A Place For Us

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  “However,” Norwood continued, “I do think the circumstances dictate some sort of disciplinary action. I’ll discuss the matter with his dorm family and prefect, but it’s my guess that we’re going to want to institute some stricter oversight measures. And, of course, I think it goes without saying that if Liam finds himself in hot water again this coming term, we may have to consider expelling him.”

  • • •

  “You were right about protecting the Cowley brothers,” Brook said as they walked across the parking lot to the car.

  “Yeah,” Michael said, digging his hands into his jacket pockets. He felt chilled to the bone. Chilled in even deeper ways than that. The more he thought about it, the more it felt as though they’d cut a quiet little deal with Foster Norwood: Keep our star senior out of it, and we’ll keep your son in school.

  “He did seem to worry more about Brandon’s role in the whole thing,” Michael added, “than Liam’s. Makes me wonder if he knows something about the kid we don’t.”

  “I don’t care,” Brook said. “As long as Liam’s allowed to go back. I never thought I’d say this, but I think he’ll be better off away from us and Barnsbury for a while.”

  “Yes,” Michael said as they reached the car. But they were sending him back to the school under a cloud. And worse, they were sending Liam away without understanding what he was thinking or feeling. It was a temporary solution at best. Too often these days Michael found himself making choices he wasn’t proud of. How many times in the last week or so had he felt that he’d been forced to compromise, to bargain, to downright lie? And the most frightening thing about it was the realization that he’d go to any lengths to help his troubled son.

  15

  Three days after the Bostocks drove Liam back to Moorehouse for the winter term, a story about the lawsuit appeared in the Boston Globe and was picked up by the Yahoo! news feed. It went into greater depth about the Social Host Liability law than the Harringdale Record had, describing similar court cases that had been tried—and often settled—in Massachusetts and other states. Brook was described as being a Pendleton heiress, and the Bostocks were said by neighbors to keep aloof from the Barnsbury community.

  Michael handed Brook the paper across the breakfast table, while Tilly sat between them, dawdling over her oatmeal.

  “We’ll talk about that later,” he said, tilting his head sideways at Tilly, whom he was dropping off at school. “Let’s go, Tiddlywinks. We’re already late.”

  That morning, Brook fielded calls from Alice and a number of other friends in the city who had somehow caught wind of the story and contacted one another. Though they all expressed concern and support, Brook kept hearing an unspoken question in their voices: How in the world could you have let this happen? But it was the call from her father, who disliked the phone and sometimes went for days without returning her messages, that upset Brook the most.

  “What the hell is going on?” he demanded. It was nearly noon. Brook had been awake for hours, but she knew her father’s habits well enough to suspect he’d just rolled out of bed and was having his usual meager breakfast of black coffee and toast while devouring a gluttonous intake of news, both print and digital. Michael and Brook had had Peter’s Riverside Drive apartment wired for high-speed Internet, and he was slowly coming to terms with the digital age, checking for breaking news online, and tracking everything he cared about through Google Alerts.

  Most people thought of Peter Hines, if they thought of him at all these days, as a gruff, opinionated old-school left-leaning crank, sunk in the political past and his own sad personal history. His professional heyday—when The Liberalist, the magazine he edited, was averaging over 150,000 weekly subscribers—had been at the tag end of the George H. W. Bush administration. Despite his submitting long, bristling editorials on a regular basis to every news source he knew, Peter Hines’s voice had been pretty much stilled for the past twenty years.

  Brook was one of the few people who understood that just beneath the surface of her father’s often terse and crotchety exterior lay a deeply caring person. To many, he appeared resigned to living a lonely, almost hermetic existence in a city where he’d once been at the political and social epicenter. But his daughter knew that he actually kept a very close eye on the few people he loved, and would leap to their defense like the firebrand he once was if anything appeared to threaten them.

