The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs (2 page)

She lets out a bemused sigh and carries the cake into the kitchen.

See? The carrot cake was a mistake. I knew it.

What follows is a carefully choreographed dance involving me on one side and the Prescotts on the other. I don’t want to step on the Prescotts’ toes, and they don’t want to step on mine, but really, all of us would be a lot happier if we didn’t have to dance at all. I, for one, would much rather sit along the sidelines and watch everyone else dance while I stuffed my face with candy.

But round and round we go, and the longer we dance, the more the smile tattooed on my face begins to ache and tingle and develop its own pulse. And yet I keep smiling, mostly because I am Adam’s girlfriend and they are his parents and, well, it’s pretty clear whose position is the least secure. I don’t expect the Prescotts to love me by the end of this dinner, but I would like, at the very least, for them to stop calling Adam every weekend to voice their concerns about our relationship while he hides in the bathroom and pretends I’m not sleeping ten feet away in our shared bed. In the scheme of things, I do not think this is an unreasonable goal.

We blow through a bottle of Veuve Clicquot as we nibble canapés on the Prescotts’ brick patio, and the champagne both calms my nerves and impairs my ability to focus on what, exactly, Adam and his parents are talking about. As our discussion progresses around the dinner table, I find myself drifting in and out of the conversation, as if the Prescotts are a TBS Sunday afternoon movie playing in the background while I fold my laundry and send e-mails. I hear what they are saying, and I am saying things in response, but significant periods of time pass where I’m not sure what is going on.

As I float away on my champagne wave, I lose myself in the thorny world of my own thoughts: how lately Adam seems mortified by everything I do, how moving in together has only magnified our differences and obscured our similarities, and how consequently I now feel as if I am in the wrong everything—the wrong job, the wrong relationship, possibly even the wrong city.

I snap out of my trance when someone mentions my name, though I’ll be damned if I can figure out who it was. But everyone is staring at me, so I think it’s safe to assume a question was involved.

“Sorry?”

“Your parents,” Martin says. “How are they?”

“They’re good. On sabbatical in London until October.”

“Wonderful,” Sandy says. She hands her empty soup bowl to Juanita, the Prescotts’ housekeeper. “Your parents do such interesting work.”

My parents are the only part of my pedigree of which the Prescotts approve. When Sandy heard my parents were Alan and Judy Sugarman, both esteemed economics professors at the University of Pennsylvania, she saw a glimmer of hope. I didn’t come from a wealthy or powerful family, but at least my parents carried the sort of academic heft that would look good in a
New York Times
wedding announcement.

“They aren’t the only ones doing interesting work,” Martin says. “Adam showed us the paper you coauthored on quantitative easing. Very impressive.”

“Thanks—although my boss was the one who wrote it. I only helped with the research.”

“She’s being modest,” Adam says, rubbing my shoulder. “You put a lot of work into that paper. And it showed. It was excellent.”

Martin smiles. “Looks like we have another Professor Sugarman in our midst, hmm?”

It is the question I dread most—and, I should add, the one I get asked all the time. Everyone assumes I aspire to be my parents someday, my every professional choice driven by a deep-seated desire to carry on their legacy. The way everyone poses the question suggests I
should
want that for myself—that I’d be crazy not to. And so what am I supposed to say when someone like Martin Prescott puts me on the spot? That I’d rather stab myself with a rusty knife than become a professor? That what I’d really like to do is start an offbeat catering company someday, but that my parents would go ballistic if I ever did? No, I can’t say those things, not when it’s clear that the one thing the Prescotts rate me for is a career I no longer care about and a scholarly legacy I want nothing to do with.

So instead I smile and simply say, “We’ll see.”

I grab for my wineglass and take a long sip and then, against my better judgment, I add, “But who knows. Maybe I’ll do something wild someday like start my own catering company.”

Sandy blanches. An obvious disappointment.

“Catering?” Martin chuckles, swirling his wineglass by its base. “Surely you can aim a little higher than
that
.”

Juanita returns to the dinner table, carrying three dinner plates on one arm and holding the forth in her opposite hand. She hands me the last of the plates, a gilded disk of porcelain filled with roasted potatoes, green beans, and some sort of meat.

“It’s slow-roasted leg of lamb,” Sandy says as I study my plate. She smiles. “I was planning to serve a pork roast, but I wasn’t sure if you would eat that.”

Ah, yes. The Jew ruins the party once again. The truth is, I love pork. I eat it all the time. But I can’t expect her to know that, and by her tone, it is clear that Jews are as foreign to her as aliens or cavemen.

I tuck into my portion of lamb, and the meat melts on my tongue, buttery and rich with red wine and the faintest hint of rosemary. “Wow, Sandy, what did you put in this? It’s fabulous.”

“Oh, I didn’t
make
this,” she says as she cuts her lamb into bite-size pieces and pushes most of it to the far corners of her plate, burying the meat under wedges of roasted potatoes.

Adam clears his throat. “Mom has a personal chef.”

“Oh,” I say. Of course she does.

“I’d love to cook,” she says, “but who has the time? I can’t afford to spend two days baking a cake.”

The implication, of course, is that only unimportant people have that kind of time. Unimportant people like me. I wait for Adam to jump in and save me, but instead he shoves a forkful of lamb into his mouth and feigns deep interest in the contents of his dinner plate. For someone with Adam’s political ambitions and penchant for friendly debate, I’m always amazed at the lengths he goes to avoid confrontation with his parents.

“I have a full-time job,” I say, offering Sandy a labored smile, “and somehow I manage.”

Sandy delicately places her fork on the table and interlaces her fingers. “I beg your pardon?”

My cheeks flush, and all the champagne and wine rush to my head at once. “All I’m saying is … we make time for the things we actually want to do. That’s all.”

Sandy purses her lips and sweeps her hair away from her face with the back of her hand. “Hannah, dear, I am very busy. I am on the board of three charities and am hosting two galas this year. It’s not a matter of
wanting
to cook. I simply have more important things to do.”

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.