Waiting for a Star to Fall

by Kerry Clare

  Brooke had never seen an abortion in a movie before, and it was surprising to realize this because Dirty Dancing was over thirty years old. So it should have been a throwback, but it was something very new: the character who wants an abortion. There is no other alternative, it doesn’t even make her sad, and she doesn’t change her mind at the last minute, or have a miscarriage as a convenient trick to avoid being an agent in her own destiny. She isn’t sorry, either. Now they don’t go as far as to actually say the word “abortion” in the film, but still. And then the procedure goes wrong, because this was 1962, when abortions were dangerous and illegal and the dancer, Penny, nearly dies. But Baby’s dad is a doctor, and he saves her. They see her the day after in another off-the-shoulder blouse, and she tells Baby that she’s going to be okay. She’s even going to be able to have children one day—which is to say, she gets away with it. But Baby almost doesn’t, because her dad finds out she’s been sleeping with Johnny, and suddenly everything’s shattered. Baby’s dad tells her that she’s not the person he thought she was—but then at the end of the movie, the triumph, he learns she’s even better than he thought she was. Because it turns out she’s a terrific dancer, but it’s really her will he’s admiring. And Penny who had the abortion is already dancing too—although that part, Brooke thought, was a little far-fetched. Her pants were really tight, which wouldn’t have worked with the huge absorbent pad. But still, it seemed symbolic that no one had to live in shame. You could be a fallen woman, and then get up on a stage and dance. This was a huge revelation for Brooke, who had never even considered the possibility, the number of ways a script could go.

  She told Lauren as the credits rolled, “That is the best film with the worst title I’ve ever seen. I always thought it was supposed to be pornographic, or something.”

  “I love it,” Lauren said. “It never fails me.”

  “Your mom had good taste,” said Brooke.

  Lauren said, “She really did.”

  “It must be hard,” said Brooke. “With everything.”

  Lauren shrugged. “What can you do.” It wasn’t even a question. Lauren was somebody who’d never had a say in the defining events of her life. She said, “You just get on with it. You have to.”

  Brooke told her, “I got pregnant. In the spring.” She wanted to tell someone. She was tired of this being her secret shame. It’s when you can tell a story that you finally get to own it, rather than the story owning you.

  But Lauren said, “What happened to the baby?” The baby. Brooke had never called it that. It had never been a baby to her, although correcting Lauren on this point felt awkward.

  “Well, there isn’t a baby.” She would be six months pregnant now, she thought, surprised to realize that she’d been keeping track on a subconscious level. Imagining an alternative reality where she’d made another choice. A braver one, even? Although was there a choice in this scenario that did not require bravery? “Obviously.”

  She was waiting for Lauren to infer what had happened, because she didn’t want to say the word. It was just the same as how they didn’t say the word in the movie—but Lauren just looked confused. She would have to spell it out. “The pregnancy. I had a termination. An abortion.” It was really not such a scary word, and the meaning was dawning. Lauren got it, nodding. Brooke said, “Not like the movie. It’s different now.”

  “The dirty knife and the folding table.” A line from Dirty Dancing.

  “It’s different when it’s legal,” she said. “Clean.” It had been.

  “But your boyfriend,” said Lauren. “Your ex. The rat. He broke up with you?”

  “I think he did,” said Brooke, and it felt good to say that. A line in the sand.

  “That’s awful,” said Lauren.

  “But maybe,” said Brooke, “it helped clarify things. Otherwise he might still be stringing me along.”

  “And then you came back to town and moved in here. I knew there was something going on.”

  “Well, nothing’s ‘going on,’ ” she said.

  Lauren said, “What are you waiting for?”

  “What?”

  “That’s the thing. What I couldn’t figure out, what you’re doing here. What you’re waiting for.”

  “I don’t even know,” said Brooke. “Maybe for all the broken pieces to be put back together again.”

  “Do you want to go out tonight?”

  “Out?”

  “What if we got dressed up and went dancing?”

  “It’s Sunday,” Brooke reminded her.

  Lauren said, “Half-price cover at Slappin’ Nellie’s.”

  * * *

  —

  It was a risky idea, she knew, going out and hitting the town. Maybe even just hands-down a bad one. Her face had been on the front page of the newspaper just the day before, and her emotional stability was fragile—she knew it was. She’d been through a lot. But staying home and hiding in her basement was an idea just as bad, and so was playing another round of Boggle with her dad in darkened rooms. There was not a single good idea among all her options, it seemed. There hadn’t been in such a long time. And she was thinking of what Lauren had said: You’ve got to get on with it. You have to. So instead of waiting for something to happen, what if she made it so?

  She knew what she was getting into. Half-price cover on Sunday nights is a Slappin’ Nellie’s special, and it’s never crowded either, so that a high-profile local boy who’s back in town just might decide to make an appearance. Even under the cloud of sexual misconduct allegations, because every local boy knows that his people are going to rally around him. Isn’t this just what community is for? But even if Derek didn’t show, Brooke wanted to be there. It wasn’t all about him, and Brooke wasn’t even fooling herself. She wanted to show her face, and drink and dance and have fun, and not be embarrassed about the recent history she’d been carrying around. The movie had been such a revelation. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and she was tired of being punished—and why are only men ever entitled to feel so unashamed?

