The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs

by Dana Bate

  Adam loved my food, and he loved watching me work in the kitchen even more, the way my cheeks would flush from the heat of the stove and my hair would twist into delicate red curls along my hairline. As the weeks went by, I continued to seduce him with pork ragu and roasted chicken, creamed spinach and carrot sformato, cannolis and brownies and chocolate-hazelnut cake.

  But once the honeymoon period was over, about six months into our relationship (which, incidentally, coincided with the first time I met his parents), he tired of the fricassees and pound cakes and soufflés. It was a distraction, he said. I’d gone beyond what one might consider a future wifely duty and had entered the realm of obsession—constantly talking about what I planned to make for dinner and rhapsodizing over every new recipe I found, spending three days preparing a brisket and wreaking havoc in the kitchen. He was fine with cooking as a hobby, but once he realized it was more than that, he’d had enough. You cook so you can eat, and you eat so you can live, and that’s that. Serious and intelligent people don’t make a career of cooking.

  “So, what, I should have lied to your parents?” I ask, flicking my finger against the plastic Listerine bottle. Adam doesn’t reply. I hand him the mouthwash and grab my toothbrush off the counter. “Yeah, great idea. Then maybe they’ll never get to know me.”

  “Maybe that would be better …,” Adam mumbles.

  I freeze, the toothbrush half hanging out of my mouth. “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind,” he says.

  “No, what was that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re right: I’m sick of dating a total misfit. It’s not cute anymore. I can’t be in a relationship with someone who’s always making me apologize for her behavior.”

  I pluck the toothbrush from my between my lips. “Is that so?”

  “Listen, all I’m saying is I should be able to take you places without worrying about what you might say or do.”

  “Come on, Adam. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Oh, I don’t? What about almost lighting Eric’s Christmas tree on fire last year when you insisted on lighting a menorah right next to it? Or the infamous dinner with my boss last month?”

  Ugh. I knew he’d bring that up. “I was just trying to explain the correct way to make spaghetti carbonara.”

  “And by doing so implied that he had done it incorrectly.”

  “Well … I mean … he had.”

  Adam sighs. “Do you see what I’m saying? You’re a loose cannon.”

  “No I’m not. I’m just … a stickler when it comes to certain things. But you don’t have to worry about me. Promise.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  “Oh, you’ll see it, all right,” I say, shoving my toothbrush back in my mouth. “Trust me.”

  I’m not entirely sure what I mean by this last statement, but I suppose what I’m trying to say is I can be the genteel, taciturn woman he describes—even if, deep down, I think the whole idea of proving myself to him is absurd. Because it is. That wasn’t the deal we struck. He chose to date me because I was sassy and opinionated. But lately Adam seems to have buyer’s remorse, as if I am some wild shirt he bought on a whim, a bright orange button-down that now doesn’t go with his lifestyle or anything else in his closet.

  And that scares the crap out of me. Adam is the first person I let myself fall in love with in a slobbery, all-consuming way. What will happen if everything falls apart? I have no experience to draw from, no playbook to reference. This is an embarrassing admission to make at twenty-six years of age, but it is also true. I sacrificed opportunities and friendships to make our relationship work—ruling out a better-paying job in Boston so that I could stay in DC with him, deciding against a weekend cheese-making class because it would mean less “together time” for the two of us. Adam became the center of my world, and I let my other friends drift away, and now I barely have any friends left who aren’t connected to Adam. If I lose him, I’ll lose my entire social life, on top of this apartment and the entire life we’ve built together—the movie nights, the Sunday brunches, the trips to Harris Teeter to buy groceries, and the walks along the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms and the memorials. I’ll be alone. All that sacrifice will have been for nothing.

  I can’t let that happen. I have to make this relationship work again, to re-create the spark that attracted us to each other in the first place: his magnetic energy, my seductive wit, his fascination with me, my admiration for him. I owe that to both of us. All I need is a little Sugarman magic to prove to Adam that he has nothing to worry about, and neither do I.

