“What can I do for you?” I say, businesslike, as if I’ve never met him. I am not going to give him anything extra.
People in the bakery are staring. A woman at a nearby table folds her hand over her mouth and leans to whisper to her friend. They giggle, not taking their eyes off of him. He is either so keenly aware of this that he can ignore it or so accustomed to it that he doesn’t notice. “Hi, Waverly,” he says, smiling sheepishly. “Can I talk to you?” His voice drips with empathy, as if I’m the one he’s wronged.
“Go ahead, shoot,” I say, opening the cash register to pretend to count the change.
“Uh.” He leans on the counter. “This is awkward.”
I close the register and fold my hands at my waist. “It’s about to get really busy in here with the lunch rush, Brendan. What can I do for you?”
“Of course, of course,” he says, not sincerely. “Listen, I need you to talk to Kate for me.”
“Talk to Kate for you?” Are you kidding me?
“Waverly, I miss her so much.” The way that he says this—the feeble crack in his voice, the pinched expression on his face like he has horrible stomach cramps—is almost enough to make me feel sorry for him. But I know Brendan well enough to know that there isn’t anything about the way he acts that isn’t premeditated. Now I just need to figure out what he really wants from me.
“Waverly, she won’t answer my calls. I don’t know what to do if I can’t talk to her.” He’s whispering and glancing behind his back, as if anyone within five feet of him wouldn’t be listening.
“Brendan, you actually expect her to talk to you?”
“She’s my wife, Waverly.” He puts his hand to his heart. “She’s the love of my life.”
I roll my eyes. “Sure didn’t treat her that way, Brendan.” I check my watch—I really do need to get to work before the lunch rush, but more than that, I want him to know how uninterested I am in helping him.
“Waverly, please,” he says, putting both palms on the counter and leaning toward me.
I take a step back.
“I don’t know who I am without her,” he says.
“That’s hilarious,” I say, laughing. “You really expect me to believe that you came in here to get my help because you legitimately want to repair your marriage? That you’re well-intentioned? Do you really think that I don’t know the real reason why you need Kate?”
“The real reason…?” He shakes his head like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Man, he’s really good, I think.
“I could see the dollar signs in your eyes from a mile away,” I say, pointing toward the front of the store. I turn away from him to clean the coffee grounds on the counter around the espresso machine.
“Waverly!” His voice is sharp and quick, a stab.
I whip around.
“You don’t understand what this is like for me!” he shouts. The room suddenly goes quiet.
He is shaking his fists at his sides like a two-year-old on the verge of a major meltdown. “She has to come back to me, Waverly! She won’t talk to me! What am I supposed to do if she won’t even return my calls? I mean, she won’t even return my calls!”
Everyone in the bakery is watching him now.
“I can’t even get into the house! Do you know that she changed the locks, Waverly? I can’t even get into my own house! I don’t have anything without her! I have nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!” He punches at the air, his fists punctuating each repetition. “Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!” He keeps saying it. “Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!”
“Brendan! Brendan! Come on,” I say sternly, leaning over the counter to try to calm him. “Brendan, take it easy!”
His hands drop to his sides and he looks at me, weaving a little, like he might fall to the floor. He exhales loudly, trying to catch his breath. “Sorry,” he mutters.
I just nod.
“Holy shit!” someone whispers.
He shakes his head and makes a sound that is almost like laughing, but then I realize…he’s crying, I think? It’s a hysterical sort of sobbing, ugly and twisted, and just as I’m about to turn to get Randy to help me, Brendan collects himself. “I’m so sorry to have bothered you,” he ekes out, his hands shaking as he clasps them together. He can’t look me in the eye. “I’m so, so sorry, Waverly. You have no idea how sorry…” When his eyes meet mine, I can tell that he’s sincere. I notice the dark circles, the pallor of his skin.
And then, just like that, he’s gone.
