Recipe for a Happy Life: A Novel (6 page)

When I woke up that morning, I had no idea that by the end of the day my relationship would be over. If I’d known that the ending was so near, I might have made sure that the last kiss we’d shared was more special, or that my hair was more perfect as he watched me leaving his apartment. Instead, I’d overslept and left the apartment in a hurry with my unwashed hair and unmade-up face. I still can’t remember whether or not I even kissed Jaime good-bye.

It was a few minutes after ten when I got to my office. A few minutes after that when the administrative partner of my firm appeared in my door.

“Hey, Tim.”

“Hannah.” He stood, leaning on the frame, his arms and legs crossed neatly over his body. It’s never a good thing when the administrative partner of a law firm comes to see you. It either means that someone has criticized your work or, worse, wants to give you more work.

“What’s up, Tim?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could muster. I made it a habit never to make small talk with him. When he appeared in my doorway, I generally just wanted him to say what he was going to say and then go.

“The New York State Attorney General’s Office has an opening,” he said, and looked down at his shoes for an instant.

When you’re a ninth-year associate at a large Manhattan law firm, that’s not the administrative partner being nice and showing concern over your career—that’s the firm’s gentle way of telling you that you’re not making partner. That you no longer have a career.

“I’d be happy to make some introductions,” he continued, “and set up some meetings over there for you.”

All the while he was telling me this, I couldn’t help thinking about what he would be like in bed. In fact, whenever I meet a man, all I can think about at first is whether or not he’d be good in bed. I look at his lips, the way he holds himself, the way he looks when he thinks I’m not looking at him. And I always look at his hands. Not because most women my age look at a man’s hands to see if he’s married or not, but because my mother always told me when I was young to look at a man’s hands so that you can see how hard he has had to work in his life. She was always telling me things like that that were inappropriate for my age.

I look at a man’s hands and think about what they would feel like on my skin. Tim’s hands were soft and gentle and didn’t have a scratch on them. They had that prep-school-haven’t-worked-a-day-in-his-life feel to them that I abhorred. I think that a man’s hands should feel like a man’s hands. Big, strong, masculine. Jaime’s hands were rough and calloused, more a product of playing the bass guitar than actual real-life hard work, but sexy nonetheless.

“I think this could be a really great fit,” he said. “Hannah?”

“I haven’t taken any of my vacation time in the last two years,” I said.

“So, should I make a few calls?” he asked, trying to get me back on track.

“That’s twelve weeks altogether.”

“Yes,” Tim said. “But the Attorney General’s Office?”

“What?” I asked.

“I’ll give you some time to think about it,” he said before leaving. It took me the rest of the morning and most of the early afternoon to digest what Tim had said to me—the gravity of it. I was not making partner at this law firm. I’d given up the last nine years of my life to this place and now it was all over with nothing to show for it. Just like that. I couldn’t stay at the firm if I wasn’t making partner and no other firm would want me, since they would know that any ninth-year associate who is looking for a new job is only looking because she didn’t make partner at her own firm.

By 3:30 p.m., I’d called Jaime to tell him the whole story in gory detail. I knew he’d be around—he was always around—just like any starving artist in New York would be.

“Could you swing by my office?” I asked. “I need to talk.”

“Those bastards,” he said. “How dare they?”

At 4:00 p.m., I stood on the corner of Fifty-Third and Fifth with my unwashed hair waiting for my boyfriend, ready for the sympathy to pour over me as I told him again about how horrible my day was. As I stood waiting, I realized that with the drama of the day, I’d entirely forgotten to eat lunch.

Four-fifteen and still no sign of Jaime. I figured it should only take him about thirty minutes to get from downtown to midtown, but I couldn’t wait. I was beginning to see spots before my eyes. I looked around for the closest candy store, certain that a large frozen yogurt with chocolate sprinkles would get my blood sugar under control.

I walked down Fifth Avenue in search of a candy store, my head throbbing from hunger, but it being midtown Manhattan, I found a street vendor selling nuts first. I bought a bag of salted cashews and a bottle of water from the vendor. I practically swallowed them whole, chugging the water down with the nuts as they were still in my mouth. As the water went down my throat, I could feel my body thanking me. The spots went away and I felt stronger. I took a deep breath and looked up. Jaime was coming my way. The sight of him, of his broad shoulders, long hair, and rough hands, always put a smile on my face.

