Driving Lessons: A Novel (3 page)

4

Before changing lanes, signal, look in all of your mirrors, and glance over your left or right shoulder to make sure the lane you want is clear.

C
all me if you forgot something, I’ll pick it up on my way home,” said Josh as he nestled the last bag onto the remaining sliver of counter space with one hand while patting his pant pockets with the other.

“They’re in your shirt pocket,” I said, peeking out from behind a paper bag filled with ears of corn.

“What are?”

“Your keys.”

“Oh right, thanks.” He grinned. “Okay, I gotta dash or I’m going to be late for class. Your mom gets in at five thirty, right? Delta?”

“Last time we spoke, yes.”

“She’s flying out of Newark?”

“Yep.”

“Got it. Text me if anything changes.”

“Will do. Go! You’re going to be late.”

“Thanks, Sar. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

The door closed behind him and I slowly spun around, surveying my bounty of both space and product. While cooking had held about as much appeal for me as driving stick shift in Brooklyn, here in Farmwood it was a different story. You could have fit six of my former kitchens in this magazine-ready one. It practically screamed for cutting boards and bubbling pots, wine decanters and bowls of gleaming fruit.

In the middle of it stood an island carved from some beautiful amber-and-mahogany-swirled wood whose name I couldn’t begin to guess, and above it were hooks from which copper pots were supposed to hang. At the moment, our decidedly noncopper pots hung there instead, embarrassed by their own inadequacy. Granite counters and glass-paned cabinets hugged the walls, which were tiled in varying soothing shades of blue, as the appliances quietly hummed in all of their stainless-steel efficiency. Here, I would cook. Or, at the very least, try.

I began to unpack the bags, marveling at the picture-book perfection of each piece of produce. At my old grocery store in Brooklyn, you’d fight over the one tomato that didn’t appear to have been mauled by cats and were lucky if your lettuce made it home without going limp. To even hope to eat a salad at home, I’d had to either trek to a produce stand a mile away with my trusty grandma cart in tow or fork over a sizable chunk of my paycheck at Whole Foods. Not the case in Farmwood, where the aisles were wide enough to lie down in and the vegetables misted at five-minute intervals without fail. Sure, I was friendless and borderline agoraphobic here thanks to my crippling driving fear, but on the plus side, I was getting all of my daily vitamins and minerals.

Tonight, my mom was stopping over on her way to Sarasota, which was technically her winter home but was becoming more like her late-summer, fall, and winter home as the years passed. She spent the rest of the time in South Orange, New Jersey, in the home where I had grown up. She and my father had divorced when I was three, and so, save for the occasional summer trip to Los Angeles to visit him, it had just been she and I, bless her poor, battle-scarred heart. I had not been an easy kid. Then again, she had not exactly been an easy mom either.

Nevertheless, our love ran deep, and it was my master plan to have a delicious meal in the oven when she walked in. I smiled, imagining her reaction. Her version of a home-cooked meal for me growing up was Kraft mac ’n’ cheese with cut-up hot dogs riding its orange waves like tiny pink sailboats.

I pulled my just-purchased cookbook off the top of the refrigerator and flipped to the recipes I had chosen to tackle for the occasion, losing confidence in my ability to pull them off as I looked through them.
What happened to all of this food after it was styled for these shoots?
I wondered. In New York, we had done a shoot with avocados for an organic line of moisturizers that we were touting, and by the end of the first hour, each one had turned an aggressive shade of brown. The brisket I was currently admiring seemed a lot less appetizing suddenly. I turned the page to reveal a glistening bowl of spaghetti and meatballs and thought of Mona immediately.

Mona was a good cook because of course she was. She claimed that it was part of her genetic makeup. When we lived together, she would trot to the farmer’s market on a Sunday morning and by nightfall, voilà—the very type of meal that stared back at me now. My stomach growled.

