In the summer of 1998, at the start of Rob and Nancy’s second year in Hong Kong, Nancy’s mother, Jean, had cancer surgery. She lost half a lung but received a favorable prognosis. By fall, she was well enough to fly to Hong Kong with her new husband, a travel agent. Jean had two days to visit Nancy before boarding a cruise ship bound for Singapore. She was taken aback—very aback—by her first glimpse of Parkview. Nothing had prepared her for its scale, nor for its vulgar excesses, its ostentatious opulence.
The thought of her daughter living in such a place worried Jean. She feared that Nancy would lose herself amid the pretension, would vanish into Parkview’s sumptuousness only to reappear as a stranger dripping baubles, unrecognizable even to herself.
But Jean knew better than to say this. She knew how Nancy reacted to anything she perceived as criticism even in the best of times, which Jean sensed these were not. Nancy spoke of Rob only to complain about him. He was almost never home. When he was, all he did was criticize. He was constantly scolding her for not paying enough attention to the children.
On the second and last day of Jean’s visit, Nancy was in the middle of explaining how unreasonable and demanding Rob was when two-year-old Zoe, who had been playing on the floor nearby, began to scream. Zoe was more temperamental than Isabel. She would melt down at the slightest provocation, sometimes apparently for no reason at all.
Jean was full of grandmotherly love, but screaming children had always set her teeth on edge.
“Can’t you make her be quiet?” Jean said.
“Connie will deal with it. If she ever gets out here. Connie! I need you right now! Hurry up!”
Still screaming, Zoe started to punch and kick at her mother.
“Can’t you control her?”
“Stay out of this, Mom.”
Zoe was now writhing on the living room floor. Connie raced in from another part of the apartment. She carried Zoe to her room and closed the door. Slowly, the screaming subsided.
“Nancy,” Jean said, “I think it’s time that you learned to take care of your children yourself.”
Nancy gasped.
Then—and even years later Jean didn’t know another way to say it—Nancy went berserk. She charged at Jean and grabbed her and yanked her off the couch. Never robust, Jean had been especially frail since her surgery. Screaming even louder than Zoe had—and using language that Zoe wouldn’t learn for years—Nancy propelled her mother down the hallway.
“Don’t-you-ever-tell-me-how-to-handle-my-own-children!”
She squeezed Jean’s shoulders and pushed her up against the door.
“Get out! Get out! Get out of my house! I never want to see your fucking face again!”
Nancy opened the door and gave Jean a shove hard enough to make her stumble into the hallway and slammed the door in her face.
Jean pounded on the door, begging Nancy to let her back in. There was no response. She pounded and begged until she was too exhausted to continue. She took a taxi to the cruise ship in tears.
She let an hour pass, then phoned the apartment. Nancy picked up. The instant she heard Jean’s voice she was possessed by another fit. She yelled things into the phone that Jean could not imagine a daughter ever saying to a mother. Jean hung up but called again an hour later. This time, Connie answered. She said Nancy was lying down and did not want to be disturbed.
Jean was still crying when the cruise ship left the harbor in late afternoon.
8. THE PERFECT COUPLE
THE MORE MONEY ROB MADE, THE MORE NANCY SPENT. SHE bought clothes, jewelry, and perfume. Then more clothes, jewelry, and perfume. Then scarves and shoes and cosmetics. It was so easy to spend vast sums of money in Hong Kong, where shopping was the national pastime. In fact, if it weren’t for the 6.5 million Chinese who lived there, Hong Kong could have become Nancy’s kind of town.
She shopped out of boredom. She shopped out of anger at Rob. She shopped so she could talk about her shopping. She shopped because the stores were open. She shopped because she never felt she had enough.
