The Key Ingredient

by Susan Wiggs

  During the sugar season my final year of high school, my chores were confined to the sugarhouse—­managing and monitoring the boil. I didn’t mind that so much, because I could crank up the radio and daydream about the life I would have one day. I scheduled my hours at the evaporator pans to coincide with Fletcher Wyndham’s shift collecting and transporting the sap. I was no Celia Swank, but I knew I’d have no trouble at all inviting him into the sugarhouse. It’s warm and cavey inside, aglow from the fire. The whole place is redolent of maple-­scented steam, curling up to the roof vents. Never hesitant to show off my baking skills, I’d made salted maple-­pecan bars—­the ones that had once won me a blue ribbon at the county fair.

  It’s one of those treats that sells out first at any bake sale. You start with a soft shortbread crust, then add the maple-­pecan filling and bake it until it looks like a pecan pie. After it cools slightly, drizzle with maple butter and then finish with a few pinches of fleur de sel. Fleur de sel is one of those small touches that elevates an ordinary dish. It’s something Gran would call a key ingredient. The flaky character of this salt makes for a delicate finish. Don’t bother using it in cooking, because it will only melt and salt the food. You want it to rest like weightless snowflakes atop the food, dissolving on the tongue at first bite and melding with the sweetness of the syrup.

  It’s doubtful that Fletcher knew anything about fleur de sel, but as an eighteen-­year-­old boy, he knew that when you come into the sugarhouse after working in subzero temperatures, and the whole front of you is damp from spilled sap, and a girl gives you a warm, salty-­sweet maple-­pecan bar, it’s like spending a few minutes in heaven.

  Never let anyone tell you that food isn’t a kind of love.

  Yet even though I loved Fletcher Wyndham with every cell in my body, I lost him—­not just once, but twice. Blame it on youth, or on bad choices or rotten luck or unfortunate timing; a broken heart doesn’t care how the love got lost. And I don’t mean lost like losing your car keys. I mean like losing a piece of yourself so that you don’t feel whole anymore. You walk around with a part of yourself missing, the way Fletcher’s dad is missing his leg—­the incident that touched off a chain of events no one in Switchback could ever have foreseen.

  After loving someone the way I loved Fletcher, it’s hard to open up again and let anyone else in.

  There are things a person can’t leave behind, even when a relationship ends. You keep bracing yourself for the next disaster, the next problem, the next betrayal.

  Gran always said you can’t spend your life mired in regrets. You have to move forward, so that’s what I did. I managed to put myself back together, eventually. I managed to move on, even though it meant heading across the country to LA and totally changing the course of my life.

  Now I look at Martin, who is intently listening to the director. Martin must feel me looking at him, because he offers his trademark heart-­winning smile.

  Maybe yes, maybe no.

  ­People who work with me on the show think I’m all that and more. Annie’s Yankee determination, they call it. She gets things done. She doesn’t take no for an answer. She’s like the Energizer Bunny.

  What they don’t realize is that most of the time, all that energy they admire so much is driven by fear and insecurity. In this business, you can’t let anyone sense any kind of weakness, or you’re culled from the pack and left behind. As far as anyone knows, I’m a homegrown success story with a real shot at creating a hit TV show and a bright future.

  That’s what I thought, too. It’s all been going extremely well . . . but now that we’re here with cameras rolling, I can’t help but feel a sense of impending disaster.

  The weather sucks. The snow has melted prematurely this year, something we didn’t anticipate. The pristine winter woods is now a dun-­colored swamp of bare maples, strung together with plastic tubing for the running sap, which doesn’t exactly create the homey image of those old-­fashioned collection buckets ­people picture when they think of Vermont maple syrup. The sugarhouse, where the magic is supposed to happen, turns out to be too noisy and steamy for the crew to film. The lenses keep fogging up and the crackle of the fire and the clanging of utensils interfere.

  When Melissa says something perky and friendly to Kyle, trying to draw him out, he stares at her blankly, clearly at a loss.

