Savor It

Chapter 2. Fisher

Has something ever been so good that you wanted to push it away? Maybe you’ve seen a film, read a book, or even had a vacation that was so incredible, you didn’t want it to end. You wanted to hit Pause and stave off the inevitable.

Some chump once told an interviewer that that was what he aimed to capture with his food. He wanted every dish to be so utterly mind-blowing that people would stop eating. He wanted to dole out culinary ecstasy. To make people sick with longing for more even before the meal ended.

And yet.

And yet that chump was also once me, which seems ironic given that I cannot get to the end of this road trip soon enough.

“Maybe downgrading will be good for you,” my niece Indy says bitingly from the back seat. “Maybe greasy spoon fare will expand your horizons.”

Even if the comment wasn’t laden with teenage disdain, I’d sense it for the trap that it is. She knows I ran a Michelin-three-starred restaurant up until three months ago, and she knows I’m not on this assignment to expand my skill set. She’s well aware that I’ve been humbled plenty. But it’s also likely she’s getting more agitated the closer we get to our temporary home for the summer.

“Does the new restaurant have a theme yet?” she asks. “Casseroles with a side of ignorance?”

Jesus. We’ve been on the road for nearly seven exhausting days. I’d thought driving rather than flying would be good for us both, not only because it would allow me to cart all my own culinary tools with me, but because it would give us time to reconnect. The therapist we’ve been seeing for the last month told me to take my cues from her for a while, to follow her lead, let her open up to me.… The problem with that is that she hasn’t been budging, so I’ve had exactly nothing to follow. She put in her earbuds back in New York and, aside from the occasional break to recharge, to throw a barb my way, or to let me know at suspiciously terrible times that she needed a bathroom stop, did not remove them the entire drive here. I tried countless times over the journey to initiate conversation, only to get a few syllables in return. And after a while I just… gave up. I passed the rest of the trip in a self-induced haze. It felt like letting my vision blur, like trying to unfocus on the text of everything happening, but going through the motions anyway. It’s a trick I developed while being berated in my early days in high-end kitchens. You can still pick up the gist of what’s being screamed at you that way, but you spare yourself the sharpness. I was trying to just get here while I avoided my anxiety in the present.

Now that we’re evidently getting close, her anger keeps bubbling closer to the surface, too. But as much as I don’t want to discourage her from sharing, I don’t think agreeing with her would be productive, either.

“I think we both gotta try to remember that we’re traveling across the country, not back in time,” I drone. “Maybe we should aim for optimism.” It sounds and tastes like bullshit leaving my mouth.

She scoffs and cuts me a glare in the rearview mirror, so I double down.

“Maybe Spunes isn’t as bad or as small as we think. Archer said they had an Olympian come from there back in the nineties. Got on the podium, too.” As far as fun facts go, it may seem bland, but these days I think Indy is most interested in a place’s ability to produce greatness.

“What for?” she asks. “What’d they medal in, I mean?”

“Long-distance running, I think?”

She lets out a low, satisfied laugh. “You see the irony, right?” she says. “That even its denizens want nothing more than to run far away from it.” And with that, Indy returns her earbuds to their places and curls herself toward her window.

Well, now I do. Fumbled that one, I guess. I sigh and check the directions on my phone. Still over eight hours to get to Spunes, which puts us getting in after midnight. I’d typically stop and get a hotel, but I think it’s clear that we’re both spent, and tonight’s the first night my boss has us booked for the rental, anyway.

I pull the truck back out onto the highway, and my mind defaults to drifting across the years, continuously searching for when it all started to go wrong. Retracing the steps and missteps leading up to three months ago when, after a decade and a half of nothing but culinary hustle, I lost my job.

Sometimes I think that it started with that first bad review five years ago. When I’d skipped a trip home for the holidays because I’d gotten word that a certain food blogger was coming into Marrow, all for her to ultimately declare my beef cheek “uninspired.”

Maybe something splintered when I’d gone out with mono the year before last and came back to a kitchen that had felt noticeably happier without me.

Maybe keeping that level of intensity for that long, where every second counts and every detail is preeminent, simply isn’t sustainable.

Whatever it was, I continue dragging myself through it, because I think reflection is the thing I’m supposed to do. I’m trying to feel something again, whether it’s longing for my career or anger over its demise… but I’ve got next to nothing. There’s the aftertaste of shame, the slight bitterness of embarrassment, but not much I can seem to build on.

All I know for certain is that it mostly stopped mattering after my sister’s car accident, three years ago.