While she shopped, Connie took care of the children. That’s what Connie was for. Connie had turned out to be smart, conscientious, and caring—the perfect amah. But even with Connie, Nancy felt oppressed by motherhood. It never stopped. There were no fixed hours, there were no days off. Children needed to be clothed and fed and cleaned and cleaned up after; they needed to be entertained and educated and disciplined. Nancy was perfectly happy to get down on the floor and play with them when in the mood—she delighted in her children then—but not even Connie’s round-the-clock service spared her the burden of responsibility. She loved to be a third child with her children; it was parenting she found so hard to cope with.
Nancy brooded about her body. She’d always known her looks were something special, but she would turn thirty-five in the spring of 1999, and it alarmed her to think—and of this she was convinced—that in terms of physical attractiveness she would soon enter an irreversible period of decline. She’d look so much better, she thought, if only she hadn’t had children. Her two pregnancies had taken a toll. It galled her to see her breasts begin to sag, to see the slight padding on her hips, to spot incipient cellulite on her thighs. That was the main reason she didn’t want to have the third child that Rob had begun to insist on. He wanted a son. Easy for him to say, she told her friend in San Francisco, Bryna O’Shea, it wouldn’t cost him the last of his looks.
She learned she was pregnant in February 1999. The baby was due in October. Ultrasound showed it was a boy. Rob was delighted. Nancy was not.
By the spring of 1999, the East Asian financial crisis was starting to wane. There were signs of stabilization, if not recovery. For Rob, it had been a hell of a ride. He had established himself as one of the distressed-debt stars of Hong Kong. Because he was at Goldman, he couldn’t say “I,” but everyone who counted knew he’d become a powerful force.
He was a natural. He had a nose for big game and the ruthlessness to chase it until it dropped. He could spot a company in dire straits in the Philippines from as far away as the Strait of Malacca. And he had a jeweler’s eye for discerning the hidden strengths and weaknesses in a bankruptcy filing or annual report.
He and Nancy celebrated his success like true children of Parkview: they uptowered. They went, in fact, all the way up to tower 17, the most coveted and expensive of Parkview’s residential buildings. Tower 17! For two years, Nancy had dreamed of tower 17. She’d seen the wives who lived there flaunting their self-importance—as if they had gotten there on their own. She’d marveled at their ability to patronize and condescend. She’d observed the cars they drove and the clothes and jewelry they wore. She’d envied them. Every woman in Parkview envied the wives of tower 17. Now she would be one of them, pregnant or not.
Nearly a year had passed since Nancy had thrown her mother out of the apartment. Jean and her husband lived in Sebastopol, California, an hour and a half north of San Francisco. One day in late spring of 1999, Bryna O’Shea called her from San Francisco to say she was about to fly to Hong Kong to visit Nancy. Jean asked her to deliver an heirloom necklace that she knew Nancy coveted almost as much as she did the lead statuette she had gotten from Ira’s mother.
“Frankly, Bryna, it’s a peace offering. Maybe you could let her know how hurt I am that she still refuses to have anything to do with me.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Bryna said.
When she got back from Hong Kong a week later, Bryna called to say that Nancy and the children were fine and that Nancy was delighted to have the necklace.
“Did she say anything about me?” Jean asked.
Bryna hesitated. “She did give me a message to pass on, but I don’t think I should.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to tell you, Jean. It’s only going to hurt.”
“Never mind that. What did she say?”
Bryna took a deep breath. “She said it’s a shame you’ll never get to see your grandchildren ag
ain.”
In October 1999, Nancy gave birth to a son. He was named Ethan. Rob was thrilled. Nancy went into what her tower 17 friends said was postpartum depression. Rob had his doubts. To him it looked suspiciously like an excuse to be lazier than ever and to neglect her duties to their growing family. No matter how hard he worked, no matter how much he traveled, Rob remained concerned about his children. He had great respect and admiration for Connie, but he wanted the children raised by their mother.
He told Nancy to start preparing nutritious food instead of letting Isabel and Zoe stuff themselves with fast food day and night. She could also teach them some table manners. And some manners in general. And she could teach them to clean up after themselves instead of hollering for Min to come do it.
