Trophy Life

by Lea Geller

  “Jack wants to tell you the full story himself,” he said quickly, rushing to the end of the sentence.

  “What?”

  “Jack. He’s here. He wants to talk to you.”

  I heard some shuffling, and then I heard Jack.

  “Agnes?” He sounded tired, raspy.

  When I heard his voice, I realized that there was a piece of me that hadn’t been sure I’d ever hear it again. I closed my eyes and let the relief wash over me.

  “Yes,” I said, the word catching in my throat.

  “I’m sorry this is happening,” he said. “I’m sorry I let you down.”

  “Why?” I asked, because really, I could only get out one word at a time.

  “Why?”

  “Yes. Why are you hiding from me? Why are you doing this?”

  “I’m embarrassed,” he said. “I told you I’d take care of you, and I don’t want to see you until I’ve made this right.”

  “Bullshit,” I said, surprising myself. I looked around, as if the person who said that word was not me but another more assertive person, possibly standing behind me.

  “What?” he asked, sounding as surprised as I was.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on getting the words out. “I don’t know why, but I find it really hard to believe that you’re nowhere to be found, or at least nowhere that I can see, just because you’re ashamed.”

  He paused for a few long seconds. “Fine,” he finally said. “You’re right. People may be looking for me. I’m calling to tell you that you need to get out of town.”

  Bolting off the bench as if it were suddenly on fire, I heard myself screaming into the phone, “Out of town? What the hell are you talking about? To where? I don’t have another town to go to.” Grace started to cry. I reached down and lifted her out of the stroller.

  “Agnes . . .”

  “Am I even safe?” I shouted, quickly looking around, although I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. “Is Grace safe?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You are safe. For now. It’s not really about safety. Things could get ugly here, and the house is about to go. You need to leave town.”

  “This is crazy,” I said, jiggling Grace on my hip. “I can’t hear this right now.” Then I did something I’d never done before. I hung up on Jack. I stared at my phone and then threw it in my bag. Seconds later, I fished it out and tried calling him back, but I got no answer.

  Grace stopped crying, but she refused to go back in the stroller, making herself rigid whenever I tried to fold her into the seat. I had no idea how Alma did this, so I carried her in one arm and pushed the stroller with the other.

  I walked in the front door to find Sondra and Alma in a rare moment of concert. They both looked up at me.

  “Agnes,” Sondra began. “You find Mr. Jack?”

  Jack had gone missing on Tuesday. It was now Thursday afternoon. The people who presumably had been hired to look after me were looking to me for answers. The man who’d promised to look after me so that I never had to worry about a single thing had just told me I needed to get out of town.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I began. “Jack is gone, and we have no money. I’m scared, and after this week, I don’t even know how I can pay you or where I will be living.”

  Sondra blinked. “There,” I said, handing Grace to Alma. “Now you know as much as I do.”

  -8-

  I was sitting on the floor of my closet counting out my shoe-drop money when Jack called.

  “Agnes, we don’t have much time. I need you to listen,” he said. “The house and everything in it will be gone soon. Sell whatever jewelry you have in the next couple of days. Ask Sondra. She knows people.”

  “What?”

  “Don will send someone to pick up your car because you won’t be able to make the lease payments.”

  “My car?” Jack had bought—or I thought he’d bought—the SUV for my birthday. Sometimes it was hard to believe there was a time when I thought ribbons on cars were just something in commercials.

  “Yes, the car,” he answered. “Don just put his mother in a nursing home and was about to sell her Honda. He’ll drop it off. It’s nothing fancy, but it will get you where you need to go.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “Then you’re going to leave town.”

  “Where am I supposed to go?” Surely I wasn’t expected to figure this out on my own.

  “New York,” he answered.

  “What the hell, Jack?” I dropped the cash. Spit flew out of my mouth. Luckily, I was alone.