After the door closes behind him, the room erupts. People are laughing, screeching, calling their friends. I race back to the office to call Kate. This might be the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced.
And then it gets weirder: By the time lunch is over, Brendan’s episode in the bakery is running in a seemingly endless loop on all of the cable news stations. In the midst of everything happening, I didn’t notice that one of my customers was recording the whole thing on his phone’s video cam. What’s especially unfortunate—especially for Brendan—is that this particular customer just happens to be a blogger for Politico, the country’s major political website, and his post of his eyewitness account of Brendan’s—what do you even call it? freak-out? breakdown?—has gone viral.
“It’s so bizarre to see the store on TV,” Randy says to me, walking up behind me as I stand at the cash register, watching another news clip of Brendan punching the air. I am fortunately not in the video—the blogger was kind enough not to capture what I can only imagine was the dumbfounded expression on my face. Kate keeps texting me one-word messages as she watches the footage. (Asshole! Idiot! Motherfucker! ) Her reaction when I called her earlier was a similar sort of spontaneous outpouring of expletives.
“Have you read the post yet?” Randy says, messing with his phone as he says it.
“Uh-uh,” I say, my eyes still on the television. “Does it say anything beyond the obvious?”
“Well he mentions the doughnut muffins,” Randy says, his thumb swiping away on his phone.
“What? The muffins?” I say, turning to him.
“Yeah,” he says. “I can’t believe that this has been live for three hours and you haven’t read it. Hold on, let me find it.” I look over his shoulder as he pulls up the article on the screen and hands me his phone. The post reads:
Hello, friends! Guess who was a fly on the wall when Brendan Berkshire, the two-timing Republican candidate caught earlier this week with his tongue down his assistant’s throat, had a certifiable One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest moment in a local NoVa bakery?!?! This one is a good one, folks. Right up there with the clip of that dude throwing his shoe at former Prez Bush. Well worth a Howard Dean howl.
The owner of the bakery is apparently Berkshire’s estranged wife’s best pal, and he appears to be begging for her forgiveness…or something? For the record, the doughnut muffins in this place are in-cred-i-ble—well worth the trek out to Maple Hill even if you’re not lucky enough to get a glimpse of a politician cracking under the weight of his own apparent stupidity. (I mean, would you cheat if you had a wife who looked like Kate Berkshire?)
I hand Randy his phone. “Well.” I shrug. “I don’t even know…”
“Yeah,” he says, laughing. He appears to be enjoying this a little bit more than I would like.
“I think I’ve seen enough of this for one day,” I say, reaching behind the counter for the remote to turn off the television.
“Aw, come on,” Randy says.
“Randy, Kate is my best friend.”
“Right,” he says, like he’s being reprimanded.
“Put on some music,” I say, clicking off the TV. “We’ve wasted enough time on this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When I arrive at Amy’s a few days later to go for a walk, she’s watching The View. I’ve decided to take the morning off, though I’ve already called the bakery twice this morning. It feels completely irresponsible to be away from work, but Jeannette and Randy practicall
y threatened to quit if I didn’t take a few hours for myself. The past few days have been crazy. I never in a zillion years could have predicted it, but the most bizarre thing has happened at work: Ever since Brendan’s outburst made the news, my doughnut muffins have developed a bit of a following. Several customers have come in asking for “the thing that the guy wrote about on Politico.” When I talked to Randy an hour ago, just after our usual commuter rush ended, he told me that even though he and Jeannette tripled the batch this morning, they were already nearly sold out. Last night, when I checked my voicemail, a PR person from a national firefighters’ association called the shop asking for eight dozen for their annual convention next week and a local elementary school called asking for an order for an upcoming parents’ meeting.
