Gallery Carre
When the Chutney’s Gone (NY Times)
Apr 6th, 2008 by Viviane
By SUZANNE FINNAMORE
I GAINED my husband with soup. Not charm, wit or lingerie, but soup. Not canned soup or deli, but real homemade soup, simmered for hours over a hot Jenn-Air. The kind of soup that makes your eyes roll back in your head and your body feel, for a brief time, safe.
I carried this soup to him at work in shopping bags with handles — fresh split pea with ham or black-eyed vegetarian delivered in Tupperware while his co-workers teased and he strutted.
I believe my deceptively simple cabbage and rice soup, finished off with handfuls of Gruyère cheese and oversize garlic croutons, is the one that sent him over the edge. He admitted as much. That cabbage soup stands as the last crumbling brick in the wall of his bachelorhood.
It explains how he was blinded into a formal commitment, despite his horror regarding legal matters. He was especially fearful of marriage, which he filed in his personal ledger of liability just below malpractice and above identity theft.
He could overcome the lure of my smooth, naked legs draped casually over his. He could handle the ambrosia of a new lover and all the mindless meandering that entailed. But he could not physically get past the delicious, sedative comfort of my soup repertory. By design, I was inexorably attached to the soup; I could giveth or taketh away. And in his life, as disciplined as he attempted to make it, the soup had gone from a want to a need.
The middle is a different kind of feast, the casual kind that doesn’t require stiletto heels or crisp shirts. There are some disturbances in the field but nothing that cannot be solved with a fat bottle of merlot, a bucket of steamers, thigh-high stockings, a low-cut blouse and a little coaxing.
. . .
The middle is nice. It is a pity it cannot last longer. I have heard tales of couples staying in the middle for decades, of favorite dishes being served every Sunday and dependable anniversary dinners at Chez Panisse.
It hasn’t been so for me, or for many of my contemporaries. Yet, now I know with a bittersweet thump that I will try love again: appetite is a constant. The more I say I won’t, the closer my desire creeps behind me.
The end, when it comes, will be heralded by the cessation of all romantic dinners whisked to small tables by officious waiters. Gone are the days of the constructed salads and the butterflied lamb rack.
. . .
I WOULD silently reminisce about the time of holding hands over a plate of warm goat cheese with chutney and watercress, but there is no chutney. My husband, the sparkling conversationalist, has turned into a monosyllabic drone, the male gourmand is now unable to find a stick of butter in plain sight and openly complains about the ratio of vodka to vermouth in his martini, which I continue to make for him, like the butler in a Jack Benny comedy hour. I’ve become Rochester.
Suzanne Finnamore lives in Northern California. This essay is from “Split: A Memoir of Divorce,” to be published April 17 by Dutton.
Full essay here.