Ben and Cat give escalating pieces of advice.
“Visit other countries, it’ll be fun!” Ben says.
“Buy an air purifier if you can,” Cat suggests.
“No one needs to go up to the Eiffel Tower more than once, save yourself the fomo and just get there the first weekend you can,” Ben advises her.
“And whatever you do—” Cat says.
“Never fall for French guys,” Ben finishes her sentence.
“I was going to say ‘don’t over tip,’ tonto,” Cat protests.
“Oh, fuck you, Catalina.”
I roll my eyes, these two are always fighting.
George laughs. “I’m going to miss you guys.”
They both hug her without missing a beat.
“How about I walk you to security,” Eli tells her. “So, I can send you off there.”
George nods before looking back at me. I smirk sadly, opening my arms for a hug. I’m going to miss the way she fits perfectly underneath my chin.
“Well, Beltran,” she says, “I guess this is g—”
“No, no, Jones,” I interrupt. “This is I’ll see you soon.’”
She squeezes me tighter. “Later, Auggie.”
“You’ll be back before you know it, George,” I whisper.
I’m not sure if I say it to reassure her or myself. We stand here for a moment, hugging. Part of me wants to ask if there’s time for me to go back home, grab my passport and an extra pair of underwear. I’d rather follow her than be miserable here. But maybe that’s the nostalgia talking.
“Well, go on,” I say when we finally break apart. “Go take over the culinary world.”
She smiles brightly. “That I can do.”
We watch Eli walk George toward the security checkpoint with an arm around her shoulders. I can’t help but feel guilty. Here I am, selfishly wanting to keep George here. Somehow, I always forget that this isn’t the first time she’s left home all by herself.
She’s good at starting over, making a name for herself, and conquering any new challenge that comes her way. It must be lonely to be a trailblazer, constantly working toward the next goal in the next place.
Not that I would know anything about that.
We wait here until Eli comes back, no George in sight.
“Well, let’s go home,” Dad says.
I nod somberly. Is it even home if there’s no one to go home to?
Nineteen
George
Going to culinary school might be the best thing I’ve ever done. That might even be an understatement. I would say it’s the best thing anyone has ever done for themselves.
It’s so fast-paced and hectic but in a really exciting way. I’m ready for a new challenge every time we shift gears. I was expecting to be overwhelmed and need some motivational pep talk by now.
But no, I’m doing great and looking great while doing it.
Maybe this is what people are talking about when they say they’ve found their calling. Not even chopping vegetables endlessly could get me down. It’s just another opportunity to learn and improve under some of the most amazing culinary minds in the world.
“Jones, good technique but slice a bit thicker,” Chef Bennett, one of our instructors, says.
“Yes, chef,” I say dutifully as I adjust.
“Shankar, don’t you dare spice that soup until I get back around to you,” Chef Bennett says. “I don’t want you over spicing it again.”
“Yes, chef,” my new friend, Tiffany, says next to me with a tight voice.
Tiffany, Tiff for short, is from Chicago. She’s the youngest daughter of a neurosurgeon and a podiatrist. She was six months away from graduating law school when she dropped out and spent her life savings to come here.
“Over spice my ass, French food is just bland,” Tiff whispers to me.
“At least she didn’t question your butchery skills,” I say.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Tiff says. “She should be careful. Her body could just disappear into a soup.”
“Gross,” I say, making a face.
“Don’t worry, give me five bucks and I’ll be your lawyer,” she offers, almost a little too seriously for my taste.
“I want no part in this nonsense,” I say.
I seriously don’t want to get bailed out of a Parisian jail. Assuming bail even exists here.
“Fine, I’ll make it a one-woman operation,” she says, waving me off. “No one will ever believe the Tamil girl did it anyway. I’ll blame it on the Dutch guy who keeps hitting on me.”
I laugh despite her plan. Tiff is brilliant but too stubborn for her own good. She hates being wrong. She spent thirty minutes yesterday negotiating with an instructor about whether she met the requirements of our assignment or not.
She won, almost surprisingly. And she does have a penchant for weaving arguments together in her favor. No wonder her parents wanted her to be a lawyer.
“So, what made you quit law school?” I ask while out for drinks later that night.
We’ve been talking for weeks, and she’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. She doesn’t even hate law. Every other morning, she comes in with some news story about an EU policy change, and a thorough explanation about what it could mean for us. She could’ve been a great lawyer or diplomat or something.
“I don’t know,” she says before chugging another friend’s shitty beer for them.
Afterward she says, “I woke up one morning and was like ‘is this what I intend to do with my life? Organize merger after merger? Find a nice cushy law firm that encourages pro-bono work if I’m lucky? Break my neck trying to make headway in a nobler specialization?’”
“…And being a chef was the logical next step?” I ask.
“I started thinking about the last time I was happy. It was at my childhood best friend’s lake house,” she says. “His family loved fishing, and they took me whenever I wanted to get away from the suburbs. His mom taught me how to clean and gut a fish to perfection.”
