Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

  “So she said no, but you did it anyway. God in heaven, you are such a shit. She thinks that she deserves nothing short of death because of you.” She paused to breathe.

  “This is what I want: You will quit that job. Go do whatever the hell you want, but you better never enter that church again. You will not take the choir away from her. And you stay away. Don’t test me, Charles.” Her arms stiffened against her body. If he’d come near her, she would have hit him.

  Kyung-ah watched Casey silently from the stairs. Had the girl been in the third or fourth grade the first time she’d met Leah? The older daughter had always been so tall and flat-chested, with those long feet. Like Olive Oyl.

  Casey faced her then, her chin lifting a little. “And I hope you know what you’re getting into.”

  Charles would not defend himself. He knew what was true, but he would quit. It was what he had thought to do anyway.

  Kyung-ah climbed the stairs slowly, her joints wooden. She wanted her clothes and shoes. There was nothing she could say to the girl. So he had slept with Leah. How impossible.

  Charles rushed up the stairs. He wanted to explain. She couldn’t leave now.

  Casey watched them vanish behind the closed bedroom door. She stared at the pile of music in front of her. The score was one long sheet of paper, folded up like an accordion. There were several long sheets in the thick stack. In her hands, it felt like holding the insides of a book without its cover. Beneath her fingertips, she could feel the impression of the notes he’d made with his black pen. Casey picked up the entire stack and stuffed it into her tote bag. She shut the front door behind her quietly and went to work.

  She was the last to arrive at the office on the morning of the offers. Starting at ten o’clock, each intern would be called in privately to speak with Charlie Seedham and whoever their senior associates were. When it was Casey’s turn, she marched into the conference room unblinkingly. Hugh was either right or wrong; there was little she could do about it now.

  “How did you enjoy your summer, Casey?” Charlie asked her. He smiled pleasantly.

  “It was great.” She laughed.

  Karyn and Larry smiled at her, too.

  “Baloney,” Charlie said, still smiling. “You were worked like a dog.”

  “Yes, I was.” She winked in the direction of Karyn and Larry. Fuck ’em, she thought, then added, “But I did learn an awful lot about banking.”

  “Good attitude,” Charlie said.

  “She has a terrific capacity to work,” Karyn said. “Learns very quickly.”

  Casey smiled at her. Karyn made her sound like an obedient mule or a fast computer.

  “We’d love to have you join us when you graduate,” Charlie said. “The quality of your work was tremendous. Everyone agreed.”

  “Oh,” she exclaimed.

  “Congratulations,” Charlie said. She didn’t appear much different upon hearing the news.

  “Thank you,” she replied, then sat up straighter.

  “And when you come back—that is, if you come back. . .” Charlie paused, expecting to be interrupted. “You’d work with Karyn and Larry, most likely. A few other people, and me occasionally if you’re put on my team. Karyn is likely to get promoted this winter, as is Larry.”

  “Oh, how great. Congratulations to you,” Casey said to them.

  Charlie glanced down at his clipboard. “Well, good news always takes less time. I’ll see you at the lunch later?”

  “Thank you so much. To all of you.” She made a point of making eye contact with each person.

  “You are accepting?” Charlie asked as a matter of courtesy. It was fairly normal to accept on the spot. But she had not said yes immediately.

  “Oh, am I supposed to say now?”

  “No.” Charlie smiled. “You don’t have to do anything.”

  “When do you need to know?”

  Karyn and Larry looked at each other. Was she for real?

  “A week? How’s that?” Charlie almost admired her detachment. The girl who had come through the back door would get a week to think it over.

  “I’ll let you know sooner than that. Again, thank you for the summer. I learned a great deal, and that’s very important to me. Thank you.” Casey smiled at them. Their words had come as a surprise, oddly, though it was true that she had worked harder than she had ever worked. In the seventh week, she’d thought she was getting ill from lack of sleep. A part of her had never believed the offer was possible. There was an offer, she told herself, still doubting it inside. They’d said they wanted her to join them after graduation. Casey smoothed her skirt and got up.

