by Kate Hewitt
I didn’t think we could sink much lower, but now I see a whole new pit opening underneath us. Losing the house. Going on welfare. Food stamps, public housing, the government paying our way, just barely. You never get out of that pit. You get lost in it, lost and forgotten and ashamed.
And I know it would just about kill Kev, to admit that much failure. Kev always has been proud how we’ve made it on our own. When we were first starting out, we didn’t accept a single handout from my parents, not that they had much to give, and even less now. His parents didn’t have anything – his father’s a drunk, his mother just as bad. Kev doesn’t even want the girls seeing them.
‘That’s it,’ Kev says dully, and he reaches for the little orange canister that holds his nightly medication and pops the lid. ‘Not much more I can do.’
‘And this baby?’ I ask in little more than a whisper. I feel sick inside, like that pit that just opened up beneath us is really inside of me. Everything is sinking into it until there’s nothing left but fear and despair. ‘What are we going to do, Kev? How are we going to manage?’
He looks up at me, bleary-eyed, as he shakes the pills into his hand. ‘You tell me, Heather.’
Two
GRACE
The day of my father’s funeral one of the partners, Bruce Felson, calls to tell me I’ve made Harrow and Heath seven million dollars in a single hour after I set the share price yesterday for a new social media company.
‘You’re on fire, Grace,’ he says with a laugh into the phone, that comfortable, jocular chuckle of an amused uncle, a forbearing father. I’m so tired even my teeth ache, and I’ve been wearing a pair of four-inch Louboutins for eleven hours.
‘Thanks,’ I say, my tone lacking its usual brisk vigor. I wonder why I even answered the call. I’d been in the elevator up to my apartment after attending my father’s funeral service, burial, and an interminable two hours at the country club in Connecticut where I’d held the reception, making chitchat with strangers, old business acquaintances of my dad’s, some of my parents’ old couple friends I hadn’t seen in about twenty years.
When I’d seen Bruce’s name flash onto my screen I’d answered as a matter of habit, a Pavlovian response to the pressures of work, because in venture capital you’ve always got to be on the ball, looking for the next opportunity before anyone else finds it. And I want to make partner before I’m forty, which is in seven months. I’ve been a principal for four years, and I’m ready. I’m so ready.
‘Oh,’ Bruce says, as if he’d just thought of it, which I’m sure he has. ‘Is today your father’s…?’
‘Yes,’ I say simply, and his chuckle peters out.
‘Sorry,’ he says, all stiff politeness now. ‘Did it go, ah, well?’
Do funerals ever go well? Can I even judge such a thing at this moment? People came. A priest spoke. There were a lot of murmured words and wilted sandwiches. ‘It was lovely, thank you,’ I say, and Bruce gives a pleased grunt.
‘Good, good.’ An awkward pause. ‘Well, then. See you tomorrow.’
I disconnect the call and step out of the elevator to unlock the door to my apartment, my hands nearly shaking with the effort. I’m so tired I feel like I could cry, and that is something I haven’t done since my father died a week ago. Behind me my neighbor’s door, the only other one on the floor, opens.
‘Oh, hello.’ The woman’s voice is cheerful, inviting conversation. I’ve been living here for four years and I should know her and her husband’s names, but I don’t. I turn back with a distracted half-smile and my key clatters onto the marble floor. ‘Been somewhere exciting?’ the woman asks brightly, and all I can do is stare.
I’ve shared minimal, meaningless chitchat with my neighbors over the years; I think our longest conversation has been about when the recycling is going to be collected after Christmas. They pushed me a Christmas card under the door several times, and I’ve forgotten to give one back. How on earth can I tell this woman with her squinting, near-sighted smile what I’ve been doing today? So I don’t.
‘Nothing terribly exciting.’ I try to smile but my face feels funny. The woman nods, clearly waiting for more, but I don’t have anything and so I turn my smile into something more of a farewell and stoop down for my key. She stays in her own doorway, waiting, while I fumble with the lock and finally, thankfully, close my door behind me.
