28. Pardon the Interruption I
Caroline gives her mother, who is relaxing out on the beach, a heads-up. “Mr.
Kirtley is here. He’s out front. And I think he had a couple pops at the
Gazebo.”
“You’re kidding,” Hollis says.
“Not kidding. He asked me to get his wife.”
Hollis groans as she stands up from the chaise. She wakes Brooke up and says, “Brooke, honey, I guess Charlie is here.”
Brooke gives Hollis a glassy stare. “No.”
“He’s out front,” Caroline says. “Everything is okay, I think he’s just looking for you.”
“No,” Brooke says again and she closes her eyes. “Tell him to go to hell.”
Caroline and her mother exchange a look. Should they send Charlie away? Caroline is itching to grab her camera. Conflict is the best content.
Look for the chink in the armor.
Brooke slides her feet to the ground, then staggers through the sand toward the house, Hollis and Caroline following behind.
When Brooke steps onto the front porch, Charlie says, “There’s my
angel.”
Charlie’s angel.
There was a time when Brooke thought this was the sweetest thing she’d ever heard.
It’s a summer night in 1995, and Brooke is at the Tent in Quincy Marina.
She’s dancing with her friends to “Waterfalls” by TLC—it’s the song of the summer—when she feels someone dancing close behind her. When she turns around, she sees a guy who’s cute in that frat-boy way she likes, and she’s flattered that he singled her out rather than her friends Amy and Megan, who
are prettier. He says his name is Charlie and Brooke follows him to the bar, where they do kamikaze shots. Gah! Awful! Yet they have the desired effect, at least for Charlie. Brooke goes home with him that night to a town house in Dorchester that he and his brother are meticulously restoring. In the morning when Brooke wakes up, Charlie shows Brooke the crown molding in the dining room, the barn board in the kitchen, and a pew bench in the front hall that they salvaged from a church in Salem. Brooke mistakes Charlie for a person who cares about craft, quality, the integrity of old buildings (in reality, the person who cares is his brother. Charlie is merely parroting him in order to impress Brooke). The next week, Brooke again sees Charlie at the Tent and again they hook up. The morning after, Charlie takes Brooke out to breakfast at a bar down the street called Flanagan’s where the old bartender with an Irish accent knows Charlie by name and calls Brooke “luv.” They eat fried eggs, sausages, grilled tomatoes. This experience somehow leads to Charlie and Brooke dating, then getting engaged and married, then having boy-girl twins and buying a house in the Poet’s Corner section of Wellesley.
Brooke knows her marriage hasn’t been perfect—she’d been making excuses for Charlie’s dirty jokes and inappropriate behavior even before the first lawsuit—but she liked her life. She was able to stay home; she was deliriously happy being a mom. Will and Whitney were good kids, exceptional, even, and their success in school and on the stage and on the athletic fields made Brooke feel like she was doing something right. But there has always been something off between her and Charlie. Back in 1995, Brooke was afraid no one better would come along—and she’s been paying the price ever since.
“This is a girls’ weekend, Charlie,” Brooke says. “You’re not welcome, and frankly, it’s embarrassing that you showed up here to grovel.”
“I booked us a room at the Wauwinet tonight,” Charlie says. “And I made a reservation at Topper’s. You can rejoin the ladies tomorrow. Just spend the night with me, please. I need you. I’m not doing well, angel.”
Brooke studies her husband. His face is bright red and she can smell the Jameson emanating from his pores. “You’ve been drinking.”
“I had one beer on the boat.”
She stares at him.
“And a beer and a shot at the Tavern while I booked the hotel and dinner.”
He reaches out a hand. “Come on, angel.”
“No,” Brooke says. She wants to scream at him. He’s being sued because he groped some poor young girl. He lost his job because even the deplorable men he works with understand he went too far. He and Brooke can’t afford a night at the Wauwinet or dinner at Topper’s! But isn’t it exactly like Charlie to make such a wasteful and grandiose gesture? He could have sent apology flowers here—the other women might have been envious—but instead, he’d spent ten or twenty times as much money and to less effect. Brooke holds her tongue, however, because Hollis and Caroline are standing behind her.
As Caroline watches this domestic drama unfold, she thinks about how she could make an entire documentary about the Kirtley family. Here’s what has always puzzled her: Brooke and Charlie are both cringey, but they produced two of the coolest humans Caroline has ever known. Will and Whitney Kirtley are brilliant, funny, kind, and magnetic. Will goes to Wesleyan and Whitney is studying theater at Yale. They’re literally amazing and have not one trait in common with either of their parents. Caroline once asked Hollis if Will and Whitney were adopted. (The answer was no.)
Brooke lowers her voice. “You have to leave, Charlie. Please, please don’t make a scene.” I’m having a hard enough time fitting in as it is, she thinks.
