Cleaving (8 page)

At last we'd decided on a trial separation. I rented a small studio at 86th and York Avenue, and for four months I led a small,
quietly satisfying, if slightly lonesome existence up in that unfashionable corner of Manhattan. I enjoyed having a space
of my own, however tiny. I enjoyed the times, rarer than I'd have liked, when D came up and spent the entire night with me,
just as though we were a regular couple, and I enjoyed the dinner dates with Eric, the sensation of simply liking his company,
of having missed him. But then, four months into my six-month lease, my landlady had me kicked out early, not because the
neighbors complained about some untoward three a.m. noises--though they did--but because she'd had a change of plans and needed
her place back. I had nowhere to go. I would never in a million years have suggested living with D, he'd have laughed me out
of the state, and besides, the bottle of beer he'd offered me the second time I came over to his apartment was still sitting
on his windowsill a year later. I could have found another apartment, I suppose. But that had seemed like a stark choice,
a separation more complete than moving out in the first place had been. In the end, I wasn't able to pull the trigger. I was
moving back in with Eric, it seemed, because of the vagaries of New York real estate.

The second breakup went much the same as the first, except with less expectation of success. I performed it at Eric's explicit
behest. He had broken up with his lover by this point, and, quite naturally, thought I should do the same. I knew it was the
only fair thing to do, but the thought of giving up D made me feel as rebellious and petulant as an unjustly punished child.
That morning, D and I sat together on the floor, leaning against my futon mattress, which was already tied with twine and
ready to be loaded into the U-Haul van. I was still flushed from the Last Sex We Would Ever Have. Again I cried. "It's not
fair!"

He stroked my hair.

"It makes no sense, breaking up with someone I don't want to break up with!"

He rested his chin on my head, which I'd tucked against his breastbone, like I was six years old and had dropped my ice cream
cone. He hushed me gently. He didn't even come close to crying that time. I think he knew that his sex life was in no immediate
danger of drying up.

I held out about a week.

S
O, AS
I've mentioned, the hard part, or rather the frustrating part, with skirt steak is the trimming. The thick filament that
makes the muscle easy to remove is also so thick as to be inedible, or at least not very fun to eat. It must be removed, but
it doesn't want to go, and clings determinedly. Some of it you can peel off with your fingers in strips, which is satisfying,
rather like peeling nail polish, if your fingernail was four inches wide and two feet long. But like nail polish, bits of
it stick stubbornly. Peeling also gets dangerous because sometimes you pull up a lot of meat with it, and if this happens
at a thin space in the muscle, the steak can tear right in two. This is where your knife comes in.

Skirt steaks have a deeply striated grain, running up and down all along the narrow span of the muscle. It's best to marinate
skirts before cooking, and always to slice them against the grain, because that striation leads to toughness. Any risk of
chewiness is completely worth it, though, because, for some reason, the difference in flavor between Big Beef meat and that
of a grass-fed "happy steer" shows most extraordinarily in this cut. It's a dark, concentrated, almost liverish taste that
is not for everyone, but which I find wickedly enjoyable. This is how Jessica told me to cook the first skirt steak I brought
home from Fleischer's. It's completely delicious, and so easy it's almost embarrassing.

J
ESSICA'S
S
UPER
-E
ASY
S
KIRT
S
TEAK
S
ALAD

3/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Several sprigs rosemary

3-4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 skirt steak

Arugula, spinach, or other salad green of your choice

Pecorino, Asiago, Parmesan, or other hard, salty cheese of your choice

Sea salt and freshly grated pepper to taste

In a nonreactive baking pan, combine the vinegar, olive oil, rosemary--slightly crushing the leaves between your fingers--and
garlic to make a marinade for the steak. Let the steak stand in the marinade at room temperature for 45 minutes or so, turning
once or twice.

(You may want to cut the skirt steak into a couple of pieces, if you don't have a huge skillet or a pan big enough to accommodate
the marinating steak. Skirt steaks are rather long and can be unmanageable.)

