‘I know what Brad thinks – that you are certifiable. The sort of control freak who gives anal retentives a bad name. But hey, go on and make trouble, Princess Mischkin. See how our boss decides that you aren’t the most profitable zone in the organization.’
‘You cross me, you’re going to find out.’
It was like watching two kids in a playground, engrossed in that game called ‘I dare you to cross that line’. What I discovered very quickly was that everyone at Freedom Mutual acted out a variation on this theme. Just as everyone was also, in some way, either damaged or perennially the outsider. After a few days on the trading floor I began to understand that Brad’s employment policies were largely based on finding unhappy or awkward people with something to prove, training them into the laws of the marketplace and then turning them loose in an unapologetically Darwinian environment. Brad himself encouraged such survival-of-the-fittest antics, just as he also had a natural sense of corporate combustion. Competitiveness wasn’t the only driving force behind all the aggression on the trading floor. Rather, it was also rooted in our boss’s instinctive eye for the troubled idiosyncrasies of others.
‘You don’t get a job here,’ Trish told me over the late-evening drink she insisted on every night after work, ‘unless you’re super-bright and super-damaged; someone with a score to settle in the world.’
‘But not everyone here—’ I heard myself saying.
‘Is as screwed up as me?’ Trish said.
‘That’s not what I was about to say.’
‘No – what you were about to say was: “Not everyone here is screwy”, the implication being that you’re Little Miss Nice and Sane. Allow me to let you in on a little secret, kiddo. Brad was onto your inadequacies, your sense of being abandoned by your asshole father and having to fend for yourself courtesy of your ineffectual mother, and still mourning the one-time big-deal professor whom you still consider the love of your life, even though he’d never leave his dreadful wife and treated you as a convenience, especially as you were happy to spread your legs for Daddy—’
That’s when I threw my drink in her face: a twelve-dollar gin and tonic that completely drenched her. Before pausing for thought, I tossed some money down on the table and said: ‘That’s for the drink and your dry cleaning.’
Then I stormed out.
I must have walked around for about two hours after this incident, feeling desperate and alone and very angry. The anger, I knew, was bound up in grief. David. My David. I still couldn’t wrap my brain around the brutal reality that he was no more – and no amount of pleading or cajoling could change that monolithic fact. Though the grief was constant and would catch me unawares at odd moments, I largely kept it out of the public eye. But that sense of ‘if only’ constantly haunted my thoughts about him. If only he’d sought me out when the press started to crucify him . . . If only I’d been more upfront about how much I really cared for him, maybe he would have left his dreadful wife . . . If only I’d driven straight up to Maine after he’d been suspended from the university . . .
Is life so often about desperate missed opportunities?
So yes, the grief kicked me hard in the stomach yet again – until I fought it off with rage. Rage at the vindictiveness of Trish’s comment. Rage against the hazing to which I had been subjected all week. All right, maybe this was all a big test to see if I could cut it in their highly idiosyncratic world. But two conflicting thoughts kept gnawing at me: (a) I had turned down a safe but steady job to enter this Darwinian construct called Freedom Mutual, and (b) I really wanted to survive this baptism by bile.
This second realization surprised me because everything about Freedom Mutual continued to strike me as anathema to all that I valued in my life. The place was belligerently anti-intellectual, even though Brad would occasionally drop a literary reference in my company – just to remind me that, once upon a time, he had read books. Everyone looked on the world as nothing less than a jungle to be clawed through. Why the hell did I want to jump into such a feral playpen?
We all want to get even with the parent who has, in some way, found us wanting . . .
The thing is: getting even is so sad.
It took me two hours to walk back to Somerville. When I got inside my apartment I made two phone calls. The first was to my old friend Christy Naylor – with whom I was in occasional email contact. After finishing her doctorate a year earlier than me she’d landed a teaching post at the University of Oregon and had just published her second collection of poems. ‘It was a finalist for the Pulitzer and sold eleven hundred copies,’ she told me in an earlier email. She still didn’t have a guy in her life, though ‘when I need sex there are several reasonable redneck bars in town – and as long as you have a taste for bikers (which I have reluctantly developed), there is action aplenty.’
