Small Vices

Chapter 52

Susan and I were making dinner together at my place. The sublet tenant had finally departed. Pearl was demonstrating why she is known as the Wonder Dog by managing to sleep soundly while lying flat on her back on my sofa with all four paws in the air. I had bought a Jenn Air stove a couple of years back and it had a rotisserie unit on which I was roasting a boneless leg of lamb, which I had seasoned with olive oil and fresh rosemary. After it’s seasoned and put on the spit there isn’t a great deal demanded of the guy that’s cooking it, so I stood at the counter while the roast turned slowly and watched Susan as she made beet risotto.

“I saw a woman on the Today show make this,” she said.

“And you loved it because it was such a pretty red color,” I said.

“Yes. Does this rice look opaque to you?”

I looked and said that it did. Susan ladled some broth into the rice and began to stir it carefully. While she stirred, she looked in the pot and then at the rice.

“Do you think I have to put this broth in a little at a time, the way the recipe says?”

I said that I did. She stirred some more.

“It has to all absorb before I put in more?” she said.

“When you see the bottom of the pan as you stir, add some more broth,” I said.

She nodded. The counter around the stove and the space on the stove not occupied by the risotto fixings and the roast was covered with pans and plates and dishes and cups and measuring spoons and forks and knives and a grater and two wooden spoons and a platter of grated beets and a dish of grated cheese and some onion skins and three pot holders and a crumpled paper towel and a damp sponge and her glass of barely sipped red wine and a lip-liner tube and a copy of the recipe written in Susan’s pretty illegible hand on the back of a paperback copy of Civilization and Its Discontents. Susan was not a clean-up-as-you-go kind of cook.

“They always lie to you on television,” Susan said.

“I know,” I said.

“This woman never said you had to stand here for an hour and stir the damn stuff.”

“When you tear away the mask of glamour...” I said.

Susan stirred some more, studying the rice, looking for the bottom of the pan.

“Hurry up,” she said into the pan.

I thought about explaining to her how a watched pot never boils, but it might have seemed contentious to her, so I skipped it and went and looked out the front window at Marlborough Street. There was an east wind coming off the water, slowing down as it funneled through the financial district and downtown, picking up speed as it came down across the Common and the Public Garden, driving some leaves and some street litter past my building at a pretty good clip. I watched it for a while, keeping my mind on the wind, trying not to think of anything, sipping red wine.

“Look how pretty,” Susan said behind me.

I turned and left the window. The big white pot of bright red rice was in fact pretty, though had we been eating at Susan’s house the pot it was in would have been pretty, too.

“Keep it warm in the oven,” I said, “while I make the salad and then we’ll eat.”

“You didn’t say it was pretty.”

“The beet risotto is very pretty,” I said.

“Thank you.”

Susan set the table while I made the salad. Then we ate the lamb and risotto with a green salad and some bread from Iggy’s Bakery.

“You feel sort of mad about having to sell Concord?” I said.

Susan shrugged.

“It had to be done,” she said. “But yes, I probably resent it a little. If you were a stockbroker maybe I wouldn’t have had to.”

I nodded.

“How about the baby, any new thoughts on that.”

“Yes.”

“Care to tell me?”

Susan drank some of her wine and touched her lips with a napkin.

“I can’t bring a child into this kind of a life,” Susan said.

“A life where I may be off getting shot on her first day in kindergarten?”

“Or his,” Susan said. “Yes, that kind of life.”

“I think you’re right,” I said.

“You have thought that since I first mentioned the idea,” Susan said.

I shrugged. We ate together for a moment in silence. The risotto was very good. Susan put her fork down.

“And I suppose that makes me a little angry as well,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I can see where it would.”

“And I suppose I’m angry sometimes because the man I love keeps getting in harm’s way and I have to be frightened that he might not come back.”

“It’s the only thing I’m any good at,” I said.

“Not entirely true, but I understand. I don’t want you to change. I just wish I didn’t have to be scared as much as I am.”

“Me too,” I said.

Pearl, with her hunter’s instinct, had come instantly awake when we started to eat and was now sitting alertly on the floor between us, watching closely.

“Life is imperfect,” Susan said.

I nodded.

“But it is not so imperfect that we cannot enjoy it,” Susan said. “We don’t have our country house, and I will probably never be a mother. But I love you, and you love me, and we are here, together.”

“Works for me,” I said. “And what about the anger, what are you going to do with that?”

“I’m not going to do anything with it. Anger doesn’t have to be expressed. It is enough to know that you’re angry, and know why, and not lie to yourself about it.”

“You mean it’s not repression if I keep my feelings to myself?”

“No,” she said. “It’s repression if you pretend to yourself you don’t have them.”

“Does Dr. Joyce Brothers know about this?” I said.

“I doubt it,” Susan said. “Our life together has not always been placid. You must certainly have some anger at me. What do you do with it?”

“I know that I’m angry,” I said. “And I know why, and I don’t lie to myself about it.”

“Very good,” Susan said and smiled at me. “We’ll both keep doing that.”

“Till death do us part?” I said.

“Or hell freezes over,” Susan said. “Whichever comes first.”

“You sure adorable little Erika didn’t have any influence on your decision to adopt a child?”

Susan smiled slowly.

“You are a cynical bastard,” she said.

“Of course,” I said.

Pearl put her head on my lap and looked up at me by rolling her eyes up. I gave her a spoonful of the risotto. She liked it. On the other hand she liked just about everything. Things were quite simple with Pearl.