Vanessa and I made Law Review together and then went to the same law firm for our second-year summer. We’re both litigators, which means that our offices are mere footsteps away from each other on the eleventh floor.
Which worked out perfectly for me the day after my breakup with Douglas, since I couldn’t get out of bed and needed someone to go to my office and turn on the lights and computer to make it look as if I were actually there.
I lay in bed in Vanessa and Marcus’s guest bedroom for most of the morning, simply unable to move. Everything around me reminded me of Douglas. The picture of Vanessa and Marcus on my bedside table — a happy couple; the earrings that I had forgotten to take out of my ears the night before — a present from Douglas; the red silk drapes covering the windows — his favorite color for me to wear.
How could this be happening to me? Why is this happening to me? What have I done to deserve this? Why didn’t I deserve to be a happy couple, like Vanessa and Marcus?
My eyes opened at around noon, when the telephone began to ring. I listening to it ring, over and over, and threw the covers over my head in an effort to make it stop. The answering machine picked up, far and away out in the living room, and I heard Vanessa’s voice calling out to me.
“Brooke?” she said. “Brooke, if you’re there, pick up. Pick up! Pick up, pick up, pick up….”
My cell phone rang next. I pulled the covers back and threw my arm out to the bedside table to pick it up.
“Didn’t you hear the phone?” Vanessa asked.
“No,” I lied, eyes still shut.
“Okay,” Vanessa said, “well, nothing’s really going on here. I checked your voice mails and your e-mails and I told your secretary you were in court on some pro bono case.”
“Thanks, Vanessa,” I said.
“Are you still in bed?” she asked tentatively.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, you should get up and eat something,” she said, “it’ll make you feel better.”
Vanessa was right. You should always listen to doctor’s orders. Or doctor’s wife’s orders, as the case may be. I rolled out of bed and padded into the kitchen.
“What else is going on over there?” I asked, taking the half-eaten roll of cookie dough out of the fridge and plopping myself down on the couch.
“Quiet day,” she said. “What are you going to do about your stuff?”
“Stuff?” I asked, flipping the television on.
“Your stuff, your things,” she said. “As in, what are you going to wear to work tomorrow?”
“My stuff,” I said. Right.
“You can borrow mine until you get back downtown to pick up yours,” she said. That would have been a great idea if I could actually fit into any of Vanessa’s things.
Vanessa was right. I should pick myself up, dust myself off, and go down to Douglas’s apartment and collect my things. That would be the mature, responsible thing to do. I should just go down there, pack my bags, and go about moving on with the rest of my life.
Two hours later, I’d hit the makeup counters at Saks, bought a new pair of black pumps and was headed up to the fifth floor to get some new outfits when my cell phone rang. I could see Jack’s work number pop up on my caller ID and I answered it.
“How’s it going?” Jack said.
“Fine,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the music playing on the fifth floor of Saks. It was kind of loud.
“Did you win?” Jack asked.
“Win what?”
“Vanessa said you had a hearing on one of your pro bono cases?” Jack said.
“Oh, yes,” I said, “that. Of course I won. It went great. Great! Great, great, great…”
“Excuse me, miss,” a salesperson asked, “would you like me to start a fitting room for you?” I smiled and nodded, and quietly handed her the clothing I was holding.
“Brooke, are you shopping?” Jack asked.
“Well, you can’t expect me to sit at home eating raw cookie dough all day,” I said. “Saks can be very therapeutic.”
“No,” Jack said, “I expect you to come to work. Where you belong.” Clearly, I was talking to a man. A woman would understand that I belonged at Saks.
“Douglas and I are having some problems,” I said, brushing my hand against a row of spring dresses. “So, I just need a day to get back to myself.”
“Vanessa said he kicked you out of the apartment,” Jack said.
“Well, yeah,” I said, “that’s sort of, like, the problem.”
“What are you doing in Saks?” he said. “Come to the office and I’ll take you out for lunch.”
“I don’t want lunch, I just want Douglas,” I said. I hoped he understood that I was saying that I wanted Douglas back, for things to be the way they used to be, and not that I was actually suggesting that I wanted to eat Douglas for lunch. Although I was not opposed to the occasional afternoon rendezvous….
“Well, it’s over, so why don’t you let me take you for lunch,” he said.
“Can you even pretend to be supportive?” I asked.
“You want me to support your going to Saks?” he asked.
“I don’t have any clothes or makeup,” I said. “I didn’t get a chance to pack anything on my way out.”
Jack didn’t respond. I could tell that he was brushing his hand through his hair as he thought.
“Well, then,” he said, clearing his throat as he did, “I’ll pick you up at Saks right now and take you to the apartment to pack a bag. It’s the middle of the day so he won’t be home.” I could tell that he was deliberately refraining from saying Douglas’s name, sort of the way Harry Potter only calls Voldemort “he who shall not be named.”
“Thanks, Jack,” I said, “but I’m fine.”
An hour and a half later, I walked out of Saks with three enormous shopping bags, two garment bags and a tiny shopping bag that held all of my cosmetics. It was amazing that you could spend that much money at the cosmetics counter and the sum total of your purchases could fit into a tiny bag that would barely hold a pair of shoes.
