Outside the Lines (3 page)

“Hey, Mom,” I said. I sat on my couch, a chocolate leather hand-me-down from my mother and stepfather’s last redecorating overhaul project. My mother changed her décor almost as often as some people change their bedsheets. She was a relentless bargain hunter and could completely change the look of a room without spending more than five hundred bucks. When they redid their living room, they gave me the couch, a teak coffee table, and a set of three wrought iron lamps. The only off-the-shelf piece of furniture I owned was the television, and that’s only because the flat-screen they had offered me was too large for the walls of my tiny box of a house.

“How are you this morning?” she asked. “Did you have to work last night?”

“Yep. A corporate event in Bellevue. I’m wiped.” I worked as the head chef for a large catering company while I tried to build up enough capital and connections in the industry to launch my own restaurant. I dreamed of opening a small, classy café with a lengthy wine list, no more than ten tables, and a seasonal, eclectic menu. Unfortunately, unless I could find a ridiculously rich investor, this dream wouldn’t be realized any time soon.

“How late did you get in?” Mom asked.

“Only eleven, but I got a call from Seattle General around three thirty so I’ve been up since then.”

“Oh no,” said Mom. “What happened?”

I paused. I knew she wasn’t going to like what I was about to share, but I also knew she wouldn’t leave it alone until I told her. I took a deep breath. “They thought they had Dad in their morgue.”

As I suspected she would be, Mom was silent.

I went on. “It wasn’t him, though. It looked like him a little bit. The dark hair and the height were right, but this guy was really heavy and—”

“And what?” she said, interrupting. Her voice was sharp. She didn’t like talking about him. She’d rather have pretended he never existed—to tell herself the story that I’d simply appeared in her womb.

“And he didn’t have the scars Dad would have. On his wrists.”

She sighed. “I don’t get why you’re doing this to yourself.”

“I don’t know how to explain it to you. It’s just something I need to do.”

She didn’t understand. My search wasn’t about her—I knew she was done with him long ago. That last time, the time when the medics came, was the end for her. A week later she served him divorce papers in the state hospital and he signed them without dispute. But me, I wasn’t done. I wanted my father. When he didn’t come to see me, when he didn’t even try to call, I began conjuring him in the face of every man who crossed my path. Each of my breaths became a wish that the next corner I turned would be the one where he’d appear.

It only took a year for me to stop wishing. At eleven years old, I told myself I was done with him, too.
Screw him,
I thought.
He doesn’t want me. I don’t want him, either.
By that time my mother had married John and I told myself my new stepfather could fill the empty space in my heart. John was a good man, a fireman with a generous soul. But it didn’t matter how good he was or how hard he tried. He couldn’t fit in a space custom-built for another man.

My father did try to get in touch with me after I graduated high school, but after eight years of no contact from him my hurt had hardened into hatred and I refused to respond. He was staying on his meds, the two letters I received said. He was back in Seattle. He was holding down a job.
Back in Seattle?
I wondered.
Where did he go? Did something happen that kept him from coming to see me?
I told myself I didn’t care.
Too bad,
I thought
. Too little, too late.
I threw his letters away.

There were, of course, moments when I missed my dad. My black hair was just like his, as was my pale skin, narrow face, and vivid blue eyes. Looking in the mirror was a frequent, painful reminder that he was gone. Once, in my early twenties, I went to a friend’s wedding only to make a quick exit when her father walked her down the aisle. It was too much to stand, knowing my father would never do the same for me. As more time passed, I started to toy with the idea of trying to find him. Then, last fall, I sat by my mother in the hospital, holding her hand and watching poison drip into her veins in an attempt to annihilate the jagged cells that had already stolen her breasts. I suddenly realized how selfish I had been—how little time any of us are given with those we love. I started thinking more and more about my father, wondering where he was and if he was safe. His letters mentioned time he spent living on the streets. I worried that he was driven back to a homeless existence not only by his illness but by my lack of response. I worried I wouldn’t find him in time for him to forgive me.

“You need to find him even after everything he put you through?” My mother’s voice yanked me back to the present.

