1
When I got the call to come home to the Jersey Shore suburb Springsteen's always singing about, I was in the back of an Uber zipping across the Williamsburg Bridge with a stranger's hand down my pants. I vaguely remembered the guy's name being Ross, but I wasn't sure. In my attempt to ignore the incoming call, I accidentally answered it.
"Caroline, it's your father," my stepmother, Claudia, said, her voice steeped in melodrama, as if she were being ushered out of a failed soap opera audition. "We're at Shore Hospital. He told me to get you on the horn."
"Oh, God," I breathed into the phone. My anonymous suitor had his face buried so deep in my neck, he couldn't tell that I was in distress. He took the noise as a command to keep digging into me.
"He had a bad fall," Claudia continued, a different level of intensity affecting every line she delivered. In her purebred Ronkonkoma accent, she sounded like she was reciting a monologue about Humpty Dumpty. "About an hour ago. He flew down a whole set of stairs to the basement and landed in this horrible position. He just got out of the MRI . . ." She started to trail off. "We're waiting for results."
My heart raced. I needed to unlatch from my paramour. I peeled Ross off me, my neck and his hand both slick with anticipation. He was disoriented, still not understanding that I was on the phone and that the course of the night was being rerouted with every passing word. I shifted into an upright position, crossed one leg over the other, pointed to the black brick at my ear, and held a single finger to my mouth. He turned away from me and rested his head against the window.
"What do they think it is?" I murmured, chewing on a cuticle and bracing myself. Now I was the one affecting a phone persona. The character I chose was concerned daughter who did not drink three filthy gin martinis and call it dinner "because of the olives."
"Broken wrist, a couple of broken ribs. But they needed to check for internal bleeding and look at his ACL and his meniscus . . ." She dropped down to a whisper and got weepy. "And his . . . vertebrates." She started crying. I asked her to hand the phone to my father. She shuffled and muttered, "Leo, take this."
"Hello?" he said, his voice warm and familiar, albeit weak. I recognized then how much my chest had tightened, loosening only once he spoke.
"Sir," I said into the phone, "I'm so sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it says here on your chart you've got . . . vertebrates."
He laughed, and a racking cough chased the sound up his throat. "Lousy fuckin' spinal column," he muttered. "Now I'll never be a jellyfish."
"Or a Republican," I added. I glanced over at Ross, who discreetly sucked on a vape pen as he watched the city lights streak by out the window.
"Caro," my father said, and I could hear the starshine fading from his voice. It sobered me up. "You know I never want to be the one to ask, but it'd mean a lot if you came home."
The threat of tears stung my sinuses and plugged up my throat. My father always wore his endurance and immunity as badges of honor. Never took a sick day, never broke any bones. I was almost certain he'd never even had a cavity. Before I could answer, Claudia took the phone back. "The doctor's here now," she whispered. "I'll text with any news. Let me know which train you'll be on. I'll pick you up from the station in the morning."
A shuffle, a click. The flashy patina of the city went by in a smear outside my window. We were in the part of Brooklyn they'd turned into Disneyland-no more sugar factories and textile mills. A slice of pizza cost seven dollars. A single delicate earring from the boutique jeweler: $150. A one-bedroom apartment: $3,500 a month.
The dejected man sitting next to me in the Uber lived here. Earlier, I'd been eager enough to cross a bridge for Ross and see where the night led, but now I did not want to go upstairs with him and play pretend. I did not want to find out he was one of three roommates living in a two-bedroom. I did not want to wrap my panties around my wrist like a scrunchie to save myself the agony of feeling around for them in the postcoital dark, the next Uber driver waiting for me downstairs, messaging me, I'm here. Miss. Are you coming? while my heart searched for its natural rhythm.
But I also did not want to send him away forever, I decided then, examining his silhouette in the intermittent Bedford Avenue lamplight. He was an astute enough kisser to make me wonder what other skills he might possess. I wasn't ready to sacrifice the investment I'd made that night and send him to the island of lost Hinge dates. The old sunk cost conundrum. I'd have to put a pin in the family trauma if I wanted to save Ross for a rainy day.
