Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

  “Right,” he said, closing both his eyes. “I’m sorry about that, too.”

  When the taxi got to Ella’s dad’s offices, Ted tried to pay the driver, but he couldn’t make out the denomination of the money without blinking. Frustrated, he handed his wallet to Ella. “Just take what you need.”

  It was the black alligator wallet that she’d bought for him from T. Anthony when he’d graduated from HBS. On the left-hand side of the wallet were his initials, stamped in gold leaf. Much of the gold had been rubbed away.

  “I gave that to you,” she remarked softly.

  “I know,” he said, his eyes still closed. “I’m sorry, Ella. I am so sorry about everything.”

  Ella couldn’t touch the wallet that he held out in his hands. She opened her handbag and pulled out her change purse, where she kept her ones and fives.

  “Do you want the wallet back?” Was he supposed to return all her gifts?

  “How could you be so unfeeling?” Ella wiped her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Ella,” he said, his left eye open, his right eye shut. She was crying again, and they were about to see her father.

  “I gave that to you. I gave you everything you wanted. I did everything you said. But you want to take Irene away—” She sniffled.

  The driver was aware of the crying woman and the man with his eyes closed. He shut off the meter, wanting to do something nice for them.

  “We have to get out of here.” Ella paid the driver and gave him a three-dollar tip. “C’mon.” She let him take her arm.

  Douglas Shim was reviewing the revised list of residents when Sharlene said his daughter and Ted were here. Ella walked into his office, smiling weakly. Her eye makeup was smudged around the eyes, her lipstick faded. Ted stood next to her, his right eye closed.

  “Are you okay?” he asked his daughter, ignoring Ted.

  Ella nodded, unable to say why she’d come. His kind look made her tear up again, and she had tried so hard to clean up her face in the elevator before coming to his office.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Ella, Ella,” he said, seeing the tears in her eyes. He put his arm around her shoulder, and he stood between her and Ted.

  “Oh, Daddy. I’m okay.”

  “I know. I know you’re okay.”

  Ella tried to gather herself up again. “Ted’s eye. He can’t see.”

  Douglas faced the young man.

  “Ah-buh-jee,” Ted said reflexively. He’d called Ella’s dad that since they’d gotten married. “I mean, Doctor—”

  Douglas clenched his jaw. Hearing the boy calling him “Father” and then correcting himself was hard. Until the day Douglas’s father-in-law passed away, Douglas had called the father of his long-deceased wife Ah-buh-jee.

  “What’s the matter with your eye? Here, have a seat.”

  Ted sat. “I’m sorry to bother you like this. We were at the lawyers’, and talking about something, then suddenly I couldn’t see. Out of my right eye. I mean, I can see, but what I see isn’t right.” He spoke rapidly.

  Douglas led Ted by the arm and guided him to the examination room next door. Ella came along.

  The examination room was darkened, and a thin bolt of light projected a series of eye charts on the white wall. Douglas asked him to read the first letter on every line on the eye chart, but Ted could hardly make out the largest E on the top row. Douglas put dilating drops in Ted’s eyes that stung painfully.

  “Wow,” Ted said, blinking back tears.

  “It’ll pass,” Douglas said. He’d forgotten the anesthetizing drops prior to dilating him.

  Using the ophthalmoscope, Douglas checked behind Ted’s eyes, then moved on to the 90-diopter lens for better resolution.

  “Central serous retinopathy,” he pronounced.

  “What’s that?” Ella asked her father. She was familiar with many medical terms just from being his daughter, but she hadn’t heard that diagnosis before.

  “There’s a tear in your retinal tissues, and fluid has seeped in, causing a distortion in your vision.”

  Ted’s head jerked back. “How?” he asked.

