Aunt Cass

If I felt anything for the man sitting across from me at the dinner table, it would have been an incredibly romantic evening.

The restaurant was dimly lit, we’d each had two glasses of red wine, there was a string quartet playing a lovely tune at the center of the dining room, and Samuel looked handsome that night. Well, for him. His suit was a size too big and he had gotten a weird haircut that week, but he’d never looked better.

“Champagne?” he asked me.

Dear God, I thought to myself. He did not put the ring in a champagne glass.

Three minutes later, our waiter set a champagne glass down in front of me with a sparkling diamond ring at the bottom of the glass.

I squealed and smiled at Samuel. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.” I kissed him, because that’s what you do when you accept a marriage proposal. I slipped the ring on my finger.

I did not want to and would not marry this man, but my squeal of enthusiasm was real. I was thrilled to be his fiancée at last.

_____

A year ago, I received a different marriage proposal, from a man who is Samuel’s opposite in every way. Theodore is handsome, clever, ambitious, and can fill out a suit. We met at the magazine where I'd been working as an associate editor for five years. He started with us as a weekly humor columnist, and we began dating almost immediately. I was hesitant at first; I had avoided romantic entanglements ever since an incident during my junior year of college. Eventually Theodore’s small gestures won me over - saving the Times crossword for me and laying it on my desk every morning, surprising me with coffee from my favorite place in the Village.

Once I agreed to a first date - dinner at Bistro - I fell hard and fast. I had never been in love like that before. I couldn’t wait to open my eyes and see him beside me every morning, and there was no moment of my life, exhilarating or devastating, that I didn’t want to share with him.

I did try to stop. I tried to keep things casual, suggesting that best friends with benefits could be an option for us. Theodore just laughed at me, his blue eyes sparkling. It was impossible; we were clearly meant to be more than friends. The inevitable was drawing closer and closer.

When Theodore suggested dinner at Bistro on the second anniversary of our first date, I started to panic, Aunt Cass’s voice echoing in the back of my head.

I tried everything I could to cancel our anniversary dinner. I blamed a family commitment, but it turned out that Theodore had gone to my parents to ask for their blessing, so that plan failed. I told Theodore I had a deadline at work, but the editorial staff was in the loop and had cleared my schedule for the weekend.

The night of the Bistro dinner, we left straight from the office.

Theodore went downstairs ahead of me to get a cab, and I looked frantically around my office for a reason to stay.

“Do I have any messages?” I asked my assistant.

Samuel shook his head, giving me a dopey grin. “None.”

_____

The thing you need to understand is that I desperately wanted to marry Theodore. Everything about our relationship was amazing - the sex, the conversations, the unconditional emotional support. Everything.

An engagement, however, was out of the question.

When we got to Bistro, Theodore had reserved a quiet table in the corner. I observed all the small details - the music, the lighting, the flowers - and I suddenly felt dizzy, like I needed to sit down.

Theodore pulled out the chair for me to sit - yet another sweet and small romantic gesture that made me love him even more.

“I can’t marry you,” I exclaimed.

I’d never seen a person’s face crumple like that. He was thirty-one years old, and he looked like a distraught toddler.

Theodore let go of the back of my chair and started to back away from the table silently.

“No,” I said, seizing his hand. “You have to let me explain why.”

That’s when I told him about Aunt Cass.

_____

It’s really hard to explain Aunt Cass.

Our family was Italian, passionate, loud, and full of characters - an aunt who made racist comments after three glasses of wine, the cousin who would always end up passed out around a table, and Aunt Cass, who everyone said could predict the future

It supposedly started when she was a kid. Her mom asked her about having a play date with a friend and five-year-old Cass said she couldn’t go because of Uncle Joey’s funeral. Uncle Joey, healthy as a horse, collapsed and died of an aneurysm two days later.

After that, her predictions were a regular occurrence. Sometimes Aunt Cass delivered warnings, attempting to help family members avoid a negative consequence - like when she warned my oldest cousin, Mia, not to go to a school dance or she’d risk a grave injury. Mia stayed home. The limo her friends rented was in a horrible accident, and three kids ended up in the hospital. Other times, Cass’s predictions were more definitive, unavoidable, like when she told her cousin Freddie that he was about to be fired. He was furious, stormed away from the Sunday dinner table, called her a liar. Yet when his boss called him into her office two days later to give him the bad news, no one in our family, not even Freddie, was surprised.

