Waiting for a Star to Fall

by Kerry Clare

  “For the sake of the party, and the work we’re doing…” Brooke couldn’t hear him because this was the library and so the sound was off, but the words were captioned below him, a staccato flow. He was really going to do it.

  “Because this has become a distraction, and it’s become about me, which is undermining the good work of a lot of people, and I’m not going to let that happen. So that is the reason I’m resigning today as leader of the party. I’m still intent on saving my reputation and defending my name from these heinous allegations, but I also believe the best path forward is me clearing my name outside of the spotlight of leadership.”

  The news was a blow, and also dizzying—how to orient herself in this new reality? And she could only imagine how Derek must feel, after everything they’d worked toward. She recalled the campaign and how winning the leadership had seemed inevitable, because how could you work so hard for something and not succeed? It was like how she used to believe that society and the world would just keep getting better—that proverbial arc that bends toward justice. But here was a setback—it had all come to nothing.

  “I owe this to my colleagues, and to the public, whom it has been an absolute honor and privilege to serve these last few years,” Derek was saying. “And I will continue to serve my constituents, while doing my utmost to restore their faith and trust in me. I appreciate all the support so many of you have shown me so far. I will not let you down.”

  And then he just stood there, staring into the camera. Staring right into her, it felt like, and the moment hung on long and awkward, silent. He was going to wait them out this time. He wasn’t going to run. Then cameras started flashing, and reporters started shoving their microphones in his direction. No doubt they were questions about the mass resignation, about his political future.

  All that effort and energy, and to have it just fizzle out—what a waste, Brooke was thinking. A waste for him, for her, and for everybody.

  Someone must have been coaching him. He stayed still and then finally he spoke into his own mic. “I’m not taking any questions now,” he said. His expression was calm. He said, “I think it’s time to shift the focus.” He waited a little bit more. “I want to thank you all for coming today.” And then he turned and walked out, no longer a man who was running scared. Nobody chased him. All in all, his performance had been good.

  But still—he’d resigned the leadership. All those years—it had been her life—but he’d thrown it away.

  * * *

  —

  Morgan came up from her lunch. “He’s resigned,” she said. “Did you see that?” And Brooke wasn’t sure she would ever get used to the contents of her heart being the stuff of current events and gossip.

  She played dumb. She said, “Who?” and collapsed the window on her screen.

  “Your man,” said Morgan. “The admirable Mister Murdoch.” Morgan was a punk-rock librarian with blue hair and a ring through her lip, so it was hard to say where she was going with this, where her politics lay. “Someone was watching it without headphones downstairs. I had to tell them to knock it off.” The stacks were supposed to be silent. “Did he ever try it with you?” Heavy brows raised above her chunky glasses. She was going to wait for Brooke’s answer—Brooke had never seen Morgan be patient before. She said nothing, and the eyebrows shot even higher. “He did!”

  Brooke said, “He didn’t.”

  “He was your boss, though,” she said. “I saw your CV. I hired you.” She had—after Marijke, Derek’s chief of staff, put a call in to Municipal Affairs, and together they’d found a job for Brooke, a soft place to land. Above and beyond what was required of them, she knew it. And yet.

  A patron arrived with a stack of Caribbean travel guides, and Brooke checked them out for him. What a thing it would be to just fly away.

  “So you worked for him,” Morgan said, once they were alone again. “You think there’s any truth to it all?” This was becoming exhausting, even painful—to keep having to put into words that Derek Murdoch was indeed a man of impeccable character, absolutely the real thing, the most inspiring person she’d ever met in her life. Not that it wasn’t true, but it was worse that it was. And also because every time she said it, everybody thought it was because she was twenty-three.

  “The whole thing’s a setup,” she told Morgan.

  Morgan looked surprised. “Believe Women,” she reminded Brooke.

  Brooke said, “But I’m a woman. What about believing me?”

  Morgan paused. This was more complicated, Brooke knew, than anyone supposed, but then Morgan moved on, robbing the moment of its tension, getting to work taking a stack of folders off her desk, and bringing them over to the counter. “It’s all over anyway,” she said. “And he’ll be fine. They always are. You just watch—his friends will be taking care of him.”

  But would they, really? From that disastrous press conference the other night, and the resignation of his staff, Brooke had the impression that Derek had become a pariah. A kind of kinship between them. Although for powerful men, it was true, supporters always came out of the woodwork, lucrative job offers and teaching gigs. No doubt he could always settle down and become a consultant. Men of far lesser character have transformed such stories into book deals.

  But she didn’t think that Derek would be after such a fate. She said, “I think it’s different when you know someone.” Trying to explain, because she didn’t want Morgan to think she was a person who wouldn’t normally side with women. This was new to her, this position, and it fit her awkwardly, because she was feminist, but so was Derek.