She goes on a tangent about slicing a fish open in an almost grotesquely intricate detail. See, this is what makes Tiff so much cooler, so much more interesting, than the people I hung out with in college. She doesn’t treat life like a series of inevitabilities with a few ‘fill in your own choice’ options.
Tiff sees skills to learn, people to experience, and challenges to conquer. She treats almost everything as knowable, understandable, and ultimately, changeable. Which makes her shying away from law, really intriguing.
“Cooking is great because I can still be bitching at it,” Tiff says. “But when you work with your hands, you don’t have to think about the next meeting, or the meeting after that, or why you’ve spent most of the last two decades of your life following all the rules and doing everything ‘by the book’ when it doesn’t fucking matter.”
Tiff mentioned once that she was allowed to take pro-bono cases in law school under faculty supervision. She doesn’t talk about it, but I can tell whatever happened changed her. It makes me wonder if I’d be able to hear the story if she was willing to tell me.
“I just...law is for people with thick skin,” she says. “I’m not cut out for that.”
Sometimes people are good at the life that’s been laid out for them, but that doesn’t mean they should do it. It fucked Tiff up.
She jokes about how mad her parents are, but I can tell she’s scared of going home. It makes me feel lucky that I had people to nudge me here. I could have gotten here on my own, but it would’ve been harder.
I sling an arm around her shoulders. “What makes you think you’re cut out to not give people salmonella?”
She laughs. “God, you're a riot. I can’t imagine the dull desk job you had before this.”
“Well, don’t because it’s gone now,” I say bitterly.
“Good, I like my new best friend, George,” she states.
“Well, I don’t know about that…” I say before I shove her playfully.
I laugh. “Guess I can live with that.”
✩✩✩
Time differences suck. When I have time to call Auggie, he’s busy and when he’s free I’m sleeping. At least, we have texting. He keeps sending me selfies of him and all the paperwork he’s been dealing with for the last couple of weeks. I keep sending him pictures of the food I prepare—when the instructors aren’t watching.
If I get to catch the sunset, I take a selfie of it and send it to him.
George: Can you talk?
Auggie: Nope, I’m in a meeting. Lolita’s now has a signature drink.
George: Seriously?
Auggie: Yep, we have several non-alcoholic margaritas called Lolitas. Also, our signature horchata and tamarindo frescas.
George: What does that mean? You’ve always had those drinks.
Auggie: We’re bottling them and selling them in grocery stores around the country.
George: How about other countries?
Auggie: One step at a time. By the end of the decade, every household in the world will have frozen food from Lolita and cases of our thirst-quenching drinks.
Auggie: Georgie-girl, I have to put the phone away, Dad’s glaring at me.
George: Text when you have time to call, maybe one day we’ll connect. Miss you.
Auggie: Miss you too.
Twenty
George
“So my dad called this morning,” Tiff says a month later.
“Oh, shit,” I say, sitting up from my bed. “What did he say?”
Tiff hasn’t spoken to her family much since she got here. Even then, it’s mostly been her sisters that call and ask how she is. Her mom called once and asked how she was but acted like nothing happened. But literally like nothing happened—her mom asked how was studying for the bar going. Her dad though...he hasn’t said a word to her since she left.
“He asked if I’m done running around Europe yet,” she says, rolling her eyes.
I frown. “Doesn’t he—”
“Nope,” Tiff says. “They wouldn’t let me explain why I was dropping out of law school so I said ‘sucks to suck.’”
Technically, we could be having this conversation in the common room of our tiny Parisian loft. Can’t say I’d take our stiff little couch over the comfort of lazing on the full-sized bed that barely fits in my bedroom. We played rock-paper-scissors for this room. Fortunately for me, children’s games aren’t one of Tiff’s many strong suits. Unfortunately for me, she still sleeps here about half the time anyway.
“Well, out with it,” I say, nudging her shoulder lightly with my foot. “What’d you say this time?”
“I’m not coming back until I’m a classically trained French chef,” she says.
I lean in closer toward her head as she takes a long sip of wine. She holds up her finger as she finishes the glass. Tiff gets up. “We need more wine.”
“You’re killing me here!” I shout after her.
“Keep your panties on,” she says.
When she sits back down with the current bottle of wine we’re trying to kill, she fills my glass with more wine as well.
“So, then he says ‘well, why didn’t you just say so.’ As if I had lied to him about committing a murder when all I did was get a parking ticket,” Tiff says casually.
“That’s...you’re right, we do need more wine,” I say, dumbfounded.
“Anyway, he said he and Mom are coming for Christmas,” she says.
I stare at the floor, beyond overwhelmed. “What the fuck?”
“I think they are about to cave anyway,” she says. “I could have said ‘no I’m opening a bookstore in Amsterdam with my new Croatian wife’ and they would’ve spun it into whatever would let them sleep at night.
