Waiting for a Star to Fall

by Kerry Clare

  And she knew he was right—he didn’t deserve her. She didn’t deserve any of the trouble he’d caused her in the past six months, her whole life turned inside out, but she kept coming back. She kept coming back for him, because it had to mean something, and if it didn’t, then she really was a doormat, and he’d been wiping his feet all over her. He was doing it even now, but it still felt good just to have him there, to hold him. If she’d really been a doormat, would this have been the case? Only the two of them—the noise from the club seemed so far away. It was so easy just to believe in the two of them together. It always had been; reality was harder to fathom.

  He said, “Maybe the only thing that ever mattered is you.”

  She tried to imagine what she’d advise a friend to do if she ever found herself in this place. What would her parents say, Nicole, Carly? Brent Ames’s little sister? But what did any of them know about what it felt like to be singularly loved by Derek Murdoch, who’d had the eyes of the world upon him, but now only had eyes for her?

  “They told me,” he said. “Marijke and others, that you would be the problem. We had to get you out of the picture. Everyone was thinking about the damage you could do, but all along it was going to come from a different direction. And it was you all along, the last one left. Everyone else deserted me, but you’re here, when you didn’t have to be. When you had every reason on earth never to talk to me again.

  “Do you know what it’s like?” he asked her. “To have all the people you’ve ever counted on desert you when you need them most?”

  She said, “To be honest, yes. It sounds a bit familiar.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to say that enough. I took the wrong advice from all the wrong people. I don’t know what I was thinking, and I’m going to regret that for the rest of my life. I regret it more than I’ve regretted anything else, you know, and that’s saying something. I should have followed my gut.”

  “Which was telling you what?”

  “Well, to be with you,” he said. “You’re the realest thing I’ve ever had, and maybe I just had to lose everything else to see that.”

  She released him, and took a step backward.

  “I messed up,” he said, looking up at her. “I messed it all up, one thing after another. When I think about how alone you were and how I let you go in there and what happened to our baby.”

  “It wasn’t a baby,” she said, stopping him.

  “It could have been.” But it wasn’t. That was the point, and it was up to her. “I just feel like I was given this chance, and then I threw it away.” She couldn’t argue with him there. “But maybe it’s not too late.”

  “For what,” she said. She took another step away from him.

  “For us,” he said. “For you, and me, and a baby. But we could do it right this time.”

  “Do it right.” She couldn’t imagine how he could expect her to think this was real.

  Asking her, “Would you want to get married?” He shut his eyes and shook his head, saying, “I’m messing this up already. I don’t even have a ring. I know there’s supposed to be a process, but I didn’t plan this. I never imagined that I’d be seeing you tonight.”

  He said, “Okay, maybe I should just stop now, while I’m still ahead. A little bit ahead. And I could go out and buy you a ring tomorrow. But if that happened, I mean. If I asked you what I asked you, what would you say?”

  She said nothing.

  He said, “Maybe there’s a reason for everything. Maybe the baby was a sign.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of other babies. You and me, I don’t know. If we had a chance to do it again, we could make it all okay, what we did.”

  “What we did.” But it could never be okay, not after everything. He really didn’t see that. He was too busy talking.

  “I’ve been thinking it through, and I’ve been thinking about atonement,” he was saying. “If we could get it right, you know? It could make it all okay, what happened. There’d be a point to it all.”

  “It happened anyway,” she said. “It’s just that you weren’t there.”

  “And I’m sorry.” He got up from the bench and came over to hug her. “I’m so sorry. And I don’t know what to do with that. How else to make it up to you.”

  “You want to marry me,” she said. How could this ever have been what she wanted from him?

  “It makes sense,” he said.

  “And would make things much more straightforward while you’re facing allegations of sexual assault, I guess.”

  He said, “No. Come on now. It’s not like that.”

  She said, “Isn’t it?” She was freezing. He hadn’t even thought to offer her his sweater, but instead he took her hand, held it.

  “Would you marry me?” he asked her. “And you can pretend that I’m asking you this and we’re the only two people in the world. That nothing in the last week, the last six months, has happened. Could we go back to the start? Would you forgive me for being too dumb to see what was right in front of me all along?”

  There was just a single answer to his question. “No.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. No.”

  Opinion Piece by Nancy-Ann Blandling: The Daily Inquiry (from Sunday’s paper)

  “WHO DARES TO PAVE THE ROAD FOR DEREK MURDOCH’S REDEMPTION?”

  …WE’RE HEARING A LOT about victims these days, but who is going to be compassionate enough to think about the victims of these hate-mobs? Literally, this is a modern-day lynching, and these social justice warriors ought to be ashamed of themselves.

  But ashamed they are not, not ever. Not even if photographs surface showing that accusers were dressed provocatively the night of the events in question, if witnesses attest that these women were so inebriated that one of them was found the next morning passed out in a puddle of her own urine. But I guess it goes to show that a person with no compunction about wetting her pants in public would probably not feel guilty about the opportunity to savage a good man’s name, and leave his whole life in ruins. To hell with personal responsibility, I guess, and being accountable for our actions. Instead, let’s just behave disgracefully in public and then ten years later come crying and blaming our bad behavior on somebody else.

