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‘Great, I have just the place in mind.’ Trent sweetly insisted on paying the check and, finally, they were off.
They’d only walked two blocks when Trent crossed in front of her and pulled open the door to a notoriously raucous NYU bar. It was possibly the last place in downtown Manhattan anyone would take a date he wasn’t planning to roofie, but Brooke was pleased they’d be going somewhere loud enough to prevent any real conversation. She’d have a beer, maybe two, listen to some good eighties on the jukebox, and be under her covers by midnight – alone.
It took a couple seconds for her eyes to adjust, though she immediately recognized Julian’s voice. When she finally focused on the front stage, she stared in disbelief: he sat in his familiar pose at the piano, fingers flying and mouth pressed against the microphone, singing her favorite of his originals: The woman sits alone in a room / Alone in a house like a silent tomb / The man counts every jewel in his crown / What can’t be saved is measured in pounds. She wasn’t sure how long she stood rooted in the doorway, instantly and completely absorbed in his performance, but it was long enough for Trent to comment.
‘Pretty great, isn’t he? Come on, I see a couple seats over there.’
He took her arm and Brooke allowed herself to be pulled through the crowd. She arranged herself in the chair Trent pointed to and had barely placed her purse on the table when the song ended and Julian announced he’d be taking a break. She was vaguely aware that Trent was speaking to her, but between the noise of the bar and the vigil she was keeping on Julian’s whereabouts, she didn’t hear what he was saying.
It happened so fast she could barely process it. One second Julian was unhooking his harmonica from its piano-top stand and the next he was standing over their table, smiling. As usual, he was wearing a plain white T-shirt and jeans with a knit cap, this one an eggplant color. There was a light sheen of sweat on his face and forearms.
‘Hey, buddy, glad you could make it,’ Julian said, clapping Trent on the shoulder.
‘Yeah, me too. Looks like we missed the first set.’ Someone had just abandoned a chair at the next table, and Trent pulled it over for Julian. ‘Take a load off.’
Julian hesitated, glanced at Brooke with a small smile, and sat. ‘Julian Alter,’ he said, offering his hand.
Brooke was about to respond when Trent spoke over her. ‘Christ, I’m such an idiot! Who taught me my manners, you know? Julian, this is my, uh, this is Brooke. Brooke …’
‘Greene,’ she said, pleased with Trent for demonstrating in front of Julian how little they knew each other.
She and Julian shook hands, which seemed like an awkward gesture in a crowded college bar, but Brooke felt only excitement. She examined him more closely as he and Trent exchanged jokes about some guy they both knew. Julian was probably only a couple years older than her, but something made him look more knowing, experienced, although Brooke couldn’t pinpoint exactly what. His nose was too prominent and his chin a touch weak, and his pale skin even more noticeable now, at the very end of summer, when everyone else had a season’s worth of vitamin D. His eyes, while green, were unremarkable, even murky, with fine lines that crinkled around them when he smiled. Had she not heard him sing so many times, seen him throw his head back and call out lyrics in a voice so rich and filled with meaning – had she just ran into him like this, wearing that knit cap and clutching a beer in a loud, anonymous bar – she never would have looked twice, nor thought him the least bit attractive. But tonight, she could barely breathe.
The two guys chatted for a few minutes while Brooke sat back and watched. It was Julian, not Trent, who noticed she didn’t have a drink.
‘Can I get you guys a beer?’ he asked, looking around for a waitress.
Trent immediately stood up. ‘I’ll get them. We just got here and no one’s come by yet. Brooke, what would you like?’
She murmured the name of the first beer that came to mind, and Julian held up what looked like an empty water cup. ‘Can you get me a Sprite?’
Brooke felt a stab of panic when Trent left. What on earth were they going to talk about? Anything, she reminded herself, anything but the fact that she’d followed him all over the city.
Julian turned to her and smiled. ‘Trent’s a good guy, huh?’
Brooke shrugged. ‘Yeah, he seems nice. We just met tonight. I barely even know him.’
‘Ah, the always-fun blind date. Do you think you’ll go out with him again?’
‘No,’ Brooke said without any emotion whatsoever. She was convinced she was in shock; she barely knew what she was saying.
