I GAINED my husband with soup. Not charm, wit or lingerie, but soup. Not canned soup or deli, but real homemade soup, simmered for hours over a hot Jenn-Air. The kind of soup that makes your eyes roll back in your head and your body feel, for a brief time, safe.
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I carried this soup to him at work in shopping bags with handles — fresh split pea with ham or black-eyed vegetarian delivered in Tupperware while his co-workers teased and he strutted.
I believe my deceptively simple cabbage and rice soup, finished off with handfuls of Gruyère cheese and oversize garlic croutons, is the one that sent him over the edge. He admitted as much. That cabbage soup stands as the last crumbling brick in the wall of his bachelorhood.
It explains how he was blinded into a formal commitment, despite his horror regarding legal matters. He was especially fearful of marriage, which he filed in his personal ledger of liability just below malpractice and above identity theft.
He could overcome the lure of my smooth, naked legs draped casually over his. He could handle the ambrosia of a new lover and all the mindless meandering that entailed. But he could not physically get past the delicious, sedative comfort of my soup repertory. By design, I was inexorably attached to the soup; I could giveth or taketh away. And in his life, as disciplined as he attempted to make it, the soup had gone from a want to a need.
In the beginning, I was on my best and most false behavior in many aspects, as was he. We sought the intersection of all senses, the folding together of sex and of wardrobe and the fey territory of bread pudding in whiskey sauce. We avoided all areas of conflict. Instead, elaborate rituals were made, based on erotic and dining preferences.
It was the time of exotic vegetables and delicacies served in dim restaurants where candles wink on white tablecloths and coarse sea salt sits in a cunning tiny bowl. We ate out often in the beginning, better to admire each other over a wee marble table. We perched in small cafes, holding hands while the waiter discreetly avoided us, knowing his tip would be large, as all possibility is at the onset of love.
This is the time when metropolitan, professional women such as myself will happily scrub their underused efficiency apartment kitchens, rolling up sleeves on carefully toned and sun-tanned arms. An apron will be purchased, maybe two. The cornucopia of the freshest seasonal ingredients will appear, butcher shops with the finest meats and fish will be ransacked. Potatoes will be thinly sliced and crisply fried and seasoned with fresh sage.
I made all manner of dishes as though born to it. If pressed for time, I would remove prepared food from takeout tins and fob it off as my own. I decided it would be best to lie; it really was just the smallest bit of chicanery, nothing like the real farce our marriage would become. I didn’t know this yet. I was still smashing takeout cartons into the trash and covering them with the outer leaves of romaine lettuce. This woman seems very disturbed, now. I am not afraid of my garbage anymore.
In the beginning, I bent over backward and did high kicks to demonstrate how well tempered and smart I was, yet in a nonthreatening way. He slipped from bed each morning to fetch coffee and serve it up bedside, exactly as I like it. Our life was rife with soft Bach sonatas and flaky croissants and bud vases with a single stalk of freesia.
Cloth napkins were whipped out for every meal. There was much serving of coffee and tea and even breakfast in bed, along with the morning newspaper and an insouciant smile. We were both losing weight despite drinking wine as if it were water and eating fat-laden foods. I put this down to the sex: appetite fans out and succumbs to carnal recreation.
He began to plan intimate at-home dinners-for-two, making sure that I understood this was something he did only when he was truly in love. He chose the music with care. I am afraid I gasped, realizing he loved the same obscure vocalist I loved.
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