Noah introduced me to my last interviewer of the day, a partner named Rosalyn Ford. Introducing the female candidates to a successful female partner was a trick the big firms used that I remembered from interviewing the first time around (“This firm is great for women, we’ll prove it to you by dangling a female partner in front of you!”), but I still appreciated the effort.

“Brooke Miller,” Rosalyn said as we shook hands and she helped me set my crutches next to my seat. “It can’t be easy running around Manhattan with these.”

“No, it’s not,” I said with a smile, noticing a picture on her desk of her and two toddlers.

“Now that I work here I actually get to see those little guys,” she said, catching me looking at the photo. I smiled back at her. “But then again, my kids stay up until midnight.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to formulate a response.

“I’m kidding,” she said. “Only kidding.” She told me a bit about herself and her family and how different her life had become since leaving big-firm life. We both agreed that the big-firm lifestyle could be punishing, though I was cautious in my answers to let her know that I was not opposed to working hard when circumstances called for it.

“So, what attracted you to Gilson Hecht?” she asked. “Actually, no, that’s a stupid question. I was seduced by the big-firm thing, too, right out of law school. It’s hard not to be, isn’t it? The offices are beautiful and state of the art, your clients are all famous and world-renowned brands, your cases are always in the paper, you have unlimited resources at your fingertips, and they pay you more than you really deserve your first year out of law school.” I couldn’t help but smile in response. She put it so succinctly, but she was right. Rosalyn reminded me of the sort of person I’d grown up with, down-to-earth and without airs, and I found her easy to be around. “And don’t you love saying that you work at Gilson Hecht?” she asked. I was slightly embarrassed by the question because the fact was that I had loved saying that I worked there, and somehow that now seemed silly.

Rosalyn and I talked a lot about why I wanted to leave Gilson Hecht and her own decision to leave a big firm. She told me about the types of cases she was working on and the types of cases that I could hope to work on. As the interview wound down, she summed it up for me: “Offices aren’t as fancy and the cases aren’t as sexy, but you’ll get better hours, and better experience. I’m happy I came here and I think that you will be, too.”

I was sold. Within weeks, I was on my way to SGR. They didn’t offer the big firm salary, but they did offer more substance, which seemed like an excellent trade-off.

I was off crutches by the time I gave my notice at Gilson Hecht and then spent the following two weeks wrapping things up on all of my active cases. The Healthy Foods case was wrapping itself up, actually, thanks to a successful survey Jack had crafted that showed that real consumers were not actually confused into thinking that Healthy Foods coffee was healthy, as the lawsuit claimed. The case would be disappearing in no time, due to Jack’s good work.

It took me most of the two weeks just to clean out my office, throwing out some things and giving away others. It was a long-standing Gilson Hecht tradition that as an associate left, that associate would give away most of his or her things to those he or she left behind. A changing of the guards of sorts. I had quite a few things on my own desk that had been handed down to me from more senior associates whom I’d looked up to before they’d left themselves.

I had Stephanie Paul’s old Gilson Hecht mug from before Trattner had become a named partner — a collector’s item for sure. I also had Bernard Mitnick’s old Etch A Sketch that he used to keep on top of his computer, still with the poorly drawn picture of a bird (a “free” bird) that he’d drawn for me on his way out. I took those with me.

I gave away my own Gilson Hecht mug that I’d received the first day I came to the firm as a summer associate and the stress ball that used to sit at the edge of my desk. I hoped that I wouldn’t need a stress ball at my new firm. I put my take-out menu collection into a legal folder and gave it to the first-year associate I was assigned to advise. I told her who to ask for at each place, along with what to order and what to avoid.

