Brooke is so happy, she has to make sure her feet are touching the ground. Yes, yes, they are; her feet are in the wet sand at the water’s edge. Dru-Ann has asked Brooke to go for a walk, just the two of them. Brooke wishes Caroline were filming them right now; she feels like a character in a movie. The afternoon sun has mellowed and the breeze off the water has picked up; the waves froth at their ankles, and the bottom of Dru-Ann’s ivory caftan is getting damp but she doesn’t seem to care, just like Brooke doesn’t care that her stomach is pooching out because she showed so little restraint at lunch. Brooke and Dru-Ann are both facing forward, which somehow makes it easier to talk. Watching Dru-Ann dress down Charlie was beautiful, nearly arousing.
Now Dru-Ann is saying things like You don’t need to put up with a guy like that, someone who doesn’t respect women, who has an inflated sense of entitlement just because he has a penis, he doesn’t deserve you, Brooke, you are sweet and kind and pretty, there are lots of men out there who would treat you better.
Brooke has doubts about this. She’s fifty years old with no career and a poor self-image. If she leaves Charlie, he’ll find someone else within minutes—men always do—but Brooke will be left to create a profile on a dating app where she’ll meet men old enough to be her grandfather with plasticky-looking dentures and hair growing out of their ears. She’ll give up quickly and either move down to Boca to live with her mother or stay put in the Poet’s Corner house while Charlie shacks up in the Seaport with his new girlfriend (she’ll be named Callie or Brianna and she’ll be either a newscaster or one of the Patriots cheerleaders), and Brooke will have to find a way not to be a burden to Will and Whitney as they finish college and launch their own fabulous lives. Leaving Charlie has never been a realistic option because life without him has always seemed a touch less appealing than life with him.
Except now, on this walk, having what can only be described as a heart-to-heart with Dru-Ann, Brooke starts to see things differently. She’s sorry when they turn around to go back.
“What about you?” Brooke asks. “Do you have a special someone?”
“Ah,” Dru-Ann says. “That’s complicated.”
Everything is complicated; this Brooke has come to understand. But her emotions at this moment are delightfully simple and straightforward. She’s happy! She’s liberated! She pictures Charlie walking dejectedly down the hydrangea-lined driveway in his stupid FREE BRADY T-shirt and all she thinks is Good riddance, don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya, these boots were made for walking and all the other sassy sentiments expressed by people who have finally had enough.
Brooke’s good mood is dampened only a little when they get back to Hollis’s property and see Caroline waiting for them.
“I’d love to borrow Dru-Ann for a minute,” she says. “If that’s okay?”
“Of course,” Brooke says. Even her voice sounds different. Her tone is cool and casual.
There’s plenty of time to relax before the next item on the itinerary, which is predinner cocktails. Brooke decides to lock herself in the Board Room, stretch out on the bed, and make some magic happen.
32. The Shot
“Did something else happen?” Dru-Ann asks Caroline as they walk toward the house. “Am I being called to testify before Congress?”
“No, no,” Caroline says. “I just want to talk to you about your friendship with my mom and film it, if that’s okay?” She leads Dru-Ann inside and down to a home theater in the basement.
“Nobody’s going to see this but us, right?” Dru-Ann says. After watching the video of herself at Gypsy, the last thing she wants to do is sit in front of a camera. Thanks a lot, SexyBexxx. The video probably has a million views by now.
“In theory, this is for my mom’s website,” Caroline says. “But I’m starting to think it might turn into something else? I’m doing an internship with Isaac Opoku—”
“I know his work,” Dru-Ann says. “He was interested in making a film about an Egyptian ultramarathoner I represented.”
“Isaac is a genius,” Caroline says. “He’s the most intelligent, sensitive person I’ve ever met.”
“Uh-oh,” Dru-Ann says. “Sounds like somebody has a crush.”
The word crush irks Caroline; she’s not twelve years old. “I…” Is she really going to spill this? It’s been agonizing keeping it to herself, and Dru-Ann is her godmother. Isn’t this what godmothers are for?
“You… what?” Dru-Ann says, her eyebrows lifting. “You’re getting with Isaac Opoku?”
Caroline deflates a little. She has to use the past tense. “I was,” she says. “We were together for a couple of weeks while his girlfriend was on a modeling job in Sweden.”
“By girlfriend, I assume you mean Sofia Desmione?” Dru-Ann says. “I do read People magazine, you know.”
