First Comes Love (8 page)

“The seed of solo motherhood has
officially
been planted,” I say. “Pun intended.”

A
fter Daniel's funeral, I was secretly relieved to go back to college and escape the unbearable suffering in Atlanta. I called my parents as often as I could make myself, as I knew how much they worried about me, more vulnerable to parental fears than ever. Yet I also tried to push Daniel from my mind, throwing myself into my classes and auditions, anything to stay busy and distracted. Fortunately, my crush on Nolan quickly faded, replaced by a bigger crush on a guy named Lewis Fisher.

Lewis and I met in our stage diction class that semester, and were then cast as Mitch and Blanche in
A Streetcar Named Desire
. A brilliant actor from Brooklyn, he captivated me with his talent, though I also loved his quirkiness and urban sophistication. One night after rehearsal, we lingered backstage long after the rest of the cast and crew had departed, discovering that we had something much bigger in common than acting: we had both lost siblings. I told him about Daniel's accident, and he shared that his only sister, Ruthie, had jumped onto the subway tracks in the path of an oncoming N train a week shy of her sixteenth birthday.

We stayed up half the night talking, analyzing the two tragedies with a brutal frankness. We concluded that although Ruthie's death was more emotionally complicated and troubling, in some ways it felt more unfair to lose Daniel—someone who had been so happy and productive. Lewis had a larger burden of guilt for not saving his sister—whereas my guilt came in the form of being the one who had lived. It was not only cathartic to talk about our losses but also deeply intimate. Our bond felt intense, and our chemistry unmistakable. After crying together, we hugged, then kissed.

By opening night, we were a couple. Even the theater critic at
The Daily Orange,
known for being stingy with his compliments, praised our “palpable heat” as one of the best parts of the production, lamenting that Stella and Stanley didn't share a similar fire. To celebrate the review, we made love. It was my first time, and he said he wished it had been his, too.

Lewis and I became inseparable. We eschewed parties and bar scenes, spending most of our time alone or with a small group of fellow actor friends. We took the same classes, auditioned for the same plays, and spent every night in his bed or mine. We were too young to think about marriage, neither of us particularly aspiring to a traditional life anyway, but we talked about the future, what would happen after graduation—whether we would work in television or theater or film, whether we should move to New York City or Los Angeles. Maybe one of us would make it big and become a splashy commercial success—but that wasn't really our goal. The only thing that mattered was that we were doing what we loved and that we were together.

I was almost happy, as close as I could come given what I'd lost, and for months, everything seemed easy, the effect of true love. Until everything felt complicated—the effect of falling out of love. The unraveling began in the fall of our senior year, when we both auditioned for
As You Like It
. Lewis landed the part of Jaques. A gorgeous blonde named Poppy scored the lead of Rosalind. And I got the insulting role of Audrey, a country bumpkinette goatherder. Lewis and I had never had a competitive dynamic in our relationship, but I found myself feeling insecure, resentful, and jealous, especially of Poppy, whom he seemed to worship.

I developed a mild eating disorder and began to self-loathe and second-guess. I questioned my future as an actor. I wasn't pretty enough, I wasn't talented enough, and I clearly didn't have a thick enough skin. When I confided my reservations to my parents, they both seemed relieved. They said acting had been a good experience but encouraged me to find a more practical profession. My mom said I could always do community theater on the side, and my dad mentioned law school. A trial attorney himself, he pointed out that lawyering was just a different kind of performing. I didn't buy it, but I enrolled in an LSAT prep class and began to research law schools, telling myself it was good to have a backup plan.

Always a bit sanctimonious, Lewis was appalled, accusing me of selling out. I retorted that that was easy for him to say; his parents were bohemian Brooklynites. In other words, he could follow his heart without killing his parents' dreams. Things became more and more strained between us, and our sex, once passionate, turned mechanical.

That Christmas break, just after the one-year anniversary of Daniel's death, my parents sat Josie and me down in our kitchen and announced that they were splitting up—their euphemism for divorce. I knew things had been rocky, and that my dad was drinking again, but I still felt blindsided, devastated by this second huge blow to our family. Without my big brother and the mooring of my parents' marriage, it was as if I no longer had a family at all.

I had even less than that, in fact, because as soon as I returned to school, Lewis officially dumped me for Poppy. He confessed that they had been together since Thanksgiving break, but that he couldn't bear to break my heart before December 22.

“I know how hard that first anniversary is,” he said.

“Gee, thanks,” I said, doing everything I could not to cry. “That was very big of you.”

M
Y FINAL SEMESTER
of college was brutal. I quit acting altogether and fell into a paralyzing depression, the loss of Lewis and my brother hitting me at once. It was as if our obsessive relationship the year prior had simply delayed my true grieving process, and I was back to square one, my mother just waking me up from a sound sleep to tell me Daniel was dead. A professor who noticed my alarming loss of weight and slipping grades insisted that I see a university shrink. Therapy and drugs barely kept me afloat.