An accident. What a harmless-sounding word to describe something that wiped away someone’s existence and changed the trajectory of all her loved ones’ lives. A regular errand run on a regular day, a mere moment of carelessness or distraction or… I don’t know what it was. I wish I knew. I don’t know why I wish I knew. It’s not as if that would change anything. Not anything that matters, anyway. It wouldn’t have brought the guardrail closer or prevented Freya from flipping down that embankment. It wouldn’t bring her back, nor would it change the fact that, after running away from my parents’ home two months ago, my orphaned teenage niece is now in my back seat—righteously angry at the world, and just as rightfully angry at me.

I do my best to get a grip on my thoughts, trying to take in the greens and golds of the scenery around me as I chew over the restaurant quest I’ve been sent on.

Don’t people always say that all big things happen in threes? Or is it only bad things? Either way, it tracks. Three months ago, I was fired. Two months ago, Indy showed up on my doorstep, and one month ago, I came home from my daily self-pity walk around Central Park to find three people in my living room.…

I’d found my former boss’s face first, looking up at me with unnerving, irritating gentleness. Carlie Viscontti is the harsh, fearsome matriarch of a half-French, half-Italian family made up of restaurateurs, many of whom are synonymous with culinary royalty… and she was looking at me with thinly veiled concern, no matter that I lost her restaurant one of its stars.

By her side sat my former sous chef, newly promoted chef de cuisine, Archer. “Chef.” He greeted me with a nod.

Across from them both, Indy slouched in a chair, a bored scowl on her face.

“I’m not here to talk about the review, the star, or any of it,” Carlie announced.

“Then why—”

“But you knew better than to let that bastard get to you, Fisher,” she added, frustration outlining her features and tone. It was the same thing she’d already said to me a hundred times. The same thing I’d told myself, too. “Roth is a miserable prick who’s great at writing casually dramatic, negative shit because it’s what sells. Even peppered in between the pithy complaints, he managed to recognize your talent.”

“Thought you weren’t gonna talk about it?” I lifelessly replied.

“I’m not talking about it,” she said.

I gestured around the room. “Then why are we all here, Carl?”

“Because your mom called me,” she said.

“Jesus Christ,” I groaned, letting out a dark laugh and tossing my keys onto the nearby counter. “I’m thirty-one, Carlie. Why is my mother calling my boss?” Archer became preoccupied by something on his shoe.

“I like to think of myself more as your partner than your boss. We were a little more collaborative than that, don’t you think?” she said, not without hurt. I swallowed, my own eyes going to my feet. I couldn’t—still can’t—bring myself to regret the outburst that got me fired, even if the backlash from my actions was regrettable. Richard Roth was the one who approached me while I’d been trying to enjoy a quiet meal, who thought he could joke with me about the way he’d disparaged my career, along with the hard work of my staff. He deserved my pie in his face.

I guess I deserved to be fired for it, too.

“It was obvious she had no idea that you weren’t at the restaurant anymore, Fisher,” she continued. “You’ll have to come clean on that with her soon.”

“Carlie,” I started, wincing at the pain in my voice. I hate that I’ve disappointed her, too. Work was my pseudofamily at one point, until my incident left her hands tied. It’s not as if she wanted to fire me.

When my parents and Indy would visit out here for holidays over the years, joining Carlie’s family festivities had always been the perfect buffer. She and Mom sparked up a friendship of sorts, and it had always been nice to think of them as pals. My feelings were a little more mixed at the moment, though.

“Since it seems you are in denial about this,” Carlie pressed on, “given that you won’t even share with the people who care about you, let me just put this plainly: You are not doing well. And clearly, neither is Indy.”

Indy sat up in outrage. “Why am I getting dragged into this?!”

I shook my head at Carlie. “Let’s leave Indy out of it,” I said. I might be good with the repeat rundown on my own downfall, but I didn’t think it would be productive at that point to go through Indy’s again. She ran away from my parents’ place already, for the third time in as many years, so I was hesitant to push her too hard and risk giving her any reason to try taking off again. Carlie’s lips twitched into a frown, and she ran a hand over the white streak in her hair, contemplating a new approach.

“Let me ask you this,” she said after a quiet pause. “You wanna get it back?”

I almost replied with something sarcastic. Something like, “Which ‘it’? My dignity, my job, the star I lost, or my life as I knew it?” … but I stopped myself, because I knew she meant it all.

“Of course I do,” I said instead, voice hoarse. I dragged myself across the room to the remaining open chair and let my body fall into it.

