Trust Fund Babies

by Jean Stone

  In addition to being Nikki’s right hand, Alice Sullivan was a gifted seamstress, a green thumb with a needle and thread. To Mary Beth’s chagrin, Shauna had chosen Alice over Vera Wang to create her one-of-a-kind gown and the gown of her lone attendant. Surveying Dee’s very fitted white top and equally tight jeans, Nikki supposed it was possible that four pounds would make a difference. It always amazed her that a daughter of hers was skinny enough to wear such clothes: Connor’s lean genes, less of Nikki’s full hips and round curves. “Dinner?” Nikki asked.

  Dee wrinkled her nose. “Tonight?”

  “Great,” Nikki said, trying not to add that she needn’t force herself. “Can you stay past the weekend?” She would love to shanghai her daughter into volunteering at the camp. Maybe if Dee could see some of the children, see their excitement and feel the good feelings of helping those in need …

  “No. Dad needs me at the office.”

  So much for rescuing her daughter from a capitalist demise, from her father’s business-minded, Harvard footsteps.

  “Besides, I’m making other plans,” Dee continued. “Which is also why I’m here. How would you like to fund a trip to China? I’m dying to go, Mom. Just for a few weeks. I want to study their business acumen firsthand. By myself.”

  The by myself part, of course, meant without Nikki, who had dragged Dee through European museums from Madrid to Dublin every summer in a futile attempt to instill a liberal arts education, until last year, when Dee had chosen to work at Atkinson Enterprises instead.

  Nikki tried to smile. She wondered how her daughter would react if she knew there was no longer money for such frivolities as vacations, even when veiled under the guise of studying a business acumen, whatever that meant. “Well, you certainly won’t go completely by yourself. Will you?” Nikki was stalling for time, trying to come up with a plausible answer other than “Sorry, I’m broke.” Apparently word had not yet leaked from Mary Beth to Shauna to Dee that the family fortune, right now, seemed kaput.

  “Of course I’m going alone,” Dee said. “How much would I learn with a bunch of girls who would only want to shop or to manhunt?”

  Nikki refrained from asking what was wrong with that. “What does your father think?”

  “He thinks it’s inappropriate for a nineteen-year-old woman to travel alone. He said to ask you.”

  Nikki smiled. She recognized the bait that Dee had flung, that if Connor thought something was “inappropriate,” surely Nikki would not. Water and oil. Night and day.

  “So he won’t kick in any money,” Nikki stated. He was paying for her Harvard education in full, because that was not inappropriate. That was for his daughter, his genetically-matched daughter.

  “Mom,” Dee whined, “it won’t cost much. Only a few thousand. Ten maybe. Fifteen.”

  Nikki did not mention that fifteen thousand dollars could put a couple of kids through camp for the summer. Or take a bite out of this month’s AZT cost.

  “What about Shauna’s wedding?”

  “I’ll be back in time, no matter what Shauna thinks.” She spoke with exasperation, as if her mother were a dolt as well as cheap.

  An elderly couple in flannel shirts, worn jeans, and rubber boots came into the bakery. Nikki recognized them as a local man and his wife, who’d been fishing together for sixty years. She doubted they’d ever had discussions about Harvard educations or fifteen-thousand-dollar vacations.

  “Excuse me,” she said to her daughter, and went to wait on the couple, ignoring the impatience that now radiated from Dee. Nikki built a box and put in two raisin scones and two cranberry-orange muffins, then waited for the couple to decide between the sourdough bread and the whole grain. She kept her eyes on the couple, away from her daughter, who had not moved an inch, awaiting the answer she knew would be yes, because it always had been, which might account for a good part of the problem.

  The sourdough won. Nikki tied up the box and rang up the sale. It was not fifteen thousand, only six dollars and thirty-five cents. Not enough for a few weeks in China.

  When the couple departed, Dee placed her hands on her too-narrow hips as if to say, “Well?”

  Nikki sighed. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said, “but it’s not a good time. With the camp just beginning, I don’t have a clear view of my expenses.”

  “Mother! I’m not asking for a fucking fortune here!”

  Nikki refused to look shocked. “Watch your language, young lady. This is a public place.”

