Last Night at Chateau Marmont (46 page)

She used the tuner on the clock radio to find a classical radio station, a small little rebellion against Julian, who had stocked her iTunes not just with his own music but also every other artist he thought she
should
be listening to, and she set up camp at the desk. The first hour she was supremely focused—no small feat considering the lingering headache—and managed to get her résumé posted on all the major job-seeking websites. The second hour she ordered a grilled chicken salad from room service and zoned out to an old episode of
Prison Break
on her laptop. Then she napped for thirty minutes. When her cell phone rang and showed “Out of Area” a little after three she almost ignored it, but thinking it might be Julian, she answered.

“Brooke? It’s Margaret. Margaret Walters.”

She was so stunned she almost dropped the phone. Her first reaction was fear—was she missing her shift again?—before logic returned and she remembered the worst had already happened. Regardless of why she was calling, Brooke could say with reasonable certainty that it wasn’t to fire her.

“Margaret! How are you? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine. Listen, Brooke, I’m sorry to bother you on a weekend, but I didn’t want this to wait until next week.”

“It’s no bother at all! I’m actually sending out my résumé as we speak,” she said with a smile into the phone.

“Well, that’s good to hear, because I think I have somewhere for you to send it.”

“Really?”

“I just got a phone call from a colleague of mine, Anita Moore. Actually, she’s an ex-employee of mine, but from many years ago. She was on staff at Mt. Sinai for years, but she recently left and she’s opening her own shop.”

“Oh, that sounds interesting.”

“I’ll let her give you all the details, but it’s my understanding that she received federal funding to open a kind of early intervention center in an at-risk neighborhood. She’s looking to hire a speech therapist who specializes in children and an RD who has experience with prenatal, lactation, new-mother, and newborn nutrition. She’ll be serving a community that doesn’t have regular access to prenatal care, patients who don’t know the first thing about nutrition, so there’s no doubt a lot of it will be basic—literally, convincing-them-why-they-need-their-folic-acid type things—but I think in that way it’ll be challenging and rewarding. She doesn’t want to poach any of the current dietitians from Mt. Sinai, so she called to ask if I had any recommendations.”

“And you recommended me?”

“I did. I’ll be honest, Brooke. I told her all about Julian, the missed days, the hectic schedule, but I also told her you were one of the best and brightest I’d ever employed. This way everyone is going into it with eyes wide open.”

“Margaret, it sounds like a wonderful opportunity. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Brooke? I only ask one thing. If you think your
hectic lifestyle
is going to continue in a way that will regularly impact your work, please be honest with Anita. What she’s trying to do is too difficult without staff she can depend on.”

Brooke nodded furiously. “I hear you, Margaret. Loud and clear. My husband’s career will no longer be affecting my own. I can promise you and Anita that.”

Barely able to keep from shrieking with joy into the phone, Brooke carefully copied Anita’s contact information. Snapping open a fresh can of minibar Diet Coke, her headache magically cleared, she hit Compose on her e-mail and began typing. She was
going
to get that job.

B
ROOKE
smiled wanly at Dr. Alter as he held open the back door to the rental car and waved his arm gallantly. “After you, my dear,” he said. Thankfully, he seemed to have gotten past his previous day’s Hertz-directed rage and the ride was relatively rant-free.

Brooke was proud of herself for not commenting on Elizabeth’s derby hat du jour, which today consisted of at least a pound of pinched taffeta and an entire bouquet of fake peonies. Paired with a sleek YSL evening gown, the most elegant Chanel bag, and gorgeous beaded Manolos. The woman was a lunatic.

“Have you heard from Julian?” her mother-in-law asked as they turned into the private drive.

“Not today. He left some messages last night, but I got in too late to call him back. My god, those med students know how to party, and they sure don’t care if you’re married or not.”

