by Marian Thurm
The students in the class at Columbia were an interesting mix; the current bunch included an elderly Christian Scientist who’d shed his religion and gone to medical school, a former dancer on Broadway, and a pretty—if androgynous-looking— guy originally from Bangladesh. Dave seemed fascinated by them, and Stacy found herself having to work harder to get his attention from her seat at the seminar table. One night after class, seven of them went out to an espresso bar for coffee with Dave. Stacy texted Roger to let him know where she was, and he wrote back immediately: “Enjoy. XOX.” She felt bad nonetheless, even though she knew the kids were asleep and that Roger was free to relax in front of the enormous high-def, flat-screen TV in their den, where he loved to watch his favorite cooking shows like Iron Chef America and Hell’s Kitchen. But his worries about Clare and his mother tainted just about everything, Stacy thought, and she felt a burning twinge of remorse, there in the restaurant, seated between Dave and Kumar, the mysterious guy from Bangladesh.
She wasn’t even a coffee drinker, and felt like a jerk ordering a Diet Coke in the espresso bar. Dave had smoked a cigarette on the way over, and she could smell it in his short, unkempt hair, and on his ratty maroon sweater with the ripped, misshapen V-neck. His head was turned away from her now as he spoke to the white-haired, retired MD who’d been writing a memoir about his days as a Christian Scientist; Stacy was close enough, if she wanted, to rub the flat of her hand against the stubble that traced Dave’s sharp jaw. He seemed a thousand years younger than Roger, and was, she couldn’t help but recognize yet again, attractive in that slacker way of his—torn sweater, bristly face, sneakers that had seen better days. The bristly face was marked by dimples and what you would have to acknowledge were outstanding cheekbones. Whenever he happened to smile at her in class, Stacy was reminded of her inexperienced, vulnerable high school self, and what it was like to be set afire by some boy you knew would never be yours.
“I have to go,” she told Dave quietly, and as she rose from her seat in the espresso bar, handed him some folded singles for the Diet Coke and her share of the tip. Her classmates, who filled up the four tables for two that they’d pushed together for themselves, turned in her direction to call out their good-byes.
She was pleased that Dave accompanied her to the door, and flattered when he grabbed his jacket and went out with her and then stayed at her side while she waited for a cab to come by. It was October and no longer warm, the streets of Morningside Heights quiet and wet with drizzle. They stood in the middle of Broadway, neither of them saying a word. When Dave flagged down a cab for her several minutes later, she put her hand casually on the sleeve of his jacket and started to thank him. His mouth found its way to hers, resting against it very lightly and only for a few moments, but long enough for her pulse to pick up speed.
It was surprising how guilty she felt. And, too, how gratified, how filled up with pleasure.
S
When she got home, Roger looked so distraught, she almost could have been persuaded that someone had snapped a picture of her and Dave together and posted it on Facebook for all the world to view and pass judgment upon.
“What?” she said. “What is it?”
He was at their front door, in what their real estate broker had grandly referred to as “the entrance gallery” (but which Stacy called “the foyer”), waiting for her in sweatpants and an old, old Harvard B-School reunion T-shirt, and that glossy sheen she saw in his eyes must have been tears, she recognized. And was astonished by them.
What she didn’t fully understand was the failure of his current and most important development project and how, as a result of that failure, they were going to have to move from this beautiful apartment of theirs. Which, by the way, was no longer theirs, he told her.
Or would no longer be theirs in the very near future.
“What? What are you talking about?” Stacy said. She rested one hand on the small antique desk in the foyer to steady herself.