  “Ha!” Dee spat. “You call this ‘public’? Get real, Mother. Rockefeller Center is a public place. LaGuardia Airport is a public place. This is a two-bit bakery on a stupid island! If you don’t approve of me going to China, why don’t you just say so? Don’t pretend you can’t afford it. When I turn twenty-five and have my own trust fund, I won’t need you at all.”

  With that, she stalked from the bakery and exerted a great deal of effort in slamming the door, but this was the Vineyard so it was a screen door and its bang was way less than her bite.

  Jonathan had hailed her a cab because Mary Beth couldn’t risk Charlie driving and announcing to the social register that Mary Beth had paid a visit to her trust fund manager. One, after all, did not visit one’s trust fund manager; one’s trust fund manager came to one. Unless, of course, he had disappeared.

  Stuffing a few bills into the cabby’s rough hand, she gratefully exited from the leftover odor of other people and stepped onto Park Avenue. Then, like a tourist, she looked up at building 350. She counted up twenty-four floors and stared at the glass as if Lester would know she was down there and would come down to street level.

  After a moment, when he hadn’t showed up, Mary Beth marched into the atrium lobby, ready to take him on. It was ten forty-five—surely he’d be at his desk. Surely, if not he, then that woman named Carla, if she worked there at all.

  She went right to the elevators as if she did this every morning, as if she were among the scurry of gray-suited men and women who scrambled into the car in various stages of paper-cup-coffee clutching and tie-adjusting theatrics. Inside the elevator, she followed suit and faced the doors, shoulder to shoulder with the overpopulated middle class.

  “Twenty-four, please,” she announced in her most pleasant voice.

  The couple of looks thrown her way suggested she push the “24” button herself. Her face flushed. She squeezed between two people and pushed number twenty-four.

  On the ride up she wanted to close her eyes but did not dare. Instead she stared straight ahead and tried to block out the sounds of her elevator-mates: the cough of an apparent cigarette-smoker (God, what she wouldn’t give for a healthy drag right now), the nervous sniff of a young woman with string hair, the shuffle onto one foot then the other of an older man who might have to pee.

  She suppressed a smile at that thought. Though she was certain she’d never see these people again, there was no sense in giving the impression that she was a fruit-cake—they would step back to avoid brushing her jacket, despite the fact that it was a John Galliano and had cost twenty-six hundred dollars.

  They stopped on five, eight, eleven, and sixteen. The cache of worker bees thinned and she slowly exhaled. By the time they reached floor twenty-four, Mary Beth was proud that she was taking control and facing the situation when it would have been easier to pretend it would just go away. Infused with new confidence, she stepped out of the elevator and glanced up and down the hall for suite twenty-four twelve.

  The sign pointed right.

  Filled with the attitude of a true Atkinson, she click-clicked her high heels on the marble floor that led straight to the solid walnut door. A small brass holder was screwed onto it. It was designed to hold a plate engraved with the name of the occupant. But the brass holder was empty.

  She frowned and jiggled the doorknob. It was locked. She glanced back to the number. Was she at the wrong suite?

  The old man with the shuffling feet from the elevator suddenly was at her side. “Hey, lad
y,” he asked, “you looking for someone?”

  She glanced back at the door, then to the man. “Well, yes. But I must have the wrong suite. I’m looking for Lester Markham.”

  The man shook his head. “Nope. That was his place, all right. Heard he disappeared. Practically took off in the middle of the night.”

  Her throat constricted. She touched her fingers on the U-shaped bone at its base and tried to ease open her airway. “Where did he go?” she asked. “Another suite? Another building?”

  The old man shrugged. “Who the hell knows, lady? This is New York.” With that he waddled off down the hall toward another walnut door that was not Lester’s, either.

  Mary Beth leaned against the wall and wondered if she’d ever breathe right again and if anyone would notice—or care—if she dropped dead right there.

  8

  My daughter hates me,” Nikki told Alice when Alice arrived at the bakery with the list of bread and rolls needed for the first week of camp—enough to feed forty-two kids and thirty-one adults, including counselors, coaches, teachers, nurses, and two nurse practitioners who were HIV specialists. “Which is fine,” Nikki continued as she perused the list, “because most days I’m not too fond of her, either.” She looked up at Alice. “Are we going to stiff the Bake Shoppe the way we’re stiffing everyone else?”

