by Tom Ryan
I was lying on the couch wondering if I should just bite the bullet, put together a hobo sack and run away from home, when Alma came in and flopped into the chair next to me.
“Danny, why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
What the hell? Had someone formed a committee to harass me? I sat up and looked at her. “Where did that come from?”
“I dunno, I was just wondering if you were sweet on anyone. You know, like Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass. Although hopefully not totally like that, because Natalie Wood’s character went bonkers. Besides, you aren’t nearly as handsome as Warren Beatty.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Hey, don’t take it personally. Warren Beatty was a total hottie. So why don’t you? Have a girlfriend, that is.”
I closed my eyes and made a face. I wished I had a real answer for that one.
“I dunno, Al. I guess I haven’t found the right girl yet.”
“Huh. Well, don’t you think you should be looking? You’re not getting any younger.”
“Alma! I’m only seventeen. Why does it matter?”
“I told you, I was just thinking about it. Anyway, I think I might have some ideas about what kind of girl you should go out with.”
“Oh yeah? Fill me in.” At this point, I was willing to take love lessons from anyone.
She chewed on her bottom lip. “Well, she’d probably have kind of a Rita Hayworth thing going on. Thick red hair, pale skin.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sounds good. What else?”
“Well, she’d probably dress kind of like Annie Hall.”
“That sounds like a decent combo,” I said.
“You think so? Because I’m pretty sure she just pulled into the driveway in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”
I jumped up and looked out the window. Sure enough, Old Bessie was parked in the driveway, and Lisa was sitting behind the wheel.
“Alma! How long has she been out there?”
“Just a few minutes.”
“Thanks a lot for telling me.” I headed to the front door and turned around before going outside. “By the way, she’s not my girlfriend.”
“Well, you never know. ‘This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.’ ”
I walked up to Old Bessie and knocked on the window. I half expected that Lisa had come just to tell me off, so I was relieved when she smiled up at me and pointed to the seat next to her. I got into the car.
“Hey,” I said.
“Listen, D,” she said, talking fast. “I know I hurt your feelings last night, and I’d feel really bad if we couldn’t still be friends and I’m really sorry and can we please just forget that it ever happened?
“You didn’t hurt my feelings,” I lied. “You just kind of took me by surprise.”
“Well, if I—I don’t know—offended your manhood, or anything like that, I didn’t mean to insinuate anything. It was stupid of me.”
I didn’t say anything. She reached over and put her hand on my arm, and I looked at her reluctantly. She pulled her sunglasses down her nose so I could see her eyes. She looked really sincere, which made me feel even worse about freaking out at her.
“Can we please be friends again?” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do if I had to spend the rest of the summer not hanging out with you.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I said. “I was a total asshole. It’s just that you aren’t the first person who’s said that to me recently—about being gay. I’m pretty sick of it.”
“Hey, I totally get it. I shouldn’t have been so quick to jump to conclusions. Listen, let’s start fresh and pretend that last night never happened.”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
“Awesome!” she said. “Now that we’re best friends again, I have a great idea. Why don’t we make it our mission for the rest of the summer to find you an awesome girl?”
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic, but wishing I had the balls to tell her the truth.
“You know,” she said, “you really don’t have to worry about me not hanging out with you anymore. This Kierce thing—it’s just a summer fling.”
FOURTEEN
“If you know how to cook, you will never go hungry,” JP said, “and you will always have work, wherever you go. The world needs chefs like it needs carpenters. Governments might collapse, and aliens might invade, but people will always want to eat good food.”
He turned to the stove and flicked on a burner, grabbed some olive oil and swirled it into a pan, and followed it up with some garlic.
“If we had fresh chilis, I’d use those, but we don’t, so we’ll improvise. Get me that red bottle on that shelf over there,” he directed. I grabbed the plastic squeeze bottle and passed it to him. He held it up and showed me the label, a rooster surrounded by Asian characters. “Sriracha sauce,” he said. “Chilis, vinegar, garlic and salt. Delicious. Every kitchen needs some. Good on eggs, good in a marinade, you name it. But today, we make pasta aglio e olio.”
Sree rotcha sauce. Pasta ally-oh ee oh-lee-oh. I was getting used to hearing lots of names for things that I doubted I’d remember, let alone be able to spell.
He squeezed some of the sauce into the pan. Then he reached into the fridge for a container full of linguine that I’d cooked and oiled that morning, grabbed a handful and tossed it in the pan. He poured in some more oil, shook it all around and slid it onto two small plates. Then he finished them with some cheese and handed one to me.
“Mmm,” I said, my mouth full. “Spicy. Good.”
“About fifty cents a plate. Another reason a cook never goes hungry. If you know what you’re doing, you can make delicious food for very little money. Even a chef without two dimes to rub together can eat well, always.”
I was still spending a lot of time chopping and peeling, but JP had been teaching me more stuff every day. He’d gradually introduced me to actual cooking by letting me try my hand at pasta.
“There are two things to remember when cooking pasta,” he said. “The water should be as salty as the sea, and you must never overcook it. It should be al dente. Firm, not hard. The mouth should feel it, should need to chew it.”
