Life From Scratch Read Online Free Page B

of babies and fertility too. I spent the next two years helping Arianna conceive and carry a child, while becoming increasingly bitter towards Adam, who was not filling me with his very inexpensive, readily available seed. There I was, watching my friend shell out tens of thousands of dollars to become a mother while I technically could become a mother for free, but didn’t know if I’d even make a good one.
    After two miscarriages, three fresh IVF transfers, four frozen IVF transfers, several months of daily Lovenox injections, a premature delivery, and a NICU stay, Arianna had Beckett, so named after the author of the most famous Godot of all times. Beckett may have been her own personal Godot, but the delay in his arrival only meant that she had built up more love for him than any one person could possibly need in their lifetime.
    We jump off the train at the 79 th Street station, dodging the Upper West Side nannies returning their charges from play dates and students coming home from school with oversized packs strapped to their backs like studious camels.   79 th Street feels, if possible, ten degrees cooler than the packed sidewalks in Midtown.   Of course, Zales has been decorated for Christmas with the requisite boughs of holly hanging over the enormous sign announcing the store’s Christmas sale and window displays of heart-shaped sparkling jewelry.   Arianna rolls her eyes and Beckett gurgles and slaps the fabric of the baby carrier.
    We forgo bagels at H&H, and instead push our way into the throng of shoppers clogging the narrow aisles of Zabar’s.   We travel up here usually once a month so Arianna can get the pickles she likes and stock up on their cream cheese spreads and coffee beans.   We hit the dairy aisle first, dropping containers of Greek yogurt and crème fraiche into our basket.
    “Zabar’s makes me hungry,” Arianna announces as we pass the smoked fish counter.   I cannot think of anything more unappetizing than fish that has been pulverized into a spread.  
    “Seriously? Smoked fish?   What are you, a seventy-year-old man?   I understand if you said that back at the cheese counter.   Did you see the fresh pasta that was on sale?   Tri-color capelletti?”
    “Their smoked sable is incredible.   Not that I need to spend twenty bucks on smoked fish at the moment, but if they were giving out free samples, I’d stand in line for hours.”
    “Beckett would love that,” I comment.
    I duck past a woman reading the label on a jar of lemon curd and make my way toward the baking supplies.   We stand in front of the empty space in the baking section, where cake flour would normally be stocked next to the enormous jars of active yeast and the Dutch-milled cocoa.
    “Do you think the world is trying to tell me something?” I ask, shifting around bags of cornmeal and gluten-free rice flour.
    “What do you mean?” Arianna asked, adding vanilla to her own basket.
    “When everything is going wrong—when your husband is choosing the office over you, and you’re somewhat newly divorced, and you only have a few more months left in your savings account before you need to go back to designing pamphlets, and every store is not stocking cake flour even though you already went out to New Jersey to retrieve the stupid angel food cake pan you were given for your wedding—do you think that is the universe telling you what you should expect after you die? Is this forewarning that I am heading to hell?”
    “Oh, sweetie, of course you’re going to hell.   That’s where all self-pitying drama queens go.”   Only Arianna can get away with teasing me while I’m down.   She holds up a bag of whole wheat flour, and I shake my head.  
    “I can’t use that to make my angel food cake.   It has to be cake flour.”
    “So drop the idea of the cake, and you’ll make it some other time.”
    “What other time?” I admonish.   “I’ve had the pan for months now, and I still haven’t used it.