  Silence. I wondered if I’d pushed too hard. I couldn’t risk him short-circuiting, and I needed information, so I softened my tone. “Wait,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut. “I have a question. I want to know why I have to get out of town if you only lost money. Don’t investors lose money sometimes? Isn’t that part of the risk? What’s really going on?”

  Once again, my question was met with silence. I’d summoned all my courage to ask, and I wasn’t sure I had anything left in me. “Jack?” I whispered, opening my eyes tentatively.

  “You need to leave town because I didn’t just lose my clients’ money,” he said. “There’s more.”

  “How much more?”

  “To cover up the losses, I had to take money from other clients. I made some bad calls and I made things worse. I need to go underground for a while and get the money back to the people I took it from so that I don’t end up in jail. Is that enough information?” He didn’t wait for me to respond. “Now you need to listen to me and follow my instructions. Understood?”

  “Understood.” But really, I didn’t understand. What the hell was happening? Jail? “Why New York?” I asked.

  “A friend of mine, Ruth Moore, is the head of school at St. Norbert’s, in the Bronx. There’s a teaching job for you with faculty housing and day care.” Jack paused.

  “A school? The Bronx?” I asked, not quite soaking in all the information.

  “It’s a boys’ boarding school. You will be teaching English in the middle school.” He spoke slowly and loudly, as though I were hearing impaired. “This means you will have a source of income, a home, and day care for Grace. Most importantly, you will both be safe.”

  Now I was the one short-circuiting. “I can’t teach at a middle school, let alone a boarding school! I can’t live in New York! Jack?” More spit. I took my phone and quickly wiped it on the bottom of my shirt.

  “Please, Agnes,” he said, sounding desperate for the first time. “You’ll be safer there, and frankly, there’s nowhere else for you to live once the house is gone.”

  “You’re telling me that I’m on my own?” I said. “That I have no choice?”

  “You’re not on your own,” he whispered. “The last thing I want is to send you away, but you just can’t be near me right now. You have to trust me to fix the mess I’ve made and to keep you safe.” His voice cracked. “I need to know that you’re both safe.”

  “Then come with us,” I said in between sniffles. “If we have to go, then so do you.”

  “That’s not practical.”

  “So me moving across the country and working at some random school is practical, but you get to stay here?”

  “I don’t get to stay, I have to stay,” he said. “I can only fix this mess if I’m here. For now.”

  “Yeah, well, I need some time to let this all sink in,” I said, mopping up the mess of tears and snot on my face. “I don’t understand how you can be in so much trouble and not want me around to help.”

  Jack cleared his throat and swallowed. “Actually, you’ll be able to help me more if you’re in New York.”

  “How? How can I help you from the other side of the country?” I sobbed.

  “Ruth Moore isn’t just the head of the school, she’s also an investor. At least, she was.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “She used to invest some of the school’s endowment, as well as some of h
er own money, with me. She pulled out of my fund, and I’m worried other big investors are going to follow and this is all going to get a lot worse. I need to know why she pulled out—if the school is in trouble, I need to know.”

  “And you can’t just ask her?”

  “That’s not how it works, Agnes,” he said.

  “And me teaching at this school is going to help you find out . . . how?”

  “If the school is strapped for cash, you’ll know pretty quickly. Besides, you’d be surprised how much you can learn just by being in the right place.”

  “This is all so much,” I said.

  “I know, but I need an answer, and you don’t have much time,” he said. “I’ll call you tonight. I love you, Aggie.” His voice broke again. “So much.”

  “Me too,” I said back before I hung up. “Me too.”

  I lay on my side on the closet floor, pulled my knees up to my chest, and called Beeks. She was in the middle of yelling at her children, who were always up way too late. “If I stop now,” she said, “I’ll forget what I was yelling about.” She promised to call me back. That gave me just enough time to do some research on this mystery school. I was ready for Beeks when she called.

