7
The first few days on the job were hard. I tried to ease into the role, working with the staff to see what they had in stock and what they needed while figuring out what the hell to actually cook for the students. We kept running out of things and improvising, and when Andrea stopped by, I found myself buckling. “I have no idea what I am doing,” I admitted. “If you want to fire me now and find someone else, you might be better off.” I knew she would probably tell everyone else on staff at Rockwood what I had said, but I didn’t care. I was sweaty, exhausted, and completely bummed out.
“That makes two of us,” she said in her usual cheery, up-tempo voice, pulling up a stool from the corner of the kitchen and sitting down. “I feel like I’ll never know what I’m doing in my job here. But you’re serving food that’s not in a cardboard box, so that’s a great first step.” She looked around and saw Marnie, the former interim Dining Director, glaring at her from across the kitchen. “Oops,” she said, chuckling softly. “How are things with her?” she whispered. “Is she pissed you took over?”
“She seems okay,” I said. In all honesty, I hadn’t had time to consider other people’s feelings that much. “Anyway, I think I need to set up some focus groups like I told you I would in my interview. Sooner rather than later, or else I worry I won’t be able to connect with the students. How should I go about reaching them?”
“Just send out an all-student email with a sign-up form attached. Search for one that I’ve sent to get the address. And maybe try to get a variety of grade levels so you hear different perspectives. I think it’s a good idea,” she said. “Nice picture in The Underground Stallion ,” she added.
“What? I haven’t seen it.” Ugh. It must have been from my dinner with Kyle. I had pushed it so far out of my mind, and with everything else going on, I hadn’t mentally revisited it. “How bad is it?”
“Considering you’re both fully clothed and the only mildly questionable thing in view is a six-pack of beer, I think you’re doing quite well,” she said, standing up. “They usually keep stacks of the paper in that little birdhouse outside the library if you want to see one for yourself.” She patted my shoulder. “You’re doing fine, Devon. I’m looking forward to dinner tonight. I can’t miss Taco Tuesday.”
“Yeah, we’ll have tacos,” I mumbled. “We didn’t even drink the beer, just so you know. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go—” I really wanted to see this newspaper or flyer or whatever the hell it was. Apparently, I had fled one scandal-ridden situation for another one.
“Please, be my guest. But try not to put much stock in that rag. It’s just a few kids stirring up trouble. You’ll make yourself sick if you let it get to you.”
I nodded and bolted out of the back of the kitchen, through the empty dining hall, and out into the grassy quad. Students were milling around, swinging in hammocks, throwing frisbees, and chatting in small groups. I ran across the lawn to the library and found the birdhouse Andrea had mentioned. Sure enough, there was a small stack of white papers sticking out of it, with the words The Underground Stallion emblazoned across the top. There was a black-and-white picture of Kyle and me, standing across from each other at my kitchen island, laughing and smiling. Sure enough, the silver beer cans were shining, as were our faces mid-conversation. It was so strange to see us through the eyes of whatever little shit snuck up my fire escape and took the picture; we looked happy and well— into each other. My heart sank a bit. I was a little embarrassed and very confused.
“Nice picture there, Chef,” yelled Ashlyn Lark in my direction from the middle of the quad, then went back to laughing with her friends.
“I’m not going to feed you,” I muttered to myself, knowing that I couldn’t withhold food from her. But boy, did I want to. Why does she make me bristle so badly?
Once I was back in my apartment and safe—hopefully—from intrusive eyes, ears, and cell phone cameras, I gave Tam a call. I never knew her work schedule, as it changed at a moment’s notice, but she always told me to try calling if I needed her. This was one of those times.
“What’s up, Chef?” she asked, and I could hear the lilt of the newsroom behind her. She probably wouldn’t be able to talk for long.
“Ugh, that’s what she just called me. Ashlyn Lark.”
“Who the heck is Ashlyn Lark? Any relation to my Andrea?”
