Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [87]
“We’re not married,” Ruth interrupts, breathlessly.
“Look, they’re going to start without you,” Neil says, gesturing beyond us into the gym, where a dozen women are now taking their places at the folding tables just set up by the custodian. “Don’t you think you’d better start racking your tiles?”
“Yes, come on, Leah, let’s go. I don’t want to be stuck sitting with Heddy Markowicz again. She’s too slow,” Rona says.
“Don’t forget you’re coming for dinner tonight. Six thirty, sharp,” Leah says, reaching up to kiss her son’s cheek.
“Yes, Mother,” Neil says, bending low to receive her kiss. “Mrs. Silverman, ladies,” and with a nod he’s gone.
We’re almost to the door when Leah flags us down again. “Ruth dear, so glad I caught you. Rona and I were just talking. Perhaps you’d like to join us for mahj sometime? I don’t suppose you have a card, do you?”
“Sure, I do,” Ruth says, rummaging in her purse for a moment before handing Leah her card. “It’s been ages since I’ve played, so I’m sure I’m rusty, but I’d love to, if you can tolerate me,” she says, smiling like she’s just won the lottery.
“What are you smiling at?” I ask her, as soon as Leah is out of sight.
“The game is afoot,” Ruth says softly.
Enid Maxwell, the food editor at the Post-Gazette, has sent me a form letter, thanking me for my interest. There are no openings at this time, she writes, but my interest is appreciated. The letter looks odd, as if she is trying to fill up the expanse of white letterhead with three lousy lines. Enid even signed her name with a big, bold flourish, probably trying to take up more space. It seems as if a letter from a journalist should be more eloquent.
My first reaction is to rip it to shreds and burn the evidence. If I rip it up, I can deny its existence, and when asked by Dr. D-P for a status report on my “irons in the fire,” as she calls them, I can tell her I haven’t heard anything. She’s lately begun to intimate that I should have a few more irons in the fire and that I shouldn’t be putting all my eggs in one basket. She’s a woman who likes to communicate in short bursts of energy and often uses clichés because they get the point across with a minimum of explanation. But every once in a while, when she suspects she’s lost my attention, she’ll drop a little bomb and then sit back and examine her nails. Like last week, we were talking about the fact that in the last three weeks I’ve only managed to send out one résumé, and Dr. D-P suggested that this might be construed as not making enough of an effort. To which I challenged that I was waiting to see what happened with the Post-Gazette before I planned my assault on the restaurants of Pittsburgh. To which she added that putting all my eggs in one basket seemed to be an issue with me. I’d done it before, hadn’t I? I’d put everything into Grappa and into my relationship with Jake and look where it had gotten me. I’d spent all of my emotional capital, when what I’d really needed to do was keep something back, just for me. It may be why, she hinted, I feel so lost and empty all the time.
I told Dr. D-P that a marriage is like a soufflé, a labor of love, requiring the taming of plenty of temperamental eggs, under precise conditions and under the direction of a skilled and talented chef. It seems to me that if you can’t put all your eggs in the marriage basket, then you ought to just forget it and order takeout. Actually, I hadn’t told her that, I just thought of it, but now I wish I’d said it.
Today, still stinging from the Post-Gazette rejection, I decide that my homework assignment will have to wait. I’m supposed to be putting together a list of restaurants where I’d be interested in working and researching the Pittsburgh catering scene, neither of which, I’ve decided, I have any interest in doing.
Later, when I tell this to Dr. D-P, she nods and asks why.