  “I just read this crazy Boston Globe story online and—”

  “I know,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to call you about it.” But she just hadn’t been able to find the quiet stretch of time that would be required to explain the whole thing to her father. The former investigative reporter would have undoubtedly demanded all the facts, wanted the history and background on the Social Host law, asked for a blow-by-blow account of the court hearing, needed to grill her extensively on how Michael and she planned to proceed, and then gone on to second-guess, analyze, and/or demand more information on just about every statement she’d made. He’d gotten worse as he’d grown older, and his friendships had narrowed to a few old newspaper cronies who tended to reinforce his quarrelsome ways. The very thought of picking up the phone to call him had seemed exhausting.

  “Well, why didn’t you, then?”

  “It’s been kind of a madhouse here. Michael and I have had our hands full.”

  “I’ve still got a contact or two at the Globe,” Peter said, “and I’m going to tell them what I think of this so-called reporting. I counted at least four unnamed sources. And then to go and haul in that goddamn Pendleton business! I’ll tell you what I think: as far as I’m concerned, that’s the only reason this thing is considered newsworthy. If you were a Smith or a Doe or a Hines—”

  “Dad,” Brook said. It was one of the few sore points between them that Brook hadn’t eventually taken his name after her mother died. Brook believed that his resentment masked his own regrets that he wasn’t able to talk Tilda into marrying him and becoming a Hines. By doing so, they would have legitimized both their marriage and their daughter’s lineage. That Peter had come to dislike and distrust Peg, Janice, and everything Pendleton didn’t much help his daughter’s position. But Brook, who had so little to remember Tilda Pendleton by, hadn’t been able to bear the thought of giving up the one tangible thing that still connected her to her mother.

  “Okay. All right. I’m sorry,” he said. “How are you holding up, Brooklet?”

  “I’m fine,” she told him, but her voice quavered. Because that was what he used to ask, using Tilda’s own term of endearment for her, when he tucked her into bed at night. During the years when it felt as though Peter Hines and Brook Pendleton were two refugees from some terrible natural disaster, wandering lost and alone through a world that seemed a wasteland without the woman they had both loved so completely.

  • • •

  “Then let’s sit the judge next to the senator’s wife,” Tilda Pendleton said, conferring with Beatrix Walsh, who acted as Tilda’s majordomo, memory bank, and social secretary all rolled into one tightly wound ball. Brook sat across from them in the breakfast parlor, following the conversation closely while pretending to be engrossed in her chapter book. The two women were in the midst of finalizing the seating plan for the fund-raising dinner Tilda and Peter were holding at their lower Fifth Avenue penthouse that evening for a friend of Tilda’s, a tough, savvy federal prosecutor who had her eye on higher office.

  Though mid-October, the weather looked warm enough to serve cocktails on the wraparound terrace with its unobstructed views of the West Village and the Hudson River. Dinner itself would be held inside, the louvered French doors opened to combine the living room and formal dining area into one large elegant space.

  “No, not a good pairing,” Beatrix replied, tapping the eraser end of a pencil against her teeth. Though Beatrix reeked of cigarettes and spoke in a Boston lockjaw, Tilda often declared she’d be utterly lost without her. “The senator’s wife is a strict Roman Catholic, an
d the judge just ruled on that gay bias case. It would be safer to go with Kitty. Let’s move the wife over here—to table nine where we have the monsignor.”

  “You’re right,” Tilda said, her gaze moving over the seating chart. The twelve round banquet tables of ten were all filled. The phone had been ringing off the hook for the past couple of weeks as Tilda’s vast Rolodex of friends fought for one of the thousand-dollars-a-seat places. A year or two before this, when Brook was just beginning to discover how much she loved watching Tilda put together these magical evenings, she’d questioned her mother the morning after such an event.

  “Why are all the seats still here?”

  “What do you mean, sweetie pie?” Tilda had replied, as they watched the party-supply crew untie the cream-colored cushions from the gilt chairs that were scattered around the apartment. “Where would they have gone?”