It had been a tradition, our Sunday nights. She would cook, I would provide the wine and an always purchased, never home-baked dessert and we would curl up to watch whatever HBO program was de rigueur for the season. The
Six Feet Under
finale had us both clutching our respective couch arms, doubled over in tears;
Sex and the City
had us holding hands; and
The Sopranos
had us facing each other with mirror images of the same
WTF?
expression. Man, I missed her. Where was she? Why wasn’t she returning my calls?

Okay, focus, Sarah. Never mind Mona right now. Roasted chicken, an Asian slaw, and corn on the cob.
I eyed the clock. It was two thirty. Too early for a glass of wine? I thought about my mother’s impending arrival and the stress that invariably went with it. Just a little one.

I reread the chicken recipe carefully, gasping in horror upon realizing that I was supposed to cut the backbone out of the bird. Did that mean I had to crush bones to do so? With a pair of scissors, no less? Did we even own scissors designed for such strenuous activity? Hell, was I designed for such strenuous activity? A one-handed chop through actual bone?

I opened the giant drawer that held spoons, spatulas, and whatever else we had that fit somewhere on that utensil spectrum, and sure enough, there they were—a giant pair of very shiny and very sturdy scissors. I pulled them out and splayed the chicken on its stomach.

“Sorry, friend,” I whispered as I attempted to devertebrae her.

Cutting through the bone, I wondered what it would be like to have my mom in this house. When I’d told her that I was leaving my job and that we were moving to Farmwood, she’d asked me if Josh was making me do it. When I informed her that it was a very mutual decision, that New York had lost its luster for me, she’d raised her eyebrow.

“Sarah, don’t do something you don’t want to do. The minute you lose your spine, they walk out the door, and you’re left holding the bag.”

She was, of course, referring to my father. In her words, which I had heard a million times plus, she had been a promising assistant copyeditor at
Cosmopolitan
when they met and a bedraggled New Jersey housewife with a toddler when he left.

“I’m not you, Mom. This is not your life,” I had replied angrily.

“I’m having a hard time believing that moving to Kentucky is your decision.”

“Mom, it’s Virginia. And yes, it is. Josh is taking on much of the financial burden so I can figure out what it is exactly that I want to do. It’s the opposite of what happened with you and Dad, actually.”

Although I knew she hadn’t meant to, my mother had always expressed a prevailing sense of regret about what could have been if only she hadn’t gotten married and had me. Now that same regret haunted my own baby-making predicament. Most of my reservations stemmed from not wanting to find myself in the same position she had been in and unknowingly making my child feel responsible for my sense of inadequacy as a result.

I nestled tiny potatoes around the splayed bird. Mothers and daughters. Always so complicated. Josh didn’t have this problem with his mother, but then again, she was a high-powered divorce lawyer who loved her job. When my dad left, my mom had taken a job as an executive assistant at an insurance firm in Jersey City, which she had dutifully hated for thirty-two years, right up until the moment of her retirement. Apples and oranges.

I covered the chicken in aluminum foil and put it in the refrigerator, intending to pop it in the oven after I had made the coleslaw and before I shucked the corn. Feeling smugly capable about my time management skills, I poured myself more wine and opened the screen door to the back porch. Birds chirped loudly as I settled into a lawn chair.
Pretty, pretty, pretty,
they called, as a bunny stopped to graze at a particularly lush patch of green. I leaned back against the headrest and stretched out my legs, closing my eyes.

S
arah?”

“Josh?” I sat up abruptly, knocking the wineglass that had been perched on my armrest to the ground where it shattered on contact. “Shit.”

“Sarah, what are you doing?” he asked, concerned. “Are you okay? The kitchen is a mess.” He came closer. “And your face is covered in drool. Did you pass out back here?”

“I guess I did,” I answered, surprised. “Wait, is my m—”

“Where’s my hostess with the mostest?” she called from the kitchen. I wiped my mouth quickly, still disoriented and now, remembering all of the prep work that I was supposed to do and had not, quickly moving into panic mode. My mother appeared at the screen door, her shape pixilated.

