Ladies (and possibly gentlemen): Do you have any idea what your spouse does all day? What is the nitty gritty of his (or her) working life all about, from that first cup of coffee through after-works drinks? I would wager that many are totally in the dark about the working lives of the other, unless you happen to be sharing office space or engaged in a common endeavor, like producing books together or flipping houses for fun and profit.
I knew that Mr. Landi, during the Brooklyn years, was working for Fairchild Publications, best known for its flagship bible of the fashion industry, Women’s Wear Daily, but I don’t recall what division employed him (I will ask next time I see him). He had something to do with advertising, possibly selling space, but beyond that I’m vague on the particulars. He dressed in a suit and tie in the morning, he came home at night. Beyond that, there was little curiosity about what the other did all day. He never asked what stories I was working on for Manhattan inc. (or any other publication), and I didn’t ask about his clients. I find it astonishing how little our daytime worlds overlapped, and I wonder how common this is in many marriages. He had one friend with whom we socialized occasionally, a bouncy portly funny guy with a head of cherubic curls named Freddy Z, who later became publisher of Publishers Weekly. I once asked Freddy, who came from a large family of Brooklyn Jews, if there were any good Jewish restaurants in the city. He replied, mournfully, “There is no good Jewish cooking. There is only more.”
And then it came about one day, into our fifth year in Brooklyn Heights, that my husband returned home from work and announced that he’d been offered the publisher’s job at a magazine called ComputerWorld. This was a very big deal, as the publication was—and still is—the leading source of news about the IT industry. Even my ex-boss Wendy Crisp, with whom I was still in sporadic touch, called it “the best job in publishing.” The move would more than triple his salary and offered a considerable boost up the corporate ladder, if one cared about such things, and it seemed he did.
Trouble was, the job was headquartered in Framingham, MA, a small city about a half-hour from Boston. I had no desire to move to Framingham, or to Boston. I was perfectly happy right where I was (well, maybe not perfectly, but reasonably so). But this was a humongous opportunity for him, and I could see how much he wanted the prize.
But what about me? I thrashed it out with Mrs. T, the therapist I was still seeing, who thought I didn’t have much choice. And I talked it over with my mom, who was the “trailing spouse” for all of my dad’s career. And who thought a well-kept suburban lifestyle was the apogee of a woman’s existence. I’m sure she also hoped such a move would push us closer to parenthood because what else would I have to do with my time? And time was running out on my biological clock. Tick tock.
So we went house hunting, or, more precisely, lease hunting since we were in no position to buy so much as a toolshed in those days. We started in Beacon Hill and the Back Bay, reasoning that those neighborhoods best approximated the look and feel of Brooklyn Heights. But even with Mr. Landi’s spectacular spike in salary, we couldn’t afford Beantown’s most exclusive precincts. Nonetheless we spent some time exploring all the requisite tourist spots and having tea at the Ritz. When a squirrel landed on my husband’s head in the nearby Public Gardens, and stood there, chattering and scolding for a minute or two, I took it as a very bad omen.
How we ended up in the tidy suburb of Weston is well beyond my powers of recall. But we rented a low-slung single-story house with a big yard and an attached garage. I called it the “Leave It to Beaver House” since it seemed the sort of place the Cleaver family would happily inhabit. Three small bedrooms, a full bath and a powder room, and a finished basement with a washer and dryer. June would have loved the amenities.
“Weston would be a good place to have a baby,” a friend suggested.
“Weston is where Anne Sexton killed herself,” I responded.
Looking back, I realize there were two relatively easy solutions for this dilemma. Let Mr. Landi go on ahead to live in an “executive suite” and scout the territory before giving up on New York entirely. Or parlay the job at Manhattan inc. into full-time work (even though the magazine folded in 1990, that would have left a few years of employment and a nice base from which to jump to another publication). Keep the apartment and kiss Mr. Landi good-bye.
I certainly wasn’t ready for that, and so we did neither, but I did extract a promise that we would keep a studio or some other pied-à-terre in the city, which he could write off as a business expense. Reluctantly he agreed.
And thus commenced the schizophrenic life of the nascently dysfunctional commuting couple.
Last week I promised a recipe for the mini-quiches I served at an opening at the gallery, and they were sensational, IMO, and so I give you the recipe here, adapted for vegetarians. If you want to add a bit of bacon, you can fry up about 12 ounces cut up into small pieces, and then sauté your leeks in a tablespoon of the hot fat. (The original recipe is at greatist.com)
Ingredients
1 medium shallot, chopped (or you can use leeks, white and pale green parts only)
1 1/4 cups half-and-half
4 ounces shredded sharp cheddar cheese (about 1 cup). Fontina or Gruyere might also work well with this recipe, and I will try one or the other next time
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Cooking spray
1 (17-ounce) package frozen all-butter puff pastry, thawed overnight in the refrigerator. I used Pepperidge Farm.
All-purpose flour, for rolling
Instructions
To make the filling:
1. Cook the shallots or leeks in 1 Tbs butter over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Cool slightly, about 5 minutes.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the half-and-half, cheddar, eggs, egg yolks, thyme, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Add the cooled leeks and the reserved bacon and stir to combine.
To assemble and bake:
1. Spray 4 mini muffin pans (or 2 if your pans have two dozen wells) with cooking spray.
2. Working with 1 sheet of puff pastry at a time, roll the dough on a lightly floured work surface into a 10-by-18-inch rectangle. Stamp out 3-inch circles of dough with a cookie cutter and gently press the rounds into the wells of the mini-muffin pans. Make sure each round is centered and that the dough extends up to the top of the well. Fill each with about 1 tablespoon of custard, or until two-thirds full. Repeat with the remaining dough and filling.
3. Heat the oven to 400°F. Place one rack in the top third of the oven and another in the bottom third.
4. Bake for 10 minutes, then switch the position of the pans so the ones from the upper shelf are now on the lower shelf and vice versa. Bake until the filling is puffed and the crust is golden brown, about 10 minutes more. Cool for 5 minutes in the pans, then gently remove to a cooling rack. Serve warm or at room temperature. (I have only one mini-muffin pan, so I baked in two batches.)
Title alone had me reading
I made the mistake of living in the suburbs twice. One when I was married to my first husband in Greenwich, Connecticut, where I almost lost my mind - the other was 20 years in Wilmington, Delaware, where my second husband had his manufacturing business. I felt terribly guilty because everyone else seemed to thrive in the suburbs, my sister, particularly who was so creative and happy and raising children with joyous creativity. I relate to Ann Sexton but I did not jump out a window as I often considered. I look back on my life now that I’m 84 and wonder why the hell I allowed myself to be so miserable.