By Chris Jetko

Today I’ll be your guide as we explore this place of mystery and broken dreams.

Gather round you guys! I’m so glad you could join me for this afternoon’s tour. Since it opened to visitors in the spring of 2019, Kitchen Island has welcomed guests from across West Allenhurst, and from as far away as Middletown. Today I’ll be your guide as we explore this place of mystery and broken dreams.

A question already? Yes, Parker, you can live stream the tour. Whatever, ok?

Now, I invite you all to close your eyes and imagine a steel-grey February morning. Claire Gardener, mother of two and half-hearted financial analyst, had decided to call out sick from her work at Mason Shadwick LLC, suffering from what she described as a bad case of indignation. After putting on a pot of coffee she arranged herself in front of the television, finally settling on one of the many dozens of popular home-renovation shows, Flipping Out.

The two hosts, a grinning, emphatic woman in her thirties, and a bearded man in a flannel shirt, were giddily sledge-hammering a downstairs wall. It was the violence of it that grabbed Claire. The chunks of drywall flying. The almighty racket. Was she, perhaps, picturing herself giddily sledge-hammering Bob Mason’s office? The truth is, we’ll never know. What we do know is that what happened next would forever change the lives of the Gardener family.

Because that’s when the emphatic woman on TV turned to the camera and pronounced two fateful words: Kitchen Island.

An island! Claire latched on to the idea like a storm-tossed sailor yearning for safe harbor. That night at dinner she announced that what she needed was an island of her own. It would be, she said, her little corner of the world, where she might gather with girlfriends to share stories and baked brie. There would be seating so the children could finish homework under her benevolent gaze. She vividly conjured the sounds of snapping celery and the crunch of carrots on the cutting board as she imagined herself there, preparing elaborate meals made from wholesome, locally sourced ingredients. But most of all the island would be a refuge. A place where the Gardeners could reconnect, sheltered from the roiling currents of modern life, the rising tides of incivility, and the distractions of technology run amok.

At first, Dave wasn’t buying it. At least he wasn’t until Claire pointed out that an island could add “at least a couple grand” to their property value. Then he was all in. Oh, was he ever.

I see your hand is up, Flynn. Actually, no reading, writing, or any other school-related activity was ever to take place on Kitchen Island. But we’ll get to that later, ok?

Soon, plans were drawn up. Enlisting the help of a local cabinet maker, Claire fussed over every detail. She insisted, among other things, on a built-in knick-knack shelf.

When it finally took shape later that spring, Kitchen Island was the largest man-made island in Monmouth County. In the midst of the kitchen its greige foundation rose like the White Cliffs of Dover. When Dave came home and said that the island “really popped,” and added a real “wow-factor,” Claire embraced him with tears in her eyes.

Yeah, it was gross.

Not long afterwards the packages began to arrive. Garlic choppers, avocado slicers, meat thermometers both analogue and digital, a chrome Italian pasta maker. Like offerings to the spirit of Ina Garten, these and other ingeniously ergonomic kitchen gadgets were carefully unwrapped and placed by Claire within the deepest recesses of the island.

Some whisper that enclosed in its dark confines is an egg cuber. Does anyone know what that is? An egg cuber is a device that turns hard-boiled eggs into cubes. What purpose this might serve is one of the great mysteries of Kitchen Island.

Whatever Claire’s best intentions, once safely stowed within the island, these items never again saw the light of day.

You guys can probably guess what happened next. The hoped-for girlfriend gatherings never materialized. My dad, who somehow managed to slam his knee into the thing every morning, started calling it the Great Barrier Island.

Inevitably the local wildlife moved in. Namely, our cat Millie. If you look closely you can see her cat tracks, marked indelibly in a sticky film of crumbs and cracker dust.

And so it was that the island was given over to a state of neglect, slowly covered in archeological layers of Bed Bath & Beyond coupons and the unread yoga magazines that you see scattered across its surface today.

Is this the end of our sad story? Could the island yet become the hoped-for sanctuary that fired Claire’s imagination so many months ago? Yesterday, I overheard my mom saying that she really ought to have Denise and Shelley over. And maybe Beth. She also said that it might be “super fun” to make pasta from scratch.

Knowing her like I do, only time will tell.