  Morgan let her leave it at that, but then they’d all been handling Brooke carefully since she’d started at the library. Her colleagues were still confused, she knew, about why she was here, where she had come from. Parachuted in from the city, and she hadn’t even gone to library school, but she had applicable experience—plus she’d taken a pay cut to get here, and she was good at the job, so it’s not like she had cheated anyone. But it must have seemed strange when her CV was placed on the top of the pile and accorded special attention from the powers that be. There might have been other people Morgan had in mind for the job, but none of them was Brooke, and now here she was. She’d been hoping to build relationships moving forward, that her colleagues might be people who could become her friends, because heaven knows she needed some, but they were all still waiting for her to fill in the blanks, and Brooke wasn’t ready to do that.

  Morgan looked over Brooke’s shoulder at the monitor, and reached around to maximize the window Brooke had been looking at before—stopped it in a moment where Derek was caught mid-expression, not the greatest look.

  Morgan said, “I never understood how anyone could find him attractive.”

  Brooke closed the window altogether and poof, he disappeared.

  * * *

  —

  She could have run away. She could have gone traveling, signed up for some international development program and scuttled off to South America to save the world like Carly, and people would have admired her. She could have been posting shots on social media right now, selfies in bikinis on golden beaches, preserving sea turtle habitats or something. She might have begun to properly move forward with her life, except at this moment she knew she couldn’t have stomached adventure—she was still far too broken for that.

  A different kind of job would have kept her mind off things, though, something with fewer newspaper headlines and hours that weren’t so open and empty. The library had rushes every so often, but it was either a mad crowd or the place was dead, save for a patron or two, and most of those patrons wanted very little to do with her, favoring the long-time staff members who already knew everybody’s names. So there was all this time and space to think in, and what she would have given right now for any distraction. For the lineup at the check-out desk to stretch on forever, and she’d have to focus on the bar code
s, taking care not to miss the thinnest volumes, minding the precarious stacks as she scanned one after another, ensuring none would topple over. Imagine a job like engineering. Imagine something as important as building a bridge.

  She closed up with Morgan that night, flashing the lights for five, ten and fifteen-minute warnings—after that, they’d have to be more obvious, shaking the shoulder of a sleeping patron: “Wake up! The library is closed.” People were often trying to hide in there, feet up on the toilet of the last stall in the bathroom, or skulking around the stacks in the hopes of not being caught. But then they’d send in Peter, the security guard at City Hall who Brooke had gone to high school with. He’d come over from across the street and do a final sweep, and then it was time to lock up and go home.

  That night, Morgan was heading off in her own direction, and Peter stopped on the steps before returning to his post and asked Brooke, “You saw the news today?” And she would keep on taking these questions personally, even though the person asking just thought she was the proverbial woman on the street. He was everyone’s boy, Derek, it was true. Brooke wasn’t the only one in town who was feeling a sense of loss that day.

  He said, “It’s a shame. You think it’s true?”

  Brooke said, “Does it matter if it isn’t?”

  Peter asked, “You know, would you want to go out sometime?” He immediately backtracked. “I mean, nothing, like…. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. I just thought. With you back in town. You know?”

  She almost laughed. It was so preposterous. Not the fact of her going out with Peter himself, though it was that, too, but that he’d think she’d have the headspace for anything like that, the mechanical details of an ordinary life. She said, “Maybe sometime. Honestly, thank you. That’s nice.” It was. A reminder of how it might feel to be normal again.

  But he knew she’d shut him down. Peter shuffled his feet, his big black boots. His uniform was designed to look official, but like his job, really, it was a knockoff. “See you tomorrow, Peter,” she told him, and she began her walk across town toward home.

  * * *

  —

  There was no food in her fridge, and while her dad would have been thrilled if she’d had dinner at Jake’s two nights in a row, she wanted her parents not to be worrying about her for once. She stopped off at a corner store and bought a box of macaroni and cheese, a stick of butter, and a couple of Granny Smith apples, just to round out the meal. The apartment was dark, and she turned on all the lights so everything would seem less lonely. Lauren’s shift wasn’t finished until eight, and then she’d probably be going out with friends after. Perhaps Brooke should have taken Peter up on his offer after all. She wondered what that would have been like. Would he have worn his boots? And where would he have taken her—to Slappin’ Nellie’s? There was not a single establishment in this town that wasn’t crowded with ghosts.

  She made the macaroni and cheese and cut the apple into slices, and even sat down at the table to have her meal, rather than eating in front of the TV. She checked her messages—another one from Shondra Decker. Brooke had looked her up—she was legit; a reporter, like she said. And Brooke wondered where a reporter had gotten her email from, but didn’t let wondering get in the way of finishing a bottle of wine, so that when she finally heard Lauren’s key in the lock, she called out in a slurry voice that sounded strange even to her own ears.

  “You’re drunk,” Lauren said. Brooke couldn’t deny it. “Mind if I join you?” She got her own glass, unscrewed the cap from another bottle. Brooke had been scrolling through news and feeds on her phone all evening, waiting for a text from Derek that would never arrive. And this wasn’t as sad as it sounded; it was more a comfort, familiar. Because Brooke was accustomed to waiting for Derek. She’d been doing it for years. It felt enough like home to begin to fill the void inside her—honestly, missing Derek was better than feeling nothing. The closest thing to love. Or maybe she just was drunk and maudlin.

