Free Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir by Stephanie Klein Page A

I was left to exhale and fake a smile. It didn’t work out for a reason , I chanted as I gulped espresso and cream. Hopefully the reason wasn’t timing. What if now is their timing? Then I picked the polish off my new manicure and headed back to my own pantry.

     

    “THERE’S NOTHING TO EAT IN THIS GODDAMN HOUSE.” Linus was whining at my feet as I stared into my empty cupboard, hoping something new would catch my eye. I scanned the familiar as my free hand weighed on the small knob of the wooden door. My brain eliminated decisions. There was a lone package of dried spaghetti, with no staples to initiate a sauce. I remembered the time I’d made my spaghetti and meatballs recipe for Gabe. We toasted over a bottle of Chianti in our apartment. He made me laugh so hard a piece of spaghetti actually came out of my nose. He wanted to save it.

    “Come on, Steph, can’t we put it in a case or something?”

    “What for?”

    “For the next time you say, ‘not funny, Gabe. Not funny.’ That way I can just point to the spaghetti case.” Usually, I reserved “not funny” for his Austin Powers impressions.

    “You’re sick, you know that?”

    “Yeah, but you love me.” He was right. I did.

     

    THE ONLY OTHER BITS OF FOOD IN MY CUPBOARD WERE graham crackers, which are a good time when you’re six, not when you’re hungry. Usually, I found solace behind another door: the refrigerator. I’d have to get past the condiments and salad dressings. Satisfaction was typically tucked away in the dairy drawer. I can’t believe refrigerators actually have drawers for dairy. As a child, I always thought it was wrong. Gosh, it’s not like the milk fits in there. I didn’t think about dairy as a solid, the way steam and ice don’t really seem like states of water.

    The fridge was barren, save for the baking soda and ketchup. It occurred to me just then: even my refrigerator screamed single. This was more depressing than crow’s feet.

    “Steph, let’s go get food, and you can cook for me,” Max suggested. “I mean that’s so not going out out.”

    “Okay.” I pepped up at this idea.
     
    In a moment, that’s our relationship. Right there. Boiled and pared down to that simple happy lick of an exchange. “You can cook for me.” “Okay.” Max is sensitive in a way only a former lover notices, so his requests for food are never met with my feminist fatal fencing. There’s nothing worse than cooking for those who eat to live instead of live to eat. Max is a seasoned counselor at Camp Livetoeat. Our relationship is just as campy: flip-flops on the beach, arms draped on shoulders, and white protective cream on each other’s noses.

    “Alright, are we going or wha?”

    “Okay, I’ll meet you at Citarella.”

    “You’re too fancy shmancy, Stephanie.”

    I wasn’t about to argue. Gristedes to the rescue.

     

    I WAS ALWAYS WAITING FOR GAY MAX TO ARRIVE. I MADE myself useful at Gristedes and started us off with a shopping cart—I was, after all, cooking dinner for two. As a rule, I was relegated to the solitary world of handbaskets, which sometimes made me feel like a hook-nosed nursery rhyme—some wirehaired spinster in a rocking chair whirling golden threads into needlepoint, living in a boot. It was new, this idea of shopping just for myself. When I first separated from Gabe, I might have actually looked over my shoulder before gripping a green basket. Back then, I was still living in our two-bedroom, hospital-subsidized, Upper East Side apartment. Alone. God only knew where he was living, so I was constantly paranoid I’d run into him or any of his medical colleagues. Shopping with a basket for one was one of the first moments divorce felt less like an idea and more like my life. Grocery shopping made divorce tangible. I felt it in my negligible handbasket filled with low-fat dairy, two apples, and high-fiber crackers made from seeds. A basket like that says two things: single and miserable. Perhaps