I walk circles around the living room while I wait for Amy to find her sneakers upstairs. It’s the first time I’ve been to her place since I found out about her situation with Mike, and since I arrived, I’ve been scanning the place like a police detective, looking for clues I might’ve missed before I knew about what was going on. I keep waiting for something to jump out at me, some sign that I can shove into Amy’s face that will convince her to get the hell out of here, but the place looks as normal as ever—Pottery Barn Kids catalog on the coffee table, laundry folded neatly in a basket next to the couch, Emma’s plastic tea set stacked on top of the toy box in the corner. I hate to admit it, but I almost wish that Mike were doing more of the things that the websites I’ve read say that abusers do to their victims—not physically, of course, but maybe if he was being more paranoid and controlling about who she saw or where she went, it would be easier to get her to break free.
The women on The View are talking about—what else?—Kate. She released a public statement yesterday announcing that she’s filing for a separation. It’s the only solution, she says. She interrogated Brendan’s body man—I can only imagine what that was like for the poor kid—and he insists that Stephanie was the only one. There weren’t any high-priced hookers. There weren’t any heartsick interns. Still, Kate says she’ll never trust Brendan again. I gaze wearily at the television. “If you ask me, this Berkshire girl is an inspiration!” Joy Behar declares. “More politicians’ wives could take a page from her book! Ya know, I think she should run for office!” The studio audience bursts into applause. I smirk.
For days, I’ve been avoiding calls from reporters requesting interviews about Brendan’s meltdown. MSNBC has called daily and even filmed a spot in front of the bakery—I wouldn’t let them come inside, even after they bought a couple dozen (you guessed it) doughnut muffins. The New York Post has been relentless, to the point that I told my employees not to pick up the phone if they see a Manhattan area code pop up on the caller ID. A junior reporter from a Washington tabloid comes in every day, orders a mocha, and lurks at a corner table waiting for something to happen like she’s a member of the KGB. Kate keeps apologizing for the bother, as if she had anything to do with it. Brendan still won’t stop calling her, but apparently she’s the only one he’s trying to talk to, because he hasn’t been seen or heard from otherwise. The campaign released a statement saying that he’s “dealing privately with his personal situation.” I’m certain the low profile won’t last long. For Brendan, staying out of the public eye is like trying to hold your breath underwater. There’s only so much he can take before he’ll pop back up, gasping for attention.
All of the news shows have dissected the same debate: Was Kate justified in giving Brendan that black eye? Matt Lauer asked a couple of pop psychologists about it on the Today show, Robin Roberts did a segment on Good Morning America, and Diane Sawyer did a piece about it on the evening news. “Does it count when the woman’s the one who hits?” she’d said, one eyebrow cocked, a picture of a generic, distraught-looking couple in the little box over her left shoulder. Every time I saw one of the stories, I felt my stomach tighten. Amy. I can only imagine what she thinks watching all of this.
“Sorry!” she calls out, bounding down the stairs. She comes into the room and checks her watch. “How long do you have? I need to pick up Emma at preschool in about an hour. It was her turn for show-and-tell today and she decided to take one of Mike’s old stethoscopes. How cute is that?”
“Adorable,” I manage. I’m amazed—and terrified—by the way that she can bring up Mike’s name so casually after confessing to me. “An hour is perfect,” I say. “It will give me just enough time to get to work before lunch gets crazy.” This morning, while I was conceivably doing the crossword in the paper but actually obsessing over my house loan payment, Larry tried unsuccessfully to convince me to come into the city to meet him for lunch. He even tried to sweeten the deal by telling me that he’d let me sneak into the museum’s replica of Julia Child’s kitchen. “I’ll let you fondle the pots and pans,” he’d joked. I’d laughed, too, but I was really thinking that I was awful for saying no. A better girlfriend would recognize that his work situation is tense right now and would accept his invitation in an effort to comfort him and give his day a little lift. A better girlfriend would also have told him about all these financial problems in the first place…I’m a terrible person.
Amy glances at the television and I notice the subtlest grimace as she listens to the hosts continue to opine about my oldest friend’s marriage. “How’s she doing?” Amy asks.
