Mary Elizabeth’s Bio:

Mary Elizabeth is a Portland, Oregon-based writer who spends her days writing training materials for various companies and her nights racing pell-mell across the keyboard after her rampaging imagination. She writes novel-length stories with occasional forays into shorter fiction, and she writes for young adults, except for when she doesn't. She has a BA in creative writing (she BSes everything else), and she haunts bookstores for fun. Her current writing project is a young adult novel about a girl on the grift. Non-writing interests include volunteering at a horse-therapy program for autistic children and learning the fine art of parenting from her newborn daughter.

Of Crepes and Constancy

By Mary Elizabeth Summer

How many times can you burn a crepe before it really does mean something? I toss my latest desecration into the compost pail with a plastic spatula whose better days were long over before I bought it on sale at the Goodwill (five utensils for cooking failure, just 99 cents!) down the street.

The sky outside my eastside flat, dressed in its usual relentless gray, acts like a mirror, reflecting the dinginess of our crowded neighborhood back down on us. Mostly, I don’t mind the weather. The steady progression of the scallop-edged clouds makes it feel as if something is getting accomplished even if nothing really changes. And the clean smell rain leaves behind is refreshing, if not entirely honest.

I pour another rust-spotted-ladle’s worth of batter into the pan and swirl it around the way I saw a too-thin chef do on a cooking show. I narrow my eyes at the pan. Probably as with most things, if I pretend a confidence I don’t feel, I can trick it into cooking evenly. I pick up a different spatula, a metal one I feel certain I’m not supposed to use with a Teflon pan, and shove the edge underneath the browning crepe.

“Something smells luscious,” she says as she brushes her palms against my bare shoulders. “Oh, and the crepes look good, too.”

A couple of weeks ago, I’d have shivered at her touch. I’d have smiled at her clichéd greeting. I’d have nibbled her nape and felt proud of my attempts at impressing her with my culinary prowess. But not today. Today, I am scowling at the pretentious pancake, which is torn and mocking me, and finding her presence almost as irritating.

It’s not as if this morning she is any different than any other morning. Her body feels the same tucked up next to mine as it did yesterday as she dips her finger in the bowl of batter and licks it clean. Her hair still sticks out in the same combination of product, sleep, and cultivated carelessness she expects her lover to find adorable. Nothing has changed, and perhaps that’s the problem.

I have half a mind to ditch the whole crepe project and head to the nearest cafe. She would come with me, of course. She’s too accommodating that way. It’s one of her better qualities; though, it has the unfortunate effect of watering down any personality she might have lurking beneath her shiny, short-banged surface.

She seems to sense my abstraction—my own gray skies reflecting, progressing—and she moves casually away, as if she meant to do so all along. She grabs a ratty towel and starts cleaning the dishes left over from last night’s post-sex nacho frenzy. Domesticity...a sure-fire cure to a lover’s disinterest. I flip the next ruined crepe into the compost pail I’ve now moved closer to me.

I feel obligated to try again. After all, I have a relationship with the crepe batter. I’ve promised it some sort of effort, if not outright fidelity. I’ve made an implicit bargain in committing the ingredients. To chuck it all at this stage would be seen as cruel, as wasteful. The addition to the compost heap another testament to my inability to follow through, another layer of neighborhood dinginess for the clouds to reveal.

But as smoke rises from the pan, blackening my final chef-d’oeuvre, I fantasize about the extensive menu at the brunch place around the corner. ...French toast...eggs benedict...Belgian waffle...breakfast burrito... I’m mentally cheating on a breakfast I haven’t even managed to fully cook.

She says nothing as she puts away the last plate and runs her hand self-consciously through her hair. And I think while scraping away the ashes, I wonder how long the wait is...

***