Apron Anxiety (23 page)

“You will never be his number one, Lyssa-la.”

“You’re probably right,” I say.

“But maybe a close second ain’t bad?”

She said exactly what I had been feeling but didn’t know how to express all these months, maybe even years. If being
the first
to safe guys like Gary didn’t do anything for me, could I be
the second
to someone with whom I’m so charged? I have one month left before I am scheduled to go back to D.C., and I still don’t know the answer to that.

Chef and I begin talking about once a day, briefly. We mostly share neutral news about my blog and his filming, but he continually communicates that our troubles are draining him. His performance has been subpar on the show, and says it’s because of us. Our unresolved life together
is
starting to feel stale. One morning, Christopher calls to check up on things while I’m making a batch of hazelnut biscotti to freeze for his return. He wants to know if I’ve had any revelations. I feel lame telling him that everything is status quo. “It’s still in the gray,” I
say, ashamed of my sedentary story line. I’m sure he’d kill off my character for being so anemic. He suggests that people don’t leave a relationship because they’re unhappy, but that people leave when the unhappiness gets too boring to bear. “You’ll wake up one day and know what to do.”

The answers are evading me. I’ve hiked until my legs are strong and scraped; I’ve read every memoir on love and loss that I can find; I’ve cooked with a vengeance, baked with pure bliss, and avoided almost any interaction with men that could possibly make my life any more complicated. Still, I’m as stunted as ever. And then the doorbell rings.

A tiny, rather stunning Eurasian woman with a pixie haircut and an indeterminate posh accent is standing there with a suitcase. She introduces herself as Paisley (as in the ties and tablecloths) and tells me that she will be staying in Christopher’s bedroom for an indefinite amount of time.
What in the world is this?

“Yeah, I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I say, overtly annoyed.

I then have a vague flashback of the night I met Christopher, when he showed me his apartment post—Bundt cake. A few things come back to me.
Shit
. He
had
mentioned something about some chick who was going through tough times—he wouldn’t say what—and who might need to crash for a few nights. He made it sound so nonchalant, but based on Paisley’s suitcases, which outsize her fragile frame, this is clearly not a weekend escape.

On one hand, I am extremely pissed about an imposition that I never
really
signed off on, not soberly at least. This is meant to be a transformative time for me. Christopher left me the cupcake so that I would find myself in the kitchen, didn’t he? Not
find myself with a roommate. And the kitchen! I don’t want to share the kitchen!
What if she’s a slob? Or worse, a neat freak?

On the other hand, here I am living almost for free, in a stunning, sprawling apartment, out of the kindness of some stranger’s heart, and I have no right to feel so entitled. Crashers can’t be choosers, not even at the El Royale. But it doesn’t matter what I think. Paisley drags her bags inside, straight past my incensed expression, without wanting or needing anybody’s help or approval. Before I can pinpoint her age, accent, or sexual orientation, I can see she’s a lioness. A survivor. A force.

I skulk over to my computer, which is sitting on the dining-room table, and try to focus on my blog instead of staring her down. Emotionally, we stand in our own corners of the boxing ring. She prowls around the place like a Persian cat, as I hate-type on my laptop like it’s a steel drum. Maybe this is the sign that I should quit while I’m ahead and go home to C Street. She might look like a Benetton model, but she’s bringing me down.

She cuts the silence by blurting out that she, too, was blind-sided by the roommate situation. Apparently, Christopher also told her she’d “basically” have the place to herself. I confess that he had mentioned her, but only once, and that it was so offhanded. We try to figure out if he sprang us on each other for a greater reason, or if he was just too overwhelmed in New York to communicate the plans. But after about an hour in the apartment, we actually start to bond over the fact that neither of us wants the other around.

I close my computer, put on some sandals, and ask if she wants to sit with me somewhere in the neighborhood, maybe a few blocks away on the quaint, café-lit Larchmont Street. By now I’ve established two facts: we’re both in transition and we both need a drink.