  CHAPTER

  three

  Apparently I have plenty to worry about because, despite my best efforts, I cannot sleep. I toss and turn, throwing the covers off and pulling them back on. The evening’s events replay in my head on a continuous loop, and I dissect each gaffe over and over again until my head feels like it might explode. Which, in the end, makes sleeping rather difficult.

  At five-thirty, I stop trying. I pull myself out of bed and drag myself into the living room, each movement a struggle, as if I am walking through a large container of Marshmallow Fluff. I plop down in front of my laptop and stare at the screen, letting the Washington Post headlines wash over me: “All Eyes Turn to Meeting of Fed Committee” … “Trade-Ins Catch On in a Down Economy” … “Preparing for Swine Flu’s Return” … It all blends together, mostly because at the moment I cannot process anything above a third-grade reading level.

  Instead of reading through today’s news, I log on to Facebook, where the stable and successful lives of my four hundred friends—many of them fellow Cornell alumni—stare me in the face, mocking me. Isaiah’s New York Times article was the third most e-mailed article on the Times’s Web site yesterday—hooray! Kate’s nonprofit was mentioned in President Obama’s speech yesterday, and she and a few of her coworkers have been invited to the White House—so exciting! Meredith passed the bar, and Jonathan won his case, and Katherine’s wedding was the most beautiful and fun and important wedding of the century. Isn’t it wonderful, all this happy news? Isn’t it just marvelous? No, not really.

  It’s not that I begrudge my friends their successes, although maybe I do, just a little. But at a time when I feel so lost—about my career, about my relationship, about everything—every status update and photo set and link reminds me how stuck I am and how, while everyone else soars upward with aplomb, I continue to sputter in circles, like a wind-up toy running out of juice. I want to post about my amazing career or the achievement of my dreams or my life-changing trip to Abruzzo, but the best I can do is post a photo of the strawberry tart I baked or the salted caramel ice cream I made. It’s my way of saying, “I’m here—I’m charging ahead like the rest of you,” even if the opposite is true.

  I glance at the upper corner of my screen and click on my profile picture, a photo of me and Adam taken almost a year ago at my friend Rachel’s housewarming party. Adam is handing me an enormous chocolate cupcake with white buttercream frosting, and I am sitting beside him with a lovesick smile planted on my face, an expression directed at Adam and the cupcake in equal proportion. The cupcake was the last one, and Adam grabbed it because he knew I’d been too busy plowing my way through the guacamole and salsa to check out the dessert table. In those first few months of dating, Adam thrived on random acts of kindness, always looking out for me, always trying to make me happy.

  That was then. What strikes me, as I stare at the photo, is how much the image resembles someone else’s present life and not my own. The picture tells the story of a girl in love, whose days brighten because she knows someone out there is thinking about her as much as she is thinking about him. When did that girl stop being me? I cannot remember the last time I felt the way I did in that photo. Not since we moved in together, that’s for sure.

  The impetus behind our move wasn’t so much romantic as it was practical: both our leases were about to run out, and I was si
ck of living in a group house. As a lawyer whose parents still provide him with a monthly stipend, Adam could afford a nicer apartment than I could, but combined, we realized we could get an even better place together. We pooled our resources and scored a luxury apartment in Logan Circle with exposed ductwork, polished cement floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, and granite countertops—the kind of place that would have been completely out of my reach without Adam.

  Everyone told me it was too soon to move in together: my friends, my parents, even my boss, Mark, cautioned against it. And that’s because everyone thinks I am incapable of managing my own life.

  “So, what, after a year of dating, now you’re thinking about marrying this guy?” my mom asked when I told her.

  Adam and I hadn’t discussed marriage—ever—but I assured my mom we’d talked through the move, and it made financial and practical sense. End of story. Why did moving in together have to lead to marriage?

