Stir (22 page)

I go through phases with recipes, making the same granola, for example, week after week, eating it daily. Then one morning, for no good reason, I stop. I eat eggs for breakfast, or Grape-Nuts, or toast. I develop some kind of amnesia that keeps me from knowing that granola ever existed. Until, months later, when I remember that it does, and off I go again on a mad granola streak, wondering how I ever got along without it.

This kind of ebb and flow in the kitchen creates a sense of seasonality beyond peaches in the summertime and apples in the fall. I remember who I was the last time granola came around, what I was doing, the book I was reading, the friend who came to town. And vice versa: When I think of that book or that friend, granola springs to mind.

When I was newly patched up but feeling broken still that fall, I made a lot of soup. One big batch on the weekends to stretch for as many lunches and dinners as I could manage. This simple tomato soup figured heavily in the rotation then. It's smooth, bold, and improves with age. I ate it all the time, after long hours in the library and runs along the river. I was also into a certain soda bread, a squat little loaf with a craggy crust; a nutty, faintly sweet flavor; and a compact crumb that slices well. It makes terrific toast.

1 large yellow onion, coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, divided

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons tomato paste

2 28-ounce cans whole tomatoes, preferably Muir Glen

Pinch of baking soda

1 cup water

Diamond crystal kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 bay leaf

1 cup whole milk, warmed (but not boiled)

Good-tasting olive oil, to serve (optional)

In a large heavy pot, melt the butter over medium heat. When it foams, add the onion, and sauté until it softens, goes translucent, and browns a little around the edges. Add 1 tablespoon of the vinegar to deglaze the pot, scrape up the brown bits with a wooden spoon or spatula, and turn down the heat to medium-low.

Add the flour and the tomato paste, and stir to incorporate. Add the remaining tablespoon of vinegar to deglaze once again, and scrape up any flour or tomato paste that may be sticking to the pot.

Dump in the 2 cans of tomatoes and their juices and break them up a bit with a wooden spoon. (Watch out, they squirt.) Stir in the baking soda and water, season lightly with salt and pepper, add the bay leaf, partially cover, and simmer gently for about 30 minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the bay leaf, and use an immersion blender to purée the soup. (You can also carefully purée it in batches in a stand blender. As with the cream of asparagus soup on page 92, fill the blender only one-half to three-quarters of the way full with each batch. Return the puréed soup to the pot.)

Add the warmed milk very slowly, stirring constantly, just before serving. Top each bowl with a drizzle of olive oil, if you'd like, and a grind or two of black pepper.

Serves 8.

1¾ cups (219 grams) all-purpose flour

1¾ cups (198 grams) whole wheat flour

3 tablespoons instant oats (rolled oats chopped coarsely with a knife will also work)

1 tablespoon ground flaxseeds

2 packed tablespoons dark brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 tablespoons (28 grams) cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes, plus more for greasing the pan

2 cups buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and butter a 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan. Combine the first seven ingredients (everything but the butter and the buttermilk) in a large bowl and blend well with a fork. Add the butter, and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Dig a well in the center of the dry ingredients, fill with the buttermilk, and stir until the liquid is just incorporated. (Better for a bit of dry flour to remain than to overmix the dough.)

Scrape the dough into the buttered loaf pan and bake for about 35 minutes, until the crust is brown and a tester inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Turn the loaf out onto a rack and cool for at least twenty minutes before slicing.

“W
ant to spend this summer in Berlin?” I hadn't planned on asking him just then. The thought hadn't even come to me until that moment. We were eating breakfast at our red table, the newspaper split between us. Eli looked up. Then, as casually as if I had asked him whether he'd like pizza for dinner, he said, “Sure.”

A few months had gone by and I wasn't yet pregnant. I would be soon, though, I hoped. A summer in Berlin could be a last hurrah for just us two. Or maybe a first hurrah, Eli and Jess back out there, two healthy people free again to take on the world.
Hurrah!
Either way, I wanted to get out of town.

By noon we had a plan: I'd passed the German proficiency exam required by my department, but barely. If I wanted to do the comparative work I had in mind for my dissertation, I would have to improve my German. There was a summer language program in the center of Berlin. Maybe my department would pay for me to do it? It was February, which meant that summer grant applications were almost due. I completed the forms by the end of the week while Eli approached his boss about working remotely for the summer.

