Cleaving (3 page)

But when I managed to ask, stammering, if they had a place for an apprentice with zero experience, they demurred. Not particularly
shocking, I suppose. Instead they suggested one of the culinary schools downtown. I briefly entertained this notion, but it
turns out culinary programs don't offer one-off classes on butchering, and I wasn't about to shell out twenty thousand bucks
for a yearlong program teaching restaurant management and pastry making, my personal vision of hell. I proceeded to ask around
at the handful of other butcher shops in the city, or try to, anyway. Half the time I couldn't even get the words out. When
I did, the men behind the counter looked at me as if I might be a tad touched and shook their heads.

I press my lips together as the beseeching words run through my mind. And then, inevitably perhaps,
he
pops into my head, the one whom the word
beseech
sometimes seems to me to have been invented for, the man who called, two years ago, to ask me to lunch, the man I've wound
up spending much of the last two years pleading with--for attention, assurance, sex, and love. The exception proving the rule
of my marriage, the one man who, when he was not much more than a boy, small and dark, not so very attractive, found he could
make me open my dorm room door in bewilderment, late at night, with a single knock. The one who, nine years later, discovered
he could still do essentially the same thing. In my phone's contact list he is represented by a single towering initial, D.

But no. I'll not let him in, not now. I shake my head sharply, as if I could physically dislodge the errant thoughts.
Find a butcher. Get him to teach you how he does what he does. Do it now
. I don't know why I want this so much, what I have to gain from learning to cut up animals. Yes, I have a thing for butchers,
but it hasn't ever before occurred to me to try to
be
one. What's going on here?

Maybe I just need distraction. D and I have been sleeping together for nearly two years now. I'm familiar with the landscape
of addiction, and I recognize that I've built up a habit for him, no less real and physical than my habit for booze, which
has itself grown stronger in the wake of all the various stresses of being an adulterer. And something is wrong lately, slightly
off. Just thinking about that makes me crave a drink.

Eric, of course, knows I'm fucking someone else, has known for almost the entire period of my affair with D. He even knows
that, in distressing point of fact, I'm in love with this other man. I don't have to tell him this. We basically share the
same mind, after all. Once, I was proud of and comforted by this nearly paranormal connection. That my husband knew me so
well, and I him, seemed proof of a love superior in all ways to all others. Then D happened. We fought about it when Eric
first found out, of course, or rather I cried and Eric yelled and marched out of the house into the night for a few hours.
But after that, there was only exhaustion, and quiet, and in all the months since we've barely spoken about it at all. Sometimes,
even most of the time, everything seems fine this way. But then, this talent we share emerges and proves itself the stealthiest,
most vicious weapon in our arsenals. We can delve into each other's heart and deftly pull out the scraps of filthy hidden
longing and unhappiness and shame. With a look or a word, we can deftly rub these into the other's face as we'd push a dog's
nose into its mess on the living room rug.

We'll be sitting in front of the TV, say, into our second bottle of wine, watching some Netflix DVD. I always have my phone
on silent when we're together, so Eric doesn't hear the trill or feel the buzz against the sofa cushions. But still I'm tense,
glancing at the BlackBerry screen whenever Eric gets up to go to the bathroom or stir the soup. When he gets back to the couch
and sits, I'll press the soles of my feet up against his thigh in a gesture of affection intended to make me seem comfortable
and happy. But eventually, unconsciously, the nervous energy builds, and I'm tapping my bare feet against his pants leg. "What's
the matter?" Eric will say, grabbing my feet to still them, not taking his eyes from the TV screen. "He not paying enough
attention to you tonight?" I'll freeze, stop breathing, and say nothing, waiting to see if there will be more, but there won't
be. There doesn't need to be. We'll stare at the television as if nothing at all has been said; when D does send me a message,
if he does, I'll be afraid to answer it.

