Andrew

Andrew, Brett Bohlinger’s boyfriend of four years, is presented as a polished, ambitious partner whose desire to be seen as successful shapes both his self-presentation and his expectations of Brett. Their relationship comes under strain as Brett’s grief, inheritance obligations, and new goals draw her toward a life different from the comfortable arrangement Andrew wants to preserve. His private history complicates his affluent image, while their disagreements about work, family, and home make that image a recurring source of tension.

Identity and Background

Andrew initially appears to Brett to belong to old money. His Italian shoes, Swiss watch, and German car suggest inherited affluence, and he says he is from Duxbury, a wealthy Boston suburb. But he evades questions about his childhood, offering only that he has an older sister and that his father owns a small business. Brett finds his reticence frustrating because it leaves her with little sense of his past.

Three months into their relationship, after two bottles of wine and Brett pressing him for an answer, Andrew discloses a less prestigious family history. His father was a cabinetmaker whose ambitions exceeded his achievements; his mother worked behind the deli counter at a Safeway in Duxbury. He is not a rich kid, Brett concludes, but is desperate to be perceived as one. The distinction between his actual background and the image he cultivates gives his carefully chosen clothes and possessions a social purpose: they help him present himself as the man he wants others to believe he is.

Grief and the Demand to Resume Work

After Elizabeth Bohlinger’s funeral, Andrew’s response to Brett’s bereavement differs from his response to her mother’s public mourning. He attends the funeral but cannot clear his schedule for the luncheon because he is in the middle of a trial. Brett measures his absence against that of Elizabeth’s lawyer, who had known her for only sixteen weeks yet attended both events. She recognizes that Andrew did break away for the funeral, but the comparison still sharpens her hurt: he had known Elizabeth for four years.

When Brett is fired and spends two days sleeping, waking, and crying, Andrew’s sympathy gives way to impatience. Dressed for work, he sits on the edge of their bed, smooths her tangled hair, and tells her that she must recover and take up the responsibilities of running the company. He interprets her absence from work as intimidation by her promotion rather than as grief, and dismisses her former marketing position as a job in which she could slack off. Brett hears not encouragement but a failure to grasp what she has lost and what she is enduring. His insistence that she get out of bed and run the company leaves her feeling both unemployed and afraid of what he will think of her.

That pressure is part of a broader mismatch in how they understand Brett’s life-list challenge. Andrew objects to her undertaking a set of goals that she must complete by the following September, arguing that she should choose what she wants rather than follow what Elizabeth wanted for her. He acknowledges that he did not know Brett when she was fourteen, when she aspired to teach and have children, and instead values the accomplished woman he knows—or the woman he imagines she will become when she lands another major position. His argument is not simply that the goals are difficult: he measures them against the life he believes the couple already has.

Career, Money, and Competing Expectations

Andrew’s investment in Brett’s career becomes explicit when he asks her to consider bringing him into Bohlinger Cosmetics. Brett is uneasy about the request. For her, the family company is bound up with Elizabeth’s wishes and with the difficult responsibilities she has inherited; for Andrew, it is also a possible job. His request places his professional ambition inside Brett’s family obligation, making it harder for her to distinguish support for her from opportunity for himself.

The dispute intensifies when Brett asks whether his willingness to help her is connected to money. Andrew angrily rejects the implication that he is pursuing her inheritance, saying that he is the one begging for work. He points to his agreement to her requests concerning a dog and a teaching job, and says that he is asking for a position in the family business with an appropriate salary. Brett privately notes that he is asking for two things, not one. She also concedes that, however reluctantly, he has agreed to accommodate several of her choices. The scene leaves their conflict unresolved: his willingness to make concessions does not make Brett feel satisfied, while his insistence on a job and salary makes his request difficult for her to separate from his own needs.

The Life Andrew Wants

Andrew describes their existing relationship as good despite the stress of their careers. He values a life without the added demands of children, a dog, a horse, and social obligations, and believes Brett has been content with that arrangement too. He recalls that she had once described wanting a child, singular, rather than a larger family. When he turns her goals into a question of whether she truly wants to alter their life together, Brett feels unable to answer honestly without risking the relationship.

Their future plans surface in smaller domestic disagreements as well. While Brett is making Thanksgiving plans, Andrew finds her asleep at the kitchen table over a dinner menu. Later, as they prepare to drive to Elizabeth’s brownstone for the holiday, he objects to holding dinner there when it would be easier at his loft. The car skids on ice as they leave the garage, giving the argument an immediate physical jolt. Brett notices that Andrew does not call the loft their home: it is his home, not theirs. Elizabeth’s brownstone, by contrast, has become the place that feels like home to Brett. The disagreement thus exposes more than a preference about where to eat; it reveals an imbalance in their shared domestic life.

When Andrew says that traveling to Boston for Thanksgiving would be a hassle, Brett asks whether he would feel the same way when their children invited them to visit. His response, which recalls her saying she wanted only one child, underscores how differently the two of them imagine family obligations. Andrew’s preferred future is not presented as hostile to Brett, but as one he assumes she shares: careers, a settled couple’s life, and as few new demands as possible. Brett’s questions increasingly test whether that assumption is true.

The Loft and the Relationship’s Unraveling

The loft’s ownership becomes most visible when Brett begins moving her belongings out. She arrives with empty boxes while Andrew is at work and hurries upstairs, wanting to leave before he comes home. She packs without sorting or folding, clears the armoire and closet, and carries four boxes at a time to her car. The scale of what she removes makes the accumulated life in the loft concrete: clothing, makeup, lotions, hair products, and the furniture and furnishings she had bought while living there.

Brett had paid half the mortgage and utilities and purchased major pieces, including the dining table, sofa and love seat, two high-definition televisions, and a bedroom set. She remembers buying a maple sleigh bed, a chest of drawers, two bedside tables, and the antique armoire she had said she could not live without. Yet the loft remained Andrew’s, and she wonders whether she had been trying to fill it with pieces of herself to make it feel like home. By eight o’clock she has removed her belongings. The contrast between her substantial material investment and her lack of ownership gives her departure a particular force: the shared life she had furnished could never quite become a place that belonged to both of them.

Narrative Role

Andrew’s character is developed through the gap between his assurances and the life he expects Brett to keep. He attends Elizabeth’s funeral but misses the luncheon; he says Brett should choose for herself but frames her choices against the couple’s established comforts; he agrees to several of her requests while also seeking a job in her family’s company. These tensions prevent his support from appearing wholly absent or wholly sufficient. As Brett’s goals require her to reconsider work, parenthood, and home, Andrew becomes the intimate measure of what she may have to give up in order to pursue them. The loft’s eventual emptying makes that conflict visible in objects: Brett had bought and carried into the space many signs of a shared home, but the place remained his.