“Niece. And I don’t know who Andrea’s brother pretends to be because his dear daughter is clearly the spawn of something God-awful. Yeah, in other words, I don’t like her at all. She’s a mean girl. Reminds me of a few girls I went to high school with.” There it was. I knew something about her was familiar and terrible.
“Oh, those are the worst,” she said. “I only have a few minutes, but I’m so glad you called. Tell me something. How are things going otherwise?”
“Well, Sparky, I have already been featured in an underground newspaper if that gives you any kind of idea.”
“I’ll ignore my nickname, which I like to pretend never existed. Did they write about Bentley and the scandal? Eww, that’s harsh. What’d they say?”
“No, nothing about that, at least not yet. I’m sure they’re onto me, so I bet it’ll be soon. But it was about Kyle and me. No article, just a picture and a caption. It says, ‘Chef cooks up something spicy with Rockwood’s newest bachelor.’ And there’s a picture. Hold on, I’ll send it to you.” I took a quick snap of the newspaper and texted it to Tam.
“Whoa, that’s Kyle? Dev, he looks good. What are you doing drinking beer with him? Are you two already an item? I thought it would take at least a couple of months, given your trepidation.”
“We did not drink those beers. We drank whiskey sours. And no, we are not an item. He’s been through a lot. He has a ton of baggage. I heard the whole story about what happened when he went to London and the girl he met there, plus all about his recent divorce from a teacher who used to work here. He has a kid , Tam. Her name is Annie, she’s ten, and she does theater in Boston. It’s all too much. I told him I wanted to be friends for now. He’s sort of on board.”
“Because he really wishes he was cooking up something spicy with you,” she replied with a laugh.
I sighed. “He brought me ice cream.”
Tam cleared her throat. “What flavor?”
“Vanilla Toffee,” I said weakly, and I heard Tam gasp. “I know, I know,” I said. “But I’m trying to take this one step at a time.”
“Gotcha,” she said. “Well, I love your condo. I’m not there much right now due to Professor Plum, but I really like it. Great location.”
“Ooh, I want to meet him. That is, if you’re ready for that.”
“Definitely. When are you coming down to feed D-Dawg?”
“D-Dawg?” I scrunched up my nose at the nickname. “Where did you hear that one?”
“The new sportscaster has been calling him that. Too cheesy, right?”
“I think so. Yeah, I’m making my schedule around his, so this week, I’m taking Friday and Saturday as my weekend. I’ll be down on Friday afternoon with a ton of food for him. Are you free?”
“Shoot, I’m covering this huge book event on Nantucket this weekend. But soon. Just let me know when you’ll be back.” I heard some people talking near her. “Okay, Dev, I gotta run. Don’t let this Ashlyn get to you. And Kyle’s cute. Whatever you decide to do, I support you. But if you decide to play pots and pans with him, I’m good with that.”
“What does that even mean, Tam? Pots and pans?”
“I have no idea. It just sounded like something some chef in a rom-com would say.”
...
I only had four students reply that they would come to the focus group, but I messed up the online form, and somehow, it only captured the numbers of “yes” replies and not actual student names. Out of the three hundred students, only four agreed to help me. And who knew if they would even show up?
I set up a space in the corner of the faculty dining room that had some comfortable chairs and a low table for us to meet. I brought my favorite fresh sparkling lemonade and a tray of the cookies that Andrea and Kyle had liked. When I made them in the dining hall kitchen that morning, the staff couldn’t get enough, and I had to set aside some for the focus group. I promised I would make more for dessert that night if I had time. As they enjoyed the cookies, it seemed like Marnie and the rest of the crew were softening a bit to my presence. Maybe it would work with this group of students, too. Or else I could just sit in the room by myself and eat cookies.
I grabbed a chair and scrolled through my phone, too fidgety to do anything else. “Someone told me the cookies were here,” announced a familiar male voice. Kyle came into the room in shorts and an old Counting Crows t-shirt and plunked himself down on the chair across from me, helping himself to a cookie.