I can do the same to him. Some night my husband will go out. "Drinks with work buddies," he will say. "Back by nine." Nine
o'clock and then ten will, inevitably, come and go. The first time this happened, a month or two after he discovered I was
sleeping with D, I was surprised and worried. He came home that morning at two thirty and woke me up to confess, remorsefully,
that he'd been on a date with another woman, that it wouldn't happen again, though I told him--ah, the pleasure of being the
sainted one for once--that he deserved to be able to see anyone he wanted. By now I'm used to it; I don't expect him home,
probably until dawn. I can instantly tell, from the tone of voice when he calls or the phrasing of his e-mail, that he's going
to be with the woman he's been seeing off and on for nearly as long as I've been fucking D. I'm not even angry; I'm pleased.
The text I send him at a little after eleven is always more than gracious:
Sweetie, can you let me know if you'll be home tonight? I totally understand if you won't be. I just don't want to worry
.

It might take him twenty minutes to write back, or an hour, or three. But he'll always write the same thing.
I'll be home soon. I know I'm fucking up everything
.

No,
I'll write, all sweetness and light,
you're not fucking anything up. Have fun. Come home whenever you like
. When I hear the lock in the door I'll initially feign sleep while he undresses and cuddles up guiltily beside me in bed,
but I'll make sure I give his hand a reassuring squeeze so he knows. In the morning I'll pretend not to see his wish that
I'd scream or cry, show my hurt and thus my love. I'll poach an egg for breakfast, smiling. Nothing will be said. This is
how I punish him.

When he leaves for work I'll report everything that happens to Gwen, the friend I go to with all of this. "I really don't
mind. He cares for her, you know? He deserves some relief."

"Julie, honestly? I love you, but I don't know why Eric stays. I really don't."

Gwen says all the things a good girlfriend should, and every once in a while she offers to beat up my husband or my lover
for me, depending on who is driving me more crazy, which is nice. But at the end of the day, she can't quite fathom the situation
I find myself in.

"I know. When did we start being so nasty to each other? I mean, it's not all the time, it's really not. But--"

"Do you really see this getting any better?"

I don't know the answer to her question. I do know that through all this, Eric still doesn't leave. And as for me, as bad
as it is, I can't even comprehend the pain of leaving him. (As so often happens in my life, I find that a character from the
much-mourned TV show
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
puts it best: "It's like I lost an arm. Or worse. A torso.") I just need a place to hole up from time to time, from this
constant silent seep of toxic hurt and anger, and also, lately, from D's hot-and-cold ambivalence, which I feel like too-tight
clothing. Bafflingly, when I think "sanctuary," what comes to mind is the gleam of steel and tile, the moist red of a lamb
roast, the pungent smell of aging beef, and the grip of a knife in my hand.

But it turns out that this is a tricky thing I'm trying to do, and not just because I seem to be constitutionally terrified
of men in white coats. There also just aren't a lot of butchers out there anymore, not real ones, not in this country. That
seems impossible, doesn't it? I mean, there are a lot more of us Americans than there were, say, a hundred years ago, and
a whole lot of us are eating meat. But butcher shops have been largely replaced by meat-processing plants, giant factories
that swallow up animals and excrete vacuum-packed steaks. A crude analogy, I know. But the invisibility of the procedure is
as complete as that of your own bodily processes. We know there are lots of heavy, sharp machines in there, since the workers
inside are constantly getting hurt and killed. (Meatpacking is one of the most dangerous jobs in America, and that's probably
why it employs more than its share of illegal immigrants.) We know that there are probably men in there with terrific knife
skills, presumably fitted into the industrialized process, fleshly cogs in the vast machine, clad in chain-mail aprons and
repeating the same cut on the same body part over and over until their hands cramp and backs throb.

But I'm guessing about all this, because Big Beef doesn't generally tend to roll out the red carpet and start throwing backstage
passes around. In this age of nanotechnology and liability, you've got a better shot at taking a journey through the digestive
tract of an industrially farmed steer than at witnessing exactly how that same animal moves from on the hoof to on your plate.
And that's not what I want anyway. I want to be taught by an artisan, not an assembly-line worker.

So, after exhausting all the possibilities in the city, I've made a few calls and obtained another few names from farther
afield, seasoned guys who still know how to go about the old-fashioned trade of ushering animal into meat. I'm following one
of those leads now, straight into the far reaches of southern New Jersey.

