by Cat Cora
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 hundred 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.
The driver of the second car got out and came over to my window. He was a well-dressed Indian guy in a pressed shirt and nice slacks. Even with a few beers under my belt I clearly saw his expression shift from irritation to wicked delight. He’d come to collect my insurance information, but then he recognized me. He pulled out his phone and started videotaping.
All right, I thought. This comes with the territory. By then his girlfriend had appeared at his side to take in the show. Cat Cora, caught in the wild! I was polite. I’m a southern girl, even three sheets to the wind. “I’m being videotaped by two nerds,” I said with a smile. Okay, a drunken smile. “Who doesn’t just want to go have dinner together. Could do something exciting with their lives. Really.”
The couple called the police and sold their twenty-seven-second recording to TMZ.
I was arrested with a blood-alcohol limit twice the legal limit in California, and pled no contest. I was sentenced to three years’ probation and paid $2,386 in fines.
Not my finest hour.
You’re probably wondering about my phone. Jennifer had marched home, hopped into the other car, and sped back to retrieve it.
twenty-two
Getting that DUI was easily the most shameful moment of my life, but I’ve come to view it as a gift. It was a wake-up call. I’d needed to face my postpartum depression problems, tease out how much was hormones, how much was basic disposition. I went to a doctor.
They say you start going to meetings either because you made the decision to stop on your own or because you received a nudge from the judge. According to the state of California, and the terms of my probation, I was required to attend at least eight meetings within a certain time frame. I’d been to meetings before, so walking in and taking a seat wasn’t hard, but afterward I was required to present my court card to the leader, and every time I felt myself flush with shame and guilt.
I felt like a total loser. I couldn’t shake it. I continued going to meetings for four months after the DUI, and then our family took a trip to Italy and I started up with my few glasses of wine with dinner.
The conventional wisdom is that step one is the most difficult step, admitting that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable, and I know it has been difficult for me. Until you are able to stand up and say “I am an alcoholic,” you can’t get well.
If only because it would make a neater, simpler story, I wish I could tell you that I have stood up and shared, and surrendered completely to the process of recovery, but I’d be lying. I’ve thought long and hard about my relationship with alcohol, have remembered those long-ago days at Hinds Community College where I would get fall-down drunk most nights of the week, and also the days during the beginning of my career, when I would “cleanse” before a shoot, then guzzle martinis afterward, and also, recently, when I tried to soothe my troubled heart and ease the pain of a marriage in crisis by self-medicating with some nice Chardonnay, but I am not ready to surrender. Not yet. Right or wrong, the trauma of my early sexual abuse, the PTSD that resulted from having endured it, my ongoing anxiety that I’m trying to manage without medication, and the ever-present stress of providing for my wife and kids in a complex profession, has led to a habit of using alcohol to help relieve my stress.
The day is coming when this will no longer serve me. Drinking has become like screwing a porcupine—the pain exceeds the pleasure. I’m engaged in an internal struggle, one that is familiar to millions of others: Do I quit alcohol for good because I know I will be free and happy? Do I try just to drink less (and is that even a possibility?), or do I just pray that one day I’ll be blessed with an epiphany and stop drinking altogether? As of this writing I’m going to meetings again, working the twelve steps with my sponsor. And, not surprisingly, I am happier.
Whether I continue on my current path, my drinking and driving days are absolutely over. If I could hop into the Wayback Machine, knowing what I know now, I have not a shred of doubt that rather than try to drive after Jennifer got out of the car that day, I would have pulled over and called a cab. The other night I had a nightmare that I was tooling around behind the wheel with a cocktail in my hand, and I woke up in a terrified sweat. I never got behind the wheel with a single drop of alcohol in me after June 17, 2012, and I never will again.
I’ve also focused on getting my crazy schedule under control. Over the years I’ve said yes to everything, always aware that I was responsible for providing for six people, and fearful that if I said no, another opportunity would not come along. I’ve said yes, even as it took a toll on my family and myself. Now, after a lifetime of working to distance myself from the confused little girl degraded by abuse, working fiercely to show the world that I wasn’t trash, but how accomplished I could be, how perfect, how iron, I’ve learned to let it go a little. “Being you is enough,” has become my daily mantra, courtesy of Deepak Chopra. I started taking time to evaluate each and every opportunity that came my way, no longer automatically saying Hell yes! to everything.