My heels click across the marble foyer, echoing in the emptiness. Ahead of me floor-to-ceiling windows overlook Central Park, twilight already settling over it, the shadows lengthening between the clusters of trees, the traffic emptying out, a few cabs gliding down Fifth Avenue.
The air smells of lavender and lemon, the organic furniture polish my cleaner uses. Everything is still and quiet and perfect, my oasis in a full, frenetic life.
My father is dead.
I feel like I should cry, but I can’t. The tears have gathered into a cold, hard lump in my chest. I feel it every time I swallow. I picture it ossifying, getting harder and bigger, choking me, taking me over. But still the tears won’t come. They came after my mother died; hot tears pouring down my cheeks while my father held me. A grief shared is one divided, lessened; I bear the weight of this one all alone, and it’s crippling me. I am bowed beneath it.
I walk to the window, kicking off my heels, flexing my cramped toes, but even that small thing feels like an indulgence I shouldn’t enjoy, not now. Not when my father is no longer alive. How can I enjoy anything any more?
One hand rests on the cool glass, connecting me to the world. Ten stories below two women walk along the cobbled pavement by the park, deep in conversation, gesturing widely. Behind them a mother, or perhaps a nanny, hurries her child along. He’s holding a soccer ball and dragging his feet; the woman is steering him by the shoulder.
When the reception after the funeral ended, I went to the club’s bar and drank two Scotches, neat, my father’s drink, while the bartender polished glasses and the club emptied out. The alcohol seethes in my stomach now; I didn’t used to like whisky, but I learned to drink it. When you work on Wall Street, whether it’s investment banking or venture capital, and just about everyone other than the secretaries is male, you need to do that kind of pseudo-masculine stuff. Drink whisky. Laugh at the titty jokes. Play golf, or at least be interested in it. I’ve even smoked a cigar.
But now I’m home, and the apartment is as empty as it ever was, and I feel like I can’t stand it for a second longer. The silence screams at me, hurting my ears.
On a normal night I’d change out of my suit, pour myself a glass of wine from the expensive bottle I keep chilling in the fridge, and settle down in front of the TV to watch the news on CNN. After about five minutes, if that, I’d switch to Bloomberg to keep up with the financial markets, because I can’t stay away. Then I’d do thirty minutes on my elliptical trainer before getting ready for bed. And I’d feel happy, damn it. I’d feel happy and satisfied, and just a little bit smug, but in a good way. I had it all, I really did. Now I feel as if I have nothing.
I’m alone. The words rattle around like marbles in the emptiness of my mind. Of course, I’ve known I’m alone for a long time. I’ve been single for my entire adult life, save a few forays into relationships that never went all that far, mostly because I didn’t see the point.
My work has precluded a lot of things: lots of good women friends, serious boyfriends, long vacations, any semblance of what most people call normal life. But it’s made me a lot of money, including a cut of the seven million today, and I’ve enjoyed the chase, the discovery, the benefits. I never felt like I was missing out. I never wished for more than I had.
But right now I have a deep, primal need not to be so alone. I need someone here with me, someone to shoulder something of what I feel, and the sad and glaring truth is that there just isn’t anyone to do that.
Friends, fine. I’ve managed with casual acquaintances and office chitchat, meeting my colleague Jill to work out, the occasional after-work drink wit
h someone from my MBA days. One summer I shared a rental in the Hamptons with my friend Joanne and a bunch of her friends; it was fine. I could have taken or left it all, I’ve never been that bothered. I’ve never needed lots of friends.
As for boyfriends, lovers? I’ve had a few, some more serious than others, but I’ve never really wanted to go down that whole marriage and kids route that so many women seem to think is inevitable, and that’s been fine. Fine.
But my dad? My daddy? The man who gave me twenty dollars to invest when I was seven? Who sat with me poring over the business section of the New York Times, who told me about getting in on Microsoft before it went big – never mind that he didn’t, he just thought about it.