“He’s been through quite a bit himself, if you think about it,” I said. Jasper whimpered at my feet, where he was taking a much-needed nap after our Green Lake excursion. I rubbed his back with the tips of my toes and he quieted.

“That was his
choice
. Or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten anything.” I sighed. “I don’t want to argue about this with you, okay? Can we just change the subject, please? How’s Bryce? Is his competition this weekend or next?” My twenty-year-old half brother, Bryce, was the reason my mother married John six months after my father disappeared from our lives. A successful high school wrestler, Bryce had opted for a career in personal training and competitive bodybuilding instead of college.

“It’s tomorrow at two. Can you make it?”

“Maybe, but it depends on what time I have to work. I think we have a wedding, but I don’t remember for sure. I’ll check the schedule when I get in today.” I paused. “How’s John?”

“He’s fine. Down at the station on the tail end of a seventy-two-hour shift. He’ll be home tonight.”

“You’re feeling okay? Not overdoing it?”

“Yes, dear. I’m feeling fine. Dr. Freeland says my counts look great. My energy’s up. So you can stop mothering me.”

“I’ll stop if you do,” I teased.

“That’s impossible. When you have a baby you’ll understand.”

“I’d like to have a husband first,” I said, then wished I could pull the words back. I wasn’t up for one of her pep talks around finding a man.

She sighed. “Well, maybe if you went out a little more you’d meet someone.”

I stifled my own sigh. “I work weekends and I’m thirty-two years old with a decent IQ. I have zero interest in the club scene. Most of the men there are only interested in hooking up, anyway. They’re not looking for a wife.”

“What about the Internet? My friend Patty found her husband online. She said it was like shopping for a credenza!”

I laughed. “I don’t think so, Mom. I feel like it’ll happen if it’s supposed to.”

“Oh, fine. I just hope for you, sweetie. You have so much to give.”

We hung up a few minutes later and I continued to sit on the couch, thinking about my romantic past. Working in the restaurant industry, I’d dated plenty of men for one or two months. Even a year at a time. Only two relationships before my more recent one with Ryan turned into anything serious.

First was Wyatt, a fellow culinary student whose dark brown bedroom eyes and wicked smile never failed to make my heart do backflips in my chest. He had this effect on a lot of women and I counted myself lucky to have landed him. After a year of dating, filled with lots of great sex and what I thought was meaningful conversation about sharing our lives and someday opening a restaurant together, I realized that I wasn’t the only item on Wyatt’s daily menu. It turned out he had bigger appetites than that. A dishwasher one night, the hostess and then me the next. He dumped me unceremoniously for a line cook at Denny’s.

Sixteen celibate months later, Stephen appeared in my life, a man whom I swore I would not fall in love with after the torture of what I had gone through with Wyatt. But Stephen was sensible, a financial planner who started his own firm at twenty-five years old. He was a safe choice, a careful choice, and he bored me out of my skull. I learned that no matter how much I wanted it to, a successful romance couldn’t be based on a mutual adoration of organization and Excel spreadsheets. After eighteen months of trying to meld myself into someone he actually could love, I came to my senses and broke up with him.

Not too long after that particular breakup I read somewhere that until a woman resolves the issues she has in her relationship with her father, she isn’t capable of having a lasting, intimate connection with a partner. If there’s something broken in her primary relationship with a male, the odds of success in any other romantic relationship she forms are pretty slim. I thought about Wyatt, who had been like my father in so many ways—irreverent, fun, and unpredictable. I wondered if I was attracted to him because of that. The idea creeped me out. I began to wonder if it wasn’t the men I chose who were dysfunctional, it was me.

Three hours later, after a catnap and another quick trot around the block for Jasper, I drove downtown and entered the enormous hotel-style kitchen where I spent a majority of my days. Emerald City Events was one of the biggest catering companies in Seattle, located in a large brick building overlooking the waterfront. We provided services to any event, from intimate book club get-togethers to the largest wedding receptions imaginable. The company employed about twenty people in the kitchen, not including the waitstaff, and being the head chef was a busy job. That night we had three cocktail parties to prep for, one on-site, and two five o’clock deliveries. With rush hour that would prove to be a good trick—I’d need the drivers to be out the door no later than three thirty, just to be safe.

