My friend Andrew used to say that relationships are very much a series of negotiations about outsourcing. That is, contracting to one’s partner jobs one would rather not perform, often in exchange for another task instead. For example, after what felt like an endless decade of pushing a lawn mower for hire during my adolescence, I had absolutely no desire to mow my own yard in either of the houses we owned. I outsourced that to the Craig Corporation, who didn’t find the chore as off-putting. In return, Vance Industries got stuck with weeding duty—which I didn’t exactly enjoy, but which was better than looking at the exhaust end of a lawn mower.
A lot of these trade-offs tend to be wordless exchanges that evolve with the relationship. I tend to be vague about dates. I mean, really vague. The kind of vague that makes patients with advanced Alzheimer’s seem really on the ball. My most common question about dates is not along the lines of What is today, the 16th? or even It’s Friday, right? No, I’m more likely to wrinkle my brow, try to get a few feeble brain cells a-sparking, and mumble, “Hey, um, what month are we in?” My absent-mindedness in this area does not make me an ideal bill-payer. Craig has learned over the years that it’s therefore probably best to take care of recurring payments himself. Creditors probably think so, too.
In return, I have been the one who scrubs the toilets and the bathrooms. It’s a grungy task, but someone’s got to do it. Honestly, I don’t mind it in the least. It’s just some spraying and some wiping and some mopping. Plus it smells good, after. I can wash my hands when I’m done and still feel cleaner than if I’d sent checks to the utility companies. Toss in most of the cat pan duties, and I’d say it’s still a fairly even exchange.
My parents had their own trade-offs. My dad hated proofreading his own articles, so my mother would fire up a pot of coffee and light up a cigarette and have at it while he, in exchange, would make school sack lunches for us. He performed mysterious rites under the hoods of the cars while she tended the vegetable garden. And though he did all the grocery shopping every Saturday morning, she was the one who for a time did all the cooking.
Cooking duties were probably the biggest bone of contention between them when I was growing up. My mother disliked cooking, and her nature rebelled against the then-common assumption that she should be the one stuck at the stove merely because of her gender. However, my father’s repertoire in the kitchen consisted solely of one dish: a chili made with ground beef, a can of kidney beans, a can of tomato sauce, and a whole mess of Minute Rice. Even with my dad making chili once a week and with him guaranteeing a take-out pizza or Arby’s sandwiches for everyone on another, that was still five dinners a week she had to plan and prepare. (Forget breakfasts and lunches. As soon as we were weaned from her breast milk, we were pretty much on our own for those.) As far as she was concerned, that was still five meals a week too many.
And she let us know it, too. During a particularly self-pitying moment in my childhood she sat down with a pencil and a pad of paper, performed a rapid series of calculations on the ruled pages in her impeccable hand, and figured out how many more dinners she had to prepare until both her children had graduated high school—the point at which she felt her indentures ended, apparently. For years after she’d chip away at that number, meal after meal. “Two thousand, one hundred and seven,” she’d growl as she’d chuck down a plate loaded with pot roast in a uniform gray, some potatoes on which she’d taken out her frustrations while mashing, and a few watery green beans that had come from a can. Or, “One thousand, eight hundred and forty-five,” as from the other side of the room she’d fling sodden chunks of meatloaf and lukewarm store-bought rolls.
I’m shortchanging my mother’s cooking a little. The dishes she genuinely liked turned out well—like cornbread from scratch or fluffy angel biscuits or any of the stews that struck her fancy. Occasionally she’d be inspired to try a Julia Child recipe that she and my father would enjoy. She claimed she made a good steak and kidney pie, but since the prospect of eating kidneys had me hiding behind tall furniture rather than coming anywhere near the kitchen table where we ate, I never found out. She didn’t like desserts, but she made good cakes and tortes and pies. Most of the everyday dinners, however, she approached with the same enthusiasm of a condemned man his noose.
I’ve been reminded of my mother in recent months because we’ve been planning—at long last—to move again in the early new year. The one-bedroom flat in which we’ve been living since 2011 is cute and cozy, but it’s also so cramped that about eighty percent of our old Detroit household has been in storage for two and a half years. Long enough, that is, so I no longer remember what’s in any of those dozens and dozens of boxes that have never been unpacked since they left Michigan. Originally when we took up residence in our current place, we thought we’d be there for two months, three months. Six months at the most. I laugh now at what naive children we were.
