3. Crew
I loved my family. I really did.
It was just that I had to remind myself of it…often.
They meant well, all of them. Even my oldest brother, Adam, and all of his grumpy grumbles. But while they paired off one by one, it became glaringly obvious I was the odd man out. They tried not to make me feel that way, I realized. My therapist told me once that in everyone’s life they are the main character. Some people had to be regularly reminded that others exist, and that their importance was the same level as anyone else’s. So I kept that in mind when the couples paired off one by one and I became the ninth wheel.
Luke and Layla.
Nathan and Calla.
Liam and Marigold.
Adam and Rachel.
Crew and a bag of salt and vinegar chips.
That was the way the world worked. Or the cookie crumbled. Or whatever phrase you’d want to plug in here. At the end of the day, I knew it wasn’t the fact that I was the only single sibling left that separated us.
It was my diagnosis.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, the psychologist said after my first full break down only a year prior. ADHD. I’d heard it before a million times, but it never meant much to me.
‘Ugh, my ADHD is terrible.’ I remembered a girl I was dating a few years ago say. But she would say it when she jumped from one topic to the next, or like if she wanted to be watching one movie one second and then an entirely different genre the next. I shrugged it off, never thought much of it. She hadn’t actually been diagnosed with ADHD, of course. It was like a thrown around term that meant quirky or something. Like it made her cuter. I never considered how unattractive that was until my diagnosis.
Until all of the blank part of the equations that made me who I was finally got plugged in and I could look myself in a mirror and say this, this is why you are the way you are.
Of course, a diagnosis in itself really didn’t change much. Got some meds for some mild mood swings I was having. Started therapy, which realistically everyone needed, and took myself a little less seriously in some areas of life. All it did mostly though was back up what I already knew about myself: I wasn’t anything like the rest of my family.
None of them had trouble just functioning. None of their brains overworked itself so hard that hours after hitting a speed bump you’d fully convinced yourself that you actually ran someone over and never looked back and that the cops would be after you any minute now. To the point where you said screw it and drove right back to the speed bump at 2 am just to look at it and show your brain, see, I told you I’m no murderer.
‘Crew’s just Crew.’ my family always joked. And I joked right back with them, so there was no need to really get upset. You couldn’t be mad if you were the one making the jokes, right? Still though, I watched from the couch as all of my family merged together and I knew it was glaringly obvious that I was always going to be the odd man out.
Layla and Luke just recently announced they’re pregnant with a little star wars baby. They claimed they were going to name it Anakin if it was a boy, or ‘Annie’ if it was a girl.
Nathan and Calla eloped and just got back from their honeymoon, all love drunk smiles and butt pinches that were not subtle at all.
Liam is racing around as Marigold is about to pop out their baby girl any day now.
And Rachel and Adam are happily married with big plans for the future.
And I was here…making lasagna with my mother and arguing with my dad about who deserved the rightful trophy of last season’s Master Chef.
They all had their beautiful lives all together wrapped up in a big bow, meanwhile I was struggling over here to just remember to pay bills. ‘Just write it down’ they’d say when I said I was having a hard time. But they didn’t understand that even if I wrote it down, I wouldn’t remember where I put the paper. And setting an alarm on my phone only works if it goes off at the exact time I am able to pay it or else I turn off the alarm and forget. The cycle continues over and over until whoops, your power is out.
Everyone took their rightful seats at the long extended table in my mother’s dining room, a large lasagna set out in front of us beside a pan of seven layer brownies.
“What kind of diapers do you guys recommend?”
“Yeah, works been crazy, did you know Suzie quit?”
“What? I loved Suzie!”
“I know, me too.”
“I think Pampers were best for our boys.”
“Can someone pass the Parmesan?”
All of their voices danced around me, crowding in closer and closer until I felt like all of the walls around me were raised to the point of no return. My pants were too tight. The overhead chandelier was causing a glare in my eye. My plate was scalding hot and my drink was freezing cold. My knee won’t stop tapping. I was trapped. Stuck. Frozen.