Through the visor mirror that Elizabeth was peering into, Brooke could see the woman’s eyebrows shoot up, and she felt a jolt of glee at her small victory. They rode in silence the rest of the way. When they came upon the imposing Gothic gate that surrounded Fern’s home, Brooke could see her mother-in-law nod almost imperceptibly with approval, as if to say, “Why yes, if you
must
live outside Manhattan,
this is precisely the correct way to do it.” The drive from the gate to the house wove by mature cherry blossom trees and towering oaks and was long enough to warrant calling the property an estate rather than a home. Although it was February and chilly, everything looked lush and green—
healthy
somehow. A tuxedoed valet took their car and a lovely young woman escorted them inside; Brooke saw the girl sneak a glimpse at her mother-in-law’s hat, but she was too polite to stare.

Brooke prayed the Alters would leave her alone, and the moment they spotted the bow-tied bartenders behind a massive mahogany bar, they didn’t disappoint. Brooke flashed back to her single days. It was strange how quickly you forgot the way it felt to be solo at a wedding or a party where everyone else was paired up. Was this the new normal?

She felt her phone vibrate in her purse and, grabbing a glass of champagne off a passing tray as reinforcement, ducked into a nearby powder room.

It was Nola. “How’s it going?” Her friend’s voice felt like a warm, cozy blanket in this icy, intimidating mansion.

“I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty rough.”

“Well, I could’ve told you that. I still don’t understand why you’d subject yourself to that. . . .”

“I don’t know what I was thinking. My god, I haven’t been single at a wedding in six, seven years. This just sucks.”

Nola snorted. “Thanks, friend. Yes, indeed it does. You didn’t have to go there to discover that on your own—I definitely could have told you.”

“Nola? What am I doing? Not just down here, but in general?” Brooke could hear her voice high-pitched and a little panicky, and she noticed the phone beginning to slip in her sweaty hand.

“What do you mean, sweetie? What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? What
isn’t
wrong? We’re in this weird nowhere land of not knowing what to do next, not being able to just forgive
and forget, not having any idea if we can move forward. I love him, but I don’t trust him, and I feel really distant from him. And it’s not just the girl, although that drives me crazy, it’s
everything.
”

“Shh, calm down, calm down. You’ll be home tomorrow. I’m going to meet you at your front door—I don’t love anyone enough to meet them at the airport—and we’ll talk about everything. If it’s at all possible for you and Julian to figure this out, to make it work, you’re going to do that. And if you decide it’s not possible, I’ll be there for you every step of the way. So will lots of other people.”

“Ohmigod, Nola . . .” She moaned with the misery of it. Having someone acknowledge that she and Julian might not make it was terrifying.

“One step at a time, Brooke. Tonight the only thing you have to do is grit your teeth and smile through the ceremony, the cocktail hour, and the entree. The moment they clear the plates from dinner, call a cab and get the hell back to your hotel room. Do you hear me?”

Brooke nodded.

“Brooke? Yes or no?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Listen, get out of the bathroom and follow my instructions, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow. Everything will be fine, I promise.”

“Thanks, Nol. Just tell me quickly. How is everything with you? Andrew still good?”

“Yeah, I’m with him right now, actually.”

“You’re with him right now? Then why are you calling me?”

“It’s intermission, and he’s in the bathroom. . . .”

Something about Nola’s tone sounded suspicious. “What show are you seeing?”

There was a pause.
“The Lion King.”

“You’re at
The Lion King
? Really? Oh wait, this is a stepmother-in-training activity, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, so we have the kid with us. So what? He’s cute.”

Despite herself, Brooke smiled. “I love you, Nola. Thank you.”

“I love you, too. And if you ever tell anyone about this . . .”

Brooke was still grinning when she stepped out and slammed directly into Isaac—and his blogger girlfriend.

“Oh, hi!” Isaac said with the sexless enthusiasm of a guy who had spent the entire previous night flirting with someone for purely selfish purposes. “Brooke, I’d like for you to meet Susannah. I think I was telling you before how much she’d love to—”

“Interview you,” Susannah said, extending a hand. The girl was young and smiley and reasonably pretty, and Brooke couldn’t stomach one more minute of it.

Brooke summoned some long-forgotten reserve of confidence and composure, looked Susannah squarely in the eye, and said, “It’s such a pleasure meeting you, and I do very much hope you’ll forgive me for being rude, but I simply must get a message to my mother-in-law.”

