The Girl Who Would Be King(52)

“No.” I pause, trying to picture my mother’s face. “I think I can understand that. So, is he proud?” I ask. Clark sucks in a breath and blows it out dramatically.

“Jury’s still out,” he says, smiling. I laugh at the lame joke and cover my mouth to hide it. “Yeah, I think he’s probably just proud of me for being his son, you know? He doesn’t actually care much for the city and there’s not much to be proud about in what I’m actually doing,” he admits.

“Why not?”

“Well, I mean, I do well in school, and I got accepted to a good law school, but the internship, it’s nothing much. It’s basically doing everything nobody else wants to: a lot of paper shuffling and low level grunt work. It’s a great learning experience, but I don’t like some the firm’s big corporate clients. I’d rather do more pro bono work, I guess, or maybe be an ADA or something less soulless. Maybe environmental law,” he trails off.

“Is that what your father does?” I ask.

“Yeah, he runs a small practice in Maine, specializes in environmental law. He seems to sleep easy, which I’ve come to see the value in,” he says chuckling lightly.

“What about your mother?”

“She died when I was nine,” he says simply.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, feeling like I’ve shot him in the chest, and that as a freaking orphan I should have known better.

“It’s okay, it was a long time ago,” he says, taking a sip of his water. I don’t ask the next question because I know I wouldn’t want anyone to ask me, but like anyone who has lost someone, he knows the question, knows it’s laying there unasked between us. “It was a car accident,” he says, putting down his glass. I breathe in slowly wondering if maybe a little bit of our twin pain is part of what draws me to him so powerfully.

“Mine too,” I say quietly. He looks up at me, surprised.

“Your mother died in a car accident.” He says quietly.

“Both of my parents,” I say. “When I was six.” It feels almost a relief to say it out loud. In twelve years I haven’t actually said it to anyone.

“Oh, Bonnie, I’m sorry,”

“It’s okay,” I say, swallowing my forced smile. “Like you said, it was a long time ago.” There’s a long, serious pause between us and he suddenly lifts his glass to toast and I raise mine, unsure what we’re toasting to.

“Car accidents,” he says lightly. “Making kids miserable since just about ever.” He smiles clinking his glass against mine. I’m serious for a second, looking at him, studying him, and then we both burst out laughing. I’m laughing so hard I’m crying and people are staring. It feels good to laugh about it. It’s one of those clichés – if you don’t laugh you’ll cry. I never realized how true it was before, but I guess that’s why they’re called clichés. It feels glorious to make light of the tragedy we’ve been carrying around on our backs and I catch my breath and raise my glass again.

“I’ll do you one better,” I say and he smiles and prepares himself for another black toast, “Orphanages – splitting up families since inception,” I say clinking my glass to his and drinking deeply. We both laugh again at the absurdity of it all, and we stop and touch our sides simultaneously.

“Ouch,” Clark winces, and then looks at me more seriously. “Orphanage huh? That must have been rough.”

“Yeah, my brother, Jasper, and I were split up, sent to group homes. There wasn’t any family that could take care of us. I think that was the hardest thing actually. I mean, my parents were dead and I was devastated, but here was this person that was alive and loved me as desperately as I loved him and yet we couldn’t be together.” My words come tumbling out in a rush, surprisingly raw. I can’t help but wonder, who is this amazing person I suddenly feel like talking to. With him I feel like stringing whole sentences together into paragraphs. Bonnie Braverman, the once-mute girl, talking in whole soliloquies.



Sitting across from Clark, I feel that if I can just be with him, I will never have to worry about anything ever again. Something about him makes me feel normal, makes me just like everyone else in the restaurant, the city, the world.

After dinner he walks me home. I don’t want him to, mostly because I don’t want him to see where I live. I don’t have a gift for taking care of myself the way other people seem to – buying towels, or changing dirty sheets, or cooking food and putting leftovers in cute little Tupperware containers for later. It doesn’t come naturally to me and it has never seemed important, until now. Until now, when Clark risks seeing my badly-furnished motel room (which I have painted entirely yellow) and my not even passable homemaking skills. Now, it seems important. I wish more than anything that I could take him back to some cute little East Village apartment, maybe complete with a nice roommate and they can chat while I make tea. As we get closer to my neighborhood he asks me the question I’ve been dreading, the question that might ruin what even I, virgin dater, think was a pretty great first date.