"I can't come up tonight," I said, scooting over to recoup his affections, sliding a well-manicured hand over his black-denim-clad thigh. "But not for lack of wanting to."
"You came all the way out here just to go back downtown?" he asked, gentle but incredulous. He blew a puff of nicotine vapor down the sleeve of his leather jacket. A hint of mint haunted the air between us. His face showed as much concern as four whiskeys on ice would allow. Ross looked like a young Alex Rodriguez, when he was just the rookie shortstop from my childhood whom I'd beg my dad to take me to see whenever the Mariners were in town. I pressed my lips to his jawline.
"Look, I'm not thrilled about it either. And this driver is going to be even less thrilled that I've taken up temporary residence in the back of his Impala. But it's a family emergency. I swear I wouldn't pull this shit if it wasn't serious. Scout's honor." I flashed him a double peace sign, like Richard Nixon with a mile of carefully displayed cleavage. My head buzzed as the martini fog receded, leaving me in a muzzy, in-between state of inebriation. Ross stayed quiet.
By the time the driver pulled up in front of his building, I'd kissed my way across his neck and crawled into his lap. Not bad, I thought, looking out the window and up at the facade. One of those modern structures with matte black banisters and semi-flush globe light fixtures. Inside I'd bet there were stainless steel appliances in every kitchen and a wheezing French bulldog on every floor.
"I think you should still come up. Make the trip worth it," he whispered, then stuck his tongue in my ear. I couldn't bring myself to recount the details of the phone call. Confiding in this stranger that I was legitimately worried about my dad felt too intimate and a little juvenile. I didn't want his pity.
"Listen, Ross," I said, pulling away. "Tonight's just not my night, but I really do want to see you again. And I'm not saying it in the obligatory you-just-gave-me-a-pelvic-exam-in-the-back-of-a-cab kind of way. I'm saying it because I just got out of a long-term relationship where no one spoke up about what they really wanted, and I think it's important for me-for the universe-that I tell you what I want."
Pivoting to the subject of Ben, my ex, was easier than that of my dad because I was still trying hard to tamp down the too-recent memory of him while I was out with other men. Both the parts of Ben that repulsed me (the relentless veneer, the cabal of New York City private school friends he never outgrew, the foggy intoxication-fueled fighting) and the good-on-paper parts that made me sure no one I could find on an app would ever measure up (the prospect of marrying into a family of Jewish doctors, the summer weekends in East Hampton, the sex that somehow stayed great and perhaps even got better when things between us were bad).
I searched Ross's expression for confirmation, but he just stared at me. Confusion masquerading as intensity, or perhaps the other way around. I clasped his tired face in my hands and looked at him without flinching.
"I'm looking for candor, Ross. Real life. I'm coming to you in a vulnerable moment and asking for your compassion. This is new terrain for me. I'm going to call you next week and we can pick this up where we left off. Are you with me? Can you be candid with me, too, Ross?"
He didn't break eye contact. Not to check and make sure we were stopped in front of the correct apartment, not to acknowledge the driver, who had begun wearily ma'am-ing me about my next destination. I thought maybe he had paused to appreciate the beauty in my humanity, or perhaps he had crossed his own liquor threshold and was calculating a vomit trajectory.
Then he broke his silence to ask me with utmost sincerity: "Who the fuck is 'Ross'?"
Don’t fall.
In teetering heels, I climbed the stairs to my temporary sanctuary, the historic Greenwich Village gold mine where my best friend, Winnie, had graciously loaned me her couch after I found myself without a place to live. My eyelids felt like tiny anvils, and remnants of gin had alchemized to acetone in the back of my throat.
Inside the apartment, I knew I needed to make a plan but also that I wasn't in my right mind to process the chaotic tangle of information I'd been fed through the phone. After turning on the side table lamp, I tucked into the envelope-size kitchen and ran tap water into a Yankee Stadium souvenir cup littered with illustrated championship rings, peeling from age. I broke out what was left of the egg matzo and some rubbery nondairy spread from the impromptu Passover seder we'd hosted a week earlier, willing myself sober.
