by Lea Geller
Jack came up behind me, and I looked at our reflection in the mirror. “I promise, Aggie. It will all be worth it. Remember, we’re doing this for us, for our family.”
“For our family,” I repeated, looking at Jack in the mirror. I looked into his eyes because I could not look into my own.
-15-
“You were right, boys. I failed you. I failed all of you.”
That’s how I started the next class.
“I couldn’t stop the program from happening. I couldn’t stop Principal Burke, and I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” said Guy, breaking the silence. “We know you tried.” He forced a smile.
“Did you?” asked Caleb from the back of the class.
“Yes, Caleb,” I lied. “Really, I did. I went as high up as I could, but I couldn’t stop it from happening. I’m sorry, boys, truly.”
“It’s fine,” said Art. “We just wanted you to try for us. Nobody else does.” I looked away. We sat in more awkward silence, and then, with an enthusiasm I did not feel, I said, “Let’s get to work. Outside!”
That morning was cold and brisk but sunny, and the boys followed me out. I couldn’t look at them, not directly. Maybe it would be easier to teach without eye contact if we were outside.
I had just handed back the boys’ essays (all of which I’d graded in a fog of wine and self-pity), and we were still in the poetry unit. I started by reading Robert Frost’s “Birches” to them. I couldn’t remember his name, but I remembered the hippie middle school English teacher who had dragged my class outside, asked us to hold hands around a tree, and then cried while reciting the poem. But “Birches” was too long for my boys. Ten lines in and they started playing catch with Davey’s shoe. Davey, meanwhile, started to wander from the group. Art began pulling leaves off a nearby bush. I saw Caleb glance around distractedly, looking for some trouble.
“New poem,” I said. The boys groaned.
“It’s a short one. I promise. Eight lines.” Still, more groaning. “Come on, guys.”
“Fine,” said Davey, leaning against the base of the Norbert statue. “Go for it.”
I opened my book to “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and started reading. When I got to the end of the poem, I looked around at a sea of blank faces.
“Nothing?” I said.
“Nope,” said Caleb, almost proudly. “Not a thing.”
“What’s happening in the poem, boys?” I asked, looking down at the book, not waiting for them to answer. “I see the word grief, so I know there’s something sad going on. When Frost says at the end that ‘Nothing gold can stay,’ I think he means that nothing beautiful lasts forever. Maybe he even means that the prettiest stuff, the gold, that stuff really doesn’t last . . .” I heard a choke in my voice. I quickly looked down past the phone at my shoes. Crying was not in my lesson plan.
“I know what Eden is,” said Caleb, quickly covering for me. “Adam and Eve. That’s a pretty sad story.” He looked at me, nodding and waiting for approval, wanting me to see that he was trying.
“Nature’s first green,” I said, my voice cracking. “The first line of the poem.” We looked at each other. “Eden didn’t last, did it?”
“Nope,” added Davey. “Adam and Eve got sent away. They got sent out of paradise.”
They weren’t the only ones.
“Wow,” said Art. “That’s kind of sad.”
“Sad but happy, because you know that the leaves will come back,” added Guy, always on the lookout for a better ending.
“Not all the leaves,” said Caleb. “Maybe the prettiest ones never come back.”
“See?” I gulped. “See what you did? You just analyzed a poem.”
“Did we get it right?” asked Guy nervously.
“There is no right.” I looked up. The trees were still bare, but the sky was a brilliant blue. I looked back at the boys. They had done good work today.
“Class dismissed,” I said.
I wondered if the boys would remember anything about my class. I wondered if they would remember this poem, or their hippie California teacher who dragged them outside and cried because she had failed them.
-16-
There were words tugging at the back of my brain that night. After tossing, turning, and shifting positions more times than a yoga instructor, I stood up and started walking around the bedroom.
I thought back to the day in Santa Monica when I’d gone through Jack’s desk, or at least I’d tried to go through it. I hadn’t seen anything because I hadn’t wanted to see anything. It’s hard to see clearly when there’s sand in your eyes.
I ran downstairs into the living room and stared at the stack of boxes behind the TV, the ones I still hadn’t unpacked—the boxes with the framed photographs, my useless books, and the contents of Jack’s desk. I moved the boxes around and smiled when I saw Sondra’s handwriting—“Jack office”—and ripped off the packing tape and opened the box.
I removed the familiar Lucite cubes and paged through the same client reports I’d seen in Santa Monica. I looked at the bottom of each one to the section marked GAINS AND LOSSES. I felt my eyes glaze over, but I blinked and forced myself to look closely at the pages. I looked through thirty or so reports, and in each one, the client had gains, big gains. At some point, I even began to read the charts. I kept looking and could not find a single report with losses. If this was the case, Jack had made his clients a ton of money. Had he really taken all of it? And if this was a onetime mistake, wasn’t he still making money for them? Why did he need to raise more money to pay them back?
I felt a little light-headed and leaned against the wall. Jack had sent me here for one reason—to get money for him. Jack wanted new investors, new investors to pay back the old ones.
