Hello, Sunshine

42

Did you know that chanterelles are picked, at their peak, in late summer?

Chef Z loved chanterelles, and counted down until a specific date in July (which he refused to share), when he picked them from the garden. Then he made them a centerpiece of a course each night for as many nights as the mushrooms would allow. It had been eight nights since Danny had shattered my world and, on each of them, Chef Z’s world was shattered by chanterelles.

He started on Sunday night with a pear and chanterelle salad, moved on to stuffed artichokes with crab and chanterelles, moved from there to a crostini, a fricassee, a pasta with chanterelle mushrooms.

Every night, Z gave the staff a lecture about the versatility of the vegetable, their meatiness and flexible quality. And, every night, he almost cried (the closest I ever saw him to crying, at least) when too many of the chanterelles returned uneaten.

I tried to stay out of his way most of those nights, even though he came over every few seconds to ask why more people were leaving them behind. I shook my head, trying to look equally disgusted. And I was—though about something else. I was disgusted at myself. At how exactly Danny had accomplished what he had. At how I had missed it.

I couldn’t stop going over it, each new detail like salt in the wound. And I remembered the strangest details. The oak floors in Danny’s Upper West Side apartment project. He had obviously been working on that project longer than a few days—had it afforded him a way to buy me out of the loft? The morning it had all started “Moonlight Mile” had come on the radio alarm clock. What was that doing on the radio? Had Danny managed to plan that part too? Was it not the alarm clock, but his iPhone connected to the charger, scheduled to go off and play that song? My favorite song playing, like a chance, to remind me of who I was. Whom I’d been.

He had given me other chances that night. He had asked me not to go to the party. I remembered clearly. He had brought Gerber daisies home with him and said he would call the whole thing off if I wanted. Was the whole thing, which I thought was the party, really the unraveling of our life together?

Why hadn’t I taken him up on that offer? Where would I be now if I had?

Chef Z would come over to my station, and it would be like looking in the mirror. Utter and total despair. For him, it was his underappreciated vegetable. For me, it was the reminder—as if repeated on playback—that I was completely and utterly alone. Career-less, husband-less.

It was almost enough to make me confide in him. It seemed to be enough to make him confide in me.

“The chanterelle is a tricky beast,” he said, on night eight, his eyes on a gorgeous plate of pasta. “They need to be picked at precisely the right time to reach their full potential.”

Was it happening? A connection? “For what it’s worth, Chef,” I said, “I think they’re delicious.”

He banged the plate on the table. “Not much,” he said.

Then he walked away.

I seriously considered hiding them for the rest of the night. Just to see a different look on his face. Just to do something proactive, as opposed to sitting here, stewing in it.

Adding insult to injury, Amber’s cookbook was a raving success. One week in, and she had already gone into another printing. I was yesterday’s news. Literally.

Perhaps this was what I got for lying so publicly. Now everything I had was private. My life was so private that I was about to have a baby with someone who didn’t even know about it.

Another plate of the pasta with chanterelle mushrooms was returned to the kitchen. Chef Z’s homemade and quite exquisite bucatini was absent from the plate. Several mushrooms remained.

I looked around the kitchen to see if anyone was watching. No one seemed to be, so I scooped up a mushroom and dropped it into my mouth.

It was delicious, rich and meaty, with a perfect amount of spice.

I reached for another when I heard a voice behind me.

“No, you didn’t,” he said.

I turned around to see Ethan standing there, a stainless-steel thermos in his hands.

He shook his head, disgusted. “That’s a new low.”

Then he reached down and took a bite himself.

“So you’ve been keeping a low profile,” Ethan said. “One day you’re staying over, the next you disappear.”

We sat on the bench outside the restaurant, after hours, Ethan pouring us each hot cocoa from his thermos.

He handed me a cup. “Are you all right? Thomas told me you’re sleeping on the couch.”

“I’m surprised he even noticed. I stay in the car until late at night after they’ve all gone to sleep. And I sneak out before they get up. We’ve avoided saying more than two words to each other.”