Waiting for a Star to Fall

by Kerry Clare

  “Help yourself,” Lauren said with a shrug. The pot was full and waiting on the counter. Who knew they would be so compatible? And that it would be such a blessing to know somebody who never followed the news.

  Brooke said, “Listen, if anyone comes around here—I’m not home, okay? Maybe I was never here in the first place.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just laying low.”

  “Are you in trouble?” Lauren asked. And it turned out Lauren had an imagination after all, because Brooke could see in her expression that she was thinking something terrible, maybe smuggling or murder. Lauren had no idea who Brooke was, so it really could be anything.

  “I’m not in trouble,” Brooke told her. “But you know how things are.” And Lauren did know—Brooke knew that much from her history. Lauren’s father killed himself when she was eight, and her mother lived in a care home because she suffered from early-onset dementia, and Lauren had learned much younger than Brooke of the bad news that can come from a knock on the door.

  Lauren said, “I never answer the door. Nobody you ever want to see shows up that way. It’s always salespeople, missionaries, or politicians.”

  Brooke said, “And politicians are the absolute worst.”

  BEFORE

  After she told Derek about her pregnancy, his condo became her cocoon, and for two days Brooke lived inside it, finally yielding to her exhaustion and calling in sick to work. She reclined on his sofa, taking luxurious naps under a fur throw-blanket, naps scattered among bouts of mindless daytime television, comfortably dressed in one of Derek’s T-shirts, all while he worked, because his was a life that couldn’t be put on hold. But she could rest, finally. The next day she unearthed a bottle of lavender bubble bath from the collection of hotel shampoo bottles in his bathroom cupboard, and she took a bath twice, her first time in years soaking in a tub—an impossible dream in a shared house—releasing all the tension from her body. And there was food. After they’d finished their pizza the other night, he’d gone to the shop at the bottom of his building and come back with fruits and vegetables, organic apples and sugar snap peas, plus fancy crackers and cheese that cost more than what she earned in an hour. For the first time ever his fridge was full, and she helped herself, when she wasn’t lying down warm and dozing. All her needs were taken care of, time was suspended, and she was taking notes, details for Carly, so she could tell her friend, Hey, look at how you were wrong about him. Look at the way that he’s been here for me. Let me tell you all that he has done.

  If she could have remained suspended, Brooke might have stayed in that place forever, where they didn’t have to deal with anything, where Derek came and went and seemed happy to see her at the end of the day. He’d been worried about her, and was treating her carefully in a way he never had before—holding her close, touching her hand, kissing her head in the morning when he thought she was still sleeping. And she liked this, being cared for by him, the way he treated her tenderly. It made her wonder if it could always be like this—but then there were discussions they still had to have, decisions they would have to make. They weren’t talking about anything right now, everything between them space and quiet. Their mutual agreement, unspoken, had been to make nothing irrevocable yet.

  But the essential fact was that Brooke didn’t want to be pregnant. She wished she’d never been pregnant, and no amount of comfort or tenderness was ever going to change that. Even the word “pregnant” filled her with such revulsion, all those ugly consonants, so if anyone had asked, she would have told them she was “knocked up,” affecting a casualness toward the affair, all cool and breezy, the kind of person she wanted to be. But no one was asking, and she tried to maintain her composure, act her age, and not give Derek—when he was home—any reason to think that the terrible mistake he’d made in getting involved with her was any worse than he already thought it was.

  Because he had made this mistake, they both had. Things were tender between them, but this was also what went unsaid during the comfortable and comforting two days that she spent ensconced in his world, in the evening when he came home, and in the mornings before she kissed him goodbye. They’d messed up, and that part was awful. She didn’t want to be pregnant, and he didn’t want it either. It was the only option. She wasn’t going to have a baby.

  “I don’t want to have a baby,” she’d said. And she meant it, except for the part of her—a part that was so minute she couldn’t even properly call it hers, to claim it—that could consider something different. Maybe she was even waiting for it. For Derek to put his arms around her and begin a sentence with, “Unless…”

  She might have been game for anything he’d suggested, especially under the spell of this cocoon, because while she didn’t want to be pregnant, she did want a future with Derek, and what else was a baby but the future incarnate? She had a vision of a house, a kitchen window with sun pouring in around the curtains. Quiet, the way it had been the last two days in his condo, which felt like a home for the first time. And it would be theirs; all of it would be theirs, and so would the baby. And she wanted that. Because she wanted him.

  But Derek didn’t say “Unless.” Those hours when he was actually around, he still didn’t say very much at all. But he was with her now, Saturday morning, and he’d even skipped his run and stayed in bed beside her, his arms wrapped around her as the sun came up and light filled the room. And she was thinking, “Isn’t this nice?” and “What if it could be like this?” She imagined that maybe he was thinking the same.

