Back To U

chapter Twenty

Cucumbers have a cooling effect on any dish.



Gwen's Journal - September 29th, Sunday 1990



The semester started just a couple of weeks ago, and it already sucks. I thought summer sucked. Ellen brings home new boyfriend number nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine. A guy who does seat covers for cars, whole town calls him Upholstery Pete. She won't end up marrying him, thank god. She’ll want to so he can take care of things, as if he even could, he can’t put the toilet seat down. But he’ll be gone before I go back again, which will hopefully be never.



And the stupid, stupid, stupid P.E. class I have to take for my degree where we play dodge ball? As if I’m going to be a P.E. teacher and even if I did I would never, ever, ever make kids play a game where getting hit in the face leads to you getting kicked out of the game, and the kid who nailed you is the winner. What is that? Lord of the Phys. Ed. Flies? But the running we’re doing, I’m probably not used to the exercise yet, but I think it’s screwed up my system or something.



Gwen's life the day before…



The field lay empty in front of her, all the players gone along with the band. She did love a good piccolo player, but even he was probably off at some party. It seemed everyone had left her there in the stadium. She could see the sun head down the sky, orangey and warm, like it also needed to remind her the day was over.

She’d sit on the hard bleachers all night. She was already numb to them. A month back at school and she should be at a party. It should feel like a beginning, but that was last year, wasn’t it? Maybe they called it the sophomore slump for a reason, but what she feared the year would bring made a slump sound inviting.

"Gwen." She heard Max, knew his voice at a distance, in her head, in her dreams. She looked toward her feet where the bleachers ran in strips and saw Max standing beneath her. "Whatcha doin’ up there?"

She wanted to ask him what he was doing underneath where it was nothing but shadows and gum and whatever else people threw away on purpose or accidentally.

"Gwen?"

She heard the click of his camera, knew he could wait her out if he wanted to, or worse, he’d get distracted taking shots and wander off before he remembered to come back to her.

"Are you mad at me, again?"

God, was she? It seemed like she’d been mad since he’d said goodbye in June and not missed her as much as she’d missed him. "I’m fine."

"You know, I’m beginning to think that when girls answer a question like that, they don’t say what they really think."

All guys knew that, didn’t they? Duh. Not that she was going to tell him he’d gotten it right. She tried to see his face in the gaps of the bleachers but only heard his camera clicking below. He was so talented that he’d be gone the day after they graduated and so handsome he still took her breath away even after a year.

"Gwen? Don’t get mad, well, madder, but I think if you had, you know, more to do you’d be more okay with the time the newspaper’s taking. I know I’m in the darkroom a lot lately, but you know…"

So she just didn’t have enough to do? That was her problem? "It’s not like I’m not taking eighteen credits, Max. You’re not the only one going to school."

"I know. It’s just that elementary ed. doesn’t really seem like it’s your thing."

"What do you mean by that?" She’d passed every class, every class so far, even the really stupid ones.

"It’s just that ed. majors are, well, especially the ones teaching kids, they’re so, you know, psyched about it. Remember that assignment with the marbles and the molding clay? You gotta admit that yours didn’t really look like the solar system."

"Jeez, go away. You’re not helping."

"Helping? I’ve been trying, Gwen. I can’t win with you. I didn’t call enough this summer. I wasn’t jealous enough when that guy Steve drove you back to Belmar for school. You’re my girlfriend, and I didn’t think I needed to be, and god, Gwen, he’s not even your type."

"My period’s late." The words came out so quickly and without any kind of conversational echo. It was like a hiccup that polite people ignored, that polite people went on ignoring. "I’m just stressed, that’s all. I think it’s because I started to exercise or something. I’ll get it soon. It’s nothing."





Back to U…



She’d followed Nicola out and stood on the front porch in her socks, which might not have been a great idea for a couple of reasons. The big one, besides not wanting to talk to the woman at all, was that Nicola wore a coat and boots, and Gwen was already freezing. She tried not to shift her weight back and forth on her feet because that was trying to keep warm like squirrels did.

"You are here because you cannot live in the dormitory, yes?"

"Oui." Gwen smiled like she’d made a joke at her own expense, but Nicola didn’t register it. "And… I’ve kind of been dating Max. You probably know that."

