When the server hands me my salad—in a plastic bowl and tucked in a white paper bag alongside a fork and napkin—I smile and thank her. Her fingers brush mine and I wonder if she also waited on my replacement.
Before I am even out the door, I’m suddenly overwhelmed by acute hunger pangs. All the dinners I’ve slept through, the breakfasts I’ve skipped, the lunches I’ve tossed in the trash—they converge upon me now, fueling a nearly savage desire to fill the emptiness inside me.
I step to one side, where there is a counter and stools, but I can’t wait long enough to put down my things and settle into a seat.
My fingers tremble as I open the container and begin to fork in mouthful after mouthful, holding the container close to my chin so I don’t spill any, devouring the tangy greens, chasing bits of egg and tomato around the slippery container with my fork.
I’m queasy as I swallow the final bite, and my stomach feels distended. But I am as hollow as ever.
I throw away the empty bowl and begin to walk home.
When I enter the apartment, I see Aunt Charlotte splayed on the couch, her head angled against a cushion, a washcloth draped over her eyes. Usually on Sunday nights she teaches an art-therapy class at Bellevue; I haven’t known her to ever miss one.
I’ve also never seen her nap before.
Worry pierces me.
She lifts her head at the thump of the door closing and the washcloth slips off, into her hand. Without her glasses, her features seem softer.
“Are you okay?” I recognize the irony: It’s an echo of the words she has repeated to me ever since a cab deposited me on the curb outside her building with three suitcases stacked behind me.
“Just a killer headache.” She grips the edge of the sofa and stands. “I overdid it today. Check out the living room. I think I cleared away twenty years of clutter after my subject left.”
She is still wearing her painting uniform—jeans topped by one of her late husband’s blue oxford shirts. By now the shirt is soft and worn, decorated with layers of drips and splatters. It’s a work of art in itself; a visual history of her creative life.
“You’re sick.” The words seem to propel themselves out of me. My voice is high and panicky.
Aunt Charlotte walks over and puts her hands on my shoulders. We are nearly the same height and she looks directly into my eyes. Her hazel eyes are faded by age, but they are as alert as ever.
“I am not ill.”
Aunt Charlotte has never shied away from difficult conversations. When I was younger, she explained my mother’s mental-health issues to me in simple, honest terms, ones I could understand.
Even though I believe my aunt, I ask, “Promise?” My throat thickens with tears. I cannot lose Aunt Charlotte. Not her, too.
“I promise. I’m not going anywhere, Vanessa.”
She hugs me and I inhale the scents that grounded me as a girl: linseed oil from her paints, the lavender she dabs on her pulse points.
“Have you eaten? I was going to throw something together. . . .”
“I haven’t,” I lie. “But let me make dinner. I’m in the mood to cook.”
Maybe it’s my fault she is exhausted; maybe I’ve taken too much from her.
She rubs her eyes. “That would be great.”
She follows me to the kitchen and sits on a stool. I find chicken and butter and mushrooms in the refrigerator and begin to pan-sear the meat.
“How did the portrait go?” I pour us each a glass of sparkling water.
“She fell asleep during our session.”
“Really? Naked?”
“You’d be surprised. Overprogrammed New Yorkers often find the process relaxing.”
As I whisk together a simple lemon sauce, Aunt Charlotte leans over and inhales. “It smells delicious. You’re a much neater cook than your mother.”
I pause in rinsing off the chopping board.
I am so used to masking what I feel that it’s easy to slip on a smile and chat with Aunt Charlotte. But the reminders are everywhere, as always—in the white wine I dash into my sauce, and the salad greens I push aside to reach the mushrooms in the refrigerator’s vegetable bin. I fall into light conversation with my aunt, gliding above the thoughts roiling through my mind, like a swan whose churning feet are hidden as he floats across the water.
“Mom was a tornado,” I say, even conjuring a smile. “Remember how the sink was always overflowing with pots and pans, the counters coated with olive oil or bread crumbs? And the floor! My socks would practically stick to it. She didn’t exactly subscribe to the belief that you should tidy up as you went along.” I reach into the big ceramic bowl on the counter and pull out a Vidalia onion. “Her food was great, though.”
On her good days, my mother would create elaborate three-course meals. Worn volumes by Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, and Pierre Franey lined our bookshelves, and I would often find her reading one the same way that I might devour Judy Blume.
“You were probably the only fifth grader who would get homemade beef bourguignonne and a lemon torte on an ordinary Tuesday night,” Aunt Charlotte says.
I flip the chicken breasts, the uncooked side crackling against the hot pan. I can see my mother now, her hair wild from the heat seeping from the oven, clattering pots onto burners and mincing garlic, and singing loudly. “Come on, Vanessa!” she’d say when she caught sight of me. She’d twirl me around, then shake salt into her hand and throw it into a pot. “Never follow a recipe exactly,” my mother always said. “Give it your own flair.”
I knew a crash would come soon after those nights, when my mother’s energy had burned itself out. But something in her freedom was glorious—her unfiltered, stormlike joy—even though it frightened me as a child.
“She was something else,” Aunt Charlotte says. She leans an elbow on the blue tile countertop and rests her chin in her hand.
“She was.” I’m glad my mother was still alive when I married, and in a way, I’m grateful she isn’t around to see how I’ve ended up.
“Do you like cooking now, too?” Aunt Charlotte is watching me carefully. Almost studying me, it seems. “You look so much like her, and your voice is so similar sometimes I think it’s her in the other room. . . .”
I wonder if another, unspoken question is in her mind. My mother’s episodes grew more severe in her thirties. Around the same age I am now.
I lost touch with Aunt Charlotte during my marriage. That was my fault. I was even more of a mess than my mother, and I knew Aunt Charlotte couldn’t just swoop in to help me. I was too far gone for that. The hopeful, buoyant young woman I was when I married Richard is almost unrecognizable to me now.
She turned into a disaster, Hillary had said. She was right.
I wonder if my mother also suffered from obsessive thoughts during her episodes. I’d always imagined her mind was blank—numb—when she took to her bed. But I’ll never know.
I choose to answer the simpler question. “I don’t mind cooking.”
I hate it, I think as my knife comes down and severs the onion cleanly.
When Richard and I first married, I didn’t know my way around a kitchen at all. My single-girl dinners consisted of Chinese takeout or, if the scale was mistreating me, a microwaved Lean Cuisine. Some nights I skipped dinner altogether and munched on Wheat Thins and cheese as I sipped a glass of wine.
Still, the unspoken arrangement was that once Richard and I married, I would cook for him every weeknight. I’d quit working, so it seemed more than reasonable. I rotated between chicken, steak, lamb, and fish. They weren’t fancy meals—a protein, a carb, and a vegetable—but Richard seemed appreciative of my efforts.
The day we first visited Dr. Hoffman—the day Richard learned I’d been pregnant in college—was my first attempt at making something special for him.