Page 98 of The Husband I Left

I hear the grocery bags being unpacked, cabinet doors, the refrigerator. Then a rustle of fabric, and I lift my head just enough to look over the arm of the couch, and I watch Oliver tie on the apron Joe gave him for Christmas. It’s navy blue with a cartoon rooster on it and Oliver wears it every time he cooks now.

Then he crosses to the far counter and lifts a kitchen towel off a large bowl I hadn’t noticed, and underneath it is dough. Risen dough, puffed up and pillowy, clearly hours in the making.

I sit up. “What is that?”

“Dough,” Oliver says.

“Thank you, yes, I have eyes. What are you making?”

He glances over and shoots me a little smirk. “Paitience,” is all he says.

“I hate being patient,” I grumble, collapsing back onto the cushions and his chuckle warms my whole body.

“Then this is going to be a difficult evening for you,” he says serenely, and turns the dough out onto the floured counter.

I sulk and pretend I’m not watching him. I am absolutely watching him. There’s something almost hypnotic watching Oliver in a kitchen now. This is the man who, when I was married to him, had never so much as used a microwave. Now, he’s all confidence. He rolls the dough out in smooth strokes, and then he picks up a biscuit cutter and starts pressing out rounds, one after another, twisting each one free.

He transfers the rounds to a baking sheet, spacing them out with care. Then he gathers up the scraps, kneads them gently back together, rolls the dough out again, and cuts more rounds. Then he does it again. And again, the piece of dough getting smaller each time, until he’s cutting the very last round out of a scrap barely big enough to hold it, and every circle of dough is lined up in rows on two baking sheets.

He drapes towels over both sheets and sets them aside.

“Now what?” I ask.

“Now they rise again.”

“They already rose.”

“They rise twice.”

While the dough does whatever second-rising business dough does, Oliver sets a cast iron skillet on the burner and pours in oil, more oil than I’ve ever seen him use, a deep golden pool of it. He clips a thermometer to the side of the pan and turns the heat on, and then he stands there watching it.

By now I’ve abandoned the couch entirely and I’m sitting on a chair by the kitchen counter, my chin on my hands, watching him.

“Seriously,” I say. “What are you making?“

Oliver looks up from the thermometer, and he smiles at me.

The frying, when it starts, is a whole production. He lowers the rounds in three at a time, and they sizzle and bob, and he is totally and completely focused on them, nudging them with a slotted spoon, flipping them occasionally, and they come out of the oil puffed and golden brown, nothing like the pale discs that went in. He lifts each one out and lays it on a paper-towel-lined baking sheet, and the smell that fills the apartment is so good it should be illegal.

“Oliver.”

“Mm.”

“I’m begging you. What are they?”

“Patience,” he says, and slides three more rounds into the oil.

“I’m going to write that word on a piece of paper and set the paper on fire.”

“That seems healthy.”

I watch him fry every last round, batch after golden batch, and my stomach growls loudly enough that he glances up with a grin, and I can’t even be embarrassed about it. When the last of them is draining on the paper towels, he goes to the refrigerator and takes out a bowl covered in plastic wrap, and inside is a deep ruby-red filling, thick and glossy. He spoons it into a piping bag fitted with a long metal tip, and then, one by one, he pushes the tip into the side of each fried round and fills it, and I watch each one plump up slightly in his hand.

Then powdered sugar. He rolls each filled donut through a shallow dish of it until it’s coated white, and he stacks them onto a plate, a pyramid of sugared, jam-filled perfection, and he carries the plate over and sets it on the counter and pushes it toward me and smiles.

“Okay,” I say, staring at the plate. “What are they? Final answer. No ‘patience.’ I have been so patient.”

“Try one,” he says.