She blew out a long sigh and looked over to Archer before she launched into her pitch, recapping one of her investment projects that had been in the works for nearly a year: a restaurant on the Oregon coast. I’d been moderately embarrassed to realize that despite her tirelessly championing me in both my work and personal life over the last decade, I’d been too insular to pay much mind to hers outside of where it related to me.

She told me they’d been running into delays at nearly every step, that the town had been giving her trouble, and that she needed to get representatives on the ground to see it through the rest of the way. She told me she’d be sending Frankie, a general contractor we’ve worked with for projects in New York before, the same general who oversaw construction on Marrow, and that his objective would be to push through the remaining build.

“Where do I come into this?” I asked quizzically. “And Archer?”

Archer cleared his throat. “I want the job,” he said. “Want the CDC gig there when it’s done. Spunes isn’t too far from home for me.”

People auto-referring to wherever they grew up as “home” will never cease to amaze me.

“But,” Carlie interjected, “I need him here for the time being. Otherwise I’m without a chef. I can’t have you back yet, not until things cool off.”

I covered a flinch. And waited for them to finish their explanation.

“Help me with Starhopper,” Carlie said. “Come up with a menu like you did when we started Marrow. Figure out what that area needs and what people will want, what will work for that whole immersive experience. All that artsy, atmospheric stuff I know you’re great with.” She leaned forward and gave me a hard stare. “Show me you’ve got your head on straight and I’ll bring you back here, back to Marrow, when it’s done. I don’t care if I get shit for it. We’ll work together and we’ll get that star back plus another one if you want.”

It was like gas to flame, the feeling that sparked to life in me. It flickered weakly, but it was there. The notion of a comeback was something I could set my sights on, even if it would only be pride or vanity motivating me.

Indy snorted from her seat to my right and looked up from her phone. “You’re telling me I just ditched one shitty town, and you’re immediately gonna cart me off to another?” she said. Then added, “Whatever,” before she stalked away, slamming the door to the guest room behind her.

“I’m trying, Carl,” I explained to Carlie’s worried gaze. I just also felt like I was trying to breathe through a straw while simultaneously running uphill all the time. “I don’t know why she wants to be here or why the hell she wants to live with me, but I guess she does so I’m… I’m trying.” I shrugged.

“Seems obvious to me,” Archer supplied, earning a sharp look from Carlie and me. “I mean, Chef, you’re a legend. You know you are. And she saw you make it here, right?” he said. “You’re probably her hero, in a way.”

I find that laughable and think Indy would, too. Maybe that was partially true for the old versions of ourselves but not anymore.

I do understand why she’d want to get away from her home, at least, and can only conclude that she got desperate enough to get out of there that she ran here. Without Freya, I imagine that shitty town back in Nebraska lost any shred of appeal.

“And you don’t mind that you wouldn’t have a hand in this part of things?” I asked Archer. I think we’re as close as I am to anyone, which is to say, not very. The guy is a great chef, though, and does deserve his own kitchen.

“I just wanna cook, Chef. You know me,” he nonchalantly replied. “Once I’m there I’ll have the freedom to do what I want, but I trust that you’ll set things up all right, at least,” he added with a cocky grin. Good, I thought. You need an ego if you expect to successfully run a place.

Carlie got up and gathered her purse onto her shoulder. “You can give it a think, but I know this could be good, Fisher. It’d be good for you and Indy to get a reset, at least.”

A reset.

The thought of being in a kitchen again still fills me with palpable angst, swiftly followed by self-disgust. I’m so sick of this thing I can’t shake or name. It feels paramount that I figure it out, though. Now that someone else’s happiness could be affected by mine. And since nothing else I’d been doing was working, I knew I needed to agree.

“I’d need to be back by the end of summer,” I said to my guests’ retreating forms. “So Indy can start school in the fall.”

Later, I was certain to thank Carlie for her relentless faith in me, for wanting to give me another chance. I took a recommendation from her for a therapist that Indy and I started having weekly video appointments with, and have been generally doing my best to get us on our feet since.

The minutes and miles drag on, set to the dulcet sounds of the truck, and eventually, Indy’s quiet snores.

It’s exactly midnight when the headlights shine on the town’s welcome sign, which states:

SPUNES, OREGON

(Not to be confused with Forks, Washington)

I’m just glad that Indy isn’t awake to sneer at it.

By the time we get to the rental house, the moon is high in a foggy, blue-black sky, but I’m too depleted to unpack anything other than myself, or to take in any of the details of the place. I blearily pull up the lockbox code and let Indy and me inside, before we both slog up the stairs to the first bedrooms we find. Her door slams, and I toe off my shoes, letting myself collapse into bed.