“Hi, doll,” she announced, opening the door. She gave me a wry smile. “So much for the grand welcome. Your kitchen looks like a tornado hit it.” She looked me up and down. “As do you.”

“Hi, Mom,” I replied, standing up to hug her. She smelled like she always did—of roses, spearmint gum, and hairspray.

“It’s so good to see you, honey. You okay?” She released me, holding me at arm’s length and taking me in.

“I swear, I just closed my eyes for a minute,” I explained exasperatedly. “I had planned this grand welcome, with the chicken in the oven and the sides all ready to go.” I peered over her shoulder at the vegetables and dirty dishes that cluttered the counters. “Alas.”

“Not to worry, Sar. I appreciate the thought. We’ll order in.”

“No, Mom, we can’t order in,” I replied, annoyed by her naïveté. “This isn’t New York. The chicken is prepped, I just have to put it in the oven. Could you help with the coleslaw and corn?”

“Sure, calm down. How hard can it be? I’m at your service.”

“Me too,” added Josh. “I’ll get rid of the broken glass, and then, did you want to put the corn on the grill?” The three of us glanced over at the dusty, spiderweb-accessorized appliance shoved into the far corner of the porch.

“I guess I didn’t think to clean it first,” I replied dejectedly.

“Oh, you can just boil them,” said my mom, saving the meal from further disaster.

I gave her a grateful smile. “You can do that?”

“I may not be a Michelin chef, but I know that. Boil ’em and slather ’em with butter, and we’re all set.” She clapped her manicured hands together. “Now, who wants some wine?”

Later, with the slaw prepared and the corn shucked, Josh went for a quick run. My mother and I sat on the porch together as the chicken cooked.

“Well, one thing is certain, this place sure beats that shoebox you were living in in Brooklyn.” She raised her glass and I clinked it accordingly.

“Yeah, there are some perks to southern living,” I replied.

“Tell me about them.”

“Well.” I cleared my throat. “There’s space, you know? Literally and figuratively.”

“And what are you doing in this space?” In the lavender light, fireflies twinkled.

“I’m detoxing from New York; you know that. Trying to connect with what it is I want in a career.” She nodded in response. “I know you think that this wasn’t my decision—that this was all part of Josh’s grand plan—but you’re absolutely wrong.”

She waved her free hand in the air, dismissing me. “I was wrong about that,” she admitted, looking at me directly. “I apologize. Josh is not your father, and you are not me.” I sat back, realizing that my anticipation of an argument with my mother had me practically hovering over the seat.

“Well, that’s surprising. Thanks, Mom.”

“What, it’s so surprising for me to apologize?”

“For being self-centered, yes.”

“Don’t be fresh, Sarah. And fine, point taken. It’s a very personal issue for me though, this whole leaving-your-career-for-your-husband thing.”

“But I didn’t leave my career for my husband! How many times can I explain that to you? As a matter of fact, I left my career for me. I was the one that was desperate to leave New York and the grueling demands of a job that I found ridiculous, Mom. Not Josh.”

“I know that now, but I didn’t initially. Initially, I had a knee-jerk reaction like I always do. You’re a different generation, you and Josh. What do I know about emotional support from a husband?” She patted my hand. “Not a whole hell of a lot, let me tell you.”

“I thought I was going to have to defend my decision until I was blue in the face.”

“Oh, well you’re not in the clear just yet on that front. I still think that you rushed into this a little too rashly. I mean, maybe Josh would have been able to get a teaching job somewhere a little less . . . rural. You had a very good thing going in New York at Glow. I don’t know what kind of career you plan on getting off of the ground here.” She took her last sip. “Tupperware sales?”

“Very funny. You’re a regular comedian. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there’s this thing called the Internet, Mom. Everyone works remotely these days.”