The Cookbook Club Read online

  “Yeah, you know Robin, my therapist?”

  “Dr. Lang?” Since when did he call her Robin?

  He gave a half shrug. “I’ve been seeing her so long that it seemed silly to keep calling her Dr. Lang.”

  “Mm. Seeing Robin.” Her teeth were gritted hard. She forced them apart.

  He nodded. “Yes, seeing my therapist.” He squinted and looked at her, and had the nerve to look irritated by her. Like she was being a bit much. “This new job,” he said. “The move. Everything. I’m . . . I’m going alone.” He took a bite, finally having the guts to look as avoidant as he was being. “Boy, this is good.”

  This was a man who could find the good in that salad, but not in their marriage? Was she hearing correctly?

  “What do you mean you’re going alone? To find a place to live? While I sell this place? Or . . . ?” She didn’t take her eyes off her husband, though his glances were flitting all over the place.

  He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “No, it’s just me.” He closed his eyes for a moment and she just knew he was picturing “Robin,” who had probably coached him through this conversation, telling him he was entitled to it. “I’m leaving.”

  The words rang through the acoustics of the kitchen. The echo had been a selling point when they first found the house. Margo had said “I’m married!” and listened to the way it bounced off the walls.

  “I see,” she said now. It was all there was to say.

  “Yeah, that wasn’t so hard. Just out with it and, boom, it’s over.” This seemed like an aside to himself, rather than to Margo.

  The dryer finished its cycle and started its insanely long jingle. Never had it ever bothered her so much, and it almost always bothered her.

  She gave a sharp inhale and shifted her gaze to the salad in front of him. The video she’d posted. An idiot woman makes a salad for the man who is about to divorce her and for her thirty-six geriatric YouTube followers.

  Oh, what she’d give for him to have that heart attack he’d been dreading. Right now. Right here. The whole scene played out in rapid motion in her head: him clutching his chest, falling to the floor, trying to choke out the words “Call . . . nine . . . one . . .” while she pretended to not understand his request.

  Nine one? I don’t understand. Who do you want to call?

  “That was . . . easy?” she repeated his words. Her mouth felt numb. “Calvin, am I understanding this right? I can’t tell because you’re being super weird. Have you just said you are actually leaving me? Leaving our marriage? As in, you want a divorce?”

  He replayed her question in his head, she could tell by the thoughtful look and three short nods before he said, “Yes.” Then, as a long afterthought, “I’m sorry. But it’s for the best.”

  The nerve this took was unbelievable. “For whose best?” But she knew the answer. Throughout their entire marriage, they’d both done everything possible for his best.

  “Well . . . mine for one.” He gave a quick smile, as if he’d said something amusing. “But yours too, you’ll see.”

  She let the wave of rage flow over her flesh, and then she followed his gaze to the salad he clearly wanted to eat. Momentarily, she thought about dumping the whole lot into the trash. But she hated to waste food, even though he didn’t deserve to eat it and she didn’t have an appetite suddenly. Automatically, she went to the dishwasher and started emptying it, even though it hadn’t finished its eternal heated dry yet.

  What was she doing?

  Trying to feel normal, she guessed. There was no way this was really happening. No way.

  “And is Robin part of your plan?” she asked. “Is Robin going with you?”

  He scoffed. “She’s my therapist! Of course she’s not. In fact, she’s already referred me to a former colleague who works there, so, really, it’s working out perfectly. Meant to be.”

  That’s what she’d thought once. Meant to be.

  “Eat,” she said, shoving his bowl closer as she passed him. “You’re going to need your energy.”

  “For what?” He took a big bite and rolled his eyes in bliss. “You’ve really gotten so good at this lean stuff.”

  She gathered her internal strength, vision blurring. “Packing and getting the hell out of here.”

  He shook his head, chewing. “I don’t have to leave right away,” he said with a mouthful.