It was accepted family lore that Cass’s predictions were accurate. For that reason, I did my best to avoid her. Occasionally, her predictions were positive, like when she told my sister Tori that she’d get into Julliard - but for the most part, they were gloomy and eerie, words that would haunt you every moment until the prophecy was fulfilled. Aunt Cass tended to make her predictions in private conversations during our weekly Sunday dinners at Nonna’s house, so I stuck with my sisters during those evenings. I did my best to never be on my own and in Cass’s eyeline.

Then one night during my junior year of college, we were watching TV in Nonna’s den and my little sister stole my dessert - just snatched up my chocolate chip cannoli with a wicked grin on her face. I whacked her in the arm and retreated to the kitchen to get a new one.

It happened so fast. There Aunt Cass was, smiling at me as she brewed the coffee, and all of a sudden she was speaking.

“You’ll have three men in your life,” she said casually.

I froze, one hand about to select a new dessert. Was this how it happened? Aunt Cass had cornered my sister Isabella last month to tell her that she’d never be a movie star, but Isabella hadn’t mentioned such an informal tone.

“The first one will break your heart. The second man will become your fiancee, but will die before you can marry. The third will be your happily ever after,” Aunt Cass continued. She handed me a napkin and a paper plate for my cannoli.

“Aunt Cass, I -” I wasn’t typically speechless. I had goosebumps on my arms and legs.

She left the room, and I heard her start talking to my Nonna about a doctor’s appointment she was taking her to the next day. Aunt Cass had delivered her prediction, and now she was ready to return to small talk.

I didn't tell anyone. I had a boyfriend at the time; we’d been dating for three years, and we talked about marriage and kids. Six months after Aunt Cass’s prediction, I caught him cheating with my best friend. It was upsetting, but I wasn’t surprised.

_____

This was the story I told Theodore that night at Bistro. The look he gave me afterward was scornful.

“Gia, you can’t possibly believe that nonsense,” he said.

I was crushed. Theodore had never looked at me like that before - with something close to contempt. He didn’t know what it felt like, to be in my family and watch impossible things occur and know that disbelief did nothing.

“I can’t - I just love you too much to risk it,” I exclaimed. My eyes filled with tears.

I did love him - I loved Theodore with a strength of feeling I’d never experienced before.

The second man will become your fiancee, but will die before you can marry.

If he died, I would want to die as well. The thought of losing him was too much to bear.

He stood there, absorbing the information, and I could see a shift in his expression. I was becoming a different person in his eyes - a kook, a nut job, someone not serious or stable enough to love and marry.

It was infuriating that Aunt Cass had done this to me. I was twenty-nine years old, and her prophecy had been haunting me for a decade. I avoided intimacy, I resigned myself to a lonely life. I was scared of never finding someone to love, and equally afraid that when I did, they would die and it would somehow be my fault.

Enough. A small voice inside my head pushed Aunt Cass out, and I felt calm and resolute for the first time in weeks.

“It’s really nothing,” I said, striving to make my voice sound conversational. “It’s just a hard thing to shake, and I’ve been -” I paused, sensing it would give my next words more impact. “I’ve been lied to my entire life.”

It was as if a light that had flickered out reignited in Theodore’s eyes. He looked at me hopefully.

“Give me a little time,” I said to him. “I just need to - work it all out.”

Someday, maybe, I’d be able to give him a different answer.

_____

Our co-workers were shocked when I started dating my assistant Samuel a week later. He had always had a crush on me - he was young, impressionable, sweet, dopey. It was refreshing to be with him; everything with Theodore had been so intense, and my relationship with Samuel was easy. We had to transfer him, of course, for HR purposes, and he ended up as the assistant to the editor in the office next door to Theodore.

It was challenging, watching Theodore from afar for all those months. I watched him, watching me and Samuel, and I wished I could whisper what I was really thinking into his ear.

_____

It was simple to encourage a quick engagement and wedding. From the beginning, I told Samuel that I wanted to wait until after marriage for us to have sex, and he obliged; I blamed my Italian-Catholic upbringing and he was supportive.