  “There aren’t any obvious reasons for this. No one knows for certain. I can guess from what’s going on in your life and so can you that there are a lot of dramatic events in it. More men tend to get this than women. It’s been correlated with stress. And perhaps from elevated cortisol levels, also related to stress. You know, when you feel out of control. Especially since central serous retinopathy tends to affect type-A personalities.” Douglas made a face as though he didn’t like saying this, because it sounded too judgmental. “It can recur, and it can also just clear up by itself. I don’t see many cases of this. But I have seen a few. All of them were men, and all of them were experiencing great stress in their lives. Also having an objectively high-stress job—like pilots, for example. They apparently get this. Stress.” Douglas shrugged, because who didn’t feel stress these days?

  “But we don’t have any stress,” Ella said, and laughed. Ted laughed, too.

  “I’m glad you find this so amusing,” Douglas said.

  Ted closed his right eye and focused with his left. His face leaned forward toward Douglas’s face. Ella’s dad, seated on the other side of the slit lamp, looked nothing like his own father. A soft pile of gray hair crowned his head, and a perennial tan from tennis and golf made him look rested. The crow’s-feet around his eyes grew only mildly deeper when he smiled. He wore a jacket and tie with chinos. Almost never a white coat at his offices. The biggest difference was their hands. Ella’s dad had medium-size hands with long, tapered fingers. His nails were cut short in a square shape and had small white moons near the cuticles. Ted’s hands were more like Ella’s father’s than his own father’s. He had known all along that losing Ella’s dad’s respect was something quite serious, but it had been easier not to think about it when he hadn’t seen him. Ted missed his own father sharply.

  “So what do you think I should do?” he asked.

  “It’ll take a few weeks or a few months to completely clear up. It can fix itself. I’ve seen that. Or it can get worse. Some people have this in a chronic form. And that is a dangerous thing. We can try to fix it if it gets to that. But it might not necessarily help to operate. Let’s see how you do without any intervention. This is serious, though, Ted. You don’t want to lose your vision.”

  “What?”

  “It won’t get to that, I hope. I don’t think it will. For now, though, you might want to decrease the stress in your life.” Douglas had always known that the boy was ferociously competitive, with marked perfectionistic tendencies, but getting central serous retinopathy seemed like the end of a complicated proof: QED.

  The boy looked utterly lost.

  “Today, you should go home and definitely rest a bit. Your dilated pupils will return to normal in a short while. And tomorrow, figure out how to relax more. Yoga, relaxation techniques. There are also drugs that can treat anxiety. And maybe you might want to consider seeing a counselor or a therapist. To just talk about things in your life. It might help.”

  “Got it.” Ted couldn’t imagine talking to a stranger about his problems. Telling the lawyer about the video and the herpes thing had been an ordeal in and of itself. He checked his right eye again, hoping that maybe the vision would return as quickly as it had left him. Everything was still wavy.

  “How will you get home?” Douglas asked.

  “I’ll get him a cab,” Ella said.

  “Do you want me to do that?” Douglas asked her.

  Ella shook her head. “I have to get one anyway to return to the school.”

  Douglas nodded.

  “I’m fine, Daddy,” she said, seeing the anxiety in his face. A tiny vein rose on the left side of his forehead when he was upset. Her father had never been anything but good to her, and now she was causing him to worry. “I’ll call you as soon as I get to the office.” She gave him her big-girl smile.

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nbsp; “Thank you so much,” Ted said to Douglas, shaking his hand. “I don’t know what to say. Should I give Sharlene my insurance information? Or—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Just try to relax. Go home, Ted.”

  The doctor watched the two of them leave, and when they were gone, he put his head down on the desk. He then did what he always did whenever something bad happened with Ella. He wondered what his wife would have done, and he hoped to have done that, because she had always known the right thing.

  Ella dropped him off at his apartment in her taxi. He thanked her. He had never been wrong about her good character. Ella was capable of being kind to him, even now.

  The apartment was empty. Delia was at the office, and he would call her shortly. The doorman had handed him his mail when he walked in; he looked over it and could barely make out the lettering because his eyes were still dilated, but he spotted a flimsy three-by-five envelope that his father liked to use. Could his father have sent him something before he died? But the handwriting was more like his mother’s. It was hard to tell right now.