The only bright spot came that spring when my acceptance letters rolled in from law schools, including one from Columbia. It wasn't Harvard or Yale, and law school was a far cry from neurosurgery, but it was still the Ivy League, and I knew my news made my parents proud. This, in turn, filled
me
with pride, which was better than being completely empty.

A few months later, I got the hell out of Syracuse, moved to New York City, and threw myself into my first year of law school, doing my best to avoid the theater, plays, or any other cultural offerings.
Maybe Lewis was right,
I thought, when I learned that he and Poppy were living in the Village and had joined the same theater company. Maybe I was a spineless sellout. Then again, maybe I was doing something noble and selfless, putting my parents first. I convinced myself that this was the case, and became determined to be their stable, successful child, the salve on their still-open wounds.

Of course, I think they hoped I would one day have a family, too, preferably in Atlanta. But if that didn't pan out for me, Josie would have that covered. At the time she was dating a generically handsome boy named Will, who hailed from a “good family” (my mother's phrase) in Macon, had impeccable manners, and wore seersucker and white bucks on special occasions. The two quickly became serious, giddy in love, the kind of couple who laid claim to baby names before they're even engaged. She was doing her part to make my parents happy, and we forged a tacit agreement, an unspoken pact: I would accomplish and achieve from afar, and she would marry, become a mother, and provide the beautiful, local grandchildren. Maybe it would make Dad stop drinking. Maybe it would bring our parents back together. At the very least, we would both help them move on in our so-called
new normal,
a term I despised.

At my law school graduation, my parents presented me with my brother's briefcase, the same one they had given him on his twenty-fifth birthday. It was a moment that was more bitter than sweet, and I remember feeling intensely jealous of my sister's end of the bargain. I had a law degree and a briefcase. She had real happiness. Her life as a teacher seemed easy, punctuated by one happy hour and road trip after another. Most important, she had someone to love.

Lest I become bitter, I reassured myself that her choices might actually free me in the long run.
Maybe someday,
I kept telling myself as I passed the bar and went to practice litigation at a top Manhattan firm and billed seventy or eighty hours every week.
Maybe someday
after Josie married Will and popped out a baby, I would follow my heart, too.
Maybe
someday
I would be happy.

B
UT THEN, BEFORE
I could cast off my legal bowlines, Josie fucked everything up in grand Josie style. She called me in the middle of the night (though I was still at work, finishing a brief), bawling, telling me she had screwed up and that Will had dumped her. I asked her what happened, trying to sort out the facts so that I could offer her appropriate counsel.

“It's a long story,” she said, her line whenever something was her fault or she didn't want to get into it. “Just trust me. It's over.”

“Well, then. You'll get over him—and find someone else,” I said. “You're not even thirty. You have plenty of time.”

“Do you promise?” she asked so quickly that I couldn't help questioning whether she truly loved Will or she just wanted to get married. Maybe
any
cute boy in seersucker would do.

I obviously couldn't assure her fate, any more than I had Daniel's, but I still told her yes, it's all going to be okay. After all, I thought, the universe owed us both a little mercy.

A week later, I flew back to Atlanta at Josie's pleading, filled with the usual angst of going home. Being back always unearthed grief that I was able to mostly bury in the bustle of my everyday life in New York, where there was no association to my brother. I took a deep breath and braced myself as I rode the escalator up to Delta baggage. To my surprise, there stood Nolan. He still emailed me every six months or so, just to check in and say hello, but incredibly, this was the first time I had laid eyes on him since that night we stood in Daniel's bedroom together.

“Hey,” he mouthed, waving at me. I had heard from Josie, who occasionally saw him out at the bars, that he was better-looking than ever, but I still wasn't prepared for how gorgeous he was, standing there in jeans, a T-shirt, and an Ole Miss baseball cap.

“What are you doing here?” I could feel myself beaming. “My dad was supposed to pick me up.”

“Yeah, I know. I played golf with him today. I told him I'd get you.” He mussed my hair as if I were twelve—although he hadn't actually mussed my hair at any age. “You look great, Mere. Wow.”

“So do you….I've
missed
you,” I said.

“I've missed you, too,” he said, grinning and carrying my bag to his car.

As he drove me home, we quickly caught up. He told me he was still working in his family business, his father grooming him to eventually take over. I told him about my law firm, and some of its juicier politics. We talked about our parents, how sad it was that mine had divorced, but that his really needed to do the same. We gossiped about people we knew in common. Many had left Atlanta for college, but most had returned to settle down and start families.

“Why aren't you married yet?” I asked playfully. “Commitment-phobe?”

“Nah. Just haven't found the right girl,” he said. “What about you? Are you seeing anyone?”

“Not at the moment,” I said. “I work too much.”

Our only moment of silence came as we passed Grady Hospital. Neither of us said Daniel's name out loud, though it hung in the air anyway.

When we got to the intersection at West Paces Ferry, he pointed to the OK Cafe. “Remember the night we went there?” he asked, as if we had shared countless dinners alone together.

“Of course,” I said.

“Can you believe it's been almost seven years?” he asked, lowering his voice, staring intently at the road.