The Secret Sauce

A Saturday evening in Betsy’s backyard for her 31st birthday. She’s covered the tables in red checkered cloth, organized them in an L-shape in the grass, placed colorful wildflowers in empty tomato sauce cans — the yellow Cento label, the red tomatoes, the tablecloth, the white taper candles.

Sun sets slowly below the neighboring rooftops, the sky goes twilight, and Italian bistro music plays under the chatter of enough friends to fill a life, and I am one of them. I’m here for you, Betsy, with all our friends, and I’m happy. I’ve been drinking wine. Everyone brought a bottle, and we’ve been topping off each other’s glasses for hours. I’m about to eat pasta with Eddie Mancini’s secret family recipe for Italian meatballs in red sauce. This is the most beautiful night I can remember in recent history.

The sauce is tangy and sweet, deep red and bubbling in a huge pot on the stove.

Dinner is followed by a perfect brownie with vanilla ice cream, chopped nuts, and strawberries. We stuff one with candles and sing Happy Birthday, and we have a toast. Betsy is welcomed into her next year with open arms. Familiar, beloved faces are now glowing in candlelight. I feel tender. My friend's two-year-old son sits next to me, sucking on a lemon. Talk turns from Brighton football to romantacy novels to marriage struggles to learning about sex from a nun in high school. I pick at the melted wax on the checkered cloth and I am full of everything, from Caesar salad to conversation, just stuffed.

And then I suddenly, desperately want to go home.

I’ve tried to make sense of it a million times: why does feeling seen and known, and being surrounded by home and love, feel so uncomfortable at times? There's a significant limit, a cap on even life's best things before they turn sour. I feel rosy one moment, and in the next I’ve had quite enough and want to be alone.

I have a theory now, after Betsy’s party, that it’s part of a natural rhythm of creativity responding to life.

Creativity is expression, and it’s a response. But creativity craves slowness. Things like writing and painting are many steps removed from what they’re responding to, and they take time to slow-cook, like sauce on a stove.

To tell you about how I feel in this moment, Betsy — the gratitude, the awe, how beautiful it all was — I need days. I need to think. I need to write it down so I know what I think. I need to write you a letter about the flowering smilax vine on your garden fence in golden hour, how each tiny white flower lit up like a star, and the sweet tang of Eddie's sauce, and how we all fell like dominoes into the friendly romance of the evening you created.

I need a week in the studio. I need to combine how you loved and fed me with the way it made me feel, and mix it up into a secret message on a canvas. I might not paint your backyard, or you in the black dress, but notice the shades of red and yellow are the same as the label on the cans with the flowers.

In a month I’ll paint a flame at the end of a taper candle or sculpt melted wax to remind me of that night, how our friends' faces glowed, their tinkling laughter. I’ll eat foods heavily garlicked and seek out the driest wine, go to the store where all the bottles are lined up. Another idea will spawn. It will feel fresh, but it’s rooted in a thousand memories.

Painting and writing are how I process memories, feel gratitude, and understand relationships. They’re part of the full experience, how I squeeze enjoyment out of life, how I cement memories in my mind forever. And they’re how I pay it forward. Friends, I might leave the party early, might commit the worst crime of an Irish goodbye, but I’ll show you soon how it all comes together. How your beautiful thing created another beautiful thing. Feed me dinner and I’ll feast your eyes. Tell me a story and I’ll write you another, wrapped in a love letter.

When you (Betsy) were young, your family had a boat. So did your family friends, the Mancini’s. One day, Eddie Mancini's boat broke down in the middle of the lake. He was stranded, and he called your house landline for help. He had the number memorized, they're that kind of old friends.

Picture Eddie: Italian-American, a dark tan covering his skin, dark hair covering the tan. I think he is lounging in his pontoon wearing shorts and boat shoes without socks. I think he's an endearing sight while he waits, trying not to be anxious. He’s stuck. So what does he do? Crack a beer. Watch the sun dance on the water. Pause. Check his watch as the time goes by. This is why he got a boat anyway, right? To relax.

He can hear your mom’s boat before he sees it, and then there she is, waving widely. “I’ve found you!” Eddie smiles and gets to his feet, removes his sunglasses, waves back. They tie the boats together, and she tugs him to shore. They’re laughing about how ridiculous it is. When the ordeal is over, he says, “Thank you so much! I owe you one. How can I ever repay you for saving my ass?”

Your mom looks him dead in the eye and says, “I want the family recipe for meatballs in red sauce.”

When you told that story the night of your party, we were in stitches. “She had to have planned it!" "She definitely broke his boat for that recipe."

Well, here’s a story you don’t know yet:

Dinner is served. We’ve all switched from white wine to red, spaghetti is twirling around forks like a carefree dancer, and I go inside for more salad and to stir the sauce. (We’ve all been instructed to give the sauce a good stir whenever we walk by it.) Tanya is in the kitchen putting brownies in the oven. We’re both wearing blue dresses, but hers matches her eyes perfectly and she is dazzling. I help her set out toppings for the brownie bar, and we open up the cupboards and drawers looking for utensils and things. As we poke around your kitchen, I see a recipe card for “hazelnut cauliflower.” This sounds interesting enough for Tanya, a brilliant home chef, to pick up and read. When she does so, the card behind it is revealed: Mancini family recipe.

I yelp, “Tanya! This is the secret recipe! This the sauce.”

“Oh my god, it is!”

We stare at each other for a moment, eyes wide.

“Should we…?”

“I don’t know, should we?”

We do. We take photos, front and back, feeling both giddy and guilty, like little thieves. But it also feels poetically right. This recipe takes a little scheming to earn, as evidenced by your mom, and we did our due diligence.

After a moment, we stick a candle in a brownie and walk it out to your table, full of ceremony. We keep our shared secret and sing you happy birthday. Then the candles melt down, and amidst the ongoing laughter of friends, I quietly exit. I'm sad to go, but couldn't stay another minute. It's time to turn in, and turn inward.

I think about what Tanya and I will do, now that we've scored the secret sauce. I imagine her using the recipe to surprise you one day, maybe on another birthday. You'll take a bite and wonder... how could this be?

But I just wanted a good story.