by Neil Turner
She accepts the peace offering with equanimity. “You know Mother and Father, always complaining about being harried, but otherwise they’re well, thank you.”
The tension between us is palpable, at least to me. Brittany seems oblivious to it as she tells her mother the latest school and Bobby Harland news. Our daughter looks embarrassed when she says, “Too much coffee this morning. Where’s the bathroom?”
I direct her to the hostess for directions.
“What is she doing here?” Michelle hisses as soon as Brittany leaves.
“This is her life that you’re fucking with, Michelle. She should have a say in her future. Given all the bullshit you’ve been filling her head with, I thought it might be instructive for her to be a party to what you and your father are up to.”
“You better not have told her about the custody lawsuit.”
Brittany knows the current terms of custody, which were set by family court in Chicago. I have temporary custody while Michelle lives overseas. Michelle pays $2,500 in monthly child support. She’s also on the hook for tuition and school-related expenses for as long as Brittany is in school, including four years of undergrad and three years of postgraduate studies if she goes to university. Michelle is contesting the private high school tuition from the settlement, arguing that the provisions of the original ruling only apply to postsecondary education. She makes it sound as if she can’t afford to help on her Coca-Cola executive vice-president salary, prodigious bonuses, or her multimillion-dollar Rice family trust fund. Prescott Rice had threatened me with all manner of professional destruction if I didn’t cave in to their demands during round one. I hadn’t. Prescott was infuriated to discover that my lowly life as a lawyer in private practice has put me beyond the reach of his usual machinations to threaten careers, but I’m sure he’s still working whatever angles he can to screw me over.
We wait in uncomfortable silence until Brittany returns. She appears a little pissed for some reason when she looks at Michelle, so we wait in awkward silence until our table is ready.
“This way,” says a young lady wearing a bright smile and a period costume consisting of a full paisley skirt and a frilly white blouse. A sleeveless blue vest tops the ensemble, laced tightly enough to thrust her ample bosom dramatically upward.
We fall in behind her with Michelle in the lead, followed by Brittany, and finally me bringing up the rear. We settle around a table for six beside an impressive fireplace framed to the ceiling in mahogany or some similarly dark and exotic wood carved by a long-forgotten craftsman of surpassing skill. The wooden table and chairs are colonial, of course, and the table is set with period pieces. The walls of the room are sky blue. It’s almost too warm in the heavy air near the fireplace, but that’s okay with me. I’m still trying to thaw out.
Michelle has seated Brittany at her side, directly across the table from me on what I assume is meant to be the Rice side of the table.
“This place is how I expected Europe to look,” Brittany says with a laugh.
A waiter also dressed in period garb appears like magic and slides a breadboard onto our table. A loaf of the Sally Lunn bread I remember fondly from past visits rests atop the wood, as if welcoming me back.
“May I get you folks something to drink?” he asks.
I opt for a mug of Irish coffee that I can warm my hands on. After giving the waiter a thorough grilling about the contents of Gadsby’s wine cellar, Michelle orders a glass of a French white wine and alerts our waiter to the imminent arrival of two more guests. Brittany loyally requests Coca-Cola, earning a smile from her mother. The server leaves behind a trio of menus and three glasses of ice water. I pull the bread platter close, then cut and distribute slices onto our bread plates.
Our daughter’s eyes go wide when a strolling violinist enters the room and merrily bursts into a sprightly rendition of “Greensleeves.” I’ve never heard the piece played quite this up tempo.
Brittany, who has a few years of piano instruction under her belt, laughs after several bars. “‘What Child Is This’ done in four-four time? Cool!”
Michelle is quick to correct her. “Actually, the tune is called ‘Greensleeves,’ honey. It’s one of those things you often see identified in song credits or sheet music as a traditional arrangement. They used to slap lyrics to whatever piece of music they felt fit the words. Someone obviously thought this tune was a good fit for the ‘What Child Is This?’ lyric.”
“No way!” Brittany exclaims.