  “People paid so much money for them! Don’t they get to take them home?”

  It became one of Tilda’s favorite anecdotes, repeated with loving amusement again and again. But at the dinner that evening, for the first time that Brook could remember, Tilda actually tried to tell the story twice. Brook, as usual, had been allowed to join her parents for dessert and, perched on Peter’s knee, was trying her best to follow the animated political conversation at her parents’ table. When the waitstaff started to serve the chocolate tart with raspberry sorbet and almond tuiles, the honoree held up her hand and said:

  “None for me, thanks. I’m afraid I have to watch my girlish figure. But you certainly don’t need to,” she added, handing her plate across the table to Brook. With the spotlight trained suddenly on her daughter, Tilda told the chair anecdote, and the whole table, several of whom already knew the story by heart, laughed appreciatively. The conversation soon shifted to weightier matters, and when the coffee service began, Brook rose dutifully from her father’s lap to take her leave. Tilda drew Brook to her side as she moved past, hugged her tight, and said, “Sleep well,” and then, just as her daughter was pulling away, “Oh, wait! You don’t mind if I tell that funny story about you and the chairs, do you?”

  “Mom?” Brook said. She saw her father’s quick frown and the exchange of looks around the table. Tilda, too, obviously sensed something was wrong.

  “No, not right now, I think, Brooklet,” she said, smiling at Brook and patting her cheek as if the idea had actually been her daughter’s. “We need to leave plenty of time for any long-winded types at our table.”

  Hours later, after the speeches, after the brandy, after the last lingering guests had finally gone, Brook heard her mother getting violently sick in the bathroom down the hall. Then she heard Peter banging on the door and shouting, “What is it? What’s the matter? Tilda, open the door!”

  But Peter eventually had to rouse the super and his son to pry the door off its hinges. By then Tilda had already slipped into the coma from which she would never emerge. And Brook’s happy childhood came to its abrupt end.

  • • •

  With no other role models at hand, Brook grew up following in the footsteps of her half sisters: attending Brearley, spending a month every summer at the Flatt compound in Maine, where she learned to hike and ride, and two weeks every Christmas holiday at their place on St. Bart’s, where she picked up snorkeling and sailing. During the school year she studied dance at the same Lincoln Center studio Peg and Janice had attended, and received private voice lessons from a teacher who had tutored both Flatt sisters. Brook didn’t exactly shine in any of these endeavors.

  “She has a sweet voice,” the voice teacher commented. “But Brook lacks the necessary passion.” She was well aware that she was just going through the motions, doing what was expected of her, without getting any real pleasure from it. She kept a resolute smile on her face, but her heart was empty. She knew of no other way to be. No clearer path to follow. Wasn’t it safer and easier just to go along to get along? She even applied this philosophy to the boys who began to ask her out: the age-and class-appropriate teenagers from Dalton and Trinity, whose groping hands she was constantly having to move back to neutral territory, whose soggy kisses she endured for as long as was polite, counting to twenty in her head.

  But every night she came home to her father, breathing a huge sigh of relief. He was the only person in the world who understood her craving just to be left alone. They’d moved to a co-op on Riverside Drive because the Fifth Avenue penthouse held too many wonderful memories that made them both miserable. The two of them lived together like enlightened Buddhists: wanting and expecting nothing.

  At Vassar, though she maintained her usual cheerful front, Brook’s sense of ennui deepened. She’d chosen the college in the Hudson Valley so she could get back to the city and be with her dad on weekends. Since walking away from The Liberalist, he’d stopped keeping any sort of regular hours, reading all night and sleeping through the day. Brook worried about him. He worried about her.

  “You’re supposed to be making lifelong friends in your college years,” he told her. “You can’t do that if you spend all your free time holed up here with me. Now, don’t come back until Christmas. I’m not going to up and die on you, okay?”

