Authors: Anita Hughes
“Not couples yoga!” Cassie leaned forward, laughing.
“Carter and I had a bit of a rough patch a couple of months ago so I’ve ramped it up a bit. And it’s working. I set my alarm for eleven-fifty at night so I’m awake when he comes home, and we have sex like porn stars.”
“I don’t think I have the energy for yoga or a midnight rendezvous.” Cassie smiled. “But I get it. Like Sister Agnes used to say, ‘face your enemy head on, and you have nothing to fear. God will be at your side.’”
“Aidan isn’t your enemy. He’s been your twin for a decade. I can never peel you away to go shopping because you’re glued to his side. You guys even go to the grocery store together. It’s nauseating.”
“Not the grocery store.” Cassie felt a little better. “The Berkeley Co-op. It’s more a gathering place, and they have the most amazing vegetables, better than anything I grow in my garden. Last week I picked up a purple eggplant from Japan. I served it on a bed of long-grain organic rice, and it was delicious.”
“Enough.” Alexis held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear about purple eggplant, let alone eat it. That’s why you and your professor live in Berkeley, and I live in Presidio Heights. You’re made for each other. Don’t let some bottle blond coed come between you. Go home, pour a glass of Kenwood Chardonnay, show Aidan the box, and ask him where it came from.”
Cassie stood up, testing her legs to see if they were still wobbly. For a moment she relaxed. She had had a delicious tea in the city, saw her best friend for the first time in weeks, and was going home to sit by the fire and nibble on snow peas with her husband. But then her eyes settled on the red Fenton’s box and she sucked in her breath as if she’d been slapped.
“Cassie, go on.” Alexis followed her eyes. “You can do this.”
“You should have your own afternoon talk show.” Cassie picked up the box. “Let’s go before I lose my nerve.”
They took the elevator down to the parking garage. Cassie had parked in a reserved space, next to her mother’s smoky blue Jaguar XL.
“Your mother knows how to treat herself.” Alexis peeked through the window at the spotted maple dashboard and the cream leather upholstery. There were three purses on the floor of the passenger seat: Louis Vuitton, Prada, and a Fendi clutch, and a couple of pairs of boots on the backseat.
“Are those Chanel ostrich-skin boots?” Alexis pressed her face harder against the glass. “I’ve only seen them in
Vogue.
”
“Stop drooling, you’ll fog up the glass.” Cassie opened the door of her Prius. “Wish me luck.”
Alexis kissed Cassie’s cheek. “Maybe I’ll ask Carter for a Jaguar for my birthday.”
“Thanks for your support.” Cassie put the keys in the ignition.
“You have all my love and support. Trust me, it was some silly mistake. You’ll drink Chardonnay and eat Japanese eggplant and have the best sex of the holidays.” Alexis grinned. “You’re Aidan’s angel. You’re irreplaceable.”
2.
Cassie drove
across the Bay Bridge listening to Mariah Carey sing “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” She thought someone should tell the DJ Christmas was over. The sparkle, the mistletoe, the eggnog was gone and all that remained were leftovers and returns. She glanced at the red Fenton’s box on the passenger seat and considered opening her window and tossing it into the bay. But then she’d be facing Aidan empty handed.
She flipped the radio station and heard an old Train song: “Drops of Jupiter.” Instinctively she smiled and hummed along. Train had been their favorite band when they were first married. Cassie remembered going to their concert at the Warfield theater and spending the whole night sharing Irish coffees: Aidan’s arm draped around her, her face buried in his leather jacket. When the song “Calling All Angels” was played on heavy rotation, Aidan would turn up the radio and boast that he had asked the lead singer to write the lyrics for Cassie.
Cassie’s eyes filled with tears, and she wiped them away so she could see the cars in front of her. She rested her elbows on the steering wheel and remembered the day she met Aidan. She walked into his lecture class fifteen minutes late, and he stared at her, his fierce black eyes sizing her up, as if she was interrupting a presidential address.
“And who is this young lady who has the courage or the bad manners to walk into my class three days and fifteen minutes late?” Aidan addressed the lecture hall.
Cassie blushed and took a seat at the back of the class. She had heard about Professor Aidan Blake: he loved to hear himself talk, he wasn’t afraid to offend students if it made his lectures more interesting, and he had the sexiest mouth of any professor on campus. Girls signed up for ethics in modern society just to see him pout.
