Good Enough to Eat (17 page)

 

 

“This is going to be so much fun, thanks Mel!” Nadia says, coming out of the bathroom twisting her chameleon hair into a loose bun with tendrils hanging down.

I reach over and tug a loose strand of deep magenta. “This new?”

She smiles. “Something I’m trying out. Too much?”

I laugh. “It’s all in the same pink family, I think it looks good.” I’ll never understand Nadia’s obsession with coloring her hair, but I have to admit it looks good and almost natural on her in a strangely unaffected way. As if it was supposed to be four shades of pink. Most kids I see with the punk hair colors always seem as if they are trying to scream some statement at me, political or otherwise, but Nadia just seems to need some pink in her hair, and it’s between her and her head as to what it means.

“You look great, Mel. I love that dress.”

I’m in one of my favorite things, a pale, sage green wrap dress that hides all my flaws and accentuates all my good spots, and is as comfortable as pajamas. It is made of some magical jersey material that moves with me, never clings, and never wrinkles. Plus it makes my eyes look almost olive green. “Thanks, sweetie. What time is Daniel expected?”

She checks her watch. “Seven.” She pauses, looking sheepish. “He might be a little late. He isn’t very good about timing.”

“That’s all right. The great thing about this meal is that the only thing that can get overcooked you don’t even make till the last minute, and everything else is all ready.” I’ve made one of my favorite salads, celery, green apple and shaved Parmesan, which will get a squirt of fresh lemon and a drizzle of olive oil at the last minute. Homemade tomato sauce is simmering lightly on the stove, and tiny veal meatballs have already been browned. The precooked meatballs are so small that they will heat through in the sauce in the time it takes for the pasta to cook. Nadia helped me make a thin-as-paper apple galette with fig glaze, which is cooling on a rack.

“I never knew spaghetti and meatballs could be so fancy! But I’m glad you suggested it. Daniel has sort of a limited palate. Very boring meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. The other night I wanted to go to this Chinese place and he ordered a hamburger! I didn’t even know they had it on the menu!”

“Not everyone is a foodie, or has to be. But I’m glad you think this dinner will meet with his approval. And I’m glad things are going well between you.”

“Well, I think they are.” Nadia pauses, eyebrows furrowing. “We haven’t, I mean he hasn’t, there isn’t exactly . . .” She trails off.

“No sex yet?” Poor thing. She seems a little bit stricken. “But I thought you’ve spent a couple nights together, when I was at Nate’s?”

“EXACTLY! We have. But we just SLEPT together, we haven’t done anything. Nothing. I mean, not totally nothing, we’ve kissed, you know, but that’s it. When we spent the night, we just cuddled.” She runs her hands through her hair. “I’ve never been in this situation. All the guys I’ve ever dated have, like, totally pounced on me the moment they got a chance. And I’m not so good at the whole taking-it-slow thing, I just feel like, sex, you know, it’s so natural and something our bodies were meant to do, and if it isn’t good, then you aren’t going to last anyway, so you might as well find out. . . .”

“I suppose that’s one way to look at it. But didn’t you ever think that maybe waiting, getting to know someone a little bit, letting the anticipation build, that might make the sex better?”

She looks at me as if I have offered up Einstein’s theory of relativity. In Mandarin. “I guess I never much thought about that. Usually I figured that if a guy wanted to sleep with me, my best shot at him hanging out with me again was to do it.”

My heart breaks for her. I was that girl. The one who assumed that if a guy was even momentarily attracted to a fat girl, she had better jump on that opportunity and hope it was good enough to keep him coming back for more. Luckily for me, more often than not, it was, and most of my boyfriends began as either a hookup at a party, or a late-night study session turned make-out session. I think it’s why I didn’t even know Andrew and I were dating at first; I’d never had that normal progression of someone asking you to do something and not making it immediately sexual.

“Nadia, there’s obviously nothing wrong with sex; I personally am a big advocate for sex. But there’s also nothing wrong with waiting. Do you feel like the relationship with Daniel is just building slowly, or do you feel like the chemistry isn’t there?”