When ready to cook, just heat a large skillet over very high heat until a drop of water flicked into it skitters madly across
the surface. Lift the steak out of the marinade, shake off a bit but not all of the excess marinade clinging to it, and put
it in the skillet. It will hiss and pop rather alarmingly. Cook only until brown on each side, flipping it over once--about
90 seconds per side. Remove and let rest for 5 to 10 minutes.

To serve, pile a handful of arugula or other green onto each of two plates. Slice the steak thinly, at a diagonal across the
grain, and lay several strips over each bed of greens. Shave cheese over the top. I like to use a wide cheese slicer for this,
to make substantial curls, but that's up to you. Season with salt and especially pepper, to taste. Serves two, with leftovers.

Easiest thing in the world. Assuming you've gotten your butcher to do the cleaning part, which is not so embarrassingly easy.

To clean a skirt steak, you must slice along the grain carefully, so as not to take off too much meat with it. It's a time-consuming
process, slicing gingerly at all the stringy bits, judging just how clean is clean enough.

Sometimes, I'll confess, if I've been cleaning up skirts for too long, I'll take the easy way out. I'll tell myself, perhaps
a self-serving justification, that there's no such thing as perfectly clean. And when Slave-Driver Aaron isn't looking, I'll
roll up the steak with whichever is the prettier side facing out, hiding the last bits of chewy white shreds, and just tuck
it into the case at the front of the shop, where it won't be closely examined. I do this furtively, guiltily. Sometimes I
just can't take any more of the endless fretful picking.

T
HIS LAST
breakup isn't like the others. It takes hours--in point of fact, from D's perspective, it probably has taken months--yet in
the end it's quick and cruelly final.

During the two-hour drive back to the city from Kingston one Saturday afternoon in early October, I decide that something
has to be done. D and I haven't been sleeping together for several months, not really. He keeps citing a busy schedule, and,
to be fair, my being married and also driving upstate all the time for the butchering isn't making things easy either. Since
he's returned from his most recent business trip more than a month ago, we've met in parks and bars, we've kissed and giggled,
cooed sweet words and cuddled like bear cubs, but have managed sex exactly once, and that was because I lured him with a wildly
expensive hotel room directly across the street from where he works. What's next? Is he going to start asking for a monetary
exchange? Enough is enough. So I text him, just tell him straight up,
I'm coming over tomorrow. What's your apartment number?

(He's just been forced out of his old apartment and has made the peculiar choice to move to a new one right down the street,
staying in the Murray Hill neighborhood I find so dreadfully dull. I guess it's funny what you can get attached to. Anyway,
I haven't seen it yet, which is my trumped-up excuse for inviting myself over.)

I'm in a good mood as I ride the elevator up to his apartment. Here I am, making a stand, going for what I want. No meek,
whimpering adulteress, I! When he opens the door, I'm grinning, and I neatly ignore the distinct ambivalence of the smile
he gives in return. I grab hold of his hand as he gives me the tour of his tiny, rather sad, new apartment. Once he's closed
the door to his sunny, small room, still scattered with packing boxes, we collapse onto his bed--it's the same bed, but stuffed
into this much smaller room, pushed up against a wall, it seems depleted, a double instead of a vast expanse of California
king--and commence some serious making out. After two years, kissing him still leaves me breathless; it seems worth both the
harrowing guilt over Eric and the nasty little holes of self-contempt that my neediness for D opens up in me over and over
again.

But something's not right, even willfully clueless I must eventually admit. I keep going for the buttons of his shirt, his
belt buckle, but he handily evades my gropings. He cops the occasional halfhearted feel but doesn't even attempt to get a
hand under my shirt. (
Highly
unusual, that. D is what I believe is referred to as a "breast man.") After a while, the kissing trails off, and though I
keep trying to make inroads, conversation takes hold. Increasingly frustrating conversation, about not all the deliciously
dirty things we'd like to do to each other, but movies. Animated movies. D is simply shocked that I've never seen
Team America
. The laptop comes out.

