Life, on the Line by Grant Achatz (leveled readers .TXT) 📗

and tourists and business travelers smartly stay away. It was nothing like running Trio—it was like my days at the Laundry.

Alinea made money every month in our first year. It was, on every level, a success. My home life, however, was a different story.

Before Kaden was even born I had made the decision to not run out and get married, despite the pregnancy. Marriage was a difficult subject for me. I watched the relationship my parents had growing up. I had until recently completely rebuffed my father. I knew that I didn’t want to have that sort of relationship with my sons and I wanted to do everything in my power to set an example for them and to engender trust.

But I was very adamant about not getting married.

Angela and I had two wonderful children, and she kept the home together in a fairly tight fashion. She was a dedicated mom who spent nearly every minute of every day tending to the boys. I was, of course, working nearly all of my waking hours at Alinea. I was not a great father in that I was largely absent five days a week working sixteen-hour days, but I made every effort I could muster when I was there. But I was a terrible spouse. I had no emotional time for Angela, and in many ways my feelings vacillated between appreciation and, well, something else.

While Alinea was being built and had just opened I could defer any talk of marriage by shrugging my shoulders and simply saying, “When?” I had no schedule other than wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep. The restaurant was always in my head, and there were really no days off, no moments off.

As our relationship continued to struggle and disagreements became more frequent I chose to shut down rather than argue. Silence, after all, was the path of least resistance.

In the midst of a tiff in which Angela confronted me about getting married and I tried to change the subject, she marched to the refrigerator, where we had a calendar that helped us remember things like birthday parties, doctors’ appointments, and when I would get paid. She grabbed a red Sharpie and drew a large red ʺXʺ through a square cell that marked a date.

“Here,” she said loud enough so that I would hear her from the other room. “If you don’t ask me to marry you by that date, I am leaving . . . with the boys.”

I knew we weren’t meant to be together, and the kids had been the glue holding the relationship together before Kaden was even born. But over time our interactions grew worse, and what started out as trying to do the right thing for everyone turned into the opposite. But the thought of her taking the boys back to California or Arkansas, where she grew up, was devastating to me.

I wanted desperately to do the right thing for the kids, so I did what I thought was right. I waited until the day before the crossed-out date on the calendar and—ringless and begrudgingly—asked her to marry me.

The wedding was scheduled for March, when Alinea was in its slow season, and Mark Davis, the doctor who had invested in Alinea, generously offered up a house in Napa that was part of a vacation club he belonged to for the wedding site. After I told Thomas that we were getting married—a TFL alumni engagement, no less—he offered to cook for the reception, which Angela arranged to have at Silverado Vineyards, where she once worked. Once everything was set, I asked Nick if he would preside over the ceremony.

“You want me to marry you guys? I’m not exactly a minister,” he said.

In California it was easy to get an online certificate, and it was completely legal. “Come on. You would do a great job and I’m not exactly religious. And I don’t want some old justice of the peace.” He agreed and got a kick out of it.

Two days before the wedding, Angela and I went to the Napa County Courthouse to get our wedding certificate. As we approached the building she turned to me, knowingly, and said, “Well, are you ready?” My stride slowed to a stop. “Here’s your out—you don’t have to do it,” she said. I knew at that point, as I did months previous, that this wasn’t really the case, and resumed walking to the front door of the building.

When the date finally came we gathered with around forty family members and friends in a stunning mansion in Napa. Nick and Mark took me out, and Dagmara and Angela went to dinner at Bouchon before meeting the guys at Pancha’s, the only bar in Yountville. Nick was intent on making sure I had some sort of bachelor-party experience and began ordering shots for everyone. I didn’t want to drink.

I began to panic. Was I doing the right thing? Clearly I knew that Angela and I didn’t belong together, but was this the best thing to do for the boys? Instead of this being the happiest day of my life, I was instead asking myself how I let it come to this. The answer, of course, was that I had invested no time or thought in my personal relationships. My waking time and my dreams were of restaurants and food and my career. And now I was getting married to someone who I did not know well enough and who I did not honestly love.

I sat looking at the pool table and thinking about my time at the Laundry and the great nights we would have here blowing off steam. As I did, I started to shut down completely. Nick came by. “G, don’t take it so hard,” he said. “An ass-kicking on the pool table is nothing to get upset about.” I shook my head.

“I’m just not feeling well. I’m going to bed.”

“Nonsense. I will allow no such thing,” he said. “Here. Have another