Chapter 46
“So your way is … making enough sauce to fill a kiddie pool?” asks Sammie.
“Do not,” says Matt, who is a limp heap in his chair, a rag over his eyes. “Do not question her methods.”
I see Austin and Sammie exchange a look, and I plant a foot on my own chair like Captain Morgan and say, “Well? Eat!”
“You’re scaring me,” says Sammie.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “As you can see, I’ve made many, many dishes.”
I go on to tell them about each one. Yes, a lot of sauces, but also some rice and pasta and bread to soak it all up.
“You had trouble making one meal, so you thought, let’s make sixty. I see the logic,” says Austin, taking a scoop of rice.
“This is almost everything in Babe’s cooking journal. Thankfully I had Matt as translator and sous chef for the day, thank you, Matt.”
He glares at me.
My reputation as a chef is a good one. Usually, I’m skilled.
I’m good at what I do. But I’m exacting.
I’m at a ten at the start of every service.
People don’t always love working under me because—well, I have high standards.
I say it’s because I’m a drill sergeant and only the strong survive.
But the truth is, I am irascible. I have hundreds of timers and tasks going in my head at the same time, and sometimes I forget to use my words to communicate what I need.
That being said, I never shout. I am never a dick. I’m just … firm. Stern.
But also, very often, people seem to have no ability to think for themselves. I don’t want to have to tell everyone to pay attention and see the things I see, but for some reason it seems I always need to!
Even thinking about it is raising my blood pressure.
Point is. For Matt, I think his stage shift working for me in the Birdsong kitchen may have irreparably changed his opinions on the service industry.
“And again, sorry about all the bossiness.”
Matt waves a hand at me and reaches for an overfilled glass of wine.
Sammie stares at everything in front of her. “It’s … just … it’s an awful lot of sauces.”
“Yes, that’s why there’s crudités and baguettes and rice, and proteins to put them on!” I say, like it’s obvious. “Is this not self-explanatory?”
“Okay.” Matt stands. “So this goes with this, and this goes with this, this would be best with any of these three dishes, if you try these two together—”
He goes on, perfectly dictating everything I had told him about every dish on the table. I beam with pride, but the other two just look on blankly.
“You know what, I’m just gonna try a little bit of everything with everything else,” says Austin, scooping some hollandaise onto his plate.
He picks up a piece of jerk chicken, and I say, “That might overwhelm the hollandaise.”
He drops the chicken on his plate and gives me a look.
“I’ll stop,” I say. “I’ll stop.” Then after another moment, “Oh, but save room for dessert, we have a tiramisu that should hopefully be great.”
Thunder, lightning. Both of which seem to foreshadow that the tiramisu will not, in fact, be great at all.
I finally start loading up my own plate and begin to see this how everyone else does. A table full of dips. An offering of wet things and some seemingly unrelated other things.
When the doorbell rings, I say, “Nope!”
“Come on, Didion,” says Sammie.
“No, today is my day. When it’s your day, you can decide what you want all of us to do. We can all go out and hang out at the pier with Johnny Hart and consider making a huge mistake, but tonight is my night.”
This is the first time no one goes to the door, so the bell rings again.
Sammie glowers at me.
“Okay, okay,” she says, sitting back down. “I’ll have more salty liquids.”
“So, how exactly is this going to stop the time warp?” asks Austin. “I thought your theory was that we’ve all got stuff we need to work on.”
I look down at the table and open my mouth, but then am not sure how to answer.
“I think I just thought … food was what Babe and I shared. I guess I thought, if I could make her recipes…”
The somewhat teasing mood shifts, and empathy fills the air.
The truth is, my heart was a tangle today. My mind, itself, like a soupy dip. I’d known I was making a mistake last night, I’d actively thought, I am making a mistake and that’s okay. But now, today-me is struggling to know what to do with the aftermath.
Sure, there’s every possibility we will be trapped in this limbo for all of eternity, and I’ll have plenty of time with Austin. Nothing seems off the table to me at this point. But what if we figure it out? What if we break out of it, and we have to go back to real life?
It feels actually unimaginable to me to put my chef coat on and step back into that gleaming, stainless steel and ceramic kitchen.
To go back to clarifying consommé and timing out soufflé.
Even if I do get my talent back, how could I go back to the bright lights of that kitchen with its constant beeping timers and tick-tick-ticking gas stove and the empty nights alone where I collapse in an overly fragrant puddle on my couch and watch reruns of Gilmore Girls until I fall asleep, then do it all over again the next day?
Every day? Forever? Until my blood pressure finally peaks and I die young of a stroke from being overworked and underliving like my father?
I had cooked today because it allows me not to feel. But I remember a time when I cooked because it was what made me feel.
I stand up and go to the fridge and get the dessert. I bring out four forks, plop it in the center of all the other food, and then take a fork straight to the middle and carve out a messy, unattractive bite and stuff it in my mouth.
“Can we … all? Have dessert instead of sauce?” asks Sammie.
“I’m not your parent,” I say, mouth full. “You can have straight whiskey and nothing else if you want it.”
Everyone moves their plates out of the way, and forks into the tiramisu.
“Okay, this is actually really good,” Sammie says.
I look to Matt, who grins at me.
I roll my eyes. “Matt made it.”
“Did you really?” asks Sammie.
“Man, that’s good,” Austin says. “You should be a chef.”
“Oh, screw you guys,” I say.
The others laugh.
“Well, it was your idea to do the frozen chocolate bar thing on the top,” says Matt, taking another bite.
We all eat contentedly for a while, until it’s almost entirely devoured.
But then Sammie gasps. “Wait—”
She jumps up from the table and runs to the freezer. Comes back with half of the foil-wrapped chocolate bar in her hand. “Is this what you used?”
“Yes…?” I say, not getting it.
She starts laughing, and then bites her lip and winces at me. “This is a mushroom chocolate bar. I gave it to Mom when she was sick.”
I stare at her blankly. But then I understand. “It’s—like—”
“Like … magic mushrooms.”