For the sides, I was making roasted vegetables and a black bean and corn salad. The vegetables were a combination of cauliflower, mushrooms, carrots, and eggplant, and the salad was made with red peppers and avocado with a lime-cilantro vinaigrette.
The key instruction for the veggie dish was to spray a cookie sheet with oil and then season the pan with salt, pepper, and garlic before covering it with vegetables. Once they were on the cookie sheet, in a single layer, I was to drizzle them with olive oil and then season the top. When it all came out of the oven, I was to transfer it to a serving dish, drizzle the veggies with lemon juice, and sample it.
If they needed it, I would season with more salt and pepper. The final part was to crumble feta over the vegetables, sprinkle them with parsley, and serve.
For dessert, I would make a caramel-pecan tart with a shortbread crust. Mary assured me that I could prepare it ahead of time, and it would be perfectly paired with a cup of coffee.
I had a plan of action and had made sure I had all the ingredients for the meal when Aunt Bonnie came in.
“Mind if I help?”
“I take it the conversation out there is boring.”
“No, it’s just that I would rather spend time with you than listen to them talk about you,” she explained.
“I probably didn’t need to hear that … Anyway …”
“What are you making?” Aunt Bonnie asked.
I gave her the rundown.
“I’m very good at making shortbread. Why don’t I tackle the tart?” she suggested.
“Have at it. Baking isn’t my strong suit,” I admitted.
We got busy cooking. It was nice spending time with my aunt. It helped us to get to know each other better, and I found she was both fun and thoughtful. Aunt Bonnie was easy to be around, and we were soon enjoying each other’s company.
◊◊◊
“What wine are you serving?” Aunt Bonnie asked.
“I was told to pair the fried fish with a California sparkling wine. I was assured it would match up well since most wines lose something when you serve them with fried seafood. Not so with sparkling wine, whose bubbles cut through the weight of fried food as if the wine were made for the dish.”
“You sound like an expert.”
“Hardly. I had to ask. I plan to drink mint sun tea since I try not to drink much alcohol.”
“Because you’re too young?”
I just shrugged. Aunt Bonnie had been a teen not so long ago, so I assumed she knew that most teens partook now and then.
We invited everyone in to eat. During the appetizer, which was a success, there was mostly small talk. It wasn’t until the main course that the discussion turned to me.
“David was blindsided the other day and came to me for advice,” Mr. Nomura said to kick off the festivities.
He went on to describe the Japanese websites and how the cast had been feeding them information.
“You need to be careful with stuff like this,” Grandma Dawson said to weigh in. “This kind of thing can be a real problem down the road.”
“How so? I’m just in high school. How can something like this harm me later in life?” I asked.
“It would be easy for them to come after you and tag you as the icon for white male privilege,” Mr. Nomura said.
I thought about the picture of me on the yacht. Just the word ‘yacht’ proved his point. Then there were pictures of me at different parties where the setting screamed affluence and privilege. It didn’t matter that I was from a small town in the Midwest and lived in a middle-class neighborhood.
Frank Ingram, my publicist, had taught me that we had to control the narrative. I’d checked out the gossip sites and clicked on blogs about the young and über-rich, and it had sickened me to see them acting like they were above it all.
“There will be reporters who want to get to you for a headline, or God forbid that you go into politics someday. Your opposition will dig until they find dirt, and they always find dirt,” Uncle John said.
“Even what I did as a teen?” I asked.
“Over the past twenty years, I’ve seen it get to the point that I’d call it ridiculous, except for the fact that it seems to be real. Heck, for Bill Clinton, they dug up that he smoked pot. I still remember his ridiculous lie that he never inhaled.
“Then there was George Bush, who was painted as a frat boy. Nowadays, with social media, it’s easy to dig up stuff. All it takes is one homophobic tweet as a joke for you to be disqualified thirty years later,” Grandma Dawson warned.
“Okay, you’ve scared me a bit. I think I’ve tried to not do anything stupid,” I said.
“You’ve done a good job of avoiding that sort of issue, and I would hope you continue to do so,” Mr. Nomura said.
“It’s not just politics, David,” Uncle John said. “What you do now can have a profound effect on you no matter what you do in the future. You see how the mob mentality is starting to make it okay to delve into your personal life and expose it to the world.
