She was trying, in other words, to have a positive outlook.
But as Dahlia followed Janet toward the back corner of the set, Janet’s curly hair bouncing in a loose knot as she walked, Dahlia curled her fingers into the hem of her tank top. Her humiliations of the past twenty-four hours, including the California rolls Lizzie had just crafted faster and more artistically than Dahlia had, dropped away as a different anxiety settled in her gut.
Dahlia had been thinking about this moment since she’d learned she made the cut for the show a month ago.
When the contestants introduced themselves in their first solo interview, they only had to state a few basic facts about themselves. Where they were from, their jobs back home, what they hoped to get out of the show.
But even trying to think of answers for these simplest of questions made Dahlia feel inadequate and confused these days.
She was from New Bedford, an old whaling town in southern Massachusetts next door to Rhode Island. It was New England who had raised her.
But she lived in Maryland now. Her ex-husband David had commuted to DC and she commuted to Baltimore; they had lived between the two in suburbia for the six years of their marriage. She had contemplated moving to Baltimore proper when she moved out last year, but she ended up sticking to what she knew. Because everything, from getting up in the morning to feeding herself, had felt hard, and sticking to what she knew felt like the only option. She found a small apartment in their same dull town, even though she no longer felt any real allegiance to it, to its string of mini-malls and chain restaurants. She wondered, at times, if she ever had.
David had moved to Arlington.
So at least she didn’t have to worry about running into him at the Food Lion.
The small set where the Chef’s Special contestants would film their solo interviews was tucked in a back corner of the sound stage, beyond the wooden archway, next to craft services. A thick, marbled window lit from behind and made of stunning turquoise glass took up the entire back wall. It was beautiful, and it soothed Dahlia immediately when she walked in the room, even if it didn’t give her any better ideas of what to say.
She sat on a stool. She blinked while the camera focused on her, while PAs adjusted the lights. The young woman behind the camera with short, tightly curled hair peeked out at her and smiled, full of friendly vibes.
“Hey, Dahlia. I’m Maritza. Remember, we just need the basics here. Start with your name, age, location. Good to go?”
Dahlia nodded numbly. Wordlessly, Maritza counted off with her fingers and then gave the signal.
“My name is Dahlia. I’m twenty-eight and originally from Massachusetts.”
Her mind blanked.
Maritza bopped out from behind the camera again. “Okay. Something about your career, and why you’re here?”
Right. Sure.
Except Dahlia didn’t have a career.
She had worked as a copy editor at a small Baltimore paper for the last four years, and enjoyed it for the most part. She had always liked writing and editing, and the work was interesting sometimes. More and more of the paper was simply canned from larger news wires, but the local beats their reporters still got to cover felt important. She liked her coworkers, especially Josh, who covered their online marketing and social media, who made her laugh and had always treated her with respect.
But she’d become restless these last couple of years after so many days in the same cubicle, never moving on to something bigger, better, more challenging.
Dahlia had dreams, but vague, blurry ones, dreams that held no concrete value. Seeing the world. Doing something she was passionate about, something meaningful. She simply had no idea what that something was. She worried that if she made cooking her career dream, she’d lose the joy in it. And sometimes, this last year, it felt like that joy was all she had.
Dahlia didn’t want to own a restaurant, or even work in one, but cooking meant something to her now, something primal and important. When her mental health and her marriage started to break down two years ago, far before she fully understood either of those things was happening, it was cooking that calmed her. Made her feel productive and useful.
Cooking made her mind focus on something other than herself.
And then, as she started getting better at it, as she started cooking more not because she had to but because she wanted to, she started to stray away from strict recipes to rely on instinct and knowledge alone. And that? That made her feel creative and powerful—two adjectives she had forgotten to associate with herself. And then it wasn’t just a distraction. Cooking held the possibility of helping Dahlia Woodson find herself again.