The ten words: (definitions follow the story)
- Gravamen
- White
- Intimate
- Signaling
- Stale
- Evaluation
- Haruspex
- Gelati
- Ambrosia
- Haruspex
The Story:
My wedding reception was incredible - an intimate gathering in Santa Barbara, white orchids with a hint of pink on every table, and even I, the bride, enjoyed every little hidden blend of flavor inside that day. It was a gathering of favorites – friends, family, food, music, and I had an absolute blast. We opted out of the traditional boring wedding cake and served authentic Italian fare, and I especially remember the gelati. One of the flavors was named ambrosia and I had several servings. Little did I know that the delicious ambrosia was signaling me as I took it deep into my fibers, ambrosia was to become the grave of my marriage.
My marriage never got stale. I never complained that it was dull nor that it was empty and never that the love was gone. I loved my half-American, half Italian/Swiss husband. With the connections of his family and brains to boot, he became a successful partner in a Wall Street investment firm. He grew up with summers on the Mediterranean coast, winters skiing in the alps and he was not so much as handsome as unbelievably talented, witty, and with enough drive in him to ensure me that my aspirations would be equaled to his. I was a Manhattan trial lawyer, becoming the youngest partner in the firm – I had grown up blond, athletic, and accustomed to being stunning and somehow always knew how to lure, how to achieve and in my evaluation, you were meant to get what was yours, equal to yours. Our love on that wedding day was more about looking in the mirror and realizing that we were not compromising or settling. We were in love with rising to the top, again.
But eight years later my Aunt Charette came to visit. I never really knew my aunt – vague memories from childhood when she would come to our house on the California coast as the chubby aunt, who always seemed to be stepping off the normal rhythm of life. When she tried to stay in touch with me, there was no point to have the time. She had had a coarse life, I guess, although I had never bothered to know at that point. Her husband, back in the 50’s had dumped her for a blond bathing beauty, leaving her alone with her arms full of Catholic children who became the ragged, loud cousins I barely knew and whose names I’d easily forget.
That day she had spontaneously decided to come out to Connecticut to visit me, a detour on her way home from visiting a childhood friend. My dad had died earlier that year and as his sister, she was going to check in on her niece. Her arrival was announced only a few hours prior and was also the day of a big gathering that my husband I were hosting at our custom-built Connecticut home. The winter event was for my associates and my husband's, his bosses, my bosses, his employees and mine and the loads of people we called friends –people who were in our life for now and forever. As Charette approached the house, as the event was well underway, she wore elastic wasted stretchy pants, and worn out shoes. She limped and sweated from her arthritis, even in the cold air, as she walked her way up the long driveway holding a glass dish with plastic wrap taped over the sides. I cringed – she had brought something to share.
Charette came through the door, handing me the dish, giving me a bear slapping hug and a kiss and more love than I knew what to do with. I looked at the dish and saw that it was that ambrosia salad I loved as a kid, cool whip, sour cream, marshmallows, canned pineapple, canned mandarins, maraschino cherries, pecans and whatever else that has nothing to do with a salad. But I was mortified to serve it now. I brought the dish into our gourmet kitchen, where caterers were going to and fro and I set it down on the marble top island in the center. The caterers all ignored it, until one looked over at it as he was passing, then stopped, pulled it towards him, looked at it carefully, smiled, and said, “Is that ambrosia?”
“It is,” I said, as I haphazardly slid the bowl back into the middle of the island, “And it's not like we're gonna serve this crap,” I said, chuckling and mocking it, without knowing Charette had followed me into the kitchen to prepare it for serving to the guests. I scooted her out, telling her the caterers had everything covered and there was no need for her in the kitchen.
Charette left the kitchen and walked into the crowded living room, turning to whoever she could find to start a conversation, hoping it could last. She asked our guests a never ending string of questions, but struggled to track with conversations, names and places that they had been which she’d probably never be able to place on a map. She didn’t follow any of the talk about trends in the market and the discussions of issues and things that mattered. She stood out like thistles growing in a field of roses – anyone that came near, she seemed to cling to annoyingly. She did not belong and she knew it.
She stayed only a couple of hours, and seeing her getting ready to leave, I thanked God that my weird aunt was finally realizing that this was not worth the effort. It was time to go. I followed her to the door, where she pulled me aside.
“You have a beautiful home. As a little girl, you were beautiful. There was not a day you weren’t pretty. You still are. But, I’m a Catholic, and no haruspex. But if I were and I could see the insides of your guts, I don’t care how pure and perfect all that goings on here and out there are, I would be able to tell ya that things are not as perfect as you would have us believe. You can call ambrosia “crap”, that the pretty little girl I use to serve it to, did not deserve it tonight. And apparently not even back then. I should have served you salt wounds as a kid, then you might know how lucky you are. I can say all this and more without a hint of concern that it will hurt you. You know why?”
I did not answer, I was just looking over my shoulder to make sure none of my guests were listening to her.
She continued, as she put on her winter coat, “Because I watched you grow up. And I know I can say whatever I want because you grew up to be a pachydermatous woman,” she said, but I interrupted.
“A what?” I asked,
“No worry, you’ll live happily ever after. I’m just glad your dad didn’t understand who you really are. I’ll probably regret saying all that to you, but not for a few years at least.” She walked out the door. I started to open the door to say something to her as she stepped carefully down my front steps, but then my managing partner walked by the doorway and asked me a question, and I went back to doing what I do best, being head of the game.
