Belinda got a wicked glimmer in her eye. For an instant, Angie understood how her father had fallen so profoundly in love. “I’m going to take swimming lessons,” she said.
Publishers Weekly
Legacy: The Recipes of Deacon Thorpe, Foreword by Quetin York
Fans of Deacon Thorpe’s TV shows, Day to Night to Day with Deacon and Pitchfork, and guests lucky enough to have secured a coveted reservation at Mr. Thorpe’s midtown Manhattan restaurant, the Board Room, will rejoice that the legacy of the late chef—who passed away in May 2016—lives on through the voices of his talented children. His daughter, Angela Thorpe, graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park in 2010 and worked for the past four years as the fire chief at the Board Room. His son, Hayes Thorpe, was until June 2016 an editor at Fine Travel magazine. Together, the Thorpe offspring provide a host of the most popular recipes from the TV shows and the restaurant, as well as some treasured family recipes and some original recipes developed by Ms. Thorpe. Interspersed throughout is an unflinchingly honest and often humorous portrait of their father. According to his eldest two children (Thorpe also fathered a daughter, Ellery, age 10, with his third wife, Scarlett Oliver), Deacon Thorpe fought the demons of drugs and alcohol most of his life, but he was buoyed emotionally by the women he loved—his childhood sweetheart and first wife, Laurel Thorpe, his second wife, Academy Award–winning actress Belinda Rowe, and the aforementioned Ms. Oliver. Legacy is more than a cookbook; it’s a touching tribute to a cultural icon many Americans miss. It celebrates Mr. Thorpe’s greatest legacy, which is love.
New York Times Wedding Announcements
OLIVER–TANNER
Scarlett Oliver and Robert “Bo” Tanner were married yesterday at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Savannah, Georgia. The Reverend Clarence Meets officiated.
Ms. Oliver, the widow of the late chef Deacon Thorpe, was attended only by her daughter, Ellery Thorpe. Ms. Oliver is the daughter of Bracebridge and Prudence Oliver of Savannah, Georgia.
Mr. Tanner is a private wealth management specialist in Savannah, Georgia, and New York City. He’s the son of Beulah Tanner and the late Harrison Robert Tanner. Mr. Tanner’s first marriage ended in divorce.
Deacon and Angie’s Stupid Word List (reprised)
1. protégé
2. literally
3. half sister (brother)
4. oxymoron
5. repartee
6. nifty
7. syllabus
8. parched
9. brouhaha
10. doggie bag
11. giddy
12. unique
13. condolences/sympathy/pity
14. maraschino
National Enquirer, August 31, 2016
Belinda Rowe divorces horse-trainer husband… her ex, Chef Deacon Thorpe, advises her from beyond the grave, “Get rid of him!”
LAUREL SIMMONS THORPE and JOHN EDWARD BUCKLEY JR.,
along with their families,
invite you to join in the celebration of their marriage.
September 17, 2017
Nantucket Island, Massachusetts
American Paradise, 33 Hoicks Hollow Road
RSVP by August 10.
EPILOGUE: ONE PERFECT DAY
He’s going up to Nantucket to say good-bye.
He has seen this coming for months now, but it feels like a fresh wound. It was either the restaurant or the house, and to lose the restaurant would mean putting forty-seven people out of work and watching his life’s dream go up in smoke. There really wasn’t a choice.
He has also blown his third marriage. Deacon knows he should be proud that his union with Scarlett has lasted as long as it did, and that they created a being as exquisite and clever as Ellery. And now, he is sober. The strongest thing about him is his willpower.
He plans a trip out of the city, one last visit to Nantucket. He wonders if he can make the time as sweet and pure as the day his father first took him to the island. He will try.
He decides to take the slow ferry, the way he and Jack did so many years earlier. Forty years have passed, but he can still recall his wonder. Deacon buys a cup of coffee and takes it up to the top deck. Over the years, people have maligned the slow ferry—it’s easier and faster to take the fast boat or to fly—but Deacon enjoys it. The trip feels like an old-fashioned adventure. He pays close attention as the island comes into view, and then, as they grow closer, he squints. Are there seals lounging on the jetty? Yes, one. Deacon waves his empty cup; the seal barks.
