by Swan Huntley
“I’m going to need you to expand on that.”
“Okay, let me ask you this.” She tapped my diamond. “How many times have you been in love?”
I didn’t know if I was finding this conversation fun or stressful. On the one hand, I’d been in love many times. On the other hand, was it real? Maybe I’d never been in love at all. I went with the less complicated answer, the one Susan would expect. “I don’t know—five times, ten times?”
“See? That’s what I mean. I’ve been in love twice. Two times, that’s it. Just two.” She held up two fingers and then got distracted by something moving out the window. It was a bus. “You’re just—you want to be in love more than I do.”
Susan was in therapist mode. Which had the potential to be very amusing, because she’d be even more brutally honest than usual, but it backfired when she hurt your feelings.
“Susan, everybody wants to be in love. Come on.”
“Yeah, but you—you want, like, the little man with the little picket fence.” She said this in a wee little voice.
“I do not want a picket fence. And William isn’t my little man, he’s my fiancé.”
“No, William is a big man.” She said this in a big ogre voice.
“What do you think about him? Tell me the truth.”
Her eyes came unfocused, her bottom lip jutted out, she rocked her head back and forth. “He’s cool. Cool, cool, cool.” She touched her face again; she couldn’t stop. “I mean, no, he’s kind of cold. Isn’t he? Like a German colonel.”
“Well, he is German.”
“Well, so am I.”
“Okay.”
“He’s hard to read.”
“He can be at first. It’s called being mysterious. It’s a good thing.”
Susan made a face that said no.
“He grew up in Switzerland. People aren’t as expressive there.”
“I have many Swiss friends I would call expressive. Also, wasn’t he born here? Why does he have an accent?”
“He barely has an accent.”
“Listen, I’m happy for you, okay? I’m very, very happy for you.” She held my hand. “I am just saying, as your friend, okay? As your fah-riend.” She paused until she had my eyes. “I think he’s a little Talented Mr. Ripley, and I don’t want you to get hurt again, that’s all I’m saying.”
“You don’t even know him. You’ve met him twice.”
“I have a sixth sense.”
“Well, it’s off.”
The waitress, sensing tension, placed our drinks timidly on the table.
“Fine,” Susan said, hands up in surrender. “Agree to disagree.”
“Fine.”
“Are you upset?”
I didn’t answer.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’d be a shitty friend if I didn’t tell you how I felt, okay? But I’m done now. I’m done. I’ve said my piece. So tell me about the wedding. Let’s talk tablecloths.”
“Susan.” I was desperate. “I need you to like him.”
Susan nodded once. “Done—I like him. If anyone asks, I like him.”
She kissed my ass for the rest of lunch, asking all about Marty Williams and the color palette and what kind of food we were going to have. I ended up telling her about my mother and the vase, to which she simply said, “Interesting.”
“You know I have Dan coming over once a week now. Isn’t that hilarious?”
I set the fork on the plate. “Are you going to sleep with him?”
“Whoa.”
I laughed, and then I kept laughing. And then I was laughing uncontrollably.
“What is going on with you? And no, I have Henry.” She pronounced it Henri like he was French. “I have it all!” Susan fluttered her hands open. They looked like sea anemones on speed. Then she turned dramatically to face me, like a singer preparing to belt out a number. “That’s our job in the one percent. To look like we have it all.” She touched her raw cheek again. “My face feels like the ass of a babe.” She grabbed her glass. “Cheers,” she said. “To having it all!”
•
When William got home, I gave him notes about my day while he changed out of his suit. Lunch with Susan, workout with Chris. Marty Williams was great. October seventeenth was going to be the happy day.
“October seventeenth—I like it,” he said from inside the closet.
“You do?”
“It’s perfect.”
He reappeared in a tank top and those faded Adidas shorts he liked so much and sat on the bed to put on his sneakers. I was in bed, adding maybe/yes Post-its to Brides.
“I can’t wait to be married to you.”
I could feel my heart beating in my chest. I didn’t know what to say. I said, “Ha.” I just couldn’t believe it. This was what I had always wanted, and here it was, happening.
“I’m going to go for a quick run.”
“Okay.”
He put his ear buds in, stood up. From the doorway he blew a kiss.
“I love you,” I called after him, but he must not have heard me. The music was already playing.
14
At the end of every day, Vera or Maya sent me an e-mail about the shop. These e-mails contained information about foot traffic, the day’s clientele (anyone important/famous? any homeless interlopers?), what items had sold, what needed to be restocked, and our total sales.
Vera, next to the total sales number, often inserted an opinion about how little money we were making and how this worried her greatly. “This worries me greatly!” My honest reaction was, Poor Vera, who lives in New Jersey and cares so much about her little peon job.
Today she had written: Catherine, unfortunately we made $135 today. This is not due to my lack of performance as your manager. There is only so much I can do. Our account balance is $1,233.67. This worries me greatly.
I wrote back: Will transfer funds ASAP.
I’d been bailing the shop out for a few months with my personal funds. I hadn’t told anyone. Nothing had ever been this bad though. One hundred thirty-five dollars—even I knew that was a bad number.
