Page 8 of Summer Reading

I did a quick tour of the library, but I didn’t see my friend Emily, who worked there. I should have texted her and checked her hours, but the kitchen project had distracted me. I left the library, feeling discouraged. I’d hoped Tyler and I would grow closer this summer, especially with Dad and Stephanie being away, but this was not an auspicious start.

After I stopped at the local Stop & Shop grocery store to stock up the pantry, I returned home and before I dove into my project set three different alarms just to make sure I didn’t get distracted from picking Tyler up. It took me the rest of the day to arrange the kitchen to my specifications.

Chefs and their work spaces. It’s a thing. In my case, I needed the spice rack set up near the main workstation, alphabetized and expiration dates verified. Thedisorganized jumble of pots and pans below the counter sorted by size and shape and paired with their proper lid. Knives in the knife block sharpened—they had needed it quite desperately—and ready for use. I also found some old cast-iron cookware of my grandmother’s shoved into the far back of the cabinet, and I took the pieces out and seasoned them. I remembered using them with Vovó, and for a moment it felt almost as if she was here with me.

Right on time, my phone, the oven timer, and the alarm clock in my bedroom all chimed a half hour before camp ended. I decided to leave right then just to make sure I was waiting when Tyler finished. Surely after a long day he’d be happy to see me, right?

•••

The library was busy when I entered. Parents with kids streamed past me, so I assumed another program had just gotten out, as this was the toddler set and definitely not members of the robotics camp.

On the second floor, I noted that the double doors to the robotics room were still closed. I checked my phone. I had about fifteen minutes to kill. I glanced at the short shelves stuffed with books and ran my fingers along the spines. Despite our complicated relationship, I actually loved books. I liked the weighty feel of them in my hands and the way they smelled of paper and ink, and I especially loved it if there were pictures—I tended to think in pictures, especially pictures of food.

My calling to become a chef had come early in life. My vovó watched me mornings and later after school while my parents worked. We’d lived in New Bedford back then. The cottage on the Vineyard became a summer home after I was born. I didn’t know it then, but I had been a surprise. Because my parents were just starting out, Mom as a real estate agent and Dad in insurance, same as now, it was decided that Vovó would leave the island and come live with us to watch me so my parents didn’t have to quit their fledgling careers or pay for day care.

I spent my childhood learning all of the family recipes by her side. Vovó spoke in her own mix of Portuguese and English but never wrote any of her recipes down, so I’d learned by watching her and doing what she did. I discovered even at a young age that learning came easiest to me if I was allowed to use my hands and do the work myself—kinesthetic learning, it’s called.

From my first successful queijo de figo, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life—cook. For the food lovers,queijo de figois loosely translated as “fig cheese,” but it’s not cheese, it’s cake—delicious cake with figs and anise—but it resembles a cheese wheel, thus the name.

I checked my watch. I had ten more minutes until camp was done, so I wandered over to the next bookshelf and saw that it displayed the latest magazines. I scanned the covers until I found one with food andrecipes. I laid it on top of the short shelving unit and began to flip through the pages. The photographs were excellent. The fonts were a nightmare. There is no cure for dyslexia. There’s no pill to take or brain surgery to be done that can keep the words and letters from flip-flopping or hopping around the page.

There are, however, fonts that are friendlier to the dyslexic brain than others. Sans serif or bottom-heavy typefaces that differentiate thep’s andb’s andd’s are super helpful. This magazine had none of that. Given that one in ten people have some form of dyslexia, you’d think mass-market publications would catch on with their fonts, but no.

Someday, when I published my own cookbook... yes, this was a secret dream of mine. I never told anyone, ever, for fear that they would laugh at the girl with dyslexia wanting to publish a book. Anyway, if, no,when, I published my cookbook, the fonts were going to be dyslexic friendly.

I happily flipped through the pages until I saw the most beautiful pan-seared Atlantic salmon on a bed of jasmine rice that I had ever seen. My eyes strayed to the recipe. Did they use a rub? A marinade? How had they seared it so evenly with an extra char on the edges? I studied the words with a sigh.

In addition to being a kinesthetic learner, I was a visual learner, too, and spent most of my time watching online cooking videos to learn how to do things. TheInternet had literally saved me in culinary school. Still, I wanted to know about this salmon. I forced myself to focus on the words that were as slippery as a freshly caught fish. It was a struggle.

“Sam? Is that you?”

I ripped my gaze from the page. I blinked, trying to get my bearings. I glanced at the woman standing in front of me. Medium in height, like me, but thinner, with a head of bright red hair, she wore overly large glasses, had a button nose and full lips. She grinned and asked, “It hasn’t been that long since we’ve seen each other, has it? Do you really not recognize me?”

“Emily! Emster! Em!” I cried. “Of course I recognize you. You’re just out of context. I mean, usually we’re drunk in a bar in Boston when I see you.”

I hurried around the short shelf and grabbed her in an exuberant bear hug. Clearly not prepared for my enthusiastic greeting, Em was caught off guard, and we stumbled before she grabbed the bookshelf for balance.

“Sorry! I’m just so glad to see you,” I said. “I meant to call you as soon as I landed, but there was minor family drama happening and I’m still trying to get my bearings with being here and all.”

“That’s all right,” Em said. She waved a hand at me. “I know how busy you are.”

“Eh.” I shrugged. Not that busy since I’d lost my job, but I didn’t need to share that just yet.

Even though I considered Em one of my closestfriends, I hadn’t told her about my situation. Being passed over for the promotion to executive chef at the Comstock, when I’d been there for seven years, had crushed me, and I’d quit. Now I was flat broke and unemployed and full of my old familiar friend—shame. I hadn’t told anyone about my aborted career. Instead, I let everyone think I was just taking the summer off. Ha! As if that ever happened when you were a chef.

I knew the restaurant owner’s decision to hire someone else was not reflective of my culinary skills. Straight up, he told me he felt a man would be a better fit in the hierarchy of the kitchen. Misogynistic jerk! Still, there was a part of me that felt that the food I’d busted my tail to create should have guaranteed me the job of executive chef, and it was hard to let it go, especially when I suspected deep down that it was my dyslexia that caused him to pass over me.

An executive chef had so many organizational duties, like the menu, inventory, schedules, and budget. The owner knew I had dyslexia, and I suspected he didn’t want to take a risk with me. Whatever. I decided that sharing the current events of my life could wait at least until we had drinks in front of us.

Em stared at me expectantly. I’m the extrovert, the talker, while she’d always been the introvert. It had been my job to do the heavy lifting conversationally, and usually it was no problem, but at the moment it just felt too difficult to open up.

I scouted the room, looking for something to say. I noticed that the library was still hopping for a Monday evening and the doors to the robotics room were still closed. “I looked for you this morning when I dropped Tyler off for robotics camp.”

“I’m working the evening shift today,” she said.

“Yeah? It must be nice to have the morning off,” I said. Why was this conversation feeling so difficult? Where was our usual camaraderie?

“It is,” she said. She didn’t elaborate.

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