I've been riding the curves of the road a bit too fast, declining to apply the brakes, so that on the sharper turns I can
feel the weight of the car edging out along the grassy verge. But as I get closer to Bucktown, I slow up. At least, I think
I'm close to Bucktown. I've been on the East Coast for fifteen years now, since graduating from high school back in Texas
and moving up to Massachusetts for college, plenty of time to have accustomed myself to the fluid notions of townships up
here. But I still find myself occasionally nostalgic for the decorous distances of my home state, not these villages and localities
endlessly bunched and inextricable, but blank landscapes clarifying the separation between well-marked city limits, leaving
me always assured that I can find out where I am, at least on a road map. I miss that sense of separation.

Generally I like driving, especially by myself. I never really lost that teenage thrill, the fantasies of flight that accompany
going fifteen miles over the speed limit, curling smoothly around more earthbound drivers, knowing that whatever exit I need
to take is still miles ahead. But this part of driving I don't like--the looking, the poking about, the squinting to catch
sight of numbers on the sides of mailboxes. Trying to figure out the details of where the hell I'm headed. I guess maybe no
one likes this part. I'm tempted to text Eric, always am when I'm lost. He is out there somewhere, eager to help, but I still
have no phone service.

Finally I find the place. It's more retiring than I'd imagined, more countrified. I've been in the city long enough that I
expected, even in this rural setting, a city sort of butcher shop. I'd been imagining a redbrick storefront in the small town
center, shining glass panes, and the white tiles and stainless steel of a meat counter visible within. So I'd missed the rambling
old clapboard building set some yards back from the road, with the weather-beaten sign propped up on the pitched roof of the
front porch--an Italian family name in unprepossessing lettering. I pull into the little unpaved lot with a crunching roll
of tires. For most of the drive from Queens I've been filled with that lovely sense of purpose that comes from having embarked
upon a quest without yet having begun to grapple with any of the nitty-gritty; yet for the past half hour I've been overcome
with the frustration and irritation of unfound addresses. And now, as I put the car into park and take the key out of the
ignition, all of that goes away and I'm stuck with that old lurch of the heart. Now I have to walk in there and ask these
guys for a favor. A job. That this time I've driven for two hours at the behest of the raving voice inside my head doesn't
make this any easier at all.

The air smells like flowers. With a little extra push of will I open the car door and get out. Inside the front screen door,
the shop is dim and has a whiff of something not exactly clean, though not unpleasant either, the same class of aromas to
which horse barns belong. There's something unsavory, yet covertly exciting, about the place; it's like sneaking into an abandoned
hunting lodge. A glass-fronted freezer against one wall to the left holds an untidy pile of hand-labeled bins and packages.
The wide planks of the wood floor are worn, dark, stained, and strewn with a light sprinkling of sawdust. The meat counter
seems to be an improvised affair; the coolers look old, perhaps secondhand, and rather than the high piles of fresh beef and
lamb on neat trays adorned with parsley sprigs I'm accustomed to seeing at Ottomanelli's, there's a haphazard scattering of
meat, some of it looking a little gray and tired. The end of a busy week. There's a blond woman in her late thirties smiling
at me directly behind the counter, and an old man, stooped, in the farther reaches of the space behind her, winding trussing
string around thick, stiff fingers. One of the brothers from the sign, of course. You can always tell a butcher. He looks
up at me and nods, not unfriendly but weary. "Can we help ya?"

So once more I give my spiel about wanting to learn butchery, of being willing to do anything to get behind that counter every
day and watch him do his thing, that I've driven all the way from New York to ask him for this favor. The brother smiles sadly.
But once again I get a shake of the head. "We don't have enough work to go around as it is. Nobody wants butchers anymore.
When we retire, we'll have to shutter this place." He says it kindly enough, and it's not my place to argue with him. Maybe
he thinks I'm a dilettante, and maybe I am. Maybe this irrational passion is going to pop like a soap bubble, evanesce. Maybe
I'll change my mind tomorrow, decide I'm really into, I don't know, dog racing.