“It’s like when Jaya said she was getting a tattoo and when she came home with a fucking back piece they spent six months always moving around her, so they never had to see it peeking from her shirt collar. Then one day, ‘oh look at our beautiful daughter, what a wonderful art piece you’ve given yourself.’”
Familial expectations are a minefield. I know this. Yet I’ve gained a new appreciation for the delicate dance of individual families since I’ve been hearing the secondhand reactions of what my cohort has dealt with their families.
Parents of my classmates have ranged from completely supportive to extremely high expectations to dismally devastated and everything in between. Parents come in all shapes, sizes, and quirks, I’m realizing. They do a lot of freaking out when they want what’s best for their kids. I know they mean well. But I’m not sure if they realize the mixed signals it sends their kids.
That’s part of why I didn’t drop out of college even though everything in me kept telling me that I wasn’t working toward a life I could love. It took my dad seeing through my best efforts to make good out of a bad situation and really talking to me for me to understand that I always have his support.
But even then, it’s still a lesson I’m learning every day. Every time I miss him, I have to remind myself that he’s really happy. Sometimes the people pulling us away from happiness aren’t even our parents, I realize. It’s the people on the outskirts of our lives who won’t stop criticizing things and people they don’t understand.
It makes me think of Auggie, who’s so sure that he can never make his dad proud. He might spend his entire life trying to sell his soul for his dad’s happiness. But is it really his dad who’s keeping him down now? Or is it the ghost of who his dad used to be?
Tiff nudges me to drink more. I sigh but indulge her anyway.
It’s nice having people I care about who are going through similar things. Even if we don’t get each other exactly, hearing their stories helps me learn about myself.
What would I do in their place? How are my circumstances different?
Tiff loves her family but doesn’t let them dictate who she is and tells them as much. Auggie loves his family but he’s so scared of failing them that he’ll never say what’s wrong until long after it’s irrelevant.
Somewhere in the middle is me—I love my family. They helped me get here. Not a week goes by where I miss messages from my dad or emails from my grandparents. Nia’s kids won’t stop pestering me for pictures of Paris.
They’re my people; they’re always there for me and they’ve said as much. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to do everything in my power to make them proud.
I don’t know what that means for the future, if someday career and family are going to conflict again. I hope it never comes to what poor Auggie faces.
“Families...are wild,” I say.
“Statistically speaking, we all have parental baggage,” she says. “But it’s...complicated when they love and listen to you enough to...I don’t know, make it worth it to try? Foster sustainable relationships while reconciling past biases? Screw inter-relational complexity in the face of cultural ambivalence, is what I’m saying.”
That’s Tiff in a nutshell, nuanced but direct.
✩✩✩
“Hey, Beltran,” I say, practically grinning into my phone.
It’s been weeks since we’ve had a moment to talk. We text often but it’s never the same. Between our time zones being so far apart and our schedules being so busy, we’ve missed a few (more like dozens) of attempted calls. I’ve really missed his voice.
“Georgie-girl,” he says cheerfully. “Long time no talk. How are you?”
“Good,” I answer.
“Just good?” he asks. There’re some clanking sounds in the background.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah, peachy,” he responds, agitated.
“Sure, peachy’s totally a word in your vocabulary,” I argue.
“Ah, sorry, George,” he says, distracted. “We’re working on a new project and it’s sort of in the ground stages
right now.”
“New project?” Like a restaurant? “Is it—”
“Ah, sorry, Jones,” he apologizes. “It’s a surprise.”
“Damn, and here I thought I was missed,” I say jokingly.
“Quite the contrary, you’re actually—” A giant crash from his end cuts out what he’s saying.
“What?” I ask. “Auggie, what are you—”
“Shit, sorry, George.” Auggie’s voice sounds urgent. “There’s a literal fire to put out, so I’m going to have to leave you.”
My stomach twists. That’s reasonable. So why does it feel bad to hear him say he’ll have to leave me?
“Okay.”
“Can I call you later?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say weakly.
We barely talk to each other and when we do it’s too fast.
“Thanks, miss you, Georgie-girl,” he says quickly.
“Yeah, you t—” I say as the line goes dead.
Auggie’s never hung up on me before. Honestly, it’s a little upsetting. It shouldn’t be because he ended the call for an emergency. I don’t know, I’ll probably get over this sinking feeling in my heart.
I just wish I understood why it bothers me so much.
✩✩✩
The city is beautiful, don’t get me wrong. Being here is a lifetime opportunity. I’m working hard because I enjoy cooking. Loving what I’m doing doesn’t take away the melancholy eating me when I’m not in the kitchen.
I’ve experienced firsthand what it is like to be away from home. College wasn’t easy. I know how loneliness eats you alive. It feasts upon any happiness you have, leaving you full of despair and memories you can't seem to hold onto anymore. It’s a beast who traces your soul with cold fingertips.
When I started college, the one person who kept me at bay was Auggie. He made sure I wasn’t lonely, and I had someone to hold onto when I felt as if the world was about to eat me. Right now, during the holidays I need him more than ever.
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