  But now I see her point, and everyone else’s. The move was … well, it was a little hasty. There’s no way I could afford this apartment without Adam, and so if we were to break up …

  I slam my laptop shut and jump up from my seat. No. I can’t think about that now. I can’t think about how my relationship is on the brink, how all those people who told me moving in together was a mistake might have been right. Because thinking about those things will lead me into darker territory, like what would happen if Adam and I broke up, where I would live, how I would afford a new apartment and new furniture. I would be forced to examine my backup plan, which does not, in fact, exist.

  So I do what I always do when my life seems out of control: I bake.

  Baking and cooking bring me inner peace, like a tasty version of yoga, without all the awkward stretching and sweating. When my life spins out of control, when I can’t make sense of what’s going on in the world, I head straight to the kitchen and turn on my oven, and with the press of a button, I switch one part of my brain off and another on. The rules of the kitchen are straightforward, and when I’m there I don’t have to think about my problems. I don’t need to think about anything but cups and ounces, temperatures and cooking times.

  When I was a freshman at Cornell, I heard a plane had flown into the World Trade Center while sitting in my Introduction to American History lecture. My friends and I ran back to our dorm rooms and spent the next few hours glued to the television. I kept my TV on all day, but after talking to my parents and watching three hours of the coverage, I headed straight to the communal kitchen and baked a triple batch of brownies, which I then distributed to everyone on my floor. Some of my friends thought I was crazy (“Who bakes brownies when the country is under attack?”), but it was the only thing I could do to keep from having a panic attack or bursting into tears. I couldn’t control what was happening to our country, but I could control what was happening in that kitchen. Baking was my way of restoring order in a world driven by chaos, and it still is.

  I preheat the oven and pull the flour, sugar, and baking soda from the cupboard, but before I can grab my recipe for sour cream coffee cake, Adam trudges out of the bedroom.

  “What are you doing?” he groans, holding his hand above his eyes to block out the kitchen light.

  I rub my hands along the counter and bite the inside of my lip. I can’t tell if he is still angry about last night, but I suspect he is. “Baking a coffee cake,” I say.

  “Isn’t there half a carrot cake in the fridge?”

  “This is for the office.”

  “Well could you keep it down? I don’t have to get up for another hour.”

  “Sure.” I start to move toward him, about to tell him he doesn’t have to be such a jerk about everything, but before I can say anything more, he turns around and heads into the bedroom and shuts the door behind him.

  The coffee cake takes thirty minutes longer to bake than expected, which makes no sense at all. I made it exactly the way I always make it—handfuls of cinnamon streusel, a hefty dose of vanilla, the perfect ratio of butter, eggs, and flour—but the toothpick kept coming out with goo all over it. Maybe our oven is broken. Wouldn’t that be fitting? Broken, like most other things in my life at the moment.

  But, broken or not, the broader consequence of all of this is that, despite having been up since five-thirty, I am late for work. Again.

  I race out of the apartment and hobble along the seven hot-and-sticky blocks to my office at the Institute for Research and Discourse—IRD, or as my friends and I call it, “NIRD,” which describes pretty much everyone who works there.

  NIRD is a prominent Washington think tank whose scholars think and talk and write about public policy, and then think and talk and write about it some more. It’s run by a brilliant but completely insane seventy-year-old named Charles Shenkenfrauder, a one-time head of the Congressional Budget Office who fancies himself an expert on the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, the two presidents under whom he served. For fun, he travels to Chesapeake, Virginia, each December to participate in a Revolutionary War reenactment of the Battle of Great Bridge—or at least he used to. Apparently last year he was involved in an unfortunate incident involving a dove and a musket, and, well, according to Charles things are a little up in the air this year.

  I push my way through the revolving door and bolt toward the elevator, balancing a coffee cake and half a carrot cake in my arms. Adam informed me he would be working late every night this week and wouldn’t have time to eat the carrot cake, so I decided to foist the leftovers on my coworkers instead. Personally, I don’t see how working late has any impact on one’s ability to consume a carrot cake, but since the cake reminds me of dinner at the Prescotts’, I’m happy to get rid of it.

