I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (23 page)

Then he announced that he would be spending the next week at his family’s lake house up in Canada for his annual vacation
with his children and ex-wife. “I would invite you, but …” I understood. In any case, I had no desire to go on vacation with
him and his ex-wife and children. Marcus wanted to leave the Vespa parked in the small yard in front of my house while he
was away. On the Friday before he left for his trip, we had tickets to see the Brooklyn Cyclones, a local minor league baseball
team that he really wanted to see. I had not heard from him all day. I spent the afternoon with Kit at a tag sale, waiting
for Marcus to call, and while Kit was helping me lug home a painting, we found him on my stoop, waiting. The painting, a Watteau
reproduction, inspired one more burst of faux mensch from Marcus, who offered to paint over some of the spots on the canvas
that were chipped. He was tough to read; he looked sullen on the stoop, but then he morphed into the good guy, always willing
to help, especially with art.

But as we rode out to Coney Island on the Vespa, my hands felt wrong wrapped around Marcus’s waist, and he wasn’t saying much.
Alarmed by the prices at the concession stand, he got us one beer and one popcorn to share. Not long after we took our seats
in the bleachers, I noticed that the beer had moved from its initial spot between us to Marcus’s right, where I couldn’t get
at it. He wasn’t concerned with my need for alcohol or the players on the field. Not even the man dressed as a giant baseball,
who danced around the aisles in between innings, could evoke any sort of reaction from him. At the seventh-inning stretch,
there was a fireworks display on the beach. Marcus didn’t even look. “This is kind of boring,” he said, and with that we left.

Marcus parked the Vespa in front of my house and took the subway home. He was off to Canada the next morning.

“I’ll call you when I get there,” he said as he left. “I guess I’ll have to since you never call me.”

What was that about? I couldn’t understand what it was or where it came from, but I could also no longer deny that something
was very wrong. I had been having doubts about Marcus for weeks, but surely that was just me putting up roadblocks where there
weren’t any. I didn’t have any hard evidence to explain my lack of satisfaction besides maybe an unwillingness to clean gutters
here or phoning a few hours late there. I was a pro at ignoring those and working on my own thing. I was going to get better,
then he’d get better and we would be happy again, just as we were for that first five or so minutes of what should merely
have been a fun, inappropriate summer fling.

I couldn’t bear another story gone wrong, no matter how wrong that story was. I spent Saturday sick with worry over what could
have happened. Marcus’s original demeanor was a memory, but he never behaved with hostility the way he had that previous evening.
And though he wasn’t making me happy, I didn’t want to lose him. My family knew him and (as far as I could tell) liked him,
Ginia was rooting for us, and most of my work friends and colleagues had witnessed our meeting, and those who hadn’t had met
him when I paraded him around the office on his many visits.

The weekend was cloudy, and I was trapped in that mental prison known as waiting-for-the-phone-to-ring. I checked my cell
phone every two minutes. Saturday night, I called him. He had groused about my never calling, after all. I got only his voice
mail. Sunday morning, I went to Mass to try to get some peace, but nothing worked. I scratched and scratched at a mosquito
bite I probably got at that silly game.

I spent Monday in a state of extreme stress. I dined with my brother Matthew and his wife, Elizabeth, on Tuesday, and they
brushed off my worries. They adored Marcus and were convinced that some logical explanation of his silence would emerge when
he did.

On Wednesday at lunch, I went to a lingerie sample sale, even though I thought that might be bad luck in light of what was
going on. Still, I bought some lacy underpinnings. Not long after I returned to work, an e-mail arrived from Marcus.

G.

Two things:

You’ve obviously been talking to someone a lot about me.

I’ve run off with Renee Lachaise. I’m as madly in love with her as I was the night we met.

M.

My heart was palpitating. I grabbed the phone and called Marcus, but there was no answer on his home phone or cell. (As if
someone that cowardly would answer his phone, but I wasn’t thinking straight.) “You can’t break up with me like that,” I said
in my messages. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.
You’ve obviously been talking to someone a lot about me.

Not only was this nonsensical, it was angry, and there was nothing between us to warrant that. Good that he was gone, but
was the kick in the face really necessary?