Good old Christy – she was still unapologetically incorrect. And when I rang her at her house and said that I needed some advice and told her about turning down the Wisconsin job for Freedom Mutual, her first comment to me was: ‘Well, of course you are conflicted – because you know all those mad people you now work with have figured you out as well . . . that is, if they can even look beyond their own insanities for a moment or two.’
‘I’m only doing it for the money.’
‘That’s bullshit – and you know it. But I’m sure as hell not criticizing you. If I had my way, I’d hit the eject button and parachute right out of this fucking job. The thing is, I’m too damn comfortable in the interminable self-importance and mediocrity that is college life.’
‘Safety has its virtues.’
‘But you’ve never played it safe, Jane – despite all your protestations otherwise. You need this job – because you need to punch the lights out of everyone who’s ever fucked you over. So make my night and call your asshole father and rub his nose into the fact that you’re going to be making more money than he ever even touched.’
Shortly afterwards Christy ended our call, heading out to meet the Hell’s Angel of her dreams. That’s when I phoned my father. The line to Santiago was all static and when Dad answered he sounded as if he was on the far side of the moon – and just a little drunk.
‘To what do I owe this honor?’ he asked.
‘How are you, Dad?’
‘Why would that interest you?’
‘For all the usual reasons.’
‘I’m breathing.’
Long pause. I should have hung up on the spot as Dad was playing his usual head games with me. Turning his own guilt about everything to do with me into a display of petulance and chilly distance.
‘And besides breathing, Dad?’
‘Are you calling just to bug me about something?’
‘Can’t I just call you to say hello?’
As I said this I heard him drop ice into a glass, followed by a cascade of some liquid being poured over it. Then he said: ‘So . . . what? . . . you want me to make conversation?’
‘You doing OK?’
‘You’ve asked that question already. But yeah, everything’s just fine. Consuela moved out two weeks ago.’
‘Oh God, that’s terrible.’
‘It’s not great, yeah.’
‘Do you mind me asking what happened?’
‘I do mind. But I’ll tell you anyway. She says I slugged her.’
I took that in.
‘Well, did you?’
‘Not that I can remember, but I was a bit loaded at the time.’
‘If she said you hit her—’
‘You taking her side or what?’
‘Hardly. I’m just—’
‘You know anyone who can loan me ten thousand bucks in a hurry?’
‘Why do you need ten thousand dollars, Dad?’
‘That’s none of your damn business.’
‘I certainly would want to have at least a hint of what you need it for before giving it to you.’
‘You give me ten Gs? That’s funny.’
‘I’ve got
the money, Dad.’
‘You’ve got shit – unless you’ve been running some illegal Girl Scout cookie scam.’
‘I’ve got the money, Dad,’ I said again.
‘I don’t understand.’
When have you ever understood anything?
‘I’ve got a job.’
‘Yeah, that teaching thing at Wisconsin. Your mom told me.’
‘You’ve been talking to Mom?’
‘Hardly. She’s got no money, I’ve got no money. So we’ve not exactly been burning up the phone lines between Santiago and Old-fucking-Greenwich. Anyway, I have nothing to say to her. But she keeps insisting on sending me these chatty goddamn emails. Keeps thinking we’re going to somehow patch it all up, let bygones be bygones, and all that other forgiveness stuff.’
‘Well, Mom doesn’t know this yet, but . . .’
That’s when I told him about the job at Freedom Mutual. He didn’t interrupt me, though I did hear more ice hit the glass after I reached the part about the $100,000 starting salary and the joining bonus. I was nervous as I spoke, because – well, I was always nervous when I talked to my father. When I finished there was a long silence. Then: ‘Don’t take the job,’ he said.
‘I’ve taken it.’