Julian laughed and Brooke laughed with him. ‘Why not?’ he asked.
Brooke shrugged. ‘No reason in particular. He seems perfectly pleasant. Just a little boring.’ She hadn’t meant to say that, but she couldn’t think straight.
Julian’s face broke in a massive smile, one so bright and beaming that Brooke forgot to feel embarrassed. ‘That’s my cousin you’re calling boring’ He laughed.
‘Omigod, I didn’t mean it like that. He’s seems really, uh, great. It just—’ The more she stammered, the more amused he appeared.
‘Oh, please.’ He interrupted her, placing his wide, warm hand on her forearm. ‘You’re absolutely, exactly correct. He’s a really great guy – honestly, as sweet as they come – but no one’s ever described him as the life of the party.’
There was a moment of silence as Brooke wracked her brain for something appropriate to say next. It didn’t much matter what it was, so long as she managed to keep her fan status under wraps.
‘I’ve seen you play before,’ she announced, before clapping her hand over her mouth in reflexive shock.
He peered at her. ‘Oh yeah? Where?’
‘Every Tuesday night at Nick’s.’ Any chance of not appearing downright stalkerish had just come to a crashing end.
‘Really?’ He seemed puzzled but pleased.
She nodded.
‘Why?’
Brooke briefly considered lying and telling him that her best friend lived nearby or that she went every week with a group for happy hour, but for a reason she herself didn’t entirely understand, she was completely truthful. ‘I was there that night at Rue B’s when the jazz quartet canceled and you did that impromptu performance. I thought you, uh, I thought it was awesome, so I asked the bartender for your name and found out you had a regular gig. Now I try to go whenever I can.’ She forced herself to look up, convinced he’d be staring at her with horror, and possibly fear, but Julian’s expression revealed nothing, and his silence only made her more determined to fill it.
‘Which is why it was so weird when Trent brought me here tonight … such a weird coincidence …’ She let her words trail off awkwardly and was filled with instant regret at all that she had just revealed.
When she worked up the nerve to meet his eyes once again, Julian was shaking his head.
‘You must be creeped out,’ she said with a nervous laugh. ‘I promise I’ll never show up at your apartment or your day job. I mean, not that I know where your apartment is, or if you even have a day job. Of course, I’m sure music is your day job, your real job, as it should—’
The hand was back on her forearm and Julian met her eye. ‘I see you there every week,’ he said.
‘Huh?’
He nodded and smiled again, this time shaking his head a little as if to say, I can’t believe I’m admitting this. ‘Yeah. You always sit in the far back corner, near the pool table, and you’re always alone. Last week you were wearing a blue dress, and it had white flowers or something sewn on the bottom, and you were reading a magazine but you put it away right as I came on.’
Brooke remembered the sundress, a gift from her mom to wear at her graduation brunch. Only four months earlier it had felt so stylish; wearing it around the city now made her feel girlishly unsophisticated. The blue did make her red hair look even more fiery, so that was good, but it really did nothing for her hips or legs. So engrossed was she in trying to remember how she’d looked that night, she hadn’t noticed Trent return to the table until he pushed a bottle of Bud Light her way.
‘What’d I miss?’ he asked, sliding into his seat. ‘Sure is crowded tonight. Julian, dude, you know how to pack’em in.’
Julian clinked his cup with Trent’s bottle and took a long drink. ‘Thanks, buddy. I’ll get you back after the show.’ He nodded to Brooke with what she swore – and prayed – was a knowing look and walked back toward the stage.
She didn’t know then that he would ask Trent for his permission to call her, or that their first phone conversation would make her feel like she was flying, or that their first date would be a defining night in her life. She never would have predicted that they would fall into bed together less than three weeks later after a handful of marathon dates she had never wanted to end, or that they would save up for nearly two years to drive cross-country together or get engaged while listening to live music at a divey little place in the West Village with a plain gold band he’d paid for entirely on his own, or get married at his parents’ gorgeous seaside Hamptons home because really, what were they proving by refusing a place like that? All she knew for sure that night was that she desperately wanted to see him again, that she would be at Nick’s in two nights come hell or high water, and that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop smiling.
