A Place For Us

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  “And if you think he’s innocent, why would you want to settle? How is that going to make this any easier for him? And what do you think that tells him about standing up for himself? Besides, as Angela Lloyd kept pointing out, it’s not Liam who’s on trial here. We are. Because Troy sees a way of taking advantage of the situation. It’s easy enough for Staff and his lawyer friends to tell us to give in to Troy’s demands—and walk away. They don’t have to deal with the consequences. They don’t have to live in a town that will never think of us in the same way again.”

  “How do you suppose the town looks at us now?” Brook said. “How do you think it’s always looked at us? Do you know what I took away from that meeting today? I heard Angela Lloyd tell us that we’re bad parents. That we made a number of really bad decisions and that we’re responsible for what happened. And that’s from our side of the table! Think what Cranston and Cranston is going to do to us if we go to trial. Do you have any idea how Barnsbury is going to look at us then?”

  “So, rolling over and giving up is the better option? I don’t think so. I’m proud of who we are—and what we’ve done. I’m proud of Liam and Tilly and the way we’ve brought them up. Okay, we shouldn’t have left them alone that night. We were wrong to think Liam could handle it. But I’m not willing to let that one mistake ruin our life here. I think it’s worth fighting for.”

  “I don’t know. I feel like everything—and everyone—is stacked against us.”

  “Not if we face this together.”

  “I’m scared. I’m not like you. I’m not self-sufficient. I’m tired of being treated like a pariah. I need people! I need friends! I want to be liked—and to have my children liked! I want to belong somewhere.”

  “I’m not enough? We’re not enough?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “And that’s not an answer.”

  Brook didn’t reply, and Michael was too disheartened to press her on it. So he’d been right in thinking that she’d been questioning their life in Barnsbury. Which meant she had to be having serious doubts about their marriage. Their love. Everything that mattered to him most in the world. They drove into the darkening afternoon, the silence building between them—like an actual presence. A person. Someone Brook had finally named. They’d just passed the Lee exit and were ten minutes from home when she said: “You know, you keep saying Troy is only in this for the money, but I think something else is at stake. I think a lot of this is really between you and Troy—whatever turned him against you years ago. Maybe that’s what you need to settle, Michael. More than any lawsuit.”

  His heart ached. Brook had no idea how hard he’d worked to put it all behind him. He and Brook were alike in that way: they had both tried, after difficult beginnings, to make themselves over into new and better people. But Brook had always been honest about her struggles, talking frankly throughout their marriage about her family and her girlhood insecurities.

  I bet you always had it together, though, she’d told him when they first fell in love. I bet you were always the strong, silent type. Even as a boy, right?

  I guess so, he’d told her. But he knew otherwise. Silent, perhaps. But strong? Hardly. Though it’s what he wanted her to think. It’s what he’d told himself that she needed to believe. He’d long ago convinced himself that the facts didn’t matter. The truth was dead and buried. Who would know the difference? It had seemed like the right thing to do. Until now.

  21

  “I think Tilly could use a change of scenery,” Brook told Michael a few days before Deer Mountain’s midwinter break. “I thought I’d take her into the city with me next week. Alice and I have a few meetings lined up and the Ferris Foundation gala’s on Thursday night, but there would still be enough time for us to see a show and do a little shopping. I thought we’d stay with my dad. You know how much he dotes on her.”

  She shouldn’t have added that last bit. It was an oversell. And now Michael would suspect what she’d been trying to conceal: it was she who needed to get away. Since their trip to Boston three days before, Michael had been in a total funk. The intensity of his gloom frightened her. He made an effort to be loving around Tilly, he sounded normal enough talking on the phone to his manager and the studio in North Barnsbury, but he’d literally turned a cold shoulder to Brook. They’d been sleeping with their backs to each other.

  “Okay,” Michael said. It was early in the morning, but he looked exhausted. He didn’t glance Brook’s way as he poured coffee into his thermos. She realized that he planned to spend the whole day holed up in his studio again.