Giving up the shop was simply not an option. I loved telling people I was a small-business owner. It made me relatable. It gave me substance. Without it, what was I doing with my life?
The trust my father had left dispersed money to the three of us every month. Caroline and I got $80,000 a month, our mother got more. One stipulation of the trust was that Caroline and I could buy real estate under $8 million. (We both got as close to that number as we could. My house cost $7.85, Caroline’s $7.82.) I also had some money saved, so there was no reason to pay close attention to these monthly deposits. Even without savings, I doubt I would have paid attention. I had never worried about money. My entire life, I had never worried about money. I had always had enough.
So when I went to the bank to make the transfer to the shop’s account (I liked to do this in person sometimes; I think it made me feel legit, not that the people who worked at the bank cared), I was surprised at the low balance. I assumed it was a clerical error. I assumed a few zeros had been lost in cyberspace. I would speak to someone and it would be resolved.
A hair-sprayed woman who looked like a flight attendant told me in her flight-attendant voice that no transfers had been made in the past three months. When I asked why, she said she had no way of knowing that information, ma’am.
I called the accountant, Ted, who’d been a family friend for years, and explained that a clerical error had occurred and he needed to fix it right now. I hadn’t spoken to Ted in a long time but had fond memories of him. He had come to our Christmas party every year and brought Caroline and me Peeps. Which, now that I thought about it, was unseasonably odd.
“What’s the problem? The trust contains $500 million. Which is enough for everyone forever!” I was sure about this number because my mother had said it so many times.
“Five hundred?” Ted sounded unsure.
“Is that wrong?”
“That is
indeed wrong. Your father may have had that much at one time in stocks, but when the market fell, those funds were dissolved. The full amount at the time of your father’s death was closer to $100 million.”
“What about the money from Eighty-Fourth?” We had sold for $20.5.
“The house was left to your mother. What’s left remains in her name. But there isn’t much left. She donated nearly all of it to charity.”
“She donated $20 million to charity?” I laughed. “That’s insane, Ted. That has to be wrong.”
“Unfortunately, it is not wrong.”
“I’m coming to your office.”
“Okay, let’s set you up with an appointment. When would you like to come?”
“I’m coming right now.”
•
I had never been to Ted’s office. It was a big gold building on Fifty-Fourth Street, not far from the bank. I showed my ID, was given a badge. I took the wrong elevator up and had to come back down and go to the other elevator bank. “This,” I planned to say when I saw Ted, “has been an unnecessarily degrading experience.” When I found the office, finally, I was a total bitch to the headband-wearing receptionist, and I had every right to be. “Ted Adams,” I said. I didn’t take my sunglasses off.
“If you’ll just have a seat, I’ll call him.”
Why was everyone speaking like a flight attendant today? “Tell him to hurry up.”
I refused to sit down. I paced the waiting room. The plants were fake. How tacky. In a large conference room, with a view designed to impress (I was not impressed), two suits appeared to be having an unserious conversation. They were laughing. It was unprofessional.
“I’ll take you back now,” Headband said. I followed her through the cubicle maze, where people’s cat pictures were sadly tacked onto the sad blue fabric walls of their cubes, to the back, where the real offices were. Ted’s door was open.
“It’s nice to see you.” He stood behind his desk. “It’s been years.” He walked around, hugged me.
“Yeah.” I patted his back. He smelled strongly of Old Spice.
“Please, sit.”
I did, in a gaudy leather chair with too-high armrests. I looked out the window. Flying pigeons and I swore one of them was shitting.
Ted looked like he’d just stepped off the golf course: baby-blue polo, white pants (really?), the unnaturally orange skin pigmentation of an Oompa Loompa. As if I had given him a compliment on his tan, he said, “Just got back from Florida this morning.”
I sighed as loudly as possible.
“Do you want some water?”
“Yes. No. I—yes. Ted, I am distressed.”
“I can see that.”
He filled a glass of water at his tacky personal sink, touched my back in a fatherly way when he gave it to me. I recoiled. I was not a child anymore. I was a small-business owner with a serious problem.
“How much money is left, Ted?”
“It’s gone,” he said, taking his seat across from me.
“It’s gone? Gone?” This wasn’t registering. “Gone? What does that mean?”
“It means you will no longer receive monthly payments, Catherine.”
“No,” I said. “No no no no no.” I was going to tear my hair out. I was going to die. “There must be some way around this. Tell me there is. Please. Tell me there’s a loophole.”
“There is something additional you should know. In your father’s trust, it was stipulated that you and Caroline would receive additional funds if you had children. And you must be married to receive those funds. I believe he added that later. Your father rewrote his will more often than anyone I’ve ever known—it was hard to keep track. He loved the idea of a large family. Well, you know that. He thought this would give you and Caroline an incentive to have kids. Ten million dollars per child is the number he chose. A separate account holds that money. I believe it accommodates up to eight children. If that number isn’t reached, the remainder will be given to the Met.”