  So they went. “I thought you were a nun,” said Lauren on the way. They’d been drinking at home. After Dirty Dancing, they’d watched Ghost, because it turned out that Lauren’s mom had been partial to Patrick Swayze in general. And then Lauren did Brooke’s makeup, which she was very good at, and she had plans to do a program at the college, which was what she was saving her money for right now while her fiancé was out west.

  She’d also loaned Brooke a sparkly tube top, which was too small for her, but Lauren said that only added to its appeal. They were both wearing tight jeans and strappy heels, and Lauren had magicianed Brooke’s hair into an elaborate pile on top of her head.

  “Well, I don’t look like a nun now,” she replied. She didn’t look like the wholesome girl from the cover of yesterday’s newspaper, either, and anonymity felt good. It had been a long time since she hadn’t figured that everybody’s eyes were on her.

  Or at least if they had their eyes on her, it was for a different reason, she realized, when Brent Ames at the door didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t sure he’d ever looked at her properly anyway, just another one of Derek’s girls.

  “Ladies,” he said as a greeting, as he took their cover and stamped their hands with red stars. Brooke followed Lauren into the darkness of the club’s interior, the scene of so much youthful iniquity, where there had always been new shadows to hide in, new personas to try on.

  They started dancing. It was the same music here that they’d been playing for years, and Brooke felt underage again, illicit. Eighteen and irresponsible, and she had another drink, the alcohol pulsing through her brain, making her head feel lighter and lighter.

  “This was a very good idea after all,” she yelled at Lauren, who was dancing in front of her, hands in the air.

  “I told you,” she said, and over her shoulder Brooke saw him
, passing by the corridor on his way to the bar. Surrounded by his hometown entourage, all the guys he’d known forever. Her first instinct was to duck and hide, because he’d be angry if he saw her there. She was violating some part of the terms of their agreement.

  But why was that even fair? she wondered. She had never agreed to anything. And who was he to tell her where she could and couldn’t go, and she was so tired of taking instructions from Derek when he didn’t even know what he was doing in his own life. So she kept dancing, and then Lauren led her over to two generic guys in Polo shirts.

  “This is Rick and Rick,” Lauren yelled.

  “Which one’s which?”

  She said, “It doesn’t matter.” They all started dancing, and Brooke wasn’t sure if Lauren knew these guys, or if she’d just found them, but maybe that didn’t matter. And Rick and Rick gave her something to think about other than Derek, or at least something else to look like she was thinking about, because of course he was on her mind.

  They were dancing to that old song “Two Princes,” because half-price Sundays was also ’90s night. And Brooke’s Rick was the taller one, grinding against her, both of them on display since the dance floor wasn’t crowded. She had to look up to kiss him, her arms wrapped up high around his neck. She’d never been with anyone this tall before, and she was possibly even confessing this fact, her words slurred, in between wet kisses. And then she had a horrifying thought that maybe Rick was in high school.

  “Are you in high school?” Brooke asked him. Why were the two Ricks dressed identically? Maybe it was a uniform?

  But he was in college, he told her. In town for a volleyball tournament, and when she asked him if everyone on the team was called Rick, he said no. His name was Kevin, and Lauren had been confused. The song changed, and they came apart, and Brooke could see Derek against the wall watching her.

  She quickly looked away from him and kept dancing. Maybe she could carry on as though she hadn’t noticed. She wondered what she’d looked like when she hadn’t been aware he was watching her. What if he failed to recognize her just like Brent did? She imagined the whole thing coming full circle, Derek moseying on up to her, “Hey, you look familiar.”

  But Derek knew Brooke better than Brent did, and had managed to see through her brilliant disguise. He was coming over now with a puzzled look on his face. “What are you doing?”

  “Hey, buddy,” Rick/Kevin interjected.

  But Derek ignored him. “What’s this?” he asked, gesturing at her top, her hair.

  “We came out dancing,” Brooke said.

  “We?” He thought Rick/Kevin and Brooke constituted a “we” now, and he was trying to make sense of all of this.

  “Why’s it any of your business?” she asked him.

  Lauren was now standing beside her. “You know this guy?” she asked Brooke.

  And Brooke said, “I don’t think I ever did.”

  She was watching Brooke’s face. “This is him?” she asked, and Brooke nodded. She turned to Derek and said, “You’re an ass-hat. You realize that?”

  “Who’s she?” Derek asked.

  Lauren answered, “I’m her friend.”

  Derek was pulling her away from them. “I have to talk to you.”

  Lauren was pulling her back. Rick/Kevin seemed to have disappeared to a place with less drama.

  “We need to talk,” he said again.

  “That’s not what you said at your house the other night,” she told him.