Every couple of days, he’d teach me something new. He showed me how to make a medium-poached egg, his idea of the perfect food. We made pastry, chilling the ingredients first and then working quickly so the end result would be flaky and light. We picked fresh herbs from the pots he’d planted out back, and he showed me which ones to use with which foods. One day, we butchered a side of beef into various steaks and roasts, and then roasted the leftover bits and bones and made a rich stock.
But it was when he began to demonstrate sauces that I finally fell completely in love with cooking. I had a hard time believing that there were so many thousands of ways to complement food with pan reductions and vinaigrettes and marinades. I slowly whisked lemon juice into butter and egg yolks, and stirred in fragrant chopped dill for smooth, rich hollandaise sauce. Fresh figs and balsamic vinegar, cooked over very low heat for a long time, created a sweet and tart syrup that could be drizzled over goat cheese and fresh greens, or pooled underneath golden-seared scallops. I opened cans of Italian plum tomatoes and crushed them up with my hands, threw them into a pot with some sautéed onion and garlic, and let the whole mess simmer with a handful of fresh basil and oregano for marinara sauce that I imagined smelled and tasted like the Italian countryside.
Cooking created endless possibilities. I began to realize that you could travel the world without leaving your kitchen.
It was the first time I had ever been really good at something. JP told me that I was a natural, and I actually believed him. The more he showed me, the more I wanted to learn. As I watched him confidently throw down dozens of perfectly cooked plates during one busy shift after another, it began to dawn on me that I could picture myself in his shoes. I belonged in the kitchen.
“How did you become a chef?” I asked JP one day when he was sho
wing me how to make a compound butter by mashing cheese, herbs and butter into a paste and rolling it in plastic wrap.
“I did it the hard way,” he said. “I started off where you are. Lower than where you are, and I worked my way up through the kitchen. I couldn’t afford to go to school, so I had to pay my dues in the trenches.”
“There are schools?”
“Sure. These days there are lots of them. In my opinion, the best one in the country is in Montreal. The Atwater Culinary Institute. They have some great teachers.” He stopped what he was doing and looked at me. “Have you been thinking about becoming a chef?”
I imagined living in a city like Montreal, wearing a beret and a striped scarf and biking through the old city to a school full of cute guys with French accents. There was bound to be an endless supply of exotic groceries, not to mention hundreds of fantastic restaurants where I could work to pay my way through school.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been thinking that I might want to be a chef. Like you.”
“Comme moi? Very flattering, Danny. But you should know that there’s a lot more to cooking than what we’re doing here. It’s a tough business, and there will be days, mark my words, when the look of food, even the most delicious food in the world, will make you sick.”
“I still feel like it could be the right thing for me.”
“Well, in that case, I’d be honored to help you any way I can.” He reached up to his neatly shelved row of cookbooks, pulled down a thick, serious-looking book and dropped it with a thud on the counter next to me. “You can start with this. Take it home and read it.”
The book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was dog-eared and had food stains on every page. Inside, I found hundreds of elaborate recipes that sounded as if they’d take days to make. I started reading it at home in the mornings before work, and on the beach with Lisa and the guys. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know, and my resolve to become a chef became stronger every day.
For the first time, I felt excited about my future. Cooking was the escape route I’d been looking for. JP had lived and worked all over the world. I could do that too. Deep Cove would be a place I just dropped into once in a while. My real life was somewhere else, waiting for me.
THE DAY MY DAD flew home, Mom and Alma and I went to the airport to pick him up. He dropped his bags as he came out of the gate and picked my mom up off her feet, twirling her around. Then he put her down and gave her a huge kiss on the mouth.
“‘Fasten your seatbelts,’” Alma said to me. “‘It’s gonna be a bumpy night.’”
Dad bent over and gave her a big bear hug and then reached out to give me a manly handshake.
“There he is,” he said. “The working man himself.”
“So is there any news with the contractor?” my mom asked him as we were driving home.
“What kind of news?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe there are some new opportunities coming up.”
He sighed, then forced a smile. “Do you know what, Mary? I just got home, and that’s about the last thing I want to talk about right now.” My mom didn’t say anything; she just smiled tensely and turned to look out the side window.
“What are you most excited to do now that you’re home, Dad?” Alma asked him.
“Do you know what, Alma? I can’t wait to just kick back and put my feet up.”
IT SEEMED LIKE that’s all he wanted to do. Usually when Dad came home from Alberta, he acted like he was making up for lost time. He’d start new building projects around the house, or bug me and Alma to go fishing with him. This time, though, he seemed content to sit on the deck and struggle with the crossword or just stare out at the garden for hours on end.
Weirdest of all, he didn’t once bring up university with me. He asked me vague questions about my friends and took a quick look at my report card, but there was no sign of his usual obsession with my future.
One morning, a few days after he arrived, I came into the kitchen and found Mom standing at the counter. She was nursing a cup of tea and staring out the window at the back of Dad’s head.
“Is it my imagination, or has he been acting strange?” she asked me.
