Free Recipes for a Perfect Marriage by Kate Kerrigan Page A

and said, “Thanks.”
    “Thanks for jack shit, baby—that’s my job,” he said, then took my hand and walked me back into the kitchen. In a funny way, I think he was pleased that I had snapped; it showed him I was human.
    “Tressa’s got a bug, folks. I’m taking her home.”
    They were all concerned, although I could see Shirley smirking in the corner as if to say, “Welcome to Ma Mullins’s Sunday Bonanza, bitch.”
    As we were walking out the door, she called after us, “See you at the first communion next weekend?” and I could feel Dan’s hand weaken over mine.

12
    The years passed and brought with them the inevitable intimacy of routine. I knew James’s footsteps on the gravel of the road, I could trace the pattern of his body in our bed, I grew used to the smell of his skin, so that I found comfort in it. Still, I would not let go of my ideal, and not one single day passed when I did not think of Michael. Over those early years especially, I remember walking out in the field at the back of our house late at night and looking up at the stars.
    Michael.
    I would say his name and imagine that he could hear me.
    I still love you, Michael. I still love you.
    In saying it out loud, I was able to make it real again. So I was not an ordinary country schoolteacher’s wife, but that passionate young woman again, victim of that greater kind of love. A stream of whispers pouring out of me: I still love you, I still love you, over and over so that the words might make a line that would carry up and up, across the galaxies and find where he was. How many words would it take to get to America? How many to bring him back to me again? He would never forget me. Not Michael. Love like we had never dies. It never grows old or dulls with the bland, gray shades of familiarity. Love as vibrant as ours would live forever.
    In those early years, my husband became my family. I visited my parents only occasionally and always out of duty rather than pleasure. The estrangement brought about by Ann’s refusing my dowry never healed between my aunt and myself. I think now that by staying angry with her it was a way of keeping Michael alive in my heart. My mother’s humiliation at being refused my dowry softened in time, especially once she knew I was settled with James. Although I did grow fonder of my husband, I could not say that I loved him. But I did come to understand that being married to him was not the disaster that I thought it would be. Although I did not fully appreciate it at the time, we had a good life. James, spurred on by my example, started to rise early and developed more of an interest in small farming, so we had a modest head of cattle in addition to his teaching income. I kept hens and reared pigs for the slaughter as my mother had done, and James took up beekeeping when war loomed and sugar shortages were threatened. Between us, we were virtually able to feed ourselves and sell any surplus honey and eggs to a shopkeeper in Ballyhaunis. With the spare cash, we made improvements to our house. We had running water in the scullery and a range built into the wall where the fire had been. I had the tailor, Tarpey, make me three suits a year, and I bought fabric from him to make my own dresses. One year, we had a four-day holiday in Dublin. We stayed in great style at the Gresham Hotel, took tea in Bewley’s Coffee House. I bought cinnamon and coriander and all kinds of spices from Findlaters on Harcourt Street. We went to the cinema and saw Random Harvest, then walked up and down O’Connell Street into the late evening. I wore a lilac suit and James a long trench coat and a Trilby hat cocked over one eye. I had bought him the gift of an ivorycapped walking cane, and he swung it grandly as if he were an English gentleman. I remember thinking that I was lucky enough to be married to such an elegant man. Although I would always stop myself short, always pull back. I was afraid to let go and let myself love him.