“Cancel the Wauwinet and take the next ferry home.”
Charlie’s face twists into a snarl and he starts to rant. “You ungrateful bitch, I’ve worked my ass to the bone for you and the kids, two college tuitions, the fancy house you had to have in Swellesley, the Escalade you begged for because you thought it would make you look cool in front of Electra.”
Brooke closes her eyes. Why did Charlie have to mention Electra?
“Get out of here right now!” Brooke says. Her lunch is roiling in her stomach and for one hot, queasy second, she fears she’s going to boot into the flower beds. She breathes in through her nose and tries to think of what Gigi would do. Gigi wouldn’t stand for this kind of verbal abuse, that’s for sure.
“I’m not leaving here without you!” Charlie screams.
Hollis places a hand on Brooke’s shoulder and says, “Why don’t you go
back to the beach? I’ll call Charlie a cab and book him on the four-thirty ferry.”
Brooke feels tears of shame burn her eyes. “I’ll just go with him,” she says. She starts to blubber. “I’m a fifth wheel here anyway.”
“What?” Hollis says. “That’s not true at all!”
“You have Tatum,” Brooke says. “And Dru-Ann has Gigi.”
At that instant, they hear a door slam, and they all look across the parking lot to the guest cottage. Dru-Ann is striding over to Charlie. “Is there a problem here?”
Charlie rears back. “Hey… you’re the chick from Throw Like a Girl.”
Dru-Ann offers her hand. “Dru-Ann Jones,” she says with a tight smile.
Brooke can see Dru-Ann crushing Charlie’s fingers. “Don’t ever call me—or any other woman—a ‘chick’ again, please.” Charlie opens his mouth to speak but Dru-Ann stops him. “You’re crashing a very exclusive party, my friend.
Brooke is staying here with us. You will respect her, and me, and our hostess, Hollis, by leaving promptly. Am I clear?”
Emboldened by Dru-Ann—she’s saving the day like Superwoman!— Brooke says, “Yeah! Get out of here, Charlie!”
Charlie flexes and unflexes the fingers that Dru-Ann mangled. “My wife doesn’t need to be part of this cougar committee,” he says to Hollis. “You’re all… Wiccans!”
“We’re friends, Charlie,” Hollis says. “I’ve called you a cab. You should wait at the end of the driveway.”
Reluctantly, Charlie heads down the hydrangea-lined drive. He turns around and calls out, “Have fun burning your sage and gossiping about Luke and Laura!”
Dru-Ann marches up the porch stairs, puts an arm around Brooke, and says, “Girl, I’m sorry. I had no idea that’s what you were dealing with.”
Caroline bumps into Tatum as she comes in the side door. “What’s going on?” Tatum asks. “Where did everybody go?”
Caroline will let her mother explain later, but right now, she has an idea.
“Are you busy?” she asks. “Because I’d love to talk to you alone and ask you some questions about my mom.”
“I’m free as a bird,” Tatum says. “Lead the way.”
Hollis isn’t sure how much more drama she can take. There was the breakfast with Jack, the news about Tatum’s biopsy, the revelation that Gigi also lost a man she loved, all the challenges with Caroline—and then Charlie Kirtley shows up out of the blue and calls them Wiccans?
“Are you okay?” Hollis asks Brooke.
“She’ll be fine,” Dru-Ann says. “We’re going back to the beach where the world can’t bother us.”
Hollis sees Tatum following Caroline down the basement stairs. “What are you two up to?”
“We’re going to have a little chat,” Caroline says.
Hollis blinks. “A chat? About what?”
Caroline smiles. “I want to talk to Tatum about her friendship with you.”
“That’s not on the itinerary,” Hollis jokes. “Sweetheart, I appreciate your creativity, but I don’t think Tatum wants to be grilled about our friendship.”
“I don’t mind,” Tatum says. She gives Hollis a look. “What’s wrong, Holly? Are you worried about what I’m going to say?”
“I’m just trying to get some historical context,” Caroline says.
“Historical context?” Hollis says. “You make it sound like we’re a hundred years old.”
“For depth and texture,” Caroline says. “Otherwise I’m just making a video scrapbook.”
That’s what Hollis wants, a video scrapbook. She appreciates that Caroline is taking this seriously, but she doesn’t have to go full-on Ken Burns and conduct… interviews.
“This kind of chat sounds too personal for the website,” Hollis says. “I don’t need people hearing details about my most intimate relationships.”
“Can you just relax, Mother? These are your friends. I just want to dig a little deeper. That’s what makes this weekend meaningful. Otherwise it’s just duvet covers and pecans.”
Henrietta rubs against Hollis’s legs, probably sensing her discomfort. “All right,” Hollis says. She raises her eyebrows at Tatum. “Be kind?”
“I’ll be honest,” Tatum says.