As I pushed open the door to the Fifth Avenue exit, there stood Vanessa in front of a town car holding a sign that said “Brooke Miller.”
“What on earth are you doing here?” I said, my eyes almost brimming up with tears at the sight of her.
“Jack said that you were here, so I thought I’d take you downtown to get your stuff.” She grabbed a shopping bag and garment bag from me and signaled for the driver to pop open the trunk. “We’ll do it quick and painless, like ripping off a Band-Aid.”
“Thank you,” I said, a tear escaping from my eye.
“Breakups suck,” she said, putting her arm around me.
As the car sailed down Fifth Avenue, Vanessa and I sorted through my shopping bags, deciding which items I would have to return and which she would be borrowing.
We arrived in front of the Soho Triumphe and Vanessa got out of the car with me. I told her that I thought I should do this part alone.
“Hi,” I said to the doorman as he stopped me on the way in, “I’m Brooke Miller, I live in 32G. Well, lived,” I said, unsure of my new status. I finally settled on saying: “I’m in 32G.”
I got up to the apartment and opened the door. Even though it had only been mere hours since I’d left, it already felt as if I didn’t recognize the place. Everything somehow looked colder, more antiseptic, and I didn’t see a trace of myself in it. I walked over to the windowsill and saw a picture of Douglas and me, taken when we were down in the islands for Christmas the previous year, nestled among the other objets d’art he had lined up on the sill like little soldiers.
It’s not over, I thought. If it were over, that would have been the first thing I’d have thrown out. My first step in moving on. (I probably would have hurled it right out the window, but let’s not get technical.)
Walking into the bedroom, I took a deep breath. It smelled just like Douglas. Woodsy and manly and dark. The bed was unmade an
d I smiled, thinking about how Douglas and I never had the time to make it during the week. I picked up his pillow and inhaled.
Then, remembering Vanessa waiting downstairs in a car for me, I quickly took out the step stool and grabbed a suitcase from the top shelf of the closet. I didn’t need too many things. I would be back.
I went through the closet and heard a key in the door. A smile crept onto my lips. That unmade bed was about to come in very handy….
If lipped the suitcase shut and headed toward the bedroom door as I heard a voice on a cell phone. A woman’s voice.
“I’m at your apartment, baby,” she said as I stood frozen in my tracks. I couldn’t believe that Beryl had the nerve to be there. The day after Douglas threw me out. A thousand thoughts flooded my brain — should I hide in the closet? Under the bed? What should I do? Even if I hid myself, the suitcase was still there in plain sight. With all of my things in it. And anyway, who was I — Lucy Ricardo?
There was nowhere to go. It was just like that scene in No Way Out where Kevin Costner’s photo is coming up on the computer screen and he’s about to be revealed as the bad guy, but really, he’s not the real bad guy, someone else is the real bad guy, but he’s totally stuck inside the Pentagon with nowhere to go.
“Pastis?” I heard Beryl say. “I’d absolutely love to!”
The room began to spin. He was taking Beryl to Pastis, a fabulous ultra-trendy French bistro downtown in the Meatpacking District. A favorite of local celebs and the New York Euro scene, Douglas used to call it “our place” since we had spent so much time there over the years.
I sat down on the unmade bed and laughed at myself. I couldn’t believe that up until a few weeks ago, I used to indulge this pathetic little fantasy that Douglas would propose to me there. Actually drop down to his knees in the middle of the restaurant and proclaim his undying love to me in front of his friends and our waiter and the other diners and any celebrities who happened to be there that night. I would giggle like a schoolgirl and jump down to the ground to throw my arms around him, all the while kissing him and screaming, “Yes, yes, yes! I will marry you!” Of course, the crowd would applaud and the waiter would bring a bottle of champagne to our table. We would laugh and drink champagne and I would blind the other diners with the sheer size and brilliance of my new diamond ring. As my relationship with Douglas crept up to the two-year mark, my outfits on the nights we were going to Pastis got more and more “special” as I deluded myself further and further into thinking that my fantasy could become reality.
I used to tell myself that it was okay to have harmless little fantasies like that. Who were they hurting, anyway? And who wouldn’t have such fantasies? But Douglas wouldn’t be taking me to Pastis or anywhere else anymore. He was taking Beryl.
I heard the apartment door slam shut and I hurriedly threw more clothing and assorted pairs of shoes into my suitcase. I was packing so fast that I had no idea what I was putting inside the case. Somehow, I remembered to grab my jewelry, which I threw on top, zipped the suitcase shut and wheeled it out of the bedroom. When I walked into the living room, I saw an enormous crystal vase filled with three majestic calla lilies, arranged neatly. That was what she came here to do, I thought. She brought in fresh flowers. I looked to the windowsill and saw that the picture of Douglas and me was gone.
I rushed back to the car, threw myself into Vanessa’s arms, and cried the whole way back uptown.
6
From: “Brooke Miller”
To: “Douglas MacGregor”
Subject: I miss you
Do you miss me, too?
