Scot on the Rocks (4 page)

N
o! That’s not right! It was definitely
not
a piece of cake! By the time Trip’s wedding came around, not only was I
so not
engaged, but Douglas and I had also broken up, leaving me both boyfriend-less and homeless! And he proposed to another woman! Who, as you might have caught earlier, had a stupid, stupid name!

Aren’t you even paying attention?!

Luckily for me, my best friend Vanessa
was
paying attention. Post-breakup, she was my rock. She was even kind enough to let me stay with her and her husband Marcus. After I showed up on her doorstep crying hysterically, begging to come in, that is.

Even in my time of need, though, I was really a pleasure to be around. In fact, I think that in their heart of hearts, they actually enjoyed having me there. Marcus was always working late and was never at home, so I kept Vanessa company on the nights that we, ourselves, didn’t have to work late.

I was also very helpful in the kitchen. I even made dinner once or twice. Well, not so much made dinner as stood in front of the fridge staring blankly into its vast coldness. But it’s really the thought that counts with those things.

“Did the governor call?” Vanessa asked me on one such evening, as she walked into the apartment. She took off her three-inch stiletto heels, which she wore every day despite the fact that she was five foot eight.

“No,” I told her, marveling at the fact that I have such impressive friends, they were actually sitting around waiting for the governor to call. Yes, my friends were out waiting for heads of state to call, while I was standing in front of the refrigerator in my bathrobe, eating raw cookie dough straight from the package as if it were a hot dog, or some other food product that might be acceptable to eat while clutching said food product in one’s fist.

Oh, please. As if you never did that, too.

I guess that’s the way life is when you are the sole offspring of glamorous parents like Vanessa’s — her father, originally from the West Indies, is a world-renowned heart surgeon, and her mother, a former model, now owns a gallery in Tribeca that specializes in African-American art. She grew up in a palatial house in New Jersey that was in the same cul-de-sac as a hip-hop mogul and his child bride. The only famous person in my family is my mother’s cousin Ernie, who once placed second in the Ben’s Kosher Deli matzo-ball eating competition.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, sliding her long legs under her body as she sat down at the kitchen counter.

“Me? No. I’m absolutely fine. Why on earth would I want to talk about it?” I asked.

“When I come home to find my best friend eating like she’s going to the electric chair, I figure she needs to talk about it,” she explained. Electric chair? Governor calling…Clever.

I suppose to some people, that sort of behavior screams “cry for help.” To me, it screams “typical Monday night at home.”

“No, Vanessa. I’m okay,” I said, slowly backing away from the refrigerator. The truth is that I
did
want to talk about it. It was the only thing that I wanted to talk about, but it seemed as if all I did all day was talk about it, so at night, I would be better off doing more productive things with my time. Like standing in front of the refrigerator in my bathrobe eating raw cookie dough from the tube.

You see, Vanessa never had to worry about the things that I worry about on a daily basis. Will I ever find someone? Will I ever get married? Will I ever have children? Or am I destined to end up like Old Mrs. White, the lady who lived next door to me growing up? I used to pass by her house every day on my walk home from elementary school. She always seemed like such a kind woman, tending to her garden and waving hello to every neighbor who passed by. There was always the faint smell of vanilla on her hands, as if she had been baking cookies all day. Some days, she would even bring out chocolate chip cookies to the neighborhood kids when she saw us playing kickball out on the street (store bought — go figure). One day, she told me that she recently became a grandmother and wanted to show me pictures. I was delighted! After all, what eight-year-old girl doesn’t love babies? She pulled out the photos, and I was so excited to see them that I could barely get my hands around the pictures fast enough. Holding the photos by their edges, ever so carefully, I took a peek. To my horror, they were photos of kittens. Kittens! As in: baby cats. Basically, her kittens had been more successful at finding a mate and reproducing than she had. I was scarred for life. I went home that very night and threw out all of my Hello Kitty stickers. The sight of a cat still makes me cringe.

Vanessa, on the other hand, met her husband Marcus on her very first day at Howard University. How’s that for luck? He spotted her attempting to pull her suitcase up a flight of stairs, and, ever the gentleman, offered to help. The rest is history. They got married exactly one year after graduation. Isn’t that so cute you could die? I think that the story of the day they met also involved him inviting her to a fraternity party that same evening, and then making out with her shamelessly at said party, but that part of the story usually gets edited out in polite company. There’s a rumor among people who have known her from her Howard days that one groomsman alluded to the alleged make-out incident at Vanessa and Marcus’s rehearsal dinner. As the story goes, that man never made it down the aisle.

The first man that I met on my first day of college asked me who the “hot blonde” helping me move in was. It was my mother. I told him so. He asked if she was single. When I told him that she was not single, and in fact, was very much married, he asked, “Happily?”

And he didn’t even offer to help me with my bags.

I met Vanessa at a law school event being cosponsored by the Black Law Students Association and the Jewish Law Students Association. We gravitated toward each other, seemingly the only two people there solely for the free pizza and beer. We spent most of our free time from then on out together, studying and just generally trying to make it through law school as a team. Marcus was rarely at home, since he was first in medical school and then starting out his residency in surgery. Trip, who became the third in our study group after we met him at a Student Bar Association happy hour, used to accuse Vanessa of making up Marcus entirely so that no one would ask her out, thus leaving her more time to study (logic that completely escapes me).

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.)