Open: An Autobiography

Besides, everyone around me is getting married. Perry, Philly, J.P. In fact, Philly and J.P.

met their wives together, on the same night. After the Summer of Revenge, it’s the Winter of Marriage.

I ask Perry for advice. We talk for hours in Vegas and on the phone. He leans toward marriage. Brooke is the one, he says. How are you going to do better than a Princeton-educated supermodel? After all, didn’t we fantasize about her years ago? Didn’t he predict that she’d come along? And now here she is - destiny. What’s the problem? He reminds me of Shadowlands. C. S. Lewis doesn’t become fully alive, doesn’t grow up, until he opens himself to love.

Love is how we grow up, the movie says. And as Lewis reminds his students: God wants us to grow up.

Perry says he knows of an excellent jeweler in Los Angeles. The same jeweler Perry used when he got engaged. Set aside the question of whether or not to propose, he says, and just focus for a moment on the ring.

I know the kind of ring Brooke wants - round, Tiffany cut - because she’s told me. Straight out. She’s never shy about sharing her opinions on jewels, clothes, cars, shoes. In fact, the most animated talks we have are about things. We used to talk about our dreams, our childhoods, our feelings. Now we avidly discuss the best sofas, the best stereos, the best cheeseburgers, and while I find such talk interesting, an important aspect of the art of living, I fear Brooke and I put undue emphasis on it.

I gird myself, phone the jeweler and tell her I’m in the market for an engagement ring. The words come out croaky. I feel my heart pound. I ask myself, Shouldn’t this be a joyous moment - one of the great moments of life? Before I can answer, the jeweler is peppering me with her own questions. Size? Carat? Color? Clarity? She keeps talking about clarity, asking me about clarity.

I think: Lady, you’re asking the wrong guy about clarity.

I say: All I know is round, Tiffany cut.

When do you need it?

Soon?

Can do. I think I’ve got just the ring.

Days later, the ring arrives by courier. It’s in a big box. I walk around with it in my pocket for two weeks. The box feels leaden, and dangerous, as do I.

Brooke is away, filming a movie. We talk every night on the phone, and sometimes I cradle the phone with one hand and fondle the ring with the other. She’s in the Carolinas, where it’s bitter cold, but the script calls for the weather to be balmy, so the director forces her and the other actors to suck ice cubes. It keeps their breath from fogging.

Better than licking hands.

She says a few of her lines for me, and we laugh because they sound fake. They sound like lines.

After we hang up I go for a drive, the heater turned up high, the lights of the Strip winking like diamonds. I replay our conversation, and I can’t tell the difference between the lines in her script and the lines we’ve just spoken to each other. I pull the ring box from my coat pocket and open it. The ring catches and reflects the light. I set it on the dashboard.

Clarity.

AS BROOKE WRAPS HER FILM, I conclude a miserable stretch of tennis that has sportswriters openly, sometimes gleefully, saying I’m done. Three slams, they say. That’s far more than we thought he’d win. Brooke says we need to get away. Far away. This time we choose Hawaii. I pack the ring.

My stomach rolls as our plane swoops toward the volcanoes. I gaze at the palm trees, the foaming coastline, the misty rain forests, and think: another island paradise. Why do we always feel compelled to run off to island paradises? It’s as though we have Blue Lagoon Syn-drome. I fantasize about the engine sputtering, the plane spiraling down into the mouth of a volcano. To my chagrin we land safely.

I’ve rented a bungalow at the Mauna Lani resort. Two bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a pool, a full-time chef. Plus, a long stretch of white beach all to ourselves.

We spend the first few days hanging around the bungalow, relaxing by the pool. Brooke’s engrossed in a book about how to be single and happy in your thirties. She holds the book over her face, licking her finger and loudly turning the pages. It doesn’t cross my mind that this might be a pointed hint. Nothing crosses my mind except the proposal I’m about to deliver.

Andre, you seem distracted.

No. I’m here.

Everything all right?

Please leave me alone, I think, I’m trying to decide when and where to propose to you.

I’m like a murderer, plotting, thinking constantly of the time and the place. Except that a murderer has a motive.

On the third night, though we’re planning to eat dinner in the bungalow, I suggest we dress up as if it’s a special occasion. Great idea, Brooke says. She emerges from the bedroom an hour later in a flowing white dress that falls to her ankles. I wear a linen shirt and beige pants, the perfectly wrong outfit, because the pockets of the pants are shallow and the ring box doesn’t fit. I keep my hand over the pocket to hide the bulge.