by Dana Bate
For a woman so different from my own mother—the frosted, well-groomed socialite to my mother’s mousy, rumpled academic—she and my mother share a remarkably similar view of the role of cooking in a modern woman’s life. For them, cooking is an irrelevant hobby, an amusement for women who lack the brains for more high-powered pursuits or the money to pay someone to perform such a humdrum chore. Sandy Prescott and my mother would agree on very little, but as women who have been liberated from the perfunctory task of cooking a nightly dinner, they would see eye to eye on my intense interest in the culinary arts.
Were I a stronger person, someone more in control of her faculties who has not drunk multiple glasses of champagne, I would probably let Sandy’s remark go without commenting any further. But I cannot be that person. At least not tonight. Not when Sandy is suggesting, as it seems everyone does, that cooking isn’t a priority worthy of a serious person’s time.
“You would make the time if you wanted to,” I say. “But obviously you don’t.”
Martin stabs a piece of lamb with his fork and shoves his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Is this really appropriate, ladies?”
The correct answer, obviously, is no. Picking a fight with my boyfriend’s mother, a woman who already dislikes me, is not appropriate. It also is not wise. But by this point in the evening, I don’t care. I just want this dinner to end, and the sooner that happens the better.
Unfortunately dinner stretches on for an interminable two hours, giving me ample opportunity to take a minor misstep and turn it into a totally radioactive fuckup. And, knowing me, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Whether it’s muttering expletives while wiping Martin’s lap at The Capital Grille or railing against those who order chicken at a steakhouse—which Sandy ultimately did—I always manage to say exactly the wrong thing when the Prescotts are around.
Adam tries to play referee, jumping in with a story about his latest coup, an assignment to a Supreme Court case. He embellishes wildly, crediting himself with far more responsibility and power than he actually has, but Sandy and Martin eat up every word. They love it.
This is Adam at his best: the future politician, captivating the table with his charm and panache. From the moment I met Adam, I was, like any woman with a pulse, attracted to his chiseled features, his intelligence, and his ambition, but his charisma—that’s what sucked me in. That’s what hooked me. When Adam is “on,” being around him is electrifying, a total thrill of a ride you never want to end. He made me feel interesting. He made me feel alive. He took me to parties filled with political movers and shakers—White House Correspondents’ Dinner afterparties and charity galas and Harvard alumni events. He treated me like someone important—like someone who mattered. How could I not fall for someone like that? The man is magnetic, enchanting everyone he meets with his smiles and jokes and shiny white teeth.
All of which seems great until I realize tonight he is acting this way to shut me up.
Every time I attempt to join the conversation, Adam raises his voice and plows over me like a bulldozer, crushing me with his anecdotes and convivial banter. He kicks, squeezes, and prods me beneath the table, like I am an out-of-control five-year-old at a dinner party. I can’t get a word out, which, it becomes clear, is the point.
And that, I decide, is total bullshit. Adam used to love my spunk. That’s what he told me, anyway. I was nothing like the girls Sandy tried to fix him up with, girls who’d had debutante balls and regularly appeared in Capitol File magazine. Sure, I went to an Ivy League school, but in his Harvard-educated eyes, I “only” went to Cornell, which he considered a lesser Ivy. I grew up in a house the size of his parents’ foyer, wrote about financial regulation for a living, whipped up puff pastry from scratch. I was different, damn it. And that made me special. But tonight I do not feel special. Tonight I feel as I have on so many occasions recently: like part of a social experiment gone awry.
During a lull in Adam’s act, Juanita appears with my carrot cake, an eight-inch tower of spiced cake, caramelized pecan filling, cream cheese frosting, and toasted coconut. Miraculously, none of the frosting stuck to the foil—a small triumph. Juanita starts cutting into the cake, but I shoo her away and volunteer to serve the cake myself. If Adam wants to cut me out of the conversation, fine, but no one will cut me out of my culinary accolades.
I hand a fat slice to Sandy, whose eyes widen at the thick swirls of frosting and gobs of buttery pecan goo. I cannot tell whether she is ecstatic or terrified. Something tells me it’s the latter.