  “So your brother,” she whispers to me later. “He’s incredibly good-­looking.”

  “Thanks,” I reply. “His wife thinks so, too.” Melissa can’t stand being single. She’s told me so herself.

  “I’m not hitting on him,” she insists, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. “It’s just . . . is he okay? He seems like he might be kind of . . . simple.”

  I burst out laughing. My brother? Simple? He’s run the entire operation since he graduated high school and our dad took off. Yet his discomfort on camera is extreme and makes him seem like a country bumpkin.

  “No,” I tell Melissa. “Kyle is anything but simple. Just not fond of being in the limelight. He knows everything there is to know about maple syrup, though.”

  She nods, then turns away to let out a sneeze. Anton, the director of the shoot, is having a whispered conversation with Martin. I’m not catching everything that’s being said, but I’m pretty sure I hear the dreaded I told you so.

  When I was a kid, eavesdropping on my parents’ arguments, I honed my listening-­in to a fine art. I could hear them quarreling from three rooms away. Huddled in the stairwell or under a window, I overheard them talking about broken dreams and family responsibilities, about the deep ache of unfulfillment, something I didn’t understand until I was much older.

  Listening to my parents making each other miserable, I vowed that once I married, it would be forever. I would never get a divorce. It’s just too hard on the family.

  My parents’ “forever” lasted until Kyle was eighteen and I was ten. Dad went all the way to Costa Rica and built a surf camp on a crescent-­shaped curve of white sand, fringed by palm and coconut trees, zopilote birds circling overhead. The camp consisted of palm-­thatched huts and an outdoor kitchen.

  You would think it would be awesome to have a beach in Costa Rica to visit when you went to see your dad. The reality wasn’t awesome.

  It was hot and there were mosquitos. Sure, I went crazy over the fresh fruit and produce—­papaya and plantains, mamones and marañón, starfruit, zapote and coconut, most of it simply plucked from the gardens. But when it rained a lot, horrid-­looking alligators would congregate at the mouth of the river where it flows into the ocean, and surfing would be called off for that day.

  Worst of all, Dad had a girlfriend. Imelda. It seemed totally weird to me, hearing him speak Spanish to a woman who was a complete stranger. She had waist-­length hair and big boobs and absolutely no interest in discovering who I was. At night when they would go off together to the room they shared, and I would be left with the loneliest, most left-­out feeling in the world.

  Even now, years later, when I see my father, I struggle to keep my resentment at bay. He and Mom drifted apart. It happens, especially when you marry young the way they did.

  The one thing I loved unequivocally about my time in Costa Rica was the day I visited a cacao-­bean grove. I’m determined to film a Key Ingredient episode there one day. During a day tour, I chatted up one of the cacao growers, with Dad serving as our interpreter. The grower had never left his village, because everything he needed was right there—­food, family, security. He’d never been to school; his education consisted of working alongside his elders, gathering, fermenting and drying the cacao beans in an endless cycle of nature and labor.

  I still remember the sense of shock I felt when I discovered that not only had he never tasted chocolate, he wasn’t even sure what was being made from his beans. When I gave him a bar of single-­origin dark chocolate, made with nothing but cacao, sugar and cocoa butter, h
e peeled back the wrapper and held it in his hand for a long time. Then he broke off a piece and tasted the chocolate, and his face lit with wonder. He had no idea that the beans he grew and fermented under heaps of banana leaves could be transformed into something so rich, complex and delicious. The smile on his face was unforgettable, completely genuine and filled with joy.

  It was one of those rewarding moments I hope to find for the show, when something unexpected and utterly charming presents itself. I can picture exactly how I would film and edit the scene, scoring it to highlight the farmer’s surprise and delight when he tastes the fruits of his labor.

  Now, as we’re muddling through today’s filming, I’m not sure about anything. A feeling of devastation curls around my heart.