In terms of my marriage, I’m reminded of my response to Donna’s tantrum over the broken vinaigrette all those years ago. That it was always going to break overnight. That was the nature of vinaigrette. It broke, and in the morning you reseasoned it, remixed it, and fixed it. That’s just what my wife and I are doing, day by day.
We have made it to a place where we can laugh, just a little, about the dramatic events of the past few years. As they say, tragedy plus time equals comedy. I told her she was allowed one head shaving in our marriage, and she said I was allowed one DUI. Recently, I got a tattoo to honor the power of forgiveness and the hope I hold for our love. It’s from Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I will meet you there.
We’re having some friends over to dinner tonight. All the boys are underfoot, and Jennifer is at yoga, but will be home soon. She has finally earned that yoga teaching certificate, not in hot yoga but in a Vinyasa-based style called CorePower, which is more laid-back, in keeping with her essential nature. I’m proud of her and her accomplishments, as both a mom and a yogi.
Zoran, now ten, is helping me make the salad—Greek, of course, with off-the-vine tomatoes, feta, and glossy kalamatas. Caje is arranging crackers on a plate to serve with my roasted eggplant tapenade. Nash and Thatcher are irritating him by eating them as soon as they are perfect.
In teaching my kids about food, I’ve adopted the ways of my mom. They have to try everything once. I offer them options —“What do you think tonight? Are we going to have chicken or are we going to have salmon?”—and once we’ve decided, that’s what’s for dinner. Like any children, they’d live on pizza and burritos if you’d let them, but they also love artichokes, asparagus, and pork tenderloin. I’m proud of them, too. I think, no matter what else I’ve done in this lifetime, what mistakes I’ve made, what times I’ve let the devil on my shoulder lead me, even what good things I’ve achieved, these kids are the very best I’ve done. I got them completely right.
What’s on the menu? Oh, I think you know. My kapama, still and always my favorite dish. I pat the chicken dry with paper towels, mix the cinnamon, salt, and pepper in a bowl, and rub the chicken with it on all sides. Mince some garlic. Heat up the olive oil. I put my head down and as the Greeks say, siga, siga, slowly, slowly, I begin to cook.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my incredibly gifted writer, Karen Karbo.
Thank you for nourishing my stories with the ultimate deference and care, for hearing my life without judgment but with empathy over many great tuna-jalapeño melts. You got it just right.
To my mom, Virginia: you are always a beacon of light in my life. I am eternally grateful that you adopted me and made me always feel safe, loved, and chosen. I love you, Mo. To my father, Spiro, who I am sure is bragging to God right now about “his girl”: I miss you every day, Daddy. To Joanne: thank you for caring for me for nine months, giving me life, and then searching for twenty-one years. You never gave up on me. I love you.
To my grandmother Alma: you continue to be my angel and watch over me; these last couple of years I could have used you a little more, but I know you are there. To Randy and Carla: thank you for always being there for me and our family; you are my parents, too. To my brothers, Mike and Chris: my love and respect is immense. Jeff, Carrie, Jennifer Ann, Jason, Kim, and Michelle: I am so proud you are my brothers and sisters. To my awesome nieces and nephews, Morgan, Nicholas, Alexi, Anna, Andrew, Paxton, and Hallie: dream the biggest dreams, because you can—you will—make them happen, end of story. To my godparents, Taki and Maria: you have always loved me unconditionally and inspired me to go out into the world.
To my extended family and friends everywhere—you know who you are: thank you for your love and your support.
Thank you to Shannon Welch, my superb, brilliant editor, for believing that my life was interesting enough to fill a book, and for creating a book I can really be proud of. Many thanks to you and the entire team at Scribner!
To Jan Miller and Nena Dupree, my book agents at Dupree Miller: thank you for all the pep talks and encouragement, and for all of your tireless work and dedication.
To Tyler Goff, my talented plate-juggling assistant: thank you for the ridiculously great work you do every day on my behalf.