Opening Belle

by Maureen Sherry

  My chest heaves, my fingers shake, and besides the whir of an espresso machine and the clicking of keys, the world around me falls so very silent.

  • • •

  At first my sell orders have limits on them, meaning I will only sell at a certain price. But as thirty minutes of finding no buyers becomes forty-five, I’m crazed to sell at any price. Selling seems the only way to regain control. Nothing in my life is certain anymore and I need to feel something solid like cash in our account. The McElroy account loses columns of numbers with the speed of a spinning roulette wheel. I sell and sell.

  My final trade is the sale of a small lot of EBS, that same stock that had rocketed upward for me so many months ago. I sold it below my purchase price despite how promising their cancer therapies appeared. I sell and sell like I’m ridding myself of toxins and washing myself clean.

  • • •

  Carron went home to make dinner for the crew. The moon rose over the picture-perfect mountains. The café fills with beautiful, athletic people who seem to have no worries. Seeing them reminds me of that time in my life, back when I was the more confident me that Carron had been speaking of.

  I hope Bruce will understand what I’ve just done, that I’ve sold everything because I needed to know we still have something solid in our accounts. Then I’ll tell him we have to make us solid again too.

  Hours later I walk back to my sister’s cabin on a winding road, ice and shale crunching under my feet. The stars are so bright I can’t take my eyes from them. Maybe it is the clean air or the fact I know my children are happy and safe somewhere, but an odd calm that closely shoulders the feeling of happiness comes upon me. Being fearful that a terrible thing is about to happen can be worse than when it actually happens. I like having a solid number in the bank, even though it is less than I thought it would be, and I like having three healthy kids and a semidecent husband who, while not perfect, loves their little souls as much as I do. Yes, tonight I feel hopeful.

  Bruce spent the rest of the vacation broody and silent. He became the one who watched the panic in U.S. markets. When I tried to calm him by saying the government would probably backstop bad loans in some of these banks, making them easier to sell and calming investors, he would spit things at me such as:

  “My United States will not throw taxpayer money to help out a bunch of rich people.”

  So I stayed away from his anger by keeping quiet and avoiding the news. Bruce begged me to call into Feagin Dixon and touch base with my clients but I had nothing to say. Any news was on television and I didn’t need to call in to gossip. I was mad at a small band of men who destroyed the place with greed, bad behavior, and testosterone-fueled decisions but that bank wasn’t mine anymore. I stayed on the sidelines of a different continent and felt remarkably unafraid.

  Ten days later as we waited to board our plane back to New York, it was Bruce who told me that Bear had sold to JPMorgan Chase for $10 per share and that Feagin was rumored to be taking a similarly low bid. Instead of my stock being worth $145/share, Manchester Bancorp offered us $7 and Gruss, who had apparently been difficult to locate in the days of this disaster, would be forced to accept.

  I felt dizzy walking down the jetway, overwhelmed by the fortune change and yet slightly excited to be getting home. I was carrying Owen, who smelled like the sunshine he’d been playing in. Kevin was proudly wheeling a bag of books, blankets, and sippy cups and leading us in a way I hadn’t witnessed before. Brigid had one loving hand in the back pocket of my jeans and I was starting to think about all the things I could do, the possibilities that come along with change. We had everything good ahead of us if only Bruce could see that.

  CHAPTER 37

  Trade This

  IT’S BEEN three months since our trip to France and everything has changed. I’m married to a guy in search of six-pack abdominals and social media recognition. Bruce occupies himself with many hours at a gym, followed by checking in with his new Central Park mommy friends, who now seem to include him in everything. While his buff factor continues to grow, any moves he was making toward getting a job seem to be shelved while he trolls online to reconnect to people he remembers from high school. Countless times he mentions to me that people he thought were less than him—less smart, less connected, less athletic—now inexplicably run some part of a company. I refrain from telling him that’s what happens. People take the low-rung job, they stay with it, they sometimes find success as they get older. That’s what can happen when people get a job. But to him, seeing his happy, successful former peer group now on Facebook has made him wave some white flag of surrender on the career front. Fitness and good looks are the field where he can eat their proverbial lunch. According to him, everyone’s looking old and fat. His saggy sweats of six months ago have been traded for slim-cut straight pants, tailored blazers, and Chuck Taylors on his feet. He showed up once for breakfast wearing black Lycra and I told him I’m drawing the line for soon-to-be-middle-aged men everywhere: no Lycra. But overall he seems almost euphoric. Maybe he’s happier that rich people finally had it handed to them.

