Chapter 9 #2
Her eyes go wide. “Really?”
“Really. It’s like…wet and mushy and it doesn’t taste like anything.”
“Yes!” Emma practically shouts, delighted that someone finally gets it. “And it’s the same color as when you get a bad bruise, you know? Like orange and green at the same time?”
“Exactly! And people always put it in fruit salad like it belongs there, but it doesn’t. It ruins all the other fruit.”
“It makes the other fruit taste like cantaloupe!” Emma’s nodding vigorously now. “That’s what I always tell Dad but he says I’m being dramatic.”
“You’re not being dramatic! It’s a culinary crime.”
She dissolves into giggles at that, and suddenly we’re co-conspirators in cantaloupe hatred.
It’s a start. I open the fridge to survey what we’re working with.
It’s organized, of course it is, with everything lined up neatly.
There’s a gallon of milk—whole milk, with the red cap—a carton of orange juice, a stick of butter on a little ceramic dish, some Tupperware containers that probably have leftovers from his parents’ restaurant.
I grab the carton of eggs from the top shelf and a container of strawberries that look fresh, then set them on the counter. The bread is in a wooden bread box on the counter—white bread, the squishy kind that Emma probably likes—and I pull out four slices.
Emma’s chattering away about something that happened at preschool last week, something involving a boy named Tyler and a disagreement over who got to be the dinosaur during playtime, and I’m nodding along even though I’m only half-listening because I’m trying to figure out the kitchen logistics.
“I’m gonna go get my Ariel coloring book and some crayons,” Emma announces suddenly, sliding off her chair. “Be right back!”
“Okay,” I say, watching her run off down the hallway, her nightgown billowing behind her.
The second she’s gone, I stare down at the carton of eggs like they might provide instructions themselves.
I have never made scrambled eggs before. Not once in my entire life.
I’ve been living off ramen noodles and bananas and the occasional bagel from Essa Bagel down the street, and when I’m feeling fancy—or when Cori or Marcus drag me out—we go to Zen Palate for cheap vegetarian food or grab dollar slices from 2 Bros Pizza.
That’s basically been my entire diet since I got to New York, which is probably why my budget has dwindled to almost nothing so quickly.
Turns out eating out every day adds up fast, even when you’re eating the cheapest possible options.
But I’ve never actually cooked anything.
I mean, I’ve watched Eileen make scrambled eggs. I think. Maybe? She definitely made breakfast when I was growing up, and eggs were involved, and there was a pan and a stove and…stirring? That’s a thing that happens, right?
The stove before me, with its array of cryptic knobs, might as well be the control panel of a 747.
Have I ever used a stove? Like, actually used one?
We had a state-of-the-art kitchen in the house in California but I was never allowed in it when the chef was cooking, and if Eileen was cooking, I sat at the table and never really paid much attention.
At Stanford I lived in the dorms where we mainly ate in the cafeteria, and now here in New York the kitchen in my apartment is so small that usually only one person can be in there at a time, and that person is usually Marcus making his weird experimental meals that never turn out the way he plans.
Oh God. What if I break it? What if I turn the wrong knob and blow up the apartment or set something on fire or—
“Is something wrong?” Leo’s voice comes from the living room, and I can hear the concern in it, the barely suppressed need to intervene.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Everything’s fine.”
Think, Annie. Think. You can figure this out.
It’s just eggs. People make eggs every single day without incident. Millions of people. Probably billions. It’s not rocket science.
But I’m staring at this stove with its five knobs—why are there so many knobs?
—and I have absolutely no idea which one does what or how to make it work.
I can feel Leo’s eyes on me from the living room, burning a hole between my shoulder blades, and the weight of his attention is making this worse because now I can’t be incompetent when it comes to fucking scrambled eggs.
That’s like failing at the most basic adult task imaginable.
My eyes are starting to sting just a little but I refuse to cry. I will not cry over scrambled eggs. That’s absurd. That’s the most ridiculous thing I could possibly cry about.
But it’s not really about the eggs, is it?
It’s about the fact that I grew up in a house with a full staff where everything was done for me and I never learned how to do anything practical or useful.
