The Corrections

This accomplished, Denise went to a midtown studio and taped her guest appearance on Pop Food for Now People, making lambsmeat ravioli and other Mare Scuro standards. She met with some of the New Yorkers who’d tried to hire her away from Brian—a couple of Central Park West trillionaires seeking a feudal relationship with her, a Munich banker who believed she was the Weißwurst Messiah who could restore German cooking to its former glory in Manhattan, and a young restaurateur, Nick Razza, who impressed her by itemizing and breaking down each of the meals he’d eaten at Mare Scuro and the Generator. Razza came from a family of purveyors in New Jersey and already owned a popular mid-range seafood grill on the Upper East Side. Now he wanted to jump into the Smith Street culinary scene in Brooklyn with a restaurant that starred, if possible, Denise. She asked him for a week to think it over.

On a sunny fall Sunday afternoon she took the subway out to Brooklyn. The borough seemed to her a Philadelphia rescued by adjacency to Manhattan. In half an hour she saw more beautiful, interesting-looking women than she saw in half a year in South Philly. She saw their brownstones and their nifty boots.

Returning home by Amtrak, she regretted having hidden for so long in Philadelphia. The little subway station under City Hall was as empty and echoing as a battleship in mothballs; every floor and wall and beam and railing was painted gray. Heartbreaking the little train that finally pulled up, after fifteen minutes, with a population of riders who in their patience and isolation were less like commuters than like emergency-room supplicants. Denise surfaced from the Federal Street station among sycamore leaves and burger wrappers racing in waves down the Broad Street sidewalk, swirling up against the pissy façades and barred windows and scattering among the Bondo-fendered cars that were parked at the curb. The urban vacancy of Philadelphia, the hegemony of wind and sky here, struck her as enchanted. As Narnian. She loved Philadelphia the way she loved Robin Passafaro. Her heart was full and her senses were sharp, but her head felt liable to burst in the vacuum of her solitude.

She unlocked the door of her brick penitentiary and collected her mail from the floor. Among the twenty people who’d left messages on her machine were Robin Passafaro, breaking her silence to ask if Denise might like to have a “little chat,” and Emile Berger, politely informing her that he’d accepted Brian Callahan’s offer of the job of executive chef at the Generator and was moving back to Philadelphia.

At this news from Emile, Denise kicked the tiled south wall of her kitchen until she was afraid she’d broken her toe. She said, “I’ve got to get out of here!”

But getting out was not so easy. Robin had had a month to cool off and conclude that if sleeping with Brian was a sin then she was guilty of it also. Brian had rented a loft for himself in Olde City, and Robin, as Denise had suspected, was dead set on keeping custody of Sinéad and Erin. To strengthen her case, she stayed put in the big house on Panama Street and rededicated herself to motherhood. But she was free during school hours and all day on Saturday when Brian took the girls out, and on mature reflection she decided that these free hours might best be spent in Denise’s bed.

Denise still couldn’t say no to the drug of Robin. She still wanted Robin’s hands on her and at her and around her and inside her, that prepositional smorgasbord. But there was something in Robin, probably her propensity to blame herself for harms that other people inflicted on her, that invited betrayal and abuse. Denise went out of her way to smoke in bed now, because cigarette smoke irritated Robin’s eyes. She dressed to the hilt when she met Robin for lunch, she did her best to highlight Robin’s dowdiness, and she held the gaze of anyone, female or male, who turned to look at her. She visibly winced at the volume of Robin’s voice. She behaved like an adolescent with a parent except that an adolescent couldn’t help rolling her eyes whereas Denise’s contempt was a deliberate, calculated form of cruelty. She shushed Robin angrily when they were in bed and Robin began to hoot self-consciously. She said, “Keep your voice down. Please. Please.” Exhilarated by her own cruelty, she stared at Robin’s Gore-Tex raingear until Robin was provoked to ask why. Denise said, “I’m just wondering if you’re ever tempted to be slightly less uncool.” Robin replied that she was never going to be cool and so she might as well be comfortable. Denise allowed her lip to curl.

Robin was eager to bring her lover back into contact with Sinéad and Erin, but Denise, for reasons that she herself could only halfway fathom, refused to see the girls. She couldn’t imagine looking them in the eye; the very thought of four-girl domesticity sickened her.

“They adore you,” Robin said.

“I can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t feel like it. That’s why.”