All three parties had ordered chicken satay with spicy peanut sauce. Everyone loved the dish, but it was a pain in the ass to get timed correctly, especially so it wouldn’t dry out before service. To avoid that particular pitfall, I made sure to soak the cut-up chicken in a flavorful yellow curry marinade for at least eight hours before I cooked it, but if we didn’t get them on the grill soon, they wouldn’t cool down enough in time for transport. I was elbow-deep in the preparation of the dipping sauce that would accompany the chicken—a mixture of peanut butter, coconut milk, red curry paste, fish sauce, and sugared ginger—trying to find the exact balance between spicy and sweet. I wasn’t in a position to get the meat on the grill.

“Can you get those chicken skewers fired, please, Juan?” I hollered from my station in front of the ten-burner Wolf stove. Ten of my other staff members worked diligently at their stations, cutting, slicing, and stirring according to the directions I printed out for them on a spreadsheet at the beginning of their shift. Their tasks were listed next to the exact time they should start and complete each. Cooking was a game of timing, and I loved it. Organization was key.

“Gotcha, boss!” my sous chef, Juan, yelled from across the kitchen. “I’m on it! The grill is hot as a mofo and ready to
go
.” He spun around in some bastardization of a Michael Jackson move and pointed both his index fingers at me like they were pistol barrels. “What else you need?”

I laughed, shaking my head as I stirred the concoction in the enormous stockpot in front of me. “I need you to stop dancing and put together all the veggie trays while you cook the chicken. Wilson and Maria did all the prep earlier, I think. Everything should be in the walk-in.”

“You got it!” Juan leapt over to the huge, stainless steel walk-in refrigerator and flung open its door. He was the only employee who didn’t need a spreadsheet. I’d worked with him for about five years at that point and I knew I could depend on him to get the job done right. He was the tiniest bit crazy, but it was the fun, kooky variety of crazy, not the scary, I-might-stalk-you type, so while we busted our butts in the kitchen, he always entertained me in the process. At twenty-three, he still lived at home with his parents and five younger brothers and sisters, an arrangement I could never have fathomed for myself. But Juan’s father was disabled after an accident at work and his mother had to care for him, so outside of a meager monthly allotment from the state, Juan was the family’s only source of income. I made sure he took a hefty portion of any servable leftovers home with him at the end of his shifts.

Within minutes the heavenly scent of charred curry wafted through the air, making my empty stomach growl. I was blessed with a ridiculously fast metabolism—a gift from my father, I assumed, since my mother fought against every pound. I, on the other hand, couldn’t go more than a couple of hours without some kind of sustenance, and no matter how much I ate I never seemed to gain any weight. My best friend, Georgia, cast evil curses upon me for this particular trait, while I simultaneously envied her naturally voluptuous hips and great rack. I wasn’t super skinny by any means and my chest wasn’t totally invisible, but my slender frame certainly didn’t invite the wolf whistles Georgia earned just swaying down the street.

I finished the sauce and turned off the burner beneath the pan. On my way to the table in the back of the kitchen that I kept stocked with snacks for the staff, I checked the sausage-stuffed mushroom caps that Natalie, one of my prep cooks, was working on. They were precariously overfull and, once baked, would morph into a greasy, awful mess. “You might want to back down on the amount of filling, Nat,” I advised. “Use the mini cookie scoop instead of a spoon. That way you get them proportioned exactly the same. You’ll need to redo them.”

I heard her sigh quietly. “Is there a problem?” I asked. She was new; I had meant the advice to be helpful, but I knew from experience my sense of efficiency could be interpreted as brusque. Or bitchy. Take your pick.

“No, Chef,” she said. “I’ll redo them.”

“Be quick, please. We’re on a tight schedule.” I hopped over to the snack table and made myself a quick sandwich of thinly sliced grilled flank steak and Swiss cheese on a small ciabatta roll. Juan strolled down the line from his station; his lanky frame and fluid movements suddenly reminded me of my father’s. I’d managed to push Dad out of my mind since the conversation with my mother that morning, but there he was, back again. The image of the dead man on the gurney in the hospital flashed in my mind, and the bite of sandwich I had just swallowed stuck in my throat.