He has brought no luggage, just his sunglasses, his phone (the battery about to die), and his wallet. He longs for his old Willys jeep, but it gave up the ghost the summer before. The mechanic that Deacon called to resuscitate it said it was a lost cause. The frame was rusted through, the engine shot. It would have cost Deacon $15,000 to replace and repair it, which was far more than the beater was worth.
Be grateful for all the years she gave you, the mechanic said.
The old, funky pickup he bought to replace it is at the house, and so Deacon has to take a taxi. The first one in line is an incredibly sweet 1965 Lincoln Continental with suicide doors—with a driver who is dressed like a pirate. Who is this guy? He seems a little theme-parkish to Deacon, but maybe the kid’s just a scrappy entrepreneur. Deacon will give him the benefit of the doubt.
Deacon says, “Take me to the end of Hoicks Hollow Road, please.”
The driver is wearing a long velvet coat despite the warm day, and his dark, greasy hair hangs to his shoulders. He’s wearing an eye patch too, of course, so with his one beady eye, he stares at Deacon for a long moment in the rearview. He says, “Are you Deacon Thorpe?”
“Afraid so,” Deacon says, and he nearly laughs. A pirate who watches cooking shows! “Now, to Hoicks Hollow, please. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”
“Huh?” the driver says.
“It’s from Monopoly?” Deacon says. “The board game?”
Blank look.
“Never mind,” Deacon says.
The air on Nantucket is rich the same way that heavy cream is rich. Is there more oxygen in it? Deacon wonders. It smells of pine and salt. Today is a drop-dead stunner with plentiful sunshine and a sky so blue, it breaks his heart. It’s beauty, ultimately, that hurts Deacon—his inability to match it, his inability to be worthy of it, his inability to hold it in his heart.
Pirate heads out the Polpis Road, past farmland and split-rail fences. They pass the tiny, rose-covered cottage that sits at the bend in the road. Tourists stop to take pictures of this cottage all day long, which means that Deacon, as a seasoned islander, should be immune to its beauty. But the cottage, draped in a lush blanket of ‘New Dawn’ roses, is too pretty to ignore. Seeing it fills Deacon with joy.
Pirate drives past Sesachacha Pond.
“It’s taken me thirty years,” Deacon says, “but I finally learned how to pronounce the name of this pond. Seh-sack-a-ja.”
Pirate barely nods; he probably couldn’t care less, but Deacon is proud of himself. For decades, Deacon has stumbled over the name, sounding as though he had a mouth full of marbles. But JP broke it down into syllables, and now Deacon sounds like a Wampanoag native. JP is an ace with things like that: he can identify every shorebird, every species of tree and shrub and he can tell what kind of fish is on the line—bluefish, striped bass, or bonito—just by the way it tugs. The guy is frankly amazing, and Deacon would love nothing more than to somehow hook him up with Angie. He can’t choose Angie’s life for her, but how miraculous would it be if she fell in love with JP and moved to Nantucket year round? She could open her own restaurant here, take winters off to travel, and maybe give Deacon a grandchild.
Deacon spots Sankaty Head Light. When Ellery was little, he used to tell her it was a giant peppermint stick. He misses Ellery desperately—the way she smells after a bath, the freckles that dust her nose.
Pirate puts on his turn signal and takes a left.
Good old Hoicks Hollow Road, Jack had said. Used to be my home away from home.
When Pirate drops Deacon off, Deacon gives him money for the fare, plus a twenty-dollar tip. “Get yourself a parrot,” Deacon says with a grin.
Deacon changes into a bathing suit and a long-sleeved T-shirt and grabs a beach towel from the linen closet. He pulls a bike out of the shed—Laurel’s bike is how he always thinks of it—and throws the towel in the basket. He pedals down Hoicks Hollow Road to the Sankaty Head Beach Club. He and Belinda languished on the wait list for more than ten years, and then, the summer after they split, Deacon received a letter of acceptance, which he turned down because the application had Belinda Rowe’s name on it, and it was no secret that private clubs preferred whole families to broken ones.