I certainly can’t say I had a bad childhood. But I grew up early and fast, and over the years the resentment grew. The classic child-becomes-the-parent scenario. Flaky parent and studious child: watch the disconcerting yet sometimes charming storyline unfold on tonight’s episode of What’d Your Parents Do to You? I knew it, I recognized it, I could see my issues coming a mile away. Especially when I was halfway through my twenties and my mother was halfway through her fifties, and I was still cleaning up her messes.
I was California Roxie now, but I was secretly scared to death that I’d morph back into Bailey Falls Roxie here. I’d defined myself in California, and I was extremely reluctant to live again in a town that defined me only as Trudy Callahan’s daughter, the one who blushes a lot.
This really couldn’t have come at a better time, though . . .
Okay—so I just wouldn’t let it get under my skin. I’d do this for her, but this was it.
“It’s good pie. Really good pie. Lard?” I asked my mother later that evening. She’d brought home the last of a pie from the diner for dessert.
“Pardon me?”
“Is there lard in the crust?” I asked again.
I’d come outside after dinner to clear my head, get some fresh air, and of course, she’d flitted after me like a moth. I realized shortly after I entered the house that my dream of going to bed with the sun was a pipe dream. But I had to admit, there was great air in the Hudson Valley—far better than that in Los Angeles.
“Oh, you’d have to ask Katie about the pie, dear; she makes it.” My mother scraped her plate clean with the back of her fork, getting the last little bit.
“Have you ever asked her why she only makes cherry?” I asked, also scraping the plate clean. It was really good.
“No.”
“Why not? Didn’t you ever think that maybe, since the cherry pie is so fantastic, she might make other pies? Just as good, if not better?” I asked, licking my fork.
My mom just shrugged.
I exploded. “But you run the place! It’s your diner! Why in the world wouldn’t a business owner ask the pie woman if she makes more pie?” I thumped on the arm of my Adirondack chair for emphasis, and my fork clattered to the porch floor.
She looked at me for a moment; my hand was still clenched in a fist. “Just how pissed are you?”
“Pretty pissed.” I sighed, setting my plate on the floor. So much for not letting it get under my skin. Evidently this was a splinter the size of a telephone pole. “I just — ugh.” I set my head down where my plate had been.
“Say it, Roxie,” she said.
“I’m here. And I’m going to hold down the fort while you’re gone. But like I said, I’m not bailing you out again.” I lifted my head to look up at her through tired eyes.
“I hardly think coming to help at your family’s diner is bailing out. Not when I have a chance to go on TV and try something really new and exciting,” she said.
I closed my eyes. I was feeling the effects of my drive, and not up to a fight right now.
“I agree that this time has a different feel to it. CBS programming isn’t usually the method you use to get me to come home, or fix something, or make a call, or literally bail you out when you flood the basement because you forget to turn off the hose. But I’m talking about in the future. When these things happen again? Not going to come running. I’ve got my own life to take care of. I have a career—or I’m trying to, anyway. We clear?”
She opened her mouth. Then closed it. Then opened it again.
“When will you be back?” I asked quietly.
“The main producer said I won’t be able to check in, something about a nondisclosure, but that in an emergency I’d be able to contact you or vice versa, so don’t think that—”
“When will you be back?” I repeated.
“It depends on how well I do, how well Aunt Cheryl does, if we’re able to stay in the game until the end, so—”
I used literally every ounce of patience available to me to calmly ask one more time, “When. Will you. Be back?”
“September. Hopefully by Labor Day.”
Three months. I’d be here the entire summer. Wow. Would I have totally morphed back into my high school self by the time she returned?
I sat up tall. I wasn’t that socially awkward girl anymore. I was a graduate of the American Culinary Institute. A private chef in Los Angeles. California Roxie, a chef so talented I once made a spotted dick so good that Jack Hamilton made a face I’m pretty sure only Grace Sheridan usually gets to see.
I took a deep breath, centered, and nodded. “Okay. The summer. That’s fine.”
“Really?” she asked, looking surprised and relieved.
I forced a smile. “I’m sure it will be just fine. And I’m exhausted, so I’m going to bed.”
I settled into my childhood bed, surrounded by everything important to me as a teenage girl. Instead of posters of Justin Timberlake and Edward Cullen, I had a shrine to Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain. Those two would make a heavenly sandwich for any woman to slip in between. If asked, I’d be their meat.
Instead of cheerleading pom-poms and pictures of the prom, I had framed menus from some of my favorite restaurants in New York City. The NoMad. WD-50. The Shake Shack. Pok Pok NY. Union Square Café. Of course Le Bernardin. See above-mentioned Ripert/Bourdain sammich.
While other girls in my high school were planning which sorority to rush next year in college and what dress to wear to prom, I was daydreaming about chanterelles and geoduck. Of the American Culinary Institute in beautiful, sunny Santa Barbara. A world away from my hometown.