  In the envelope was the check for a thousand dollars that he had sent to his parents last month. Since graduation from HBS, he had sent his parents a check each month and larger gifts on holidays. Ted closed his right eye and held the letter as far off as he could and made out some of his mother’s writing. She was returning his check, and she asked him not to send money anymore. She didn’t want to take his money. She didn’t have any real expenses. At the bottom of the page, she wrote: “I hope you are kind to Ella. She has always been so kind to your parents. Be a good boy, Teddy,” and she signed the letter as she always had: “Umma.”

  On Tuesday after the Fourth of July weekend, Ronald Coverdale phoned Ella at school. The ring echoed in the empty headmaster’s office. The building felt ghostly with all the children gone for the summer. Soon, the administrative staff would also leave the building for six weeks.

  The lawyer’s hello sounded cheerful. She almost didn’t recognize him.

  Ted had decided not to pursue joint custody with an equal time split. And if she could buy out his share, Ted would let her keep the house. Ella would get full custody of Irene, but he asked for weekend visiting rights and shared holidays.

  She was speechless for a moment. “Oh, thank God. But why?”

  “Didn’t say. Maybe he wants to get this over with. Chet said he’d rush with the paperwork. Don’t ask why. This is very nice, you know. You two can get on to the next stage of your lives.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. It’s what I wanted. Thank you, Ronald. Thank you so much.” Ella felt overcome with emotion.

  “I can’t take credit for this.”

  “And neither can I,” she said, ending the happy call.

  Ella ran out of the office to tell David.

  Casey let herself into the Gottesmans’ apartment with the key Sabine had given her the night she’d come from Unu’s.

  She slipped off her high heels and tiptoed to the guest room where she’d made camp. When she opened the door to her room, a light was on, and Sabine was asleep on the chaise longue with an open book about Modigliani on her lap.

  Casey hung her handbag on the doorknob.

  Sabine stirred from sleep. “Hello,” she said, pushing the bangs off her face. “What time is it?”

  Casey checked her watch. “One-twelve.”

  “You coming from work?”

  “Where else?” she replied. Why was Sabine sleeping in her room? If she didn’t want to sleep with Isaac, there were two other empty bedrooms in the apartment. “Is everything okay?”

  Sabine sat upright, her body forming a right angle. She was fully alert. “And how is work?”

  “It’s work.” Casey wouldn’t complain, refusing to provide ammunition for Sabine’s case against Kearn Davis.

  “It’s very late, Casey.”

  “I’m sorry, Sabine. I hope my stay hasn’t been too disruptive. It’s incredibly kind of you and Isaac to let me sleep here. I’m trying to figure out what to do about an apartment. I just haven’t had the time to—”

  “No, no, sweetie. It was my idea for you to stay here till school starts. And you can stay on as long as you like. It’s just that we hardly see you. I thought I’d see you far more. I saw you once this past week—for like ten minutes in the kitchen before you went off to the office. What’s wrong with those people there? It’s inhumane how they make you work like that. And the idea of not giving every person who deserves an offer an offer. That’s no way to run a business. How about if every person who’s working with you is good? Then what? They create this situation where you have to cut people?” Sabine was on a tear. “And you hardly eat anything. You look terrible.”

  The more she talked, the less Casey had to say. It was that way between them. And now she was a guest in Sabine’s house. Casey stowed away her shoes in the closet, taking care to be neat about it. She wanted to change out of her clothes but felt shy about undressing. Would Sabine leave her room soon? In the closet, beside her own clothes hung half a dozen suits Sabine no longer wore and had loaned her to wear to work. She was wearing one of Sabine’s sleeveless blouses at the moment with a gray skirt she’d bought years ago when she’d first moved out of her parents’ apartment. Casey had lost a few pounds and was able to wear Sabine’s things, but her arms were too long for Sabine’s jackets.

  “Casey? What’s the matter, honey?” Sabine sounded concerned. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m just tired.”

  “You missing that guy? That gambler?”