She bites her lower lip gently. “I feel like when we first started hanging out, that he was totally into me, and I wasn’t that interested, but felt like I should try and break my bad-boy pattern for a change. And I liked the way he looked at me, the way I felt powerful around him, like, you know, that old saying, it is better to be the person in the relationship who is loved more than they are in love, or something like that, you know . . . like he looked at me as if I were some amazing thing, and that made me feel good, and even though I wasn’t totally, you know, hot for him, I thought it would be nice to be with someone who might just be nice to me for a change.” She shakes her head. “But the more we hang out, suddenly I feel all powerless again, and he doesn’t seem to really be that interested in me, you know, physically, and that makes me wonder what is wrong with me, that this total geeky guy, who is like, no one’s idea of a prize, isn’t at least attempting to get into my pants, even when we spend the night together!”

“Nadia, do you like him, or do you just want him to like you? Because if you don’t really like him, it isn’t very nice to . . .”

“I LOVE HIM!” She throws her arms into the air, and drops her chin on her chest. “I mean, I think I might want to love him, or something. He is so smart and weird and none of his clothes match, and he looks like he needs a haircut, even when he just had a haircut, and one of his eyes is hazel and the other one is blue, like three-D glasses, and when he smiles, which isn’t a lot, he has these tiny little baby teeth, perfectly white and even, like a row of corn kernels, small, but not gross small, just like, different. And he has beautiful hands and he only listens to music on actual records, like big black plastic records, and he’s from Nebraska!”

This all comes out in a rush, as if any of it would make sense to me, as if she were giving a woman’s usual litany of the ideal guy. But where most of us would say that he was smart and funny and kind and cute with a great butt and a good relationship with his mother, Nadia has offered up a series of qualities that I think only she can understand.

“Well,” I say, sort of at a loss. “If he’s from NEBRASKA . . . that is, um, something.”

Nadia looks at me. And then she smiles, crooked teeth winking, eyes wide. “I guess that all sounded totally bizarre, huh?”

“Yeah, little bit.”

“What do I do?”

“Tell you what; I’ll see if I can spend the night tonight at Nate’s. There is a really nice old cognac in the bar. Ask him to stay for a nightcap, look him in the eyes and tell him that you like him, that you are attracted to him, and while you don’t want to pressure him, if he was thinking it might be time to take it to the next level, you are feeling ready for that. My guess is, he’s probably just a real gentleman and wants to be sure that you are ready. Tell him you want him. I bet the night gets passionate very quickly.”

“You’re right. I have to let him know. Thanks, Mel!” She grabs me in one of her attack hugs, rocking me back and forth, and then disappears into her room to keep getting ready.

I call Nate.

“Hey!” he says. “I’m just jumping in the shower, and I’ll be over within the hour.”

“Hey, yourself. Wish I were there to help with the rub-a-dub.”

Nate laughs. “Me too. What’s up? Do you need me to bring anything besides the wine?”

“Nope, just wanted to know if it would be okay for me to come crash at your place tonight.”

“Of course. You know I’d never turn down your company. I thought we weren’t sleeping over tonight since you have to be at the store early tomorrow?”

“We weren’t but I want to give Nadia home-court advantage with her boy tonight, making myself scarce.”

“You are a good woman. That is a very sweet thing to do. And that makes me extra lucky! Something to really look forward to. I’ll see you soon, kitten.”

“See you soon.”

I head back to my bathroom. If I’m going to be staying at Nate’s tonight, there is some extra primping to be done.

 

 

This is the longest meal I’ve ever suffered through, and if Nathan Gershowitz pinches my thigh one more time under the table, or nudges me with his foot, or goes into the kitchen to get something and raises his eyebrows at me over Nadia’s and Daniel’s heads, I’m going to fucking punch him in the throat.