  Lauren must have seen it on her face—more perceptive than Brooke gave her credit for. She asked, “Who is it? Is he back in the city?” Brooke didn’t know how to respond. Lauren said, “Is he a she?” Brooke shook her head. Lauren said, “I don’t like to assume.”

  Lauren filled her glass and topped up Brooke’s. She said, “I’ve been wondering what your story was. Knew there was something. I didn’t want to pry. Was it a breakup?”

  Brooke said, “Kind of.” Wishing it was a straightforward situation that could be framed in those terms.

  Lauren said, “Fuck it, right?”

  Brooke said, “Exactly,” and they clinked their glasses.

  Archive: City Lights Monthly, 2017

  “DEREK MURDOCH IS MARRIED TO HIS JOB”

  HOW IS IT POSSIBLE that the city’s most eligible bachelor hasn’t had a date in months? Although Derek Murdoch insists it hasn’t been that long. He thinks some more, and asks, “What month is it, anyway?” And it’s no surprise he’s having trouble keeping track, because the weeks since his leadership victory have been a whirlwind. “There have been plenty of late nights at the office,” he admits. “Right now, I’m focused on the job.”

  Murdoch’s singular focus has always been key to his success. His trajectory in politics began before he was even eligible to vote. He was a political organizer and leader of a social justice youth group in his hometown of Lanark.

  “For me,” he says, “politics was never about the power. It’s about what power gives you opportunities to do. It’s actions that count—they’re everything.”

  However, everything leaves little time for the rest of life, as Kim Nicholls, a former classmate, will attest. She was Derek Murdoch’s high school prom date, and they were a couple during the following summer. “He was a good guy,” she says, “but his mind was always someplace else. I was never his number one priority, and so we broke up.”

  “I’m not the easiest person to be with,” Murdoch admits. “It would take a special kind of girl…” His voice trails off.

  There were other girlfriends, some significant relationships, none of them long-term. Megan Gerhardt, who dated Murdoch for a few months in 2001, remembers, “Derek was just all over the place. He was like the Energizer Bunny, and it was hard to keep up.” They didn’t stay in touch, but she shares photos from when they were a couple, Murdoch’s grin taking up most of the shot. “He was always campaigning for something,” says Gerhardt. “I kept waiting for the point when he would start to take our relationship as seriously as he took the rest of his life. And it never happened.”

  While his friends were beginning to settle down, Murdoch was celebrating his first election win as a city councilor in Lanark. He’d recently finished law school, but practicing law was not in the cards—he says, “I wanted to be in a position to really effect change.”

  Murdoch is godfather to his best friend’s three children, who call him Uncle Dare, and he’s close to his nephews. “I love kids,” he says. “I’d love kids of my own, for sure. But right now—it’s kind of a cliché—I’m married to my job.”

  These days Murdoch arrives at events escorted by his mother, or one of his sisters. “So you can’t say I don’t have plenty of women in my life,” he insists, explaining that they taught him everything he knows about neckties and haircuts, and decorating his house in the country just outside Lanark. “I get a lot of advice,” he confides. “Too much advice.”

  Yet his single status brings with it a certain longing. “When my father was my age, he’d been married for years,” Murdoch says. “By then, he had four kids. My parents didn’t have any money when they started out, and my mom says they spent the first few years of their marriage living on love—and discounted pork chops. But they made it work, and I want to live up to their standards. So it seems strange that I don’t have those things yet—a wife, a family. I know it disappoints them. Sometimes it disappoints me.”

  M
urdoch is about ten years older than most of the clientele here in this downtown coffee shop, but with his youthful grin he fits right in. On top of working hard, he stays in shape by running regularly and training for marathons. Last year he completed his first Ironman, and he says he’s hooked. “I’m kind of an intense guy,” he says. “It’s good to have an outlet.” So there’s time to train for a triathlon, but he’s too busy for a date?

  “I still date sometimes,” he said. “I haven’t given up on that yet.”

  He makes a point of attending church, and explains that he finds services grounding, but also difficult. “Growing up, going to church was all about family,” he says. “It was the thing we did every week, without fail, and shined our shoes for, and the entire week revolved around it.” In his teens, Murdoch would end up leaving his family’s church as a rejection of the denomination’s restrictive social views.

  “But I missed my family,” he said. “I missed that ritual of all of us together, and even now there’s an empty place where that should be. I don’t usually feel bad about not having a family until I’m that one guy alone in a pew. I mean, there’s a reason there’s pews and not chairs, you know? You’re not supposed to be on your own. And when I think about what I want as a family, that’s what I’m thinking about.”

  He smiles and his face lights up: “One day.”

  Thursday Morning

  He’d been booked on a morning show, the one where the hosts ask all the hard-hitting questions and they have the highest ratings. No doubt every morning show in the city had been vying to have Derek on, but Brooke thought he’d made the right choice with this one. He wasn’t going to be coddled, and here he was taking responsibility for what was happening—the very opposite of that shambolic press conference three days before. He’d already resigned, but everything would not be lost. It was simply a matter of showing up and being accountable, and making voters remember why they liked him in the first place. Because voters really did like him, Brooke knew, and it was time to seize that popularity and use it to their advantage.