  I burst through the elevator doors and walk face-first into a mass of curls, the sort of coarse, fruity-smelling ringlets that can belong to only one woman: Millie Roberts.

  Millie, like me, works as a NIRD research assistant, though to hear her tell it, you would think she ran the place at the age of twenty-six. She frequently begins sentences with, “When I was in the Peace Corps,” or “As I told Wolf Blitzer,” or “When I cowrote an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal.” Her status updates on Facebook are always saturated in self-importance (“Need to finish writing this congressional testimony, then heading to the Hilton to meet the Veep—wish there were more hours in the day!!”), as if it is her work, and her work alone, that keeps this institution from falling apart. She generally causes annoyance and discomfort wherever she goes—ergo the reason I have christened her The Hemorrhoid.

  “Watch it,” Millie says as she spins around. She purses her lips when she realizes I am the offender in question. “Oh, hi, Hannah.” She looks at her watch. “Just getting here?”

  “Household emergency,” I say, only partly lying.

  “Is everything okay?” she asks, moving in close. I nod, ignoring her mock concern. Millie and Adam dated in high school, when he was a senior and she was a sophomore at Georgetown Day School, and they are now “best friends,” the sort of warm-and-fuzzy friendship that makes my stomach churn. As far as I can tell, Millie harbors hope the two of them will reunite in a scene straight out of When Harry Met Sally. I foresee something more along the lines of Fatal Attraction.

  Millie deserves a little credit, I guess. She introduced me to Adam. We met at one of her parties, and much to her surprise, Adam and I hit it off. Even then—when I was at my fittest—my petite, curvy frame couldn’t hold a candle to Millie’s five-foot-seven-inch frame of pure marathon-runner muscle. She never thought Adam would show interest in someone as clumsy and out of shape as me. I would be lying if I said I took no pleasure in proving her wrong.

  Millie draws closer, lowering her voice to a whisper as she widens her eyes. “I heard about last night. Yikes.”

  I can’t see my watch through the stack of cakes, but I know it’s no later than nine-thirty. I cannot fathom how she already knows about last night’s dinner. I’m sure it has somet
hing to do with the nature of her friendship with Adam, where they talk every day and tell each other everything. Which, of course, pleases me to no end.

  “That’s not why I’m late,” I say, glazing over her reference to last night’s events. “My … dad called from London.”

  “Oh, right, they’re in England. London School of Economics, right?” I nod. She stares at the foil tower nestled in my arms, eyeing it suspiciously. “What’s that?”

  “Coffee cake and leftover carrot cake.”

  “Two cakes? Are you trying to make us all obese?”

  “Yes, Millie. That’s why I bake for the office. To make you all obese.”

  Millie raises an eyebrow. “I don’t see why you couldn’t bring in something healthy every once in a while.”

  Adam once told me that when Millie was thirteen, her mom sent her to fat camp, and from what I can tell, she has lived in mortal fear of eggs and butter ever since. I am about to remind Millie that the carrot cake does contain vegetables, and therefore possesses a modicum of nutrition one could rationalize into health-fulness, but before I can speak I hear a voice calling my name at the end of the hallway.

  “Hannah? Hannah, where are you?”

  Mark Henderson. My boss. Crap.

  “Gotta run.” I dash past Millie and dump my cakes in the kitchen before scurrying to my desk.

  “Where have you been?” Mark asks, knitting together his apricot-colored eyebrows, which jut a full inch beyond the rim of his round, tortoiseshell glasses. He speaks, as always, with the faintest hint of an English accent, a mystery to all of us, seeing as Mark was born and raised in Indiana. From what I can tell, the accent is an affectation, much like his extensive collection of bow ties and handkerchiefs. Mark used to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, where for a whopping fourteen years he was in charge of setting interest rates and overseeing the U.S. banking system. These days, he churns out papers and op-eds on fiscal and monetary policy and occasionally makes the rounds on the cable news networks. As a prolific DC commentator, he is sort of the economic equivalent of Terry Bradshaw or John McEnroe, albeit without the charisma and with a much larger collection of tweed.