Cooking as Fast as I Can (34 page)

At the party, I thought they would perish from shock and delight. I admit it was overkill. I couldn't help myself. I knew I was building some good memories for the hard time to come. I watched my mom squeeze my dad's hand, put her strong arm around his shoulder, kiss his lips. My dad shook his head, smiled, chuckled, teared up with who knows what emotion. He was still my soft-spoken dad to the end.

Every last over-the-top impulse? Totally worth it.

I stayed on in Jackson after my parents' anniversary party to help my mom, canceling every obligation I could without risking a lawsuit due to breach of contract. For three months, I sat at his bedside. I rubbed his feet and hands with lotion, brought him a heated pillow for his neck where the tumor pressed and caused the most pain. I hired a masseuse to come several times a week. He had lost the taste for his beloved hand pies and could eat only a few bites of Popsicle a day.

He was very tired at the end and went to sleep most nights with the sunset, when the smell of warm grass was strongest in the neighborhood and the lightning bugs came out. My mom and I didn't cook much, preferring a local sushi place she'd
discovered. Sushi had come to Jackson! Just like Taki had introduced frozen pizza at the Shamrock Inn, all those years ago. As the house got dark my mom would make us a couple of her favorite cocktails, Voodoos, with iced vodka and Crystal Light lemonade.

The most precious moments occurred when he let me trim his hair and beard. We sat talking face-to-face while he let me spruce him up. I knew time was short and I asked him every question I could think of, including whether he was afraid to die.

“Yes,” he said, “but I had a dream I was passing, and you know, it was wonderful.”

One of the priceless lessons I learned from my father is that when someone is dying, all they want is you. The best thing you can do for them is to be present.

On the last day, which we didn't know was the last day, because it turns out you never really know, my brothers came. We stood around his bed, prayed, and cried. It was just like when we were kids, the five of us in that house on Swan Lake Drive.

My
Iron Chef
days were largely over. The Food Network says once an Iron Chef, always an Iron Chef, but in season nine they'd used me only twice. Our contracts were nonexclusive, so in 2010 I signed on with OWN, Oprah's new cable network, to develop my own show. The Food Network was not pleased and curtailed my airtime. My last battle was against South Carolina chef Robert Carter. Somewhat predictably, our secret ingredient was that most southern of vegetables, okra. My cuisine reigned supreme, with a score of 51–44, and I should have felt a whole lot more triumphant than I did. The
show aired on September 4, three days after my father died on September 1, 2011.

There was no end to work, opportunities coming my way like tennis balls out of a serving machine. I set about opening two more airport restaurants and a gourmet market. I started two food lines, a cookware line, and even a shoe line (who knows better than me what you need in a shoe when you're on your feet all day?). I opened my first international restaurant, in Singapore.

I landed the spot as cohost for a short-lived Bravo reality series,
Around the World in 80 Plates
, a very ambitious, very expensive show produced by Magical Elves, a great and reputable production company run by people I genuinely liked. (After it wasn't renewed we joked that
Around the States in 80 Plates
would have been a more affordable option.)

The show was a hybrid travel show/cooking contest, where the contestants ran literally around the world, from country to country, attempting to “master” a nation's favorite dish (as if you could actually do such a thing in the week we allotted them). My cohost was Curtis Stone, the adorable Australian chef and cooking show gadabout, with whom I'd worked before. In forty-four days we visited ten countries and four continents. It was like
Top Chef
meets
The Amazing Race
.

The offer dropped in my lap at the eleventh hour. I knew in my bones that it wasn't a good time for Jennifer and me to be apart. We'd barely weathered my father's illness and death, and now here I was preparing to go gallivanting around the world. But I was the sole breadwinner, and there was nothing else this promising on the horizon.

Off I went. We traveled with a caravan of nearly one hun
dred cast and crew. It was a chef's dream tour: the spice markets of Morocco, the spicy curries and breathtaking Buddhist temples of Thailand, the wet markets of Hong Kong, where pretty much any protein with a heartbeat is there squirmy and blinking, waiting for its fate beside a carrot curl and sprig of parsley. Curtis and I couldn't have had more fun, relieved from kitchen duty for once, spending the bulk of our days in hair and makeup, then standing around bantering.

After the final episode wrapped I flew home, arriving at LAX, an hour and a half south of our home in Santa Barbara. I'd expected Jennifer to be there, waiting for me, but instead I had a message on my cell phone. She'd gotten a sitter for the kids and headed up to the Bay Area to visit a friend. My heart sank. I was sure we were over.