“My goodness,” she says. She lays the plate in front of her, takes a whiff, and then pushes it forward by four inches. I gather this is how she consumes dessert. “By the way, Hannah,” she says as I serve up the last piece of cake, “I read some very scary news last week about your neighborhood. Something about a rash of muggings?”
“Really? I hadn’t heard that.”
“You should be careful. Apparently Columbia Heights is still very much … shall we say, on the edge.”
“Oh, I don’t live in Columbia Heights anymore. Adam and I found a place together in Logan Circle about three months ago. We—”
I catch myself. Adam’s eyes widen in horror and fix on mine.
“I’m sorry, what?” Sandy says, her eyelids fluttering rapidly. “Did I hear you correctly? You two have been living together?”
Neither of us says anything.
Sandy’s voice grows tense. “Adam? Is this true? You’ve been living together—for three months?”
Adam clears his throat. “No. Yes. Let me explain…”
But before he can say anything more, Sandy clenches her jaw and shakes her head and leaps up from the table. Adam chases after her, and then Martin throws his napkin on the table and stomps out of the room after both of them, leaving me in the dining room, alone.
I stare at the mess of plates and napkins, scattered around the table amid the overturned forks and the slices of uneaten cake. The Prescotts haven’t touched my dessert, and given the hushed tones coming from the next room, they probably never will. I pull my plate closer, saw off a corner of carrot cake, and shovel a forkful into my mouth. The cake is delicious, the best I’ve made in months, bursting with the sweet flavor of cinnamon and carrots and the crunch of caramelized pecans and toasted coconut. It’s a masterpiece, and no one will ever know. I’m sure there are worse ways this evening could have gone, but at the moment, I’ll be damned if I can think of any of them.
CHAPTER
two
Let’s be honest: the Prescotts were going to find out at some point. All I did was speed up the process.
And, really, with all of the champagne and red wine, combined with the prospect of sugary frosting and pecan goo, it almost wasn’t my fault. I was distracted. Who hasn’t made a few bad decisions under the spell of sugar and alcohol? Besides, Adam acted like a jerk for most of the evening. I’m hardly the only one at fault.
But something tells me none of these excuses will fly with my boyfriend, who has ignored me for the remainder of the evening. As he speeds toward the Q Street Bridge, I’m struck by how little he has said since we left his parents. The air-conditioning blasts through the vents in Adam’s Lexus, chilling the interior of the car as we move like a cool, hermetically sealed bubble through the thick, sticky summer air. Even at nine-thirty, the summer sky still holds a faint purple glow, draping the night in a dreamlike veil. Old-fashioned streetlamps dot the sidewalk, surrounded by leafy trees of varying sizes and blooming impatiens. The spires belonging to a series of Dupont Circle town houses loom on the horizon.
As we approach the bridge, Adam grips the wheel of his Lexus with two tense fists and presses down on the gas pedal. He races up behind a white Prius, a car moving at the speed limit, and rides its tail all the way across. When the opposing lane clears, he jerks the car over the double yellow line, speeds up, passes the Prius, and cuts back in front of it.
“Asshole,” he says as he gives the driver the finger.
I have no idea how driving the speed limit makes someone an asshole, and I am inclined to ask, but given Adam’s scarily aggressive tone, I decide not to bother.
Adam speeds up again as we cross Connecticut Avenue, flying through the very heart of Dupont Circle with its crowded streets and bustling sidewalks, and I clutch my seat and close my eyes, not at all comfortable with these hostile maneuvers, even though I recognize my earlier behavior is likely behind them. Regardless, I’d rather not die tonight.
But I will concede tonight was a disaster. An indisputable, excruciating disaster. Why do interactions with Adam’s parents always end this way? Because I’m me, that’s why. And Adam is Adam. I am chatty and unpredictable, and Adam is uptight and cautious, and when you throw us into a room with his parents, we somehow become exaggerated versions of ourselves, which is to say, polar opposites. I am the loose cannon, and Adam is the guy with a stick up his ass, and it is clear which kind of person the Prescotts prefer.
