Chapter 8: Home smells like curry, collard greens, and fried chicken.
Back to the present
I travel light.
Maybe that’s hard to understand, since I’m flying in from fucking Europe and don’t know how long I’m going to be here, but an airline lost my checked bag once when I was country-hopping for basketball, and ever since then, I only take a carry-on with me. So I don’t have any reason to go to baggage claim, but I end up walking past it anyway on my way to ground transportation.
The baggage carousel from our tiny propeller plane flight is rumbling rhythmically, metal slats letting out a high-pitched squeak every few seconds as they scroll by, but no bags ride the conveyor belt.
Amy’s standing there with a handful of others, oversized purse on her shoulder, hands folded in front of her, and as I walk by, she catches my eye, waves me over.
I check my phone, but there’s no reply from Gerry, which means the restaurant’s probably still in the weeds, so I saunter in Amy’s direction, gym bag bouncing against my waist.
“You didn’t check anything?” she asks when I arrive.
“I fundamentally do not fucking believe in checked baggage,” I say, then add, “Sorry, I should watch my language.”
She shrugs. “I work in a software company. I’m the one female in an office full of men. Believe me, an occasional f-bomb is the least of my worries.”
I grin. “So where do you go next, once you get your bag?”
“I pick up my rental car. Then it’s off to Bumblefuck, Nowhere, for this wedding.”
“And where exactly is Bumblefuck? Sounds suburban. Is it close to Columbus?”
Amy pulls out a phone, thumbs it awake, flips through a few screens. “No, it’s… Marcine. Have you ever heard of Marcine, Ohio?”
“You’re fucking kidding me. Marcine? The wedding you’re going to is in Marcine?”
“Yeah,” she says, eyebrows furrowing a little. “Why? What’s wrong with Marcine?”
“Nothing — everything, actually. It’s my hometown. It’s where I’m going. Marcine’s between here and — ”
“Akron?”
“Exactly.”
Her eyes light up. “We should ride together!” Then her face falls just as quickly. “Unless — sorry, I’m sure you have someone picking you up, or other plans, or — ”
“You said you’re renting a car?” I ask.
“Yeah, as soon as my — ”
“I’m in.”
“Really?”
“Really. Lemme just text my brother, tell him I don’t need him to come get me.”
#
I don’t give Amy directions to my family’s home; I give her directions to Soul Mountain. After all, this is why I’m here, isn’t it? To fill in with whatever needs doing at the restaurant while Mom recovers from chemo and surgery, and Dad nurses her back to health. I try to explain this to Amy as we drive without giving away too much family drama.
“The ‘Soul’ is for soul food,” I tell her. “You know — collard greens and coleslaw and cornbread and fried chicken. The ‘Mountain’ is for traditional Himalayan cuisine. Nepalese food is similar to Indian food, but… different. Usually not quite as intense. More lentil soup, fewer hot peppers.”
Amy contemplates this, adjusts the glasses on her face as she looks over her shoulder before changing lanes. She switched into glasses before we left the Cleveland airport, complaining that her eyes were burning after sixteen hours wearing contact lenses. The glasses make her look kinda professorial. Which I mean in a good way. In a hot-for-teacher way.
“So… soul food… and Himalayan food… fusion?”
“I swear it’s not as strange as it sounds. My mom and dad, they’re both amazing cooks. They make it work.”
“They must make it work, if they’ve owned a soul-Himalayan fusion restaurant in small-town Ohio for — how long did you say, again?”
“Twenty-five years. Give or take. After my dad got laid off from the auto parts plant for the third time, my folks realized that running restaurants was the only other marketable skill they both had. So they borrowed some money from my dad’s brother-in-law, and… voila.”