  Charlie flashed a quick grin, then asked her to send in the next person awaiting his fate in the hall.

  The door closed behind her, and Casey did not know what to do. She made herself go back to the office. Hugh had been right after all. She was relieved somewhat, only a little less anxious. In a morbid way, she’d half expected him to be wrong. There was also a part of her that had wondered if Hugh might push Charlie not to give her the offer. But she couldn’t imagine Hugh doing that. It was too mean, and Hugh was not that.

  Back in her office, the happy faces outnumbered the upset ones. It was obscene that it had to be this way. Why couldn’t losing be a private affair? At least two of the ones who didn’t get offers were men who had worked alongside her nearly every weekend. One of them had a baby. What was he going to do? She could hardly face them. Would they have worried about her, however, if she’d been booted? The world was cruel with its rations. Who didn’t know that? A disappointment—that’s what it was, but it was hardly the end, right? None of them would ever starve, her refugee father would’ve said quickly. Americans were goddamn lucky. The United States was a rich country. You had to work, but at the very least, you would eat. Here, they fed you even if you didn’t work, he’d say. A professional failure was zilch compared with your family lost behind the 38th parallel. Casey peeked at Scott, the guy who’d just had the baby. He was trying to be brave—be a good fucking sport about it. Her father was wrong, she thought. Suffering was that—it sucked not to get what you want. No one wanted to fail publicly, and tragedies came in an assortment of sizes.

  From under her desk, Casey pulled out her bag. Beside her wallet was the sheaf of music. With the fat pile tucked under her arm, she left the room. The enormous shredder hummed peacefully near the bank of copier machines. The whole business took about two minutes. She phoned her mother and checked to see how she was. Her parents were fine.

  Lucy Griswold drove them up to Litchfield in her blue Saab. She’d welcome the company while going through Joseph’s things, Lucy had said when Casey phoned on Friday afternoon. The drive was not quite two hours, and Casey kept up the chatter by asking questions. They listened to NPR. Lucy said she liked Bill Clinton’s voice.

  Joseph McReed’s sister-in-law was a nice-looking woman, trim, past her sixties, who talked intelligently about most everything. There was an authority in her voice; she would never suffer fools. She read two books a week, she said—mostly biographies and histories. A member of the Cos club, the mother of one grown son—a marine biologist who lived in California; she was a docent at the Frick. “You haven’t seen the Fragonards?” she’d remarked with disappointment, as though Casey had been born missing a finger. Her intentions were always good, though. That was obvious. A girl from the Manhattan School of Music gave her cello lessons on Tuesdays.

  There were only three houses on Joseph’s street. His house, the one in the middle, was a two-story clapboard with a remarkable porch painted cream white. The shutters were a French blue like Joseph’s glasses and his watchband. The rooms smelled fresher than expected, but it was warm today, so they opened all the windows. There was no air-conditioning, but Lucy said the house had been winterized in the eighties. John was thinking of selling it in the spring, but it made him sad to think of doing so. Besides, the market was slow right now. A lady came to clean the house still; the plants had been wat
ered. Lucy took the bills and circulars from the hall desk and dropped them into her net grocery bag. You died, but you still got mail. There were some hats in the second-floor bedroom, more in the attic, and the remainder in the guest room on the main floor.

  “Take a look,” Lucy said. “They’re yours.”

  Casey felt awkward, but this was what she had wanted to do today. She had phoned the Griswolds yesterday after the offers were announced, and Lucy had been so charming on the phone.

  “I never understood their appeal, really. I mean, for me, anyway. I look funny in them,” Lucy said.

  “I doubt that,” Casey said. Lilly Daché, the famous milliner, had written that every woman looked better in a hat. She just had to find the right one. Daché believed that wonderful things could happen to a woman wearing a hat—get kissed, meet a new friend, at the minimum, avoid freckles. Casey had worn a plain broad-brimmed straw today with a white T-shirt and chinos, tennis shoes. “Here, try mine. No, better, I’ll find one of Hazel’s.” How strange it was to say her name.

