Chapter 5
“Come on, Jules. You can do this! What’s a recipe that means something to you?
” A half hour later I’m standing in front of the open refrigerator staring at the ingredients I bought at Trader Joe’s and giving myself a pep talk.
To be honest, when I picked up groceries after my shift, I was looking forward to coming home, putting on an episode of my favorite guilty pleasure—the Pasta Grannies YouTube channel—and letting an eighty-something-year-old Italian woman teach me how to make some carb-heavy and yummy type of pasta. But now I have big work to do.
Unfortunately, I’ve been standing in front of the refrigerator for the past twenty minutes, completely stuck.
Everywhere I turn I see ingredients for vintage recipes I’ve made for the show, but I’m drawing a blank on anything more personal to me.
I close the refrigerator and move to pantry staples. Maybe they’ll be more inspiring.
“Do beans mean anything to me?” I ask, eyeing some dried fava beans.
I try to picture my dad. Did he ever make anything with beans?
All I can summon is a memory of him teaching Aurora and me to make farting noises with our armpits and the three of us doubled over laughing hysterically in our kitchen in Beacon Hill.
A fond memory, but not particularly useful right now.
Drew pokes his head into the kitchen. “Did I hear something about beans?” He’s wearing faded basketball shorts and a University of Wisconsin Mead Witter School of Music sweatshirt.
He’s been holed up in his room listening to Danish death metal and packing for LA since I got home.
He said yes to Keith and signed the contract this morning.
Keith and the production company want him in LA before the end of the week.
This is really happening. Apparently, things move quickly in the TV production world.
Every time I think of him leaving, my heart breaks a little more.
“Ugh, I talked to Michelle earlier.” I explain about needing fifty personal recipes for the cookbook.
I don’t mention how stuck I am, or how much I cannot seem to make any recipes that have an emotional connection for me.
I haven’t told anyone that, not even Drew.
Not even my older sister Aurora, and she knows practically everything about me.
“Can you think of any recipes that are meaningful to me?” I ask hopefully.
“Hmm…” Drew frowns and opens the fridge, grabbing a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheddar.
He sets about making himself a cheese sandwich slathered with mayo and garnished with half a jar of fancy homemade pickles he picked up at the farmer’s market.
“Well, what makes a recipe personal to you? What do you love about the vintage recipes you make on the show?” he asks.
“I mean, there must be a reason you choose the ones you do, right?”
“I don’t know why I choose the recipes I do,” I admit to Drew. “Maybe I just find making them soothing.”
I purse my lips, mulling over his question.
I’ve never really thought about it before.
Why do I love making vintage recipes? Maybe it stems from cooking with Nonna Bruna every summer when I visited her in Italy, using her cherished leather-bound book of Italian family recipes passed down through generations.
Maybe for me these vintage recipes are a substitution.
After my dad’s death, when I stopped being able to cook the recipes from our family, I found solace in trying out classic recipes I discovered online or in vintage cookbooks I gleaned from thrift stores.
I cooked late at night, long after my mother and stepfather Ted were asleep in the gleaming New York apartment I was now forced to call home.
I’d had to move in with them after Dad passed away.
In that awful year, when my anxiety was running high and I couldn’t sleep, I’d lie in bed night after night with my thoughts whirring at a hundred miles an hour, feeling panicky and out of control and crushed by the grief.
I’d get up, find a recipe that appealed to me, and cook until the wee hours of the morning.
When I was done, I’d feel calm again. I’d clean up all traces of the tomato soup spice cake or vinegar pie I’d made, dumping everything in the trash can and hiding it away under layers of paper towels.
I didn’t need to eat what I’d made. It was the act of cooking that gave me comfort.
Afterward, I’d carefully clean up the kitchen and fall into bed exhausted and heartsore but peaceful and at ease.
Those recipes from the Great Depression, from WWI and WWII, from the Vietnam War, saved me in a way.
They made me feel safe. They grounded me, reminding me that generations of people had lived through hardship and fear and uncertainty, and with the power of prune pudding and potato peel soup, they’d survived.
I could too. Years later, in the dark lockdown days of 2020, I’d taken those same recipes and—with Drew’s encouragement and help—created The Bygone Kitchen as a way to comfort and strengthen others as we weathered a global catastrophe together.
Now, however, I’m being asked to leave my cooking comfort zone. What do I do?
“Hey,” Drew interrupts, spearing a pickle and crunching it. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Grateful for the interruption, I steal one of his pickles and listen with a sinking heart as he explains uncomfortably that he’s going to have to sublet his room for the summer while he’s filming in LA.
Rent is sky-high both here in Seattle and in LA, and he can’t afford to pay double rent.
Our apartment is affordable, probably because our 1970s-era building has all the charm of a square of Spam, but it’s still pricey.
