I Loved My Husband. I Loved Him So Much.
It was true — but since when does anything real bear so much repeating?
People have all sorts of hidden talents; I am magic with a chicken. Golden brown, garlic-blistered, hissing herb-scented steam when you slice into it after 20 minutes of being driven mad by the smell. Waiting is the hardest part of the process, but like every worthwhile sensual pleasure, a great dinner responds gorgeously to delayed gratification.
Chickens, like people, need time to rest after getting cooked.
After work on Tuesdays, I would strip off my slim black pantsuit and slip into yoga pants and one of D’s sweatshirts. I’d mix fresh herbs with salt and olive oil, then massage the mixture underneath the skin of a small bird.
Tuesdays were the only nights I had the apartment to myself — he taught an acting class from 7 to 10, his entire week whittled down to three hours of work.
D had turned his back on quotidian concerns like paying rent, consumed by a feverish belief in the immediate inevitability of a big-time career. Hollywood producers beckoned from seaside patios in Malibu; Broadway people made offers no reasonable playwright could refuse. Those phone calls were not hallucinations. I heard them. I was taken along to steak dinners, bore witness to…