What Adam’s parents think of me shouldn’t matter, but it does—to both of us. Adam may have grown up surrounded by luxury and privilege, but we were both raised by parents who invested a significant proportion of their time and money into our upbringing and whose opinions always mattered—on the right schools, the right majors, the right careers and lifestyles. Why should their opinions about our significant others carry any less weight? I’ve always respected people who could flout their parents’ wishes on a regular basis and blaze their own trails in the face of their parents’ disapproval. But Adam and I aren’t like that. It’s one thing we’ve always had in common.
Adam turns onto the wider and less crowded thoroughfare of Fourteenth Street, and I decide to break the silence. “The carrot cake came out well.”
Carrot cake. That’s all I’ve got.
“Like it matters,” he mumbles under his breath.
“I’m sure they’ll get used to it. Us living together.”
Adam huffs as he races through a yellow light. “Don’t count on it.”
We don’t speak again until we reach the apartment.
Adam unlocks the door to our fifth-floor, loft-style apartment, which is located in the heart of Logan Circle. When I interned in Washington as a college student, Logan Circle was still considered “up-and-coming,” and I heard stories about the prostitutes who would loiter up and down Fourteenth Street. But over the past few years, dozens of shops and restaurants and galleries have moved into the area—everything from Whole Foods to the hip Cork Wine Bar and lowkey Logan Tavern—and now the Fourteenth Street corridor bustles with young professionals, who have moved into the area in droves. Our building sits on a lot where a run-down auto repair shop once stood, but now the decaying warehouse of beat-up cars has been replaced by eighty-four luxury rental apartments—none of which I could afford without Adam’s monthly financial contribution.
I follow Adam into the apartment, leaving a few feet between us as he storms into the living room. He throws his keys on the steel console, setting off a clang that echoes off the brushed cement floors.
“I can’t believe you told them,” he says as he throws himself onto our leather couch—his leather couch, actually, since I sold all my furniture before we moved in together, an idea that seemed to make sense at the time but now makes my stake in this apartment, this relationship, rather tenuous.
“I didn’t mean to,” I say. “It just sort of … slipped out.”
“Right. It slipped out. After I specifically asked you not to say anything.”
“I told you, I’ve never been good at keeping secrets.” Adam stares at me, unmoved. “At least they know the truth.”
Adam lets out a huff. “Yeah. Great.”
“They were going to find out eventually …”
Adam presses his palms against his temples and lets out a grunt. “You know what? I can’t deal with this right now. We’ll talk tomorrow.” He pushes himself off the couch and marches into the bathroom.
Okay, so he’s pissed. Or, more accurately, given the banging I hear going on in the bathroom, he’s flat-out angry. But if we have any shot at making this relationship work, his parents will have to accept and respect our decision to live together. We can’t live a lie forever. At least I can’t.
What worries me is I’m beginning to think Adam could. When I said Adam has never defied his parents, that’s not entirely true. He’s dating me, after all. That has been his one rebellion against them, his small act of resistance. But tonight, instead of charging forward in the face of their disapproval, he waved a little white flag and left me open to attack. And lately all the characteristics that drew him to my side—the way I was talkative and offbeat and sometimes a little weird—are pushing him away, as if I am a constant source of embarrassment.
He didn’t used to see me that way. When we first started dating, he introduced me to all his friends and colleagues as his little firecracker. That’s what he started calling me after our third date, when he brought me to a Redskins party at his friend Eric’s place. Eric had decided to make buffalo chili, but, in what became clear to both me and everyone else at the party, he had no idea what he was doing. Two hours into the party, after all of us had blown through the bags of tortilla chips and pretzels, Eric was still chopping red peppers. Determined not to let a room of fifteen people go hungry, I rolled up my sleeves, marched into the kitchen, and grabbed a knife. “Okay, Bobby Flay,” I said as I wielded my knife. “Time to get this show on the road.” I chopped and minced and crushed at rapid-fire speed, and in no time, dinner was served. “Get a load of this firecracker,” Eric said as he watched me work my magic. After that, the name sort of stuck.