Left here in this place that should have been called my home but now was feeling like more and more of a cave. No, worse than a cave. A cave had an exist and this…this feeling never had a way out. Not in any way I’d experienced before.
“Crew, honey,” Mom’s voice from one seat over began to ground me ever so slightly. “What’s going on with you, hmm? How’s work?”
She could sense it. I didn’t know how. I always kept my flare ups so quiet that no one suspected a thing. But this last year Mom was different with me. She treaded more lightly. Spoke softer. Stopped blaming me when I had to skip out on dinner early or when I’d suddenly disappear without a goodbye. It was like she just knew, despite me keeping every bit of the diagnosis to myself.
What was the point in telling them? So they could tip toe around me? So they could think poor Crew and pity me and my sad, lonely life. F that. I would rather be on my own than in a crowd full of sorrowful eyes staring back at me. I refused to be treated differently. Even if my mind begged for it so.
I settled my breathing and took a bite as I felt my siblings and their spouses looking my way. “Good. Really good, actually.”
“Yeah?” My sister in law, Layla, smiled. She was always smiling. “Anything exciting for the truck?”
I looked up from my plate at my family. At their eyes all boring into me. Married, family-making, successful career eyes. Don’t do it, Crew. Don’t say it. I knew it wasn’t logical deep down. But that was the thing about ADHD, sometimes it meant I couldn’t be in control. Right now it wasn’t my logic in the driver’s seat. It was my feelings, and they went zero to sixty in five seconds.
“I signed up for a big food truck competition.” I announced, reveling in their stunned, joyful faces.
Nope. I hadn’t. But obviously I had no traction in this conversation and if me blurting that out was enough to get someone to lean in to me then so be it.
“The state wide one?” Nathan asked. “We saw a sign up for that the other day.”
Calla nodded. “It seems like it’s going to be a huge event.”
“Yep.” I took another bite and committed full force. “If I win I’ll get $5,000 and a permanent spot on the corner of main street by the shopping and event centers.”
Money was nice, but it was that spot that I needed. A place where my family passed by daily, where they would see my sign and my truck and know that, diagnosis be damned, I was enough on my own.
“Obviously, you’re going to win.” Marigold chimed in. “I still have dreams about your elote.”
Liam nodded. “Ugh, seriously, she talked about it in her sleep for a month. I’m not convinced it wasn’t the baby saying it herself.”
I smirked a grin. They did always like my food. It was where I thrived, in a kitchen.
“Is that what you’re going to make for them?” Calla asked.
I shrugged. “Not sure yet.” More like I committed to this plan about two minutes ago and was playing a game of impromptu lying. “Maybe some carne asada tacos with a beet root coleslaw.”
“That sounds incredible, dear. If you need to practice over here, come by anytime. You know the key is always under the mat for you.” My mother smiled at me knowingly, like the key being for me meant more than a practice kitchen or a place to ask for help with recipes.
I looked away quickly. “Thanks, Mom. I might take you up on that.”
“What about dessert?” Rachel, Adam’s wife, chimed in. “You have to have both, right?”
I froze with my fork mid-way to my mouth. I…hadn’t considered that.
I’d make some desserts in the past, but my reviews back were less than enthusiastic and I always kind of figured I needed to sell the things I was best at- which was mostly Mexican cuisine.
My first assistant for the truck had his mom teach me everything I know about their food and culture. Like a madman, I researched street taco recipes late in the night and had her taste test everything I made. When she was done she said ‘Esto es increíble, lindo ni?o blanco.’ Which I didn’t understand but Jose gave me a thumbs up and I’d stuck with Mexican cuisine ever since. Occasionally adding in a random Tuscan dish for my mother’s sake though.
“I’m not sure.” I shoveled another bite into my mouth and spoke around it. “Maybe a dessert taco? So they all match?”
Mom shook her head. “I think you can do something more extravagant than that. Come by tomorrow afternoon and we can go through my old recipes, see what fits you best.”
I swallowed, almost choking on my too-large bite but nodded. “That sounds good, Mom, thanks.”