“Tell me more about school,” Michelle says imperiously as she takes control of our get-together.
I savor my heavily buttered bread and study my daughter and ex-wife while they discuss Hyde Park Prep School. The years have added a studied grace and maturity to the natural blessings bestowed upon Michelle. With the judicious use of makeup, she’s learned to tease her high, finely chiseled cheekbones into even more refined prominence. Her eyes are a pair of blue orbs in a hue just this side of the Hope diamond, framed by gracefully curling ebony lashes. Many a time I’ve looked at her and never seen beyond those eyes. Brittany shares most of Michelle’s facial features but lacks the exotic flourishes that set Michelle off from other women. The more subdued effect is better suited to Brittany’s unadorned character.
Michelle finds my eyes on her and smiles a smile I haven’t seen in a long, long time. Despite myself, I feel the blood coursing through my veins a trifle faster than it was a moment ago. Damn her.
“Tell me about the new job, Tony,” she orders.
“Nothing much to tell,” I reply while setting down my bread. “We’re just a couple of lowly lawyers trying to see that everyday folks get a fair shake.”
“I don’t suppose that pays very well,” she muses with a half smile. It’s always about the money with Michelle.
“After expenses, I probably make about as much as a public defender.”
Her jaw actually drops. The daughter of Prescott Rice locks eyes with me to determine if I’m being serious. After all, we’re talking chump change in the Rice paddy. Then she leans a few inches toward me, the subtle movement just enough to suggest an increasing level of intimacy. “Perhaps it wouldn’t be fair for you to pay child support.”
Spoken as if she’s already won custody. Not surprising, coming from someone who is accustomed to having her way. I bite back the prideful retort that I don’t need or want her charity. The truth is that I do. Rather than say something I’ll regret, I pop another bite of bread into my mouth.
“What are you doing the rest of today?” Michelle asks after the server delivers our drinks. I’ve noticed her consulting her watch and the mental day timer that resides in her head to regulate the minutes and hours of her existence, no doubt wondering where Mommy and Daddy Rice are.
“No plans,” I reply while wrapping my hands around my big blue mug and slurping a little Baileys off the top.
“When do you fly back to Chicago?”
“Nine o’clock,” I reply as circulation finally returns to my fingers. Amputation due to frostbite might yet be avoided.
“Mother and Father were thinking we’d spend the afternoon and evening at the house.”
“The house” is one of the coveted Georgetown brownstones within walking distance of Saint Matthew’s Cathedral, the Rices’ DC stand-in for New York City’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Each church is the house of worship for Catholics who matter in its respective power center.
“All of us?” I ask.
Michelle looks embarrassed.
“That would have surprised me,” I admit. Not that I have any interest in visiting with the Rice family.
“How would you feel about the three of us hanging out until you go?” Michelle asks.
I cock an eyebrow in surprise. “No Georgetown?”
She smiles. “No Georgetown.”
Brittany seems to be enjoying the fact that her parents are being civil. It’s been a long time since she’s had a chance to hang out with the two of us. For her ben
efit, I smile back at Michelle. “I’d like that.”
“I saw a news report about Hank Fraser’s testimony,” Michelle says while her eyes linger on me. “The man’s turned out to be every bit the snake I pegged him for.” She’s referring to my former boss at Sphinx Financial, who is on trial for fraud relating to the financial shenanigans that precipitated the fall of the firm. Even I’ve been shocked by how brazen some of Fraser’s scheming and scams were. Michelle had proven a far quicker study of him than I was. While initially charmed by his easy manner and solicitousness (hadn’t we all been?), she’d begun warning me that Sphinx was hurtling down the tracks toward derailment even before the first whispers of alarm began to circulate within investment and banking circles.
“You’re right,” I admit, grudgingly acknowledging to myself that I’d been willfully ignorant in matters related to Sphinx—all too happy to grasp the brass ring Fraser dangled before my nose. I scrambled up the corporate ladder to dive into the muck of privilege and obscene perks we’d all happily wallowed in like swine rollicking in sewage. Many of us were still skimming along atop a sea of drowning shareholders when the good ship Sphinx finally turned turtle and precipitously plunged beneath the waves.