Brooke Miller
Gilson, Hecht and Trattner
425 Park Avenue
11th Floor
New York, New York 10022
*****CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE*****
The information contained in this e-mail message is confidential and is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, we would request you delete this communication without reading it or any attachment, not forward or otherwise distribute it, and kindly advise Gilson, Hecht and Trattner by return e-mail to the sender or a telephone call to 1 (800) GILSON. Thank you in advance.
Delete.
It was the fourteenth e-mail message that I’d drafted and then deleted so far. But it wasn’t as if I could concentrate on work two days after Douglas threw me out of our apartment. My assignment for the day — talk to Douglas and clear this whole mess up.
From: “Brooke Miller”
To: “Douglas MacGregor”
Subject: hey
We need to talk.
Brooke Miller
Gilson, Hecht and Trattner
425 Park Avenue
11th Floor
New York, New York 10022
*****CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE*****
The information contained in this e-mail message is confidential and is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, we would request you delete this communication without reading it or any attachment, not forward or otherwise distribute it, and kindly advise Gilson, Hecht and Trattner by return e-mail to the sender or a telephone call to 1 (800) GILSON. Thank you in advance.
Too angry and defensive. Men hate angry and defensive.
From: “Brooke Miller”
To: “Douglas MacGregor”
Subject: hi
Can we talk?
Brooke Miller
Gilson, Hecht and Trattner
425 Park Avenue
11th Floor
New York, New York 10022
*****CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE*****
The information contained in this e-mail message is confidential and is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, we would request you delete this communication without reading it or any attachment, not forward or otherwise distribute it, and kindly advise Gilson, Hecht and Trattner by return e-mail to the sender or a telephone call to 1 (800) GILSON. Thank you in advance.
Send. A screen popped up asking, “Are you sure you want to send this message?” Normally, I just click Yes as a matter of fact, but this time it gave me pause. Did I really want to send this message? It was as good of a question as any, I supposed. My life had changed in an instant and my computer wanted to know if I wanted to take a step in making it back the way it was.
I clicked Yes and walked down the hall to Vanessa’s office to discuss the breakup.
“Do you think that we’ll get back together in time for Trip’s wedding?” I asked.
“You asked the man why he hates America,” Vanessa said, barely looking up from the document she was typing.
“Mistakes were made,” I said.
“You think?” Vanessa asked me, still typing away furiously on her computer.
“I can’t believe that I have no boyfriend,” I said. I eyed the photograph of Vanessa and Marcus at their college graduation that was on her bulletin board. They were holding on to each other for dear life, cheeks pressed together, smiling like two little kids. It was the day Marcus proposed to her.
“And apparently,” Vanessa kindly pointed out, “you may be a racist, or a nationalist. Or some sort of Scotsman-hater in general.”
“I just wanted the man to wear pants. Who knew that once you found a man in Manhattan who was straight and single, you then had to worry about whether or not he wanted to wear pants?”
“The things we take for granted.” Vanessa sighed.
“Are we still talking about Douglas?” Jack asked, walking into Vanessa’s office, balancing three coffee cups in his hands. I picked a paper clip up off of her desk and began to unravel it. Vanessa’s desk was always neat and ordered with everything in its proper spot
. The paper clips had their own tiny tray right next to her stapler and tape dispenser. She kept her pens and highlighters in a Howard University mug, right next to her Rolodex, right next to her In and Out boxes. I always marveled at how she could keep herself so organized since my own office always looked as if it had been recently hit by a tornado. I hadn’t even seen my own Rolodex since I was a first-year associate.
“It’s not like I’m obsessed with him, or anything,” I explained. I didn’t want Jack to worry about me. Or see how pathetic I was being. Jack had broken off an engagement six months prior and he never became completely unhinged about it the way I was over Douglas. In fact, six months later, he seemed totally fine about it. Well, I mean, I’m sure he was upset at the time — I’m not meaning to say he’s cold or some sort of monster or anything. It’s just that he didn’t seem to have to discuss it constantly with his friends in the ensuing days. Although maybe that’s what they did at all of those firm intramural basketball games. Jack was the captain of our firm’s team, so maybe that’s what they did while reviewing the playbook, lament past relationships and cry over it the way we women would, quoting Oprah and trying to figure out where it all went wrong. In between shooting hoops, I mean.
Or maybe Jack was able to recover so quickly because he had been engaged to his fiancée for three and a half years without ever having set a wedding date. I always thought that it was totally ironic that in Jack’s junior year, he played the Nathan Detroit role in his high school’s production of Guys and Dolls. I was sure his fiancée didn’t find that fun fact quite as charming.
“I’m not obsessed with Douglas,” I said. “I can move on…. To obsessing about Trip’s wedding instead. Totally different.”
“Totally more healthy,” Vanessa said, with her hands in her desk drawers, getting out sugars and various other fake sweeteners for us to put in our coffees.
“If you want to be healthy,” Jack said in his best game-show announcer voice, “drink coffee from Healthy Foods. Wholesome, delicious, and also,” he continued, segueing into his normal speaking voice, “our firm’s biggest new client.”
Scot on the Rocks Page 4