My dad was so proud of me. He didn’t like me going into venture capital, true; he felt it was too risky. He played it safe, lived a middle-class life out in Newtown, Connecticut, and retired at sixty-five. But he was proud of me, even with the risks. When I found that first tech investment that went big, six years ago – All Natural, a company that sourced organic products from different stores to present the whole healthy living/wellness package to subscribers – he pumped his fist in the air and said, ‘Gracie, you did it. You damn well did it!’
My dad was everything to me: mother, father, family. When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was seven, he stepped right up. He came to my ballet recitals; he made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner; he sat with me at bedtime. He bought me pads for my first period and stammered through a talk about birth control right before I went to college. He took me out for my first legal drink on my twenty-first birthday; we shared a very good bottle of wine. He can’t be gone.
But he is.
The lump of tears and grief is growing, taking me over like the cancer that ate away at my father’s insides. Kidney, diagnosis to death took six weeks. Six weeks. Barely enough time to understand what was happening, never mind accept it. The impossibility of it is like slamming into a brick wall, leaving me not just breathless, but reeling.
Slowly, I walk from the window to the enormous kitchen I barely use, all marble counters and stainless steel appliances – a cliché, I know, the professional woman who doesn’t even make use of the apartment she paid a fortune for, and certainly not the kitchen. You think I want to spend hours making some gourmet meal I’m going to eat alone in front of the TV?
The enormous sub-zero fridge holds very little – milk, some nice Brie that’s probably gone bad, and the bottle of wine I opened last night and that is already half-empty. I pour myself a fishbowl-sized glass and for good measure I take another bottle from the wine rack and stick it in the fridge. I’m going to need a lot of alcohol to get through tonight. To get through the rest of my life.
I wriggle out of my pantyhose and black crêpe dress, leaving them crumpled on the floor of my bedroom before I slip into yoga pants and a t-shirt and curl up on my king-sized bed, cradling my wine.
I feel so lonely. It eats at me, like some physical attack from an invisible monster. I want to claw at my own skin, pull my hair, scream, anything to alleviate this moment. To change it. Instead I drink more wine.
It slips down nicely, and soon the glass is empty. I’ve only nibbled a couple of soggy sandwiches all day, and so I have a nice buzz going on as I walk back to the kitchen and pour a second glass. I think about turning on some music – I paid a fortune for a voice-activated system – but I’m afraid music, any music, will tip me over the emotional edge. I’m not ready to cry. Not yet, and maybe not ever. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to come back from that.
So I drink and I watch darkness settle on the park and the lights of cabs stream by. The apartment is so quiet. I liked that about it, when I toured the place four years ago, after I got the big bonus that provided me with the deposit. I liked that I couldn’t hear anything – not neighbors, not traffic, not the creak of the elevator or the blare of a car horn. But right now I feel like I’m in an isolation chamber. I am in one.
The second glass of wine goes down easier than the first, even though my empty stomach is starting to churn. Blearily, the world going fuzzy, I reach for my phone and start scrolling through contacts. I’m not so drunk that I don’t realize this is a bad idea, but I need to talk to someone. I feel like if I don’t, I might explode – or die.
I call Joanne, my friend from business school, first. She works in Chicago now, managing a hedge fund, and I haven’t seen her in over a year. Her phone flips over to voicemail and I open my mouth to leave a message, except no words come out. What can I say that would make sense? I haven’t talked to her in months. She doesn’t even know my dad was sick. I swipe to disconnect the phone and toss it on the bed. I drink more wine.
I’m not sure what time it is, but it feels late. After a little while, I’m not sure how long, I pick up my phone again. I swipe through my contacts and then, sober enough to know I’m being stupid, I press call on a certain number.
Ben answers after a couple of rings, sounding uncertain. ‘Grace?’
‘You still have me in your contacts.’ I let out a hiccuppy laugh and then close my eyes. What am I doing? This is so not me, I do not make drunken phone calls. I don’t even get drunk. And yet here I am.
‘Yes, I do.’ A pause and I can hear him moving, maybe getting up from a chair or a bed. Was he with someone? Does it matter? ‘Grace, are you… are you all right? Because you sound…’
‘My father died.’ The words are stark and abrupt. ‘His funeral was today.’