  “Oh yes, you do.” Seeing how much he was enjoying her food enraged her. It was probably more accurate to say it pulled the pin on the anger that was already tightening deep beneath her disbelief, but whatever caused it, she found herself unable to fight it. “In fact, you’ve got three seconds to eat whatever else you’re going to eat there before you’re wearing it.”

  He looked genuinely shocked. “Margo, this isn’t like you!”

  “Correction: this isn’t like Margo your wife.” The flames of fury engulfed her. She couldn’t believe this was happening, and that it was happening so . . . so casually. “Let me introduce you to Margo your ex-wife.”

  “Can’t we be friends?”

  The idea that they could suddenly shift baffled her violently.

  “No.” She picked up the bowl and dumped the whole thing in his lap, careful to make sure the oily dressing saturated his shirt. She looked him over and clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Get yourself cleaned up, Calvin, honestly, you’re a mess. Oh, and you have half an hour to pack what you want and get out. If you don’t, I’ll call the police. I don’t know if they’ll be able to enforce anything, but I do know that will embarrass you to death, and if there’s one thing you hate, it’s being embarrassed.” She walked out of the room, shaking inside but hoping he couldn’t tell from the outside.

  “My dinner,” he said stupidly, still sitting in the position she’d left him in.

  She walked to the sunroom, where she had everything set up for book club, and sat down. It was supposed to start in an hour. Some people had to drive that long, so she couldn’t very well cancel at the last minute like this. Somehow she was going to have to see this through.

  “I need more than half an hour,” he said, as if that was the point. As if that was the point at all.

  “My book club is coming then. Do you really want to slither out of here in front of them? Because I promise you, I will call the police whether they are here or not. In fact, witnesses would probably be good.”

  His face colored and she knew he was imagining word getting back to his colleagues somehow.

  “I’ll pack a bag,” he conceded. “Then I’ll be back for my things.”

  * * *

  Book club, formerly an enjoyable enough diversion for Margo, had all at once become a nightmare.

  In dreading having to entertain that night, after receiving the blow of news that her entire life was shattering, it hadn’t occurred to her that Susi Winslow’s husband also worked at Calvin’s firm, Cromwell and Covington, and that she might know about the promotion.

  She did, despite the fact that it was the biggest firm in the area and the men’s paths probably never crossed.

  And in a move she obviously thought was a kindness to a humble Margo, she made the announcement the minute everyone sat down with their drinks, going so far as to raise a toast to Calvin—and by extension, Margo—for their good fortune.

  “You are going to love San Francisco! Summer is an awesome time to move there, warm days and cool nights. But, really, the weather is always amazing. We’re going to miss you in the book club, but, my God, you are going to have the time of your life!”

  Margo didn’t know what to say. How to brace the world for the news without coming out with the whole true story right here and now. She couldn’t help but be glad he’d gotten out because, for all her bravado, she really didn’t want to have this scene in front of everyone.

  So she sat there, frozen like one of those goats that goes stiff and falls over when it’s scared, half hoping she didn’t fall over silently. Half hoping she would. She cleared
her throat, trying to buy a little time for an answer.

  “You know . . . we’ve only just talked about it a little bit,” she said. “Obviously Calvin is going out there first . . .” There was nothing obvious about that at all, in fact it was weird, but she had long since learned if you said something definitively enough people didn’t even bother to think you were lying.

  “Well, sure,” Marie Bentz muttered, after an awkward moment. “Makes sense.”

  “And I’m not sure how I feel about leaving this town, honestly. I do love it here.” Never mind that an hour ago, for one brief moment, she’d been thinking what she’d give for a whiff of the Saffron Arancini and meatballs at Delfina. Or, right before that, fantasizing like a middle-schooler about the (alternative) life of a grown-up.

  “Oh, come on,” Susi said, smiling and red-faced as usual. “You’ll get over that! How could you not?”