  “I’ve cleared some space,” he said, out of bed now and getting dressed. There’d been an event that morning, some kind of community fundraiser in a plaza parking lot, but he’d canceled his appearance, which was unprecedented. She was feeling special, wondering if there was enough food in the kitchen to conjure pancakes—did he even own a frying pan? She’d figure out something. But no. He said, “We’re going out.” Out for brunch, like regular people, pancakes and bacon, the greasy and substantial food that she was craving, and she wouldn’t even have to cook it.

  How long would this go on? she wondered, Derek delivering her everything she desired on a platter?

  As she faced him across a table crowded with dirty plates, rinds and remnants—why hadn’t the server come to clear the table?—she thought about how they were on the same page. “I just can’t,” she said, about a baby, but she wanted to explain that it wasn’t a rejection of everything else—the cocoon, his comfort, the possibilities of their life together. Surely she could leave one and still keep the others? The last two days had left her feeling rather indulgent. “I just can’t,” she said again, for emphasis, to make up for the fact that she couldn’t say what she just couldn’t, sitting in the middle of a crowded restaurant as they were. But it was so noisy there that they could talk, albeit in vague terms, and no one would be able to overhear them. By the conspicuous way everyone had looked away when they’d come in, she knew that Derek had been recognized, but places like this were an ideal way for him to be in public, with a clientele too cool to be stirred by fame.

  And now she was waiting for him to agree with her, to respond to her, for anything. Waiting for his unless, if he had one to give. But he was giving her nothing, barely looking in her direction, just over her shoulder, pulling his lips so very thin, a dead giveaway. Something was happening here. She said, “What?”

  And he still didn’t answer, wouldn’t meet her eyes. So she implored him, “Say something. Please?”

  This was the moment, she was thinking. If he was ever going to say “Unless.” And this whole brunch was a gesture, and there was a ring in his pocket. Maybe he had planned it. What would she do if he asked her? Because maybe a ring wasn’t even what she wanted after all, she was thinking, having not let herself consider how one thing might lead to another. But Derek was hard to say no to.

  Except he wasn’t even aski
ng. He wasn’t asking anything. What he finally said was, “Okay?” Not actually a question; noncommittal. His voice so low—he was used to speaking over crowds, not under them. Usually he dominated everything. Surely he had never been this quiet. Something had shifted, but what?

  That morning she’d had a shower, blow-dried her hair, put on the only outfit she had with her—a T-shirt and yoga pants from her gym bag—but she’d washed it with his laundry. So she felt fresh, and now finally, they were having this conversation, after two days of being so careful, discussions of nothing of substance. Neither wanted to upset the other. And she’d been indulging in a fantasy that maybe this was what love was, fragile feelings hanging in the balance. But they couldn’t hang there forever. She had to get an idea of what was going to happen. She’d thought she knew, but she didn’t.

  “I can’t,” she’d said, needing him to tell her that this was okay.

  What he told her instead was, “It isn’t up to me.”

  “But you’re part of this,” she said. “I want to know what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m not sure you need to,” he said.

  And she didn’t get it. “You mean, you want me to have it?” A baby.

  He admitted, “No.” Without explanation, or provisos. His answer was definitive, like a door slamming shut.

  “So we are on the same page,” said Brooke. At least there was that. Hardly the same as curtains in the window, but two people have to start somewhere.

  “I just can’t,” he said.

  “You can’t,” she said. Not understanding. “Can’t what?”

  “Go along with,” he started. “Support. You know my feelings.”

  “I really don’t,” she said. “You’re not even speaking in complete sentences.”

  He leaned across the table. “Termination,” he whispered. Abortion was a word even uglier than “pregnancy.” It sounded like “borstals” and “borscht,” “divorce” and “abhorrent.” The word was dangerous, and he wasn’t even going to pick it up, was certainly not going to risk using it himself.

  “But this,” she said. “I mean, you and me—this is different.” She knew his view on abortion, and even admired it, in a sense, though it also pushed her buttons. They’d argued about the issue, all the issues, on a regular basis, but she liked to think that they’d learned from each other, and she’d helped him write the very speeches in which he’d articulated his point of view. Respecting his honesty, and wishing nuance went down better with the public, but Derek was who he was, and it couldn’t be helped. He wasn’t like all the others with their talking points and appeals to the base. Derek was human, and difficult. It wasn’t fashionable, but it was real, and people were craving realness at this moment of political plasticity.

  But why didn’t it feel real now, as she and Derek sat there together over main plates and side plates, the breakfast she’d devoured and that he’d barely touched, so close she could feel his knees knocking against hers, but with a distance between them that was insurmountable—had it been there all along? Why did it feel so wrong? None of it seemed real. She required love and comfort and arms firmly wrapped around her shoulders—right now, her appreciation for difficulty and nuance had evaporated. This crisis they’d found themselves inside was difficult enough and didn’t need added complication.

  He said, “I mean the things I say. You know that.”

  “But you don’t want to have it either.” Now she was pleading.

  He closed his eyes and sighed, like all this was hard for him. “It’s your choice,” he said. “It’s always been. I’m firm on that.”

  He was being so obtuse that it almost felt like a joke, a setup. She told him, “But that’s like cheating. It just means you don’t have to be responsible for what happens.”