A pause. ‘I’m sorry,’ Ben says quietly, and I know he means it. Ben is the closest thing I have to a great, lost love, and the funny or maybe the sad thing is, we only dated for a little more than a year. We met years ago at a party thrown by one of my MBA colleagues, and we just clicked. He was as ambitious as I was, but also funny and fairly laid-back. I had fun with him, and the thought of forever flitted through my mind.
‘Thanks,’ I say, and I sniff. My eyes are closed and my stomach and head are both spinning. ‘Sorry, I know I shouldn’t have called.’ We broke up five years ago, when Ben, a corporate lawyer, got headhunted to San Francisco.
We had an awkward, stilted conversation about keeping it going long distance, and Ben suggested, rather hesitantly, that I consider moving to San Francisco. I remember looking at him in disbelief; I couldn’t leave my job, or my father. I did fly out once, about three months after he moved. We had a nice if awkward dinner, and then a discussion about how we might as well break up because our relationship was clearly not going to last an East Coast/West Coast divide.
‘It’s okay,’ Ben says after a moment. ‘I know you were close to him.’
‘Do you?’ I sound almost childishly eager. Does he have some story, some recollection that I’ve forgotten? He feels like a link to my father, a precious thread I want to unravel and see where it leads.
‘You met him for brunch just about every weekend,’ Ben remarks dryly. ‘Not many thirty-five-year-olds have that kind of relationship with their dad.’
‘No.’ I loved those brunches. Father-daughter time, an institution he insisted upon every Saturday morning since my mother died when I was fourteen. Our last one was seven weeks ago, before all this happened. I’ve gone over every second of that brunch, trying to remember if I missed some clue. My father had white chocolate waffles, but he left a lot on his plate, saying they were too rich.
We had the New York Times spread out on the table, as we often did, and as we sipped coffee and nibbled toast we’d read out bits to each other, commenting on various news stories or investment snippets like an old married couple. If I’d known that was the last time we’d do that… what would I have done differently? I torment myself with that question, with remembering how I checked my watch at the end, how I turned down a third cup of coffee because I had some errands to run. Errands.
I do remember how he talked about my mother; how he said he missed her but he was glad he’d been able to be both mom and dad to me. I didn’t pay much attention; my
dad liked to get sentimental sometimes. Later, I tried to remember every word. I even wrote it down, a transcript that was half remembered, half wishful thinking.
Sometimes I wish we’d been able to give you a sibling. He’d definitely said that, and I’d simply shrugged, because what else could I do? Now I wonder how much easier this grief would be if someone else were bearing it with me. If there was anyone, absolutely anyone, to put their arms around me and say they understood; that they were sad too, as sad as I am. Because I know no one is.
I try to remember if my father seemed tired or in pain. Was he hiding it from me? He swore he hadn’t but six weeks, and at diagnosis the doctors said the cancer had already spread to his stomach and lymph nodes. He must have known. He must have at least suspected. And I know he never would have wanted to worry me. He would have waited until the last possible moment to say anything, and while I understand that protective impulse, it doesn’t feel completely fair. I didn’t have enough time to adjust, to accept; to begin to grieve. I’m still half-expecting him to call, to hear his message on my voicemail. Hey, Gracie. I’m coming into the city. Want to grab a bite to eat? Never again.
In the background of Ben’s home, wherever it is these days, a baby cries. I stiffen.
‘Is that…?’
‘My daughter.’ Ben almost sounds apologetic. ‘I got married a year ago.’
‘You did?’ The words burst out of me, high, bright, and false, like the sudden squawk of a parrot. ‘That’s great. Congratulations.’ This call now feels like a huge mistake. ‘Congratulations,’ I say again, because I’m drunk and I can’t think of what else to say, but even so I’m not ready to get off the phone.
‘I’m sorry, Grace, but I should go. Lauren’s visiting her mother and Isabella sounds like she needs me…’