"I am very, very tolerant of men. They are..." Nicola waved her hand, "men. Max will let you stay. I will not."

Gwen forgot she was cold for a moment. What did that mean? Head of her program or not, who did Max’s ex-girlfriend think she was? "Listen, I know that Max feels responsible for you coming here--"

Nicola laughed, and it sounded light and musical even though Gwen knew it was fakey and mean. "I should hope so. We have had our difficultés as anyone does. And what this is," Nicola waved an elegant finger her direction, "I am understanding to be… oh, what is the word? Nostalgia."

Why, when Nicola said it, did nostalgia sound so old and moldy? "I’m here for old time’s sake?"

"Yes, you understand also. His attention will turn, and we will be stronger, our marriage."

Marriage? Lord, but the woman had a hurtful way with the English language. "You mean relationship."

Nicola didn’t answer, just stood there looking so perfectly put together Gwen heard cool as a cucumber run through her head over and over and had to stop thinking it to focus. "You’re married to Max?"

"But of course." Nicola gave a sad smile that looked neither sad nor smiling. "He did not tell you I see by the wrinkle just here." Nicola touched the smooth spot between her own thirty-year-old eyes. "Men… are they not small boys? But he has taken you in, for a price, has he not? And you have no finances. This is right? And no… I must be honest, ability." Nicola shook her head. "Shame."

Shame. Is that what she felt? It could be in there along with embarrassment, anger, and maybe heartbreaking pain all wadded up in the world’s largest ball of stupidity residing at her core. She felt a shiver run through her.

"Ah, but you are cold, and I am off now." Nicola sighed. "He will come to his senses speedy enough, no?"

No, he wouldn’t. He never had. He never would. And obviously she hadn’t come to her senses speedy enough to avoid that lesson again.





Missy drove them towards town, and Gwen tried to imagine she was alone without a daughter beside her, a mother in the back seat, and barely enough money for the cheap hotel they were headed for. Missy had turned down the radio but the pop station seemed to specialize in women panting over unintelligible lyrics, and it wasn’t filling the silent gaps enough.

They would ask her soon, any minute, why the hell she’d dragged them out of Max’s. They couldn’t be ignored for long, but maybe they could be distracted for another minute. She turned to face the front windshield, the signs bright in the night as they lined the blocks ahead. "So, Missy, you’re driving grandma home tomorrow."

"Yeah."

"Glad your medical adventure’s over, Mom?"

Missy’s eyes darted to the rear view mirror, and Gwen swiveled to catch Ellen’s answering look. "What?"

"Gwennie, what happened with Max? He didn’t understand why we were leaving either and such a nice meal we had."

Clearly she’d learned her distraction trick from her mother, but she’d done it first this time, so Ellen had to be the one to answer. "What’s going on, you two? I saw the look. Missy, your grandmother practically invented the look. I grew up with it, and I know it means withholding information."

Ellen gave a hint of a smile. "It was my mother who invented the look." Nostalgia, Gwen thought, but the good kind. "I’m just second generation."

"You’re doing the distraction thing again, Mom. What’s going on?"

Missy stopped at a red light and turned to her, and Gwen felt a pulse of panic. "Grandma has osteoporosis."

"Early days, early days." Ellen waved her hand in dismissal. "I refuse to have that humpy back. Surely there are fashion tricks to camouflage it if it comes in real bad, like stripes. Horizontal, do you suppose?"

Gwen tried to remember what she knew about osteoporosis beyond breaking a hip, and it seemed like there were some potentially serious health issues. "Mom, when you get home I want you to see your doctor and check on medications, exercise, maybe some physical therapy." She saw the look again and busted them in the rear view mirror. "Tell me."

Ellen sighed like a long suffering teenager, and Gwen wondered if Missy had learned that generationally as well. "I don’t have any insurance."

"You certainly do."

"I did, Gwennie, but to be fair to the tool, and I’d rather not be, but he can’t take care of me anymore. I’m not even his mother-in-law, unless you patch things up with him."

Missy shook her head. "Mom, you can fix this, all of it."

She was supposed to do what? Re-snag a husband so she and her mother had someone to insure them?

But Missy kept going, clearly buying whatever story Steve had sold her. "He’s alone. He really is. And he--"

"Oh, so I should quick go catch him while he’s between girlfriends?"

