Just as it’s important to be happy when you’re in a kitchen, the most crucial thing to keep in mind when you cook is the people who are going to eat your food—their tastes, their desires, their likes and dislikes, what will satisfy them, what will move them, what will make them want it again. A cook should understand the people’s eating habits, too. People can’t change their eating habits easily. They take their habits with them even when they leave home for somewhere far away. When I first started cooking, Chef would often tell us to cook the way our mothers did when we were young. Having had no mother, I changed that word to Grandmother. When I was working at that restaurant in Napoli, the head chef told me that proper Italian cooking had to give customers the feeling that their grandmother was in the kitchen, and I found myself smiling despite myself. It’s not so when I cook for customers or the students I teach, but when I cook for him, I want to make the kind of food that would pique his hunger for me.
Taking lettuce from the fridge, I pause to look out the window, lit brightly by the spring afternoon sun. I look around at everything I have here—a kitchen spacious enough to conduct a cooking class for ten people, an interior and a yard roomy enough for an English setter, and a thirty-one-year-old man, as tall as a palm tree, walking across the yard. They’re not things that would come easily to me at this age. I have it all. Even if things have been bad between us, these I can’t easily give up. The problem now isn’t whether we love each other, but whether we can return to what we used to be. I need to say to him, subtly, suggestively: Even if we can’t return to what we used to be, it can’t be completely futile. We can learn something truly valuable as we pick up the broken pieces and float up to the surface. Let’s wait until then. Being inside the house in the spring, with him there, makes me a more positive person, more outgoing and cheerful.
I think I’ll make a meatless sandwich of herbs, vegetables, and eggs. There’s nothing more fitting for a meal at two P.M. on a Sunday. If it’s true that he already had lunch, the filling should be light. I put the cold chicken and the can of smoked salmon back in the fridge. Then I spread a thin layer of butter on the baguette and drizzle it thoroughly with olive oil infused with chopped garlic and thyme. Without the garlic and thyme enlivening the olive oil, the sandwich is boring. I usually add a bit of mayonnaise, but this time I don’t, since he’s not a fan. Now all I need to do is stack the ingredients. I spread lettuce, spun dry, slices of boiled egg, tomato, cucumber, onion. Usually one baguette is more than enough for the two of us. I cut it into thirds with the bread knife, on a slant, and nestle them in a gauze-covered basket. Even if it’s a simple sandwich, you have to choose quality bread, the ingredients have to sing together, and, whether it’s thyme or basil, there must be some kind of herb—this is my philosophy for sandwich making.
“Go ahead, try one.” I wait for him to take a bite of the sandwich. The person you can eat with is also the person you can have sex with, and the person you can have sex with is the person you can eat with. That’s why dates always start with a meal. You get to experience the impulsive expectation and curiosity toward the other person this way first, not in bed. There are many instances when the opposite is true, too. When you eat together, your relationship deepens or takes a step back—it’s either one or the other. Eating together, having sex—he and I are used to both, and we also know how to bring it up to the next level.
I eat by myself. I gulp down two pieces of the sandwich. I’m full. I’m satisfied, but not completely. Sharing something and feeling satisfaction from it—now I can’t seem to recall how much joy that used to give me.
“Why don’t you just take a bite?” Is the sandwich too boring to stimulate his appetite? He doesn’t even look at it.
“I told you I don’t want to. Why do you keep doing this?”
“Why do you think I keep doing this?”
“It’s over, okay, so please stop.”
“Over? What’s over? You’re not being rational right now. Any day now you’re going to come back and beg, saying you were wrong.”
“That’s just not going to happen. And I wish you’d stop going around talking about Se-yeon.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about.
“I mean, you two liked each other back then. Why would you do something like that?”
“I’ve never said anything about her to anyone.”
“Okay. I guess it’s Mun-ju, then?”
“Stop it. All you do is worry about Se-yeon, right? Have you bothered to ask me how I’ve been doing since you got here?”
“If you keep doing that, you really make me out to be the bad guy.”
I can’t speak.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, but I can’t do anything, okay?”
“You can come back. I told you I understand.”
“It’s not you I want to live with anymore, it’s Se-yeon. How many times do I have to keep telling you this?”
“You told me you loved me with that mouth of yours. Don’t you remember? Did you forget all of that?”
“Yeah, I did back then. It’s all in the past, though.”
“Come back to me.”
He doesn’t say anything.
I lay a hand gently on his arm, near his left elbow. No matter how much you kick off the covers in bed you always have a corner of it covering your stomach—just like that, we’d always been linked together, by one leg, one arm, one hand. “I’ll wait.”
He pushes my hand away coldly. “It hurts me, too, to think about us ending up like this.”
“It’s not hurt—you probably feel guilty.”
He’s silent.
“Isn’t that right?”
“I think in the future I should just visit with Paulie in the yard.”
I’m shocked.
If I bake a cake, I think I’ll make it in the shape not of my body, but hers, Se-yeon’s. Giggling, watching you shiver in disgust, I would pierce the chocolate eyes with a fork and eat them. You would ask, very seriously, How did it taste? How’s that? And since you’ll be curious about its taste, we can eat the entire cake, from the ankles. How’s that?
He’s not standing in front of me anymore. I rush out to the front door. He turns around, pausing as he slides his feet into his shoes. “Look in the mirror,” he says to me, his voice softening with pity for me for the first time.
“You, you’re about to leave the person you love the most, okay? So think about it just one more time.”
“I’m really sick and tired of that kind of talk.”
I’m stunned into silence again.
The door closes.
If I turn around, I’d be able to see him one more time, walking across the yard, kindly but sadly hugging Paulie, whispering, See you soon. I’d loved the shadow he casts, as sturdy as that of a grove of trees in the sun. I’m so worked up that all I can do is crumple onto the shoes stacked in the foyer. I’m not sure what this heavy thing is, pressing down on my shoulders—hunger, powerlessness, Paulie. Okay. Goodbye, just for now. Even if I have everything, you leaving like that—it’s like losing everything. Bye. Even when you’re with her, you will have to think about me from time to time. I’ll continue to piece together my sorrow here, like this.
CHAPTER 12
IF THERE HAS TO BE a reason for it, I think Mun-ju and I became close not only because we’re the same age, but also because I understood her appetite. Mun-ju said she was the eldest of five sisters. Pausing after revealing this, she asked me, Could you turn the lights off?