Briar Chamberlain Character Analysis

With her phone pressed to her face and Briar’s hands in her hair, Emira screamed, “You’re not even a real cop, so you back up, son!” And then she watched his face shift. His eyes said, I see you now. I know exactly who you are, and Emira held her breath as he began to call for backup.

On thick, textured stationery and with dreamy cursive handwriting, Alix asked nicely for the things she wanted, and it became a rare occurrence when she didn’t receive them.

If the decision had been Briar’s, the theme of her party would have been glasses because the toddler savagely wanted glasses, and to touch everyone else’s glasses, and to see how she looked in all of the glasses. But Briar also loved airplanes and pointing at them and the sounds they made, and Alix felt that this, out of all of Briar’s other interests (smelling tea bags, other people’s belly buttons, touching the soft skin on Mama’s earlobe), should be openly encouraged.

In her first week of babysitting for the Chamberlains, Emira took Briar to a painting class. She’d been wearing an oversized knit cardigan, the kind that paint would never come out of, and Alix offered her one of her many white LetHer Speak polos. “I actually have tons of these and you’re the same size as my old interns,” she’d said. “Well, they might be a bit big on you, but you’re welcome to wear one anytime.” This became Emira’s uniform. Three times a week, Alix came downstairs to find Emira slipping a white polo over her head. She hung it up on the coatrack just before she left. And suddenly, as Alix walked through blue ribbons hanging from the balloons above, the tenderness of this tradition made her throat start to close.

As she turned the bowl so that the ribbon faced forward, Alix remembered. Yes. Emira had asked if she could get Briar a fish for her birthday. She’d asked both Alix and Peter days ago. Alix hadn’t considered it would be a real one, because she hadn’t really been listening, but here it was, gold and wiggling.

“Bri, look.” Alix picked up a pink ball from a bin of toys and tossed it down the hall. Briar gasped, overjoyed, and dutifully pumped her arms as she went running after it.

Whenever Alix was afraid that Emira was mad at her, she came back to the same line of thought: Oh God, did she finally see what Peter said on the news? No, she couldn’t have. She’s always like this, right? Emira came upstairs as Alix finished washing her hands.

The reality of how completely different this run-in was from the last fifteen years of Kelley Copeland fantasies came down on Alix and crushed her lungs. She was still eight pounds heavier than she’d been before Catherine. The current state of her home wasn’t the modern, minimalist environment she’d worked so hard to achieve. And there were babies everywhere, not just the sleeping cute kind but Briar with her questions […] Throughout marriage, motherhood, and monumental career changes, Alix had always found herself forming ideal scenarios of how she would see a grown-up Kelley Copeland, or rather, how he’d see her. There were the cliché pipe dreams (seeing him after a particularly good blowout, running into him while wearing heels at the airport), but there were elaborate premises that took Alix entire showers and subway rides to fully flesh out the logistics of.

“You’re not better than anyone,” she said, “when you hang up your own coat and take your plate to the trash. I’ve been those girls helping out tonight. I fucking am those girls helping out tonight, and you’re not making anything easier by giving them less to do. It’s like eating everything on your plate ’cause you think someone else won’t go hungry if you don’t. You’re not helping anyone but yourself.”

Deep into her thirties, Emira would wrestle with what to take from her time at the Chamberlain house. Some days she carried the sweet relief that Briar would learn to become a self-sufficient person. And some days, Emira would carry the dread that if Briar ever struggled to find herself, she’d probably just hire someone to do it for her.

With her phone pressed to her face and Briar’s hands in her hair, Emira screamed, “You’re not even a real cop, so you back up, son!” And then she watched his face shift. His eyes said, I see you now. I know exactly who you are, and Emira held her breath as he began to call for backup.

On thick, textured stationery and with dreamy cursive handwriting, Alix asked nicely for the things she wanted, and it became a rare occurrence when she didn’t receive them.

If the decision had been Briar’s, the theme of her party would have been glasses because the toddler savagely wanted glasses, and to touch everyone else’s glasses, and to see how she looked in all of the glasses. But Briar also loved airplanes and pointing at them and the sounds they made, and Alix felt that this, out of all of Briar’s other interests (smelling tea bags, other people’s belly buttons, touching the soft skin on Mama’s earlobe), should be openly encouraged.

In her first week of babysitting for the Chamberlains, Emira took Briar to a painting class. She’d been wearing an oversized knit cardigan, the kind that paint would never come out of, and Alix offered her one of her many white LetHer Speak polos. “I actually have tons of these and you’re the same size as my old interns,” she’d said. “Well, they might be a bit big on you, but you’re welcome to wear one anytime.” This became Emira’s uniform. Three times a week, Alix came downstairs to find Emira slipping a white polo over her head. She hung it up on the coatrack just before she left. And suddenly, as Alix walked through blue ribbons hanging from the balloons above, the tenderness of this tradition made her throat start to close.

As she turned the bowl so that the ribbon faced forward, Alix remembered. Yes. Emira had asked if she could get Briar a fish for her birthday. She’d asked both Alix and Peter days ago. Alix hadn’t considered it would be a real one, because she hadn’t really been listening, but here it was, gold and wiggling.

“Bri, look.” Alix picked up a pink ball from a bin of toys and tossed it down the hall. Briar gasped, overjoyed, and dutifully pumped her arms as she went running after it.

Whenever Alix was afraid that Emira was mad at her, she came back to the same line of thought: Oh God, did she finally see what Peter said on the news? No, she couldn’t have. She’s always like this, right? Emira came upstairs as Alix finished washing her hands.

The reality of how completely different this run-in was from the last fifteen years of Kelley Copeland fantasies came down on Alix and crushed her lungs. She was still eight pounds heavier than she’d been before Catherine. The current state of her home wasn’t the modern, minimalist environment she’d worked so hard to achieve. And there were babies everywhere, not just the sleeping cute kind but Briar with her questions […] Throughout marriage, motherhood, and monumental career changes, Alix had always found herself forming ideal scenarios of how she would see a grown-up Kelley Copeland, or rather, how he’d see her. There were the cliché pipe dreams (seeing him after a particularly good blowout, running into him while wearing heels at the airport), but there were elaborate premises that took Alix entire showers and subway rides to fully flesh out the logistics of.

“You’re not better than anyone,” she said, “when you hang up your own coat and take your plate to the trash. I’ve been those girls helping out tonight. I fucking am those girls helping out tonight, and you’re not making anything easier by giving them less to do. It’s like eating everything on your plate ’cause you think someone else won’t go hungry if you don’t. You’re not helping anyone but yourself.”

Deep into her thirties, Emira would wrestle with what to take from her time at the Chamberlain house. Some days she carried the sweet relief that Briar would learn to become a self-sufficient person. And some days, Emira would carry the dread that if Briar ever struggled to find herself, she’d probably just hire someone to do it for her.