For a while, the nickname seemed like a good thing. Every time I would rail against fad diets or champion the importance of sustainable agriculture or lament the lack of food options in inner cities, Adam would laugh and say, “That’s my little firecracker.” He made me feel special, as if I were a vital part of his life. His parents were the only people from whom he seemed to hide me, and though it bothered me a little, I understood. I was the anti-Sandy. That’s what made me attractive. But he hasn’t called me his little firecracker in what feels like months now, and lately I feel as if he’s hiding me from everyone. When did this little firecracker become a grenade?
I follow Adam into the bathroom and stare at his reflection as he brushes his teeth. “I’m sorry dating me is such a huge embarrassment.”
Adam spits a foamy, white lump of toothpaste into the sink and rinses out his mouth, swishing the water back and forth between his cheeks. He spits the water into the sink and meets my eyes in the mirror. “I never said that.”
“It’s what you’re thinking.”
Adam shoves his toothbrush into the toothbrush holder. “No, it’s not. But come on, did you need to mention the apartment?”
“I told you, that was an accident.”
“What about arguing with my mom about cooking? Was that an accident, too?”
I play with the fringe on one of our hand towels. “I wasn’t arguing with her.”
Adam huffs. “Sure sounded that way.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I guess I can’t do anything right.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” He massages the bridge of his nose and sighs. “But, okay, just as an example, why did you have to bring up the whole catering fantasy? What made you think that would go over well? I’m surprised you didn’t start telling them about food carts or your obsession with underground supper clubs.”
Ever since I introduced Adam to the idea surrounding underground supper clubs—secret, unlicensed restaurants run by off-duty chefs or enthusiastic novice cooks out of their homes—he has considered it an obsession. Sure, I have lobbied him repeatedly to let me host one out of our apartment, and sure, I have researched the crap out of what it would take to run one, but that hardly makes it an obsession. It’s more of an interest. An intense, unshakeable interest.
Adam reaches for the mouthwash, but I grab the bot
tle before he can lay his hands on it. “Starting a catering company isn’t a crazy fantasy, Adam. Your mom employs a personal chef. Cooking is a legitimate career.”
“Yeah, for people who don’t have the brains to do something else. Which you do.”
“God, you sound like my parents.”
“I sound like someone who’s right.”
“No, you sound like an asshole.”
Adam rolls his eyes. “For my parents’ sake, couldn’t you have made up something else?”
Typical Adam: when reality doesn’t suit your audience, create an alternate reality that suits them better. Adam Prescott for president!
But I know Adam wishes my intense interest in food weren’t a reality at all. When we first started dating, my talent in the kitchen was a turn-on. The prospect of me in the kitchen, wearing a skimpy apron and holding a whisk in my hand—he thought that was sexy. And, as someone with little insight into how to work her own sex appeal, I pounced on the opportunity to make him want and need me.
I spent four days preparing my first home-cooked meal for him, a dinner of wilted escarole salad with hot bacon dressing, osso bucco with risotto Milanese and gremolata, and a white-chocolate toasted-almond semifreddo for dessert. At the time, I lived with three other people in a Columbia Heights town house, so I told all of my housemates to make themselves scarce that Saturday night. When Adam showed up at my door, as the rich smell of braised veal shanks wafted through the house, I greeted him holding a platter of prosciutto-wrapped figs, wearing nothing but a slinky red apron. He grabbed me by the waist and pushed me into the kitchen, slowly untying the apron strings resting on my rounded hips, and moments later we were making love on the tiled kitchen floor. Admittedly, I worried the whole time about when I should start the risotto and whether he’d even want osso bucco once we were finished, but it was the first time I’d seduced someone like that, and it was lovely.
Adam raved about that meal—the rich osso bucco, the zesty gremolata, the sweet-and-salty semifreddo—and that’s when I knew cooking was my love language, my way of expressing passion and desire and overcoming all of my insecurities. I learned that I may not be comfortable strutting through a room in a tight-fitting dress, but I can cook one hell of a brisket, and I can do it in the comfort of my own home, wearing an apron and nothing else.