  And now what are we to do with Derek Murdoch, a man who has devoted the last fifteen years of his life to public service? While I was certainly never a fan of Murdoch’s politics, it was undeniable that he was a person committed to helping people and making positive change. The loss of such a person in a position of leadership is a loss to us all, then, and one can’t help thinking that the virtue signalers have come down even harder on him than they might have on their political opponents. Derek Murdoch’s been made an example of, and now his former colleagues are wiping their hands of it all and feeling sanctimonious.

  But they shouldn’t be. What happened last week was even worse than a show trial, because there wasn’t a trial at all. There was no due process. Instead it was all media spectacle, political theater. And now the show’s over, and what’s this latest flavor-of-the-week disgraced politician to do?

  You might be thinking, “It’s not my problem,” but let me tell you that one day you’ll be eating those words. And not even when it’s eventually your own son, or husband, or father that they’re coming for. No, even before that, before it gets so close to home. Because there are going to be all these broken, wounded men littering our landscape, if things keep on as they have been. And you think that masculinity is “toxic” now? Well, get ready for a disaster when these men decide to rise back up and take what’s rightfully theirs, what’s been stolen from them. Once the feminists have spent all their outrage capital on microaggressions and manspreading, they’ll be at pains to know how to deal with these men who’ve been the carnage of the social justice warrior movement. These women
are creating monsters, is what I am saying, if they continue to bask in the humiliation of men whose only crime has been being born male in an age where being male is an unpopular and dangerous thing to be.

  Monday Morning

  When she implored him to come with her out of the cold, he wouldn’t even look her way. He was humiliated, shrinking on a picnic bench, where it smelled like garbage and those cigarette butts in the coffee can mixed with rainwater. But she had to get out of there. She was freezing, and it turned out there was a reason that sleeves had been invented. She couldn’t wait anymore.

  “Come on, this is silly,” she told him, one last try. If she could bring him inside, at least she’d know he’d be okay, that he wasn’t just sitting out there falling apart, and she could pass him off to Brent or someone. Make him somebody else’s problem. But he refused to budge, and she’d already given him enough, so she walked away from him. It was almost easy to do.

  Back inside, she didn’t see Lauren at first, although the crowd had thinned out, but it wasn’t long before she spotted her by the pool table, the Ricks now abandoned. She wasn’t dancing, and looked relieved when she saw Brooke.

  “You’re okay?” Lauren asked, trying to read her face to discern the situation, but Brooke was confusing her. She really was fine.

  “We should get going,” Brooke said. Even though part of her wanted to linger, to see if he came in. But when he did, what then? “We definitely need to go.”

  Lauren said, “What happened?”

  Brooke said, “Nothing. It’s really over now.” She wasn’t even fooling herself, this finality she’d been craving. To know what to do, even if it wasn’t certain what was going to happen after that. It was amazing even to know what not to do too.

  Eventually they found themselves in a taxi, and for the first time in a long time she was sure of her destination. They were going home. Lauren was quiet, and the driver didn’t make small talk either, because he could tell that they were both beyond that. It had been a long night.

  When they got back to their place, Brooke saw the lights they’d left on in the windows, like a welcome, the first time she’d ever felt genuinely glad to return here, but maybe that feeling was also relief at knowing she’d be moving on before too long.

  “I’m really tired. Got to get some sleep,” she told Lauren when they got inside, and Lauren hugged her. Brooke hugged her back, fiercely, and then she went into the kitchen for a glass of water to help stave off a hangover, turning off all the lights on her way back through. She took a moment to wash off her makeup in the bathroom after she’d brushed her teeth, the rare time she’d bothered, to get a glimpse of the person underneath it. She recognized that girl, and it felt like she owed her a few things.

  * * *

  —

  There was a text from Derek in the morning, and seeing his name on the screen made her stomach drop. She thought she had expressed to him that she couldn’t do this, keep being the one he crawled back to. He was having a hard time, but she’d had a hard time too, and she needed this break. She was sure she had been definitive for once, leaving no doubt in his mind. No “Maybe someday,” the kind of thing she might have said before, infused with hope and faith—because she’d lost all hope and faith. Or rather, she’d decided to put her faith in different things.

  But maybe he’d been listening to what she was telling him after all, because the message was something other than what she’d expected, not him begging for another chance. Just one more thing, and I’ll leave you alone, he’d written. I’ve got something for you, and it’s at my parents’ place. I think you know where that is. How mysterious, and yes, Brooke knew where his parents lived. My mother is expecting you. Ann Murdoch, a pillar of the community, that force behind the organ.

  Back in July, Derek’s mom had been standing in line in front of Brooke at the grocery store, and she looked a lot like her son with her short no-nonsense hair and her compact frame, and it had felt incredible to Brooke that if she tapped this woman on the shoulder, she would have had no idea who Brooke was. She could tell her, “For about five minutes I was pregnant with your grandchild,” and maybe she’d be destroying the world as Derek’s mother knew it, or else she’d call the cops on her, another crazy lady in the grocery store.

