Recipe for Divorce

Creative response to “Simple Recipes” by Madeleine Thien

I always wondered why my mother paid so close attention to the kitchen when searching for houses during our time as missionaries. From when I was a baby until around ten years old, we were moving around constantly. Each time we were assigned a new location, she would spend hours on the desktop printing out pictures of each house’s kitchen and compare them on her island countertop.

After the divorce, my brothers spent some time with my father on his boat. During this time, my mom decided to move in with her new boyfriend, whose kitchen was the size of my last closet.

My father grew substantially in importance at his restoration firm, so his new money provided him the luxury of eating out nearly every meal. Our evenings were garnished with white table cloths and laced with long and tense silences. The hollow small talk was occasionally interrupted by forced compliments and wide smiles from our server, who was banking on a large tip from the important looking bald man in the tweed flat cap. There was always this looming sense of loneliness, or maybe it was longing, from my dad, who watched the servers dart in and out of the kitchen, trying to get a glimpse of the action.

The times that I decided to pity my father and join him for dinner always ended in me storming off, or sneaking off, to cry in the nearest bathroom—or his newest truck, if he happened to feel comfortable enough to take the keys off his belt and put them on the table. Come to think of it, just a few months ago, I cried in the bathroom stall in a lobby bathroom of an apartment complex we were visiting. We were searching for an affordable apartment for my junior year in college, and I made it very clear that I could not live with roommates. After entertaining me for a few hours, asking questions at each apartment complex about the price of a one-bedroom, he sat me down in the lobby of Progress 910 and took the seat across from me to begin his lecture.

He always did this; even as a child, he spoke to me with the kind of distance and informality that you would a business partner. Maybe somewhere along the line, we just became uncomfortable around one another—detached in a way—and this is what really brought me to tears each time. Not because he disagreed with me, but because he does not even seem to listen.

I think back on how attentive he was when I was a child, and I no longer see the same father. I picture him moving in rhythm with my mother through the kitchen, dodging my siblings and I, careful to watch over each of our respective cooking stations. I hear his careful instructions as he recites them, slowly, out loud while writing them on small colorful index cards for each of us. I always wanted a green one.

We were always so happy when bustling around the kitchen. I don’t remember a time where my mom wasn’t trying a new themed recipe for that week’s cookout with the other missionaries. My favorite was the layered jello cake she made for the Fourth of July when I was ten years old. We were in Papua New Guinea at the time, and we had a huge open kitchen with a bar-top that connected to the living room. I spent hours hunched over on my stiff, black circular barstool cushion mixing red, white, and blue jello bowls, and pouring them into star-shaped molds and rectangular cake pans. We didn’t have any air conditioning when we lived there, so from time to time, my sister and I would take a break from whisking, and put our palms facing backwards on the countertop so we could push our bodies up off the barstool. That way, we got a break from the aggravating itch that came with our thighs resting in pools of our own sweat.

After the jello cooled in the fridge for a few hours, my mother cut around the edges of the molds with a butter knife. She helped my sister and I layer each of the jello cakes with red, white, and blue stars in-between them.

There was never a dull moment in the kitchen, especially if the boys got involved. My dad used to love to bake extravagant cakes with all sorts of themes for each birthday. Since mine and my brother’s birthdays are only eight days apart, counting down the days until May second was my dad’s favorite part about spring. For three whole weeks, starting at the end of April, my dad can be found at any hour whistling in the kitchen in his cake apron which read: “Real Men Bake Cakes”, except it was pink. The days when he was decorating a cake, he would wear a tall toque blanche (or white chef’s hat) that clung to the thin layer of perspiration on his bald head effortlessly.

For my ninth birthday, my father made me a cake shaped like a castle. I have always been in love with The Beauty and the Beast, so naturally, I wanted a castle of my own. At this time, I was not ashamed of the color pink, so, inspired by the pink castle-themed mosquito bed canopy in my sister and I’s room, my father created a beautiful three-tier pink cake with ice cream-cone towers that were decorated in elaborate frosting.

