Milk Fed - Melissa Broder Page 0,46

normally. But I feasted on the food and the warmth, the cozy togetherness, and I realized that the food itself was only one part of what a person needed in order to be sustained.

Mrs. Schwebel served a one-dish lunch, cholent, a stew of warm beef, carrots, beans, and potatoes that had been simmering on the stove all night. I thought of all the parts of the stew as I ate it: the carrots, the onions, the beef, the gravy. I imagined the vegetables growing in the ground. I imagined the cows grazing. Each element was nourishing in its own right, but even juicier and better when they came together as a whole. It was meant to be savored. Life could be savored. I was surprised to think for a moment that if there was a god, this could be god’s wish for us.

Later that day, when the sun finally went down, I didn’t want to leave and go back to my real life. Forget work, I didn’t even want to go back to my apartment. No one was kicking me out, but I didn’t want to overstay. I kept testing them, making sure they weren’t sick of me yet. But each time I would say, “Okay, I’m gonna be leaving soon,” they would all say, “No! Rachel, stay! Stay until sundown at least!”

When I finally got in my car, it seemed strange to be inside it, alone. I couldn’t believe it was the same car or that it belonged to me. I looked at my hands and they didn’t even look like my hands. I felt in that moment that I did not know myself at all, that the Schwebels, who knew nothing about me, somehow knew more about me than I did. What was a person supposed to do with herself in life? Maybe we did need spiritual guidance. No wonder I’d turned to the elliptical machine.

Miriam had traveled fewer places than I had. She still lived with her family and had no grand plans for any kind of career. Yet somehow, she seemed to be moving forward more freely than I was, or if not forward, then deeper and higher, in a series of infinite crescendos. While I was aggressively pedaling nowhere, she was orbiting peacefully.

I had thought that I was the sculptor and she was the golem. But now I considered that she might be the sculptor, the maestro, the creatrix, expanding and improving me, giving life to my dead parts, laughter to my breath. Maybe she was remaking me in her image. Maybe we were remaking each other.

CHAPTER 39

I wanted to text my mother and tell her about Shabbat, how happy my grandparents would have been that I was there. Instead, I went to 7-Eleven.

I bought a container of nachos that I microwaved right in the store and ate in line, plus a bag of Swedish Fish, a package of Hostess cupcakes, four little tubs of rice pudding, a box of Golden Grahams, and a jug of milk. This was how it was done. This was me taking care of myself the best I could. On another day, maybe tomorrow, I would assess the carnage and figure out exactly how I was going to live. But for the moment, life was between 7-Eleven and my intestinal tract.

That night, with my belly stuffed, I dreamt I was walking on a long, grassy path, like the one beside Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. As I walked, I saw, to the left and the right of me, two sets of trees. On the left were evergreens, fluffy and emerald green, a small forest growing up in peaks. On the right was a row of palms, tall and elegant, with fronds that billowed lightly in the sunlight. When I’d moved to Los Angeles, I couldn’t get over the presence of the palm trees, the way people were just living their lives against such an exotic backdrop. But in the dream, I found both sets of trees absolutely delicious.

Squirrels and chipmunks flitted around in the grass. They were having a feast, eating tons of nuts. I wasn’t sure if someone had fed them the nuts or if they had dropped from the trees, but there were so many nuts—more nuts than I had ever seen in one place. I saw peanuts, almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, acorns, and pistachios. It was like the grass was nature’s infinite toppings bar of nuts.

But even though there were plenty of nuts to go around,