My father was an exception, but then he’d probably be an exception anywhere. He was a surgeon, the son of a surgeon, trained like his father at Stanford. He said occasionally that there were far too many people coming into California. He went further than that: when I was thirteen I heard him say that San Diego was ruined by the war, which changed it from a rather pleasant, sleepy town into a half-grown city full of “poorly educated, over-enthusiastic fools.”
We were standing in front of the church, on a hot Sunday in May, and he was talking to one of the scientists who worked at the Naval Electronics Lab, further out on the Point Loma. I remember being scandalized, and looking around to see if anyone had overheard. That wasn’t the kind of thing that our teachers or the parents of any of my friends said.
My mother laughed at him. “James never got over being invited to the Bohemian Club,” she said. This was before she got sick, when she still was tall and elegant. “He’s such a snob.” Then she looped her arm through his and smiled. “That’s why he married me.”
My mother.
But I hadn’t come to the coast to think about her.
I turned on the radio and tried to get something loud and pounding to help keep me awake. The drive to San Diego was a good two hours even early on Sunday when there was less traffic than usual. I decided I’d stop around Oceanside on the other side of Camp Pendleton to get something to eat and stretch my legs. Jenny had said she’d call to tell Lil to expect me in the morning, and knowing Lil I decided she’d be looking for me early.
But even the music wasn’t enough to keep me awake, I realized as I drove down Interstate 405, heading over to Interstate 5 and the run down the coast to San Diego. The headlights approaching through the fog were disorienting, and my eyes drifted closed twice. It was dangerous to drive like that. I was tired, I was annoyed, I was regretting that I had ever decided to make the trip. I began to think about the uppers I had stowed in the bottom of my shaving kit.
Anybody who’s read Anthony Bourdain’s books about chefs and cooking knows that a certain percentage of people who work in kitchens are crazy. During the two years when I did the Culinary Institute of America course and the two years after that when I worked in kitchens up and down the Hudson I met quite a few, and got into a couple of altercations with one or two, also. There was a certain amount of cocaine, a lot of alcohol, not as much speed as you’d find among truck drivers: sometimes a bit of chemical help is called for in the kitchen. I was much older than the crews I worked with as a rule, and I had Jenny and Cassis as anchors, so I wasn’t as tempted as the other guys. But on the other hand I didn’t have the energy the younger ones did, and there were times when I felt the need for an upper or two. So I still had three pills I’d gotten the last time I’d worked in someone else’s kitchen. They had shifted to the bottom of the little aspirin bottle I kept for emergencies, and I’d almost thrown them out the last time I refilled it from the thousand-aspirin bottle that Jenny picked up at Price Club.
So there it is, I admit I had them with me in my shaving kit.
But I didn’t open the shaving kit, I didn’t take even an aspirin, although that might have been good for my knee. It is important for everyone to know that. What happened after was not affected by anything chemical. I was, I am, I have been ever since Jenny took me over, a good citizen, a boy scout, not somebody who gets cranked up on meth or who needs a line of cocaine to wake up in the morning.
So when I came to the interchange south of Laguna Beach, I bought a ten-ounce cup of coffee and a can of Coke at a fast food place and hobbled around the parking lot. Despite the roar of the freeway I imagined I could hear the surf not too far away. Certainly the air was damp with fog and filled with a hint of the smell you find on mornings like this along the beach. My knee hurt—I had trouble getting out of the car, and the first few steps were agony—but something of the peace I always remember from being by the ocean crept into my bones. Yes, being in California did funny things to me, but maybe, I thought, just maybe this trip would be all right. Then I went back to the car, got my small bag out of the back seat, and opened it up next to me so I could fish out the big manila envelope with the papers Lil had sent me.
I continued south making very good time, until I realized that I was going to arrive at Lil’s far too early for her to be receiving visitors. However, I had told her I’d look over the complex, and I’d initially thought we might drive up Sunday afternoon. The better plan, I saw, the better plan by far, would be to stop at the complex now. That way I could spend the afternoon making sure that Lil was ready for the movers when they came the next day.
The sky was growing a little lighter off to the east: sunrise would be sometime around 6:00 A.M. I pulled the car over onto the shoulder so I could check where I should turn off the freeway. The brochure from the complex had a map in it, I knew, so I slit the manila envelope open with my penknife, which I’d also retrieved from the bottom of the bag. The directions said to take Highway 78 east toward Escondido from the interchange south of Oceanside, then the San Marcos off-ramp and a couple of county roads that wound around the tops of the hills. That wouldn’t be too hard to find, I’d been in that country before, I remembered.
I put the knife back in my pants pocket. I’m sure of that. I’m sure of that because, while I love knives, I have great respect for them. A cook has to. You keep them righteous sharp, you have one in your hand half your waking time, and you are surrounded by people working under pressure who also are cutting and chopping and slicing with instruments just as sharp and strong as yours.
This knife wasn’t one I used at work, but it has a connection with Chez Cassis. On that famous trip to Europe that Jenny and I took, when I’d finally decided to take the leap into a new life, she bought it for me. At the time, she thought it might be useful for cooking; we were wrong, but neither of us knew that much then. Without a doubt it was a beautiful knife, however. It was a Laguiole, handmade in a little village in the Massif Central with a handle carved from a cow’s horn. It fit the hand perfectly, it closed on itself with a satisfied gasp, the blade kept its edge like the best surgical tool. I used it half a dozen times a day, every day, and every time I thought of Jenny and her faith in me.
So the knife was in my pocket when I drove into the parking lot at the complex and the sun was beginning to rise from behind the mountains to the east. I parked around in the back so I could look at the sunrise on my left and at the complex in front of me and on my right.
One of the things I always forget about Southern California is how high the mountains are. The Sierra Nevada, which form the backbone of the state, are the stars: Mount Whitney is the highest mountain in the continental U.S., and the long range of granite peaks capture so much moisture from the ocean that everything on their east side is near desert. But the ranges of mountains that run the length of the state not far from the coast are impressive too, especially when you consider that they rise from near sea level. Mount Palomar—the one with the big telescope—is over a mile high. So is Mount Cuyamaca, where we used to go in the wintertime to see the snow.
I don’t think you can see either of them from the complex, but what I saw that morning were shadowy, purple-grey cutouts of mountains with the sky pink and orange behind. The Camino Real Care Complex sat on the edge of the valley where the highway ran. I couldn’t see the bottom, though, because the low places were still filled with fog. Above, the air seemed more or less clear, although it was tinted with something—smog, maybe. Nevertheless, it was all very pretty, and I sat for several minutes, taking it in.
However, I was there to get a fix on the complex, not the landscape. Lil had written that this place looked the best of all the assisted living facilities she had visited. Built about fifteen years previously, it had forty-five apartments for people who could get around on their own, who only needed help with the housework, two meals a day, and the backup of having staff on the premises twenty-four/seven. The place also had two other levels of care: one for people who needed help with personal stuff like dressing and bathing, and another for those who had to have full-time care.
“As you get more and more ancient you can just go from one level to another,” Lil had written. “But not all the people have one foot in the grave. They