The abstinence was part of my plan to keep us moving forward. Nothing encourages a man to speed up a wedding date like a vow of chastity.

_____

After I accepted Samuel’s proposal, after we told our families and started making plans for a wedding, after we set a date that was just six months away - I waited.

It was agony. Theodore started to date. I couldn’t invest in wedding planning with any enthusiasm when I knew the event wouldn't actually occur. My mother adored Samuel, who was happy to help with choices and errands, and they planned happily together while I pretended to be busy at work.

I was at the office late one night when Theodore caught me by the hand as I was leaving.

“What are you doing?” he asked me. “I thought you just needed time.”

I walked away. He would understand soon enough.

_____

Three weeks before the wedding, I started to panic.

_____

Three days before the wedding, Samuel took me to dinner at the restaurant where he’d proposed. It was the last time we’d see each other alone before the wedding; he had a bachelor party the next evening and I had a bachelorette, and then we’d have the rehearsal dinner. It was so sweet that he’d thought, just as Theodore had, to bring me back to a restaurant where we’d had a beautiful memory. It seemed I was destined to have boyfriends who excelled at romance.

I didn’t feel romanced.

I was terrified. I was waking up screaming at night, and I felt tremors in my hands and feet periodically throughout the day. I couldn’t eat.

I knew what true love was - I’d had it with Theodore. A marriage with Samuel would be devastating for me after the years I’d spent as Theodore’s lover, and if the wedding actually happened - well, my parents would throw a wild fit if I even mentioned the word divorce to them.

I needed to end it.

We took a walk through the park after dinner, and then we went up to the roof deck at the top of my apartment building. It was a cool evening. I walked over to the edge of the roof to stand at the railing. The building was twenty stories tall. I felt Samuel wrap his arms around me, rubbing my bare arms to keep me warm.

“Do you want my jacket?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

Then I seized his arm and swung him forward. I watched him fall twenty stories to the street.

_____

It occurred to me during the memorial service that everyone in attendance would have been at our wedding.

The death was ruled an accident by the authorities. No one had seen Samuel fall. After years of feeling like I lived beneath an unlucky star, things were working out in my favor.

Aunt Cass hugged me tightly at the funeral. “I’m so sorry, baby girl,” she said, crying and whispering so that only I could hear. “I hate when I’m right about these things.”

I hugged her back and wished that I could thank her, for saving me from a worser fate. There was no way to know if I could trust her, though.

The plan wasn’t always supposed to be this. For weeks, I’d waited for some accidental calamity to befall Samuel. I would have grieved it - he was only twenty-eight years old - but I wouldn’t have had to resort to what I did.

It simply wasn't fair, the way Aunt Cass’s predictions ruined lives, ended lives.

_____

After everything was over - the funeral, the memorial service - I called Theodore and asked him to dinner.

His voice sounded perplexed. “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “I’m so sorry about what happened.” It had been about a year since I’d rejected his proposal.

“It was terrible,” I said quietly. “He was so young.”

Theodore was silent for a few moments. I wished that he was in the room with me, that I could look at his face and guess what he was thinking.

“And you’re calling - to ask me to dinner?” he asked slowly.

“Things are different now,” I said. “Bistro? 7 p.m.?”

There was another beat of silence.

“I’ll pick you up at 6:30 p.m.,” he said.

We hung up and I frowned. He didn’t sound excited. But then, I’d broken his heart a year ago, and it might take time for things to mend.

_____

When I opened the door at 6:30 p.m., two uniformed police officers were waiting to patiently explain to me about the footage that had been found on a neighbor’s security camera and the motive that had been revealed to them by the love of my life.

I used my phone call to reach Theodore. “How could you do this?” I asked him. I didn’t even recognize my own voice - it was high-pitched, wild and frantic. “Who’s going to be my happily ever after?”

“I don’t know,” he said coldly. “Maybe the lady in the cell next door.”

He slammed down the phone. That was ludicrous, I thought to myself. Aunt Cass’s prediction had clearly stated that there would be three men in my life.

I held the phone to my ear briefly after he hung up. I needed a moment to breathe.

All I could think about was Aunt Cass, with her words that had haunted me for the past ten years.

The woman was insane.

She ruined lives.