Vanessa came in and took all of my office supplies, from the desk calendar down to the paper clips, which she claimed were in much better condition than her own (something about my not using my stapler as much as she did — I was pretty sure it was a not-so-subtle dig at my work ethic, but I let it slide). She also dragged out my two visitor’s chairs. They were chocolate-brown distressed leather, whereas most of the associates all had the same standard fabric run-of-the-mill doctor’s waiting-room chairs in their offices. I had gotten them when I was a first-year associate — stolen them really — from the office of a recently disbarred partner. I’d felt it only fair that I have first dibs on his office furniture — I’d been working on a case for him at the time, and had been the first to know of his impending disbarment. I felt Gilson Hecht owed me something for the pain and suffering I endured from having watched a partner being taken out of the office in handcuffs right in the middle of a meeting.

I shuffled through my top desk drawer for more things to throw away or give away when I came upon the faux engagement ring Jack had bought me. It still shone brightly with its tiny fake baguettes and fake platinum band. I picked it up and looked at it for a moment just as Sherry Lee, one of my favorite first-year associates, came into my office.

“I knew it was true!” she said, walking into my office and sitting down on my empty credenza. She crossed her slim legs and I remembered how Vanessa and I used to get dressed up and wear skirts when we were first years.

“What was true?” I asked.

“That you got engaged to Douglas in L.A.! It’s why you quit, isn’t it? Let me see the ring!” Sherry said, leaning over my desk.

“This isn’t the ring,” I explained. “I didn’t get engaged to Douglas. We’re not together anymore.”

“Then what’s that in your hand?” she asked me.

“This?” I asked, looking at the ring. “This is nothing.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry. Well, then, I’ll see you at your going-away party tomorrow night.”

I smiled at her as she walked out. I turned the ring over and over in my hands, unsure of what to do with it. I couldn’t throw it out and I most certainly couldn’t give it away. I turned it over and over again, remembering how much fun Jack and I had had together on the day that he’d bought it for me.

I put the ring into an interoffice envelope and put it in my Out box.

29

I didn’t even know I was going to do it when I walked into the place, but the moment I got there, something overcame me and I just knew that the time was right. Something was different — somehow I was different — and I decided all at once.

“I usually don’t recommend doing this after you’ve had a traumatic situation,” Starleen said.

“I haven’t had a traumatic situation,” I said simply.

“Let’s see,” she said, “Douglas broke up with you and threw you out of your apartment after proposing to some bimbo, which left you dateless for Trip’s wedding. Then, you realized you were in love with your best friend, but Douglas came back and ruined that, too. And now, you’re about to start a new job. You’re right, Brooke, that’s no stress at all.”

“Do it,” I said, looking at myself in the mirror. “I’m ready.”

“After you do this,” she said, “you can’t just go back, you know.”

Actually, you could. As I walked into the hair salon that day, there was a huge sign advertising a summer special on hair extensions. You could cut all of your hair off one day, and then return to the salon the very next day and have extensions put in that would make your hair the exact same length that it had been. But that didn’t matter. I wouldn’t need to go back.

“Cut it all off,” I said to Starleen, who had been my hairstylist for the last ten years. When I’d first started seeing her, she’d been a mere assistant to the namesake of the salon (read: charged really cheap rates), but she had worked her way up to become a senior stylist (read: so expensive that I’m actually embarrassed to admit the price). She’d seen me through Trip and Douglas and about a million other bad dates in between. So, I could understand her apprehension to change my style so drastically after such a long time.

“Here goes,” she said, running a comb through my long wet locks and making the first cut.

I watched the first piece fall to the ground and felt a tear come to my eye. It wasn’t so much that I was sad — I cried often enough to know the difference between cries — it was just a recognition of how hard it was to cut away a piece of yourself. A piece of yourself that has been there since you were just a kid. Something that’s been with you for more of your life than it hasn’t.

But maybe change is good. It certainly felt good to go out and get a new job, and I was excited about my new opportunity and the thought that it was up to me to make something of it. By letting go of what I thought I’d wanted, I had found an even better job than the one that I’d had, just as I’d recently found a new apartment that was even better than the one in which I’d lived with Douglas. I just knew that the new job was only the beginning of more new good things to come for me.

“I can stop right now,” Starleen said, watching me looking down at my locks of hair in the mirror.