A boy obsessed

Tristan loved the alchemy of cooking: broiling chicken bones until lightly charred and simmering them for hours until transformed into a rich aromatic stock that he’d use in sauces or soup or a glaze. But he was equally thrilled by the quick bliss of an Oreo McFlurry. Tristan loved everything about food.

I wasn’t sure that Tristan would succeed in culinary school. He was 19 and reckless, but his focus and commitment to school astounded me. His previous passion for cooking turned into an all-consuming endeavor. By that time, my oldest daughter had moved out, leaving only Tristan and his sister, Tanis, at home with me. Every meal Tristan prepared for us was an adventure into the unknown.

One time, he spent all day in the kitchen, filling our world with the fried, yeasty scent of gluten-free doughnuts which he topped with a sweet maple glaze and served to us for dinner, at 4 pm, with a side of thick-sliced, apple-smoked bacon. Tristan didn’t want Tanis to go through life never tasting a warm, home-made doughnut just because she couldn’t eat wheat.

“Come and get it!” he called, setting the first batch in front of Tanis, and placing more dough in the fryer. The doughnuts were puffy and golden brown, dripping with a quickly-hardening glaze. They smelled like love. As Tanis took her first bite, Tristan’s intense grey-green eyes stared at her, nervous and hopeful. When she finally gave him a thumbs up, her smiling mouth too full to speak, he whooped in a Rocky Balboa impression, his grin as large as life. He danced around the kitchen island to wrap Tanis in a bear hug and kiss the top of her head. He wore nothing but MMA shorts with a kitchen rag tucked into the elastic. He was lean and muscled, his hands and forearms scarred from cooking.

He was too skinny, I thought.

Another time, he served me and Tanis a five-course fine-dining extravaganza, every course themed around juniper berries. The food was perfectly plated, and the table set with a white table cloth and candles for ambiance. He served us wearing his black dress pants and white button-up shirt, with a white apron draped over his arm. He spoke in a comical English accent. It was 10 pm when he brought out the final course, a juniper-chocolate panna cotta.

For Tristan, if his cooking turned out well, then all was right in the world. More than that, he was on top of the world.

“I’m fucking awesome, mom!” he yelled one afternoon, licking warm caramel sauce from his fingers, shimmying around the kitchen and singing along to Elton John’s Tiny Dancer. “This is fucking A! All the girls are going to want this caramel sauce.”

But if his cooking didn’t turn out well, he was unpredictable. I learned to watch closely, barely breathing, to see if he’d just shrug it off and try again, or if things would fall apart. In the split second I saw his mood shift, I’d jump in to try to salvage whatever went wrong – a sagging souffle or broken Bearnaise. Of course, I never could salvage a thing, because even if I did, it was too late.

Sometimes, after a cooking failure, he’d lock himself in his room and smoke weed, hurling obscenities if I tried to talk to him. “Fuck off, mom, it’s all your fault,” he’d say, whether I’d been in the kitchen with him or not. I took it in stride and tidied the kitchen, sometimes coaxing him to try again. Sometimes that worked.

On his bad days, he’d blame himself. He’d throw his cooking in the garbage and lay comatose for half the day, his only words about how pathetic, useless, and stupid he was. His words seemed true to him and it broke my heart. I’d tiptoe around him, to avoid being a target or upsetting him further by my simply being. If Tanis came into the room, I’d try to catch her eye and shake my head, indicating for her to just let him be. Please, just let him be! But Tristan’s dark mood was pervasive and made it hard for anyone else to breathe. If it got too much for Tanis, she’d tell him to get over it.

“It’s only a coffee cake, Tristan. Make another one!” she’d say.

That was all Tristan needed to leap into a rage and tell her to fuck off and Tanis would respond in kind. Then my world would explode as my two beautiful children raged at each other in an unstoppable emotional storm. They both had black belts in taekwondo and sometimes things got physical. Once, I had to call the police.

On Tristan’s worst days, though, he’d threaten to kill himself, demand money from me (which I sometimes gave him and sometimes didn’t) and then take off. He never told me where he was going, and I rarely asked. I already knew. If that happened on a week night, it wasn’t so bad. I knew he’d be home in time to change into his checkered pants and chef’s jacket and head out to school by 6 am. Tristan never missed school. But if it was the weekend, I wouldn’t hear from him until Monday morning. Those times, my fear of what might happen to him was equal only to my relief that he was away.

The year Tristan was in culinary school was an emotional roller coaster for all of us. Our home revolved around the erratic ups and downs of a boy obsessed with cooking and cocaine.