‘Call Wisconsin back, tell them you still want the teaching thing.’
‘I’ve already informed them I’m not coming.’
‘You call them first thing tomorrow, tell them you’ve had a change of heart, you really want the job.’
‘But the thing is, I really don’t want the teaching job.’
‘You take the Freedom Mutual thing, you’re gonna be out on your ass in six months. I know how those hedge fund assholes work. Once they figure out you’re a lightweight who can’t cut it—’
‘What makes you think I can’t cut it?’ I said, suddenly angry.
‘You kidding me? Thirty years punching my weight in the metals business and you think I can’t spot someone who won’t make it to the end of round two?’
‘My boss thinks otherwise.’
‘Your boss is probably some sadistic sonofabitch who’s decided to strip the hide off some Harvard broad who—’
I put down the phone. I walked over to the kitchen, in great need of a drink. But as soon as I picked up a wineglass, I smashed it into the sink and cursed myself for calling Dad with the foreknowledge that he would respond exactly the way he had responded.
The phone started ringing again. I ignored it. It kept ringing. I let it switch on to voicemail. I picked up another glass and decided I needed the instant kick that only vodka could provide. So I poured myself two fingers of Smirnoff. The phone sprang into life again. Against my better judgement I answered it.
‘Look, you’re right to hate me,’ Dad said.
I didn’t reply.
‘And when I drink . . .’
He didn’t finish that sentence – and again, I maintained a very large silence.
‘I’m sorry, OK?’ he said.
Silence.
‘Please tell me you accept my apology.’
Silence. Then I asked: ‘So why do you need ten thousand dollars?’
‘I’m not asking you for it.’
‘Why do you need it?’
My voice remained calm, but firm. On the other end of the line the clink of ice cubes returned.
‘Because . . . I’m out of money, that’s why.’
‘I thought you had that consulting thing.’
‘I did . . . but it ended.’
‘When?’
‘Four years ago.’
‘Four years?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘And since then . . . ?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So how have you lived then?’
‘Bit of Social Security back home – and Consuela. But as she’s a hairdresser . . .’
‘So the big house with the pool and the butler and the staff and the three stallions you kept telling me I’d one day ride . . . ?’
‘That all went years ago.’
And he never let on for a minute – always turning down my requests to visit him, always spinning this line about his Chilean hacienda, always getting me to write him care of a post-office box in Santiago.
‘And now that Consuela’s left you . . .’
‘I’ve got six hundred bucks a month to live on, courtesy of the federal government.’
‘And where are you living now?’
‘The same place I’ve lived for the past three years.’
‘A house, an apartment?’
‘Yeah, kind of an apartment . . .’
‘By which you mean?’
‘A studio. Nothing much, maybe two hundred square feet.’
‘Jesus, Dad . . .’
‘Hey, it’s just a temporary thing. Like I’m about to get into something very surefire. Young American guy – Creighton Crowley – working down here and doing this dot.com thing for Latin America. Wants to hire me as a business consultant.’
‘Is he going to pay you?’
‘Not exactly. He’s promised me shares in the company. Says once it goes to an IPO it will treble everything I’ve invested in twelve months.’
‘Everything you’ve invested? You’ve given this guy money?’
‘Not yet – because I’ve got none. But he definitely wants me to put some money into the company.’
‘How much?’
‘He suggested fifty grand.’
‘Fifty thousand dollars? Jesus, Dad.’
‘Look, if he can triple it . . .’
‘And you actually believe him?’
‘He’s a smart guy. Virginia Law, a couple of years with a big firm in DC.’
‘Where he evidently didn’t make partner, as he’s hustling some shoddy business proposition in South America.’
‘What the hell do you know about business?’
‘I know how to smell a fraudster.’
‘Unlike you, I’ve been in business for thirty-five years. Unlike you, I am a fucking professional with a first-rate bullshit detector when it comes to knowing someone who’s trying to con me and someone who is legitimately exploiting a gap in the marketplace.’