Cassie had made the class a last-minute add. It was her final semester, senior year, and the philosophy of cooking class she wanted was full. Thomas Keller and Alice Waters were creating such a buzz with reduction sauces and seven-course tasting menus that cooking was the new rock ’n’ roll. Undergrads lined up for culinary courses and spent their evenings prowling Williams-Sonoma.
Cassie’s roommate suggested Professor Blake’s ethics class, so she climbed three stories to the top of Newberry Hall and tried to blend in with the desk chairs.
“Cassie Fenton,” she replied when it seemed Aidan wouldn’t continue his lecture until she answered.
“Miss Fenton, ethics, if you read the course guide, is about the pursuit of good within the confines of society. We do not murder, rape, or steal from our fellow men, and we do not”—he paused to put emphasis on his words—“interrupt a class that is already in progress.”
“Would you like me to leave?” Cassie’s voice was very small. She wondered if it reached the podium.
“And disrupt the class further? You make an attractive addition to the back row; just make sure you take notes. I’ve kicked students out for less.”
Cassie wished she had signed up for conversational French. But as she listened to Aidan, her pen filling her notebook, she became interested in the lesson: Plato, Aristotle, the pursuit of good, the idea that happiness was attainable. At the Convent, moral code had been laid out in inarguable language while her mother had one God: Fenton’s. Aidan put new ideas in her head, and when the lecture was over she put her pen down reluctantly.
“Miss Fenton,” Aidan addressed her as she stuffed her backpack. Cassie gazed at Aidan up close and blushed a deeper pink. Her roommate’s description hadn’t done justice to his black curly hair. Not only was his mouth gorgeous, but his chin was chiseled, and his eyes were the color of raisins. His shoulders belonged on a quarterback and his waist was as small as a dancer’s.
“Yes, sir.” She swung her backpack over her shoulder and stood up. She wore white capris and a collared Ralph Lauren shirt. She had a J.Crew sweater tied around her waist and her favorite navy Tod’s on her feet. Even after four years of college she shopped at Fenton’s, and she suddenly felt preppy and overdressed.
“I keep office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays from two to four, if you need help catching up.” He smiled and walked out of the room.
* * *
It took
more than a month for Cassie to get up the courage to knock on his door during office hours. She sat at his oversized metal desk, wearing a tie-dyed shirt and denim cutoffs borrowed from her roommate, and tried to ask intelligent questions about the reading. Cassie told herself she was there because she was interested in the material, but whenever she was close to Aidan, she felt like there was a magnet drawing her even closer.
“What does a department store heiress do with her diploma?” Aidan asked one afternoon in late April, when graduation was just weeks away.
“How did you know about Fenton’s?” Cassie looked up from her lecture notes.
“Students don’t just gossip about professors, they run a pretty thorough commentary about one another.” Aidan didn’t seem to notice that she was blushing. He wore a black cotton T-shirt, khaki pants, and his signature leather jacket. His teeth were blinding white and his fingernails were smudged with ink.
“I’ll probably join my mother at Fenton’s.” She shrugged.
“Is that what you want to do? Sell overpriced merchandise to women whose closets will swallow it up like a black hole?”
“It’s what I should do,” Cassie said. She had spent every afternoon of her childhood at Fenton’s; the elevator music still played in her head. “It’s what I’m expected to do,” she repeated, as if trying to convince herself.
“Noble, to take over the family store”—Aidan flipped open his textbook—“but to grow, first you have to be true to yourself. What’s your passion?”
Cassie’s pen froze midsentence. When she looked up, Aidan was underlining words in the text.
“My passion?”
“What you wake up in the morning thinking about.”
Cassie gazed past him, at his framed doctorate on the wall and a print of Monet’s
Haystacks
.
“I want to grow organic vegetables,” she said. “I love everything to do with cooking and gardening.”
“Then that’s what you should do with your diploma.”
* * *
It was
a few weeks after graduation, when Cassie saw Aidan in the frozen-food section of the Berkeley Co-op, that she admitted to herself he was part of the reason she decided to spend one more summer in Berkeley.
“Cassie Fenton.” His face broke into a smile when he saw her. He was holding hands with a small girl of about seven, with the same dark eyes and black curly hair. She was pointing stubbornly at a box of frozen pizza and stamping her feet like a young bull.