She heard Missy suck in a breath. "That’s mean."

"Yeah, mean to me, and I don’t think I need to take advice from either of you." She hooked a thumb toward the backseat. "Hannah Montana’s had a stadium worth of potential husbands, and you’ve followed up Austin with Bryan, and don’t think I didn’t notice. He thinks anything female is fair game. You won’t be the only one, Missy. Your father may have walked out after twenty years, but we had twenty years. Bryan’s just like Max."

Ellen leaned into the gap between the front seats. "What about Max?"

Missy pulled into the hotel parking lot and jerked into a parking space. "You don’t know anything."

The hell she didn't. "Well, I know he’s married."

Missy looked at her like she was crazy. "Bryan is not married!"

Ellen made a clicking sound with her tongue. "Max, honey. And don’t stress your mom out about boys. She doesn’t know anything."

"God, right, huh?"

They got out and left her in the car.





"It’s darkest before the dawn, Gwennie."

Gwen listened to the grumble of the radiator, felt the polyester bedspread scratch the underside of her chin, and understood a little of Martha Stewart’s experience in prison. And she knew her mother would wait for some response. There, in the dark of a cheap motel in separate but equally lumpy double beds, her mother could wait forever.

Gwen sighed. "It’s darkest before you see the light at the end of the tunnel. And that light is actually a train that finishes you off."

"Heavens, I don’t think it’s all that bad."

She considered the state of her affairs, and since Max was married, she was also guilty of an actual affair. "My husband left me and took everything. Max set me up to knock me down again. Deb and Nicola made me commit to a program I can’t afford. My daughter isn’t listening to me and will screw up her life. Gee, am I leaving anything out?"

"You’re leaving me out. You’ve blamed Steve and Max and the folks in the cooking school and Missy. You must be depressed if you didn’t start with me. I worked in a bar. I liked men, and they liked me. I didn’t give you the right kind of house or the right kind of dad. I think it’s fun to dress up for Halloween and have a good time."

She heard her mother take in a breath. "But let me tell you something, Gwennie. People aren’t like one of your recipes. You can’t take what you want and throw out the parts you don’t and make something that suits you. I’m an Ellen casserole, and I don’t like all the ingredients either. I’d have chosen for your dad to stay with me longer, a lot longer, but I made do. That's what being human's about, to go on loving our lopsided lives and all the half-baked people in it." Ellen gave a little snort and rolled over.

Gwen felt the heat of tears pour out of the corners of her eyes and down along the side of her face. She wanted to say goodnight, wanted to crawl into bed with her mother and be comforted, helped, forgiven, but instead she tried to steady her breathing so no one would know she was crying at all.





She’d spent a week going from the Belmar kitchen to the library to the motel room Ellen had put on a credit card for her. It was probably a credit card Steve had forgotten to cancel. She didn’t want to think about any of that, just get through finals and then move in with her mother where she’d begin amassing cats and body fat and not necessarily in that order.

Other things she wasn't thinking about? Thanksgiving, which had come and gone without so much as a turkey sandwich. All of the messages from Max on her cellphone. And the fact that she'd let herself get close to him again, and he’d squashed her like a bug with a woman she really, really hated for just being that woman. She wasn’t going to think about any of that, just school.

She’d aced her psychology test and wished she could just enjoy completing her associate’s degree, but the dream of becoming a chef had muddied the water. Anything less than a culinary degree felt like more failure, and sitting in the classroom with the final test in front of her, she felt ill. Just seeing a tense Deb and surprisingly relaxed Ty, she'd had a headache before she even started.

By page two her eyes crossed from pain, and she wasn’t sure if the meat HACCP systems were regulated by the USDA with seafood and juice falling under the FDA, or if she had that reversed. When the definition of charcuterie stumped her for ten minutes, she knew the test had her bacon. Charcuterie... cooked flesh... prepared meats... bacon. She got the first section answered and then kept going.

Page after page she mowed it down. Wrong probably, but answered. She visualized a pair of headache pills, a glass of cheap wine, and a bath in a questionable tub waiting for her when she finished. So what if it would only be noon. It was okay to drink a little since the hands-on testing wasn’t until the next day. Wasn't that a country western song? If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and drink 'cause it's five o'clock somewhere.