I go along for a bit, fuming. He laughs loudly. It's the same laugh he bestows upon himself when he's feeling clever, which,
I think meanly, is more often than is warranted. I don't think it's all that funny. I last perhaps twenty minutes before slumping
onto my side with an irritable sigh. He presses the space bar to pause.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Well, that's clearly not true." He's smiling at me. D never gets mad, not really. Occasionally condescendingly exasperated.
He's always smiling, no matter how angry I get, and, in truth, I have often gotten too angry, demanded too much. I've wanted
certainty, resolution--have needed it. He has been, all along, the wrong person to ask it from. We were both happier, I think,
before I told him I loved him, when that was a hidden thing.

I flop onto my back, unable to stop a small answering smile to his despite my annoyance. "What the hell is going on here?
What's the point of this anyway?"

"What's the point of what?"

"
This!
What's the point of a torrid love affair without any sex, goddammit?!"

And so, still in each other's arms, we talk.

"Look, I'm a total fucking mess, I'm miserable at the thought of losing you--"

"
Losing
me? You're not going to lose me."

"But I'm terrified that if we sleep together at this point, you'll be mad at me for not living up to what you're expecting--that
I won't be funny or brilliant or even good in bed."

I laugh, cuddle into his side. "Don't be silly."

"Or else it'll be great and then you and Eric will get divorced and you'll blame me for wrecking your marriage when you realize
that I'm not as good a catch as he is and then we'll both just get bitter and I'll lose my teeth and end up being an embarrassment
to you for the rest of our lives."

I punch his arm. "Now you're just making up crap for the sake of it. And what is it with you and your obsession with your
teeth?"

This is where we should be having the Fight Sex. Where I say something sufficiently angry, petulant, ultimatum-y, that leaves
nothing for him to do but flip me over and fuck the living daylights out of me. In the past year this has happened countless
times; I almost look forward to our fights now. But not this time. This time he just talks and talks. And it takes me so long,
so agonizingly long to realize what's happening. He even speaks his immortal
Team America
line, and still, still, I don't get it. But finally I realize: He's not saying he can't have sex with me now. Or next week.
Or until I'm happier, less needy. He's saying he can't ever. Not ever again.

I clamber from the bed in a panic, as if my abrupt epiphany is some kind of nasty crawling bug I can brush off. With my back
pressed up against the window, as far from him as I can get, I stare at D. He's flat on his back, still smiling. He makes
a gesture that in the last two years has become all too familiar. Without lifting his head from the pillow, he reaches his
arms out to me like a hungry baby, his hands flapping toward his chest, his eyebrows raised in mock distress, dark eyes wide,
soft lips parted to emit an urgent whine. It's an exasperating, endearing, indolent gesture of desire, and in the past has
had the unfailing effect of drawing me back into his arms, comforted, laughing indulgently. But now at last I see what it
really means.
I want to hold onto you a while longer
.

But it will never mean what you want it to mean
.

Oh,
Jesus
.

When I begin to sob, he doesn't come to me, not at first. He knows I've finally figured it out, something I've been ignoring
for a long time, something that he's known. I cry and cry, and this isn't like the crying all the times before, not lusty
and somehow at root pleasurable. This is the coldest, loneliest feeling in the world.

Now I will become part of another of D's favorite postcoital mythologies. Not the romantic epic of how the stars aligned to
bring us together, but the litany of D's Lunatic Exes. The leggy blond model who didn't know the difference between Herbert
and J. Edgar Hoover. The withholding Spanish exchange student who wound up being very impressed with his private parts. The
dull grad student he narrowly avoided marrying. And now the crazy, clinging, married chick.

"I can't do this. Can't. Have to go." I pick up my purse, and then he does try to hug me. But I can't have it. I cringe in
his arms. I'm not angry--oh, how wonderful anger would feel! I'm just... done. I'd so wanted certainty, and now that I have it,
I can't breathe for the weight of it.

He takes me down to the street, helps me catch a cab. He wipes away my tears, even cries himself. It's the first time I've
ever seen him cry, but it doesn't make any difference. He kisses me once more as the cabbie waits, which makes my heart blossom
and die.