A few weeks later, we were set. The funding came through, permission was granted, and when we were done pinching ourselves, we started looking for a flat. It was fun, this scheming. I felt as though we were staging something not totally allowed. I couldn't wait to go.

 • • • 

I always remember the first picnic of the year. Probably because it feels so unlikely. All that snow and ice, months of wind-stung cheeks, pitch-black late afternoons. Then a suddenly spring day sneaks up, and there you are, with grass and a blanket and something to eat, and you slip off your jacket and you're not even cold. Like the First Day of School, First Night Sheets on laundry days, and the First Ocean Swim of the summer, First Picnic is
a thing
.

Ours was in early April that year. We'd gotten home later than expected and had to race against the sun. Eli dug the blue quilted blanket out of the bin in the hall closet. It had been his bedspread in college and for picnics ever since. I grabbed a long-sleeved shirt, and by the time we were lining up our shoes along the edge of the blanket in the park outside our apartment, it was almost a full half hour after the sun had officially set, but still another full half hour before it would be truly dark. We ate steamed artichokes, and pasta with mushrooms, lemon, and thyme. Then we stretched out on the blanket and let our conversation go where conversations go when your bellies are full and you're flat on your back outdoors, when the stars are already out but you feel like you have all night.

“People tell me I'm brave,” I said. “Do you think I'm brave?”

“Do I think you're brave?” He was buying time.

“I asked you first.”

“Yes,” he said. “But not because you were sick. Bravery doesn't mean living through something hard.”

I rolled over onto my stomach and pushed myself up on my elbows. “Say more, say better.”

Eli sat up and folded himself into a cross-legged position, pulling his left heel against his body at the top of his thigh. “Bravery is when you go against the momentum of your life to do the scary thing,” he began. He plucked a piece of grass and rolled it between his finger and his thumb. “So . . . okay: If a lion comes after you and backs you against a wall, and you face him, that's not brave. It's when you go after the lion yourself and stick your head into his mouth. That's brave.”

“Right,” I agreed. “Like, not just living through the terror, but hunting it down. It's only called bravery when you've made a choice. And that's just it. I didn't choose anything.” The way I saw it, I'd just lived alongside something really bad for a while. I'd recognized that the only way out was through, and then I had waited, the way you do when you're caught in a downpour and have no choice but to get soaked until the storm clouds pass. Cowards and heroes and everyone in between would have done the same, I figured, because really, what was the alternative? I realized that I didn't know very many brave people at all, and that I wasn't nearly as brave as I wanted to be.

“You're braver than you think,” Eli said.

Back inside, we opened a bottle of wine and sank into the sofa. I saw the question starting to form on Eli's lips, the same question he had been asking me for eight months now. This time, when I cut him off, he started to cry.

“You've worked so hard to get back to where you are,” he said. “You've made your body strong again. You're running. You're back in school. You are better. You are whole. But when you see that dent, you feel like you're not.”

“Because I'm horrible,” I said.

“Babe—”

“No, I am. If I need to fix anything, it's the thing inside of me that can't just be grateful. I know how things might have turned out. I know how they
should
have turned out. I'm supposed to be dead, Eli.
Dead
. I am lucky to have this dent.”

“You have a funny definition of luck.”

I bit my lip, suddenly angry. “You're wrong. Plastic surgery won't change what happened to me. It won't undo the fact that my body broke or give me back the sight in my left eye. God, what is wrong with me? Since when do I care about my looks, anyway?” I'd always been a shower-and-go person, letting my curls do whatever they pleased. At twenty-nine, a tube of lipstick was all the makeup I owned. It was the same color I'd once tried when I was sixteen from a sample tube that Amy had gotten along with a purchase. Even on my wedding day, I wore only that lipstick and a bit of eyeliner my cousin Katie brought along. I'd done my hair myself that morning, by which I mean I washed it. “It's not like I was some kind of beauty before all this,” I said. “It's not like, with this dent in my head, I've lost something.”

Eli closed his eyes. “It hurts me to hear you talk about yourself this way.”

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, love. You didn't sign up for this.” Now I was crying, too.

“
You
didn't sign up for this. And you can't move past it if every time you look in the mirror, you're reminded of it. You shouldn't have to remember it all the time.”

“You don't solve problems with plastic surgery,” I insisted.

Eli gathered my feet onto his lap. “It's not that kind of plastic surgery.” His tone had changed. He was no longer pleading. “All you want is to look the way you did. To recognize yourself in the mirror again.”

