CHAPTER ONE

BY THE TIME I BOUGHT MY HOUSE on Russian Hill after forty years of an intermittent single life, I was sixty. Despite a few new aches and pains, I fully expected the approaching decade to be my best. Mind, body, and soul, I’d never been in better shape. Since I didn’t think of myself as a senior, what got to me were the checkers at the market asking if I needed help to my car or well-meaning people who offered me seats on the bus. With hair that was still blondish, an athletic vitality, and a good-humored attitude, I felt more like forty-two.

Once again, I was a woman without a man. But my acceptance of this state—my joy in the peace and simple pleasures of living alone—were new for me. Each morning when I pulled back the curtains in my bedroom, I could see San Francisco Bay stretching before me with ships gliding in and out of the Golden Gate, while my two snowy ragdoll cats purred in the warm white folds of my covers.

In 1896 my gray wooden row house had been built for a sea captain. During the fifteen years I’d rented it, it had been the scene of considerable fun, a couple of failed attempts at romance, and a lot of deferred maintenance. When it went on the market after I had just extricated myself from a disastrous four-year relationship, I pounced. I planned to live in it alone rather than sharing my life with another man who didn’t stack up.

Now that I owned my house, I made it fully mine, doing everything I’d dreamed about, making it a welcoming place for the friends and house guests who filled my life. The living room, just off my little back garden had been lacquered red for years, just like my mother’s. I painted it a more subtle color--a sophisticated grayish brown that warmed up at night in the light that glowed from the fireplace and candles and lamps with mica shades. With my bookcases completely filled, I stacked the overflowing books everywhere, with vases of flowers and little treasures perched on top of them.

With the aid of my stylish opinionated friend Randal Breski, who has an unerring eye and who, like me, had lived and shopped in Paris, I chose fabrics and paints for the rest of the house. We made the dining room feel French with pale green walls and taffeta curtains. On summer evenings, a low gold light streamed across the old hardwood floors and my mother’s mahogany dining table that could seat up to eighteen. Winter dinners were candlelit.

My dinners were more casual and fun than my mother’s. Hers tended to be boozy, heavy, and creamy. Mine were easy going and lighter, with fish or good red meat, lots of vegetables, salads, and fruit. While I served my guests wine, I no longer drank it myself, having given up alcohol when I was forty, after nearly letting it wreck my life. I cooked with ingredients my mother had never used—fennel, radicchio, hunks of aged cheeses, and essentials like good extra virgin olive oil and varied vinegars. She’d resorted to shortcuts out of a can or the freezer; I made food from scratch. Men wore neckties to her dinners and her guests didn’t include writers, teachers, blacksmiths, artists, gay men, and women, or chefs, but she did invite Alan Watts and Dianne Feinstein along with other political types and theater people.

As a renter, I had cooked in my fifty-year-old kitchen, testing recipes for several cookbooks I’d written and for dinner parties. It was beyond ready for a renovation and definitely needed more than the one heavily over-loaded electrical outlet. With the help of an architect friend, the room was transformed. We kept the black and white tile floor, and brought the electricity up to code, adding a commercial stove, a farmhouse kitchen sink, and marble counters. A glass chandelier provided a certain sparkle. At last, the room that was the center of my life and my work as a food writer was ideal for me and the food-loving friends who cooked there with me. I’d met many of them in the late 1990s when I started writing about food for Saveur Magazine, and other publications. They were my people. But others went all the way back—I’d known two of my closest friends Cal Ferris and Flicka McGurrin since we were seven-year-olds. With Flicka, I’d opened a restaurant in North Beach in the 1970s and another one on the waterfront in the ’80s. And alongside, we ran a cooking school and a catering business. When we started, we had no experience with business or cooking for more than 6 to 8 people, but we cooked what we loved and they sent back empty plates.

Another of my dearest friends had been the first to call my attention to my heightened domestic urges. The novelist Armistead Maupin had been introduced to my domesticity during the early days of my first and only marriage. He’d gone to college with my ex-husband Jay Hanan and later came out as a gay rights leader. Armistead and I had spent hours talking about men, straight and gay, but for a long time, neither of us had been terribly lucky in love.

Tending to act upon my urges more swiftly than was wise, I’d repeatedly found myself with a man far too soon, since I had trouble being alone in a sea of couples-sometimes. My lapses in judgment had chipped away at my self-esteem. I’d fall into a swoon, get into a romance and wake up a few years later wondering what hit me. The men I was consistently attracted to were roguish and immature, the more off-beat the better. I began to think I should hire a private eye before getting into something deep one more time. But what was the definition of a good man anyway? And what kind of good man would be the right one for me? Why had I been afraid to aim high, when I’d always aimed high in my career and choice of friends.

Now that I was single, I expected my house to be my sanctuary. My walled garden had become the jewel of the first floor. The mirror that had been placed on its center wall, surrounded by an arch of ivy, cleverly reflected a painting through the glass doors in the living room. The tiny trimmed green space gave the impression of being another room. And the white flowers I’d planted around the edges to catch the light of the moon appeared to be floating in the garden at night. It was all very romantic but I was certain there would be no more love affairs. Just me, my kitties and my friends.

I planned to keep sleeping alone in my bedroom. Because of its view across the bay and its amazing light, I felt it was the best room in the house. It was there that I spent most of my time—reading, talking on the phone, and on my laptop. Across the hall, I freshened up my writing room by painting it forest green; its new orange shelves held 400 cookbooks. But I kept my one small old-fashioned bathroom just as it was and deliberately didn’t put in a shower (the lack of one had been a source of complaints from men.) The claw-legged bathtub was fine for me.