She hummed the drinking song while she finished page eight by sketching a kitchen layout for a fifty seat restaurant. She'd hoped that besides happy hour, somewhere in the world it was happy life-stage for women her age. It may be that medication rates were up for her demographic, suicide rates were climbing, and satisfaction rates remained non-existent, but like a good western twang, somewhere middle-aged women were coming into their own and feeling satisfied with the quality of their lives half-way done. The gals were probably part of an obscure tribe with a mere three or four women, but they’d managed to wave goodbye to their children and were enjoying the abundance of what was left to them. She’d imagine that because of those women, their sisters all over the world could grab some happiness because there was happiness somewhere.

She flipped the page over to a section on culinary arts related mathematics determining food costs, yields, and percentages. She sighed loudly enough that Deb looked up to give her an inch of pity. She'd take pity. She wasn’t short any. Even she knew she was swimming in it, but she'd take it. It was better than the world of regret she'd been carrying for years.





She'd explained to Marta, the woman at the motel desk, about the hands-on testing. Gwen knew she'd really lost everyone in her life if she had to chat up someone who was paid to be nice. It might just be the friend equivalent of hiring a hooker. And black box testing did sound pretty bad. Marta thought the students were placed in an actual box.

Heading down the culinary arts wing, Gwen decided that being enclosed in a box would have made her less nervous. She actually did pretty well under tables, so a box couldn't be that much different.

Stepping into the kitchen, she felt tension radiating from everyone except Ty. Ty looked ready to go. His chef’s jacket, his hat, and his smile were already on, and like an Olympian at the starting line, he was prepared, in place, and already a winner. Naturellement.

She remembered with fondness the painful book testing the day before. Sure, she’d suffered then, had a throbbing headache, but compared to what lay ahead, the written test had been filled with charm.

Charm, and she hadn't even had wine or a bath. She’d fallen asleep on the polyester bedspread after eating popcorn for dinner. The dining experience had been enhanced by a reality show that involved troubled young women who confused their currency in the world with their sexuality and who deeply needed to get their GED's and work on their language to stop bleep, bleeping, bleep, bleep, bleeping so much. Even that seemed delightful to her as she waited for the black box. The previous day had been, in fact, so perfect, so appealing, she wanted to live it over and over again like Ground Hog day.

Deb stood in front of a steel cart, neither black nor a box, and Gwen tried to gauge her face. Mostly tired, with hints of grim. Grim, Gwen was pretty sure, was bad. Grim, when the instructor knows what’s coming, might be epically bad. Deb could step aside and reveal any chef's nightmare, a combination of ingredients that no one could make a cohesive plate out of. Tuna fish, canned. A cup of peanut butter. Eight slices of American cheese. Mace.

They might be given things that were never intended to go together, like potatoes and kiwi fruit. Or worse, things that reacted badly when combined and made something more horrible than the individual items could hope to make, like a baking soda and vinegar volcano with the waxy aftertaste of botulism.

Even the best chefs, professional ones, couldn't manage something like that, and there was no way she could succeed and then she wouldn't even have the hope of leaving with a passing grade and then without any hope she wouldn't have any hope and then what? Hopelessness, all because some things could actually, literally, not be done. They were, no matter how optimistic you'd been, no matter how you'd Pollyanned your way through the past twenty years, things you just couldn't make work, and it wasn't just you because no one could. It was actually, actually impossible like... like...

She watched Deb put her hand on the cart. "Chef Gaspard put these ingredients together. You have three hours to make a plate. Main dish, side dish, one sauce minimum. Chef Gaspard and I will grade your finished product and your final grade on the practical testing will be averaged with yesterday's written test. Good luck.

It was like... like... "Orange!"

Everyone turned to stare at her, and she realized she'd blurted it out loud. "Uh, I was just thinking about combinations that wouldn't work like tuna and peanut butter."

Ty shrugged. "Thai peanut sauce over grilled tuna."

"Or American cheese and mace."

"We wouldn't get American cheese."

"Well..."

"Sauce béchamel."

Gwen felt the inevitability that Ty would pass and she would fail, but she still needed to defend her impossibility theory. "Well, the word Orange has no rhyme in the English language no matter how you spin it. None."

"Okaaay." Deb lifted the lid, and Gwen nearly stopped breathing when she spotted the orange.