Susannah nodded.

Clutching her champagne flute like a lifeline, Brooke was almost relieved to find the Alters in the ceremony tent, with a seat saved for her.

“Don’t you just love weddings?” Brooke asked as cheerfully as she could. It was nonsense, but what else was there to say?

Her mother-in-law peered into her compact and patted an invisible blemish on her chin. “I find it simply astounding that more than half of all marriages will fail, yet every single couple who walks down that aisle thinks it won’t happen to them.”

“Mmm,” Brooke murmured. “How lovely to be discussing divorce rates at a wedding ceremony.”

It was probably the rudest thing she’d ever uttered to her mother-in-law, but the woman didn’t even flinch. Dr. Alter glanced up from his BlackBerry, where he was checking stock prices, but when he saw his wife didn’t react, he went back to staring at his screen.

Thankfully, the music started and a general hush fell over the room. Trent and his parents entered the tent first, and Brooke smiled
when she saw how genuinely happy—and not the least bit nervous—he looked. One by one the bridesmaids and groomsmen and flower girls followed, and then it was Fern’s turn, flanked on both sides by her parents, beaming in exactly the way brides do. The ceremony was a seamless blending of Jewish and Christian traditions, and despite herself, it was a pleasure to watch Fern and Trent gaze at each other with that knowing look.

It wasn’t until the rabbi began explaining the chuppah to the audience, how this covering signified the new home the couple would make together, how it would shield and protect them from the outside world and yet was open on four sides to welcome in friends and family, that Brooke teared up. It had been her favorite part of her own wedding ceremony, and it was the moment in each wedding she and Julian had attended where they clasped hands and gave each other the same knowing look Trent and Fern were now sharing. Now not only was she there alone, but it was impossible not to acknowledge the obvious: it had been a long time since their apartment felt like a home, and she and Julian might be on their way to becoming one of her mother-in-law’s statistics.

At the reception one of Fern’s girlfriends leaned over and whispered something to her husband, prompting the husband to give her a
Really?
look. The girl nodded and Brooke wondered what they were talking about until the husband materialized next to her chair, held out his arm, and asked Brooke if she’d like to dance. The pity dance. She knew it well, was often guilty of nudging Julian to ask solo women at weddings for a dance, thinking she was doing a good deed. Well, now that she knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of such charity, she swore she’d never do it again. She thanked the husband profusely but begged off, claiming something about needing to find some Advil and could see his relief. This time when she headed for her favorite hallway bathroom, she wasn’t sure she could make herself come back out.

She checked her watch. Nine forty-five. She promised herself that if the Alters didn’t leave by eleven, she’d call a cab. She slipped back into the hallway, which was drafty and thankfully deserted. A quick check of her phone revealed no new messages or texts, even though Julian should have been home by then. She wondered what he was doing, if he had already gotten Walter from the dog walker and they were curled together on the couch. Or maybe he’d gone directly to the studio. She didn’t want to go back into the reception yet, so she paced for a bit, first checking Facebook and then looking up the number of a local cab company, just in case. Fresh out of excuses and distractions, Brooke slipped her phone into her clutch, hugged her bare arms against her chest, and headed toward the music.

She felt a palm close over her shoulder, and she knew before she turned around, before he could utter a word, that it belonged to Julian.

“Rook?” His voice was questioning, uncertain. He wasn’t sure how she was going to react.

She didn’t turn around immediately—she was almost nervous she was wrong, that it wasn’t him—but when she did, the onslaught of emotions hit her like a truck. There he was, standing right in front of her, wearing his only suit and smiling at her shyly, nervously, with a look that seemed to say
Please hug me.
And despite everything that had happened, and all the distance between them these last couple weeks, it was all Brooke wanted to do. There was no denying it: she was reflexively, instinctively ecstatic to see him.

After she collapsed into his arms, she couldn’t speak for almost thirty seconds. He felt warm and smelled right and hugged her so tightly she started to cry.

“I hope those are tears of joy?”

She wiped them away, aware her mascara was running but not caring in the least. “Joy, relief, and about a million other things,” she said.