I saw out of the corner of my eye that she was hobbling, painfully down my icy, cobblestone driveway. As I was talking to my managing partner, I saw my husband on the other side of the room look out our big living room window at her, then excuse himself to walk outside to hold Charette’s arm as she struggled down the driveway. I did not know at the time, but he stayed out there and spoke with her for over an hour.
Late that night, the house cleared of guests and caterers, I saw my aunt’s bowl of ambrosia in the refrigerator, no one had touched it, because I had stuck in there, hidden. My husband came up from behind me, grabbed the bowl out of the refrigerator, served himself a big bowl and was enjoying every bite. Then he asked, “Did you even talk to Charette tonight?”
“I don’t know why she bothered coming, it wasn’t worth the extra drive,” I said, “And how can you eat that junk?”
He dumped another big spoon full of it into his bowl, then spoke in a long rambling spew of Italian and French that I did not understand. When I asked what he was saying, he said, quietly, “You are one of the most beautiful women I know.” I smiled at him, loving his words, and moved towards him, undoing my tight dress. Before I got close, he added, “And one of the most profoundly cruel I have ever known.” Then he took his bowl of ambrosia to his office and shut the French doors behind him. I do not like doors shut on me. I opened the doors and asked what he meant.
“I meant what I said. You really have no idea how much people don't like you," he said. I was never near an artillery range. Never even saw a gun fired. But I think the response that came flying out of my mouth that night apparently felt like I had. My husband listened to me like he was staring at an evil he did not know lived inside his own home. The problem was I did. He responded, smiling like he wanted to defuse the battle in front of him, “That’s a great dress, you look incredible in it," then pointing to the belt on my dress, he said, "Is that an ammunition belt? It's amazing how a designer dress can load all those cartridges under there.” I looked down at the belt on my dress having no idea what he was referring to. He walked out and went into our media room and shut the doors again. This time he locked them.
He never recovered from what I said that night. I did not know that in his evaluation, our marriage was stale, I was boring, I was a pachydermatous woman, who loved him like paint likes a wall – it’s meant to cover up the imperfections underneath. It was later that year when he told me, it was over. I could keep the house. Half all the other assets. He just needed to go. And that he did.
I asked him over and over again, “When did it all go wrong? I thought we were happy. I thought you were happy.” In front of a marriage therapist, after a long and silent pause, he said the turning point was that night, “When I was eating Charette’s ambrosia.”
“Marriages should not break up over one argument and a bowl of canned fruit,” I said.
He responded, quietly, as he got up to leave never to return, “Lawyers never make one argument. And the problem is, in their own life, they never see their own gravamen.”
gra·va·men
- the part of an accusation that weighs most heavily against the accused; the substantial part of a charge or complaint.
- a grievance.
white
[hwahyt, wahyt] adjective, whit·er, whit·est, noun, verb, whit·ed, whit·ing.- of the color of pure snow, of the margins of this page, etc.; reflecting nearly all the rays of sunlight or a similar light.
- light or comparatively light in color.
- (of human beings) marked by slight pigmentation of the skin, as of many Caucasoids.
- for, limited to, or predominantly made up of persons whose racial heritage is caucasian; a white club; a white neighborhood.
- pallid or pale, as from fear or other strong emotion: white with rage.
in·ti·mate
1 [in-tuh-mit]- associated in close personal relations: an intimate friend.
- characterized by or involving warm friendship or a personally close or familiar association or feeling: an intimate greeting.
- very private; closely personal: one's intimate affairs.
- characterized by or suggesting privacy or intimacy; warmly cozy: an intimate little café.
- (of an association, knowledge, understanding, etc.) arising from close personal connection or familiar experience.
sig·nal
[sig-nl] noun, adjective, verb, -naled, -nal·ing or ( especially British ) -nalled, -nal·ling.- anything that serves to indicate, warn, direct, command, or the like, as a light, a gesture, an act, etc.: a traffic signal; a signal to leave.
- anything agreed upon or understood as the occasion for concerted action.
- an act, event, or the like that causes or incites some action: The unjust execution was the signal for revolt.
- a token; indication.
- Electronics . an electrical quantity or effect, as current, voltage, or electromagnetic waves, that can be varied in such a way as to convey information.
stale
1 [steyl] adjective, stal·er, stal·est, verb, staled, stal·ing.- not fresh; vapid or flat, as beverages; dry or hardened, as bread.
- musty; stagnant: stale air.
- having lost novelty or interest; hackneyed; trite: a stale joke.
- having lost freshness, vigor, quick intelligence, initiative, or the like, as from overstrain, boredom, or surfeit: He had grown stale on the job and needed a long vacation.
- Law . having lost force or effectiveness through absence of action, as a claim.
e·val·u·a·tion
[ih-val-yoo-ey-shuhn]- an act or instance of evaluating or appraising.
- (especially in medicine) a diagnosis or diagnostic study of a physical or mental condition.
ge·la·ti
[juh-lah-tee] Show IPAam·bro·sia
[am-broh-zhuh]- Classical Mythology . the food of the gods.
- something especially delcious to taste or smell.
- a fruit dessert made of oranges and shredded coconut and sometimes pineapple.
ha·rus·pex
[huh-ruhs-peks, har-uh-speks]- (in ancient Rome) one of a class of minor priests who practiced divination, especially from the entrails of animals killed in sacrifice.