He was always so proud of his work, too. After he placed the final pipette droplet on the top of the highest ice cream cone tower, he took out this giant Canon camera with the extended lens and took dozens of photos of his masterpiece. He would even have my mom take pictures of me and my dad holding it up. I could probably find where this picture used to be in one of my mothers shipping boxes full of scrapbooks—it’s probably in the one labeled “Mikaela’s 9th Birthday!” I don’t look through any of these albums anymore, partly because they have been in storage since I was twelve due to the fact that my dad wanted every childhood picture with him in it, but not my mother. It was too depressing showing my dates the baby photos of my siblings and I when most of the pages had nearly eighty percent of the pictures missing from their decorative border.

I texted my dad a few weeks ago, before my twentieth birthday, and asked him if I could borrow his cake decorating kit.

“Do you still have your cake Decorating kit?” I asked. I sent a follow-up message that explained that I missed baking, or at least helping bake, my own birthday cakes. I wouldn’t tell him the truth; that something about it made me feel closer to home. I couldn’t because I chose to be right where I am.

“No. Your mom kept that kit and not sure where it ended up.” he said, then, probably after realizing his frankness, sent another message. “I can’t remember the last time I decorated a cake.”

I stared at that message for two hours before I could bring myself to respond. When I did, I didn’t say what I wanted to—I rarely do. I couldn’t imagine him going more than a year without putting on that pink apron and losing himself in the ambiance in the kitchen. I never did spend my birthdays with him after the divorce—or any holiday, really. He never had a reason to go out and buy a new kit, since, by the time my parents separated, my brothers were too old to care about that kind of stuff and my younger sister followed my lead in everything.

Guilt flushed through my whole body, and my stomach tightened, causing my face to flush and my body sunk into the couch, weighted down by the increasing pain in my stomach. When I did text him back, all I said was that I saw he baked my sister a nice cake recently, and I passively implied that he just didn’t want me to have it.

I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t bought another one by now, but I already knew the answer. My step sisters on my dad’s side were all a few years older than me, and I knew they spent as little time in the kitchen as possible. These are the same girls who laugh at you when you suggest McDonalds for lunch, as they dial the number to the closest five-star restaurant to make a reservation. My stepmom was the same way, I could tell that from the moment that I met her. Coincidentally, and actually rather predictably, that day was the same day that she and my father got married. They have the largest kitchen my father has ever owned, but I have never seen my stepmother cook.

At first, my dad stopped cooking because his boat didn’t have a kitchen. I imagine he used to rely on microwave dinners to keep him company as the waves rocked him to sleep each night. The comfort of a nice restaurant must have been an escape for him, which would explain why he is so comfortable spending hours sitting among other seemingly important folk with clunky bluetooth earpieces and angry looking daughters.

I hope there was a microwave. I never spent enough time in the cabin of his boat, even before the divorce, because I was spending all my time out on the tube so that the harsh wind would block out the never ending bickering between my mother and father.

My mother and I still spent a lot of time in the kitchen after the divorce, but without my dad there, my brothers lost interest in spending hours with the girls. Instead, they would only wander into the kitchen following the cloud of the delectable aroma of the impending meal. Still, my mother and I would try and fill the gaps with spoken word poetry that I thought would make her happy or we would talk about men in the way that only women who have seen the transition of divorce can articulate.

“Did you know your dad got us kicked out of that missionary program we were in? Also, I know that notecard says half a stick of cream cheese, but I just use the whole stick.” she said, as she slid the seasoned chicken breast chunks, peppers, and freshly cut pineapple onto the long wooden skewers.

“Yeah I was going to do that anyways; you can never have too much cream cheese. But god damn Shannon, always messing shit up.” I always said stuff like that. I wanted to be on my mom’s side, even if I didn’t really care about what was going on. I love my mom so much, and to see her to hurt at such a young age made me feel protective over her, or at least caused me to feel responsible for keeping her happy. So, I trash talked my father, and even sometimes my siblings for spending holidays with him, so my mother wouldn’t feel so alone with her pain.