  “This East Coast–West Coast time difference is really coming in handy,” she began. Beeks never said hello. She just dived in. “I’m so frickin’ happy to hear your voice. Don’t get me wrong, I’d let you call every night at four a.m., but I’ll take earlier any day. What’s up?”

  “The good news is that I’ve spoken to Jack. The rest is bad,” I said, lying down on the closet floor. (Yes, I was back in the closet.)

  “How bad?”

  “Bad. Stolen money bad. Have to get out of my house bad.”

  “Shit.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “No money at all?” she asked, cleverly sidestepping the questions about Jack I knew she was dying to ask.

  “Nope. Nothing. Apparently I don’t even own the stove.”

  “I never liked that thing anyway,” she said, not missing a beat. “I mean, how many burners does one woman need?” I laughed. Of all the noises I’d made in the past few days, laughter had not been one of them.

  “There’s more,” I said.

  “There’s always more,” she followed.

  “He says I need to leave town. I’m coming to New York.” I didn’t finish the sentence before she started whooping with joy. Beeks, Brian, and their boys lived in a small apartment on the Upper West Side.

  “Beeks,” I said, “remember, this is bad news.”

  “Oh,” she said, chastened. “You’re right. Bad news. OK, tell me more of this bad news and I’ll try to control myself.”

  “I’m supposed to go live at a boarding school called St. Norbert’s. I’m apparently going to teach English in the middle school. Oh, and there’s day care for Grace and free housing for us.” My God, this sounded worse each time someone said it.

  I rolled over and looked up at the shelves of T-shirts that Sondra neatly folded and organized by color. It was still hard for me to believe that I had more than one yellow T-shirt.

  “And they want you?” she asked.

  “I guess so. I looked online, and I don’t need credentials to teach at a private school in New York. Anyway, you now know as much as I do,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said again. “A middle school teacher? At least you’ll be prepared.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  Beeks and Brian had four boys. Stevie was thirteen and was Beeks’s stepson, a product of Brian’s first, early, and very brief marriage. Kyle and Alec were five, and Jimmy was three. “I live with a middle schooler. They’re moody, impulsive, and they smell awful. How different can it be from teaching preschool?”

  “Beeks, I think it’s going to be really different,” I said. “I don’t feel prepared, not at all.”

  She ignored me. “Tell me again,” she said. “How does Jack know this place? What’s his connection? Who does he know there?”

  “I thought you wanted me close,” I said, listening to her click in her retainers.

  “Aggie, I’m just asking questions. Do not take any of them to mean that I do not want you to get on the first flight to New York. I do. It’s just all a little fishy and, frankly, a little neat.”

  “I know. But this is my only choice right now.” I was convincing myself as well as her. “I’m scared, Beeks, and I don’t have any other options.” My voice began to crack. I hoped that Beeks would hear it and go a little easy on me. “I know he did something horrible. I get it. But I also know that he’ll fix it, whatever it is. Don’t you see that?”

  I knew Beeks did not see that, and I was annoyed with myself for asking her. I ended the call and walked down the back stairs into the kitchen.

  I sat at the kitchen table clutching a mug of tea I probably wouldn’t drink. “New York,” I said aloud. “Middle school.” I closed my eyes and tried to picture the words but only saw black. What other choice did I have? I could look for a place to live and a job here, but that wasn’t easy. I thought about calling Marge at Sunny Day, Marge who would always have a place for me. The thought of her was warming, but the thought of facing all those teachers and moms who knew something like this would happen was terrifying. Maybe they hadn’t predicted that Jack would steal money and go underground, but they knew I’d be back. I’d be back when Jack traded me in for a newer model, because that’s what happens to trophy wives. And what of the other trophy wives, the other moms in my baby group? What would they say when they thought I was out of earshot? That they knew I’d be the first to go? That it was only a matter of time?