  “Leave her alone,” said Lauren, still holding on. She whispered in Brooke’s ear, “He’s not even that cute. Are you sure?”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Derek told her. He looked at Brooke. “It’s loud in here. Can we go someplace else?”

  “Sorry, no,” said Lauren. “We’re dancing.”

  “I think Brooke can speak for herself,” said Derek.

  Lauren laughed, “Well, let’s hear it then.”

  And Derek was pleading now. “Can’t we go somewhere? Just for a little while? And then you can come back to your friends.” Brooke had never seen him so desperate, at least not since the press conference that had been the beginning of his undoing.

  “I won’t be long,” she said to Lauren, and Derek led her out to the patio, which was empty tonight except for a few people who were smoking, and they moved past them. There they were, out by the garbage cans.

  “There’s some privacy here,” he said.

  “I’ve heard about that,” said Brooke. “Your special spot. You’ve never brought me here before, though.” Here it was, solidarity, long past the point where she should have recognized it. So she was the kind of woman who could end up out behind the garbage cans after all. Maybe every woman was that kind of woman, and it was knowing this that made a person truly responsible for her own life.

  Derek said, “What’s up with you tonight?” He even had the nerve to look hurt. He’d always claimed to like the way she gave it to him straight, but truth was she’d never given it to him straight. Not properly. “Your hair, those clothes?”

  “What’s it got to do with you?” she asked him. Truthfully, she was really cold.

  “Because I care about you,” he said. “And I’ve never seen you all done up like this. It’s like you’re somebody else.”

  “Still me,” she said.

  “Well, I hope so,” he said. “But I just don’t get it. What’s going on? And with the reporter too, why you said what you said.”

  “You could have asked about it the other night,” she told him, “but you didn’t want to know.” He had to know how much that had stung.

  He said, “I’m sorry about that, about everything.” There was a picnic table back there where the staff probably took their smoke breaks, a coffee tin for the butts, and he sank down onto a bench. The light was dim, but she could see that his face was tired. This week had done a number on him. “You said I was a gentleman,” he said. He was staring at his feet. “It was not what I expected.”

  And probably not what she would say now, which is what she was thinking, in light of the last two days, but she didn’t tell him this, because it was becoming obvious that Derek was in trouble. He was suffering. She asked him, “What were you expecting, then? What did you think I would tell the reporter?” She stared down at the top of his head, where the hair was beginning to thin. She’d never seen it before.

  He took a breath, and exhaled with a puff of steam. The season was changing, and there was a chill in the air. She hugged herself to keep warm, and shivered, and he didn’t even notice. “I don’t know what I was expecting,” he said. “I haven’t exactly been stellar through any of this, I realize. Even before this week. And what you said, it was the first nice thing that anyone I really cared about had bothered to say about me since everything happened. I can’t tell you what that means to me. With everything you could have said—you could have destroyed me if you wanted to. Even more, I mean. I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

  “But I wouldn’t do that,” she told him. “Surely you know that.”

  “I don’t know anything anymore,” he said. “Not after this week. You think you have everything under control, and then it all comes crashing down. I didn’t even see it coming. I mean, there were rumors, and other people weren’t surprised. But I thought if I just kept my eye on the goal and focused, it would be okay. I never thought people would be this disloyal.”

  Brooke said, “So it’s not true, what they’re saying? Those girls?”

  “It was years ago,” he said. “I don’t even know. I mean, of course not. Not the way they said it did. But sometimes things get misconstrued. How do you control the way that other people read things?”

  “Read things like what?” This wasn’t a literacy exercise.

  “I don’t even know,” he said. “Ten years ago—it was another lifetime. And the
y’re being put up to this—it’s a political assassination more than anything else. In some ways, it’s got nothing to do with the girls at all.”

  “Really.”

  “I don’t mean it like that,” he said. “But it’s a setup.”

  “You know who they are, the women?”

  “I think I do. Or I don’t know. How do you ever know?”

  “You mean because it could have been anyone?”

  “No,” he said. He was exhausted. “But it was such a long time ago. I don’t even know who I was back then, let alone anyone else.”

  “So it could have happened.”

  “I was an idiot then,” he said. “Still am, I guess. You know that better than anybody.” He said, “Now I know how a downward spiral goes.” Utterly defeated, and she was worried he was going to collapse entirely.

  So she pulled his head against her chest, that tube top, which was nothing like her, but was something she could put on to become a person with the kind of nerve she dreamed of having. And she held him. Over and over, she’d think she’d never be able to hold him again, and then he’d be there right beside her, listening to her heart.

  “I’ve done everything wrong by you,” he said. “All of it—but especially the other night. You getting dropped off like that—how have you been living up here without a car?”

  “I can’t afford a car,” she said.

  “I should have thought of that,” he said.

  She said, “You don’t have to think of everything.”

  “I was afraid,” he said. “When I sent you away, and I didn’t know what you’d told the reporter. It’s been a terrifying week, Brooke. I don’t know who to trust, or who’s a friend, and I know I’ve been messing up you and me even longer. That I’ve let you down. But you’re here. Even still, you’re here. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve you.”