  “Oh no,” Lucy protested. “Trust me, I know two things about me and fashion: I look lousy in hats and in the color green. My skin becomes lizardly.”

  “C’mon. You’re silly. I don’t see that at all.” Casey shook her head dismissively. It could take a long time to convince a woman that she looked fine. Occasionally, you had to repeat the script of assurance till you were tired. But she was in no mood. Her fatigue from the summer internship had been compounding like interest, hitting her exceptionally hard this morning, but she’d rushed out of the apartment unwilling to yield to it.

  Lucy continued to open cabinets and shut them as though she were searching for something in particular.

  There were photographs of Hazel everywhere. In every image, even the color ones taken not long ago, she was wearing a hat. She was maybe five two, medium build. Friendly looking but not beautiful. Her clothes were simple but with dramatic lines, like Dior’s New Look. When she and Joseph were photographed together, he stood a head taller, his arm encircling her thickening waist. Her eyes were more green than blue. Near the end, her hair was white and puffy.

  “She was very funny,” Lucy said. “She could tell a dirty joke. And loyal. No one was loyal like Hazel. Hated to cook meals, but baked on Sundays. Joseph liked a nice cake with his coffee.” In front of the heavy mahogany sideboard, Lucy unbuttoned her shirtsleeves and cuffed them.

  Casey held up a photograph framed in marquetry wood of the two of them in front of the shop. They were almost strangers to her; she had never even met Hazel, but to be in this house so soon after Joseph’s death, they felt like kin.

  Lucy took a deep breath, as if she were bracing herself for the task ahead. John had gone sailing today, and it was just as well. He would have taken things out of closets and cupboards without deciding what to do with them.

  “Casey, the guest room is in the back,” she said cheerfully, pulling out the silver-and-ivory-handled tea set from the sideboard. For as long as she’d been married to John, she had admired her mother-in-law’s silver, which had gone to Hazel and not John. Now it would go to their son, Michael, but would he even want such things in his bungalow in Sausalito? “Past the bathroom and linen closet,” she said when Casey appeared confused.

  Casey went to the rear of the house, opening the wrong door first, then discovered the large spare room beside the laundry room. There must have been fifty or sixty hatboxes stacked up like towers—a landscape of striped paper, floral fabric, and squat leather cylinders. The windowed room with white cabbage rose curtains smelled of a dry, forgotten closet, and the scent of perfumed sachets lingered; someone had kept up with the mothballs. It would be impossible to take these back to Sabine’s. Casey opened the box nearest her and the one next to it, soon realizing that each box contained at least two hats. Some had more. They were sublime, but they were old hats nonetheless and for all intents and purposes unwearable. Not worth money, either.

  She put on a pigeon-gray feathered hat shaped like a small oval plate. The feathers curved a little toward the face teasingly and were held up with two tortoiseshell combs and elastic. You’d wear your hair up, the hat cocked slightly over one eye. With a charcoal suit or maybe a pink one. Another was a luncheon hat with a bird’s nest cradling three blue eggs on a slender branch. The extravagance in design made Casey marvel. An ordinary woman could not pull this off. Surprisingly, the hat stayed put with only an elastic band worn beneath the nape of the neck. She checked the mirror near the door. How could she not smile? She dashed out to show Lucy.

  “That was for a garden party in Wilton. Hazel had so much fun making that one. Those are real robin’s eggs,” Lucy said. Hazel’s hair was still brown then, she recalled. Her sister-in-law had worn a tailored sage-colored suit—something out of The Sound of Music with a nest on her head. Hazel was a wonder.

  “One second,” Casey said. She ran back to the room and brought out a hat with a bisque-colored fan perched on top of a small brown pillbox. “You try.”

  Lucy made a face. “No, no. You’re just like Hazel. She’d always make me do silly things.”

  “Please,” Casey said.