“Yes, Sofia. When she got back to New York, the affair ended, and I came here.”
“So we’re talking fresh heartbreak,” Dru-Ann says. “You should have told me sooner, sugar.”
“It seemed like you had a lot on your plate.”
“Who, me?” Dru-Ann says and they both laugh.
“Isaac lent me his equipment, including his drone. At first I thought, Whatever, I’ll just get the requisite shots of you guys and the food and the camaraderie—”
“Has there been camaraderie?” Dru-Ann asks, deadpan. She smiles. “I’m kidding.”
“There’s some tension too, I can feel it,” Caroline says. “This weekend is revealing things about my mom that I never knew. So I just want to ask you some questions about your friendship.”
Caroline’s phone starts buzzing but she ignores it. “That I can handle,” Dru-Ann says. She’s feeling calm and present. She’s in a soundproof home theater on Squam Road on the island of Nantucket where the internet can’t find her. She isn’t going to talk about golf or mental health or cancel culture. She’s going to talk about Hollis.
Caroline says, “How did you and my mom become friends?”
There’s a song that Dru-Ann’s male colleagues listened to back in the mid-aughts called “I Love College” by Asher Roth. The song has a distinct white-frat-boy vibe—it’s about drinking, idolizing the basketball stars of the day, and getting girls naked. But Dru-Ann secretly found the song catchy and she certainly agreed with its thesis statement: I wanna go to college for the rest of my life.
Dru-Ann is fresh out of Mother McAuley, an all-girls Catholic school in Chicago. The instant she sets foot on the UNC Chapel Hill campus, she feels like she’s home. She was a basketball star in high school and is a sports geek in general thanks to her dad and three older brothers. She’s knowledgeable on topics from the 1984–1985 Bears season to the depth of the Bulls bench. She’s a Michael Jordan fan, and she doesn’t care if that’s a cliché; she is such a fan that it’s been her dream to attend UNC so that she might walk on the same ground that MJ did.
Her freshman roommate is a white girl named Hollis Shaw from Nantucket, Massachusetts. All Dru-Ann knows of Nantucket is Moby-Dick and the lewd limerick. She has a vague idea that it’s a summer playground for rich people, maybe not so different from Petoskey, Michigan, where Dru-Ann’s parents have a second home on the lake. Hollis is a WASPy name, but instead of being put off by the idea of having some East Coast elite for a roommate, Dru-Ann is intrigued. Dru-Ann is something of a snob; her father is a bigwig at the Merc and her mother is the in-house counsel for Grant Thornton, and they live in an Oak Park home filled with Stickley furniture. Dru-Ann has known about Stickley furniture since she was eight years old.
Dru-Ann’s first impression of Hollis is favorable and she can tell Hollis’s impression of her is as well; there’s a chemistry and an easy agreement about the particulars of the room. Both of Dru-Ann’s parents help her move in, but only Hollis’s father has come and he’s not at all what Dru-Ann expects. In fact, when Dru-Ann first sees Tom Shaw in jeans and a T-shirt advertising a place called Steamboat Pizza, she thinks he’s been sent by maintenance to fix something in the room. He has a thick Boston accent; he shakes hands with both of Dru-Ann’s parents, but he seems very uncomfortable and he asks Hollis three separate times, “All set, then?” He has to hit the road, he says. He’s driving through the night to catch the first ferry back the next day.
Hollis says she’ll walk him back to the van to say goodbye, which makes Dru-Ann think there might be some crying. Dru-Ann’s parting from her parents is unsentimental. The elder Joneses have gone through this three times before with her brothers at Bowling Green, Michigan, and Colgate, respectively. Dru-Ann loves her parents but she’s been ready for college since seventh grade.
When Hollis returns to the room looking a little weepy, Dru-Ann asks her about her mother. “Are your parents divorced, or—”
“No!” Hollis says. She opens the packaging of a set of extra-long twin sheets that Dru-Ann can see came from a place called Ocean State Job Lot. “She’s back at the hotel. My dad is going to pick her up.”
“But she didn’t want to come?” Dru-Ann says, and Hollis shakes her head.
To Caroline, Dru-Ann says, “Your mother and I became real friends at the final bid party for Beta Beta Beta.” (This isn’t the sorority’s real name, but Dru-Ann isn’t about to say the real name on camera; with the luck she’s having, they’ll probably file a lawsuit.)