This is a love letter never sent…

Thank God. He was 22 years older than I and completely inappropriate–he never would have fit in down on the farm. Somehow, though, it’s always the inappropriate ones that capture your heart…

E,

So, it’s your birthday… no, wait, it’s our birthday. What do we do? Oh, E, what do we do? We have books unwritten, articles unfinished, very important conversations that haven’t been dissected or transcribed and all of those editors and agents on our tails. The prose and the witty, clipped sentences are, you know, always there—metaphors, onomatopoeia, dialogue and all that. It’s just that when the tips touch the keys and the screen is white and vast and empty they don’t come out as easily as they used to.

No matter.

The 6th is for us. We eat cake and drink champagne and live on sweetness and memories for a day. Maybe longer. I smile and look up at the Spanish blue skies and pull your wool winter coat a little closer to your cold little body and remind you to think of the good bits because that’s all you can do on a day like this in a city like New York.

We take a walk—Bedford, Charles, West 10th and all the rest of the nice ones— and don’t think to complain about anything. Ladders and fire-escapes on the buildings’ facades cross and run together like honeysuckle vines on a garden trellis. With you next to me and me next to you and a brisk wind off the Hudson and the smell of warm butter and eggs from the corner bakery, everything is just so. We’re content and, for once, quiet.

Quietly we dream.

Your eyes shift from me to the golden-hued windows of the brownstones and to the earnest shadows of cooks and nannies that stand over sinks and wipe the noses of precious, young children. Mother is upstairs sliding lacquered bangles onto her thin, tanned wrists. Daddy will eventually come home to a roasted piece of meat, Scotch and a family that smells of lilac and vanilla. A doll’s house for millionaires. We both think, “one day, one day” and only hope that part of the dream will come true.

The daylight hours have been nice—really, the walk couldn’t have been any lovelier nor our reveries—so we turn around before anything changes. Our minds have captured the right bits of naked, December tree limb, proud front stoops garlanded with pine, our birthday cake adorned with a perfect, red poinsettia. Everything isn’t just so; everything is extraordinary.

Love,
Belle

Southern Boy has decided to cook for my entire family Labor Day weekend. No weaner roast here, y’all…

“What do women want?” Charlie asks me on the phone through a mouthful of shrimp Po-boy.

His question is a cliché, so why do I feel compelled to answer him? It must be his tone—it’s equal parts sweetness, anxiety and curiosity. (Then again, maybe it’s his charming Birmingham accent—when he talks it’s all vowels and minted iced tea). The boy needs something.

I’m a little disappointed that I respond with such standard fare as, “We want a lot of things—everything, really. Love, friendship, intelligent conversation, café au lait and brioche in bed, diamonds on every major federal holiday and anniversary…”

I hang up.

I drool over Adrien Grenier in “Entourage.”

I have the one glass of wine allotted to me during my ten days of antibiotics.

I switch the channel to Emeril Lagasse on the ‘Food Network.’

I start to cry.

Are steak au poivre and shoes string potatoes really that moving? No, of course not. But, he’s so damned patient deglazing the pan…adding Dijon mustard… pouring the most delicate touch of cream. His spoon patiently circles the sautee pan… Is something sticking to the copper bottom? Emeril’s brow furrows, the nose quivers, the eyes grow concerned, the big mouth turns downward and hopes that everything will go smoothly.

I need Emeril. Emeril would tend to me, take care of me, protect me. Forever.

PROTECTION, SECURITY—this is the stripped-down answer (or, some version, thereof) of every woman North or South of the Mason-Dixon, East or West of the Mississippi. Freud, this is what women want.

I’ve watched the Food Network more this past week while being sick (with no appetite) than I have in my entire life. I go to the website. I think of ways to be a phone-in guest on “Sarah’s Secrets.” Really, though, I only pay attention when the hosts are male. Somehow, they’re caring for me. They’re gentle. Their kitchens are warm.

I’ll go to bed a little happier tonight—feeling a bit more safe–because Emeril taught us how to make challah. He kneaded the dough like I need someone to massage my aching back. He draped a dry, warm cloth over the yeasty mass so it would grow. He told us all that patience and a little love would make everything turn out beautifully.

Charlie? Are you reading? This is my answer. This is what I should have told you on the phone.

Two nights ago…

I’m typing on the computer. Cramp in my side. I hunch over the keyboard on my blonde wood breakfast table trying to make it go away. A hot shower—that’ll do it. I jut out my torso into the spray of scalding hot water. My stomach relaxes. Lights out by 9:30. Hoping for a restful night of sleep.

The pain awakens me. Is it possible to give birth out of the right side of your stomach? I wonder. It’s THAT bad. The clock over my refrigerator reads 11:45 p.m. I curl up hoping that the pain will dissipate with the new position. I adjust and readjust. The sweat on my forehead is not lying. I have to do something.

Within 20 minutes I’m in the Bellevue Emergency Room. This is where the crazies come, I think. BELLEVUE.

“Describe the pain on a scale from 1 to 10,” the bright-eyed, young nurse asks.

“Around an ‘8,’” I say, hunched over with the health insurance clipboard in my lap.

“Sex?” she inquires.

“Pardon me?” I ask, incredulous. She’s questioning my gender, isn’t she? The nurse thinks that I’m a tranny because I’m at Bellevue.

