Time heals all wounds, so almost ten years after the fact I thought it was “safe” to have déjà wu with a former love interest who I’ve mentioned a few times before – the Patron Saint of Emotional Unavailability, who I’ll call “Trey.”
The thing is, I never have a problem being friends with my exes; I’m an Aquarian and we’re known to be everyone’s friend. I’ve even gone so far as to recycle ex-love interests, like some of the beautiful sweaters or bags I got while on a spending spree that never really fit me. Hell – I even do it if I’m the one who was dumped; in fact – one of my old friends (Rizzo) was originally a blind date who didn’t like me, so I subsequently fixed him up with half a dozen other girls over a ten year period. (Note: he didn’t like any of them either, and the whole exercise served the dual purpose of building up some good karma and having some satisfaction in knowing that in that case – it really WASN’T me – it was him – he’s just not that into anybody).
Moving along – Trey – for all our problems – said I was the “smartest person he ever met” he always enjoyed – and actually read – my various articles and rants and short stories and in fact, he was the first one in my life who ever heard the term “blog.”
“You have to do this,” he said, “this is what you do anyway.”
One good thing about Trey was that he liked to cook and we actually had fun together in the kitchen (no – not that kind of fun – he didn’t have that much imagination). But he would, for example, suddenly have an urge to make broccoli rabe with sausage and create it with no help from me – or take half a day to make oven roasted potatoes, never forgetting to check their texture no matter how drunk he got on grappa.
A sticking point was that he wouldn’t acknowledge my abilities; told me I had no “signature” dish.
“What about my tri-color green salad with gorgonzola and cranberries? I was making that before anyone else did…”
“No,” he said, “a salad doesn’t count.”
“Well then,” I bristled, “what about my wasabi stuffed eggs? You eat the filling with your hands.”
“No,” he said, “they're good - but they don’t count – an appetizer is not a ‘dish.’”
“My stuffing,” I said, “what about that?”
“No,” he said, “it’s a SIDE dish – it has to be an entree.”
This really pissed me off and I found it more insulting than when he bought me a Chiminea for our first Christmas together.
“Mine is eggplant parm,” he said, “everyone loves my eggplant parm.”
Indeed, when I told Rosie it was finally “over” with no chance of reconciliation, as usual, she was worried more about the loss of food than anything else.
“Oh no,” she said, “I loved his eggplant.”
Also, he always made the best marinara sauce. After we broke up (for the fifth time) – or maybe during the process – I threw in “And your sauce is WAY TOO THIN and has NO TASTE…I FAKED liking it just like I faked…”
Anyway –several years passed - and I really needed a good recipe for marinara sauce – so I decided to reach out to him. There was no way he would ever try to call me as my last words to him – to end the “back and forth” were “Don’t ever contact me again. You’ll be first on the list of people to be informed in the event of my demise.”
Plus, I got married to my now-estranged husband since Trey and I split and no one wants to call an ex-girlfriend who might be married to a 6’5” police captain who was unreasonably jealous of any male that crossed my path; he once asked me if I was sleeping with my bosses at a small forensic accounting firm I worked at for a time.
“Both of them?” my friend Lara asked incredulously.
“Yeah,” I said, “isn’t that ridiculous? What does he think I am – an amoral hussy?” (This of course gave me the opportunity to throw my head back – hand on forehead – and for a fleeting moment, feel like Sarah Bernhardt (May she rest).
“Actually,” she said, “does he know what they look like? Has he met them? If he did it would be even MORE ridiculous.”
So – I called Trey – and after exchanging polite pleasantries, I finally managed to get him to leak a few of the ingredients for his sauce recipe that I used to love so much. And surprisingly – he folded like a house of cards and recited the ingredients one by one.
“Wait a minute,” I said, stopping him in mid-explanation, “you use HUNT’s SAUCE? Why Hunt’s sauce?”
“It’s my mother’s recipe,” he said.
Then I thought of his mother. Rumor has it that she was the prototype for a character in The Wizard of Oz (and we're not talking "good witches" here). She was a particularly bad-tempered woman, and very spoiled (he told me this the first day we met). Somehow, she ended up at my house for 3 nights of dinner during one Christmas season and after the second night – when I told her I planned to make lasagna for Christmas Day – said “Oh no…I can’t STAND to look at anymore pasta” – so I rushed out to King’s to get a piece of meat – which I painstakingly prepared on the “Set it and Forget it” Popeil rotisserie that someone advised me to buy. The mechanisms were apparently defective out of the box, however, because the entire time the meat rotated it created a high-pitched creaky whine (almost worst than mother-in-law-hell-no’s unending diatribe of negativity) – and the meat came out just so-so. And she complained about that.
“You should have made it in a COOKING BAG,” she said.
Once he said “Hunt’s sauce” – I stopped listening. He lost credibility. Well – not him – his sauce recipe. Then I started remembering that he kissed like a dead fish, and that while I made the disparaging comment about faking the love of his sauce out of anger - the other - not so much...
So we exchanged polite pleasantries – had some laughs – and the memory of his sauce evaporated into the ethers.
I’m now working on my own “perfect” marinara sauce recipe. Maybe it will end up being my “signature” dish.
And – in the interest of full disclosure – his saying that I was the “smartest person he ever met” was at best, faint praise; I met most of his friends and let’s just say that Mensa is definitely not missing any members in that crowd.
Going to Corrado’s today…a new store just opened in Wayne...imported tomatoes anyone?
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