  Margo tried to put on a smile, but it felt distinctly like the pursed, unyielding lips sewn into a corpse to prevent a reflexive gasp or gape. “We’ll see.” Desperation manifested as a rabbity heartbeat and tingling fingers and toes. She couldn’t have them start in on selling San Francisco to her. “Should we get to the book?”

  There was no question that people noticed something was up with her. How could they not? Usually they spent a good long time catching up on each other’s lives before diving into the subject matter, and that was when no one had anything going on. That she was pushing ahead now when, ostensibly, she had some tremendous life news, it had to be crystal clear that something was up.

  As it continued to be as they continued the discussion and she was mum. Her eyes were filled with tears, so she had to be careful not to blink too hard, lest they spill over her cheeks and become obvious. So she was still as a mannequin, with her painted-on mini-smile and wide, glassy eyes.

  Finally, Jody Brooks nudged her, and it was her undoing. “What do you think about the distinction between grief and mourning, Margo?”

  And that was all it took. Suddenly the tears she thought she’d held in so well all came out, and when she opened her mouth to speak, instead she took a gasp like a drowning person who’d been under for a minute or so too long. Suddenly she was shuddering and crying and everyone around her—friends, but not real friends—stayed in their places, looking absolutely flummoxed.

  She tried to remember if she’d ever had a conversation of any consequence with any of them. If she’d ever seen a genuine emotion from anyone or shown one herself. Book club was easy, chatting about a book they’d all read was easy, lunch was easy, shopping was really easy. But if they were truly her friends, wouldn’t she have told them about Calvin the minute they’d walked in? Looked to them for comfort?

  Instead she was just embarrassed beyond belief.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed.

  “What on earth is it, Margo? I had no idea this book would affect you so deeply!”

  The book. They thought she was upset about the book. Her ironic laugh morphed into another sob.

  “I found it exhilarating,” Jody said, and Margo took a minute to think the worst of her for simply echoing the word all the critics had used, which was pasted all over the book.

  Margo looked at her, then at Michelle, and Susi, and Cynthia, and Sara. She still thought of Sara as “the new girl,” even though she’d joined them around Easter and Margo had even met her at Nordstrom Café for lunch once. They’d talked about shoes. The whole time.

  “It’s just that . . .” The words surged in Margo’s throat before she had time to think about it, much less talk herself out of it. The lie came fast and somehow felt like the only thing that was believable. “I haven’t told many people this, but . . . I was married before. When I was young. And he died,” she hastened to add, lest her implication wasn’t clear enough to shut them up.

  “How?” Sara asked, tactlessly. Of course she wanted to know. They all wanted to know. But one of the things about being an adult was realizing that you’re not allowed to ask how people died, no matter how hard you wondered.

  She pictured Calvin, in a fast slide show of the ways she’d like to murder him right now: strangled, pushed down the stairs, battered to death by his plate, stabbed in the back with one of the steak knives he had told her were too expensive for a birthday gift.

  None of those scenarios would work for her dearly departed nameless first husband, however. So she drew all the dignity she could muster around her. “I’d rather not talk about it. Like I said, we were young, it was a long time ago.” The more imaginary distance she could put between herself and this lie, the better. “I . . . I thought I could do this, I really did, but it’s just too close to the bone still.”

  “We understand, don’t we, girls?” Susi said, but her eyes were nearly wild with the clear intention to quiz Margo on this later. Of the group, Susi and Margo probably were the closest, but that wasn’t saying much. About three times a year they added a game of tennis to what was, with everyone else, simply an occasional lunch. That was what constituted friendship for them.

  How had she let that happen? How had she lived in solitude for so long? Some of her friends were still getting invited to bachelorette parties in Cabo. They felt like teenagers, but they were merely people who had waited to be frozen. Waited until they were themselves.

  Some of her old friends hadn’t even been married yet—which wouldn’t have been worth noting if she wasn’t suddenly, so suddenly, about to be divorced.

  And what would happen if she just opened up to all of these women?

