Savor It, page 2
Ian and Cassidy smile triumphantly back at me from last year’s victory photo when I heave a bag of crumble onto the register counter. Beside them are photos of Ian with my middle brother, Silas, for two years in a row, back when they were still inseparable. Then there’s Ian and his father—Mayor Ian Carver Sr.—for six years prior to that. Ian’s been winning at this festival since he was eighteen. This year will make ten in a row.
I kiss my fingertips and touch them to the decades-old photo of my mom and dad from the year they won, like I always do.
After I stuff my change into my pocket and say my goodbyes, I dump the feed and myself into the truck, ready to get home, my mind churning the same way it has for months.
As much as it took me by surprise at the time, I have no jealousy over Cassidy being with Ian. She’s welcome to him. Better her than me.
The thing that still back-combs against my nerves is that, while I maintain that it’s better her than me, I also think that she’s just better than me. She’s a doctor, from a family of doctors and lawyers and generations of people that either leave Spunes to do great and important things, or leave Spunes to collect their titles and only return as some sort of concession or out of obligation. Something like, “Well, I needed to be close to Mom, anyway, and the school district in so-and-so county (always one of the next ones over) is rated so excellently!” Like it’s a favor for anyone to just … stay.
Not the case for my family. Especially not for me.
So truly, it’s not so much Ian or Cassidy that bothers me. It’s not that sort of jealousy that sends something twisting through my gut anymore. It’s that this is just as much my town as it is Ian’s. I joined the committee that started preparations for this year’s festival two years ago. I’ve submitted articles over the years prior to the bigger nearby papers in an effort to generate publicity for the events. I’ve done marketing and created social media pages for it. I taught other people how to utilize those pages for their own businesses—people who were otherwise spectacularly averse to new technology before my help. I’m the one who actually had a hand in building it into a bigger tourist attraction over the last decade.
Dammit, I even gave extra credit to my freshman students before the end of the school year for signing up to volunteer! I gambled on their honor and gave them the credit in advance, but who knows if any of them will actually follow through.
I’d simply like a small victory of my own, I think. Even if I can’t beat Ian, I’d just like a moment of consideration. I want to be worth considering.
I also think I’m just getting sick of being handled with kid gloves all the time. I was already tired of it when I was still with Ian. Fed up with feeling like I was the fortunate one and everyone knew it. Like it was amazing that Ian Carver deigned to be with me—the tragic, awkward orphan. The plain, homely girl who grew up to be a woman comfortable and happy in her own skin. Lucky me.
Frankly, it all makes me feel like a fucking loser, and I am tired. Tired of being looked upon with pity, when I’m not overlooked entirely. I just want … I just want to know what it feels like to win, and I don’t think I want too much.
I’ve never had huge aspirations in life. I’ve had dreams, but they’ve all boiled down to very simple things. So as far as I’m concerned, I’m living them. I want to be happy. And in the broader picture, I am. I enjoy teaching and working with kids. I’m blessed to have small class sizes, and it helps that I’ve known every kid their entire life along with most of their families. I don’t have a mortgage because our parents’ life insurance paid off the house, and I bought out my brothers’ shares when I turned eighteen. While the $10,000 prize money would be a welcome cushion, my bills aren’t beyond my means, and I get to take my summers off. I love my animals and my garden. I love my home, my town, my people.
And yes. I would love to find a person of my own, but I refuse to let not having a partner preclude me from enjoying my life. It’d just be nice to share it with someone who appreciates and loves me as is.
I meander the truck up my gravel driveway when I get home, smiling at the sight of the place. Two stories, though it’s still fairly small—with a little front porch and my beloved sunroom hugging the back. Last year, my farmers market earnings were enough to paint the entire thing white, which makes it pop against the backdrop of the trees in the distance.
That smile plummets when I watch my wolfhound bound across the meadow from the direction of the Andersens’, effortlessly leaping over the fence that divides my place from theirs.
“SABLE!” I chide, trying to infuse as much admonishment as I can into two syllables.
She skids to a stop and turns my way, ears flopping. And then she ducks her head and continues hightailing it through the meadow, inconspicuously trying to sneak her way back onto my porch.
“Sable, I can SEE you!” I shout to no avail. Nina Andersen is already terrified of her as it is. If she finds out Sable can hop the fence, she’s going to want it rebuilt.
By the time I get parked and unload the feed, the pony-sized mutt has her body sprawled out on my front porch, her head dangling from the top step. The picture of innocence.
I quirk a brow and let out a beleaguered sigh. She huffs one right back at me.
“Oh, sure. You’re fed up with my shit.” But I laugh despite myself.
The rest of the day fritters by in a haze. I put the key in the Andersens’ lockbox after I make sure things are tidied like they asked. And despite Wren’s trepidation, I happen to think it’ll be nice to have the same people next door for the summer rather than letting it sit empty from June through July. I won’t have to explain myself or my animals multiple times to new people, either. Won’t have any weird run-ins over at the barn that sits on the edge of our properties.
I throw on my bikini top with my cutoffs so I can take advantage of the sunshine, but slip a kimono robe over my shoulders so I don’t feel like I’m being too negligent with my skin. Eggs are collected from the hens, nose rubs and grain are given to my Clydesdale, Bud. Sable unwittingly terrorizes the geese, and I turn my earbuds up to the max while I tend to my garden and tackle other chores. I busy my body and my mind until there’s no room for anything but the small joys in all the present. In my colossal dog bumping around at my side, and my cranky three-legged cat when he slinks in from the meadow. Legoless pops Sable once across her snout for good measure before he commandeers a spot on the porch in the rays.
It’s everything I need to slip back into my happy place.
It’s a beautiful life, and though I am alone, between the people I love and the pets I continue to collect, I am rarely lonely.
* * *
I paint my nails in the sunroom after dinner to unwind, pleasantly exhausted by the time dark finally blankets our little hill, content when my head hits the pillow.
The only reason I know that the renters eventually show up is because Sable whines at me sometime in the dead of night, just before I hear the blaring sirens and see the flashing lights of a police cruiser and a fire truck that go streaking past, dust billowing in their wake.
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.