  But Derek’s mom was expecting her now, and Brooke was due in to work at noon. There had been two days of newspapers since she’d been on the front page, but she wasn’t sure it was safe to show her face around work yet. How long before she’d cease to be a public spectacle, and what would she do if she ever saw Jacqui Whynacht again? But, in the meantime, she’d go see Derek’s mom. She’d get ready for the day and dress with more care than she would have on any other day, because it was her chance to make a first impression. But did it matter what Ann Murdoch thought of what she was wearing? What exactly did Ann Murdoch know about Brooke anyway, and also what had this dastardly week made of her? Would Brooke’s arrival at the door be just one more thing for her, the final straw? Maybe the two of them would end up having a lot to talk about.

  Lauren was still sleeping, so Brooke was quiet in the kitchen as she made her own coffee for a change, slopped some cereal and milk into a bowl. She ate her breakfast, and then got ready for the first ordinary day she’d had since everything had gone to pieces—but it was not altogether ordinary. Not with this mysterious errand.

  What would be waiting for her, she wondered, making her way along the familiar sidewalks, seeing her shadow for the first time in days. There was sunshine, and the sky was blue, and it was the kind of weather that made you want to walk with purpose, even if Brooke didn’t understand what her purpose was yet. It kind of felt like The Wizard of Oz, that this whole journey had been about arriving at what lay behind the great man—his mom? Who still drove around town in a minivan, even though she hadn’t had to schlep anyone to soccer for years.

  That van was in the driveway now, the house that little bungalow that had looked the same for decades, even while other houses on the street had had second storeys added, been torn down and then replaced with what passed for a McMansion in Lanark. A big picture window in the front, but the sun was shining off the glass, so it was impossible to see what was going on inside. Cement steps and a wrought iron railing up to the door, outdoor carpet on the porch with treads worn right through.

  Brooke couldn’t ring the doorbell—not yet. There was a quiet that she didn’t want to disturb, nothing but the drip of water from the gutters. And on the other side of the minivan, she could see now from where she was standing on the porch: Derek’s car, his SUV, yellow and shiny. So Derek was here. This was a trick. What had she gotten herself into?

  Then the front door opened, and Brooke started at the surprise of it. And there she was before her, Derek’s mom, half a head shorter than Brooke was, the expression on her face weary and hardened. Indeed, this had been a week, and she was like her house, weathered. Her youngest son had died, her eldest nearly killed in a fire at age eleven, and he would grow up to embody all her hope and dreams, until the last week had finally trounced them altogether.

  She pushed the screen door open—“You’re Brooke, right?” and Brooke said yes. Ann Murdoch didn’t ask her in, but instead came outside wearing slippers, a hoodie with a high school crest that might have belonged to one of her children back in the day. Car keys in her hand. “This is a little bit irregular,” she said.

  Brooke asked her, “What is?”

  And Ann Murdoch said, “What isn’t? It’s been a heck of a week.” A point they could concur on. She said, “I read what you said about him in the paper. You were generous. He’s been good to you?”

  “He has been.” There had been moments.

  “He told me there’s things he’s got to make up to you.”

  “Maybe that’s true too,” said Brooke. “It’s complicated.”

  “It’s not that complicated,” she said. “My son isn’
t always considerate. In general, yes, he cares about people a lot. But maybe not the particular ones. Not always. He doesn’t see the trees for the forest, if you get what I mean.

  She said, “He’s had a hard time.” And then she proceeded past Brooke down the steps from the porch, her slippers going slap-slap, and Brooke followed her. “Not that it’s any excuse,” she said. “I’m not making excuses, because there comes a point when a person knows what their lot is, and you’ve got to move forward with that. But I’m his mother, you know. It’s different. I was there and I saw it happen.”

  “The fire,” said Brooke. They were standing in the driveway, and before them was a garage, but not the same garage, the one that had burned down twenty-eight years ago. The big aluminum door shut, and the van and Derek’s car in the driveway before it. “Is he here?” Brooke asked.

  “Is who where?”

  “Derek,” said Brooke. “His car is here.”

  “He went back to the city this morning,” said his mother. “Someone picked him up—I don’t know who. But he left the car for you.”

  “His car.”

  “He said you didn’t have one,” she said. “And he said there were places you needed to go, so the car is yours. He says he owes you.” She was quiet for a moment. “And I suspect he does.” She tossed the keys, and Brooke caught them, surprising herself.

  “He gave me his car.”

  “There’ll be paperwork,” she said. “He’ll have it taken care of.” He really would. When Derek Murdoch did a thing, he always remembered the details.

  “That’s a pretty big deal,” said Brooke.

  “It’s what he wanted,” she shrugged. “And there’s no telling Derek what to do. Maybe you know that.”

  “I do,” Brooke said, and then she ran her hand over the hood, yellow paint sparkling in the sunshine. She didn’t know what to say. If she just took this gift, what would Ann Murdoch think of her?