At an even more basic level, she could start to take an interest in her children. She could give them their baths once in a while instead of letting Connie do it. She could put them to bed at night instead of letting Connie do it. She could read to them and encourage Isabel to read on her own and get Zoe started. She could make sure Isabel did extra arithmetic, instead of assuming that the Hong Kong International School was doing enough. She could get Zoe away from the television set and start teaching her about numbers, instead of assuming Sesame Street would suffice. Rob had high expectations for his children and he didn’t want them undermined by his wife. And it wouldn’t hurt if she took a bit more of an interest in him.
He didn’t like arriving home from Taiwan late on a Friday night, knowing he’d have to fly out again on Sunday night or Monday morning, and being treated as if he were an uninvited guest. But when he tried to talk to her about performing the duties of a wife and mother—and, yes, on occasion he might seem impatient, or even annoyed—she would erupt. Connie and Min could hear her from the other end of the apartment.
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that, you fucking five-minute father. You’re the one who turns this household into chaos. You come in late, the girls are asleep, you wake them up and get them all excited and then you lose interest and sit in your armchair and drink your fucking single-malt scotch and leave me to pick up the pieces. Don’t you dare tell me how to raise my children. Don’t you dare tell me how I should be spending my days.”
Rob couldn’t understand it. The more money he made, the less happy she was. That seemed illogical, and Rob was a logical man.
But they made it a point to show no trace of discord in public. Expat life was all about façade. At the United Jewish Congregation, at the Aberdeen Marina Club, at Goldman Sachs functions, and at Parkview, Rob and Nancy had appearances to maintain. He was the brilliant banker, devoted husband and father. She was the loyal wife and energetic mother with the sparkling smile and the look of mischief in her eye. To others, they seemed the perfect couple. “We all envy you,” a Parkview neighbor told them one day. “You two have the best marriage in Hong Kong.”
9. THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS ENOUGH
FROM THE MOMENT ROB WENT TO WORK FOR GOLDMAN Sachs in 1996, his eyes were on a single prize: making partner. No other position on Wall Street offered anything approaching either the cash or cachet of a Goldman Sachs partnership. A PMD (partner managing director) could count on an annual bonus of $10 million or more, adjusted for inflation, until retirement. He (or she, although almost 90 percent of Goldman partners were male) was also eligible to invest in Goldman ventures that were closed not only to the public, but to the firm’s non-PMD executives. In addition, a PMD could buy Goldman stock at a 25 percent discount.
That was the cash part. As for cachet, becoming a Goldman Sachs partner was the equivalent—in the closed-end world of investment banking—of becoming a made man in the Mafia. Suddenly, you could get whatever table you wanted at the New York restaurant of your choice—the firm would handle your reservation. And to assure that you got to keep as many of your millions as the tax code allowed—and to save you time that could be better spent working on a new deal for Goldman—the firm took care of your tax returns. Plus, you were guaranteed the envy, if not necessarily the admiration, of your erstwhile peers.
Goldman, which employed more than twenty thousand people worldwide, named new partners—about a hundred of them—once every two years. Rob had been too new to the firm to be considered in 1998, but after kicking sand in the faces of the boys from Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, UBS, JP Morgan, and others for the two years that followed, he fancied his chances for 2000.
Unfortunately, some of the silky-smooth senior managers in the Hong Kong office perceived his aggressiveness as abrasiveness. Yes, one had to be greedy, that was a given. But one should not appear to be. Whereas at most investment banks the bottom line was all that counted, at Goldman attention was still paid to appearances. One was expected to keep one’s naked avarice cloaked, or at least coated with a genteel veneer.
Also, one was expected not to cut into line. Hierarchy was to be respected. It was fine to let the competitive juices flow when one was trying to beat the competition, but open combativeness was to be checked at the office door. Rob paid less attention than he should have to the maxim “At Goldman we never say ‘I.’”
