Page 59 of Falls From Grace
“You get more beautiful every time I see you, Brynn Marshall.” She reached up and patted Brynn’s cheek.
“Grandma, are you okay standing up so long?” interrupted Anna. “Your hip-”
“My hip is healed quite nicely, thank you, Anna.” Thea’s voice was steely. She never did like being reminded of any weakness. Anna sat down, red blooming on her cheeks. “Come and sit with me, my darling, and tell me all about your life,” she said to Brynn, and Brynn sat, her mother handing her an elegant crystal glass of eggnog, mouthing non-alcoholic as she walked away. Brynn stared. It was the first time her mother had acknowledged Brynn’s alcoholism since their phone call in Nashville.
Away from the slowly resumed chatter of the rest of the family as the kids ran riot, Brynn gave her stately grandmother an edited version of the last year of her life.
“Well,” said Thea as she rambled to a close. “You have been having an adventure. What do you plan to do next?”
“I don’t know,” Brynn said awkwardly. “I guess I’m going to find another job, see where I land.”
“See where you land?” The steely tone returned. “That attitude will get you nowhere. If it’s music you want to be doing, then you must work at it. It seems you’ve already been gifted a head start and if you don’t follow it up with serious effort, you’ll be a fool.”
Brynn blinked.
“You don’t think it would be a waste of time?”
“Of course not. If you’re talented and driven, then you will succeed,” she said declaratively, as if success in the music industry was ever that simple.
“I just figured that if it wasn’t medicine…”
“You think I believe anything other than a career in medicine would be a waste of time?” Her grandmother sounded surprised, as if that assumption wasn’t the bedrock of the entire family. Brynn raised her eyebrows at the old woman and nodded. “Medicine is a wonderful career - a calling, in fact - for those that actually want it.” Thea looked at her pointedly. “But all I’ve ever wanted for you is to find your own calling.”
“Grandma, forgive me, seriously,” Brynn couldn’t cope with this rewriting of history, “but you didn’t exactly hide your disappointment when I quit med school. The whole family was horrified.”
“I was disappointed with you, that’s true.” Thea glared at her. “But I was disappointed that you’d gone to damned med school in the first place when it was suddenly clear it was the last thing you’d ever wanted. What on earth were you thinking?”
Brynn gaped.
“I was thinking this family gave me no choice,” she said, an old anger rising within her.
“So you just capitulated to what your parents wanted? To what I wanted? Were you not an adult who could make a rational choice? Where was your backbone, young lady?”
“Backbone?” she snapped. “I was trying to do the right thing. I wanted to make you all happy!”
“I will be happy when you stand up on your own two feet and say this is what I want, despite all the opposition, and then damn well do it! That’s what I did and I would a thousand times rather that be the legacy I leave my grandchildren than bloody medicine!”
Brynn was aware the room had fallen silent, as everyone gave up pretending not to listen in on the heated conversation.
“Mother,” her dad interjected. “Do you think it’s wise to let yourself get worked up? Your heart-”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Phillip, calm yourself. I’m not about to fall into cardiac arrest because I’m debating my favorite grandchild.” Her voice was haughty. “Let me have this one joy instead of sitting around being stuffy and boring for the entire Christmas season.”
Her father fell quiet. Thea looked her in the eye, challenge sparking off of her.
“So, Brynn, if I live to see you next Christmas, who am I going to see? A scared girl in her thirties who’s just seeing where they’ll land or a goddamned rock star?”
That evening, after everyone had gone to bed, Brynn sat out in the cool night air in her parent’s garden. She remembered when this - Palo Alto in winter - had been her idea of cold.
She thought about seeing snow for the first time in Vermont and wondered how Savannah and Tucker’s Christmas was going. They’d planned to spend the holiday together, before their little bubble had been horribly burst, and Brynn grieved the cozy day they’d have created. She hoped the band were making up for it, gathering around her, filling her world with raucous dinner parties, cheer and laughter. She hoped Tucker was excited about Santa and that he’d let his mother sleep in past five a.m.
In her longing for the two people she missed the most, she returned to the daydream that had been keeping her going since she’d left them: imagining she’d gone to Vermont with Noah and done things right. Maybe they’d never lied in the first place, or maybe they’d fessed up in the first week. There were so many things she would have done differently.
She’d have told Savannah how damn hot she looked behind a guitar, just for a start. She’d have let her gaze linger as Savannah had sat on her living room floor, pizza in hand, gesticulating wildly and teaching her to love country music. She’d have returned that burning gaze that day in the band room, not let go when Savannah took her hand beneath the freezing, rainy window. She’d have kissed her for the first time on one of their walks in the forest, tilting Savannah’s face up to her own and letting all the feelings for her she’d held back spill out in her eyes before she kissed her warm mouth.
Perhaps if she had then that day in Burlington with the snow falling, Tucker’s small hand in hers, she could have told Savannah - as she stood there, snowflakes sparkling in her hair and eyelashes - that she was the most beautiful sight Brynn had ever seen in her life. That she never wanted to stop looking at her.
She brushed back a tear. It was all pointless, magical thinking. She could not undo what she had done. Savannah had been perfectly clear: what she wanted was for Brynn to leave her alone. And so she would. But somehow, despite this, she found that here, in the quiet darkness on Christmas Eve, she could not quite bring herself to give up hope.
