“Más allá del Sol? How did it go?”
“It was so much fun. I ordered just what you said, the melted cheese with sausage, and the little rolled-up chicken things, and then we got a bunch of stuff to share and taste. I promised them as long as they tasted everything, we could stop by McDonald’s on the way home if anyone didn’t like dinner and was still hungry. But they ate everything! It was really delicious.”
“See? A little adventurousness can work sometimes. Plus, it keeps you out of McDonald’s.”
“Well, we still had to go to McDonald’s. They didn’t love the desserts so much, so they wanted McFlurrys on the way home.” She laughs. “But change is slow, right? At least it was a start.”
“It’s a really good start.” I wink at her and we drink our glasses of rich Chianti, and eat like it’s our last meal, and let ourselves be swept into the loud wonderful din of the room.
And all I can think, for the first time since I thought I was pregnant when I was with Bernard, is that it’s possible I do actually want some piece of this for myself. Maybe I really do.
Fifteen
Mm-mmm. Don’go,” Shawn says, snuggling into my back. I wiggle back against him, feeling the warmth of him soaking into my body. We’ve barely been out of bed since he got home yesterday morning.
I did the girlfriendly thing and picked him up at O’Hare, shocked at the volume of luggage he had with him from such a short trip. Turns out between receiving a bunch of Christmas gifts and his mom sending him home with a month’s worth of home-cooked goodies, he always leaves with one bag and comes back with three. We came straight to my house and had a lunch feast of his mom’s amazing cooking: glazed ham, bread dressing, green beans she cans herself with salt pork, and a sweet potato pound cake that is beyond delicious. We took Simca on a walk to try to burn off some of the food, the whipping Chicago winds getting a chill well into our bones, came back to take a luxurious hot shower together, and fell into bed. We rose around ten p.m. to raid his goodies again, opting for a small pan of macaroni and cheese, which we ate in bed, one dish and two forks, and abandoned on the nightstand when we couldn’t resist each other anymore, the sex playful and energetic.
I’m finding that the more time we spend together, the more fun I have. Sex with Bernard was always such a serious thing: long, deep, meaningful looks, strong eye contact, murmured phrases of love and longing. Sex with Shawn has that, but so much more. There is also talking and laughing and joking. We acknowledge the parts of lovemaking that are silly and funny and embrace laughing together. I only ever laughed with Bernard once, when he kissed his way up my body and said that I was the most delicious thing he had ever eaten, which was apparent from the glazed doughnut appearance of the lower half of his face, which I pointed out with a giggle, telling him he looked like a baba au rhum. He immediately lost his erection and didn’t sleep with me for three days. That was the end of playful and funny with him.
Shawn can make me laugh in bed without it being a challenge to his masculinity, and I love the way we can start and stop and talk and not talk for hours. Just before dawn he reached for me again in the dark and we were silent and half-asleep as we came together, moving slowly, languidly, toward release and then slipping back into sleep without untangling.
“I can’t stay. I have to go drop everything off at Lawrence’s, get everything there all set up and organized so that tonight I don’t have to abandon you too often to my mom and Claire’s interrogations to putter in the kitchen.”
“Okay, fine. But I can come help, right? Be your schlepper?”
This makes me chuckle, his use of Yiddish. “Yes, if you insist, you can be my Shabbas goy.”
“Okay, I’ve been working on my vocabulary, but what is a shamus boy?”
“Shabbas goy. Technically a gentile man who does things for Jews on the Sabbath that they aren’t allowed to do themselves, like turn lights off and on or carry keys.”
“You can’t carry keys?”
“Only if you’re very observant.”
“I’ve got a lot to learn,” he says seriously.
“Not really. We’re only culturally Jewish, not observant at all. Hence my ability to enjoy your mother’s amazing ham yesterday.”
“You did at that. I’m going to send her a note today telling her that you hit that ham like a shark hitting chum.”
I swat his arm and sit up, stretching, feeling that wonderful feeling of delicate aches, my body reminding me of the endeavors of the night before, of this morning. He traces a hand down the length of my side, leaning forward to plant a kiss in the small of my back.
I turn to look at him and he throws his hands up in surrender.
“I give. Work it is. Can we shower first? Maybe eat something?”
“Yes and yes.”
This morning’s shower is much more functional than last night’s, a perfunctory but loving mutual soaping up, with some strategic lather placement for entertainment value. We towel each other off and get dressed, and Shawn offers to take Simca for a walk while I rustle up some breakfast. By the time my man and my pup are back, there are scrambled eggs with some of the leftover ham and scallions and cream cheese, thick slices of sourdough toast lavished with butter, and freshly squeezed grapefruit juice. We tuck in, and I take him through what I need to do for the day.
“Sure you don’t want to bail? I wouldn’t blame you.”
“Nope, I’m all in. I want to watch my baby work.”
I wash up the breakfast stuff, and Shawn dries. Then I start to get all of the food that I’ve been prepping all week ready for transport. There is the standing prime rib roast, which I salted three days ago and have left uncovered in the extra fridge to dry out. I place the roast in a large Ziploc bag and put it in the bottom of the first rolling cooler, and then the tray of twice-baked potatoes, the crispy shells stuffed with chunky mashed potatoes enriched with cream, butter, sour cream, cheddar cheese, bacon bits, and chives, and topped with a combination of more shredded cheese and crispy fried shallots. My coolers have been retrofitted with dowels in the corners so that I can put thin sheets of melamine on them to create a second level of storage; that way items on the bottom don’t get crushed. On the top layer of this cooler I place the tray of stuffed tomatoes, bursting with a filling of tomato pudding, a sweet-and-sour bread pudding made with tomato paste and orange juice and lots of butter and brown sugar, mixed with toasted bread cubes. I add a couple of frozen packs, and close the top.
“That is all looking amazing,” Shawn says.