  While his 9 p.m. yoga sessions continue to ensure we’ve embraced the celibate life, neither of us addresses this. Instead, I suggested he become a trainer or find a way to link his fitness enthusiasm to gainful employment, but he smirked. He was fine hiring a trainer but becoming one was not for him, and oh, can I please use his phone to take a photo of him flexing?

  He’s also using his ample free time trying to make our kids smarter. He’s been subjecting them to bizarre and trendy education methods that one of the moms told him about. In the last months, he has purchased crates of stuff that promise to create superhumans. He sets up intricate living room obstacle courses to elevate the McElroy gross motor skills to Olympic levels, and has some flash card system that promises to get Owen to miraculously read. All I’ve witnessed from this endeavor is Owen folding up the cards or drawing on them. I’m no expert but I’d bet that reading before a kid knows his letters is unlikely and that my husband has purchased snake oil, but I dare not whisper this to anyone. Bruce has so little going on that a patronizing comment from me won’t help. I keep my thoughts to myself and soothe myself with the knowledge that my husband is at least spending time with his kids.

  I find myself relaying this state of affairs on a warm July day to what’s left of the former GCC. The few management strategy meetings I was included in have stopped, so we’re all directionless. Still, we work as we wait for more shoes to fall and for more of us to get fired. There are only a few people from my row left: Amy, Amanda, Marcus, and myself, while Violette, Alice, Stone, and most others have been let go. There’s so little banking business that Manchester Bank has cut about 60 percent of our employees since April. Violette is looking for a job, and Alice is trying to start a family. I’d been thinking about our GCC conversations about fairness, but they now seem beside the point and I mention this to the people I’m sitting with.

  “Boy, were we strategizing about the wrong stuff,” Amanda says.

  “Not really,” I say. I still believe a few women on the risk committee and we never would have had so many worthless bonds in our portfolio. Gruss just wouldn’t listen.”

  “He was just responding to shareholders,” says Ballsbridge. “If our growth rate is less than other banks our stock gets hammered.”

  “Yeah, it’s not like that happened.” I laugh, thinking of the $7/share price. “After that meeting with Gruss you ladies left me twisting in the wind,” I mention.

  “It was like we all gave up at once,” Amy says.

  “I didn’t give up. I was just starting,” I say. “And you tossed me under the bus after my meeting with Gruss.”

  “We should apologize,” Amanda says. “It wasn’t some organized group decision to disband like that. It was just our frustration, realizing nothing will ever change here.”

  “Except everything,” Marcus says, looking at the few people on the trading floor. He loves that we in
clude him when we chat. “Not to sound like an obnoxious oaf, but is it possible that some careers are just not compatible with a balanced life?”

  I’d been thinking the same thing and wondering if Kathryn Peterson was the only one who had this figured out all along. Still, I don’t believe it. Feagin would never have gone out of business if women were at the top. We just don’t have testosterone helping us along the path of decisions. We are happy with base hits and don’t need to swing for the fences if it’s too risky.

  We toast Amy’s recent promotion to managing director at Manchester with some apple juice from the vending machine. I’m thrilled that she’s going to join me at director meetings and yet I’m surprised that she’s succeeded in doing this at such a tough time. With the meltdown of the stock market and everyone’s business being in the tank, no one is thinking about things like promotions. Any thoughts I used to have of being made partner are gone. If it didn’t happen after my stellar year of production last year, it would never happen, and while I’m happy for Amy, I’m also very curious. I think about her largest accounts and biggest trades and the minimum amount of revenue one has to bring in to move upward. I know Amy’s accounts and I can’t figure how she did it.