“I knew Fraser would hang you out to dry to save his own skin,” Michelle adds. “Who knows what other mischief that man is capable of?”
Is she warning me that Sphinx may yet come back to bite me on the ass once again? I was eventually cleared of wrongdoing by separate Congressional and SEC investigations, but the stench of Sphinx continues to trail behind me.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
She gives me a knowing smile above the rim of her wineglass as she takes a sip. “You can be a little naive at times.”
“Me?” I ask facetiously. It’s no secret that I was a babe in the woods at the time of Sphinx. Probably still am, I suppose.
She smiles, but it fades quickly. “I hadn’t trusted Fraser for a long time before things went sour. You knew that. Your association with that man frightened me.”
“And I wouldn’t listen to you.”
“Things could have been so different,” she says softly, perhaps even wistfully. “I was so angry with you for not listening, for not seeing what was happening.”
“Angrier than I realized.”
She nods. “Which only made me madder.”
Is it possible I was once again so absorbed in what was happening to me that I made myself unavailable to those around me? My mind tracks to Papa and Mama. Do I count this failure number three? Four? Five? Will I ever be there for a person I love when he or she needs me to be?
“I’m sorry, Michelle.”
Her appraising eyes burrow deeply into my soul before her hand slides across the table to squeeze mine. “Maybe I wasn’t as supportive as I could have been.”
I turn my hand over in hers and give hers a return hug. The spell is broken within seconds when a voice from the fringe of the dining room thunders, “Michelle!”
I wince when heads throughout the room turn as one toward the assault on the tranquil atmosphere we’ve been enjoying. A heavy hand cuffs my shoulder seconds later.
Prescott M.F. Rice III, the self-proclaimed “Oracle of Vesey Street”—where he once ruled the roost at an investment bank with world headquarters in Manhattan’s World Financial Center—steps into my field of view. Rice made his bones as a young Wall Street investment banker with the takeover and pillaging of a venerable old company whose time had come and gone. With the support and connivance of institutional investors, he had swooped in and plucked control of the company from the bewildered family before they knew what hit them. The sycophant business press had breathlessly marveled at the naked chicanery as Rice stripped the company of assets, saddled it with a mountain of debt, and peddled it back to investors in a public offering. This “radical” new business strategy was actually nothing more than typical corporate bullshit iconography: produce a steaming pile of shit, slap the moniker “Daisy Fresh” on refreshed packaging, and then turn the marketing shysters loose on an unsuspecting public. The same scam also worked well on the mortgage-backed securities and similarly toxic financial derivatives Rice peddled in the new century. He escaped the 2008 financial crisis unscathed, but left a trail of heartbreak and financial ruin in his wake. What a great guy.
“Tony!” he booms, thrusting a meaty paw to within a few inches of my chest and holding it there until I rise to shake it. My ex-father-in-law is a man of privilege whose years of overindulgence have left him with an overstuffed belly and sagging jowls.
“Hello, Prescott,” I say.
“Haven’t seen you in a while, boy.”
So, “boy” replaces “son,” which served as a substitute for Tony when I was married to his daughter. I like it no better—especially coming from a racist bastard who’s never been shy about denigrating the worth of Black folks. We both know how low a blow he thinks he just landed.
I turn to an aristocratic woman who is, as always, impeccably dressed and coiffed, a trait she passed along to her daughter. Unlike Michelle, however, this woman of sophisticated appearance and stately bearing has the brains of a gnat. Also unlike her daughter, Evelyn Prescott is the type of vapid woman who revels in the trivialities and moral squalor of being the trophy wife of a rich and powerful blowhard.
“Hello, Evelyn,” I say, my words colored with the affection I nonetheless feel for this woman, who has unfailingly treated me well through the years. Perhaps there’s also an element of pity and compassion inherent in my feelings, something akin to what one feels for an especially abused pet.