  “You sure?” she asked, watching as he shrugged on his parka. “You don’t mind being on your own right now?”

  “I said it was okay,” he told her as he headed for the kitchen door. It was almost impossible to talk to him right now. Which was why she kept putting off the discussion they needed to have about formally hiring Schmidt, Lloyd & Freeman to represent them. She didn’t think she could take another argument like the one they’d had on their way back from the meeting in Boston. They hadn’t spoken in any depth since. And, though she was used to Michael’s moods, his silences these last few days seemed weighted with painful significance. And Brook, for the first time that she could remember, didn’t really want to know what he was thinking.

  • • •

  “Can we go skating at Rockefeller Center?” Tilly asked on the train ride down. “Can we go to the American Girl store? Can we go to the wax museum in Times Square? Lisette was there with her aunt at Christmas and she has all these photos of her with like Michael Jackson and Taylor Swift. They’re really awesome.”

  “Did I just hear the ‘A’ word?” Brook said. “You know what PeterPop is going to say about that sort of language.” It amused Brook that her father was so strict with his grandchildren about their overuse of “like” and “awesome,” yet he seemed perfectly happy to have them continue to call him by the silly nickname Liam had first made up for him as a toddler.

  “So you think we might be able to visit the wax museum?” Tilly said.

  Brook smiled. How long had it been since she’d done that? Days, certainly. Maybe even weeks. She’d been right to take Tilly along with her on this trip. Bright, fun-loving, optimistic—Tilly was naturally what Brook could only work at trying to be. And it seemed to Brook that she’d been born that way: eagerly taking Brook’s nipple, sleeping through the night, cheerfully tottering along behind Liam. Though lately Brook sensed a subtle change in her daughter. It was hard to put her finger on exactly, but it often seemed to her now that Tilly was a little too sunny. Surprisingly upbeat. Her daughter tended to be so sensitive and perceptive. Could it really be that she wasn’t aware of the shadow that hung over her older brother? Or the terrible pressure that her parents were living under?

  “Sure,” Brook said. “If it makes you happy, I think we could manage to squeeze in Madame Tussauds—and, if I remember correctly, the Hershey’s store is right around the corner.”

  “I wish Liam could be here,” Tilly said. “Don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Brook told her, but with a sinking feeling realized that it wasn’t true. It was actually a relief not to be thinking about the lawsuit for a day or two. Not to have Liam and his problems dominating every waking moment. And her son’s recent behavior was only making matters worse. Because just when Brook longed to feel close to him—just when she wanted more than anything else to reach out and comfort him—he seemed intent on keeping his distance and fending off any genuine emotion. Their weekly phone conversations had become pure torture. Her questions were answered in monosyllables. He was “fine.” Everything was “okay.” He’d barely responded when she told him they’d been advised to settle the lawsuit. It was clear that he couldn’t wait to get her off the phone.

  She used to pride herself on how happy they were as a family. They had so much fun together! Who needed more on a snowy winter night than a game of Bananagrams in front of the fire with your husband and kids?
What could be better on a hot, lazy summer evening than lingering over supper on the screen porch telling ghost stories? It was everything Brook had ever wanted and never had as a child: the sense of absolute security, of effortlessly sharing, of being surrounded by your favorite people in the world.

  But now she felt all that slipping from her grasp. Michael had retreated into himself. Liam had grown more and more detached. Only Tilly seemed unchanged. Unscathed. And Brook? When she allowed herself to think about it, she knew she was probably as lonely and frightened as she’d ever been as a girl.

  • • •

  “You didn’t have to wait up,” Brook told her father when she got in Thursday night from the Ferris benefit. It was nearly midnight. She’d spent the morning with Tilly on the ice at Rockefeller Center, then the afternoon and evening on her feet orchestrating the black-tie sit-down gala dinner for 250 guests at the Metropolitan Club. She was exhausted. Though the evening had been considered a great success by her client, Brook was feeling unhappy and on edge. Over the last few nights, after Tilly had gone to bed, Brook had submitted to Peter’s probing interrogation about the lawsuit. Tonight, though, she didn’t think she could manage another rehashing of the painful subject.

