MISSING

My husband has been away for nine hours and already I feel like the warden has entrusted the mental patient with the keys to the institution.

I stumble downstairs after a long nap to discover half-eaten poop on the kitchen floor along with spilled garbage and chewed up dish towels. I find Abbie, our blind and deaf dachshund, sitting in her bed on the dining room floor. Her bottom end is soaked and I know she’s been sleeping that way, in her own urine. This is something she wouldn’t do if John were home.

John brings with him, in all his seriousness, a practical and necessary sense of order. Without him, we are rudderless; and collectively, the dachshunds know—they can take me.

It’s not enough that I’m recovering from the flu. But I decide today will be the day to make radical changes to my diet. Today, I will shed my chocolate-habit. No more breads, cakes or cookies either. In fact, I’ll eliminate all processed foods, and eat only organic steamed vegetables that I buy at Whole Foods, spending 1/3 of the of money I have in my checking account.

John would say, “That’s not very smart … spending all your money. You should save it.”

“Pah.” I would say.

“You won’t get paid again for another two weeks, maybe three,” he’d remind me.

“Pah.” I would tell him.

“What are you going to do when you want to order Thai in the middle of the week or go to brunch next Sunday and you don’t have the money to do it?”

“Pah.” I would say again, waving him away from my brimming shopping cart, telling him how I won’t need other food because I’ll be eating my delicious, homemade, organic vegetable broth.

I love filling up my cart with organic parsnips, red kale, butternut squash and the like. I keep thinking about how good it’s going to be … this vegetable broth, which needs to simmer on the stove for 3-4 hours for the most robust flavor. At least this is what my friend Jenny tells me. Then, you scoop out all of the vegetables and throw them away, eating only the broth which will have all the nutrients.

“Isn’t that a waste?” John would ask.

And if he were here, I would tell him, “No.”

This is the recipe Andrew Weil recommends. If you drink it every day, you can cleanse your liver and digestive tract. Your skin will look younger. In fact, it will glow from the inside out because of all the vitamins you are getting. And without the veggies themselves, you don’t need to be bothered with chewing.

So, I try it, peeling vegetables I can’t even name. Their skins and leaves and scraps are piled up in my sink. I dream of starting a compost bin. All of that nutrient-rich byproduct becoming something that goes back into the earth … nourishes the soil. I think of what John would say (Worms in the kitchen? No way! Are you crazy!?) and put it out of my mind. Like many of my fanciful ideas, that one doesn’t even deserve to live on paper.

The veggies go into a giant vat of boiling water. I add the exotic sea salt—that can only be found in the Himalayas. (Or at Whole Foods, in their spice aisle.)
John would ask, “How can sea salt come from mountains? Shouldn’t sea salt be from an ocean, or, at least from the sea?

But John is not here, so I can spend $13 on a small vile of salt and not worry about such formalities as origin. I’m sure there is a reason, of course, why these mountains were once at sea level before they were pushed up by some shift in a tectonic plate or whatever. It’s the salt Jenny uses for her broth, so I will use it, too.

Jenny is right. The broth IS delicious. Jenny recommends staying away from vegetables with high sugar content—so, of course, I go right for the sweetest ones: a sweet potato, and something called a candy onion—anything I can think of to get the broth to taste as close to Hostess as possible.

At Whole Foods, which, John affectionately calls, Whole Paycheck, I also decide that I will buy beets—both gold and red—to have something to munch on while I wait for my soup. There is also this new health drink that is fancy and comes in a glass bottle. It’s fermented for days, until the drink contains the right combination of “culture.”

“Isn’t that mold?” John would ask. But alas, he is not here … and my new friend Nancy swears by it. She is young and beautiful and thin, so I must try it, too, not even considering the possibility that she may be young and beautiful and thin for other reasons besides the health drink.

At home, I toast a slice of my wheat-free, gluten-free, sprouted grain-load bread, pour a glass of my nutritious, fermented health drink and boil my beets. When the beets are soft and cooked, I discover that they are more glorious than I could have ever imagined. I’ve never seen anything like the gold ones. They come straight from California, and are so loaded with vibrancy; it looks like the sunshine is packed right inside of them. I think of Native Americans who must have, somewhere along the line, used beets for coloration—maybe cave drawings—or to dye skins or furs. I imagine that I will bypass Paas this Easter and suggest using beet water to dye our eggs. Then, I remember who I am married to.

The health drink is tasty but pungent. It makes my nose run, and I’m starting to get a headache. In the short time that John has been away, I have both fantasized that he is dead, and imagined that I was never married. When I think of him not coming back, I panic. That fermented drink is really starting to make my forehead tingle. Or, maybe it’s the cold medicine, or the fact that I’ve been without sugar for more than a few hours. But that doesn’t explain the hives. Yes. Hives on my belly and under my left arm. It could be the new health drink or the beets or the sprouted bread or the fact that I probably have a fever because I have the flu and I’m not drinking enough water.

When I am sick, John is the one who reminds me to drink. “You have to force enough fluids till you are peeing every 1o minutes.”

I think about the last time I peed, but can’t remember when. Maybe this morning? Before deliriously dropping him off at the airport in my sinus-filled haze? That was hours ago—nine hours to be exact. And now, I am fuzzy with a headache so strong it pounds in the back of my head and behind my eyes. Damned fermented health drink. Damned cold medicine. Damned sugar-free, organic vegetable broth.

It’s 7:08pm, and already I’m drizzling honey on my brick-hard-sprout-grain-toast and thinking about ordering Thai food.

But you don’t have the money! Shouts a familiar voice—a voice that doesn’t belong to my husband, but it’s been so long since I’ve heard it, I hardly recognize whose it is. Ah yes, that’s my voice I’m hearing. And it’s speaking to me too—it’s saying, Chicken Pad Thai, Beef Lad Na, Shrimp Spring Rolls!

Shut up! Shut up! I can’t take it any longer … the hives are spreading, the dachshunds are bouncing off my legs begging for dinner … I’m sick of veggie broth, weak from hunger, my fingers are stained with beet juice, and I have a sink full of soggy, pale vegetables that could have been compost, or better yet—dinner.

Honey, please come home soon.