He also—unwisely—tried to elbow his way past a PMD who had been instrumental in bringing him to Hong Kong. Without the PMD’s support, Rob had no chance of making partner. It became clear to him—and to Goldman—that his future lay elsewhere. Once again, his head was available to be hunted. In short order it was: this time on behalf of Merrill Lynch.
Merrill had been slow to make an Asian footprint and was in a hurry to catch up. His new firm didn’t have the Goldman Sachs aura, but it offered what Rob coveted most: limitless opportunity. Between Mumbai and Manila there remained many blank spaces on Merrill’s map of distressed-debt opportunity. Rob would be given the mandate of filling them in. Taking his top assistant, David Noh, with him, he jumped ship virtually overnight. The new century would bring with it new horizons. And at Merrill Lynch, Rob would be able to say “I.”
Nancy was the only possible downside. She’d had her fill of Hong Kong. Rob had told her it would be for three years and the three years were almost up. “I’ve been looking online at houses in Westport,” she told him in the early spring of 2000. “There’s not much for five million, but there are a couple in the seven to eight range that might be worth checking out.”
“I don’t think so,” Rob said.
“Why not? Don’t you want to live in Connecticut?”
“Plans have changed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m leaving Goldman. I’ve received a terrific offer from Merrill Lynch. They’re going to make me Asia-Pacific managing director of Global Principal Investments. I’ll be in charge of everything except Japan. The money is going to be unbelievable.”
“Are you telling me you’re staying in Hong Kong?”
“We are. Probably for another three years.”
“No, Rob. You are. I can’t take any more of Hong Kong. I’ll take the children and leave.”
“I won’t let you do that. You have to stay here.”
The fiercest battle for control they’d ever had ensued. It involved many ugly scenes and threats of divorce. In the end, Rob won, but at a cost. Andrew and Hayley had bought a multimillion-dollar house high up on Stratton Mountain, while Rob and Nancy remained stuck in a condo in the village at the base of the ski lift. Nancy said she’d stay in Hong Kong, but in return Rob would buy a $2-million Stratton home and give Nancy a million dollars for renovation. She got the project started during a long summer vacation in Vermont. She told friends she’d never forgive Rob for keeping her in Hong Kong against her will, but she gloated that she’d made him pay $3 million for her acquiescence. And she proudly said she’d make the home a work of art: something that Andrew and Hayley would have to envy.
They went to Phuket for a week’s vacation at Christmastime. Ira and his wife flew out to join them. All of them had been there before. The beaches were fabulous. But Phuket was
not the place to go if you were trying to kid yourself about your body.
Fully clothed—and considering the clothes she bought, not surprisingly—Nancy still made heads swivel. But she had not gotten her body back in the shape she wanted, although it had been more than a year since she’d given birth to Ethan. She blamed this on her self-diagnosed postpartum depression.
Ira could see she wasn’t happy. She complained incessantly about Hong Kong. She exchanged sharp words with Rob as never before. When she fell silent, she seemed morose. As a veteran of two divorces, Ira was quick to pick up bad marital vibes. He couldn’t ask Nancy directly how she was feeling. That would have crossed her line in the sand. Instead, “as one ex-restaurateur to another,” he reminded her there was no such thing as a free lunch.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that if you care so much about the lifestyle Rob’s money buys you, you should suck it up and stick it out for the next three years.” These were bold words to speak to Nancy. Ira quickly sought to soften them. “But maybe it’s not worth it. Maybe it’s too much to handle. You always have the option of getting out.” Instead of jumping down his throat and telling him to mind his own business, as Ira had expected she would do, Nancy simply lapsed into silence.
Ira found Rob much more voluble and, except when he was carping at Nancy, more congenial than ever before. Rob told Ira he’d named him—not his own father or brother—as executor of his will. “It only seems logical,” he said, “since everything I have would go to Nancy.” Ira was grateful for Rob’s trust.
Never Enough Page 5