“What? I’ve never heard that.” As the words came out of my mouth, I realized I was wrong. I had heard this before. Ten years before, when Dad had died, Caroline, Mom, Ted, and I had sat at the dining table (I remember the roses had been red that day) going over these logistics. I had barely paid attention. Of course, I’d been distraught. My father had been everything to me, and he had died so suddenly.
“But how can it be gone? My mother said the trust contained $500 million!” I was repeating myself. This still wasn’t registering. I was going to pass out. I was going to die. “I’m positive about that.”
“And you never asked your mother to see any printed record of this? The statements I sent you would have negated that figure.”
“No, Ted.” I said his name like it was something ugly. “Why would I? Why would I check? I believed my own mother. Wouldn’t you?”
Ted pressed his lips together. His wispy white hair looked like sprinkler mist above his head.
“Does Caroline know about this?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but Caroline has three children?”
“And?”
“Right.”
I managed to set my jittering glass of water on Ted’s idiotic desk without spilling it everywhere. “This is not real. This can’t be real.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you were aware.”
“How could you not inform me that my monthly payments wouldn’t be coming?”
“I did inform you,” he said certainly. “I have sent you a letter every month for the past year.”
“I didn’t get any fucking letters, Ted.” I saw myself in the kitchen all those mornings, throwing the letters away.
“Catherine, please.”
“Please? How could you not have called me? Don’t you think this warranted a phone call? Or an e-mail? No one reads their fucking mail anymore, Ted. It’s a waste of paper!”
Ted waited. He seemed unfazed. He had probably been in this situation more than once.
“How much money does Mom have now?”
“I am not at liberty to say.”
“But it’s enough to pay for her to live in that home?”
“Your mother’s facility is paid for by the money she has saved in her account, yes. She has enough saved to cover her living expenses until the age of one hundred and ten.”
“What?”
“She wanted to be safe.”
“A hundred and ten?”
“It’s a creative number. It should not be taken literally. That number just means she has padding, so to speak.”
I covered my face with my hands. “I’m going to pass out.”
“After your father died, your mother wrote a living will. In this will she stipulated that in the case of dementia or any other degenerative condition that left her unable to think coherently, the art collection—everything you and Caroline did not want—should be donated to museums and charities, along with most of the proceeds from the sale of the apartment on Eighty-Fourth Street. She wrote an extensive list of charitable organizations, in fact. I can pull it up now if you’d like.”
“So she gave all that money away, knowing we would run out?”
“I can show you the will. And the list of charitable donations. It will just take a second.” He turned the computer on. The computer hadn’t even been on.
“I think you need to get off the golf course and be better at your job, Ted. And turn your fucking computer on!” I stood up. I may have made wild gestures with my hands.
The door opened. A suit stood there, his eyes wide, like sunny-side-up eggs. “Everything okay in here?”
“Fine, Bernie, thanks.”
“See how Bernie is dressed? This is how you should be dressed for work, Ted.”
Bernie gave Ted a look: She’s crazy.
“E-mail me the documents. You’ll hear from my lawyer.”
It was like a bad movie. I tore through the cubicles. I jammed my fi
nger into the elevator button too many times, as if that would make it come faster. And I was so skinny then—the gaunt-actress version of myself. I had gotten a blowout that morning by a stylist whose vision of “feathery, feathery!” had left me looking like a Farrah Fawcett drag queen. I was a woman playing the role of a small-business owner on a tirade, and I was playing it badly. I’d even worn a pantsuit. With pinstripes. Who was I trying to be that day? I think I was trying to be myself, but in all the trying, I had missed her completely.
15
I invited Caroline out for dinner that night without telling her why. Of course she came. “The nannies are here tonight,” she said, as if they weren’t there every other night. We went to a French bistro we used to like as children, which had since become a hokey chain that gratinéed everything in oozy, oily cheese. The smell was killing me. Even the cone-shaped sconces on the walls appeared to be made of cheese. People crammed in, filled the booths, made too much noise. Of couse Edith Piaf was playing. How cheesy.
We ordered food to appear civilized. We chose the macaroni because that’s what we had chosen as children. We didn’t eat it because we were wasteful, and we drank instead because we were in pain. Yes, I was feeling dramatic. My life as I knew it was ending.
I was still in the pantsuit. I had walked to the restaurant from Fifty-Fourth Street, earbuds in, head down. I listened to Metallica the whole way. I stopped only once, to buy a water bottle at a bodega. I drank the whole thing on a busy corner and threw the bottle into a trash can with force.
Caroline was her chirpy birdy self, quacking away about how it was so wonderful that she could practice Spanish with the cleaning lady. I thought, When I’m poor, I won’t have a cleaning lady.
Caroline always gave me compliments. I waited for her to comment on my blowout. Instead, when she finally shut up about the romantic cadence of the Spanish language (what movie was that from?), she said, “You look like hell.”
“You look like hell.”
“What? I meant it like how are you feeling?” She gulped her red wine. Her knobby elbows on the table looked like gnarls on a twig. “Don’t be mean to me.”