2
suffer one, suffer all
Brooke stepped into the hallway of the maternal medicine ward at NYU Langone Medical Center and pulled the curtain closed. Eight down, three to go. She rifled through the remaining files: a pregnant teenager, a pregnant mother with gestational diabetes, and a first-time mother struggling to nurse newborn twins. She checked her watch and did a few calculations: if all went as smoothly as she anticipated, she might actually get to leave at a decent hour.
‘Mrs Alter?’ Her patient’s voice called out from behind the curtain.
Brooke stepped back inside.
‘Yes, Alisha?’ Brooke pulled her white scrub coat tightly around her chest and wondered how this woman wasn’t shivering in her paper-thin hospital gown.
Alisha wrung her hands and, staring at her sheet-draped lap, said, ‘You know how you said the prenatal vitamins were really important? Like, even if I haven’t been taking them since the beginning?’
Brooke nodded. ‘I know it’s hard to look on the bright side of severe flu,’ she said, walking over to the girl’s bedside, ‘but at least it got you in here and will give us a chance to get you started on the vitamins and discuss a plan for the rest of your pregnancy.’
‘Yeah, so about that … is there, um, like some sort of samples you could give me?’ Alisha refused to meet her eyes.
‘Oh, I don’t think that should be a problem,’ Brooke said, smiling for her patient’s sake but irritated with herself for neglecting to inquire whether or not Alisha could afford the prenatals. ‘Let’s see, you’ve got another sixteen weeks … I’ll leave the full supply with the nurses’ station, okay?’
Alisha looked relieved. ‘Thanks,’ she said quietly.
Brooke squeezed the girl’s forearm and stepped back outside the curtain. After getting Alisha’s vitamins, she half-sprinted to the dietitians’ dreary fifth-floor break room, a windowless cubicle with a four-seater Formica table, a mini fridge, and a small wall of lockers. If she hurried, she could cram down a quick snack and a cup of coffee and still make it to her next appointment on time. Relieved to find the room empty and the coffeepot full, Brooke pulled a Tupperware container of precut apple wedges from her locker and began to smear them with travel-sized packets of all-natural peanut butter. At the exact moment her mouth was full, her cell phone rang.
‘Is everything okay?’ she asked without saying hello. Her words were muffled from the food.
Her mother paused. ‘Of course, honey. Why wouldn’t it be?’
‘Because, Mom, it’s pretty busy here, and you know I hate talking at work.’ The overhead intercom drowned out the second half of her sentence.
‘What was that? I couldn’t hear you.’
Brooke sighed. ‘Nothing, never mind. What’s up?’ She pictured her mother in her signature khaki pants and Naturalizer flats, the same ones she’d worn her entire life, pacing the galley kitchen of her Philadelphia apartment. Despite filling her days with a never-ending stream of book clubs, theater clubs, and volunteer work, it still seemed like her mother had way too much time on her hands, most of which was filled with calling her children and asking them why they weren’t calling back. While it was lovely her mother got to enjoy her retirement, she’d been a lot more hands-off with Brooke when she was teaching from seven to three each day.
‘Wait just a minute …’ Her mother’s voice trailed off and it was momentarily replaced by Oprah’s before that, too, abruptly ended. ‘There we go.’
‘Wow, you turned off Oprah. It must be important.’
‘She’s interviewing Jennifer Aniston again. I can’t stand to listen to it anymore. She’s over Brad. She’s thrilled to be forty-whatever. She’s never felt better. We get it. Why do we have to keep talking about it?’
Brooke laughed. ‘Listen, Mom, can I call you later tonight? I only have fifteen minutes left of break.’
‘Oh sure, honey. Remind me then to tell you about your brother.’
‘What’s wrong with Randy?’
‘Nothing’s wrong with Randy – something’s finally right. But I know you’re busy right now, so let’s just talk later.’
‘Mom …’
‘It was thoughtless of me to call in the middle of your shift. I wasn’t even—’
Brooke sighed loudly and smiled to herself. ‘Do you want me to beg?’
‘Sweetheart, if it’s a bad time, it’s a bad time. Let’s talk when you have a little more time.’