As we walk down the sun-drenched, picture-perfect streets of Hancock Park, past the bungalows and beautiful people, we go through the basics. She’s in her midthirties, born in Hawaii, raised in California, and schooled in Singapore. She just moved back to the West Coast after many years in New York, where she juggled odd jobs in art and fashion. None of these credentials really help me understand her better though. She’s wearing a belted T-shirt as a dress and is cute as a button, with a remarkable, folkloric face.

But there’s a serious darkness to Paisley, a hard shell. When she talks, she’s tentative and terse. It’s like she’s scared to say too much about herself, and I can’t figure out why. All I really know by the time we reach Larchmont Street is that I think we’re going to be friends.

We grab a table at a dodgy little bar. She’s not giving up too much, so I explain the real reason I’m hiding out in Hancock Park: a strange brew of hard love. When she asks if I know what I’m going to do, considering I have to go home to D.C. eventually, I say, “Yeah, I’m going to make him leave his restaurants and TV dreams and move to Europe with me to make babies and sell pissaladière.” We both know I’m kidding, but it feels damn good to say it out loud. She wants to know when the wedding was supposed to be. “October third, a few weeks away,” I say. “Good,” she says, and nods definitively. “We’ll do something that makes you happy that day.”

While Paisley is an incredible listener, there’s a reticence behind her eyes telling me that her problems far outweigh mine. “Your turn,” I say, shutting up. Her first glass of wine sits on the bar empty, and I haven’t even sipped mine. “Come on, girlfriend,” I say, because something about her first name feels ridiculous to say out loud. “There’s nothing I haven’t seen or heard.” The reporter in me is dying for the scoop.

She orders a second glass of sauvignon blanc, runs her thin fingers through her thick hair, and looks me straight in the face.

“One year ago I had a baby girl.” She closes her eyes and clears her throat. “And three months ago she died.”

I have no idea what to say, how to hold my face, or if it’s okay that there are streams of tears pouring from my eyelids.
Don’t make this about you, Alyssa
. Paisley reaches for my hand and holds it tightly, continuing the story of her daughter’s sickness, with all the reveal I thought I had wanted fifteen seconds ago. She tells me everything about her baby’s battle, and her now-estranged ex, and courageously explains that she’s here in California on a quest to conceive another child, someway, somehow. She wants her motherhood back. We sit at the bar for hours, drinking, crying, and even laughing a little. She’s been in mourning for only three months, but she has such a sharp sense of humor that I can only imagine the firecracker she once was.

As we walk back to our apartment slowly, somewhat wobbly, I tell her how ashamed I am for whining about my utterly pathetic bubblegum bullshit. She urges me not to minimize my own issues, insisting that it’s healthy for her to think about other things besides sickness and death. I know she genuinely means it, but from that day on, I want nothing to do with my own nonsense. I just want to make Paisley’s life better.

In the next few weeks, we do everything together. Paisley cooks us glorious, gingery whole fish; I bake her favorite dessert, flourless chocolate cake. We are on the exact same level in the kitchen—dedicated, with a long way to go. She brews our morning coffee; I buy our cases of wine. She names us the LoLaRoos—short for the Lost Ladies of the El Royale. We make plans to socialize with our own friends but always end up bailing. We stay pretty reclusive and generally drunk.

At night, we go through episodes upon episodes of Christopher’s show, which she loved as much as I did. We smoke his pot and boil his pasta. Sometimes she locks herself in her room and plays little lullabies while curled up on the floor. On those nights, I read my M.F.K. Fisher in bed, and knock on her door every few hours, just in case she wants some peppermint tea or a little fresh air.

I love taking care of her, and I’m good at it. It makes me think that without having Chef physically around to nurture, a big part of me was stifled. Feeding him certainly filled that void, for a while, but a decent meal at midnight is just not enough.

My instantaneous friendship with Paisley frustrates Shelley, who’s always been a little territorial, and who thinks my interest in her and her loss is a little morbid. I become so mad when she insinuates this that I tell my family, and anyone else who will listen, that as far as I’m concerned, my friendship with Shelley is over. I am floored when my mother, father, and sister, the most compassionate people on earth, delicately imply that Shelley—who
they love like family
—might have a point. They very gently suggest that I’m avoiding my own problems by burying myself in Paisley’s. I’m offended by their words, but don’t want any drama, not with only one week left in L.A. So I let it be, firmly instructing everyone to never go there again, and resuming life like nothing had happened.