  I felt my stomach convulse, and I ran to the sink and threw up. I didn’t know what exactly made this sink a farmhouse sink, but I would have traded anything to be on a farm somewhere. New York, on the other hand, did not sound like a place to which one escapes. Don’t people leave New York when they are in trouble? Still, the only person I had besides Jack was Beeks, and Beeks was in New York. With Jack gone, maybe this made sense. I could be near Beeks and still help Jack get the information he needed.

  My phone buzzed with an incoming call. Jack.

  I dumped out the mug of tepid tea and picked up.

  “I’ll do it,” I said before he could even speak. “I’ll take the job.”

  -9-

  A week later, a company called Happy Home Furniture Resale came and took all our furniture. I asked Sondra to pack up the contents of Jack’s desk along with some of my old schoolbooks. As for the few things that were left, what I couldn’t quickly sell fit into a few boxes. Sondra gave me the name of a pawnbroker downtown where I sold all the jewelry Jack had bought me. I kept my wedding band but parted with the engagement ring. I also bade farewell to those diamond earrings.

  I pressed some money into Sondra’s and Alma’s hands. Not as much severance as I should have given them by local standards, or by decency’s standards, for that matter, but enough to let them know that I knew that they were also giving something up.

  The day after I told Jack I’d take the job, Don had parked a sedan in front of our house. I packed up the sedan, the car that took the place of my shiny BMW. When I first sat inside the white Honda, which was at least fifteen years old, and inhaled the stale smell of cigarettes, dust, and coffee, it was as though this past decade of my life had never happened. Sitting in that car, I could have been in my first car, a used Mazda into which I could easily have fit all my possessions. I had worked two jobs in college, three over the summers, just to buy that car. Here I was, once again, sitting in a used, pungent car, a car that other people had driven and tired of.

  On the day I left California, I packed that car with what remained of my earthly belongings. I strolled down to the beach with Grace for a final look at the ocean. We lived up on the cliffs in Santa Monica. If I looked left, I could see the pier punctuated by the Ferris wheel. If I looked right, I saw the mountains. From up on the cliffs, I often felt like I was on the deck of
a ship. The sand below was invisible, as were the beachgoers, mostly families who lived miles east of here and were willing to brave legendary traffic on the freeways.

  Many East Coasters found the Pacific Ocean surprisingly cold and unwelcoming. It made little sense to them that California’s waters would be unswimmable unless you were brave or in a wet suit. To me, the Pacific, or at least this part of the Pacific, was my mooring. As far as I drove, once I saw the ocean rise up in the distance as my car dipped down over the hill, I knew I was minutes from home.

  I closed my eyes, saw the word goodbye in my head, sucked in all the air I could get, and opened my eyes for a final look.

  Even though I could have used the air and was desperate for my last breaths of the ocean, I kept the car windows up so nobody on the road would see me weeping over the wheel. When I got a final glimpse of the beach behind me, and when I lost the LA radio stations and then the desert stations of the Inland Empire, I sobbed. There are few things that feel both more permanent and transient than crossing from one state into another. When the WELCOME TO NEVADA sign came into sight, I felt my roots being torn out of the ground.

  Grace sat rear facing in her car seat, with a mirror in front of her, so that if I looked in the rearview mirror I could watch her sleep. I quickly learned to time big chunks of driving with Grace’s naps, and I was never so grateful for her rigid, reliable sleep schedule, courtesy of our sleep consultant, baby nurse, and Alma. Watching her head nod to the side, her eyes flicker, then close, and listening to her breathing grow slower and deeper, I found it odd that Grace had learned to sleep from women who were not me.

  During one of her naps, I let my mind wander, back to a night not so many weeks ago. I had woken up and realized Jack wasn’t in bed. I sat up and saw that he had stepped out on the deck. His back was to me as he faced the beach, his back bent slightly, his arms resting on the railing. When he turned, I saw him from the side, wearing an expression I hadn’t seen on him before. He looked anxious, possibly even scared. I told myself it was a private moment, one I shouldn’t interrupt, but I knew otherwise. I chose not to see him this way, wearing a face I didn’t recognize.