“You know Kate,” I say. “Everything appears to be fine.”
“I’ve left her a couple of messages and sent some flowers. Do you know if she got them?”
“She did,” I say, leaving out how Kate had opened the card accompanying the long-stemmed yellow roses when I was at her place last week, read it, and tossed it onto the countertop, saying, “Little Miss Sunshine has a way of making me feel sick to my stomach.” I’d picked up the card and read it: “Kate, I’m thinking about you every moment of every day! I’m always here for you! XOXOXO, Amy and family.” I was tempted to tell Kate about Amy and Mike right then but I decided against it. I couldn’t upset her further.
“Mike and I saw her on the news the other night,” Amy says.
“Yeah. Me, too.” Kate’s one public appearance was a brief shot on the local news, when a cameraman blocked her car as she was leaving her house. “I’m doing great,” she said diplomatically as she smiled behind her oversized sunglasses, looking like a movie star off to a meeting with her agent. She seemed so at ease, with her elbow rested casually on the open car window, that it was as if the reporter was a neighbor who’d stopped her to compliment her yard. I can only imagine what Mike must’ve said when he saw it. He must be reveling in Kate’s misfortune like his team just won the World Series.
“She looked so great,” Amy says. “Is she really doing as well as she seems? I keep thinking about how horribly Brendan deceived her, with his trying to start a family and everything, too. I can’t imagine a tougher situation.”
You can’t imagine a tougher situation? I think. You? The one who’s being hit by her husband?
“Kate’s bogged down by all of the details—the living arrangements, the meetings with lawyers,” I say. “But honestly, Amy, she’s doing well. She hated campaigning, as you know, and I think just being able to give that up has been a huge relief.” I think for a moment before I continue. “I also think that being able to fully concentrate on herself has been really good for her,” I add strategically, watching her lace up her sneakers. “There must have been more going on there than we realized, because I truly haven’t seen her this happy in years.”
Kate’s actually been mainlining the contents of her and Brendan’s wine cellar and calling me every night to give me her latest revelations about what an idiot Brendan is, but I’m lying a little bit for the sake of charity. I want—I can’t believe I’m saying this—I want Kate to inspire Amy; to help her see why she needs to get the hell out of her marriage, or at least start to nudge her thoughts in that direction.
“Well that is so, so great!” Amy says, popping up from the couch.
“Do you want a bottle of water to take with you? Speaking of water, have you ever tried that VitaminWater stuff? I bought some at Costco the other day. It’s really good! Do you want one of those?” She walks toward the kitchen and I follow behind. While she’s getting the bottles out of the fridge, I examine the to-do list on the counter that she’s written in bubbly script: “Make dentist appointments! Emma—swim lessons! Target—lightbulbs, M undershirts, freezer bags!” There’s a fresh-looking vase of daisies on the windowsill over the sink—maybe an apology from Mike for something he did? I shudder, thinking about it. My eyes wander to the frozen Stouffer’s casserole defrosting in the sink.
“Don’t judge me,” Amy says, laughing, when she notices me looking at it.
“Never,” I say, forcing a playful grin.
“Some nights, I’m just too tired to cook,” she explains.
Why? I think. Because of something Mike did? Because you’re so distraught? Maybe you’ve been crying all day? Because your body is actually too physically and emotionally exhausted to handle cooking? I take a deep breath, forcing myself to come back down to earth.
“I understand,” I say. I start to offer her a sympathetic smile—maybe this is my opening—but she’s already headed toward the front door, her ponytail bobbing behind her.
“You know, it’s great that Kate is doing so well, but what about Brendan?” she says as we walk toward the foyer. “That thing at the bakery was pretty horrible. He must be under a serious amount of stress. He should talk to someone.”
Walking behind her, there’s a part of me that wants to grab her ponytail and spin her around and force her to look me in the eye and explain to me how it’s reasonable for her to be concerned about Brendan’s mental health but not her husband’s—or her own.
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