  Amy asks me how Bruce’s work is going and I tell her that he’s primarily employed in childcare, yoga, and cycling, so we still need both my income and a nanny. I tell her Bruce and Caregiver make a good team and she leans forward, concerned.

  “How good a team?” she asks, turning her lightly lined face toward me. Today she is wearing some short, funky dress, plunging at the neckline and ending mid-thigh, an expensive-looking vision that fell off a high-end fashion runway, not something I’d pick for a woman usually in tailored suits. I wonder if our change in fortune is making us all a little less inhibited.

  “Not like that,” I sigh to her. “Bruce is not like the men we work with.”

  “What does she look like?” she continues.

  “Caregiver? Um, petite, dark, cute, sort of Hispanic-looking. She’s taking a break from college.”

  “Hasn’t she been with you for years?”

  “Yeah, um, three.”

  “That’s quite a college break,” Amy says, not believing for a moment that a man can be left alone with a young woman without things heading below the waist. Her wandering spouse has scarred her. I still can’t make these women believe that Bruce just doesn’t stray. The women of the GCC don’t have men like my man and for a moment I have a twang of love for him even though nothing between us feels right.

  “So, the dress?” I ask, nodding to the sexy thing she has going on today.

  “Catching a Jitney,” she says, referring to the bus service that runs between New York City and the Hamptons. “No private car service out there for me. Spending five hundred dollars a weekend is something I don’t do anymore.”

  “That dress was more than five hundred dollars.”

  “Four hundred twenty dollars on sale. It’s like take a bus instead of a car service? Get a free dress.”

  “But you’re a managing director!” Amanda said. “Why should you care if you buy your clothes on sale? Why not take the dress and the car service?”

  “Not sure how long this market will last.” Amy smirked. “You seem to forget that I’m the last girl at this party and everything’s been picked over, but yeah, happy to be a managing director.”

  I knew Amy had lost her Hamptons house in the divorce but she doesn’t seem too bothered. She’s just happy for some recognition.

  “You bought a new house?” I ask her.

  “Rental. Sort of,” she says. “Like a house share.”

  “House share?” I ask, thinking of the boisterous party houses of our youth. “Aren’t you, like, thirty-five or something?”

  “Yes, er, thirty-six. And most of my housemates are in their forties. So fun to be the young kid again. We’re having a party this weekend and you should come. No kids.” She smirks. “Kids, ewww.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. I’ll just drop them on the beach and hope for the best,” I say sarcastically.

  “She’ll never come,” Amanda says.

  “It’s complicated for us,” I say, thinking of the logistics and also thinking it could be fun. “It’s hard to find a sitter in the Hamptons. Ours is not an easy gig, three young kids all whining at the same moment. There’s no employment line outside my door.”

  I’m surprised again by my openness; I never speak of my domestic situation in front of colleagues.

  “Please try,” Amy says, positively glowing at me. “I really want you to come.”

  And for some reason I agree to try.

  That night, I mention Amy’s party to Bruce. There’s no atmosphere my party-loving husband adores more than kegs of beer on tap, great music, and tanned ladies in cotton hoodies over short shorts. There’s nothing he likes less than the life he grew up with: overprocessed hair, Lilly Pulitzer clothes, real jewelry at the beach, and champagne with rose petals in it. I have no idea which end of the spectrum Amy’s party will be on and I tell him it’s probably somewhere in the middle but still, he says we should go.

  I wrangle two high school students to watch our kids for a few hours on Saturday night. I promise myself to be as perfect to Bruce as possible, as close to the person who fell in love with Bruce years ago as I can be. I want to feel something tonight. I will laugh at his jokes, not mention kids, not allude to work or how much money I’m not bringing home anymore.