The new mall, the one they’d been building in Seattle for the past two years? The $100 million deal he’d needed $5 million in cash for? Well, he’d gone to his pool of investors, who’d put in a million and a quarter each, and then to the bank to borrow $5 million more and to secure a construction loan. The lender had approved the loan, but insisted that Roger pledge the other mall, the still-profitable one in Atlanta, as collateral. (Roger had agreed to it, though in retrospect, God knows, he shouldn’t have, and God knows, as well, that Roger would continue to beat himself up over this for the rest of his life.) And he’d gone ahead and closed on the project and hired the contractor. But now, nearly two years later, now that the mall in Seattle was almost completed, his anchor tenant—a huge national chain of home-improvement stores that had been having problems of their own—had pulled out of their lease. Learning this, the rest of the tenants pulled out as well. Even worse, because of all the construction overruns, there just wasn’t enough cash to finish the project. And now the bank, envisioning this empty mall with not a single tenant in sight—no Victoria’s Secret, no Foot Locker or Ann Taylor or Banana Republic—well, they weren’t interested in throwing good money after bad, and so they’d foreclosed on the mall.
“We’re in trouble,” Roger said, as if, after all that, he still needed to underscore his point. “We’re in the deepest shit, and I’m so sorry.” He looked down at the floor after his apology. “We owe the contractor big bucks. I had a meeting with him last week and he gave me two choices—either put our apartment on the market and pay him off with whatever we get for it, or just give the apartment to him outright in lieu of the money we owe. But then tonight, while you were out, I got another call from him, and he—” Roger took a deep, noisy breath—“he said he wasn’t going to wait for us to sell, he just wanted us to turn the apartment over to—”
“Wait!” Stacy said. “Wait wait wait wait WAIT! What kind of contractor is this? Who is this person? He tells you to turn over the apartment to him and you agree? That’s insane, Roger.”
“And here’s kind of the worst part,” Roger said. His eyes were squeezed shut now. “The guy is someone . . . well, let’s just say he’s comfortable hanging out with the bad guys in Brighton Beach, if you get my point.”
“The Russian mob? Is this your idea of a joke?”
“There’s no fooling around when it comes to this guy, Stace, no asking for favors or extra time. He wants what we owe him, and that’s that.” Roger was staring at the floor again, and Stacy waited for him to raise his head. When he did, he blinked two tears from his eyes. “The lawyers are going to take care of all the paperwork, and then we’ll have extinguished our debt to this guy.”
“I don’t understand how this could have happened,” Stacy said slowly. “I just don’t get how—”
“STOP LOOKING AT ME AS IF I’VE LOST MY FUCKING MIND!” Roger howled, and his voice sounded hoarse, as if he’d been ranting all night.
It hit Stacy then, that until a moment ago—when he’d shouted at her—she hadn’t even been particularly angry, hadn’t even thought much about blaming him for this disastrous failure. (But dealing with a mobbed-up contractor—what was he thinking?) She and Roger had never yelled at each other like that, or at the children. Neither of them came from families who were ruled by parents wielding bad tempers. Shouting was unacceptable and she had to remind him of that.
“First,” Stacy said, “keep your voice down, or I’m going back out that door. And second, you’re telling me that we have nothing left, that’s implicit, right?”
“I’m telling you,” Roger said, “that essentially we no longer own this apartment and will have to move as soon as we can find a reasonably priced rental somewhere. Oh, and you can forget about the kids’ private school. We’ll have to take them both out. I mean, they might give us emergency financial aid for one kid, but for two, never gonna happen. And I’m telling you right now there’s no way we’re having one kid in public school and the other in private.” He put his face into his han
ds, and how could her anger not be tempered with sympathy? That was the way it went in the business world— you took risks and sometimes you were rewarded. Greatly rewarded. But sometimes you got screwed. Big time. So no, she wasn’t as angry as she might have been. Certainly she was grief-stricken, and certainly more than a little frightened. But they were two smart people, and they would manage.
After all, in whose bible was it written that the only happy families were those who lived on Park or Fifth or Central Park West in enviable apartments worth a hefty seven figures and then some?
Her husband staggered toward her now, and she caught him by the shoulders, telling him, over and over again, in her softest voice, what she had just told herself—that they were two smart people and that they would manage somehow.
