Northward, Ho!

I’ve got a busy week at the gallery coming up. and so may have to ask your patience in awaiting further adventures. But please stay with me—I will pick up the tale as soon as I can.

We left for Manchester, Vermont, two days after the wedding, on April Fool’s Day, which also happened to be the first day of a New York City transit strike. That seemed both a bad and good omen. We packed up the cats and stowed them in the back of the rattletrap 1974 Jeep Wrangler Mr. Landi had bought from his brother Walt. A moving van followed in our wake. Midway through the journey I had my first moment of panic when I realized we did not have our go-bag in the Jeep—overnight stuff, plus more importantly my diaphragm and my great grandmother’s tourmaline ring (do not ask me why this needed to be in an overnight bag, and the bag turned up on the van the next day).

The second wave of panic occurred after we unloaded the cats and could not find Spike, the sleeker of the two animals. After searching the house in a state of exhausted frustration for several hours, she emerged from behind the dishwasher, an impossibly narrow space in a house full of strange spaces.

The house itself was an early ‘70s or possibly late ‘60s monster, with red shag carpeting downstairs, oddly shaped windows, a master bath with a triangular tub, a sauna, and a firepole that led from my little study (accessed through the closet that held my clothes). There were built-in platform beds in two of the bedrooms, and the kitchen was a gleaming marvel of electric-blue appliances and cabinets. It was my first real kitchen, and I loved it for the built-in gas grill and grown-up recent-model appliances.

I did what I always do when I take possession of a new dwelling: redecorate. What became of most of our furniture from New York I do not know, but I remember bringing with us the coffee table, the bentwood rocker, a mahogany secretary, and a brass chandelier that hung in our bedroom on 83rd Street and was now strung up in the dining room. With the wedding money from my parents, we bought a pair of slouchy off-white canvas-covered chairs and a couch that could not be delivered for two weeks. Channeling his inner woodsman, Mr. Landi chopped down a birch tree that occluded much of our view of the Manchester Valley. Within short order the place looked pretty spiffy.

The state of our as-yet-unconsummated marriage seemed a little more precarious.  I didn’t even have the opportunity to weigh whether it felt different being legally wed; I was too preoccupied wondering what the hell we were doing in Vermont. Mr. Landi’s job with Fly Fisherman magazine had not materialized; it went instead to the heir to a Coca Cola bottling fortune, who subsequently became a good friend. He did manage to secure another contract for a book that I don’t believe ever saw print, and it was that money we were living on. I still had copy-editing assignments from the evil Bantam editor, mostly hysterical bodice rippers and simple-minded historical romances, and I still entertained hopes of writing fiction.

But the no-sex state of the marriage was troubling. I was too flipped out to work myself into the mood. Until one afternoon when we knocked back a couple of gin-and-tonics and repaired to the master bedroom. Behind the bed, where a headboard would have been on a normal bed, was a long slab of window overlooking the driveway. I had worked myself into an amorous position atop Mr. Landi when I spied a delivery truck headed up our driveway toward the front door. Our living-room sofa! I did a kind of stop, drop, and roll while my new husband lunged for his clothes.

If the “wedding night” was not entirely a success, the couch was lovely, the perfect complement to the new chairs, and my inner Martha Stewart was glowing.

This is the only photo I can find of myself in Vermont. At some point I had my hair cut very short. Perhaps as a sign of wifely submission? Dubious.

There were other rites of passages to be tackled in our new life. As I have mentioned, Mr. Landi was an ace fly fisherman who during our courtship years went off on jaunts to Alaska, Canada, and even Iceland with male friends from the publishing industry (I certainly didn’t chafe at being left behind). I had not yet seen him in action, though we had done some surf casting in Montauk, where even I could hook a gleaming bluefish from waves churning with fish.

Manchester boasts one of the foremost trout streams in New England, the Battenkill, which rises in East Dorset, VT, and flows south for about 60 miles. Such is its fame that Orvis headquarters its fly-fishing school just outside of town, where on a spring or summer’s day you might drive by a pond surrounded by fly-casters in training.

And so on the first day of trout season in Vermont, the second Saturday in April, we headed to a heavily wooded access point along the river for some hands-on instruction. My beloved had bought me a pair of waders and lent me a rod and reel. I ventured into the swirling stream, gamely finding a foothold on sleek stones, when I took a big step forward and my waders split in two at the crotch, rapidly filling up with 50-degree water. It was not my last adventure in fly fishing—there would be several more trips to places as diverse as Wyoming and Maine—because it took me an awfully long time to learn that just because he loves to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it too.

I didn’t fare much better with learning to drive. A true child of Manhattan, I never showed any interest in driving. Why drive when there were buses, subways, and taxis? If we went out of town, Mr. Landi rented a car and did all the driving. But now we were deep in the boonies, with no public transportation, and if I wanted any measure of independence, besides hitchhiking, I would have to learn. What’s more, I would have to learn on a stick shift, which to this days strikes me as a ridiculous and antiquated appurtenance. We didn’t get very far with the lessons—I simply could not grasp the mechanics of clutching and shifting—before I simply gave up and resigned myself to being chauffeured everywhere. We did have some fun, though, and our sex life picked up considerably when I practiced shifting gears on Mr. Landi’s erection.

Sautéed Asian Trout

This is a very simple and almost foolproof way to cook fresh trout.

Ingredients

·         4 (6-ounce) fillets boneless, skinless rainbow trout (if you’re planning to debone and skin your fish, here’s a handy video from chef Gordon Ramsay)

·         2 teaspoons soy sauce

·         salt and pepper to taste

·         1 teaspoon white sugar

·         1 teaspoon olive oil

·         1 teaspoon minced garlic

·         2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger

·         6 green onions, chopped, reserve a handful for garnish

Preparation

1.   Rub trout fillets with soy sauce. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar; set aside.

2.   Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic, ginger, and green onions; cook and stir until golden brown. Add trout fillets and cook until browned and crispy, about 3 minutes. Turn fillets over, and continue cooking until the fish flakes easily with a fork, about 3 minutes more.