“Have you had sex within the last 24 hours? This kind of pain could be caused by a U.T.I.” she responds calmly.

“Of course,” I say, reddening. “Ummm, no sex, no.” With embarrassment the pain deepens.

I’m swiftly moved to the back of the e.r. next to a blonde with bacterial meningitis. From my bed, I see her throw up white foam into a pan. I hear her say over and over “Jesus Christ, the pain, the pain…” The doctor administers a spinal tap. She and her pretty, blonde curls scream for morphine.

Bloop. Bloop. Bloop. I try to keep time with my I.V. and the leaky air-conditioning unit—they seem to release fluid at the same time. I stare at the white corkboard ceiling squares. Maybe it’s a two to one ratio, I think. I ponder this for a good long while. My mind wanders, my body begins to relax…

White sheets… Southern Boy … Manhattan … Mamma …swift death…iambic pentameter…Edna St. Vincent Millay…Monday night pizza at “Lombardi’s”…Sunday evenings on our lake…Pappy…cocaine and perfect health… Fitzgerald and East Egg…

In and out of the CAT scan machine and I’ve hit the 5 hour mark. I feel sick. I think about life…

His shoulders…summers on the bay…why me? … “pickled”… tickled pink…

“You have kidney stones—innumerable,” the doctor says, rousing me. “We’ve also found cysts on your liver. You need to see a specialist. Sign here and you can leave.”

I signed. I left. My taxi driver smiled and asked why I was all alone.

The agency just called.

“You got a short, white tennis skirt and lots of champagne in your future,” Renee said. As the agency’s head booker, she loves coming up with dramatic lines when I land an assignment.

The “Evian” marketing team liked me; I’ll be their VIP “hostess” for the beginning, and end, of the U.S. Open. Is “hostessing” an actual job, you ask? In New York City it is…especially when you’re 25, vaguely attractive, poor and at work on your first novel. I see it this way: a tennis skirt and an “Evian. Live Young” tank top in the cool comfort of a Flushing Meadows VIP room is much more agreeable than juggling plates and bickering over the tip pool at some Midtown, one-star restaurant.

The egos, however, are going to get me. How goes the F. Scott Fitz quote? “The rich, they’re not like you and me.” The same can be said for the men that inhabit VIP rooms. The laminated cards, wrist bands and free-flowing alcohol give them the bravado and swagger normally reserved for rock stars. Add to the mix my scanty attire and subservient position and, in their minds, I’ve become a veritable groupie.

One errant hard-on and I’m out of there.

I’m not goddamn Penny Lane.

Nurturing: the act of bringing up; sustenance; to feed; to help grow or develop; to cultivate; the act of suckling.

Suckling? Ok, maybe I’m getting a bit too scholastic. Allow me to say this—I have never felt nurtured by a man in New York City. Sure, court-side tickets to the Knick’s game and a meal of beef cheek ravioli, Osso Bucco and panna cotta at “Babbo” are fabulous. My face glows and my laugh is easy because such evenings with the California businessman are delicious. I almost convince myself (multiple times) that he cares.

Then, I go back to my apartment—alone. What do I feel? Bloated, maybe? Woozy from the arena lights and that last glass of Barolo? I feel indulged and expendable— not nurtured and cared for. Months pass and nothing has changed. I’m nothing more than an add-on to his expense account budget, a couple of digits easily passed off to the company accountant.

Southern Boy enters the picture.

He is… a Jumpha Lahiri novel on a long plane flight… the sweater page in a J. Crew catalogue… hot chocolate at Café de Flore on a rainy, cold Parisian afternoon… a vase of peonies on the bedside table…

Wait. I haven’t even gotten to the good part, the real part.

He’s a chef.

Friday night he whipped up a six-course tasting menu for me and my friend “just because.” He gets up in the morning to prepare fresh-squeezed orange juice and breakfast burritos. A midnight snack? White peaches and vanilla-infused zabaglione. The way he takes care of me is elemental. It gets me in the gut and then takes me by the heart. He nurtures.

Good-bye pin-striped suits, hello chef’s whites?

If only he and his whisk weren’t a thousand miles away…

He remembers my blonde ponytail.

I remember his skinny legs.

He says I was intimidating.

I tell him he was way too shy—why didn’t he send me “Polo” cologne-scented letters like the rest of the camp boys?

“Am I really sitting across the table from the Belle?” Southern Boy asks me over dinner at “Bottega,” a Birmingham hot spot.

I feel vaguely uncomfortable with the question. The men in New York always tell me how important they are; they say that I’m lucky to have 3 hours of their non-cell phone, non-Blackberry time.

Not so with Southern Boy.

When we’re together his smile is big, broad and genuine—the eyes, wide and incredulous.

“Come on,” he continues, “why are you here? What have I done to deserve the blessing of you in my life?”

Blessing—there’s a word that never crosses a Manhattan man’s lips.

“I walked into your restaurant—that’s how. Fate, karma—all that stuff you never fully believe in until it happens to you—that’s how we’re together.” I take a sip of my Sancerre and think that maybe once I’ve been dealt a winning hand. Just in case, I knock on the underside of the table.

He reaches over the table, touches my cheek, lowers his head.

The kiss.

So this is a man…