Eddie Creamer

meals for one

The largest bag they have in the shop is ten kilos. I carry it up the hill back to my flat and, by the time I get there, I’m sweating.

‘We’ll never use that much rice,’ my husband says. ‘What were you thinking?’

The odd thing is, I don’t have a husband. So I ignore him.

#

The first time I open the bag, rice spills out from the corners, onto the floor. My husband is annoyed.

‘I told you we didn’t need it, and now you’re making a mess,’ he says.

But I live alone; I can make a mess if I want to. When I get down on my knees to sweep up the grains, they skitter away from the brush like fragments of dreams.

#

I cook salmon, to go with the rice. My husband looks at it, quite unhappy.

‘I’m not eating that,’ he says. ‘You know I’ve never liked fish.’

It’s only a meal for one, so his protests don’t bother me. I put the salmon on top of the rice, and some broccoli on the side. My mother would be proud of me, eating so healthily; but she’s long gone, so who am I trying to impress?

#

I decide to make rice pudding, mixing the rice with milk and sugar, grating nutmeg over the top. After a couple of hours I take the dish out of the oven, but it’s all wrong: the bloated grains float in a thin liquid, nothing like the creamy pudding I remember from growing up.

‘What a waste,’ my husband says, peering over my shoulder.

When I refer back to the recipe I see I was meant to use a special kind of rice, not just the regular basmati I have in my ten-kilo bag. I scrape it into the bin, feeling like I’ve been tricked.

#

For a long time, I forget about the rice. I get into different routines; I’m working late, seeing friends. I fall deeper into a worrying takeaway habit, snatching the food quickly from the delivery driver as if I think my neighbours will care, never mind that I’ve never spoken to any of them.

One day I open the cupboard and the ten-kilo bag is right there at the front, even though for weeks it’s been buried somewhere under plastic bags of prawn crackers and the bottles of free soy sauce that come with my sushi. There’s still plenty of rice left in the bag. No more takeaways until it’s finished, I say to myself.

‘Exactly,’ says my husband. ‘Since you’ve bought it, you ought to use it.’

#

I buy a rice cooker with all the money I’m saving from not having takeaways. I enjoy the routine of it: measuring the rice, rinsing it, measuring the water; the quiet clicks the machine makes while it runs, as if to itself, and then the bleep to let me know when it’s almost ready.

‘Argh,’ my husband says. ‘That machine is so annoying. Like having an unwanted guest in the house.’

Quite, I want to say, but don’t because I refuse to talk to him like I’m some kind of madman.

#

For some reason, I start making a second meal, setting a second place at the table. I eat my own plate of food and then eat the other, slowly, chewing the rice mindfully, like I heard I should do on a podcast.

‘Hey, you’re eating mine,’ my husband says.

But I don’t feel bad, because he never wanted the rice in the first place. I’m the one who’s put in all the effort.

#

With all this cooking, and in double quantities, I’m getting close to running out of rice.

‘You’d better get a new bag,’ my husband says. ‘Before it’s too late.’

But I was thinking I might try something different once I’m done with the rice. The options are endless when it comes to grains: I could go for couscous, or even quinoa. Everyone eats quinoa nowadays. So I don’t go out to buy any more.

#

And then, suddenly, the bag is finished. When I shake it, a few grains rattle around; they’ll never come out, stragglers that cling on in the crevices. I throw the bag away and turn around to tell my husband see, I did use it. But there’s nobody there.

Eddie Creamer is a writer and part-time lawyer living in London. A graduate of the Goldsmiths MA in Creative and Life Writing, his work has appeared in various online magazines, including Queerlings and The Fruitslice. He is currently editing his first novel, Now You’re Flying, an intergenerational queer campus novel about a mother and son.

Eddie wrote the following about ‘Meals for One’:

The inspiration for this story was a prompt to write a story about food. I’d also, for a while, been wanting to attempt something with a speculative edge, my usual style leaning more towards realism. The best speculative writing tends to use the supernatural to reveal something deeper, about character or the human experience. I’ve tried, I hope subtly, to do so in this piece, [the imagined ‘ghost’ husband hinting at the loneliness that can come from living alone in the city, preparing meals for one].