“Hey, baby,” I said, and put my arms around him for a kiss. Not one of those “hello” peck-on-the-lips kisses, but a real kiss. A thank-God-you’re-here kiss. He gave me a heavenly kiss back and I could feel my day getting better. I pulled away and smiled at him.

His eyes rolled back into his head and he passed out. I tried to hold on to him so he wouldn’t hit the pavement, but my five-foot-four frame was no match for all six-one of him.

I didn’t realize he’d take the news that badly.

I fell to my knees and put my hand to his face. He was out cold, but sweating profusely. Trying my best to remember my health class lessons from junior high school, I began to perform CPR. A crowd gathered around us and I heard people on their cell phones, calling 911. Suggestions came flying from the crowd. Give him food! Give him water! I took the water bottle I’d been drinking from and tried to pour some into his mouth, which did nothing but get his face wet.

Just as I felt panic sinking in, I heard an ambulance come roaring down Fifth Avenue. It stopped right in front of us, blocking an entire lane of traffic. Two EMTs jumped out and carefully loaded Jaime, still unconscious, into the ambulance, with me following. Inside, the EMTs began drilling me with questions about Jaime.

“Age?” they asked.

“Twenty-seven,” I replied, grabbing his hand. It was hot and sticky to my touch.

“Does he have any medical conditions?”

“No,” I said, stroking his hand, “Oh, wait, yes. He has a weak left shoulder.” The EMTs looked at me. The older one furrowed his brow.

“Any allergies?” the older EMT asked, and I felt my stomach fall through my body, straight to the ground. The world had temporarily stopped, yet I could feel the room inside the tiny ambulance spin. When it stopped spinning, I had two very concerned EMTs still staring at me. “Any allergies?” the older one asked again.

“Yes,” I said. “Nuts.”

The EMTs didn’t say a word, rather looked at my face and then looked down at my left hand, still clutching the bag of cashews and bottle of water.

“I didn’t give him any nuts,” I said, feeling my face heat up. The younger EMT reached back into the supply drawer and took out a needle. “But I did kiss him. He couldn’t possibly have had an allergic reaction from my eating nuts and then kissing him.” The older EMT rolled up Jaime’s sleeve while the younger one flicked the needle twice. “Could he?” He drew down the needle—hard—and Jaime woke up with a start. His body lurched forward as the older EMT helped him sit up and then lay back down.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You’re going to be all right, honey,” I said.

“You lost consciousness,” the older EMT told him. “We’re just going to take you to the hospital for observation.”

Moments later the EMTs were lowering Jaime’s gurney onto the ground and into the emergency room doors. I ran alongside them, holding Jaime’s hand as we entered the hospital.

“What relationship are you to the patient?” a hospital employee asked me, furiously scribbling on his clipboard as we wheeled Jaime toward an empty bed in the emergency room.

“I’m his fiancée,” I lied. I was afraid that only family was allowed to be in the emergency room with patients, and I didn’t want to leave Jaime alone. Jaime pretended not to hear, the way any single man in his late twenties pretends not to hear when his girlfriend mentions marriage and/or engagement. The attending physician came in to examine Jaime and a nurse showed me to an area where I could sit down. A sign above me indicated that cell phone use was not allowed in the hospital and I reached into my bag to turn mine off.

“Excuse me, miss, do you know a Priya St. John?” a different nurse asked me. I ran out to the reception area and threw my arms around my friend Priya.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked me. “Donnie in the mail room saw the whole thing and now the entire firm is talking about it.”

“You know how Jaime’s allergic to nuts?” I said, and Priya nodded her head. Anyone who had ever been out to dinner with Jaime and me knew that he was allergic to nuts. Anyone who had ever sat at a table next to Jaime and me at dinner knew that he was allergic to nuts. I showed her the bag of nuts, still curled up in my hand.

“You are not having a very good day,” she said, grabbing them and throwing them in the nearest garbage.
She’s a good lawyer,
I thought.
Getting rid of the evidence.