Deb wanted to see her. See her in her office. It could be good… Deb understood that Gwen didn't know anything about Chef Gaspard. Or it could be bad… Deb understood that Gwen had done Chef Gaspard's husband under the dining room table. Or maybe, Gwen felt her chest tighten, maybe she'd bombed the test and her continuing stress headache was merely an exclamation point on her latest failure.

It surprised her to see Ty already seated in Deb's tiny office. She could rule out an infidelity talk and probably her other failure, the academic one. That left nothing.

"Take a seat." Deb pointed to the empty chair, a stiff-backed metal and fake black leather. "We have a problem that needs to be resolved."

Gwen looked at both of them and could tell they knew what the subject was. Ty's lips were tight together. He was upset about something, but what? And it looked like Deb was trying not to smile, and Gwen didn't know what that was about either.

"There’s a tie."

"You beat me in the written section." Ty let out a puff of breath. He'd given the whole thing some thought, she could tell. "I out-plated you by twenty points." He lifted a hand. "Tied."

He had cooked up a shrimp bisque that not only featured Pernod, which she’d never heard of before and nearly called Pernod when she saw the bottle and not pear-no which was the pronunciation everyone else in the room seemed to know, but he’d made some kind of abstract art project with the dish. No one even wanted to disturb its perfection and taste it.

She'd wanted to think of her shrimp jambalaya as earthy, but next to Ty's French cuisine, it looked like a low budget Cajun cousin. Still, she'd hung in there, and… "Tied? Really?"

"So what happens now?" Ty jumped to the next thing, but she hadn't figured out the first thing yet.

She held out a hand, "Sorry. I'm just a little amazed. We tied?"

Deb nodded. "A few more points on the written test, and you'd have been the top cooking student."

She smiled at Ty. "Well, tying is great. It’s even better." She tried not to let his lack of a smile back bother her. Some people were just naturally competitive, but she was going to enjoy sharing the win all the way back to her mother’s pull-out couch where she’d live out the remainder of her days.

"You didn't hear." Deb looked friendlier than she had for a long time. "Chef Gaspard is leaving us for professional opportunities elsewhere." She started to roll her eyes, but seemed to stop herself. "Her family wanted to thank Belmar for not expressing… let’s say disappointment that Chef Gaspard wouldn’t be completing her year-long contract."

Ty shifted impatiently beside her, and Gwen could practically feel him humming in irritation before he jumped in. "There’s an appretissage at Applaudissements."

She should know what that meant. She’d obviously done well on the test, and the name of Nicola’s family’s restaurant rang a bell, but what was the…

Deb shook her head, and if they were still friends, Gwen knew she would have laughed in complete amusement at Gwen's general ignorance of how the cooking world worked. "There’s an apprenticeship in Paris offered to the top student from this year’s graduating class." Deb smiled at her, a real one this time. "They’ll pay for spring semester, and after graduation, the winner will have a job at their five star restaurant."

Gwen felt light-headed with a rush of something like joy or hope. She’d get to stay, then graduate, then run away to Europe and be employed, and best of all, it would be success, success that anyone could see. She'd be able to say, I did it. Check it out. By mid-life I got there, boom. Sure it didn't happen gradually like most people and instead hit all at once, but the important thing is it happened. I happened. No one would be able to take that away from her. Gwen found herself on the edge of the tippy chair and scooted back. "So, what now?"

"Well, because of the tie, Chef Gaspard felt that she should make the final decision..." Deb nodded when Gwen cringed. "But when I spoke with the Arts dean..."

Had Deb helped her out? Nicola wouldn't have chosen her over Ty for more reasons than the Max one, although that would be sufficient. In bringing in another person, Deb prevented Ty from instantly getting the apprenticeship.

"We compromised and decided that the final decision will be dependent on another black box competition."

"Yes!" Ty whispered it, but with force. Gwen half thought he’d accompany it with a ghost fist pump.

Well, she was screwed. "Couldn't be a quiz on cheese or anything could it?" Gwen turned to Ty as if he'd appreciate a small amount of humor, but he didn’t.

"Chef Gaspard insisted on Black Box. And on a little bigger scale."

Bigger scale? She’d almost keeled over when she was cooking for two and spotted that orange. What if this time it really was a potato and a kiwi? And she had to cook for..."How, how much bigger?"

