A Certain Hunger

In December 2013, six weeks after Casimir’s death, Detective Kiandra Wasserman left a message for Dorothy. Wasserman’s town, Yaphank, includes the region of Fire Island, which agitated Dorothy. She erased the message and went to dinner with Ron and Paul, her friends from Fire Island. She couldn’t understand how she had left any clues behind.

Dorothy was writing for a website called DISH, under a 24-year-old editor. She mourned the loss of insightful American food writing. Ironically, as food consumption increased, critics were ignored. To stay relevant, Dorothy joined social media and appeared as a guest judge on cooking shows.

Detectives Wasserman and MacDonnell visited Dorothy. Wasserman was muscular, tenacious, and the opposite of what Dorothy had imagined. She didn’t believe Dorothy when she said she didn’t return her call because she accidentally deleted the message due to anxiety. Dorothy admitted that she had sex with Casimir, but it was a couple of weeks before he disappeared. Wasserman said it would be helpful for Dorothy to stay in town. She also said she loved Dorothy’s Guide to Eating Gloriously.

Dorothy took steaks to Emma’s studio, where Emma had been painting women who were famous for having sex for money, a project she called “The Whorestep Chronicles” (186). Dorothy told her about the detectives. She still didn’t understand why she killed Casimir since she didn’t eat him and hadn’t planned the murder.

In prison, she compares the complication of murder to the task of roasting a pig. The finished product is always worth it, but the preparation can be overwhelming. Then, she returns to her invasive thoughts about Casimir. Dorothy knows that serial killers usually have a pattern, and Casimir didn’t fit her pattern. She didn’t feel guilty about the murder but fought the urge to tell Emma about it. She finally left Emma’s apartment after getting very drunk.

Dorothy woke with a migraine and began thinking about Fire Island, searching for a mistake she might have made. She always used a disposable phone. The detectives shouldn’t have been able to find her real name because she hid her identity while working as a critic. She always used the names of movie characters when checking into hotels, which is why Casimir knew her as Diane Selwyn. She wondered if she told Emma everything and forgot about confessing.

She was fantasizing about fleeing to Italy when Wasserman formally asked her to visit the police station to answer questions.

She ponders the men she killed and the phrase that one should always eat what they love. She considers her complicated feelings of love, loss, and hatred for Giovanni, Andrew, Gil, and Marco.

Detective MacDonnell took her to a room. When Wasserman asked her where she bought her meat, Dorothy said she wanted a lawyer.

Margaret, Dorothy’s lawyer, goes by Maggie. A year passed between Casimir’s murder and the start of the trial. Then, as now, Dorothy finds the justice system tedious. She reveals that she was arrested at Emma’s place at three o’clock in the morning, after breaking in with a cleaver to kill her.

Dorothy knows she acted impulsively. She remembers giving in to her paranoia and convincing herself that she had drunkenly confessed to Emma, who was probably conspiring against her with Wasserman: “Only Emma was as smart, as clever, as perceptive as I, and thus Emma must be the sole reason why Detective Wasserman suspected me” (209).

Dorothy drank for a week after the interrogation. When Emma called and asked about the detectives, Dorothy wondered if she heard the click of a tapped phone on the other end. She admits that Emma is the only person she loves and therefore the only person capable of hurting her.

On the way to Emma’s place, Dorothy claims she didn’t know what she would do to her. She had put on a disguise and walked, then rode the rest of the way on a stolen bike that she took from a delivery boy before picking the lock on Emma’s door. She writes that female friends are important for girls, as literature demonstrates through various famous pairings. Women only let their masks slip among other women, who offer a reprieve from the burden of being a woman.

She went to Emma’s bed and demanded that she admit her betrayal. After receiving no answer, Dorothy swung a cleaver at the bed, only to find that what she thought was a sleeping body was a lump of pillows. Six NYPD officers entered, handcuffed her, and arrested her. Dorothy spent 60 hours in central booking. She ate at home after Maggie secured her release. The next day, she answered her warrant and went to jail.

Dorothy claims that she frequently hallucinates food in prison. She also dislikes the rigidity of her schedule and the lack of control she has.