Evelyn steps forward to hug the outer edges of my shoulders ever so lightly with her manicured fingertips while blowing a kiss just wide of my cheek. “It’s so nice to see you, Tony.”
“Evelyn’s been a little concerned with all the troubles you’ve gotten yourself into,” Prescott gloats with a smug grin. The bastard’s undoubtedly enjoying every unkind word about that me he’s able to lap up. Is it any wonder so many people quietly use his middle initials when referring to him? Or to describe him? Motherfucker, indeed. And to think that I’d once been one of the brainwashed business types who bought into the iconography about men like this. Hell, I’d even aspired to emulate them. Being up close and personal with Prescott Rice disabused me of the notion that there was anything to admire in such men.
“Nice to see you, too, Evelyn,” I say as she settles into the chair next to mine.
Prescott bullies his daughter aside so he can sit next to his granddaughter and confront me face-to-face across the table. It also places him in the center of the group, the position he always aspires to and feels entitled to. While he grills Brittany about her life, I study him and wonder what stew of aberrant pathologies produced such a creature. He’s got every material thing anyone could ever possibly need, and enough spare change hanging around to purchase it all over again two or three or even four times. Yet he still works, still loves to see his name in print, still loves—perhaps more than all the other perks and privileges combined—to strike fear into the hearts of people of lesser station. He retired from the firm three years ago to do the bidding of it and its brethren in the halls and backrooms of Congress. I’ve often thought he enjoys this bullying best of all. As formidable as Michelle can be, this man is my most dangerous adversary today.
“We’d best order,” Michelle says, picking up her menu to underscore the point.
My eyes land on the prime-rib-sandwich listing as soon as my menu falls open, prompting me to close it in almost the same motion.
Daddy Rice turns to me after we place our orders. “Let’s get down to business.” He shoots a sideways glance at his wife. “Take Brittany and go powder your noses or something for a few minutes. I’ll send Michelle to fetch you when it’s time to come back.”
I shake my head slowly. “I know what game you’re playing, Prescott. I’m not playing along.”
Brittany surprises everyone by cutting in with an em
phatic, “I’m staying for this.”
Michelle spins to Evelyn while her father nears detonation. As if Brittany hadn’t uttered a word, she says, “There are some nice shops on King Street, Mother. Why don’t you take Brittany and pick out a nice outfit or two?”
Evelyn’s somewhat confused countenance brightens immediately. She reaches for Brittany’s hand. “Doesn’t that sound marvelous, sweetheart?”
Brittany yanks her hand back, then glares in turn at her grandfather and her mother. “You two want to play hardball? I saw the legal papers you sent to Dad.”
I’m as stunned as everyone else is by this pronouncement.
“I also heard what you said to Dad when I was on my way to the bathroom,” she hisses at her mother. “‘What is she doing here?’”
The color drains from Michelle’s face.
Brittany turns fully to her. “You left us, Mom, and now you start whining about wanting me back. Why? I was a latchkey kid in Brussels last year.”
Michelle’s initial shock is morphing into an angry scowl.
Brittany doesn’t let up. “Dad’s been my rock, my actual full-time parent. How dare you pretend that you care about me more than he does. How dare you suggest that he’s an unfit parent! You want to go to court on this?”
For one of the few times in my life, I witness Michelle struck mute.
Brittany then turns on Prescott Rice and berates him in a tone I’ll bet he hasn’t heard in decades. “I will speak to the judge if this goes to court, Grandpa. I’ll tell them who my real parent is.”
He flashes her a scornful look. “You’re just a child who doesn’t understand these things. Nor do you realize the risk you take by defying us, young lady.”
“Is that a threat?” Brittany shoots back.
“Of course not, honey,” Michelle cuts in. The stony glare Daddy Rice has fixed on his granddaughter says otherwise.
“The hell it isn’t!” Brittany explodes with a quick sideways glance at her mother. Then she meets her grandfather’s smoldering eyes. “I know bullying when I see it.”