  It seemed like there was too much to say all of a sudden; how to explain the past ten years of her marriage realistically, after not complaining in all that time, so they’d understand this sudden end. But it wasn’t possible. These weren’t the kind of people she had shorthand with. Even now, thinking Margo was grieving over some long-lost love, they all made nervous, short movements, like unsophisticated robots.

  “Yes, we understand,” said Susi, when the agreement was stilted and minimal.

  Everyone present mumbled some form of agreement with Susi and pitched in to clear the dishes or find another tidying task, but Margo insisted she could do it herself. “It will help me focus on something less painful,” she said, hoping that was an argument that they couldn’t refute. “I’m really sorry.”

  It was a clumsy, long, apologetic goodbye from everyone, and it took way longer than she would have liked. Finally, everyone left. At least everyone was happy to take home a small box of appetizers. Margo had sprung long ago for a restaurant-size pack of those brown envelope-style to-go boxes.

  Either her cooking or her lie was good enough for them to take it, and right now, either felt like a win.

  Margo went back to the sunroom and drank every one of their remaining drinks—not even giving a damn about every gross backwash story she’d ever heard—before sitting down next to the fatty artichoke dip she’d initially been careful to park on the table farthest from her seat so as to avoid eating too much. Now it was a free-for-all, and she ripped pieces right off the baguette, rather than using the delicate little serrated knife she’d left out for that purpose.

  Her marriage was over.

  Her book club was over (it wasn’t like she could play the role of widow forever, and she definitely couldn’t admit she’d lied on top of further confessing her marriage was over).

  The champagne was quickly gone.

  Her real estate hobby had never really paid that well to begin with, but it certainly wasn’t going to earn her enough for a good lawyer, and there was zero guess as to what she might get in alimony as an able-bodied thirty-three-year-old, never mind that she had no marketable skills.

  What in the world was she going to do for “fun” now?

  Chapter Two

  Margo

  Two weeks, four showers, merely four changes of yoga pants, and one talk with a lawyer later, the idea came to her. It appeared from nowhere when she pulled the Shun chef’s knife out of its block.<
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  I could just kill myself, Margo thought, always having a flair for the dramatic. It would be so fast.

  She’d almost majored in drama in college but her parents had convinced her it was a useless major that wouldn’t lead to any profitable career options, so she’d settled for taking a few classes as electives and had instead majored in the equally useless, but somehow more respectable, English literature.

  Of course she couldn’t stab herself. If she were going to kill herself, and she definitely wasn’t, she’d find a much less painful way to do it. What she really wanted was for the pain and insult of rejection to go away. The emptiness to be filled. The gaping uncertainty about everything suddenly and the way it mixed with the previously unacknowledgeable dissatisfaction that she now had to focus on, even though it made her feel terrible too.

  The dismantling of her future. From a solid—if frightening—boulder into rocky shards of rubble that blocked her every move.

  If she were gone suddenly, there would be no eruption of grief. Just a suburban rumor mill fueled by tap water gossip.

  She considered the knife again, strong and solid in her narrow hand. She really should have killed Calvin with it. À la Chicago. He had it comin’ . . .

  That would have solved all of her problems neatly.

  She looked at the blade of the eight-inch Shun DM0522 chef’s knife she should never have sprung for. It was new—razor sharp, as she got all of her knives sharpened frequently and professionally. Like all those As Seen on TV ads—Margo’s knife was sharp enough to cut through an empty Coke can!

  Though who’d willingly do that to their blade? (Or their fingers when it came time to pick up the shredded can and throw it out.) The knife shop in town where they sharpened for two bucks an inch.

  This knife had cost sixteen bucks to sharpen.

  Calvin wasn’t worth wasting that sixteen-dollar sharpening on.

  No, turns out she wasn’t the murder or the suicide type.

  She was just another divorcing woman, leaving her twenties in the dust behind her, without enough money, without enough self-esteem, and without enough energy to start over.