She reveals that Emma’s building had a new silent alarm when she broke in. Emma had taken measures to feel safer after receiving increasing amounts of hate mail. She’d been smoking on the fire escape and had called the cops when Dorothy’s lock picking set off the alarm.

Maggie didn’t let Dorothy testify. Maggie impressed her, although the prosecutor did not. Dorothy anticipated the showdown between Maggie and Wasserman, which would provide her with an escape. However, Wasserman’s trump card was a receipt from her preferred butcher shop, Ottomanelli’s.

Emma also testified against Dorothy. It was the first time she’d left home in decades. Art in America covered the trial, and the courtroom was packed.

Surprisingly, Emma couldn’t (or wouldn’t) state with certainty whether she heard Dorothy say anything specific about Fire Island or an ice pick. She maintained that they only talked about Dorothy sleeping with Casimir. Further, she claimed that she had no idea why Dorothy might have broken in to assault her. Dorothy wonders if she was wrong about Emma. Regardless, her attempted attack on Emma led to a guilty verdict.

Now, Dorothy compares prison to dying and reflects on the misconceptions about the goodness of women. She also writes that culture won’t acknowledge violence in women, adding, “We like to forget that men imprisoned women in the house and expected gratitude in return” (226).

Dorothy was sentenced to life plus 20 years in prison for second-degree murder, first-degree assault, third-degree arson, and other, smaller infractions. Her last meal before prison was a Long Island roast duck.

In prison, Dorothy writes about the perceived lack of choice in love. Dorothy writes that love can’t be premeditated and spontaneous. Surprisingly, she then explains that she did fall in love once, with a man she did not kill.

In 2004 New York, Dorothy bumped into a man as he was buying a hot dog. He—Alex Konings—caught her when she stumbled. Alex was an editor at a paper she had written for. She took him to a Turkish restaurant, where they talked. He had gone to graduate school for engineering and was divorced without children. Dorothy gave Alex her real phone number, and they didn’t have sex for several dates. It shocked her to be 42 years old and with a real boyfriend.

Dorothy loved Alex completely but shares few particulars about him. She wants to protect him. He comforts her in prison. She feels he is safe from the perception of readers unless she forms him with words.

It took months to realize she was in love. She was shopping while he was out of town, and she thought of things he liked to eat. She bought him an egg coddler, which was the first time she did something solely because it might make a man happy. They went to Italy together. Even Emma liked him. Dorothy was confused because Alex was good, and she didn’t like good people.

Dorothy writes that people who study women who kill posit that they kill for financial gain or to escape from abuse. However, Dorothy says women will kill for almost any reason.

Without Alex, she says her story would have ended with Giovanni’s liver. On February 18, 2007, Alex took her to the Empire State Building and proposed. She imagined him making her better and kinder and then said no. She couldn’t bear to lose her former self, and she never saw him again. Dorothy killed the relationship instead of killing the version of herself that she liked.

During a group session in prison, Joyce asks Dorothy about her forgiveness list. Dorothy says her parents are on it. The other inmates know she’s lying. Then, she says she forgives Emma, who is her best friend. She says she forgives her even though she’s not sure she actually betrayed her, which confuses Joyce. Joyce insists that this isn’t how forgiveness works, but some of the other inmates understand. Joyce says you can’t forgive someone for something they didn’t do. Dorothy doesn’t understand either. Joyce says Dorothy has to forgive herself.

At age nine, Dorothy fixated on the dessert Baked Alaska. She wanted it for her 10th birthday cake. Because of its cooking method, Baked Alaska has to be consumed entirely. Leftovers are not possible, and she found the finished product to be merely adequate. No one else ate much, so she had to finish it herself. Now, she considers it training for the grim realities of Bedford Hills.

Dorothy receives a brief letter from Emma. She usually tears them up, but she opens this one. It is brief. Emma writes that Dorothy told her everything about the murders, but she says that she will never tell anyone.

Dorothy contrasts their situations. Emma has her liberty, but her agoraphobia traps her. She is “seen but now viewed,” while Dorothy is “watched but not seen” (250), which Dorothy interprets as another sign that femininity is cruel to aging women.

She concludes the novel by writing that she accepts her fate but believes she will live on through her memoir.