“Totally strange,” I said. I remembered Lisa’s story about her mom. Was that happening to Dad? “Do you think he’s going crazy?” I asked her.
She laughed. “Crazy like a fox, maybe.” She rinsed out her cup and sighed. “Who knows. I think the whole Alberta thing is starting to get to him. I’ve never seen him this bothered about getting laid off. He doesn’t want to talk about it at all.”
“It’s not like this is the first time it’s happened,” I said.
“Well, that might be the problem. The money’s good out there, but it’s a tough life. Tough on all of us, but especially on him. Why do you think he’s always giving you advice about universities and stuff?”
“I guess so,” I said, “but he hasn’t even tried to talk about that stuff with me since he got home. Not that I’m complaining.”
“Well, you never know. Maybe he’s so frustrated about his own career that he isn’t in the mood to talk to you about yours.”
It had never occurred to me that Dad ever got discouraged about anything. He always sounded so sure of how I should live my life that it came as a bit of a surprise to hear that he might be unhappy with his own.
I wanted to talk to Dad about my plan to go to culinary school. If he realized that I’d finally found my calling, it might cheer him up a little bit, but I needed to make sure he was in a good mood when I brought it up. I decided to wait for the perfect opportunity.
As it turned out, Mom had her own plans to cheer Dad up. On my next day off, she announced that we were going to have a family night. She and Alma drove into town and came home with a pizza and a bunch of chips and chocolate bars. We ate supper in the living room and watched Vertigo—Alma’s suggestion. I looked over at Mom and Dad sitting on the couch with their arms around each other, and at Alma, sitting cross-legged on the floor, her eyes glued to the tv. They all looked so content, it made me sad to think that I might never have children of my own. That I’d have to hide the real me from the people who knew me best.
I knew my days in Deep Cove were numbered. Now that I had a plan, I told myself that if I could just make it through one more school year, if I could just keep pretending to be someone I wasn’t, then I could move away for cooking school and start living my life. Maybe in Montreal I could finally be myself.
FIFTEEN
“I think I’m in love with her,” said Kierce.
I looked over at him, and I could tell from the bizarre dreamy look on his face that he was telling the truth. Or at least what he thought was the truth.
We were in his van, wishing there was something more fun to do than just cruise the strip. Tonight was the first time since he and Lisa had hooked up that it was just me and the guys hanging out. Lisa had rushed away after work, saying something about having promised to spend the evening with her aunt.
“Bullshit,” said Jay. “You just love getting laid.”
“No way, man. When you know, you know.”
“What happened to the rules?” I asked him. “You know, Rule Forty-five: Love ’em and leave ’em. Or Rule Eighty-one: Women—can’t live with ’em, can’t live with ’em.”
He waved his hand at me, brushing away my comments. “You guys haven’t experienced the joys of true love. When you do, you’ll understand that there’s really only one Golden Rule: All you need is love.”
“Excuse me,” said Jay. “I’m gonna go barf for a few minutes.”
The Lisa and Kierce thing hadn’t been as big a deal as I’d thought it would be. Instead of disappearing into some kind of couple’s bubble, they spent most of their time with me and Jay. I was happy to be hanging out with the guys again, but I worried Kierce was setting himself up for a big disappointment. “A summer fling.” That’s what Lisa had called it. That definitely didn’t line up with all his l
ove talk.
“What makes you think you’re in love?” I asked him. “You’ve only been dating for a couple of weeks.”
“You just know, Dan. It’s a feeling you get when your heart and your wang are in perfect harmony.”
“Lovely,” I said.
“Oh yeah!” said Jay. “That reminds me! I was at the Spot yesterday, and you horndogs are so busted!”
“What do you mean?” asked Kierce.
“Don’t play dumb,” said Jay. “You forgot to remove the evidence.”
Kierce gave him a blank look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The condom wrapper? You forgot to remove your garbage after your love session.”
“Gross,” I said.
“No way,” said Kierce. “We never did it at the Spot. We haven’t even gone back there since the night our true love first bloomed.”
“I guess it was just a matter of time before someone found the place,” said Jay.
“Yeah,” I said, “but it’s pretty disgusting to think about people doing it at the Spot.”
“I don’t think it’s disgusting,” said Kierce. “I think it’s awesome. I wish I’d thought of it first.”
LISA BREEZED INTO the kitchen the next day and rummaged around in her purse before thrusting a piece of paper at me. “Look!” she said.
I unfolded the paper, which had obviously been ripped from a telephone pole.
WONDERFUL WALLBURN’S ROLLING CARNIVAL
Rides! Games! Concessions! August 11–13
“It’ll be fun!” she said. “Something to do besides driving in circles.”
It wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time. Every summer for as long as I could remember, Wallburn’s Carnival had set up in a field outside of town. It was a rip-off, but Lisa had a point—it could be fun to do something different.
“I’M NOT A BIG FAN of these things,” said Kierce a couple of nights later as we tried to find a place to park in the field. “Everyone knows carnies are a bunch of queers. I don’t like having to walk around watching my back.”