It was the sweet soft voice she employed to comfort her children when they were unhappy, and it had never failed to do the trick.
If only she didn’t believe in karma, didn’t believe that somehow that pulse-quickening kiss from Dave was connected to all of this.
~ 23 ~
His appetite wasn’t what it used to be; used to be at dinner Roger would routinely finish up two large chicken breasts, several servings of basmati rice, a couple of helpings of a mixed green salad ornamented with red pepper, mushrooms, and olives, and then, an hour or so later, return to the kitchen for an apple or an orange or a handful of extra-dark pretzels. And an hour after that, help himself to a good-sized bowl of caramel-truffle-flavor ice cream, and not the low-fat kind, either. He was a pretty big guy, six three, a hundred and eighty-five pounds, and all his life he’d enjoyed food. He did one hundred sit-ups on his exercise mat every morning, and ran on his NordicTrack for half an hour before breakfast. His stomach was still fairly well-muscled, he thought, and he’d never worried about his weight even as he settled into middle age and watched some of his friends develop what they sheepishly referred to simply as “a belly.”
These days, he woke up every morning, exercised— though his heart wasn’t really in it—and bypassed breakfast altogether. The thought of putting food into his mouth so early in the day had begun to nauseate him. He had a banana for lunch at his office, and washed it down with several bottles of water. When he came home at night, he wasn’t hungry for dinner, though he knew he should have been and that it was a worrisome sign that he wasn’t. Stacy, who had worked, over the years of their marriage, to turn herself into a confident—and excellent—cook, couldn’t help but take it personally when, night after night, he sat down at the dinner table, took a quick look at what she was offering, and turned away.
Tonight he had more important things to be concerned about than the made-from-scratch tacos Stacy insisted on filling his plate with and the offended look on her face when he couldn’t even make the effort to swallow down more than a baby-sized portion while she took her time eating every last bite of her dinner.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked him, and reached across the table to lay her hand on top of his. “You really need to start talking to me, baby.”
His BlackBerry was next to him on the glass tabletop, as if he were seated in a restaurant; he couldn’t keep his eyes off it. He thought of the two young guys in suits he saw smoking out in front of the Citicorp building today in Long Island City. As Roger walked past them, he heard one say to the other, “So, how many $100 million dollar investors you got?” Though he’d wanted to continue past them, he brought himself to a dead stop in order to hear the other guy’s disappointed response: “Just two.”
Just two.
“What’s wrong with you?” Stacy asked him again.
What was wrong with him? Well, let’s see, his business was going down in flames, his mother had been assigned to the Alzheimer’s floor in the assisted-living residence whose monthly charges he could no longer afford to kick in his share of, his sister was seriously ill with cancer, his precious children were about to be yanked out of the private school where they’d been treated to the best possible kindergarten and pre-K education money could buy, and, lastly, they were about to lose their spacious home and panoramic views on one of the choicest streets in this choicest of cities.
He apologized now for not being himself, but maybe this was simply his new self; the one who had little interest in food or sex, or anything other than keeping his family and his business afloat. And, too, just getting by from one day to the next without sustaining any more losses didn’t seem like much to ask for.
“No apologies,” Stacy said. “You know we’re going to be fine,” she added, but she couldn’t possibly have meant it, could she?
S
She and her sister haven’t spoken since the night before she left for Florida, she realizes, and decides to give Lauren a call while Roger is grilling turkey burgers and ears of corn outside on the terrace overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway. In the master bedroom, Olivia and Will are lounging around, watching Dumbo on the portable DVD player.
Tomorrow afternoon they’re all flying back to New York, and no one’s complaining. Fortunately both of her kids seem happy at their new schools; why wouldn’t they want to get back?
“Hey, just thought I’d check in,” she tells Lauren’s voice mail, and seats herself at the foot of the bed with the kids, who are flat on their stomachs, chins sunk into their raised palms, as they watch their DVD.
Stacy is surprised to learn that Dumbo’s real name is “Jumbo Jr.” and that “Dumbo” is, in fact, just a means-pirited nickname.