“Hi.” Cassie avoided running into an elderly woman with her shopping cart. Her roommate had mentioned Aidan was divorced, but she never said anything about a daughter.
“I thought you would have decamped back to San Francisco and taken up your position on the fourth floor of Fenton’s.”
“I’m interning for Alice Waters at Chez Panisse for the summer,” Cassie replied.
“Well that sounds interesting.” Aidan nodded approvingly. “This is my daughter, Isabel. We come to the co-op for fresh, local produce and Isabel wants frozen pizza.”
Cassie glanced at Isabel, whose eyes flashed like a gypsy. “You could make pizza, it’s really easy.”
“That sounds like a terrific compromise. Why don’t you come over and show us? Tonight, eight o’clock?”
Cassie hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she was being invited to dinner or to perform a cooking demonstration. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“Isabel and I have lots of time together since her mother is gone for a month this summer. I’ll get a couple of bottles of wine. What should we put on the pizza? Eggplant, yellow peppers, green olives?” His hair was damp as if he’d been running and he wore shorts and a plain white T-shirt.
“Heirloom tomatoes.” Cassie avoided looking at Isabel, who was scowling and peeling price tags from bags of vegetables.
“I love heirloom tomatoes.” Aidan pulled Isabel away from the frozen foods. “We’ll see you at eight.”
* * *
Aidan’s house
was at the end of a long gravel drive, behind an impressive plantation-style mansion. Aidan answered the door wearing an apron, shorts, and rugby socks.
“It’s the smallest house on Professor Row, but I just got tenure.” He shrugged, guiding her through a small living room and an adjoining dining nook. The table was covered in papers, and more papers were piled on the floor and on the chairs. The sideboard had been converted into a bookcase with two bottles of wine serving as bookends.
“It’s lovely.” Cassie had never been in a professor’s house. She didn’t know if she expected dark wood and the smell of pipe tobacco, or a modern bachelor pad with black-and-white cubic sofas. Aidan’s house was like a toy house: it had the correct number of rooms but in miniature proportions.
“My wife left me a couple of years ago, so it’s just me and Isabel every other week.” He opened swinging doors to the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” Cassie replied awkwardly.
“She remarried a dot-com guy. His summer cottage is twice the size of this place”—Aidan motioned her to sit on a stool—“but some guys have to make money so their wives can shop at Fenton’s.”
Cassie blushed. “You shouldn’t judge it,” she said clearly. “Fenton’s provides their customers with great quality and service. It’s been in my family for sixty years. It brings pleasure to many people.”
Aidan put his hand on Cassie’s shoulder. She instinctively flinched; he had never touched her before. “You’re right, Fenton’s does contribute to society. I asked you over to make pizza, not talk ethics. Would you like an apron?”
Cassie nodded and he pulled an apron from a drawer and tied it carefully around her waist. They stood side by side at the counter, rolling out dough, slicing tomatoes, sautéing mushrooms. He poured them each a glass of wine and asked her to set the table, as if they knew each other intimately and had done this dozens of times before.
“Come out back and see the garden. It’s nothing much yet but I’d love to grow some tomatoes and some broccoli,” he said when the pizza was in the oven.
Cassie was a little drunk and the night air felt suddenly cold after the cramped kitchen. The fog had settled over the bay and the sky was without stars.
“There’s not much to see.” She peered off the deck into the black space that held the garden.
Aidan put his hand on her back and pulled her close. He stroked her hair and tipped her face up to his. She could smell wine and olive oil, garlic and Parmesan cheese. “I just wanted to kiss you.” He brought his lips down on hers. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time.”
When they went inside, Isabel was sitting on the stool, covering the counter with tomato sauce handprints. Aidan’s face turned to stone. He wiped the counter and put the plates in the sink. Finally he turned to Isabel and said in a strained tone, “Isabel, if you want to join our dinner party you will behave like a young lady, not a little barbarian.”
Isabel brushed off her father’s words and jumped down from the stool. “I turned off the oven, your pizza was burning.”
Isabel smoothed her white appliqué skirt and slipped pink clogs on her feet. She sat demurely at the kitchen table, placed her napkin in her lap, and asked her father politely for a glass of water and some garlic bread.