  Lucy’s pretty eyes lurked skeptically beneath the sober brow. She didn’t say anything. She was holding a pair of ice spoons in flannel bags.

  Casey sensed acquiescence. “Oh, goody.” She deftly tucked the hat elastic over the back of Lucy’s head and moved the fan portion down closer to the forehead. “You look beautiful.” Casey smiled, because she took your breath away.

  Lucy shook her head in denial, preparing to shed the thing herself, but she was admittedly curious.

  “Go look.” Casey pointed to the Chippendale-style mirror in the foyer.

  Lucy remained standing there, however, clutching the slotted spoons.

  Casey removed the silver from her grasp and took her by the hand. “Come.”

  Lucy cringed in the mirror reflexively. She felt self-conscious and ridiculous. “I don’t look good in these things.” When Hazel wore a hat, her neck had been as upright as a stalk of wheat.

  “Nonsense. Look at yourself. It’s all right. It’s all right to look at yourself,” Casey said softly, only a little puzzled by the woman’s reluctance to admire herself. Excessive modesty being vanity’s sister, after all.

  Casey studied Lucy for a moment, her hand covering her mouth in mild hesitation. “You look knowing,” she said.

  Lucy glanced at the mirror and chuckled. The smile softened the straight line of her jaw. She raised her hands to remove the hat, but Casey wouldn’t have it. “Keep it on for five more minutes. Please.”

  Casey headed to the attic, climbing the steps two at a time. She felt excited to see more.

  When Lucy heard the attic door open, she shuffled quietly to the foyer mirror. Her image was so different. The hat hid the ash blond pageboy—the hairstyle she’d maintained since the seventies. Knowing. That was the right word. Lucy smiled shyly at herself and did not remove the hat until Casey came down much later.

  Until evening, Casey went through each box in all three rooms until her hands were sooty and her hair covered in dust. Lucy drove her back to the city. A collapsible silk top hat rested in her lap for the ride back.

  On Sunday morning, Casey sewed the trim on a new summer hat. It was a finely woven straw with a wide brim that had been blocked for her professionally at Manny’s Millinery. She’d found the vintage green-and-white ribbon for its band at Tinsel Trading. In the past year, she’d scrawled names for her hats on the brown hatboxes—mostly after her favorite book women: Charlotte, Becky, Valerie, Lily, Edith, Jane, Anna. This one, though, was Hazel. When she had knotted her last stitch, there was no one to show it to. Sabine and Isaac were away at Fishers Island visiting friends, and the big apartment felt dead without Sabine’s high heels clacking across the ebonized floors. The housekeeper and cook were off this week.

  Casey wore her new hat to church. The regular minister was away for the summer, and
the visiting minister spoke beautifully, but she didn’t feel much of anything. After the sermon, she tried praying for once, but she couldn’t quiet her mind well enough to think of much to say, beyond thank you—maybe everything would be all right. When she opened her eyes, she saw the others who were deep in prayer, and she wondered how they did that. Was it like turning on a switch for an invisible microphone? Did they really believe that God heard them? Was it just wishfulness? What comfort they must have, she thought, not without a little envy. At the end of the service, she walked down the crowded aisle by herself. There was a light touch on her upper arm, and Casey figured that she’d been bumped along the way.

  “Hi,” Ella said.

  “Oh, hello,” Casey said. By Ella’s side stood a white guy with wavy brown hair and dark blue eyes. He was tall, well over six feet. He wore a white shirt and faded seersucker trousers. Ella wore a simple sundress in a blue chalcedony color that Casey had never seen before. She looked lovely.

  “Casey, this is David. David Greene. My fiancé.”

  His eyes held a kind expression. David was a good-looking man. Something about his demeanor made you want his approval.

  “I know who you are,” Casey said, slightly amused. “Ella works with you.” She shook his hand.

  Ella turned to David. “If it wasn’t for Casey, I wouldn’t have called you. To get my job back. She even picked out what to wear that day.” She laughed at herself. How nervous she had been; how nice he was.