“Where’ve you been? Is this, like, a day off?” I asked, gesturing at his attire.
“Class. I just entertained a group of sixteen-year-olds with tales of presidential assassinations. My favorite, of course, is that of James Garfield. A sordid, unfortunate, gangrene-ridden story.” He smacked his lips. Oh, those lips… “This is delicious. Hits the spot.”
“You wear that to teach?” I pondered, thinking of my uptight, old-school teachers back in my Maine public school days.
“Yep,” he said. “Another thing Ryland Dennis complained about last year to the former Head of School was my attire. But she’s gone, and Andrea couldn’t care less. You want me to tell you about James Garfield?”
“Seeing that I’m just sitting here waiting for students to show up to this focus group, sure. But we’re not exactly helping our cause by hanging out here together.”
“Old friends, Dev. We were college classmates. Anyone can look up our bios on the Rockwood staff page and figure that out.”
“True,” I acknowledged. I needed to ease up a bit. There was only so much I could control. “Okay, tell me about James Garfield.”
“His vice-president was Chester Arthur. He was in an off-shoot political group called the Stalwarts. Charles Guiteau wanted a government job and kept getting turned down. He was also a Stalwart. So, being a presidential assassin-type, he got the weird idea that killing the president might help him achieve his goals. Not exactly of sound mind and body, right?”
I giggled. I imagined Kyle in front of a class of students, managing to get teenagers to pay some degree of attention, which was impressive in a world where they were used to being entertained with YouTube and TikTok. He continued, “Anyway, Guiteau shoots Garfield at Union Station in DC just before Garfield is taking a train trip. He’s a terrible shot. All these people try to help him, so they lay him down on the floor of the nasty-ass train station.”
“You said nasty-ass in class?” I couldn’t imagine my million-year-old U.S. History teacher in a three-piece suit using such a description. I also had no recollection of ever learning this story in school.
“You bet,” Kyle said, smiling. “It’s an important part of the story. Anyway, they’re digging around in his open wounds for bullets. Bare hands, and we’re talking 1800s. No Purell on the scene in those days. No luck. They bring him to the White House, put him to bed, and continue to try to help him for months in a sweltering Washington summer.”
“I’m guessing they weren’t much help.”
“Nope. They fed him huge meals, but he kept wasting away. They even brought in Alexander Graham Bell with a metal detector at one point, but the bullet had moved, and they only checked one side of his body. Stupid shit like that. He finally died of gangrene.”
“And the guy who shot him? What happened to him? I’m guessing he didn’t get his dream job.”
“Arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged,” said a boy as he walked in the room. He gave Kyle a high-five. “Best teacher on campus. Tells the good stories.” Three other students followed him and sat down. One of the girls looked familiar, but I couldn’t place where I might have seen her before. Possibly just at mealtimes so far; I had seen so many students that they all blurred together.
“There you go,” said Kyle, grabbing another cookie. “Glad young Sam here remembers everything he learned forty-five minutes ago. All right, you four. Make sure you give Ms. Paige here some good ideas about what you want from your dining experiences. No smartass snarky crap. And definitely eat these cookies. You won’t regret it,” he said as he walked out, waving at me as he left.
I cleared my throat, thankful for the introduction and cookie endorsement, but also all too aware that I was following the great Mr. Holling. “Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming today. As you can see, I didn’t get an awesome response to my email, so I’m very grateful to you four for signing up and coming to talk with me. Please help yourself to cookies.” In true fake-it-’til-you-make-it fashion, I pretended to know what I was doing. “Maybe we can go around and introduce ourselves. Tell me your name, what grade you’re in, and where you’re from. I’ll start,” I began. “I’m Devon Paige. I’m the new Director of Dining, and up until a couple of weeks ago, I lived in Boston. I grew up in Kennebunkport, Maine.”
The students went through the requested motions, and finally, the girl who looked familiar spoke for the first time. Looking directly at me, she said, “My name is Adrienne Preston. I’m a junior, and I just transferred here from a private day school in the Boston area this week.”
