a crush on her. When she and Angelo split up after five years together, Jan hadn’t seemed that upset. “College boyfriends rarely stick—we’ve both changed,” she had said. She had seemed to shrug him off like a teenage denim jacket you still love but know you’ve matured out of. Although I had only ever met Angelo with Jan, the New York food scene being as it was, it was just a matter of weeks before I bumped into my boss’s ex at the opening of a new bar. It seemed only polite to join him for a drink.

There was instant chemistry between us. It was as if our mutual relationships with Jan had been a barrier to what had always been there. We laughed at the same things, we loved the same restaurants, food, people. We slept together that first night and sex was instant and easy and explosive all at the same time.

My instinct was to tell Jan right away—the next day. She might have felt weird about it, but I was convinced that she would get over it quickly once she realized how compatible Angelo and I were. I could see us all in years to come, still friends, looking back and laughing at our situation.

Angelo persuaded me to stay quiet, saying it was best to be certain about each other first before hurting Jan. Being young and confident, I assumed things would continue; I thought relationships were that easy. I got a shock when, a few days later, Jan came into work beaming and announced that she and Angelo were back together.

“We needed a break,” she said but she looked relieved.

I was hurt but I didn’t say anything and decided to stay friends with them both. After all, I was young and thought the world was bursting at the seams with “Angelos.” It was ten years before I realized that men whom I could relate to intellectually
and
physically were thin on the ground.

Having said that, the affair itself was forever ago and was so very, very over that I forgot about it myself most of the time. Although sometimes, I have to admit, I would catch myself looking at Angelo and wondering what if. It’s ridiculous, and it doesn’t mean anything, but in the deep pit of my stomach, I knew that this weekend was about me lining Dan and Angelo up next to each other and hoping to pick Dan. Buried under that knowledge was the fear that perhaps Dan could smell that there was a history there, which was why he was acting like such a jerk.

The Orlandis could not have been more welcoming when we arrived, although their housekeeper, Rosa, answered the door, which I could tell pissed Dan off. Dan is uncomfortable dealing with “staff” on this level. It comes from years of being staff himself and answering requests to unblock toilets and change lightbulbs.

We went up to our rooms to clean up after the journey. When we came back down we were slightly taken aback to see that there was a full dinner party awaiting us. Apart from our hosts, there was another food writer (whom I didn’t really care for) with her lawyer husband, a food photographer I had booked once and never used again, and a publisher who was good friends with my agent. Dan had just been thrown headfirst into a clique of foodies.

The food was in season and unfussy. Perfectly prepared goes without saying. Haloumi with chili oil, then chicken wrapped in Parma ham.

“Simplicity is
the
new style buzz,” the ghastly food writer blurted.

“Easy Entertaining?” Jan replied, her fingers flicking quotations over the statement.

We all laughed at the allusion to the title of her cable TV show. Except Dan. He looked nervously at me, waiting for me to explain the joke. I couldn’t because, actually, when I thought about it, it wasn’t very funny.

The rest of the conversation didn’t improve Dan’s comfort zone much. It was centered around the dilemma of flying first or business class, restaurant reviews—as in where to eat next time you are on business in London, Martha Stewart (of course), and, awkwardly, agents and their percentages. All the time I was worrying that my husband had no interest in these subjects, so I said, “Dan and I are building a new kitchen.”

“How fascinating! Who are you using?” the food writer asked Dan.

“We are doing it ourselves,” I answered for him.

Dan threw me a sharp look, then just to let me know I had blown my chance, looked away from the table.

“Really? How do you mean?”

“Dan has a friend who is a wonderful bespoke carpenter, and we are customizing and restoring everything back to a nineteen-thirties feel.”

They were hanging on the kitchen guru’s every word to see where she was going with this.

“It’s eclectic.”

And right when I said it, I realized that I had managed to reduce the heart and the feeling of home that we had been creating for the last three weeks into a fashion statement.

*

When we eventually got to bed that night Dan just said, “There’s no need to talk for me, Tressa,” and turned away. I didn’t reply, just lay there for hours between Egyptian cotton sheets sprayed with English lavender water and wondered how the hell I had got myself into this mess.

These were my people. I did not like all of them, but they were my peers and I could certainly hold my own among them. This kind of dinner party; networking; discussing food, wine, restaurants, and enjoying each others’ stylish hospitality—this is what I did. The language was ours, yet it felt strange to be doing it with Dan. Wrong. Clearly it alienated him, but did I really want to give this part of my life up for him? Or was I destined to spend every weekend drinking beer and eating junk food with his family, stifling this part of my life and career?

I knew the next day was going to be hell, but I thought, he put me through the first communion, he can cope with a day of macho insecurity with me and my “fabulous” friends.

*

In the morning, the publisher and photographer had gone, but the vile food writer and her drab husband were there for the whole weekend. She was all over Jan, doing an overpowering girl-buddy act in the kitchen. The lawyer was boring Angelo to death, but he was having no luck with Dan. My husband had taken to the great outdoors with Rosa and Jan and Angelo’s kids, who instantly adored him. He was avoiding everyone else, but especially me. By lunchtime everyone was drinking and picking on an over-the-top brunch buffet brought by the food writer. It was self-consciously casual: twice-baked leek and goat’s cheese soufflés, sunblush roasted tomatoes in a balsamic
jus.
We knew the names because she had written them in gold lettering on cards in front of each dish. Tacky beyond comment.

I took a king prawn that would have looked overdressed at the Oscars and gazed out the window at Dan. He had Juliana balancing on his shoulders while he swung baby Carlos around. Rosa was looking on, horrified, but I knew the kids would be safe. Dan was like that: a big bear of a man. Maybe not a neat, educated college guy, but you wouldn’t come to harm while he was around.

“Hey,” Angelo said in a dark, dangerous voice behind me, “wanna see something?”

He had some special kind of arugula he wanted to show me in the greenhouse. So he said.

It was one of those seductive film moments you can’t resist. It hits you hard because you don’t expect it. One minute you are fingering a fragrant herb, then your hands touch by accident. Next thing, your eyes meet, they lock, then you pull together into a kiss. You barely know you are doing it. It’s an animal thing. An attraction you can’t control. Chemistry.