For whatever reason, I needed to make some sense out of that e-mail. Okay, he “ran off with Renee Lachaise,” that was clear.
But the “talking about” him was sheer lunacy, and yet, I must speak lunatic because I was able to trace the meaning of it
with a call to Ethan. Barring that, I could at least find a way to blame myself for what happened.

“Did you tell Erin O’Brien that I was dating Marcus Caldwell?” Erin was that friend of Renee’s who had the crush on Ethan,
and he had every right to tell her if he wanted to, that wasn’t the issue, it’s just that if Ethan had told Erin, then my
lunatic dictionary could translate the missive into something like “If you hadn’t told Ethan, it wouldn’t have gotten back
to Renee.” The whole thing was madness, and I should have been thanking the Lord that psychopath was out of my life, but instead
I actually spent a couple of days regretting that I had ever said anything to Ethan.

“He’s fifty-seven years old, he should get some balls,” said John Mallon, an old friend I’d always had a little crush on whom
I happened to have drinks scheduled with that evening. His funny comments about the episode had me roaring, and the Bellinis
we were drinking brought out the two specks of flirt left in me. I ended up dragging him back to my apartment just to put
a better spin on a horrible day. To borrow from the
Sex and the City
episode in which Carrie gets arrested for smoking pot the day Berger breaks up with her on a Post-it note: I wanted to turn
it into the day I made out with John Mallon rather than the day I got dumped by an AARP member with a psychotic e-mail. It
helped to have John with me when I got home to find the Vespa gone and the same demented text on a handwritten note slipped
under my door.

“Even his language dates him!” said my wise friend Jennifer, mercifully sparing me any “I told you so’s” when I told her about
the note. “Who says they’ve ‘run off’ with someone in this day and age?”

“You’ll hear from him again,” said Ginia. “Not before Columbus Day and not after Christmas.” She was right about hearing from
him again, but wrong about the timing. His attempt to woo me back commenced a few days shy of Columbus Day and continued until
Christmas.

He called, he sent notes, he had cupcakes delivered to my office. They were pretty; one was yellow with a little bee on it,
the other was white with pink flowers drawn in icing. But even I wouldn’t eat them. Not wanting to waste food, even from him,
I tried to pawn them off on my colleagues at
Harper’s,
but they, in solidarity, wouldn’t eat them, either. They ended up in the garbage. I ignored all of his attempts. I had as
much interest in seeing Marcus again as I would in hanging out with Jeffrey Dahmer.

The nice-guy shtick must have taken tremendous energy for Marcus to keep up, especially at his age. That exertion must have
been what kept him so trim and not surreptitious hours spent at the gym every day while I was at work, as I originally suspected.

I exorcised him from my life by making some cupcakes of my own.

Fuck-You Cakes

For the cupcakes (yellow cake, of course):

Cupcake liners

2 cups cake flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 stick (½ cup) butter, softened

1 cup sugar

3 large eggs, room temperature

1½ teaspoons vanilla

¾ cup whole milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Insert liners into muffin tins. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Cream butter and sugar with a
hand mixer (or a standing mixer fitted with a paddle) at medium speed until fluffy; add eggs one at time, then the vanilla,
and beat until smooth. Reduce mixer speed to low and add the sifted ingredients to the butter mixture a little at a time,
alternating with the milk until fully incorporated. Do not overmix, as this will make for tough cupcakes and you’ve suffered
enough.

Spoon batter into muffin tins, filling each one a third of the way. Bake until tops are golden and springy, 20 to 25 minutes.

Yield: About 12.

Chocolate Bourbon Frosting

(Because you need a drink)

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa

2 to 3 tablespoons bourbon (depending on how bad it was)

4 tablespoons milk

1 stick unsalted butter, very soft

1 box confectioners’ sugar

1 to 2 tablespoons milk

In a small bowl, whisk the cocoa, bourbon, and 2 tablespoons milk. Cream the butter with a hand mixer or stand-up mixer at
medium speed until smooth, then add the sugar 1 cup at a time until fully incorporated. Add the bourbon mixture and continue
beating until the color is uniform, then the additional milk a little at a time until the frosting is fluffy and spreadable.

Don’t be so angry with yourself that you eat more than one or two cupcakes. Be angry with him! Bring whatever is left to work.
Your colleagues will eat these and you’ll feel lighter for having shed him and not OD’ing on cupcakes.