I felt tired. I didn't know what to say. I crawled over to his side of the sofa and laid my head on his chest, dent side down. He swept his hand across my back.

“I'm going to make an appointment with the surgeon,” he said. “If you want to, you can cancel it.”

 • • • 

I didn't cancel it. The doctor walked into the examining room and around to the dented side of my head.

“I can fix that,” he said. Just like that. Like a mechanic looking at a bent fender. He would go in along the old incision line, peel my forehead back down, and fill my remaining hole with something called methyl methacrylate, a hot putty that hardens as it cools. I asked if the reconstruction would take care of the remaining tenderness and discomfort, but he couldn't say. I hesitated.

“I need more time,” I told Eli, and I could have it. The OR was booked for months. We were leaving soon to spend Memorial Day weekend with my family in Ohio. Maybe they could help me figure this out. I could think about it while we were away in Berlin, and by the end of the summer, maybe,
maybe
I could be ready.

 • • • 

I was in the kitchen at my dad and Amy's house when the phone call came in: There was an unexpected opening in the doctor's schedule on June 9. If I wanted the surgery, I could have that slot.

“You mean, twelve days from now?” I asked the secretary.

“Yes.”

The doctor knew about our planned trip to Berlin, that we were leaving at the end of the month. I'd have three weeks between the surgery and our departure, and he said I'd be recovered enough to make the trip.

My brain switched into solve-it mode.

“Okay,” I said, getting my bearings. “Thank you. I'll need to speak with my husband, call the insurance company . . .”

“Oh, they'll cover it,” she said. “If they cover reconstructive surgery, which I bet they do.”

I paused. “This is reconstructive surgery?” I hadn't thought of it that way.

“Certainly. You know, like breast reconstruction after mastectomy. It's like that. To make you look like you did before you got sick.”

Eli had said essentially the same thing, but those words, “reconstructive surgery” changed something for me. If a woman who'd survived cancer wanted her body to look as it once had, I'd think it was only natural. I remembered a conversation I'd had with Rebecca, who, years after predicting the union of Eli and Jess, had continued to be smart about everything. She was someone I called when I needed a gut check, a little help knowing what I likely already knew. I was sure she'd be with me in the no-more-surgery camp. She wasn't. “It's your fucking face, Jessica,” she'd said.

My family felt the same. They were so careful, so sensitive about respecting whatever I chose that they hesitated to offer any advice. I had to ask a bunch of times. Finally, around the table in the yard, after a dinner of grilled burgers, pickles, and extra mustard for me, Amy said, “I'd do it, if it were my face. Absolutely.” I looked at my dad.

“Absolutely,” he repeated.

The next night, our friends Janet and Fred came over for dinner. I'd turned thirty that week, and Janet brought cake. It was white through and through, made with coconut milk and swathed in cream cheese frosting. Someone lit the candles and put the cake down on the table in front of me, and my father took a photo with an old Polaroid camera. It's a black-and-white photo on the kind of film that you have to peel apart to get to the developed image. The room was dark, so the photo is mostly black, but the glow of the cake is bright and lights up my hands and a part of my face—the intact part. The dent in my head is in a shadow, and you can't see it at all.

 • • • 

The nurse in the recovery room handed me a mirror. I remember pausing to shove any expectation down to the bottom of me. Then I lifted the mirror and looked. What I saw there, I can hardly tell you. I was completely unprepared. I had asked for the mirror so that I could look at “it.” At the dent, or the former site of the dent, or whatever it would be. But when I peered into the glass, I saw something else instead: my face. I saw
me
. A me I hadn't seen since early on the morning of August 19, 2008, when I had pulled my hair back into a ponytail and laced up my running shoes in front of the mirror in my hotel room. “Hey!” I wanted to shout. “I know you! I've been trying to get ahold of you for ages! Where on earth have you been?!”

I had completely underestimated the power of that dent in my head. For almost two years, I had done whatever I could to force my eye away from the broken parts. When I would look in the mirror, I would search my cheeks, my jawline, my lips, for signs of the face I had known. Sometimes, for a split second, I would find it, but then that dent would pull my eye right back. It might as well have been a giant blanket cloaking my entire face. That's when I got it: It wasn't seeing the defect, but
not
seeing
me
that had torn me apart all those months. In that recovery room, even with the swelling beginning to creep in, there was nothing to distract me from the person staring back at me. It was so good to see her. I was grateful to have found her. I didn't want to look away.