His anger level rose as he said this and I could hear him become flustered in the face of his own building rage.
‘There I go again,’ he said, catching himself.
‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘There you go again.’
‘I need ten grand in a real hurry, Jane.’
‘To “invest” in this “operator’s” company?’
‘To pay someone back.’
‘This Crowley crook?’
‘Will you stop acting all goddamn superior here, Jane.’
‘To whom do you owe the money, Dad?’
‘Some guy.’
‘What guy?’
‘A guy I borrowed money from.’
‘A friend?’
‘I wish. He’s just a guy who lends money.’
‘Oh, Jesus, you didn’t borrow money from a loan shark, did you?’
‘I was desperate. I literally couldn’t pay the rent. That six grand’s kept me afloat for almost two years . . .’
‘You’ve been living on one hundred and fifty bucks a month?’
‘More like three hundred. Social security pays me six, but I was handing over four-fifty to another guy who helped me out . . .’
‘You’re in hock to a second loan shark?’
‘No, I’ve just about paid him off.’
‘Jesus Christ, Dad.’
‘Go on, tell me I’m a fuck-up. You’ve been wanting to do that for years. And now that you’re the big-deal hedge fund manager—’
I’m a big deal nothing, Dad – as you’ve never tired of telling me. I’m the kid who worked every damn summer and held down every kind of part-time job to keep myself afloat in college and grad school, because you were off squandering all the money you once had south of the border. But in your more sober, rueful moments, you know all t
hat and hate me for making you feel guilty about your own inability to be responsible.
Or, perhaps, like so many people, you’ve managed to filter the truth through the sort of distorted lens which allows you to perceive your own bad behavior as other people’s problems. After all, why accept responsibility for your own actions when it can so easily be foisted upon others?
‘Will the ten grand settle the matter?’
‘Yeah, it will definitely get the guy off my ass.’
‘So he’s threatening you?’
‘Well, what do you think?’
I think you’re a sad, angry, little man.
‘And once you pay off the loan shark, then what?’
‘If I can come up with fifty grand, Crowley will hire me.’
And then disappear with your money.
‘Tell you what. I’ll wire you the ten grand tomorrow.’
‘This dot.com thing is a surefire winner, Jane. And Crowley . . . the guy’s credentials are impeccable.’
‘I don’t have a spare fifty thousand. But why don’t you send me the company documents anyway.’
‘I don’t need your due diligence. And it gives me no fucking pleasure to beg you for—’
‘Send me your bank details and I’ll transfer the money tomorrow. Once I get the documents, we’ll talk.’
I put down the phone. I poured out that much-needed vodka. I flopped into my broken-down armchair, still covered with the cheap Indian-print covers I made for it years ago. The Harvard broad needed to upgrade her furniture, not to mention her apartment. The Harvard broad should have never agreed to bail out her father – but would have hated herself for leaving him dangling in the wind. Just as she was also trying to absorb something she had suspected for years, but always sidestepped: the fact that her father had so failed at everything he’d put his hand to.
I woke the next morning feeling strangely lucid. I dressed in one of my new suits and even put on some make-up. Then I reported for work, fully expecting again to discover my termination notice on my desk. Instead, I found Trish sitting at her terminal, staring straight ahead at the raft of figures on her screen. Without looking over at me, she motioned for me to take the chair next to her.
‘Find out everything you can for me about Australian zinc futures,’ she said.
I did as ordered and had a report on her desk by midday. She read it in ten minutes, pronounced herself pleased with it, and then proceeded to school me in the business of following the movement of a currency – in this case, the euro versus the yen – and how to gauge the range of its current upper and lower limits. As always, Trish dazzled with her range of knowledge about everything – from German GDP figures to fluctuation in All-Nippon Airways shares. When she ordered me to work out a 7 percent commission from a $3.875 million trade and I didn’t have my calculator exactly to hand, the abuse was once again fast and robust.
Leaving the World Page 10