Jennifer Weiner - Good in Bed

She shrugged at me, and stared at the blackboard. This week it was American Classics with Five Easy Ingredients. The chef launched into his spiel. One of his assistants – a gangly, pimply kid from The Restaurant School – started hacking away at a head of cabbage. “He’s going to cut his finger off,” my mother predicted.

“Shh!” I said, as the front-row regulars – mostly senior citizens who took these sessions way too seriously – scowled at us.

“Well, he is,” said my mother. “He’s holding the knife all wrong. Now, getting back to Bruce…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. The chef melted a gigantic glob of butter in a pan. Then he added bacon. My mother gasped as if she’d witnessed a beheading, and raised her hand.

“Is there a heart-healthy modification for this recipe?” she inquired. The chef sighed and started talking about olive oil. My mother returned her attention to me. “Forget Bruce,” she said. “You can do better.”

“Mother!”

“Shh!” hissed the front-row foodies. My mother shook her head. “I can’t believe this.”

“What?”

“Would you look at the size of that pan? That pan’s not big enough.” Sure enough, the chef-in-training was cramming way too much imperfectly chopped cabbage into a shallow frying pan. My mother raised her hand. I yanked it down.

“Just let it go.”

“How’s he going to learn anything if nobody tells him when he’s making a mistake?” she complained, squinting at the stage. “That’s right,” agreed the woman sitting next to her.

“And if he’s going to dredge the chicken in that flour,” my mother continued, “I really think he needs to season it first.”

“You ever try cayenne pepper?” asked an elderly man in the row ahead. “Not too much, you understand, but just a pinch gives it a really nice flavor.”

“Thyme’s nice, too,” said my mother.

“Okay, Julia Child.” I closed my eyes, slumping lower in my folding chair as the chef moved on to candied sweet potatoes and apple fritters, and my mother continued to quiz him about substitutions, modifications, techniques that she’d learned in her years as a homemaker, while offering running commentary to the bemusement of the people sitting near her and the fury of the entire front row.

Later, over cappuccinos and hot buttered pretzels from the Amish pretzel stand, she gave me the speech I was sure she’d been preparing since last night. “I know your feelings are hurt right now,” she began. “But there are a lot of guys out there.”

“Yeah, right,” I muttered, keeping my eyes on my cup.

“Women, too,” my mother continued helpfully.

“Ma, how many times do I have to tell you? I’m not a lesbian! I’m not interested.”

She shook her head in mock sadness. “I had such high hopes for you,” she fake-sighed, and pointed toward one of the fish stalls, where pike and carp were stacked on top of each other, open-mouthed and googly-eyed, their scales gleaming silver under the lights. “This is an object lesson,” she said.

“This is a fish stall,” I corrected.

“This is telling you that there are plenty of fish in the sea,” she said. She walked over and tapped one fingernail on the glass case. I followed her reluctantly. “You see that?” she said. “Think of each one of those fish as a single guy.”

I stared at the fish. The fish, stacked six high on the crushed ice, seemed to gape back. “They have better manners,” I observed. “Some of them are probably better conversationalists, too.”

“You want fish?” asked a short Asian woman in a floor-length rubber apron. She had a filleting knife in one hand. I thought, briefly, about asking to borrow it, and what it would feel like to gut Bruce. “Good fish,” she urged.

“No thanks,” I said. My mother led me back to the table.

“You shouldn’t be so upset,” she said. “That article will be lining birdcages by next month”

“What an uplifting thought to share with a journalist,” I said.

“Don’t be sarcastic,” she said.

“I don’t have any other way to be.” I sighed.

We sat down again. My mother picked up her coffee cup. “Is it because he got a job at a magazine?” she ventured.

I took a deep breath. “Maybe,” I acknowledged. And it was true, seeing Bruce’s star rise while mine just stayed in place would have hurt even if his first story hadn’t been about me.

“You’re doing fine,” said my mother. “Your day will come.”

“What if it doesn’t?” I demanded. “What if I never get another job, or another boyfriend”

My mother waved her hand dismissively, as if this was too silly to even consider.

“But what if I don’t?” I asked raggedly. “He’s got this column, he’s writing a novel”

“He says he’s writing a novel,” said my mother. “Doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“I’m never going to meet anyone else,” I said flatly.

My mother sighed. “You know, I think some of this is my fault,” she finally said.

That got my attention.

“When your father used to say things…”

This was definitely a turn I didn’t want the conversation to take. “Mom…”

“No, no, Cannie, let me finish.” She took a deep breath. “He was awful,” she said. “Mean and awful, and I let him get away with way too much, and I let it go on for too long.”

“Water under the bridge,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” said my mother. I had heard her say this before, of course, but it hurt every time, because every time it made me remember just what she was apologizing for, and how bad it had been. “I’m sorry because I know it’s what’s made you this way.”

I stood up, grabbing her cup and mine, our used napkins, the remains of the pretzels, and headed off to find a garbage can. She followed behind me. “Made me how?” I asked.

She thought about it. “Well, you’re not great with criticism.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You don’t seem very comfortable with how you look.”

“Show me a woman who is,” I shot back. “It’s just that not all of us get to enjoy having our insecurities exploited for millions of Moxie readers.”

“And I wish…” She looked ruefully toward the tables at the center of the market, where families were gathered, having sandwiches or coffee, passing sections of the Examiner back and forth. “I wish you believed in yourself more. Like with… romantic stuff.”

Yet another conversation I didn’t want to be having with my late-in-life-lesbian mother.

“You’ll find the right guy,” she said.

“I’ve been underwhelmed by the choices so far.”

“You stayed with Bruce too long”

“Ma, please!”

“He was a nice guy. But I knew you didn’t love him that way.”

“I thought you were out of the heterosexual advice-giving arena.”

“I’m making a special guest appearance on an as-needed basis,” she said cheerfully. Outside, by the car, she gave me a rough hug – a big step for her, I knew. My mother is a great cook, a sympathetic listener, and a good judge of character, but she’s never been big on touchy-feely stuff. “I love you,” she said, which was also out of character for her. But I wasn’t going to object. I needed all the love I could get.

On Monday morning I sat in a waiting room full of women too big to cross t heir legs, all of us wedged into inadequate armchairs on the seventh floor of the University of Philadelphia Weight and Eating Disorders Center, thinking that if I ran the place I’d make sure to have couches.

“A few surveys,” the smiling, skinny secretary behind the desk had said, handing me a half-inch thick slab of forms, a clipboard, and a pen. “There’s breakfast,” she added chirpily, pointing at a stack of desiccated bagels, a tub of fat-free cream cheese, and a pitcher of orange juice with a thick film of pulp floating on the top. Like anyone would eat in here, I thought, bypassing the bagels and sitting down with my forms beneath a poster that read “Taking it off… one day at a time!” and depicted a model in a leotard romping through a field full of flowers, which was not something I planned on doing, no matter how skinny I got.