  “No,” Casey replied instantly. That wasn’t true, but she couldn’t tell Sabine that. She thought about him a lot. Worse, she felt awful about what she had done—the cheating and then the confession. On a week’s reflection, she’d concluded that both actions were heartless. That morning, she’d picked up the phone but couldn’t actually call him. All her things were still in his place, but asking about that now seemed cold. Sabine was dead-on: She missed him. As soon as she got an apartment, she’d contact him, she told herself. By September, he might hate her less, and she might have more nerve.

  Casey stepped into the guest bathroom. She left the door ajar; Sabine was obviously percolating with more things to say. She changed into one of the two guest bathrobes Sabine had placed in there—the kind you covet at a fancy hotel. Her host wasn’t making any move to leave the room.

  Casey began to wash her face. When she heard Sabine’s voice, she turned off the faucet.

  “You cheated on him because you were angry at him.”

  Casey frowned. Sabine had theories about everything. Casey wiped away the residual soap from her face with a towel and sat on her bed—arms folded, her back slouching. She smoothed down the Italian bedspread. The blue quilted fabric was beautiful.

  “And why was I angry with him?” she asked.

  “It’s obvious. He lost his job, wouldn’t get a new one, has a serious gambling addiction, and he doesn’t want to marry you.”

  “I didn’t want to get married,” Casey said, unable to refute much else.

  “That’s not the point, and you know it. He wasn’t thinking about the future, and you didn’t respect him for it.”

  “Wow, a free room and free advice. Thank you.” Casey didn’t feel like being polite anymore. It was so damn late, and she wanted to sleep. She had to get up in a few hours. Karyn had given her a monster assignment that afternoon. “May I go to sleep now?”

  “Cheaters always have a reason.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite.” Casey wriggled her toes. “Then why did Jay—”

  “Because you wouldn’t introduce him to your parents. He was angry with you because you were ashamed of him.”

  “An answer for everything. And quick, too.” Casey smiled, appearing unfazed. In fact, she was taken aback by this insight. “How do you know so much about this?”

  “Because Isaac cheats on me.”

  “That can’t be. He adores you.”

>   “I know he does. And he’s not leaving me. He can’t live without me.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re not suffering silently from low self-esteem.”

  “I can’t prevent it. He is just a cheater. I sensed it when I married him. He thinks I don’t know, but I know. I can’t meet all of his emotional needs, and he can’t fix himself of whatever childhood injuries doled—”

  Casey was starting to tune out. It was always this babble with Sabine when it came to sex or love. For Sabine, everything could be boiled down to psychological motivations, as if cake were just flour, milk, sugar, and eggs. Casey found it unattractive and ultimately unpersuasive. Maybe Sabine was not entirely wrong, but it seemed to take the heat out of the recipe—the romance. Unu would’ve found Sabine ridiculous. They’d never met, however.

  Sabine closed her art book and leaned her head back against the chair.

  Casey hadn’t known about Isaac’s infidelity. That must have hurt.

  “Why do you stay with him?” she asked.

  “Because we’re very good together. I respect him enormously as a businessman. He’s also very kind. That’s not as common as you’d think. Also, he leaves me alone. So I can do my thing.”

  “How about love?”

  “Love is respect, Casey. You don’t respect Unu.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “He’s very smart. Unu is an original thinker. I admire that more than most—”

  “How could you respect a man who—”

  “You don’t respect Unu. But I do. He’s going through something hard. You’re allowed to make mistakes. I don’t care if he doesn’t make lots of money. That’s not my thing.”

  “Yes, it is. How else do you explain Kearn Davis, then?”

  “I’m trying to get rid of my debts, Sabine. I have to pay for school—”

  “And you have to do it all by yourself?”

  “Well, obviously not, since you’re housing me right now, and I owe you—”

  “Oh, stop it. Who cares about this? Your pride is simply ridiculous.”

  “Thank you.” Casey wanted to smoke. There was a fresh pack in her purse. Isaac didn’t like the smell of cigarette smoke in the house, but she could have one on the terrace by the living room.