Bitter Almonds

My mother taught me that there were only 3 recipes that a woman needed in her arsenal. Lemon herb Engagement chicken to get a man to propose, chocolate layer cake to keep him around, and when you realized he wasn’t the man he presented himself to be almond buttermilk pie to make him leave.

When Mother was just sixteen years old she met my father outside a diner. He was a 21-year-old mechanic smoking a cigarette next to his beat-up old truck. They locked eyes and well that was it. They welcomed little me a year later just a few months before their shotgun wedding at the courthouse. Before I could form any memories of dear old dad, he had climbed into his beloved pick-up to run errands and never returned. It was then that Mother decided that no man would get the upper hand over her again. She’d show a man the door when she was good and ready for him to leave and not before.

Mother’s second husband was the complete opposite of her first one. He was older, established, and had an agreeable manner. He ranted and raved about Mother’s cooking. He proposed the next day after she cooked him her lemon herb chicken. He requested chocolate layer cake for dessert every week. For a few years, Mother and I thought we’d found a good one. Until the creditors came calling. Turns out husband #2 had a penchant for the ponies, the poker table, and whatever other ways he could gamble away his money. When the red convertible that he bought my mother was repossessed, a car she loved more than him, she decided that it was time to bring out the almond buttermilk pie.

Almond buttermilk pie had been baked by the women in my family since my great-great-grandmother decided she was bored of the usual buttermilk pie and threw some almond slivers in it just before it went into the oven to give it a little crunch. Mother’s pie had a secret ingredient in it that helped a husband on his way. She presented it to husband #2 one night after dinner as he moaned and groaned about money woes as if he hadn’t put himself in this exact situation. She sat and watched him eat it, he stopped his lamenting just long enough to tell her how good it tasted. For the next three nights she presented him with the pie and each night he ate a slice or two even though he was starting to think he was coming down with a bug. On the third night after he finished his slice Mother helped him to bed. She patted his forehead with a cool cloth as he complained of a migraine until he fell asleep. Husband #2, the agreeable gambler never woke up again.

Husband #3 was the richest man Mother had ever met. She wasted no time getting her food on his table. They had a whirlwind courtship and Mother had never seemed so content. Husband #3 worked a lot and wasn’t home much to have her ‘keep him around’ chocolate layer cake. So when she found out that he’d been eating another woman’s food across town she wasn’t surprised. Husband #3 wasn’t the faithful type. She was happy to keep us both in the best of everything while he was off burdening some other woman with his presence. That was until she heard rumors that Husband #3 was planning on leaving her for the woman across town. I thought for sure we’d be off to the market to get some almonds and buttermilk but no, Mother decided it was smarter to divorce him and take half of everything he had since they’d had no prenup. She hired the best divorce lawyer in the state and got a cushy alimony settlement. I heard that Husband #3 cursed Mother’s name until the day he died.

Husband #4, the last one, was an enigma. Mother had been living comfortably on Husband #3’s dime for nearly a decade. I was off at college and did not need a new Daddy. She had no reason to get married but I suspect she cared about #4. They both came from the same poverty-stricken side of town and we’re now doing well. He was a shrewd self-made businessman who’d sold his company for millions. And she was a wealthy divorcee. Though they’d gone about it in very different ways they were both success stories in their minds. There were red flags, his hair-trigger temper, the disrespectful way he treated waitstaff at restaurants. Mother ignored it all and married him anyway. They were just shy of their one-year wedding anniversary when he hit her for the first and last time. She’d been completely caught off guard by it all. My father, Husband #1 had been a drunk, a cheater, and abandoned her with a small child, but he’d never once hit her. None of her husbands had. I’ll never forget the day she called me at college and told me that Husband #4 was the worst man she’d ever married and it was time to bring the almond buttermilk pie out of retirement and she was adding an extra dose of the special ingredient this time to get it done faster. She sounded positively gleeful.

I spent my entire childhood watching my mother’s strategic choices in men, you’d think I would’ve learned something. But no, I still managed to kiss a few frogs. And each time I’d go crying to Mother about how some boy had hurt me, and each time she’d offer me the pie recipe. I always said no. I was a reasonable person. Just because a boy told me he wasn’t that into me didn’t mean he deserved Mother’s pie.

My reason ran out three weeks ago when my husband of 17 years told me he was leaving me for a woman 10 years his junior that he met in some coffee shop. I knew things between us weren’t great but to leave me for someone else, that simply won’t do. He’s coming over for dinner to talk through some options before we get divorce lawyers involved or so he thinks.

“I knew you’d need it one day,” Mother told me on the phone after I jotted down the recipe. “Call me when it’s done.”

The End