By the time I was sixty-three in 2008, I considered the existence I’d worked out for myself to be rich and overflowing. At least 85 percent of the time I was good with being single. I was alone but not often lonely. Still, there was that missing percentage. And so when my lifelong friend Cal Ferris called to tell me about a dinner conversation she’d had the night before, I pricked up my ears.

Cal had invited over Steve and Nan Grand-Jean, a couple I also knew and as the evening was winding down, Steve mentioned a dear pal who’d recently lost his wife of 44 years. His name was Robert Fisher. He was such a great guy, they told her. In fact, they went on about him-his solid honest character, his tender and emotional state. They also said he was very funny. They couldn’t bear to see him in pain. He’d stopped working to take care of his wife for the four or five years her illness lingered. Who could we introduce him to? they asked over dessert. Cal and her husband Tim Ferris responded at the same time, What about Peggy Knickerbocker?

CHAPTER TWO

AFEW DAYS LATER, I WONDERED WHY I had the urge to wander into the lingerie department of Bloomingdale’s. I had just seen a film with my closest movie friend, Terry Gamble, as we did most Friday afternoons. She went off to spend the weekend with her family and left me asking myself, Did I really need anything new ? If so, what was I doing in the lacy section where I always went when there was a glimmer of someone on the horizon.

It must have had something to do with the conversation I’d had with Cal about the guy who had recently lost his wife. I’d wanted to know just how great this guy was. And Cal told me exactly what I wanted to hear about Robert Fisher’s solid character, his gentle inquisitive nature, and how wonderful he’d been to his wife. She went on to say he was very interested in food. But then, who wasn’t?

How odd to hear about him now, I told her, when I’ve been congratulating myself for coming to grips with being alone. I’d assured Cal that my longings to have a mate had dwindled. But of course, these are the moments we’d better pay attention to, the moments when all is good, but in fact, something even better is around the bend.

So there I was in the lingerie department on the first day of a very long winter weekend. I mention the extent of the weekend, since weekends alone at any time of year had a way of getting me down; me, and many other single women. A saleswoman appeared. We made a few choices and she led me into a dressing room. There, in front of the all-too- truthful triptych mirrors and harsh lights, I felt wary. Before thinking about getting to know this man, this Robert Fisher, I flashed to getting undressed in front of him. It’s not easy in middle age. And who was I kidding, was I still even in middle age at 63?

As I climbed into bed that night, my thoughts again turned to Robert Fisher. I supposed I wanted to meet him, but I dreaded those odious first dates. The idea of getting all done up in tights and Spanx was off-putting, and opening the front door and sizing up the poor guy would be even worse. In my imagination, we would suffer through a mediocre meal at a restaurant of his choosing, where it would be so loud we couldn’t hear each other speak. Then he’d take me home, wouldn’t kiss me because that’s the rule on a first date, and even though I didn’t really like him, I’d feel rejected when he didn’t call.

Still, here I was thinking about this available man, when only days before I was convinced that I was fine on my own. The residue of my most recent failed romance was behind me. I was game for taking another crack, but this time, I told myself sternly, it would have to be a better-informed one.

A few weeks passed without a peep from Robert Fisher. I felt a little embarrassed that I’d talked about him all over town. He couldn’t have any idea what the mere possibility of a meeting a good man could do to a woman with a record like mine.

Then one day I ran into Nan Grand-Jean in front of a café in North Beach. She told me about a list Robert had made of the attributes for his ideal woman. A friend had suggested that he do this. The act of writing it had made him feel better, so he sent it to this friend, who was CEO of a company, asking jokingly that it be shown to the director of the human resources department. Nan and Steve had been sent a copy, too, but I didn’t want to be pushy and ask to see it. I told Nan I didn’t know what to think about this list-making and that I’d never dated businessmen anyway. And how has that worked out for you, Peggy? she asked.

One Saturday morning not long after that, I returned from an early trip to the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market where I go every week, to shop for vegetables, flowers, and fruit. I unpacked my produce and settled down with a nice frothy cappuccino to check my emails.

An email from Robert Fisher. I shrieked before opening it. Oh God, I said aloud. I got fluttery. There had been no warning. I wished I had at least seen a picture of him.

In his email, so raw it was jarring, he said he was an amateur when it came to meeting women: he had been married to his late wife for 44 years. He didn’t know the rules or how to proceed. But he was coming to San Francisco and wanted to take me out to dinner. Or, would I prefer coffee? Then he said he’d call me a little later in the day, when he returned home from watching his grandsons play basketball. He lived in Los Angeles. He’d been up all night perusing my website.

That email was telling. He seemed loyal and humble. He admitted he was new at dating, so I assumed he hadn’t fooled around as a husband. It sounded as if he’d never even gone out on a date.

I liked hearing that he spent time with his grandchildren. And how could I help but be comforted by the fact that he’d been with the same woman all his life?

Oh, God. Heart be still. I should have been able to take this in stride, been steady and sure of myself like Deborah Kerr in the movie I’d watched the night before, The Beloved Infidel. She’d worn a tight emerald green dress with a girdle, a pointy bra, and gloves. She’d crossed her legs with exaggerated femininity as she flirted with F. Scott Fitzgerald, reeling him in with ease. I couldn’t flirt if I tried.

I thought of my father’s situation while my mother was lingering in a near-vegetative state for a few painful years after having a stroke at the age of fifty-seven. In those last years, a great friend of my parents’ named Marti Fletcher had come from her family ranch in Sonoma once a week to read to my mother. Of all their friends, Marti was my favorite. She had been a communist at one point and lived in France on and off for seventeen years. When she returned to California for vacations, she’d take me riding, my favorite thing to do as a horse-crazed kid. Marti never talked down