Dinner continued, my siblings bouncing their discussions one topic to the next. Honeymoons, babies, soccer practices, date nights. One after the other I felt myself squishing down smaller and smaller. I shoveled the rest of my plate into the iron pit that I called a stomach and stood, taking the empty dish to the kitchen sink.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I’d never been this bad before. This…unnerved. It’s like it follows me everywhere I go. This sense that something in my life just isn’t right. It only let up when I was in my private hide out…and one other time but even then it was always just temporary. It made me feel like I was wading through quick sand, struggling and pushing and pulling in any attempt to make myself move but I’d look down and I’d be in the exact same spot. No, worse than that, I was sinking deeper.
I set the plate in the sink and turned the water on its hottest setting, rinsing off the remanence of red pasta sauce and garlic bread. I could still hear the distant thrums of their conversation at the table, my absence hardly acknowledged.
And why should it be? Why did I even care? So my family was all growing up and moving on and I was…still here. What did that matter? I had a happy life on paper. An apartment ten minutes from work, a spare bedroom to fit all of my extra cooking equipment, a comfy Purple mattress, a job I loved, a family I loved, and…yeah. It was enough. It should be enough. It always had been before. But these last few months…I don’t know. It’s like there’s a voice in my head saying you need more. Saying I had to accomplish more. You’re not enough. This fun-boy, chaotic, entertaining to watch train wreck lifestyle wasn’t enough.
It was that stupid psychiatrist fault. I never should have even gone. Before my diagnosis I was totally fine being who I am. I chalked it up to my colorful imagination and life-of-the-party personality. Worked for me for twenty four years. But my curiosity got the best of me, and after the last panic attack- which was over something as simple as me forgetting to bring in a specific pan in to the truck- I realized something had to be off. There was no way everyone did this, right?
“Crew,” my mother’s voice wafted over me like a calm wave crashing into the shore. “Are you alright?”
I looked down to where my fingers gripped the counter, my knuckles white. They loosened under her stare. “Fine.” I smiled. “Just washing my plate before I head out, I’ve got to start prepping for the competition and all.” It’s almost funny how easily they stacked up now, one lie after another.
Mom’s smile lines dipped into place. “You’re going to do excellent, let me go ahead and grab a couple recipes I think you’d enjoy.”
She turned to a cabinet to the right of the fridge, rifling through her organized index cards with recipes passed down in her family generation after generation. Several of the cards looked dilapidated and nearing the end of their, but she held on to them closely.
“Ahh, here we are.” She pulled out three index cards, details covering the front and back with ingredient lists and directions. “I think any of these would match your theme perfectly. And they’re not terribly hard to accomplish, as long as you follow the recipe.”
I cringed at the last part. Following any recipe down to the T was never quite my thing. Measuring with your heart…that was my thing. Recipes could often steer me wrong and, at the risk of sounding like an a-hole, most of the time my additions or subtractions just made the food better anyway. A touch of brown sugar with the chili powder. And apple chopped and added in for extra texture. Two tablespoons more of butter because…well my heart said it needed it. That was the best results I got. And this ticker of a muscle hadn’t steered my wrong yet, culinary wise.
Mom must have sensed my unease because she sighed. “I mean it, Crew. Baking and cooking are two entirely different ball games. You can’t just throw in an extra egg because you feel like it. Too much or too little of anything in these recipes and it’ll turn out horrible, I promise.”
“Yeah, but-”
“I know you can do it.” She handed the cards my way and patted my hand on top of them. “All you have to do is follow it, exactly step by step.”
I nodded and smiled, despite my mind attempting to process how in the world was I going to rein myself in enough to let that happen. “Alright, Mom.”
She reached on hand up and squeezed my dimple. Which was actually more of a double dimple on my left side. “Such a good boy. You’ve always been so creative, Crew. I can’t wait to see what you and that big brain come up with.”
I looked down at the cards in my hands. Tiny pencil scribbles with exact measurements and intense directions one by one marked off. I winced a little, already wondering if I tweaked just a couple things would it really change that much?
“Me too.” I lied.