These are some of my favorite memories with my mom, but as I think about them now, I see all the cracks. I see ghosts of my siblings beside me, making obscene messes on the countertop from turning the mixer on high when the only things we had put in there so far were the dry ingredients. I see my dad sitting behind the countertop on a squeaky barstool, talking about the latest Buffalo Bills game, only taking breaks to taste test the sauce my mother was making and to make sure that each of us were following our notecards exactly.

As an adult, I stand in my own kitchen and think the same thing my mom used to: this is too damn small. I wonder, is it naive of me to daydream of long countertops scattered with power mixers and utensil holders full of various shaped spatulas? Every time I scroll through Facebook, I am drawn to the photos of redecorated kitchen’s, even if I have to scroll through dozens of pictures of the other rooms before I can admire the size of the island counter.

I gaze at my boyfriend and wonder if we will create memories like the ones captured in my scrapbooks. My anxiety eases as I remember the summer nights filled with new love, where we danced barefoot in his kitchen in the absence of music, simply moved by the waves of passion flowing through the cracks between us. Though he isn’t very useful in the kitchen during the three important meals of the day, there are so many pleasant memories of us working together to make creative desserts, or a new midnight snack.

Most recently, my love helped me make my birthday cake from scratch. He probably still doesn’t understand the significance of his actions, but in the hours that we spent mixing batter and decorating our cake with fondant and icing, a smile never left my lips. We danced and sang along to our favorite reggae bands and nineties alternative rock songs as we created our marble cake with an alligator made out of homemade rice krispy treats on top. Both of us are extremely artistic when it comes to painting and drawing, but we were pleasantly surprised to find out that we turned out to be pretty fantastic at decorating, as well as baking, homemade cakes.

I submitted a few pictures of my cake to a cake baking competition that I watch regularly on Netflix called “Nailed It!” and I recognized the same pride that my father must have when he took pictures of his masterpieces. I can’t wait to be able to showcase my boyfriend and I’s skills for our neighbors during future family culdesac cookouts, or for the families and team members at our son’s future sports games. We’ll make cupcakes with sports-themed decorated cookies on top, and my son will be able to tell everyone he helped frost them.

I don’t feel anxious about the impact of my future kitchen on my children, because I know I will try my best to do things differently. Things will be like how they were when I was a kid: peaceful. In a space made to bring a family together, my boyfriend and I will refrain from bringing up our problems while cooking together. For my future, I imagine an open kitchen plan like my family had in Papua New Guinea, where my kids can either sit on the barstools and help me cook, or they can relax on the couch and talk to me and my love about their day at school.

I have a lot of regrets of omission, meaning that I have a lot of regrets consisting of things that I did not do. Most of these regrets involve never figuring out what went wrong between my father and I. I could probably take the blame and say I was too stubborn as a child, but that is just the tip of the iceberg that separates my father and I. I wish it were as simple as his recipe cards; as if we could fix what went wrong between us by simply returning to the kitchen together and following a recipe for divorce.

I hope my scrapbooks will have pictures of my father holding extravagant cakes up next to my children each year, though I know this is improbable. At least I know that I will have scrapbooks filled with photos of my children lined neatly on my shelves in my future home for all my guests to see, with no empty slots and wide smiles from both a mother and a father. I’m sure that my future kids would have loved my father’s cakes, but since I have been on my own for so long, I've pretty much got it figured out. I have a elegant wooden box with the words “Recipes” carved into the top full of all kinds of meals from my childhood, and a boyfriend fully prepared to create memories of all kinds, good and bad, in our small one-bedroom apartment kitchen. We will be content until we have our own family and a home with a kitchen large enough to make memories worth capturing in scrapbooks.

Maybe one day my dad and I will have this conversation. Maybe we'll both apologize for not apologizing sooner. Or maybe we will stay exactly where we are, pretending that neither of us messed up at any point. Either way, I know my future family will only have happy memories in the safest place of our home—the kitchen.