"The dean wanted to be a judge also. It's fair that way, really, to get more than two or three opinions. Chef Gaspard and, of course, I'll be there..." her voice trailed off and Gwen had a sick feeling in her stomach, the stress of cooking for others already ratcheting through her system.

"And since it’s the last day before Christmas break… the president and his office staff, and the board of trustees also wanted to come in and see the new program. Chef Gaspard's been keeping them out, so now, well, they're in."

Ty didn’t blink. "The kitchen facility isn’t large enough."

"We'll actually be using the cafeteria."

"The cafeteria?" Gwen fought the vision of the last time she’d been in that kitchen. And fired.

Ty waved his arm like he was already practicing French drama. "That's a sub-par facility. I don't even need to see it to know that. Chef Gaspard knows that. I can't cook in there."

Deb ignored his complaint. "You’ll have the shoulder time, which on Sundays is between brunch and dinner. You’ll have from one until five, and you’ll need to assemble a small crew. You’ll be serving in the adjoining banquet room and be out before the regular kitchen staff comes in to prepare for the cafeteria’s last dinner of the semester."

Ty seemed to be tracking everything Deb said. "We need a banquet room, for what, ten people?"

"Well," Deb cleared her throat, "the faculty’s Christmas party..."

Gwen pictured the cavernous room teaming with judges, mean academic ones, the kind who didn't get out much but still managed to be way too snooty about wine and seafood. They were the kind who graded on a curve and only gave the one smartest kid in the class an A and only if he were a great suck-up, and she was beginning to think that chocolate lava cake Aussie boy was a great suck-up. And they gave everybody else in the room D's and then one hardworking drone got a C. She'd get a C, a C! And being average wouldn't do her a damn bit of good because you either won it or you lost it, and she’d done nothing but lose for too damn long. There was no second place in a competition for a winning life. Of course, technically, she'd be second place because there were only two of them, but she'd get nothing, have nothing, be nothing.

"Gwen, got it?"

"Got what?" She looked from Deb to Ty. "Sorry. I'm just surprised and, you know," she leaned in, "scared."

Ty patted her arm. "It'll be fine. We've been trained by the best." He smiled at Deb, who didn't respond.

Gwen nodded. "Yeah, I know. It's just, wow. I can't believe it. Money for school and Paris and we’re tied."

Ty lost his smile.

"Oh, I didn't mean..."

He rose, seemed to deliberately relax his shoulders. "No worries."

"No worries." She watched him leave and turned to Deb. "Does that help?"

"Nothing helps."

"Oh good, 'cause I was starting to get my hopes up." She got up and headed to the door. "Thanks, Deb."

Deb waved it off.

"Really. Thanks for seeing that I could do it before I did."

"You don't see it now."

Gwen gave a humorless laugh. "You are good."





Good for her. Max scrolled down the email announcing the faculty Christmas party. He hoped Gwen beat that Aussie a*shole. Beat him into the ground, the bloody little pip.

He sat back in his chair, heard the creak of it, and wished it didn’t make the silent office feel even more empty. He rolled the computer mouse up to the delete icon’s red X. He was nothing but happy for Gwen. She’d go on, finish school, get a great job, and recover from the not much that had become so much to him. They were friends. Hadn’t she said that on his own god damn back porch? Friends. And then not even that after she fired off with Ellen and Missy.

So he’d wanted to push her a little, bring Nicola around to get Gwen to admit something, maybe appreciate what was happening between them. What was happening, apparently, with him alone. She’d wanted friendship and a couple times an itch scratched. He’d sure as hell done that, hadn’t he? He’d made her beg, scream, see Elvis. Well, he’d seen Elvis that one time with her and the headboard.

Damn.

The email, all black and white, announced Gwen’s future, her life without him. He’d had his chance once, then twice. But maybe he hadn’t really blown it at all. She just didn’t feel the same way he did, driven to his knees crazy for her. She'd always tied him up, even when tied down scared him shitless. He’d been ready this time, as ready as he could be. Hell, he’d never done it before.

But for this chance with Gwen, he’d stood in line for it. Yeah, I’ll take that. Sign me up. I’m in. He’d been in, dammit. And he’d called. Hell, the least she could do was pick up once. If a guy did something that cold, Gloria Steinem herself would show up and kick his ass. But let a woman refuse to explain her goddamn self, and it was okay. She was just taking care of herself or some other horse shit.