Anyway, the house to which we’ll be moving actually looks as if it might be nearing the completion of its renovation. Since November we’ve had to spend a little bit of time picking out appliances and countertops and knobs and all the other things that keep HGTV in business. I’ve outsourced my vote in these matters to Craig because I really don’t care if the floor is sandy taupe or taupey sandstone, nor do I have a strong opinion on the entire Oval Knobs vs. Round Knobs debate. For all I care the knobs can be molded from the late Gore Vidal’s nipples, the floor can be electric blue, the cabinets a metallic faux crocodile, and the countertops made of recycled porcelain from NYC subway urinals. I just want my chest freezer back, dammit.
Early in the renovation process we were over at the house looking at the gutted kitchen and the taped outlines of where the cabinets and the appliances would be installed. “I must have a good working triangle!” Craig declared, as in the air he made wild gestures. “Refrigerator! Stove! Sink! I must have space! Working space! Counter space, to prepare my meals!” He bit his lip, wheeled around, and narrowed his eyes at one corner of the room. “I wonder if we could get a professional oven.”
Reader, I smirked. I couldn’t help it. I just found it funny. Perhaps it was more of a snort than a smirk, because it made Craig wheel around. Hands on his hips, he glared at me as if he were Gordon Ramsay demanding to know where the fuckety fuck were his fucking Yorkshire puddings, and I was some contestant on Hell’s Kitchen asking, What’s a Yorkshire pudding, again? In answer to his unspoken question, I cleared my throat and said, in my mildest tones, “I just think it’s cute that you pretend to know how to work an oven.”
He stiffened. He regarded me as Dame Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey might stare down a jocular tradesman who asked if she kept a flask of hooch up her bustle. “I beg your pardon.”
“Well honey,” I said. “You never cook. You don’t cook.”
Which is verifiable. I didn’t say he can’t cook. He just doesn't.
It’s true that in our early life together he had to be gently trained a little on Things Not To Do In A Kitchen, like putting a piping hot pan directly onto a glass refrigerator shelf (the shelf shattered). And it’s also a fact that long, long ago, he would on occasion attempt to prepare dinner with new and exciting recipes. His blood-rare pork tenderloin was not a personal favorite of mine. We also both still shudder at the memory of his Southern Hamloaf—a mound of ground ham studded with golf ball-sized onion chunks. Curiously, while the meat managed to bake to a consistency of hot Underwood’s Deviled Ham (I’m not claiming that’s a good thing, mind you), the onions remained raw and cold. I’d say the dish tasted like a goddamned salt lick with some goddamned raw onions, but I don’t want to be unkind to either the salt lick or the onion industry.
In point of fact, the only meal that Craig had prepared in the kitchen where we’ve lived for nearly three years was his chili—which is the exact same chili my father used to make in my youth. Ground beef, a can of kidney beans, a can of tomato sauce, and a whole mess of frozen microwavable brown rice. (Not Minute Rice. We’re not savages.) Yes, as I’ve realized many times throughout my life, I have married my father.
Now. I have to be fair and point out that the above conversation took place in the early autumn. I was knocked flat on my back sick for a good six weeks during the months of October and early November, and didn’t have the strength to sit upright, much less stand in the kitchen cooking. While I was recuperating, Craig really stepped up to the plate for mealtimes. By ‘stepped up to the plate,’ I don’t entirely mean ‘went to Taco Bell and regarded me worriedly while he chewed his burrito’, either. He fiddled until he turned on the oven, he fired up the gas range, and he made some credible meals. From recipes I printed for him in large type and verbally annotated from the living room sofa with helpful tips like “CUT THE POTATOES INTO QUARTERS!” or “MAKE SURE YOU SPRAY THE PAN FIRST!”
Helpful . . . condescending. To-may-to, to-mah-to.
As I resumed my health, though, I’ve noticed that he hasn’t exactly insisted on preparing meals again. I’ve been back in the kitchen, happy to be back on my feet again. He’s back in the living room, watching Chopped and fantasizing about his new kitchen.
Last week, in fact, we went over to the house and let ourselves in so that we could look at the installed cabinets and countertop. Craig stretched his arms wide and extended his fingertips in a Christ-like pose. “I cannot wait,” he intoned, with hushed reverence. Then again, “I cannot wait to begin . . . my work!”
He sounded like an elderly French chef stepping into a professional kitchen after a forced indenture of three years heating up McMuffins in a microwave. He sounded like Isadora Duncan, long scarf sweeping the boards, stepping onto the stage of Covent Garden after being long away.
I snickered, of course, and reached out to touch him gently on the arm in a conciliatory way so I could tell him that yes, Madame Isadora, the cans of kidney beans will be arranged to his rigid mise en place. Before I could get in my good-natured dig, however, he narrowed his eyes at me. “Zip it,” he growled.
I let the man dream.
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