Hope Street (3 page)

There was photo after photo—Ellie and Curt outside Sayles Hall, Ellie and Curt in the Hope Street apartment he’d shared with Steve Rogers, Ellie and Curt and a bunch of other people at Narragansett Beach. Ellie sitting on Curt’s lap at some rowdy party, with other faces crowding the frame and plastic beer cups scattered about. Ellie and Curt at the big campus dance before his graduation, her hair long and silky, his barely tamed, and both of them dressed in the nicest clothes they owned, she in a flowing Indian-print dress with little mirrors stitched into the fabric and he in a pair of slightly wrinkled khaki trousers and a Harris-tweed blazer. Ellie and Curt at his graduation, a year before hers, Curt in his brown academic robe and Ellie in a cotton sundress, holding a bouquet of roses. He’d been the graduate, but he’d given her those flowers that day. He’d also asked her to marry him.

“Jesus. Were we ever that young?” Curt murmured.

The tears she’d anticipated arrived in a rush. Yes, they’d been that young. They’d been that naive. They’d believed that nothing bad could ever happen to them, nothing so terrible it could break them apart. Nothing so dreadful their love wouldn’t be enough to overcome it. They’d honestly believed that.

The screen blurred and she closed her eyes. The bathroom—she had to get to that box of tissues if she didn’t want to flood the bed with her tears.

Before she could swing her legs over the side of the mattress, it shifted under her. Curt climbed on beside her, stuffed his linen handkerchief into her hand and looped his arm around her.

She sagged against him, resting her cheek against the soft, warm cotton of his shirt, and sobbed for everything they’d lost—their love, their marriage, their dreams of growing old together. Their trust. Their friendship. Their son.

It was all gone. But at least for this one moment, in this room so far from the reality they lived every day, so far from a world full of awful things, Ellie discovered that Curt’s shoulders were still sturdy enough to lean on.

Thirty years earlier

H
E FOUND HER SITTING
all alone on the slate steps outside Faunce House. Night had fallen on the campus, a crisp, clear October evening lit by an amber harvest moon. Heading back from the Rock, as Brown University’s Rockefeller Library was affectionately known, he was strolling across the green toward Faunce—a dowdy block-long building that housed lounges, snack bars and vending machines, along with a theater and the campus post office—and debating with himself about whether to buy something to eat. He and Steve had food in their apartment, but for some reason their fridge never seemed to contain exactly the thing he had a hankering for.

Tonight he was in the mood for a salty snack. Potato chips, corn chips, pretzels, something he could crunch with his teeth. Whatever edibles he might exhume from the dark recesses of their kitchen would likely be soggy or stale. And he didn’t feel like trekking to the supermarket. Faunce was so much closer.

His hunger for chips went forgotten when he spotted Ellie
Brennan seated outside the building. He knew her because Steve was going with her roommate Anna, which meant their social circles frequently intersected. Ellie was dating a long-haired, artsy-fartsy type. What was his name? Curt had met him at a couple of parties. The guy was thin and intense, with hair longer than Ellie’s.

She was alone now, though. More than alone, she was
alone.
She looked abandoned, forlorn, her straight brown hair drooping into her face, her elbows propped on her knees and her chin resting in her cupped hands. Her blue jeans were worn white along her thighs, and she had a thick brown-and-white scarf wrapped around her neck. Next to her on the steps sat a bulky sack of a purse made of a bright red fabric.

Sad as she seemed, she was strikingly pretty. Curt had noticed her beauty the first time she’d accompanied Anna to the apartment, and every time he’d seen her since then. But Steve had alerted him to the fact that she wasn’t available, and Curt respected that kind of thing. He didn’t like guys trying to poach on his territory, and he sure wasn’t going to poach on anyone else’s. Even if the guy had stringy black hair and a snooty way of talking.

Asking her if everything was all right wouldn’t qualify as poaching, though. It was simply being considerate. She seemed distraught, and ignoring her under the circumstances would be rude.

“Ellie?” he called out as he strode over the grass to the steps.

She glanced up and her eyes focused on him. A feeble smile curved her lips. “Hi, Curt.”

He drew to a halt in front of her, then hunkered down. “You okay?”

“Oh, I’m just great,” she said in a wobbly voice.

“You don’t look so great,” he argued. “I mean, if it’s none of
my business, say so, but you look…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. If he told her she looked terrible, she’d be insulted. Could he say she looked beautiful and terrible at the same time?

She dropped the phony smile and sighed. “Apparently, according to people who supposedly love me, I’m the world’s biggest loser.”

Curt swore softly. “Whoever told you that doesn’t love you.”

“Whoever told me that may or may not love me, but they’ve got their own ideas about who I am and what I should do. And go ahead, sue me, but I think I know myself better than they know me.”

She was being cryptic, but she wasn’t telling him to go away. He sensed that she wanted to talk, maybe even needed to, and he was all done studying for the night. “You want to go get something to drink?” he asked.