Father's Day, June 2012, was my first without a dad to call in the morning, catching him while he's drinking his coffee and reading the paper. I never even considered it a real holiday; it was cooked up only to complement Mother's Day. Still, I felt low.

Jennifer and I were still struggling forward, sick of each other's shit. We decided maybe a nice lunch at Cold Spring Tavern, an old stagecoach stop twenty minutes from Santa Barbara up Highway 154, the San Marcos Pass Road, would be a fun date. The owners have maintained the Old West decor: wood-paneled, red-and-white gingham curtains at the windows, huge stone fireplace, a wagon-wheel chandelier, with music on Sundays.

Throughout our life together, Jennifer has always been the driver. I have an impaired sense of direction, one of those people who gets lost driving home from the grocery store. The arrangement has always worked for us, and so I had a beer
or three, a shot of tequila, never thinking that I was going to wind up behind the wheel. Jennifer had even made a point of calling herself designated driver.

On the way home, I received a text from our old friend, wild-haired Alexa, the one who'd witnessed us falling in love at Tahoe during the whiteout blizzard all those years ago, who'd been at our wedding, who'd helped us celebrate our birthdays. She wanted to know how I was holding up on my first Father's Day without my father.

“It's Alexa, just wanting to see how I'm doing,” I told Jennifer as I tapped out the return text. “Offering me condolences.”

Despite the shared history, Jennifer didn't harbor the same love for Alexa that I did. In fact, she'd grown to actively despise her. Alexa had behaved badly toward Jennifer at my dad's funeral, pulling her aside and telling her she needed to let up on the yoga, treat me better. On the one hand I appreciated her coming to my defense, but on the other, I ultimately stood with my wife, and Alexa's remarks offended Jennifer and hurt her, too. Not cool.

A few weeks earlier, during a therapy session, Jennifer and I had each talked about what we would have to compromise on in order to make the relationship work.

I said no hot yoga, find another kind of yoga, there are dozens of styles out there. Find one that isn't exclusive and cultish, one that contributes to the health of your home life and doesn't alienate you from your family.

Jennifer said no Alexa, find another friend who doesn't put herself between us, there are millions of people out there.

Alexa and I had been friends for many years. I was sad to make this concession, but nevertheless, I agreed. But now here was Alexa texting me.

Jennifer lost it. I lost it. The fight sprang to life like a forest fire in the middle of a drought. The San Marcos Pass is a windy, two-lane road, one of those crazy California highways that twists through a forest, over a high arched bridge, scenic but potentially treacherous. We shouted at each other at the same time, neither one allowing the other to have her say.

In frustration, she reached across the console between us, grabbed my iPhone out of my hand, and threw it out the sunroof. All of a sudden, Alexa didn't matter, our fight didn't matter—all that mattered was that my cell phone was gone. I cranked around just in time to see it land in the underbrush.

“What the hell?” I shouted.

“You don't need to text her,” she said.

We got into it: wild-eyed shouting, spit flying. Meanwhile, she's careening down the road, leaving my phone farther and farther behind in the shrubbery. Finally, she couldn't bear it another second and pulled over. By now we were only about five minutes from home.

“Get out of the car,” she said.

“I most certainly am not getting out,” I said. “This is a busy highway.”

“Get. Out. Of. The. Car.”

“I'm not getting out of the car.”

“Get out!”

“I'm not getting out! Hand me the damn keys.”

She handed me the keys, unbuckled her seat belt, threw open the door, leapt out, and started walking.

So there I was. Left with the car, the driver's door hanging open. Left with my phone back in the bushes up in the San Marcos Pass. I was so furious I could feel my heartbeat in my head. My phone! With my life inside it, all my work contacts,
important emails, my calendar. I had to get my phone. That's what I had to do.

I scooted over into the driver's seat, put the car into gear. Blame it on the beers and tequila from lunch; blame it on my upset; blame it on my knack for committing the occasional colossal fuck-up, but before I drove back to find my phone I stopped at the closest bar for a drink. Just to collect myself, just to calm myself down. Then I got back into the car.

I came to a light that had just turned yellow. There were two cars in front of me, and the driver of the first car started through the yellow, then thought better of it and slammed on her brakes. The driver in the car in front of me slammed on his brakes. I couldn't stop in time and ran into him. Fender bender.