Paisley is adamant that I invite Shelley, Dara, and Auntie Lizzie over for a very special rooftop brunch to celebrate … my wedding day. It feels a little weird to draw attention to something so unpleasant, and somehow reeditorialize the cursed day, but I
do
want to see everyone before I go. Plus, Paisley is insisting, and I get the feeling she wants to step outside her head a little, or as much as possible. After some mild kicking and screaming, I comply.

Forty-eight hours before the big day, we LoLaRoos start to cook and bake compulsively. It’s only going to be a few of us, but our unspoken theme is survival, and that should come in abundance. We make tarte tatin, lemon meringue pie, and chocolate chip cookies. I find a mayo-free chicken salad recipe—my secret tribute to that fateful chicken curry salad at Fabiane’s—and roast glorious autumn produce made sweet and sticky with pecans and prunes; I bake whole-wheat bread to serve with farmers’ market butter and Camembert cheese.

It’s a spellbindingly beautiful day on the roof of the El Royale in early October. Everyone arrives with flowers and champagne. I wear a pale pink shift dress and borrow my favorite necklace of Shelley’s (that I’ve tried to steal over the past ten years). With luscious plates of food and free-flowing drinks, all my L.A. saviors sit for hours where the sun and breeze meet, sharing stories of love and loss, and refilling Christopher’s white china with food that Paisley and I made. She excuses herself every so often to regroup, as she tends to do.

I toast each and every one of them for taking such good care of me. They were each, individually, my godsends over this summer of resuscitation, and I am doing so much better than when I came. What an interesting summer. I had the privilege of feeding my best friend an entire tin of blueberry muffins, throwing a lavish dinner party for perfect strangers, serving cherry “crumble” pie to my supercool actress-auntie, and making the saddest soul crack a smile, even just once a day. “To the El Royale,” I say, once Paisley returns to the table, looking each one of them in the eye. Shelley tells me to keep the necklace, and everyone clears the table and loads the dishwasher for the bride.

My friends put me in such a good mood, I spend the rest of the afternoon convinced that if I can just hold on to this joy, the rest will follow. Maybe the happiness onus is really on me?
Maybe, if I can remain absolutely impermeable, then I’ll be the rock for the relationship to rest on? Late that night in bed, I start thinking I should go back to Chef with that strategy:
Be happy, stay happy, and don’t let anyone or anything interfere
. It is the first time the pendulum has swung in either direction and I take it as a sign. I even contemplate leaving Los Angeles a few days early and flying to New York to attend the New York Wine & Food Festival where Chef will be featured at a big event down the street from my parents’ place. I’ll go, and be radiant and confident, and it will be a great “welcome home” weekend for me! Plus, on my turf!

When I suggest this to Chef, in my most chipper tone, he is less than enthusiastic. It’s an extremely rigorous weekend for him, and he explains that he needs to concentrate on winning his competition, not on an intense, emotional reunion with his fiancée. “Just meet me back at home in Washington … like we planned,” he says wearily. “Please, Lyssie?”

While his reaction is valid, and I suppose I
am
being too cavalier about the whole thing, the rejection stings. It’s a sting I know well, one that all the homemade crust in the world can’t cure. He promises to keep me posted on all the good parties, and will obviously let me know how he fares at the event. “You better!” I say, hoping he can’t hear the ugly in my voice.

And there it is.

Disappointment.

Again.

Forgoing the festival, I stay cooped up at the El Royale with Paisley and a bottle of Scotch, refreshing blogs covering the celebrity chef parties all weekend long. These are my last days in Los Angeles; I should be eating sprout sandwiches at Malibu Country Market or packing picnics for Griffith Park,
but I won’t leave my computer and I’m too flustered to think about food.
Hello, derailment. It’s been a while
. On the eve of the festival’s Burger Bash, I stare at photos of Chef enwrapped in bikini models, whom he’s hired to promote his brand. Through a website, I hear he’s lost the competition. Around two o’clock in the morning, I find a sighting of him at a private after-party and then an after-after-party. But I get no calls, e-mails, or texts.