Daniel arrived forty minutes late, by which time the tenor of the evening had already slid downhill. Nate, thinking he was helping me out with my curiosity problem, basically spent those uncomfortable forty minutes interrogating Nadia with all of his investigative skills. She deftly answered all his questions about family and background and history without actually giving away any information. And since he is a documentarian, he couldn’t let it go. The more she dodged sharing real info, the more he pressed. “What did your dad do for a living?” “What did you do for Christmas?” “Where do your siblings live?” He was relentless, and Nadia, who had been sitting straight and feeling confident, and ready to take on confronting her guy, sank into the couch, her shoulders dropped, her eyes unsparkled. I grabbed Nate and asked him to help in the kitchen, and whispered for him to knock it off, but I didn’t really do it in a very nice way, so he narrowed his eyes at me and clearly was irritated. By the time Daniel finally arrived, we were all grateful for what we assumed would be the relief of a new person.

Not to be.

Nadia was now really nervous, and Nate made no less than three snarky jokes about Daniel being late, including one where he implied that her boyfriend was so excited to see her he clearly forgot where she lived. Daniel is as quirky as one would expect, based on Nadia’s description, and has alternated between not participating at all in the conversation and giving long, incomprehensible monologues related to the inner workings of computers and his admiration of some guy he calls The Woz. He picked all the apples out of his salad, and left the rest. “Celery. No. No food with strings.” He separated the meatballs on one side of his plate, and the pasta on the other, ate the pasta one strand at a time, and waited till it was gone to eat the meatballs. “Don’t really like to mix my foods.”

He also brought every other bite to his nose and sniffed deeply before eating.

On the one hand, I’m sort of grateful for his peculiarities, since Nate seems now more interested in poking at me to indicate some sort of amazement at this kid’s oddities than in being irritated at me for chiding him. On the other, I’m watching Nadia practically disappear she is getting so small, and she is inhaling everything in sight, taking huge second and third helpings, which makes me very concerned, since bulimia, like any eating disorder, never goes away, never leaves your psyche, and this bingeing behavior might lead to a relapse.

I take advantage of the current lull in conversation to ask if everyone has finished with the main course. “Nadia, why don’t you and I clear, and we’ll bring dessert to the living room. Nate? Daniel? Tea or coffee?”

Daniel pats his mouth delicately, and then drops my grandmother’s linen napkin directly onto his plate, where I can see it soaking up the remains of the tomato sauce. I cringe inwardly and suppress all desire to jump across the table and pluck his eyes out with the salad tongs. “Not for me,” he says blithely. “Can’t drink brown liquids.”

Nate rolls his eyes. “I’d probably prefer bourbon.”

Nadia and I clear the plates. She grabs the napkin off Daniel’s plate as soon as we get into the kitchen, and begins running it under cold water, scrubbing it together, adding the dish soap in a frantic attempt to prevent the damage we both know is already beyond help. Her shoulders are shaking.

I put down the plates, touch her back, and she flinches. I pull her around and into my arms, and stroke her hair. “Guess this wasn’t such a good idea I had, huh?”

She laughs and sniffles. “This is a disaster.”

“I’m so sorry, sweetie, I really thought we could all just have a good night and get to know each other better.”

“I know. And I don’t know what happened. Daniel isn’t usually THIS strange, I mean, you know, he’s an odd little rabbit, but tonight, this is really the most ridiculous behavior, I just don’t know where it came from, and your napkin . . .” She trails off.

“It’s a napkin. I have a full set, it’s one of twelve. And I can only fit six people at that table anyway. He couldn’t know.”

She whispers at me violently, “He’s thirty! He could know that you don’t drop a fabric napkin on your plate! He could know that you show up to a dinner party on time! He could know that you don’t have to give some weird explanation for not wanting to eat or drink something, you can just politely decline. HE COULD KNOW TO JUST FUCKING LEAVE THE MEATBALLS IN THE PASTA WHEN YOU EAT SOMETHING SOMEONE HAS MADE FOR YOU!”

We laugh. “Guess you’re not asking him to stay over tonight, huh?”

“Not a chance.”

I think for a minute. I think about what I would do in her place. If it had been me who suffered what she has suffered tonight, I would have waited till everyone was gone, and then eaten every bite of the leftovers. I would have made a huge bowl of popcorn drizzled with butter and polished it off in front of the television. I think about how truly tempting it will be for her, all alone, to binge more and then purge, to have some control over something. And I make a decision. “How about we have some dessert and something to drink and then kick these retarded boys out and watch girl movies all night?”