  “We are not stiffing anyone,” Alice said with an edge to her voice that Nikki had not expected. “We’ll only need to defer payment, until—well, until you decide to get more aggressive. Admit it, Nikki, your cousin is being completely self-centered.”

  Nikki rang out the register and closed up for the day. “Mary Beth? Self-centered?” She did not laugh because she did not want to bother.

  “I finished the latest count,” Alice continued. “Three hundred and twelve kids this summer. Starting tomorrow. ”

  Nikki half-nodded. Three hundred and twelve children would be spread over six two-week increments. Some of them would be lucky and stay for more than one period. Some—oh, God, she thought, hopefully none—would have to leave before their time was over, because of their illness or because the money ran out.

  Mary Beth, she thought, you can’t do this to me … to them.

  She grabbed her bag from under the counter, then realized what Alice had just said. “Tomorrow’s only Friday. I thought no one was checking in until Sunday.” In a measure to help dodge a problem of Steamship Authority reservations, they had chosen Sunday-afternoon-to-Sunday-morning time blocks, thus averting the dreaded, sardine-squeezed Saturday crossings to and from the mainland.

  “We have an early arrival. A little girl. Her dad’s bringing her tomorrow. They’ll stay with me until then.”

  Nikki poked the bread list through a metal spike that stood on the counter next to the register. “I have to call Mary Beth,” she said. “We have to find Lester.”

  “There’s another small problem, Nikki,” Alice said quietly. “We have picketers.”

  Nikki closed her eyes. “Picketers?”

  “When I left the campgrounds today, a small group had formed at the end of the road.”

  Her dark mood darkened.

  “And they were carrying signs that said, ‘AIDS patients: Go home for good.’ ”

  Nikki opened her eyes and dropped her chin to her chest. “I hate this day,” Nikki said. “I absolutely fucking hate this day.” She said it with conviction and without caring that this was a public place and people might hear her. Then she led Alice out, locked up for the day, and headed out to ward off the picketers, those self-proclaimed agitators of nothing right or nothing good.

  * * *

  There were eight of them. Not enough for a full-scale war, but enough to hurt feelings. Kids’ feelings. When they saw Nikki’s VW turn into the driveway, they scattered. She recognized some faces from the courthouse clamorings.

  Quickly jamming the brakes, Nikki put down her window. “Next time, the sheriff comes,” she shouted after them. They disappeared so fast, Nikki could not tell if they cared. She sighed and pressed her forehead against the steering wheel, wondering if she could go to jail if she bought a pellet gun and chased them off once and for all.

  She wondered if Mack would put up her bail.

  “Everyone wants to grow old, but no one wants to be old,” Dorothy Atkinson said to her daughter in a lucid moment.

  Mary Beth had summoned her courage and gone to Harriman House, armed with the old photos to help prod the woman’s mind. “Last in, first out,” her mother’s gerontologist theorized, an idea that simply meant her mother could remember thirty years ago more easily than yesterday. While new medications might help slow the progression of the disease and alleviate some symptoms, apparently there were few substitutes for things that simply made sense. Perhaps something in the snapshots would trigger Dorothy to remember Lester. Maybe in those murky places of her mind remained a clue about his background. If Mary Beth couldn’t call the police, maybe she could find him herself, before Nikki went ballistic or Eric found out.

  She aligned rows of pictures by places and by years atop the glass table in the courtyard. “Look, Mother,” she said. “I’ve brought a project.”

  Dorothy gazed at the stacks of yesterday. She scowled. The Dorothy of the photographs had rarely scowled: She’d been unencumbered by distress, protected by her world of privilege and pampering, and if neither was sufficient there had always been the gin.