  “It’s hardly past my bedtime,” Peter said, closing his book and putting it down on the side table next to his Eames chair. For a septuagenarian male who’d lived alone for nearly two decades, the Riverside Drive apartment was remarkably picked-up and welcoming. Tilda Pendleton’s expensive classical furniture—overstuffed armchairs and the dainty maple escritoire—had been arranged to contrast artfully with Peter’s more modern and eclectic tastes. A small Prendergast watercolor shared a wall with a wildly colorful Rauschenberg lithograph. Built-in floor-to-ceiling shelving that housed Peter’s extensive book collection included specially designed cubbies that displayed Tilda’s Meissen figurines. An original Eames chair with a timeworn ottoman served as Peter’s center of operations.

  “How did things go here?” Brook asked, kicking off her heels and sliding onto a low, velour-covered couch. She pulled one of the tasseled silk pillows—a cherished remnant from her mother’s collection—into her arms.

  “Not well,” Peter said. “I had a terrible shock. Your daughter beat me at Scrabble. She managed to score ninety-nine points on the word ‘zero’ at the very end of the game. It was outrageous. I told her that she needed to start learning some manners.”

  “I’m sorry,” Brook said, yawning.

  “She started to cry after I said it.”

  “What?” Brook sat up.

  “You heard me. I was just kidding around, of course! But suddenly I noticed her lower lip quivering and these big tears rolling down her cheeks. When I asked her what the hell was going on, she just shook her head. Refused to say.”

  “Oh dear. I wonder what’s going on.”

  “I got it out of her finally. I still have a few trace memories left of how to ferret out a story from a reluctant source. I just kept her talking about this and that. School. Her friends. Liam. This goddamned lawsuit. Do you have any idea how guilty she feels about the whole thing?”

  “What? Tilly?”

  “Yes, Tilly. It’s not unusual for a child to feel responsible when something goes wrong in his or her family. During a divorce, or when a family member dies, whatever the crisis—kids will for some crazy reason become convinced that they caused it. In Tilly’s case, she thinks that if she hadn’t fallen asleep before Liam got home—if she’d just been there for him or some such idiocy—then none of this would have happened. And I take it that the girl involved—this Phoebe person—is a friend of hers?”

  “She was Tilly’s sitter.”

  “Well, apparently she’s a lot more than that. Tilly clearly adores her. And misses her. And feels guilty, too, that she’s no longer welcome at your house.”

  “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me any of this,” Brook said shakily.

  “You can honestly sit there and tell me that you had no idea your daughter was so confused and upset?”

  “Daddy, please. We’re all going through a hard time right now.”

  “I know you are,” Peter said. “But I don’t think that’s any excuse. You of all people should remember what it feels like to be young and frightened.”

  “Of course, I remember—all too well. I think about Mommy every day.”

  “So what happened? How did you miss the signs with Tilly?”

  “I guess she did a good job covering them up. She always puts such a good face on things.”

  “Brooklet. Sweetheart. That’s your excuse? Come on! Whatever happened to ‘It takes one to know one’? Don’t you get it? She’s just like you!”

  “You’re being kind of hard on me here.”

  “Someone needs to be. Someone needs to tell you that you’re so blinded by self-pity right now you can’t even see what’s going on in front of your face.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “Screw fair—it’s a fact. All I’ve been hearing from you these last few days is how everyone else is responsible for what’s happened. One of the other boys made Liam take the blame. Troy Lansing is only after your money. Barnsbury has turned against you. Liam is being difficult. Even Michael—because it seems he wants to fight for his good name and your reputation.”