He clicked the red X, watched the message disappear in a heartbeat. But it didn’t feel gone at all. He hit delete over and over, erasing god knows what other messages, but he wasn’t going to stop until the screen was as empty as everything else.





Before Gwen left Deb’s office, Ty had already enlisted the entire group of second year students and speed-dialed everyone else. His crew consisted of future chefs of the world and a couple of ringers she was pretty sure were already working professionals.

She had, God help her, the boys. She wouldn't even have Annie there, who'd at least been trained a little. Annie's parents, the attorney pair who'd given up on their son but expected Annie to follow them to law school, were picking her up. Gwen was sorry to miss meeting the brother, but not so much the parents.

And there was no Missy beside her either, not that they'd talked, but she'd be taking off to her dad's or grandma's. Well, Gwen didn’t need relatives. Relatives were over-rated, but winning wasn’t.

She looked across the kitchen, divided in half with a strip of masking tape, courtesy of Jason, who assured her it would psych Ty out. Ty didn’t look psyched out. He waited with his band of pros and Mranda, who wouldn’t live to see dawn if she cheered even once. But even with one amateur, improperly dressed in purple suede pumps, his crew looked like they knew exactly what they were doing. There was a reason the Olympic games were limited to non-professionals. It could never be a fair fight. She was like one of those scrawny guys sent by their country with money from a bake sale.

"Okay." She needed to address the team, prepare them for the worst ahead.

"Gwen!" Annie came around the serving line, and Gwen wanted to hug her and not let go. And right behind had to be her parents, judging by their nearly matching sport jackets. But before Annie introduced her to the attorney pair, she waved behind them and her brother stepped closer. Taller than Annie, but not much broader, Gwen knew who he was because he had Annie’s eyes.

Annie signed to him while she talked, her hands fluidly making language in the air. "This is Gwen. She taught me to make those muffins I sent you. And she’s the one who told me I didn’t have to--" Annie looked at her parents and made three gestures in her open left palm that looked like an L and something else and then both hands came down parallel in front of her body. If that wasn’t a sign for lawyer, Gwen would give up muffins.

Gwen smiled at him, but was jostled aside by Guy who signed wildly at Annie, the two of them and then her brother, seeming to talk at the same time, their hands like six birds taking flight.

Annie’s mother smiled apologetically. "I don’t know what they’re saying."

Gwen didn’t care because seeing them was enough. Annie lit up, and her brother grinned back at Guy who had happy tears in his eyes. It was a pleasure to see.

Deb waved at her, and Gwen understood the black box was coming.

Annie hugged Guy and tried to hug Gwen, the three of them making a circle until Gwen let them both go and watched Annie sign while she spoke. "Guy has some hearing loss, and he’s Norwegian just like we thought. He went to school in Norway after his family moved from China. His Dad’s a scientist and came here last year. Isn’t that great? Hey, Gwen, after the break will you teach me how to make lefse and stuff?" She signed to Guy, smiled. "He loves lefse." She teared up. "He loves me."

Guy grinned and signed while he spoke. "Jeg er ikke en gratis fugel, fyr."

Gwen waited, and Annie turned to her blushing. "He’s not a free bird, dude." They all laughed and then Gwen heard a rumble across the linoleum floor. The black box was on its way.

"Oh, Gwen, you need Guy to stay here and help you."

"No, I... you go on. I’m fine."

Annie hugged her. "See you after Christmas."

Gwen could only hope she would.

The rumble got louder, but Gwen ignored it and watched Annie and Guy leave with Annie’s family. Besides, she really didn’t want to see her future coming. It was loud. How big could it be? She slowly turned her head and saw a four-tiered rolling shelving unit, a little disappointed, again, that it wasn’t an actual box. Its twin made its way to the other side of the kitchen where Ty confronted it with legs wide, like he was the captain of a ship.

When hers stopped, she noted the chicken, red peppers, carrots, lettuce, several bunches of fresh herbs, stock, flour, butter, white wine, plum tomatoes, a package of anchovies, olives, three kinds of onions, and another unrhymable orange. She watched Jason take a green bean off a shelf, place it above his mouth and curl his lip to make a mustache. She was the captain of her own destiny, and she was going down with the ship.