  Mary Beth pulled up a chair. “Here’s a picture of Aunt Margaret in the library at the house on the Vineyard. And look, here’s one of all of us. Summer of 1974, it says on the back. Remember?” Most of the photos were from the Vineyard, where taking pictures had been what one did in summer, inside the house and out on the grounds, smiling faces—most always female—in sundresses and shorts. The summer of 1974 photo showed them crowded around the lighthouse: Dorothy and Mary Beth, Margaret and Nikki, Rose and Gabrielle. Mary Beth felt no need to mention that 1974 was the summer she’d been pregnant and had that horrible abortion. She slid the photo closer to her mother. “ ‘The Atkinson Girls,’ it says.”

  “Hmm. It was such a shame about your aunt Rose.”

  Good! Her mother remembered something, that Rose was her sister and that she was dead. Mary Beth could have reminded her that Rose had fallen on the rock jetty that same Labor Day weekend and was killed instantly. She could have reminded her, but she didn’t want to use up Dorothy’s fast-depleting brain cells on an incident that might be upsetting.

  “Here’s one of Grandfather.” Mary Beth handed her a faded color snapshot of the old man on a sailboat. He did not look nearly as old as she’d remembered. “He died when I was only fifteen. Imagine that, I was only fifteen.”

  Dorothy nodded. “He was quite the businessman, wasn’t he?”

  Mary Beth’s hopes raised a little. “Remember the trust funds he set up for Nikki and me … and Gabrielle?”

  Slowly Dorothy nodded. “All that nonsense about money … I was grateful to no longer have to be responsible to see that you had enough.”

  Responsibility had not been Dorothy’s forte, for the need had never arisen. What mattered now, however, was that by some miracle, her mother still recalled the trust funds. “Lester Markham?” Mary Beth asked quickly, afraid to lose the moment. “Do you remember him?”

  Dorothy frowned again, and Mary Beth felt an awkward guilt about putting her mother through this. She wished Dorothy could remain oblivious to suffering, as she always had been. She longed for that other, younger mother who had flitted through life, telling Mary Beth things that seemed so important—like that Marjorie Merriweather Post had one special room in her home simply for white gloves, and another for hats.

  But the woman at the table no longer wore hats or gloves, and no longer had the need for rooms in which to keep them.

  “Let me see that picture,” her mother said. Then she smiled. “That was one of my favorite dresses. Do you remember it? It was the palest yellow. I used to think it matched my golden hair.�
��

  “Yes, Mother. But we were talking about Lester Markham. Aunt Margaret hired him to handle the trust funds.”

  “Margaret had on a blue dress. She always said clothes should match your eyes. Critical, she was. She criticized everything I did and said. Rose said Margaret was just jealous because I was more beautiful. She must still be jealous, because she never visits me.”

  Mary Beth did not explain that it was more likely that Margaret did not come because Margaret, like Rose, was long dead.

  Dorothy traced the image of her younger sister in the photo. “Poor Rose. She was so sensitive.”

  Putting her head down on the table, Mary Beth wished she knew how to bring her mother back to life or, at least, how much she should push. She’d never quite known what was kind and what was not, and Alzheimer’s had more greatly blurred the line between. She raised her head again and nodded. “Yes, poor Rose. And you were more beautiful than Aunt Margaret, Mother. Always.”

  Dorothy smiled again. “I know Lester,” she said abruptly. “He sends your checks every month.”

  Mary Beth sat up straight, afraid, even, to hold her breath, afraid of distracting Dorothy from her train of thought.

  “He was a friend of your grandfather’s,” Dorothy miraculously continued. “Something to do with business, I suppose. Your aunt Margaret admired him, though I had no idea why. She never usually paid attention to such good-looking men.” She sighed a tiny sigh. “My goodness, that was a long time ago.”

  Just then a tall, buxom woman approached the table. She wore a badge that read PATRICIA KENDRICK, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR.

  “Excuse me, are you Dot’s daughter?”

  Mary Beth’s jaw tightened into a clench. “I am Dorothy’s daughter.”

  The woman did not smile as she asked, “May I see you in the office?”

  She had wanted to tell the woman that she’d see her later, but as she started to say it the woman’s eyes narrowed and Mary Beth got the message. She followed PATRICIA KENDRICK from the courtyard into the lushly carpeted, salmon-colored halls, past museum pieces of furniture and gilt-framed old masters.