“I’m only twenty,” she said. “Unless you’ve got a stash of liquor somewhere, I can’t drink.”

“I’ve got a stash,” he informed her. “Come on.” He straightened, then extended his hand. She took it and let him hoist her to her feet. As soon as he let go, she slung her purse strap over her shoulder and fell into step next to him.

They walked in and out of the round blotches of light shed by the lamps that stood along the walkways crisscrossing the campus green. Ellie didn’t speak as they strolled off the campus onto Thayer Street and past it to Hope Street, where Curt lived. Although he would never publicly admit to such a corny notion, he loved living on a street called Hope. Brown University’s neighborhood, the east side of Providence, was full of streets with inspiring names: Hope Street, Benefit Street, Benevolent Street, Power Street, Prospect Street, even Angell Street, which was probably named after a person, with that
extra
L
stuck on, but Curt liked to believe it was named after a heavenly creature. He’d grown up in Manhattan, where roads had names like Third Avenue and East 65th Street. Hope Street sounded…hopeful.

The apartment he shared with Steve wasn’t quite as auspicious as its address implied. It occupied the top floor of a ramshackle three-story walk-up with paint chipping from the clapboards and ratty old furniture sitting on the porches that abutted each level in front. The place was overpriced because its tenants were all Brown students and the landlord clearly felt justified in gouging them. But Curt and Steve had the best of the three apartments on the third floor—the front apartment, with access to a porch. The living room and kitchen might be dreary, the two bedrooms not much bigger than coffins, heat sporadic and air-conditioning nonexistent, but they did have that porch.

The porch was where he led Ellie, after a quick detour into the kitchen to grab a bottle of bourbon and a couple of mismatched, but clean, glasses. The bourbon was one of his first liquor purchases since he’d turned twenty-one a few weeks after arriving on campus at the start of this, his senior, year. In fact, the party he and Steve had thrown to celebrate Curt’s arrival into adulthood might have been the last time he’d seen Ellie. They’d had maybe forty people crammed into the apartment, but he’d remembered she was there—with Stringy-Hair.

Curt hadn’t paid them much attention. The Lennox sisters had been all over him that evening, arguing over who was going to win the privilege of taking the birthday boy to bed. Yes, that had been a fine night…and as he recalled, Ellie Brennan hadn’t been an essential part of it.

But Stringy-Hair wasn’t present now, nor were the Lennox sisters. For some reason, he believed that cheering Ellie Brennan
up was imperative. A little bourbon, a little company, a sympathetic ear and the cool autumn air on the porch overlooking Hope Street…Maybe he could pull it off.

They settled on an overstuffed sofa on the porch. It smelled only slightly mildewy; the porch’s overhang protected it from rain and snow, and it was much more comfortable than plastic furniture would have been. Curt filled the two glasses with a couple of inches of Wild Turkey and handed one glass to Ellie. She took a tiny sip, winced and then snuggled into the sofa’s puffy upholstery.

“So,” Curt said, “what jackass called you a loser?”

“My parents,” she said. “Not in so many words, of course. But they did, and my advisor did, and Martin did.”

Martin.
Right, that was Stringy-Hair’s name. “And what led them to this ridiculous assessment?”

His academic phrasing sparked a laugh from her. “I told them I wanted to be a nurse.”

“A nurse.” Curt pretended to mull this over. “Oh, yeah. There’s a real loser career. I hate nurses. They contribute absolutely nothing to society. My greatest fear is that I might someday have kids who want to grow up to be nurses.”

She laughed again. He liked the sound of her laughter, especially since she’d been so glum when he’d found her. But he wasn’t just trying to make her laugh, even if that had been his primary goal when he’d brought her here. He really was stumped about how anyone could possibly find Ellie’s choice of career objectionable.

She solved that mystery for him. “Everyone assumed I was going to medical school. I’m the first person in my family to go to college, Curt. My parents pinned a lot of dreams on me. My dad works for the postal service. My mom does part-time sec
retarial work. And here I am, their firstborn child, going to an Ivy League university. How could I possibly become a
nurse? I
was supposed to be a doctor.”

“And you don’t want to be a doctor?”

“I’ve thought about it,” she said, then took another sip of bourbon. She didn’t wince this time. “My advisor wanted to get me into a special program that would lead directly into Brown Medical School. He said I had the grades for it. I just don’t have…” She considered her words, then shook her head. “I was going to say I don’t have the ambition. But I
am
ambitious. I want to be a nurse. I want to be a terrific nurse. I just don’t want to be a doctor.”

“Any particular reason?” Curt asked. “They’re both healing professions. Either way, you’d work in a hospital and have one of those stethoscope things looped around your neck. So what’s the difference—besides a lot more years of schooling?”