...
The rest of the focus group meeting was a blur. I managed to keep it together—to engage in conversation with the other three students—while Adrienne sat in silence. I didn’t even try to talk to her, having no clue what to say. I had never seen her in person, as she had typically been at school or playing sports or on some kind of extravagant getaway with her mother or with friends, but I had seen her picture in a million places throughout their house. And when she discovered Bentley and me that fateful afternoon, I had only seen her in the shadows and frantic chaos as I stumbled out the door. But I heard her voice as she asked about her tennis racket, followed by her screaming for her mom. And now she was sitting in front of me, as her schoolmates told me of the lasagnas and chocolate cakes they missed from home.
I thanked them all for joining me and promised to start including their input in our menus. I had distracted myself from Adrienne by taking pages of notes. She was the last to stand up, so I quietly asked, “Would you mind staying for a minute?” and she sat back down. Once the last student had left, I offered the plate of cookies to her again. She took one, and I poured her a glass of lemonade.
“I’ve had these before,” she said, chewing slowly. “But I’ve never had the lemonade. I wish I could say it’s awful, but I can’t. So, you have that advantage over me.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought you were going to that school in Carlisle.”
“I was,” she said. “They kicked me out after three days.”
This was a pattern with Adrienne, at least from what her father had told me. “What happened?”
“I borrowed the Dean of Student’s daughter’s horse for the afternoon. I rode it to Walden Pond. I figured it could use a swim. Hot day,” she said with a shrug.
I tried to imagine this scenario playing out and suppressed my laughter the best I could. It was a ridiculous prank. “You took a horse that wasn’t yours and rode it all the way to Walden Pond? Down actual roads?”
“I used my maps app and figured out some trails. But they had to close down the pond for a bit and kick paying guests out because I was in there with a horse, and it was a whole scene. So yes, I was asked to leave the school immediately.”
“You could probably get your own horse if you asked your parents,” I said with a sigh.
“I know,” she replied. “But I would have to keep it out in the suburbs, and I wouldn’t get to see it much. It wouldn’t be very practical.”
She was an odd child but likely correct when it came to being able to spend time with a horse. “I can see that. Okay, so you’re here. Why Rockwood? I would think your mother wouldn’t want you anywhere near me.”
Adrienne fiddled with her shoelaces. “She doesn’t even know you’re here. I didn’t know you were here until I showed up to lunch the other day. For whatever reason, my mother thinks this place is fantastic. They were willing to take me despite my impressive record, and she sent me up here with the driver. She didn’t even drop me off.”
I had to ask. “And your, um, father?”
She rolled her eyes. “She sent him off to Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires for a month to find inner peace or lose weight or something. She calls the shots anyway. You know the money is hers, right?”
I didn’t. Bentley and I had never discussed the origins of their family’s wealth, but I knew he worked as a hedge fund manager, so I had made assumptions. But if the real money was Julianna’s, it made sense that she was the one making the big decisions. “There’s obviously a lot I don’t know,” I said. “And you and I are going to have to coexist. So, let’s start here. What’s something from home you miss eating? I didn’t ask you with the other students around, but I’d love to know now.”
Adrienne looked to the side like she was trying to avoid something. “Your Chicken Milanese,” she acquiesced. “I hate to admit it, but it was my favorite.”
I was getting somewhere. “It is good, isn’t it? I’m afraid to know what you three ate after I left.”
She made a face. “It was really bad. She started getting food delivered from all these different restaurants, but everything was cold or soggy. Too much salt. Dad refused to eat more than a bite. He’d leave and go get ice cream. And then she decided he was eating too much of that and booked the Canyon Ranch visit.”
I groaned. Strangely, I didn’t miss Bentley at all, but we had bonded over our shared love of dairy. “Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “You lucked out then, coming here. We’re going to make Chicken Milanese tomorrow night.” I hadn’t planned for it, but now I knew we had to.