  He said, “I can’t be responsible for what happens.”

  “But not having it—that’s what you want too.” He’d never seen her cry before, in all these years, but tears were springing to her eyes now. She couldn’t help it.

  “What I want doesn’t matter here,” he said. “It’s your choice.” He was leaving her so lost and alone right now, turned around and around. Spinning. He was messing with her, like this was some rhetorical exercise, and now she was angry. Because this was her life.

  “What if I had it, then?” she said. A threat. But he’d know she was bluffing, and she really was, because his refusal to be part of this, to support her, made the notion of a baby, of a future, just impossible. She could never have a baby with someone who’d done this to her, who’d left her so stranded across this impossible table. Any thoughts of curtains were a fantasy.

  “Well, I guess that would be your choice,” he said, that word “choice” again, like so many people in politics who’d turned choice into a weapon they would wield, and if Derek really believed she would make a different one, there would be fear in his eyes. But there was none. He knew he could get away with this. Of all the things Derek knew how to do, the most fundamental of them all was winning.

  She said, “But this is about both of us.” Her voice was shaky as she strung the words together.

  He said, “I can’t support this.”

  “It’s what you want too.”

  “But it’s not my choice,” he said.

  She said. “I need you.”

  He said again, “I can’t.” Then he looked around to see who might be watching them, seeing her crying. What had he imagined was going to happen, she wondered, as she blew her nose into a napkin? She didn’t care who saw. “It’s the principle,” he said.

  “And principles are what’s important here?” What if he just couldn’t hear how awful he sounded?

  “Principles are always important. Without them, we’re lost.”

  “Are you serious?” She was already lost, and she was watching him deliver those lines so smoothly, like a robot. But now she understood what people meant when they said they hated politicians, because that’s who he was now—above it all, saying what he needed to say to keep out of trouble. To be unpindownable. The expression on his face was empty and unchanging—except she knew him well enough to know there was some strain there. To pull this off would be a feat of endurance, and he wasn’t sure that he could do it, and she was torn between her impulse to give him what he needed, because that was always her instinct, and her fury at his refusal to acknowledge the complexity of the situation, the enormity of his betrayal.

  She said to him now, not rhetorical at all, but with genuine curiosity: “Do you ever wonder what would happen if you just felt what you felt? Would the world explode? Would your head?” She wanted to know.

  And it was like he hadn’t heard her. Nothing.

  She said, “What is happening?”

  He said, “Listen, whatever you need—”

  “I need you,” she said. Some things were just that simple, or at least she needed him to be the person she’d imagined he was, which wasn’t simple at all.

  He said, “I can’t.”

  “You’re a coward,” she said, not to be cruel, but because she’d just realized it and the realization was so incredible and out of the blue. A revelation. She’d never thought of it before, of how being principled was simply a matter of being above the fray, above the mess of it all, and deciding that the catastrophic state of the world simply didn’t apply to you.

  And he didn’t even flinch, because she hadn’t said it unkindly. He didn’t deny it, either. He said nothing at all. Maybe he’d known all along, and sometimes wondered how he’d managed to fool everyone.

  He said, “I didn’t mean to.” A tiny admission that he knew there was something wrong with this, with what he’d done. Was there shame?

  She said, “Didn’t meant to what?” She really had no idea.

  He said, “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

  “But this is how it is.
” They sat there, the atmosphere between them so steeped with tension that Brooke was sure everyone around them could sense it. And between the two of them, who would yield first? But Brooke had a feeling. “So what happens now?”

  He said, “I don’t know,” which was not the kind of thing he ever said, and the spaces between those three words were long and final, which made her understand that really he knew very well.

  “You want to take a break from things?” Just articulating the idea made it seem impossible. Brooke was becoming detached from her whole life, like a shadow, and she imagined floating away, but no. There was no lightness. She was stuck here, immovable, locked in this moment.

  “It’s not what I want,” said Derek. “But it might be for the best.” And then it clicked, and she finally understood properly why he had brought her there, to this unlikely public place. It was a gesture, but not the one she’d supposed. He’d been certain that she would behave, that here, at least, she wouldn’t make a scene. And for the most part, she had complied with that.

  They were so far apart now, the table an impassable divide, and it seemed like a dream that she’d ever been close enough to touch him. That there had once been such a thing as intimacy between them. Was the story even true?

  She considered just saying no to him. Refusal. She would not give in, and if he got up to go, she’d follow him. He couldn’t shake her off that easily. She knew where he lived, where he worked. Would he call the police on her? Have her removed? And then what? Endless possibilities. Because she would never have envisioned this scene over brunch, how he’d twisted the truth with lofty ideas to create a reality in which what was happening to her had nothing to do with him at all.

  “It’s your choice,” he kept saying. And it was. But she didn’t want a slogan. She wanted to have a real conversation, one that mingled ideas in the same way they had joined their bodies, the messy miraculousness, the sweat and love. Or so she’d thought at the time.