Everything in Seattle is. I understand his predicament, but I’m nervous at the thought of a new roommate.
Drew and I have been roommates for over five years.
“I hate this,” I tell him glumly. I’m going to miss Drew, and don’t relish the thought of having to get acclimated to someone new.
But I can’t afford our entire rent on my own, and our lease isn’t up until December.
It looks like I’m stuck with whoever Drew finds, at least until the fall.
Maybe Drew will come back then, but who knows. It all depends on how his show goes.
I crunch the pickle and glower at him. “I’ll never find a roommate that cleans toilets as well as you.”
Drew laughs. “We’re the best,” he agrees. “I’m going to miss you too, Jules. You and your amazing pasta.” He pulls me into a one-armed hug, and I briefly wrap my arms around his torso, grieved at the thought of losing him. He gives me a comforting squeeze and releases me to grab his sandwich.
“I’ll find somebody good, I promise,” he assures me, looking guilty to be putting me in this position.
Our cohabitation started somewhat accidentally.
Drew had just started subletting the other bedroom in my apartment from my old roommate while she did a postdoc research trip to Rome in the early spring of 2020.
But what was supposed to be a few months turned into far longer when Drew and I suddenly found ourselves in lockdown together in a small apartment in the midst of a global pandemic.
Almost overnight we became each other’s lifeline.
We suddenly went from practically strangers to each other’s sole source of company in a scenario no one could have imagined.
It was a little uncomfortable at first, but we quickly discovered that we had a lot in common and were surprisingly compatible as roommates.
Gradually, as the months wore on, we became good friends.
Pro tip: If you have to be in lockdown with a virtual stranger, try to pick a good-natured music teacher from Wisconsin who can play the piano, soft-shoe like Fred Astaire, and break into song at a moment’s notice.
And who likes to do dishes. That’s always a plus.
With Drew as my roommate, our little shared apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle has never been dull or dirty.
By the time the lockdowns lifted, we were comfortably broken in together, like an old pair of slippers.
Sometimes we joke that we’re like an old married couple, weathering the pandemic, breakups and broken hearts, employment ups and downs.
But now this. Now he’s leaving, and I don’t know if he’s ever coming back.
He’s going to LA for the summer to shoot the new series, then he’ll reassess.
He may not come back if things go well. I can tell he’s hoping they do.
Drew cuts his sandwich in half. “I already have a few leads for someone to sublet, a couple of teachers from school,” he tells me. “I’m hoping to find somebody before I leave.”
He fishes another pickle from the jar and proffers it to me, a peace offering.
Usually, Drew is very stingy about these pickles.
He’s really feeling bad about getting the job and moving and leaving me in the lurch, I can tell.
And I am still feeling the sting of his decision.
I know in my head it’s the best choice for him, and I’m trying to be excited for him, but it still hurts that he is leaving me and the show like this.
And now I have to acclimate to a new roommate. Ugh.
The thought of a new roommate being one of Drew’s posh private school teacher buddies is a little cheering, though. Maybe it will be one of the hot, single ones. I’ve seen more than my fair share of cheesy rom-coms. Who knows? Maybe this is destiny.
It’s always been platonic between Drew and me.
There was one ill-advised night early on during a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon—a sloppy midnight kiss fueled by cheap margaritas.
Both of us recoiled instantly. It felt like kissing a brother or a cousin.
Good friends, we’d agreed hastily. Nothing more.
And we’d been that for each other for five years, but now that he’s leaving maybe I could get a roommate with a little more romantic potential.
It’s been a dry spell for a while now since I stopped dating Krish, one of my coworkers at Trader Joe’s.
He relocated to Phoenix and we didn’t survive long distance.
“Can I request a hot, single teacher as a new roommate?” I call down the hall as Drew takes his sandwich and heads back to his room to pack. “How about Conor?” Conor is a teacher buddy of Drew’s. He’s originally from Galway and has dimples. It’s not fair how cute he is.
“What about Conor?” Drew yells back.
“Can I please have Conor as a roommate?” I wheedle. “I want to fall asleep listening to him lecture me on the Etruscans.” I’d listen to anything if it’s in a delicious Irish accent. I’d listen to Conor read the warning label off a pack of light bulbs. I’m a sucker for a good accent.
Drew pokes his head out of his room and blinks at me. “Sometimes I worry there’s something wrong with you,” he says. Then, “I’ll see what I can do.” He lifts his sandwich plate in a little salute and disappears back into his room.
A moment later, the Danish death metal starts up again, pulsing dully through the hall.
I go back into the kitchen to face down the refrigerator once more.
I stand by the open fridge door savoring the last tangy bite of pickle, trying not to worry about this new roommate situation.
It’s only for the summer and then Drew might be back.
Even if he stays in LA, it’s just six months until the lease is up.
I can deal with almost anything for three to six months, right? What’s the worst that can happen?