So — let me just skip ahead here and explain that I did not go on and on and on about my family’s restaurant the entire car trip to Marcine. I made sure to get Amy talking, too. And here’s what I learned:
Begin Summary
As a kid growing up with a military dad and a stay-at-home mom, Amy had grown up in
- Germany
- France
- South Korea
- Alaska
- North Carolina
- New York state
Of these, her two favorite places were South Korea and Alaska. South Korea because it was so wired; Alaska because it was so not-wired. She got an undergraduate degree in business management from Ohio State, then returned for business school a couple years later because she was a “practical idealist” — her words, not mine. After growing up in the shadow of pretty much the biggest bureaucracy the government had to offer, she decided that governments and militaries and politics and policies were not going to fix the world’s problems. Socially and environmentally responsible businesses, on the other hand, now they might just be able to tackle big issues and turn a profit at the same time.
(“I have an Elon Musk approach,” she says, and I nod knowingly rather than admit I don’t know who the fuck Elon Musk is.)
That’s how Amy ended up in “b-school,” as she calls it, with the intention to either work for a business that had social responsibility as its primary objective, or to start one herself. But by the time she actually graduated, the economy was down, pickings were slim, and the software company made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
(“Golden handcuffs,” she explains with a shrug.)
The rest was history.
End Summary
“And that was almost — God, I think it’s been eight years already,” she concludes, eyes on the road. “It’s strange, isn’t it? How time works as we get older? When I was a kid, ‘eight years’ meant two or three different pushpins on the map. Two or three different houses, two or three different schools, two or three different sets of new friends. And now? Now, it’s like eight years can pass” — she snaps her fingers — “like that. And you look back and you think, ‘Where’d that time go? Where was I for those eight years?’”
“Eight years ago, I’d just turned thirty,” I muse.
She nods. “I was thirty-one.”
“And thirty felt so fucking old, right?”
“So fucking old,” Amy agrees. “Ancient. Over the hill. Or at the very least, it felt like we’d finally arrived at an irrefutable adulthood.”
I nod. “But now… thirty year-olds are already starting to look like babies.”
“And you look at forty year-olds, forty-five year-olds, and you think, ‘Eh, they’re still young,’” she says, grinning. “You see forty-three, forty-four on someone’s dating profile online and you’re like, ‘Oh! My generation!’ When did that happen? That ‘our generation’ is in their forties?… Um, not that I spend all that much time looking at people’s online dating profiles.” She glances sideways at me. “Speaking of forty. How long will you keep playing basketball for?”
I sigh, because this is the question of the hour. Forty might look young to a software executive; to a professional athlete, forty is beyond ancient. Forty is career-ending.
“This might be my last season,” I admit. “If not this year, then…” I trail off with a shrug. “My thumb hasn’t been the same since I hurt it a few years back.”
“I remember when you were out for almost half a season after the surgery,” she says.
I nod. “And I’ve gotten to the point where ice baths after every game are a necessity.”
“So what will you do next? After basketball?”
After basketball.
After. Basketball.
I was afraid she was going to ask that. It’s what I ask myself almost every day now. And I don’t have an answer for myself, let alone for her.
“Coach?” I suggest, shrugging my shoulders. “Maybe. I don’t know. Alex can probably help me get a job somewhere if it comes to that.”
“You don’t sound that enthusiastic about it.”
“I suppose coaching’s better than… I don’t know, sitting behind a desk all day, staring at fucking computer screens.” I realize what I’ve just said a moment later. “Sorry,” I say quickly, my cheeks burning. “I’m sure staring at computer screens…”
Amy only chuckles. “I would love it if I actually got to sit behind a desk and stare at screens all day. Sitting behind a desk would probably be more productive than traveling all over Europe, schmoozing with fat old men at conferences and dinner parties.”
“This is our exit,” I say, pointing at the green and white highway sign, glad to find a topic-changer.
I’ve been away from the U.S. for so long that the green and white sign seems more foreign than familiar. But despite my long absence, I don’t have to check my phone for directions. I could find my way back to Soul Mountain blindfolded. I’m like a fucking homing pigeon. A mile later, well before the crowded parking lot comes into view, I can smell our family restaurant. These mingled smells of rice and lentils, black-eyed peas and curried vegetables, chicken masu and golden-brown hush puppies, formed the backdrop of my childhood and my adolescence.
It smells like home.
And it makes me goddamned twitchy.