  Martin is taking a break at the catering table now, chatting with the local caterer contracted to keep the crew fed during the shoot. The two women aren’t much younger than I am, yet they seem like children as they babble and practically faint in the presence of Martin Harlow.

  Although I’m standing nearby, they don’t even see me. During filming, if you’re not the star or director, you’re invisible. So I just hang around and observe. By now, I’m used to Martin’s good looks and charm, but I do remember seeing him for the first time and being struck by his Texas-­born-­and-­bred handsomeness and the utterly magnetic pull of his charm when he makes eye contact with you and smiles.

  “I’m always starving after a long trip,” he confesses to the catering girls. “This spread looks amazing.”

  There’s an urn of fresh coffee from a local roaster and a tray of caramelized delicata squash with burrata cheese lightly drizzled in balsamic, an abundant bread basket, smoked trout and a salad of organic greens.

  I’ve always believed hunger can mean different things. Sometimes you’re just hungry, like after cardio training. That’s when you crave carbs—­fettucini covered in parm, pommes Anna made with paper-­thin potato slices, butter and herbs, or salted rosemary sourdough with a wedge of cheese.

  Then there’s the hunger that can’t be filled by food. The cravings of the heart and spirit are not so easily satisfied.

  One of the caterers talks about her studies at the U in Burlington. “I’m a nursing major,” she says. “I want to specialize in critical care.”

  “Wow. Makes my job sound pretty lightweight in comparison.” Self-­effacing charm. That’s his specialty.

  “You’ve got millions of fans on YouTube who’d disagree with that,” she says. “That’s why I signed up for working this event. I wanted to meet you in person.”

  “Hey, really? You don’t say. That’s cool.” The aw-­shucks delivery is totally natural. Back when we first met, I couldn’t get enough of it. I still can’t, come to think of it.

  “I’ve been checking out the show’s website. I love the whole concept behind it, the way you’ll be highlighting the key ingredient of each episode and building the story around it.” She’s almost but not quite gushing. Is gushing even allowed on set?

  “That’s our special sauce,” he says, appropriating a phrase I’d used in pitching the show to the production company. “We’re hoping it will become the thing that sets us apart from all the other stuff that’s out there. Glad you like it.”

  “It’s great. It’s going to be so different from run-­of-­the-­mill cooking shows.”

  “I’m all about keeping it fresh,” he declares. His assistant comes over and steals him to get him miked up again for filming.

  The caterers keep talking.

  “ . . . almost instantly became a YouTube sensation,” one of them says. “That’s what I heard. With looks like that, you don’t have to wonder why he got so many views.”

  The caterers have no idea I’m the show’s creator, so they speak freely in front of me. They don’t even seem to notice me. I’m a ghost.

  “ . . . those videos online. They’re addictive, aren’t they?” says one of them.

  “What I heard was that some talent scout spotted the guy working at a food cart in Central Park and made a film and put it up on YouTube,” the other says in a gossipy voice. “I read all about it in ­People.”

  Wrong, wrong and wrong. It wasn’t a talent scout who spotted him. It was me. And it wasn’t Central Park; it was Washington Square.

  I shouldn’t get my knickers in a twist over the inaccuracies. The show is going to be a hit. Nobody will care how it came into being. But God bless ­People for picking up on the buzz and spreading the word through nail salons and waiting rooms around the country.

  “I love all the places they’re going to take the show,” she says.

  I love my job. There is absolutely nothing to complain about. Assuming it’s as big a hit as Martin’s YouTube videos, we’ll soon be able to toss the budget to the wind and go fishing for blue grenadier in Tasmania or head to that cacao grove in Costa Rica.

  By the end of today’s shoot, I no longer love my job. Nothing went right. Mud, rain, noisy equipment, take after take of shots that just weren’t working. I hold back tears as I say goodbye to my mom and brother.

  While I’m melting down, Martin steps up. “Listen,” he says, touching me beneath the chin and looking into my eyes. “You don’t have to do everything. We have a postproduction team now—­a good one.”