Then she gets a call from her grandmother, whom she’s been speaking to every other day since they’ve been here.
“I need you to hold on just a sec,” Juliette says. “I have to put my coffee cup down someplace safe.” She is ninety-two years old and still of impressively sound mind and body—except for her eyes, which are suffering from the earliest stages of macular degeneration. She’s still in her tiny apartment in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood that’s still none too cool and not especially safe, though certainly more so than a decade ago.
Juliette’s just finished reading fifty pages of This Side of Paradise, she reports to Stacy. In one of her few concessions to old age, she’s enjoying Fitzgerald on her e-reader—a gift from Stacy and Roger—where she can adjust the light and the size of the print to suit her. (The other concession is Mary-Magdalene, the caregiver who looks in on her once a day and prepares dinner for her every night.)
“Did you know that the poet Rupert Brooke died of sepsis caused by nothing more than a mosquito bite? The poor thing was only twenty-eight years old when that mosquito got him!” Juliette says, sounding outraged.
“Wait, I thought you were reading This Side of Paradise,” Stacy says.
“Well, where do you think the title comes from? It’s from a Rupert Brooke poem,” her grandmother tells her. And Stacy thinks how lucky she herself will be if, at ninety-something, she’ll be interested in having a conversation about poor, tragic Rupert Brooke.
She hears the call-waiting beeping now, and sees that it’s her sister.
“Hang on, Gram.”
“Hey, gimme your flight info,” Lauren says.
“I’ll be right back,” Stacy says, and clicks back to Juliette, promising to call her later.
“I don’t think you will,” her grandmother says. “But I’m busy here with my F. Scott Fitzgerald, and in a little while what’s her name, Mary-Magdalene, will be here to make me my pasta. So I’ll see you soon, babydoll, when you get back from your trip.”
“See you soon, Gram.”
“Got anyone to pick you guys up at the airport?” Lauren asks when Stacy switches back to her. “Because I can drive in from Connecticut if you need me to, it’s not like it’s a weekday and I need to be at work or anything.”
Stacy is both surprised and pleased by her sister’s offer, but says, “Oh, we’ll just catch a cab, no problem.” She’s already imagining, with some excitement, the taxi ride back from Kennedy—she and the kids packed into the rear of the cab, Roger up front wit
h the driver—the familiar, uninspiring landscape of the parkways, the Van Wyck and the Grand Central, both of them probably clogged with cars as usual. And she realizes now just how much she’s been longing to get home.
Pretty much since the moment they got here, if you really want to know the truth.
~ 24 ~
Roger was sleep-deprived, but this time around, there was no baby to blame, no hungry infant shrieking in the middle of the night and forcing him or Stacy to haul themselves out of bed at two or three or four a.m. for a diaper change and a soothing bottle of Enfamil. This time around, he just couldn’t sleep through a single night without getting up and out of bed at least once, and sometimes twice, for lengthy periods. He usually went to bed with Stacy at midnight or so, and envied the way she fell asleep, within a few minutes, it seemed, her head resting against her bent arm, her knees tucked together, her breathing even and nearly silent. He arranged himself around her, hoping the warmth and weight of her body, that perfect calm and stillness she gave off, like a delicate scent, would somehow lull him to sleep.
No dice.
For weeks now, it had been the same thing every fucking night; it would take him a miserable hour or so to fall asleep, his mind racing from worry to worry, his stomach all worked up as he thought of his business debts, the dwindling money in his checking and savings accounts, all his investments in the stock market he’d been forced to sell at a loss. He’d awaken a couple of hours later, the back of his neck moist with sweat even though it was already December and they never slept with the heat on.
He would go into the den and onto the Internet, send e-mails to his accountant asking questions he already knew the answers to. And then he would torture himself by visiting the websites of the top-ranked cancer hospitals throughout the country to see if there was something better out there for his sister than what she was already getting.