‘Okay, Mom, I’m begging you to tell me about Randy. Literally pleading. Please tell me what’s up with him. Please?’
‘Well, if you’re going to be so insistent … fine, I’ll tell you. Randy and Michelle are pregnant. There, you forced it out of me.’
‘They’re what?’
‘Pregnant, sweetheart. Having a baby. She’s still very early – only seven weeks, I think – but their doctor says all looks well. Isn’t that just wonderful?’
Brooke heard the television go on again in the background, quieter this time, but she could still make out Oprah’s recognizable laugh.
‘Wonderful?’ Brooke asked, setting down her plastic knife. ‘I’m not sure that’s the word I’d use. They’ve only been dating for six months. They’re not married. They’re not even living together.’
‘Since when are you such a prude, my dear?’ Mrs Greene asked, clucking her tongue. ‘If you’d ever told me that my educated, urbane, thirty-year-old daughter would be such a traditionalist, I never would’ve believed it.’
‘Mother, I’m not sure it’s exactly “traditionalist” to expect that people try to limit baby-making to committed relationships.’
‘Oh, Brooke, relax a little. Not everyone can – or should – get married at twenty-five. Randy’s thirty-eight and Michelle is almost forty. Do you really think anyone cares at this point about some silly little legal document? We should all know well enough by now that it hardly means a thing.’
Brooke’s mind circled through a number of thoughts: her parents’ divorce nearly ten years earlier, when her father left her mother for the school nurse at the high school where they both taught; the way her mother sat Brooke down after her engagement to Julian and told her that women could be perfectly happy these days without getting married; her mother’s fervent wish that Brooke wait to start a family until her career was fully established. It was interesting to see that Randy, apparently, operated under a completely different set of guidelines.
‘Do you know what I really find amusing?’ her mother asked without missing a beat. ‘The thought that maybe, just maybe, your father and Cynthia will have a baby, too. You know, considering how young she is. Then you’d have a brother and a father who are expecting. Really, Brooke, how many girls can say that?’
‘Mom …’
‘Seriously, sweetheart, don’t you think it’s pretty ironic – well, I’m not sure “ironic” is the right word, but it’s pretty coincidental – that your father’s wife is a year younger than Michelle?’
‘Mom! Please stop. You know Dad and Cynthia aren’t going to have any children – he’s going to be sixty-five years old, for god’s sake, and she doesn’t even want—’ Brooke stopped, smiled to herself, shook her head. ‘You know, maybe you’re right, and Dad and Cynthia will jump on the bandwagon. Then Randy and Dad will be able to bond over feeding schedules and naptime. How sweet.’
She waited for it and wasn’t disappointed.
Her mother snorted. ‘Please. The closest that man came to a diaper when you two were babies was watching a Pampers commercial. Men don’t change, Brooke. Your father won’t have anything to do with that child until it is old enough to express a political opinion. But I do think there’s hope for your brother.’
‘Yeah, well, let’s hope so. I’ll call him tonight to congratulate him, but I have to—’
‘No!’ Mrs Greene screeched. ‘We never had this conversation. I promised I wouldn’t tell you, so act surprised when he calls you.’
Brooke sighed and smiled. ‘Great loyalty, Mom. Does that mean you tell Randy everything even when I swear you to secrecy?’
‘Of course not. I only tell him when it’s interesting.’
‘Thanks, Mom.’
‘Love you, sweetheart. And remember, keep this to yourself.’
‘I promise. You have my word.’
Brooke hung up and checked her watch: five minutes to five. Four minutes to get to her next consultation. She knew she shouldn’t call right then, but she just couldn’t wait.
She remembered as soon as she dialed that Randy could be staying after school to coach the boys’ soccer team, but he picked up his cell on the first ring. ‘Hey, Brookie. What’s going on?’
‘What’s going on with me? Not a goddamn thing. What’s going on with you is a much more relevant question.’
‘Jesus Christ. I told her no less than eight minutes ago, and she swore she’d let me tell you myself.’
‘Yeah, well, I swore I wouldn’t tell you she told me, so whatever. Congratulations, big brother!’