“Doctors treat diseases. I want to treat people.” She drank a little more, sank deeper into the sofa and propped her legs up on the porch railing. Her hair spilled around her shoulders. Light from a street lamp below them painted intriguing shadows over her face. “I’ve been doing volunteer work at Women & Infants’ Hospital downtown, and I just…I don’t know. I feel such an affinity for the nurses. The doctors sweep in, examine a patient, make a few pronouncements and sweep out. The nurses stick around and make the patients feel better, and bolster their spirits. That’s what I want to do. I want to make patients feel better.”

Curt twisted to look at her. Her expression was earnest, intense. “That sounds great. I don’t see how anyone could call you a loser for wanting that.”

“I’m not going to be Dr. Brennan. That’s breaking my parents’ hearts. I’m going to wind up being a lowly nurse. As far as they’re concerned, it’s a disaster.
I’m
a disaster.”

“There’s nothing lowly about becoming a nurse. And for God’s sake, Ellie, you aren’t a disaster. Anyone who says you’re a disaster is an idiot.”

“Even my advisor?”

“No. He’s an asshole.” Curt tucked his thumb under her chin and tilted her face so they were looking directly at each other. He’d never before realized how large her eyes were. They seemed as big as Oreo cookies, and every bit as dark and deliciously sweet. “Listen to me, Ellie. If becoming a nurse is your calling, you should become a nurse.”

She took a moment to absorb his words. “You’re right, Curt. It’s my calling.” She drank a little more. “Anna says you’re going to law school.”

“Assuming I get accepted into one, yeah.”

“Is that your calling? Or do you just want to be a lawyer to get rich?”

He grinned. He was already rich, at least by birth. Unlike Ellie, he was not the first person from his family to go to college. At least six other Frosts had graduated from Brown over the past century, and several—including his father—had become lawyers. But Curt didn’t want to attend law school to follow in his father’s footsteps. It was more in spite of his father that he wanted to go. His father worked in corporate law. Curt was more interested in the drama, the arguments, the challenges of litigation. Figuring out how the law worked was like solving riddles and brainteasers and intense puzzles. Whenever he read law cases or followed a local trial, his mind sang.

“Rich is nice,” he conceded, “but yeah, I think it’s my calling.”

“Have you sent your applications out yet?”

“Back in September.”

“You seem so calm. Aren’t you nervous about it?”

“I’ll get in somewhere,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too cocky. He wouldn’t even need his alumni connections to get into a good law school. His grades were solid and he’d gotten a stratospherically high score on the LSAT exam. He’d also done volunteer work at a legal-aid clinic. Surely at least one law school out of the six he’d applied to would consider him worthy.

“You’re so confident,” she said, a simple observation. “If I were you, I’d be a basket case by now.”

“If you were me, you’d have my personality,” Curt pointed out. “I’m never a basket case. Look at me—nerves of steel.” He held one hand out in front of him so she could see how steady his fingers were.

She laughed again. “I’m glad you found me over at Faunce House,” she said. “I’m feeling a lot better already.”

“Must be the bourbon,” he said, adding a little more to their glasses. He wasn’t sure what her tolerance for liquor was, but his purpose wasn’t to get her drunk. Just to improve her spirits. Tonight, improving her spirits was his calling.

Not that he was responsible for her or anything. They were two people tossing back a few. Two friends, nothing more. She wasn’t available.

Except that Stringy-Hair—Martin—thought she was a loser. “So…what’s the deal with your boyfriend? He thinks you should be a doctor?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Ellie muttered, her smile vanishing and her face receding into the shadows again. “But, yes, he thinks I should be a doctor.”

“Not to judge a book by its cover, but he doesn’t really seem the type who would care.” Curt wasn’t the most clean-cut guy around—like Ellie, he was wearing jeans that featured fraying hems and a few patches, and his hair was long enough to cause
his parents to sentence him to hard time in a barber’s chair whenever he went home—but compared with Martin, Curt could pass for a Republican. “I don’t know the guy, but he looks like the sort of person who’d think becoming a doctor was selling out.”

“Martin is an artist,” Ellie said dryly. “He makes video installments. Vidiot installments, I call them. But anyway, okay, they’re artistic. He was figuring I’d become a doctor and make lots of money so he could afford to make his vidiot installments and still enjoy the finer things in life.”

“He was expecting you to support him?”

“Hey, I’m a proud feminist. I have no problem with supporting a man.”

“I like the sound of that,” Curt joked.

She plowed ahead, undeterred. “What I
do
have a problem with is some artist who expects me to pursue a career I don’t want just so he can do what
he
wants. I keep telling him to take some education courses so he can be an art teacher while he does vidiot stuff. Or at the very least learn how to type so he can work in an office. It’s one thing to support an artist, and another to support a freeloader. And you know, nurses make decent money. I could support him as a nurse, but that’s not good enough for him. He wants me to be a doctor and rake in tons of money.”