One
Is now agood time to mention that my husband has been leaving me in increments (first the far side of the bed, then the guest room, and now, apparently, his own apartment) and I’m not taking it well?
Lease start date August 15.
Join me here, in my kitchen, with a glass of wine that’s somehow found its way into my trembling hand, staring at this sheaf of paper I’ve just discovered, that my husband has pinned to the kitchen counter with a twenty-eight-ounce can of diced tomatoes.
So.
He’s moving out.
What the fuck do we do with this? If you’re like me, you might be asking yourself this very question.
Well, what the fuckdoI do with it?
I set my wine down.
The fact that he’s chosen a twenty-eight-ounce can of diced tomatoes to pin that lease to the counter suddenly feels a bit like a gauntlet.
Because, when my world is crumbling, I feed people.
Actually, when my world is gorgeous and peachy and shining with the light of a thousand Instagram filters, I feed people.
Can you guess the pattern?
I feed people!
He could have chosen a twelve-ounce can. He could have left it on the counter with nothing holding it in place.
He could have notleftthe lease outat alland relayed this information withwordsandeye contact,but no, who am I kidding, this is Vin we’re talking about here.
Twenty-eight ounces? Game on.
I take the can and leave the lease. I don my second-favorite striped apron. The one that makes me feel like Queen Martha Stewart. I’ve never diced onions into neater squares. Never once peeled garlic with such speed. When they hit the hot oil in the pot, they sear with such a satisfying hiss I grin like the devil.
And now. For the fun part. I grab the diced tomatoes off the counter. The lease immediately skates a foot to the side in the breeze from our kitchen window. Every crank of the opener feels like cracking open the door to a room I’m not permitted to enter. The can pops open and I feel I’ve done something almost naughty. I’m supposed to be crying over these tomatoes, right?
Surely not simmering them.
I watch until they bubble on the stove.
Holding the immersion blender in one hand, I rev it in the air, yes, like that one murderer with the chain saw in those movies I’ve never actually seen. And then the sauce gets it. I’m turning those tomatoes to velvet in that pot. My hand slips on the immersion blender and tomato sauce paints a zebra stripe across the counter. And the lease.
A splash of red across the death certificate.
I season and simmer and stir. When the scent grows heady and rich and layered, when there’s nothing left to do but clean up the kitchen, when the wine is gone but the tremble in myhand is not, I pick up the lease from the counter and fasten it to the fridge door like all of our to-do lists. Step one: get a divorce. Step two: buy mushrooms.
There’s the unmistakable scrunch of keys in our apartment door. I reach out and swipe the stripe of sauce off the lease with one finger. It leaves a stain behind.
Vin steps into our apartment. I turn to him, just a normal woman in an apron.
He’s got an intensely determined, did-she-see-it-yet look on his face. He’s breathing hard. His endlessly green eyes dart from the empty kitchen counter to the fridge door and then to my face.
I lick the sauce off my finger.
“Sauce is on the stove if you’re hungry.”
One hand on the doorknob still, he looks again from the lease to me. I wait, interminably, for him to say anything.