Winnie heard me knocking around and emerged from her bedroom. "You're back early," she said, despite it being past three in the morning. She waggled her eyebrows with a sly smile. "I'm guessing Raphael was a bit of a quick draw?"
"Raphael!" I cried, slamming down my Yankees cup, sending a torrent of tap water onto the mint tiled floor. "Raph! Fuck!"
"You know what? I don't even want to know," she said, coming toward me, sidestepping the puddle to get to the sink. Winnie was the only person I knew who had one of those elegant little glass bedside carafes and actually used it.
I considered the modes of transportation ahead of me and tried not to think too much about the reason I had to go to New Jersey. I shooed away thoughts of my father, flattened and moving slowly through an MRI. Instead, I asked myself the age-old question: Bus or train? I held off looking at an Uber estimate after a phone notification informed me that my escapade from the Village to Williamsburg and back again had just set me back a cool eighty-seven dollars.
Winnie looked at me expectantly over the lip of her dainty glass as she took long pulls of water, her dark curls tucked back under a silk schmata. She looked pristine and angelic in the dim lighting, eager to absorb all my woe if I was prepared to unleash it. But even in my compromised state, I knew if I told her about the call from Claudia, I would dissolve into tears like a frightened child and lose my logistical focus.
Don't fall.
My father's spill down the steps was just the latest in a series of mishaps draining the consistency-and well-sought-after comfort-from my life. In the last two months, I'd championed, hired, and on-boarded the woman who would replace me as the events director at my dream marketing agency. I'd found someone to take over the remainder of the lease on my apartment. I said my teary goodbyes at the office where I had built my career. That same night, my boyfriend of three years informed me that the West Coast life we'd meticulously plotted was no longer happening. Ben explained it as though it were quite simple: he was still moving to Los Angeles, I was just no longer invited-despite having quit my job and gotten rid of my apartment to make the move. And of course this happened at the Minetta Tavern, where we'd planned a celebratory dinner of hamburgers and champagne. Foolish of him, really. While I don't enjoy crying in public, my aversion to it wouldn't keep me from making a scene.
"I don't understand," I said that night, understanding perfectly. "You're telling me I'm not allowed to come to California?"
"You can do whatever you'd like, Caroline," he said, tipping his glass over his nose and gulping. "If you still want to go to California, I think that's great. But I think it's best if we didn't go together."
I stared down at my hamburger, resenting its presence. I was already nostalgic, wistful to return to the naive ignorance I'd possessed when I'd ordered it. "How long have you been thinking about this?" I asked him without looking up from my plate.
He extended his arm across the table like he was going to grasp my hand, but instead he rested it a safe distance from mine. "Since our last trip to LA," he said finally. "It was such a disaster." I sank into my seat, still mortified thinking about what happened on that trip. "We deserve this chance to start over. You know, make a clean break."
But there could be no clean break for us, not when everything had already become such a mess.
I asked why he'd picked that moment and not, say, a few weeks prior, when I'd given notice and hired a replacement so scrappy and competent my employers actually seemed kind of glad to see me go. He said he hadn't been sure then, but he was now. That didn't stop me from trying to negotiate with him-the little bargaining measure desperate people do when they're being jilted. Trying to convince someone to love you back when they've already made up their mind is like reaching rock bottom and attempting, still, to gnaw through the subfloor.
It didn't work. Did it ever? In my head, I could hear my mother's voice-a sage divorcée-doling out the same kind of advice she'd given to me throughout my twenties. You cannot cajole someone into loving you, Caroline. It doesn't work like that. When Ben left, I knew what he was taking with him: my prospects of moving to a grand Hollywood apartment in the Cecil B. DeMille complex. The financial security I'd been relying on until I found a new job out west. The love and sense of stability I'd found with him. The assuredness that I'd never have to be back in the dating pool again. The Upper West Side doctor parents and their multiple vacation properties I could have been tethered to forever with the simple offer of an emerald-cut diamond ring.
Copyright © 2024 by Courtney Preiss. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
