Why We Broke Up (26 page)

I bought this but didn’t use it
. Al and Lauren kidnapped me to make wild-mushroom lasagna and cry at the table instead of hiding in the nonreserved seats to watch you play, like I told them I wanted to.

“Have some dignity,” Lauren said to me, and Al nodded in agreement over the cheese grater. “You don’t want to be that sad ex-girlfriend in the stands.”

“I am that sad ex-girlfriend in the stands,” I said.

“No, you’re here with us,” Al said firmly.

“That’s all I am,” I said, “or having dinner with my mother all sullen, or crying on my bed, or staring at the phone—”

“Oh, Min.”

“—or listening to Hawk Davies and throwing him away and fishing him out of the trash and listening to him more and going through the box again. There’s nothing else. I’m—”

“The box?” Al said. “What’s the box?”

I bit my lip. Lauren gasped. “I know,” I said. “I know, I know, I should have broken up with him on Halloween.”

“What’s the box?” Al said again.

Lauren leaned down to look me in the eye. “You do not,” Lauren said, “tell me you don’t have a box of stuff, of Ed Slaterton
treasures
you’ve been pawing through. God in heaven, no. Did I not tell you, Al? Didn’t I say we should have searched her room with a fine-tooth comb and torched every Slaterton thing we could find? From the moment we learned about his scummy,
scummy
behavior we should have gone and rented some of those radiation suits and paratrooped into her room—”

But she stopped because I was crying, and Al took off his apron and came over to hug me. At least, I thought, I’m not crying as hard as the last time. “It’s stupid, I know,” I said. “It’s desperate stupid.
I’m
desperate stupid. I’m a desperado for keeping all of it.”

“When it’s a girl,” Al said, handing me a napkin, “I believe the term is despera
da
.”

“La Desperada,” Lauren said, in a flamenco pose. “She
tracks through the desert destroying boxes of treasure given to her by scummy, scummy men.”

“I’m not ready to destroy it.”

“Well, leave it on Ed’s doorstep at least. We can do it tonight.”

“I’m not ready for that either.”

“Min.”

“Leave her alone,” Al said. “She’s not ready.”

“Well, at least tell us the most embarrassing thing in there.”

“Lauren.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“I’ll sing,” she threatened.

I gave her a small sigh. Al picked up the grater again. The condom wrappers, I couldn’t say.
Goofballs III
.
I can’t stop thinking about you
. “OK, um, earrings.”

“Earrings?”

“Earrings he gave me.”

Al frowned. “There’s nothing embarrassing about that.”

“Yes there is, if you saw them.”

Lauren grabbed the pad Al’s mom keeps by the phone. “Draw them.”

“What?”

“It’ll be therapy. Draw the earrings.”

“I can’t draw, you know that.”

“I know, that’s why it’ll be therapy for you and hilarious for us.”

“Lauren, no.”

“OK, act them out.”

“What?”

“Act out the earrings, you know, like a pantomime. Or interpretative dance, yes!”

“Lauren, this isn’t helping.”

“Al, help me out.”

Al looked at me sitting at the kitchen table. He could see I was teetering. He took a long, long sip of his lemon mint drink and then said, “I do think it would have therapeutic value.”

“
Al
. Et tu?”

But Al was moving a chair out of the way to give me room. “Do you need music?” Lauren said.

“But of course,” Al said. “Something dramatic. There, those Vengari concertos my dad likes. Track six.”

Lauren turned it up. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “put your hands together for the free-dance stylings of… La Desperada!”

I slouched up and then, with my friends, I took my place. So you take my ticket, Ed. While the world and its crowd were cheering you, co-captain, winner of state finals, I got some applause myself.

Give this back
to your sister. I’m done.

OK, one last thing
. Totally forgot it was in here. I bought it sometime, when we were talking about Thanksgiving foods a million years ago. You said that stuffing was something that had to be made the same old way, with a jar of, absolutely had to be, this weird brand they hardly make, chestnuts. You are wrong, of course. Chestnuts in stuffing tastes like someone chewed up a tree branch and then French-kissed it into your mouth. I bought this to make for you on Thanksgiving. But Thanksgiving’s gone now. Al and I saw all seven Griscemi films that weekend at the Carnelian, sneaking in leftover turkey sandwiches and the
mashed-mint-and-lemon drinks sloshing in plastic canteens. We didn’t kiss but wiped mustard off each other’s mouths, is how I remember. And he just saw this. “What’s that doing there?” is what he said. I told him what I’d been willing to do for you, and he wrinkled up his nose.

“Chestnuts in stuffing tastes like someone chewed up a tree branch and then French-kissed it into your mouth,” he said.

“
Ew
. And—?”

“Oh yeah. And in my opinion, bluebirds are pretty.”

We have a thing now, that every time he gives an opinion he has to give an extra one to make up for all his not-having-an-opinions. My end of the deal I’m holding up finally, now that I’m ready, getting rid of this stuff. “I think I read,” Al is saying now, “about an appetizer thing with chestnuts, though. You wrap them up in prosciutto I think, brush them with grappa, and roast them and put a little parsley on top.”

“Or maybe blue cheese,” I said.

“That’d be good.”

“Could we use chestnuts from a jar?”

“Sure. Wrapping something in prosciutto cancels out from a jar. Wrapping in prosciutto cancels out anything.”

“Yes,” I said, and so Ed, this is the thing I’m keeping. This is the thing you’re not getting back. You wouldn’t even know about it if I weren’t telling you, its heavy heft, its
goofy label, this part of us that I’m not letting out of my grasp. It makes me smile, Ed, I’m smiling.

We could try it for New Year’s
, Al is going to say, I know he will. We are planning an elegant supper. It’s in honor, we decided after a lot of caffeinated talk talk talk about it, of nobody. So far most of the dishes are poached from
The Deep Feast of Starlings
, which we rented again and kept pausing to bicker over what it is Inge Carbonel adds, hunched over the stone oven while her blinded son plays that racing angry piece on the cello over and over, what she bastes the tiny birds with that sits bubbling on her windowsill for days and days during her brother’s wake. What kind of wine it is, like we’d be able to find Greek wine even if we knew, the camera diving deep into the bottle and following it out to the wide thirsty glass. Licorice tarts, also. A soft-boiled egg with anchovy inside. Goat cheese melted on beets or maybe these chestnuts, wrapped in prosciutto, canceling out everything. Candles, real napkins. I might get him another tie. It’s a plan, some of it won’t work. (Sorry to hear about Annette, by the way.) But it beats bad lousy stuffing like jocks eat, Ed. Our sketches are messy, but Al and I can read it, can picture it moving forward. The New Year will make me feel, I don’t know, like those huddled happys at the large wooden table, not my favorite movie but one that’s got something, according to me. You wouldn’t like it. Why we broke up is that you’ll never see it, never a picture like that. The tremble of
the soup pots, that crazy bird that pecks at the seeds in the saucer, the way the love interest sneaks up on you, several scenes before you even know for sure he’s in the story. Shutting the box with a wooden shuffle, exhaling like a truck pulling to a stop, thunking it to you with a Desperada gesture. I’ll feel that way soon, any sec now, friends or loved or content or whatnot. I can see it. I can see it smiling. I’m telling you, Ed, I’m telling Al now, I have a feeling.