I can discuss the symbolism in The Great Gatsby and I know how to walk in heels on a red carpet and I can make small talk with entertainment executives at dinner parties, but I can’t make breakfast. I can’t cook anything.
The only reason I can do my own laundry is because some kind lady at the laundromat taught me how, at twenty-five.
I don’t know how to iron or sew on a button or change a tire or any of the things that normal people just know how to do because they learned them growing up.
And if I can’t even make some scrambled eggs for a four-year-old, how am I supposed to take care of her? How am I supposed to do this job? How am I supposed to prove to myself that I can make it on my own when I don’t even know how to work a stove?
I reach out and turn one of the knobs. Nothing happens.
I turn another one. Still nothing.
I try a third, and there’s this clicking sound that makes me jump back like I’ve been electrocuted, even though nothing actually happened.
“Do you need help with the stove?” Leo’s voice is closer now, and when I glance over my shoulder he’s standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, his red pen still in his hand.
I want to say no. I want to tell him I’ve got it under control, that I’m perfectly capable of figuring this out on my own.
Pride wars with pragmatism. Pride loses.
“Yes,” I admit, the word small in the bright kitchen. “I would.”
He moves past me, and I catch his scent—cedar, clean cotton, something expensive and unsettling. He reaches out, turns the front-left knob and holds it. A soft click-whoosh, and a perfect blue corona of flame springs to life under the burner.
“Gas stove,” he says, like that explains everything. “You have to turn the knob and hold it for a second until the ignition catches. Sometimes it takes a few tries.”
“Right.” I stare at the obedient flame, a symbol of my profound domestic incompetence. “Thank you.”
He’s still standing close to me, close enough that I could count the flecks of gold in his brown eyes if I were the type of person who noticed things like that, which I’m definitely not.
He smells good and he looks so, so good and he just watched me fail at the most basic possible task.
I want to disappear into the floorboards.
“Thank you,” I manage.
“You’re welcome.” He clears his throat again and steps back, giving me space. “Do you need help with anything else?”
“No,” I say quickly, maybe too quickly. “No, I’ve got it from here.”
He nods once and walks back toward the living room, and I turn my attention to the eggs, determined to at least get this right even if I don’t know what I’m doing.
How hard can it be, really?
I find a small mixing bowl in one of the cabinets—glass, with a blue rim around the edge—and set it on the counter.
Then I pick up an egg and crack it against the side of the bowl the way I’ve seen people do in movies.
Except it doesn’t split. It shatters. A web of fractures, and shell fragments cascade into the bowl along with the viscous yolk and slimy white.
The sensation of cold, raw egg on my fingers is viscerally revolting.
Shit.
I try again with another egg, more carefully this time, but the same thing happens.
I’m fishing them out with my fingers now, and the feeling of the raw egg is absolutely disgusting—slippery and cold and slimy in a way that makes my stomach turn.
I pull out another piece of shell, then another, trying not to gag.
“Can I help?”
I look down and Emma’s standing next to me, still in her nightgown, her coloring book and crayons forgotten on the table.
I feel my face flush with embarrassment. A four-year-old is offering to help me make breakfast because I clearly have no idea what I’m doing.
“Sure,” I say, stepping to the side to make room for her at the counter.
She silently drags over a little wooden step stool that was tucked beside the fridge, positions it carefully, and climbs up so she’s at counter height.
Then she looks at the bowl with all the shell pieces floating in it and doesn’t say anything about what a disaster it is, which I appreciate more than she probably knows.
“My Daddy always taught me you have to crack the egg on something flat first,” she says, reaching for one of the remaining eggs. “Like this.”
She taps the egg against the counter—not too hard, not too soft, just right—and a clean crack appears in the shell. Then she holds it over the bowl and carefully pulls the two halves apart, and the egg slides out perfectly, no shell, no mess, just clean yolk and white dropping into the bowl.
“See?” She looks up, her expression one of pure, helpful pride. “You try.”
I reach for another egg, still feeling uncertain and humiliated.
A four-year-old is tutoring me in a fundamental life skill.
I’m here to care for her, and she is already, in ways she cannot understand, caring for me.
How many eggs am I even supposed to make?
Four seems like enough for me and a kid, right? That’s not too many or too few?