  “Stop it! Why are you—”

  “Because your life is at stake here, Brook! Your marriage, your family, everything you’ve worked so hard for all these years. And, if you keep blaming others, if you continue to pass along your own responsibility the way you’re doing right now, I’m afraid you’re going to lose it all!”

  “What are you saying? That it’s all my fault?” Brook was stunned by her father’s harsh words. He’d never spoken to her this way before. Though she knew him to be fiercely opinionated, though she’d heard him lash out against what he saw as political injustices all her life, though she’d read his fiery op-eds denouncing this or that conservative stance or proposal, Peter Hines had always held his famous temper in check when it came to his only child.

  “Not all of it. But accidents don’t occur because just one thing goes wrong. A series of things usually happens: a rainy road, a tired driver, the oncoming car not dimming the brights . . . and suddenly—bam!—a head-on collision. This lawsuit is a major fucking pileup—and, yes, I think you’re partially responsible.”

  “Which part?”

  Brook’s father took her in over his glasses. He looked sad—and tired, too, she realized.

  “Which part, Daddy?” she asked again.

  “I don’t think that’s for me to say,” he told her, pushing his glasses up on his forehead and rubbing his eyes. “I’ve already said more than I should. You know I’m not without my prejudices, Brook. I’m not without my own failings and regrets. I just hate to see you repeating my mistakes.”

  “What mistakes?”

  “Allowing other people’s opinions to affect what you know to be right. Your mother would have married me if I’d just pushed her more. I know she was gun-shy after the hell Howard put her through during the divorce. But she was also bowing to pressure from Peg and Janice, who hated us being together. She didn’t want to upset them any further. So we let that damned family shame us into putting off making things legal. Even after you were born! What a fool I was. No, what a coward.”

  “And you think they’re doing the same thing to me now?”

  “Of course they are! You know perfectly well they are. Who gives a damn what anyone else thinks—whether it’s the Pendleton family or the whole town of Barnsbury? If you really believe Liam didn’t assault this girl, then you have to ask yourself what a settlement would be saying to him. I think it would be saying that he’s guilty. And that it’s okay to sweep everything under the rug.”

  “That’s what Michael says, too,” Brook replied. “But I’m really worried about Liam, Daddy. I’m worried about how much he can take. I’m sure he didn’t hurt Phoebe, but he was obviously really out o
f it. And it’s hardly the first time. I love him so much—but there’s always been a part of him that I can’t reach, that’s just closed off from everyone—this will make him understand how dangerous it is. I’m sure of it.”

  “Are you?” Peter said. “I don’t think so. You need to do everything in your power to get through to him. You need to make him realize that his actions have serious consequences—alcohol, drugs, letting things get so out of hand that night. This is something you need to face as a family. Whatever else happens, you want Liam to come out of this willing to change. And, maybe even more important, really believing that he can.”

  22

  Phoebe could go to jail for what she’d done. She’d looked it up on the Internet. Though the statute included a lot of confusing legalese, it seemed pretty clear that anyone committing perjury in the state of Massachusetts could be incarcerated for up to twenty years. Troy had laughed when she’d asked him about this on the way back from the meeting at the Cranston & Cranston offices in Boston.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” he told her. “You’re still a minor. And besides, who do you think’s going to find out?”

  “What if Liam changes his story?” Phoebe asked. This possibility had been on her mind a lot lately. “What if he decides to tell the truth?”

  “Listen, that’s just not going to happen, okay? And who’s going to believe Liam if he does try to backpedal now? You don’t think Brandon is going to suddenly step up to the plate and say, ‘Oh, yeah! Sorry folks, I’m really the guilty party here.’ No, it’s obvious Brandon has Liam by the balls—and he’s not about to let go. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  But Phoebe had stopped believing everything her father told her. He used to seem so much larger than life. So big and strong and self-confident! Like he could never make a mistake. When she was little, she loved riding around on his broad shoulders, her arms wrapped around his neck, his curly red hair tickling her chin. He was proud of her, too, she knew. He was constantly showing her off to his friends.