Jacqueline P Vincent

The following isn’t a recipe.

Once a fortnight, I visit my writing buddy, Abagail Thorne. We spend the morning working through a writerly course and in the afternoon we critique a piece of each other’s writing, learn a facet of our craft, or depending on whether one of us is close to publication, we check over the publish package. On these days John, my partner, caters for himself at home.

Our normal routine is as follows, I cook during the week, create far too much and freeze the leftovers, because they’re handy for either when we’re busy or if one of us is out for the day. On writing Fridays, I take out a frozen meal and a dessert for John, but this day I forgot. I must tell you, our freezer is one of the upright varieties and the nutritious home-cooked meals are on the shelf at eye level. This bit of information will be relevant as you read on.

When I first met John over sixteen years ago, he was living on his own and appeared to be independent. He cooked, worked, was a brilliant dancer, and his house and garden were tidy, the perfect man. Except he had one flaw, he’d eat anything, which is not a flaw in itself but ‘the anything’ included food well past its sell date, from mould on yogurts to rancid vegetables which had developed a gooiness that bore a resemblance to slime. Although I never wasted food, I checked its condition and used it before it resembled primordial soup.
I drove to his house one particular day, this was in the early years, and found him eating rocket from its original plastic bag. The smell was awful, there were no leaf shapes to be seen, and the bag squidged when pressed. Yuk! I asked, “Why are you eating that?”
“I bought it, I’m gonna eat it.”
“There’s wasting food and poisoning yourself.”
“I’ve never had any problems beforeand I’m still here,” he said, grinning before planting a sloppy kiss on my cheek.
I took the bag from him and threw the contents onto his compost heap.
“Now, what am I going to eat for lunch? There’s nothing in the fridge.”
He was right; the fridge was empty. I opened the eye-level cupboards and said, “but your cupboards are full. We’ll make lunch together.”
These events became less and less over the years and I trusted him to not eat gone off food. Until last Friday.

Last Friday, I packed my bag with laptop, file for our current course, John Truby’s Anatomy of a Story, and my notebook. I’m a copious note writer. And I remembered thinking as I walked downstairs, I must leave out John’s lunch.
I haven’t made him incapable of fending for himself, but on this day he’d already started work out in the project room. He was prepping the beams and setting up the scaffold so we could work on the roof the following week. Anyway, I placed my bag, phone and my contribution to lunch, at my writing buddy’s house, in the car, blew a kiss to John, got in and drove off.

After an exhausting day, writing, learning and discussing our aims for the following week, I arrived home to find John curled up groaning on the sofa.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s my stomach.”
“What’s the matter with it?”
“I ate those sausages from the freezer and they tasted a bit funny.”
“Where on earth did you find sausages?” I didn’t know we had any.
“On the top shelf at the back.”
“Why didn’t you have a meal I’d already prepared?”
“They looked so neat, and I was rummaging in the back and these fell off the top shelf.”
“If they tasted funny, why did you eat them?”
“I bought them. I wasn’t going to waste them.”
Throughout the night, I felt John get in and out of bed, and in the morning, his face was pale.
“Have you still got a queasy stomach?”
“It’s better,” he said, and leapt out of bed, ran to the loo and I heard liquid explosions from both ends.
“Perhaps we’d better take you to emergency?”
“No, I’m fine. It’s less than last night.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I would have if I thought it was too bad. The pain has gone, so it’s getting better.”

During the day, his visits to the bathroom lessened and by the following morning, he’d recovered enough to devour anything he found in the fridge.

I realised we can’t change who we are. John would always be a person who ate anything, even if it was rancid like the rocket or skanky like the sausages. And I would always be forgetful whenever I have a lot to think about.