I was past the point of going back to sleep. Grace would be up in a few hours, and three hours of sleep was almost as bad as no sleep at all. So I did what no wife should do when her missing husband returns and tells her that he needs her to help raise money to pay back his old investors—I went online.
It didn’t take long for me to find what I was looking for, even if I hadn’t known I was looking for it. I found an article about a guy in LA who was doing time in jail for promising high returns on people’s investments, but instead of investing people’s money, he’d used the money to buy himself boats, houses, and cars. He paid his old investors with money he raised from new ones. Every time he needed new cash, he would go out and raise more money. The problem was, he never invested any of it. The words were right there on the screen—black, on a white background, just as the words No Money had been in my head when I sat in Don’s office in August. This time the words spelled out Ponzi Scheme. This wasn’t a onetime mistake that Jack was trying to fix. Jack hadn’t taken money he’d made for his clients, because Jack hadn’t made money for his clients. He’d just made it look that way. Jack was running a Ponzi scheme.
I read through pages of stories about Ponzi scheme operators who had defrauded people—all kinds of people, rich and poor—into investing in funds when they weren’t investing at all. They were only paying back other defrauded investors. The schemes were all sizes—some taking down universities, others defrauding individual investors, regular people. The cycle was never-ending, only coming to a halt when the operator was caught or the money dried up—when the amount of stolen money got too big.
When I had read just about all I could stomach, I closed my laptop and called Don. I was on the brown couch. I picked up a bag of almonds I’d bought earlier in the week, but the mouse had beaten me to it, chewing a hole in the top of the bag. I briefly contemplated eating the rest of the nuts, those the mouse hadn’t touched.
Even though it was the middle of the night in California, Don picked up on the first ring.
“I know,” I said before he could ask me any questions.
“What?”
“I know what Jack is really doing.”
“And what would that be, Agnes?”
&nbs
p; “I know that he’s running a Ponzi scheme,” I said, stumbling over the words, hoping he’d tell me I was losing my mind.
He didn’t.
“This time he’s in way over his head,” he said. “People wanted out; they wanted to withdraw their money. He almost had the money to pay everyone back, but the number was just too big. He’s in serious trouble, Agnes. This time he needs your help.”
“This time? What do you mean this time?” I pushed away the almonds, spilling them all over the floor. I got down to pick them up and found myself eye to eye with the mouse who had hidden under the couch. I stared. She stared back.
“What do you mean, Don?”
“This is not the first time Jack has gotten himself into trouble like this.” I’ve been cleaning up his messes since before you were born. The mouse blinked first and ran away, scurrying under the molding in the wall, presumably back to her multiple children and many cousins.
“Don,” I said, pushing myself up. “How is this a surprise to me? How the hell did I not know this?”
“Who was going to tell you?”
I could think of a person or two who should have told me that this was not the first time my husband had to go into hiding because he owed money or that his whole business was built on a lie. But I knew I couldn’t yell. Don didn’t do yelling. He liked yelling even less than he liked crying. So I took a deep breath and told Don that Jack wanted me to talk to Ruth. I didn’t use the word blackmail, but I didn’t have to.
“Makes sense,” he said flatly. “We all have a function for Jack. I’ve always been his fixer. I guess you’re his Hail Mary.”
“I’m what?”
“You heard me, Aggie. Listen, it’s the middle of the night. I have to go.”
I sat back on the brown couch and eyed the almonds, still unsure whether I’d eat them or not. Could I do this for Jack? Could I be his last, best hope? I wanted to be. I wanted to have a function for him, a purpose, something other than staying thin, having scheduled sex, and showing up to restaurants on time. I certainly didn’t have a function here anymore.
I thought about the boys sitting under the tree and reading the Frost poem. I thought about the looks on their faces when I told them they’d actually read and understood it. It might have been the first time all year that I’d seen them feel successful as a group. But as much as I wanted them to feel that way every day, I didn’t see how I could help them. I was up against something here at St. Norbert’s that felt too big, or at least too big for me. No, I couldn’t help my boys, but I could help Jack.
I thought about Jack breaking down that night in the hotel room. I pictured his teary face and heard him telling me how much he needed me. Before Jack, nobody had ever needed me, not like that. I heard him saying “for our family” over and over again in my head, and I thought about all the things I’d needed growing up, all the things I didn’t have. I thought about my patch of carpet and about being painfully alone. Jack had given me so much. Maybe it was my job to help him be better, to get him out of trouble and show him that things could be different, to show him the person he could be. Maybe this was just what I’d have to do for the sake of Jack, for the sake of Grace, for the sake of my family.
I abandoned the almonds and called Don back. His phone went straight to voice mail, so I left a message. “I’ll do it, Don,” I said. “I’ll be his Hail Mary.”
PART FOUR: SPRING
-1-
I called Beeks and told her. I couldn’t tell her everything—I didn’t want to implicate her—but I told her enough to let her know what I was doing was risky. She knew that it involved Jack and some money and me sort of blackmailing Ruth Moore so that Jack could get some money. Before I told her, I had made her swear to say nothing until I was done.
“Fine,” she said.
“And no yelling portion,” I said.
“That’s a lot to ask, but I think I can do it,” she promised.