As I shook my head, looking for further sympathy from Priya, I felt a presence behind me, a set of angry eyes on my back. I turned around to find Jaime’s mother, Celia, staring me down.

“Wot deed you do to my son?” she asked me in her thick Cuban accent, still shooting a deadly stare my way. She always looked at me with hatred, as if I had been personally responsible for the Bay of Pigs invasion.

“Jaime’s back here,” I said, bringing her back to Jaime’s bed. Priya wisely stayed behind. Most of my friends were mortally afraid of Celia. The smart ones, anyway.

“Ay, dios mio!” she called out when she saw Jaime lying helplessly on the bed. She began praying very quickly in Spanish.

Our ER doctor, a woman who looked a little too young to actually be a doctor, came over to tell me that Jaime had stabilized and that he would be all right. Celia practically pushed me aside and announced that she “was ze boy’s mother” and that the doctor should be speaking to her, and not to someone who wasn’t family.

“With all due respect, Mrs. Castillo, I think that Jaime’s fiancée should be here for this,” the doctor said, giving an encouraging smile in my direction. Maybe she, too, has to deal with a woman like Celia. Celia grabbed my ringless hand and thrust it into the doctor’s face.

“Dey are
not
engaged,” she said. The ER doctor looked at me as if I’d just informed her that I would not be donating my kidney to my twin sister. “And he was about to break up with her anyway.”

As if the humiliation of being broken up with by your boyfriend’s mother isn’t enough, I was asked to leave the Emergency Room. But apparently, that wasn’t enough, either, because Mrs. Castillo then demanded that I be removed from the hospital. As I was being escorted down the hallway by a very burly candy striper, Celia called out to me: “How come every time my son ees with you he either ends up een the hospital or jail?”

That whole jail thing wasn’t really my fault, either.

*   *   *

I got back to my apartment at a little bit past six o’clock and threw my bags down next to the door. I stood, frozen in the entranceway, feeling an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. I tried to take a deep breath, but I couldn’t escape the sensation of the walls closing in around me. The feeling was back. I had to get out.

As I walked into my bedroom to change out of my work clothes, it dawned on me that I could leave. I could pack a bag and leave New York. Tonight. My job was gone. My boyfriend was gone, and I didn’t have much else besides a Redweld folder filled with take-out menus.

I’d done it before.

The summer after my first year of law school, I packed up and went to live in the South of France for three months on a whim. Before that, I’d moved to Prague for a year during college, waiting until I’d found myself a place to stay before even letting anyone know I was gone. I’d even run off for two weeks in high school, leaving my mother in Brazil while I flew off to Greece to spend time with my grandmother.

The wanderlust was hitting me again.

The last time I felt like this was seven years ago, after
him
. The love of my life. The one I couldn’t live without. The one I thought I’d grow old with. Once he was gone, it felt like my insides had been ripped out and I couldn’t bear to sit still, not even for a minute.

I never say his name anymore. Never even hear it. Everyone around me is careful never to mention it. They call Adam “him” in hushed tones. Steer me away from buying books with characters named Adam. Anything not to upset me.

Turning over my options in my mind—Should I stay? Should I go? Where would I go if I left? What would I do if I stayed?—I poured myself a glass of wine and walked out to my balcony. Sitting outside, watching the world go by, I told myself that I did not want to be my mother. Never putting down roots, never staying too long. Running. Always running.
That
was not the recipe for a happy life.

The doorbell rang and I popped up from my seat, hoping that it would be Jaime. For a moment, I was afraid that it might be Celia, but I put that thought aside and rushed to the door. Standing there was a New York City detective.

“May I help you?” I asked, wondering why my doorman hadn’t called ahead to announce him and why I hadn’t answered the door through the chain instead of swinging the door wide open as I had.

“Detective Moretti, Eighteenth Precinct. May I come in?” he asked. He showed me his badge and didn’t even try to enter my apartment until he’d been granted permission. I called the police and checked out his badge number as he stood patiently at my door. As I waited for the dispatcher to make sure that Detective Moretti was who he said he was, my eyes fell down to his hands. They were rough and leathery.