  For the past seven years we’ve been renting an older, aluminum-sided house on the side of the highway away from the ocean. We’re pretty distant from the happening parts of Southampton and live among year-round residents. We have a yard that rolls down to a freshwater lake so we have no need for a swimming pool. Our lawn is brown for most of the summer and the few flowers that manage to bloom get eaten by deer the very day they do. When summers get rainy, moss creeps into the kitchen and up the walls and the place takes on an earthy smell, the smell of nuts and life and something that reminds me of tea. We call our house the Tea Bag.

  As the people I worked with became rich, the Tea Bag House no longer felt like a place to invite them to. Many of them purchased palatial places on the other side of the highway, shingled, classic homes with quickly assembled interiors of wood and stone, soaring ceilings, and powerful air-conditioning systems that assure a constant seventy-two degrees. Their homes have names, painted on quaint wooden boards, posted on their automatic gate systems, names like Swann’s Way, Aspen East, or Meadowmere. We could have afforded the same if we hadn’t been saving for the suburban escape hatch. Anyway, we liked our old Tea Bag House.

  As we drive over to Amy’s house share, I again get that almost-feeling of happy, the same feeling I got after selling most of our stock at that French Internet café.

  We turn in to the estate section where the homes hug the ocean. Several of their owners are people I’ve either worked with or been on deals for IPOs with. I challenge myself to see if I remember who lives where and I point the homes out to Bruce. “Linda Wachner from Warnaco, the clothing company. Calvin Klein, designer, what a gorgeous house. John Paulson in that one, he’s a hedge fund manager, was short the market in this latest crash and made a billion with a b. George Soros, who is George Soros, Howard Stern, that radio guy, Bob ‘SFX Entertainment’ Sillerman, Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. Tory Burch designs clothes, and King McPherson is somewhere along here too.” I was pretty pleased with myself for being able to speak as fast as Bruce was driving.

  “You should man a tour bus” was all Bruce said.

  I glance at the even number of Amy’s address, which surprises me. The evens are the ocean side, not the bay. No house sells for less than $25 million on the ocean side. What sort of multi-gazillionaire rents his house out to be shared? We turn in to a graveled drive and a valet parker takes our car from us. Embarrassed, I chuck the Happy Meal toys stuck between the front seats into the back before I hand him my keys. I glance at poor Bruce in hi
s surfer hoodie and Quiksilver shorts and compare his dress code to the white-jacketed waiters with trays of drinks standing at attention beside golf carts, ready to whisk us up the hundred yards to the starkly modern estate we can see from the bottom of the driveway. I sigh for Bruce. I married a regular guy who unstuck himself from the pretentious family he grew up with only to find himself in that world again. I think he just wants to have some fun and look where I’ve brought him.

  “Well, you look nice,” he says generously as he smirks.

  I’m wearing a simple cotton shift with a belt so tight I think it belongs to Kevin. At least it’s colorful.

  “We don’t have to go,” I say.

  “I don’t give a shit if your friend doesn’t know how to have fun. I’m happy to drink her beer.” He laughs in a crazy, unattractive way.

  I look over at him, standing in his self-righteous, smirking slouch, and see something in Bruce I have never seen before. Bruce thinks he is better than all of us. The entitled way he was raised is still in his DNA. He thinks he is doing me a favor by even being here. All this time I was worried about hurting his confidence when really, he was quite certain that working for anyone was beneath him, that maybe even having kids with me was beneath him. It is the first time I feel something bordering hatred for him.

  Our golf cart pulls up close and the driver indicates for us to get in. I need to let Bruce’s words simmer to not get mad and ruin the night.

  “I’m as surprised as you, Bruce. Maybe it’s the people she shares this house with. Maybe one of them is really wealthy and just likes having people around.” My voice is steady.

  “Let’s give this ten minutes, tops,” he says, and I nod because that’s what I need to do to keep from punching him. I’ll do whatever it takes for us to make it through this evening, but my new realization is shaking my world. My husband is an arrogant, self-involved ass.