  And then something happens between Martin and me. It’s been happening for a while, but as my pulse accelerates, the simmering attraction turns into genuine caring and regard. He leans down and kisses me, and it feels exactly right. I feel as if he’s rescuing me from drowning. Somehow, he makes my heart start beating again.

  Back at the Century City studio, the postproduction team works to create the magic that was lacking during the shoot. I can’t eat or sleep or even breathe during this process, because it’s impossible to imagine turning the Switchback disaster into something viewers will want to watch. Martin and Melissa pitch in with voiceovers and dubbing. Even though I know a good post-­production job can correct a multitude of sins, I’m nervous about the final cut.

  The lead editor doesn’t rest until she finds the perfect soundtrack, one that complements our opening theme. It’s a simple, clean melody that stays in your head—­in a good way—­and holds your attention. The ending sequence runs like a music video to “Autumn Sweater” by Yo La Tengo, choreographed by editing magic. It’s a risky move, but the show is meant to appeal to a younger demographic than traditional cooking shows, and so we go for it.

  While the final cut airs, I sit in the editing suite at the studio in a rolling chair, not daring to move. Since we didn’t release the episode early for critics, the whole world gets a first look at the same time. My heart is full to bursting. I don’t dare to breathe. Staring at the screen, I can’t tell if it’s a disaster or a hit. Panic pulses through me.

  Then Tiger comes in with her smartphone and laptop. “Check it out,” she says, showing me a long list of social-­media feedback. “Viewers are totally loving it.”

  As the closing sequence finishes and the credits roll, Martin comes in with a bouquet of flowers. He scoops me up out of my chair and kisses me, and we go to his place. We’re so high with exhilaration that our lovemaking is filled with as much laughter as passion.

  The next morning, we wake up early to check the news.

  “They loved us,” Martin says, staring at the screen with his eyes aglow with Christmas-­morning wonder. “Baby, they loved us.”

  The LA Times features a photo of Martin leaning against the rough lumber wall of the sugarhouse, sampling a fried doughboy dipped in freshly rendered syrup, warm from the evaporator pan. “Harlow’s infectious love of food will make you hungry,” the caption reads. Variety shows a publicity shot of Melissa, noting her charming relish in preparing a dish and the seductive way she invites viewers to sample it.

  The ratings are respectable. Better than respectable, according to the executive pro
ducer. Online views of the trailer pile up, hour by hour. Views of the full episode on the network’s website surpass anything they’ve ever aired before. ­People are watching. More importantly, they’re sharing. Clips and links are making their way into ­people’s homes, into their friends’ homes, and into the cubicles of ­people at work all over the globe. According to the ratings ser­vice we’re subscribed to, the link is traveling faster than the speed of light through the digital ether, reaching around the world.

  Even though I’m supposed to be a stoic New Englander, the tears stream down my face. “You did it,” I tell him. “You saved my dream. I was so worried it would flop.”

  “We did it,” he says. “We’re a great team.”

  The network orders another thirteen episodes to follow the original eight. We’ll get a bigger budget and more creative input, too.

  Martin is with me when we get the news. I slump against him, boneless with relief and gratitude. “You’re right,” I say. “We are a good team. I’m so full of ideas, I might explode.”

  “Don’t explode,” he says. “I’ve got some ideas of my own. Let’s celebrate.”

  He organizes everything, refusing to let me lift a finger. All I have to do is show up at the executive producer’s Malibu beach house wearing something nice.

  My “something nice” wardrobe is limited. I’ve been working so hard on the show that I haven’t had time for anything else. Sorting through my closet, I come across my favorite date-­night dress, which I haven’t worn since . . . since Fletcher. It’s a fitted sheath in the yummiest shade of royal blue you ever saw. The last time I wore it, I was dancing in Fletcher Wyndham’s arms, having no idea we were about to fall apart.

  Determined to make new memories, I put on the dress and add my favorite necklace, a fiery opal pendant that used to belong to my grandmother.