Turns out, I didn’t have to worry about a yelling portion, because Beeks was speechless.
“You there?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“I don’t really know what to say,” she said.
“That’s it, Beeks?”
“Yes, Aggie, that’s it. OK, maybe one thing.” I should have known. “Listen, I get that you can forgive anything once. Really, I do. But this doesn’t sound like it was a onetime thing. You know that, right?”
“I know that.”
“OK then, that’s all I have to say.”
I did not know if Beeks withheld the yelling portion because she was too shocked to yell, or because yelling would have been the death knell of our friendship. I didn’t stick around to find out which it was. Just saying the words to her made me ashamed. It was a horrible feeling.
The next morning, on the first day of April, I awoke to a text from her. The text had no words, only an attachment. I clicked on the attachment and was directed to a website. I read the words on the screen:
APRIL FOOLS’ DAY: April 1. In some cultures, April Fools’ Day is known as Fool’s Errand Day. A fool’s errand is a task that is known to be unwise and against a person’s better judgment, yet is still carried out.
I texted Beeks back.
Message received. Feeling foolish all the same.
-2-
Ruth Moore was not expecting me, but she didn’t look surprised to see me. Poor Esme just shrugged and waved me back.
“Agnes,” Ruth said, looking up.
“Hello, Ruth.”
“What can I do for you?” She pushed her chair back and crossed her arms.
I sat in the chair opposite from her, my hands in my lap. I picked at my cuticles and bit my lower lip.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
I did not meet her gaze. “The thing is,” I began, almost midsentence, “I know all about the summer program. I know that Gavin uses his faked reports to get kids to sign up for it and that he pockets some of the money, and I know that you know about it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
“It’s not really what I want. It’s what Jack wants,” I said, swallowing. “He needs new investors, and he wants you to get them for him.”
Ruth assessed me for a few very long seconds, and then she laughed. “Really? You came into my office to blackmail me?”
My cheeks burned. There it was again. The shame. I mechanically parroted back Jack’s words, feeling like a robot with a dying battery. “Jack needs new investors, and he wants you to get them for him.”
Ruth pushed herself up to standing. She walked over to the chair next to me and sat down. I looked at her large feet and thought about sitting next to Don in his office. Ruth leaned in toward me. She spoke very quietly.
“Is this really what you want to do?” she asked.
“Yes,” I whispered, my face searing, my armpits now moist.
“You have a silver bullet here. Do you understand that?”
I blinked my approval at her, like a hospital patient in full-body traction.
“So instead of, oh, I don’t know, having me fire Gavin and letting him take the fall, you’d rather have me find people to invest with Jack even though I pulled out my money, even though I don’t trust him myself?”
When I didn’t say anything, she went on. “This is it? You have a chance to make me fire Gavin. He’s a perfect fall guy for this, Agnes.” She narrowed her eyes again. “I could even give you his job.”
My own eyes flickered when she said this. I wished they hadn’t. I didn’t want her to know that I was having second thoughts. She read me and kept going. “This is what you want? You want me to convince people to hand over their money to a man with a shady history of money troubles and just hope they see some of it back?”
Damn you, Jack. Damn you for putting me in this position.
I gave Ruth the weakest nod I could muster. “I have to go,” I said. “Jack will contact you.” My feet finally free, I ran out of her off
ice, grateful for the cool air on my face. I ran across campus and did not stop running until I got to Grace.
-3-
In the days following my visit to Ruth, that feeling of shame returned. I was never ready for it, but when it sneaked up on me, I felt my cheeks warm, my skin prickle, and my stomach turn. I knew I couldn’t let it get the better of me, but I also knew that I hated it. I’d burned through the gamut of emotions since Jack left—panic, fear, desolation, irritation, even anger—but shame, that was the worst. I’d have taken any of the others in its place. The weather was slowly improving, and I ran more, as though pounding through the shame could push it away. Nothing worked.
Jack sent Grace an Easter dress, maybe to make up for the Christmas dress she didn’t have. The dress was taupe silk with ivory organza flowers around the neckline. I tried not to think about all the food that would get caught in those pretty little flowers. I also tried not to think about the dry-clean-only tag inside the dress. Jack had also sent a matching ivory cashmere cardigan. How could he know that I’d shrunk all Grace’s cashmere in October when I tried to wash it on what I thought was the cold, delicate cycle in my antebellum washing machine?
On the Sunday after Easter, I got dressed for our post-Easter brunch with Beeks and tried not to think about Beeks, Brian, and Jack in the same room. I dressed Grace in her silk dress as she stood, holding on to her crib.
“This is for you,” I said, staring into her blue eyes. “It will all be worth it. I promise.” The words caught in the back of my throat, but Grace just smiled and stood on the floor next to her crib, gripping the bars. “Do you think you could sit now?” I asked. I pulled the dress down over her knees and slid a matching bow in her hair. She didn’t have shoes to wear with it. Other than her snow boots, I had one pair of shoes for her. They had once been white but were now a dark, scuffed gray, and they hardly went with silk and organza. I knew Jack would notice the shoes, but I didn’t have time to buy her a new pair.