  She switched her concentration from film to women’s studies to English, trying to find something that grabbed her interest. She started going to the college-sponsored “Conversation Dinners.” She made some friends—or at least found herself being asked out to concerts and movies, or back to someone’s dorm room for take-out pizza and beer. But nothing and no one really penetrated her inner gloom, until she overheard a girl in her residence hall talking about a party the English department was mounting for a beloved professor’s retirement at the end of the term.

  “I hate these things. It’s always the same cheese cubes and sugary Chardonnay. Professor Hyatt deserves better. Her class on Emily Dickinson just about changed my life.”

  “You should have everyone come dressed in white,” Brook suggested. “And serve like—sherry, maybe. Didn’t she describe her eyes as the color of ‘the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves’?”

  “What a great idea,” Brook’s fellow student said. “What else would you do?”

  It wasn’t long before Brook became known as the “party girl,” coming up with creative ideas for birthday, Halloween, New Year’s Eve, even Presidents’ Day celebrations. She was always on the lookout for wacky, inexpensive party favors. Where to score lots of designer paper plates and napkins. She kept her ear to the ground—almost literally—and found the hottest local bands and coolest DJs. She didn’t fully realize it until after graduation, when her Vassar friends began to fight over her availability to help orchestrate their engagement, shower, and wedding parties, but she’d managed to put herself in business. A part of her realized that what she’d actually done was find a way to channel her mother’s spirit—and re-create the happiest moments of her life. Well, so be it, she thought. She’d found her calling.

  As R.S.V.P. began to take on professional stature, with a growing reputation and roster of clients, she brought her college friend Alice on to handle the business side of things. They leased a one-room office in Midtown. They were soon both so busy that they had to hire an assistant and then a part-time bookkeeper. There was only one fly in the ointment. Well, two actually. Peg and Janice. Though they were indulgent when they learned Brook was helping her own friends with their events, they became alarmed when they learned she was beginning to do so for their friends, as well.

  “Don’t you think it’s going to be a little awkward?” Peg had asked her. “I mean, I’m actually going to be attending the Lightman wedding, and you’re going to be there as the hired help.”

  “But I love what I’m doing,” Brook told her. “And I’m really good at it. You don’t have to acknowledge me at the Lightmans’. I won’t find it awkward. I want to do this.”

  Handling the wedding accounted for Brook’s first real rift with her older sisters. The only time in her life so far that she
didn’t follow their example or bow to their better judgment. It made her feel sad and a little anxious, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel that Tilda would have been pleased—no, she would have been proud.

  Without exactly meaning to, she started to break free of her sisters’ gravitational pull and was finally able to see how circumscribed their lives were. While Brook was meeting new people every day and dealing with everyone from busboys to heads of major nonprofits, Peg and Janice tended to see only the same staid upper tier of New York society into which they’d been born, raised, married, and into which they were now indoctrinating their own children. Brook felt comfortable enough joining the Flatt side of her family for birthday celebrations and various holidays, but she now had other, more interesting places to go.

  “This is just so impulsive! You know, you’re turning out just like Mom,” Janice told her when Brook announced that she and Michael were getting married. They’d been dating for less than six months at that point—with Janice’s and Peg’s growing disapproval.

  “Thank you,” Brook said.

  “No, I mean that you’re letting your wild—”

  “I said, thank you,” Brook repeated. “I couldn’t think of a higher compliment.”

  • • •

  The call Brook had been bracing for all day came later that afternoon while she waited for Tilly to finish up ice hockey practice. She was parked outside the Deer Mountain sports complex, heater going full blast, when her cell rang. The caller’s name was displayed on her iPhone.

  “Hello, Staff,” she said.

  “Peg asked me to get in touch,” her brother-in-law said. “She filled me in on what happened—and I read that awful Boston Globe piece. It’s a shame this made its way onto the Internet. It’s definitely going to be more costly to settle now.”

  “Settle?”

  “Don’t tell me you were actually thinking of letting this thing go to trial.”

  “Well, yes, I guess—”