She’d discovered a fishmonger near the library and had thought to make a paella. But the expense of all that shellfish, not to mention all that work, seemed too much for one person. And besides, the ice cream outing with Dr. Grant had been cheering. Not just the food, but the conversation. She needed to be more social, and Todd and Sunita were her only options.
She was relieved when Sunita answered the door. Even after her and Todd’s moment of understanding during the last shopping trip, he intimidated her. So Maribeth was a little surprised when Sunita responded to the invitation with a shake of her head so vigorous it snapped her ponytail.
“Oh no,” Sunita said. “We can’t. We absolutely can’t.”
Maribeth felt her face grow warm. What was she thinking? Todd and Sunita were in their early twenties; she was in her midforties. She’d mistaken their overtures of friendliness for friendship, when in fact she was just an old lady they were helping to cross the street.
“Oh, okay, never mind then,” Maribeth said, backing away.
“It’s just tomorrow’s Monday,” Sunita said. When that didn’t register, she added. “Monday Night Football. We play the Titans.”
“Oh, football, right,” Maribeth said. She was vaguely aware of such things. Jason was a haphazard sports fan at best, but her father-in-law went completely bonkers over one of the teams. The Giants? Or maybe it was the Jets.
“We’re going to crush them,” Sunita added.
“Oh.” Maribeth didn’t know what to say. “Well, good luck with the crushing.”
“Wait. What are you making?” Sunita asked. “No one’s cooked me dinner in a while.”
“I was thinking about paella.”
“Todd’s allergic to scallops,” Sunita said.
“No scallops in this recipe.”
“Maybe you could bring it over here. If you don’t mind watching the game with us.”
“Really?”
“Kickoff is at seven-thirty but come earlier so we can hang out.”
Hang out. “Okay.”
“Be warned, Todd can be a tyrant about talking about anything but football while the ball is in play.” She rolled her eyes as if to say: Men.
Maribeth smiled. “I’ll see you at seven.”
THE RECIPE WAS pleasantly complicated, lots of debearding and deveining, chopping and slicing. She went about it methodically yet leisurely, a glass of red wine at her side. (One thing Dr. Grant had insisted she could feel good about.) She even bought fish heads to make her own stock.
As a briny smell filled the apartment, Maribeth tried to recall the last time being in a kitchen felt like a luxury rather than a chore. She didn’t have to worry about a meal that had to be cooked, served, and cleaned in that tiny window between coming home from work and exhaustion-related meltdown (usually the kids’ but not always). She didn’t have to worry if Liv was or was not eating tomato sauce or rice or broccoli that week. She didn’t have to worry if seeing the shrimps with heads on in the kitchen would traumatize Oscar. She didn’t have to perform a cost-benefit analysis of a multipot meal: tastiness of food versus time spent cleaning up.
Even cleaning the kitchen felt gratifying. A cutting board was dirty. It was washed. Now it was clean. The simple satisfaction of it. It made her happy in a very basic way, much like editing once had.
At seven, she brought the steaming platter next door. Sunita answered, wearing an oversized Steelers jersey, her eyes blackened with those marks football players wore for reasons that mystified Maribeth. Todd appeared behind her. He was dressed exactly the same. Maribeth had seen Sunita in sports jerseys but Todd had always been dressed on the preppy side.
“It’s for luck,” Todd explained, picking up her look. “Otherwise the Steelers lose.”
“It’s true,” Sunita said. “We lost the Super Bowl in 2011 because Todd was trying to impress a guy and wore J.Crew.”
“Youth,” Todd said, shaking his head.
“Here, this is heavy,” Maribeth said, nodding toward the platter.
“Oh, right. Put it down on the table,” Todd said.
“It’s hot. Do you have a trivet?”
“Grab a catalog or something, Sunny,” Todd said.
Sunita snatched a magazine from the pile of mail. It was a recent issue of Frap.
“I haven’t read that yet,” Todd said.
“You’re not missing much,” Maribeth joked.
“You read Frap?” Todd arched his eyebrows and Maribeth suspected she had just scored another point with him.
“I’ve been known to.”
“See?” he said to Sunita. To Maribeth he said, “Sunny gives me no end of shit, even though the girl has never met a BuzzFeed Harry Potter quiz she didn’t take.”
“You cannot compare HP and your silly magazines.”
“Oh, give it up. It’s two against one. And M.B. reads it and she’s smart. She’s probably a visiting professor or something.”
She glanced at the issue of Frap, the cover growing soggy from paella steam. “A consultant.”
“A consultant reads it,” Todd said. “So no giving me shit.”
“But then what would I live for?” Sunita said. “M.B., do you want the grand tour before the pregame?”
“Sure.”
“I already warned her what a slob you are,” Todd said, and he exchanged a conspiratorial look with Maribeth.
The apartment was a lot like hers, the same aging appliances in the kitchen, the same dirty carpeting in the living room, the same generic oak-veneer dining table. Yet it looked completely different, perhaps because it looked lived in. There were chili-pepper lights strung along the windowsill, a bookshelf teetering with paperbacks and school texts. There was what looked like a shrine to the Steelers: a framed front-page newspaper article trumpeting a Super Bowl win, a few bobble-head toys, a placard that read, I BLEED BLACK AND GOLD. There was a smattering of framed photos of the two of them, younger, softer-faced, and endearingly awkward.