The Tell

by Linda I. Meyers

  “Let’s go celebrate. Come on,” I urged. “You can get a Black Russian and I’ll get a martini. We’ll toast a new beginning,” I said.

  “The money is about to run out on the meter,” he said, “and I have to get back to the office.”

  George’s house was on the market for three months, but there had been no bids. The realtor said he’d priced it too high. The real estate market was dropping, but George had a number in his head and he wasn’t willing to let go. When I tried to shake him loose, he growled and snapped at me.

  “If you would adjust to the market and lower the price, the house would sell,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me what to do with my house,” he said.

  “Thank you. You just made my point. It was not our house—it was never our house and that is exactly why we needed to move.”

  I was very sad when George wouldn’t join me in decorating the new house. I took the money I was earning and did it myself. I turned the living room into a library, with built-in bookshelves and two small couches facing each other on either side of the fireplace. I saved us having to renovate the old kitchen by painting the cabinets white, buying new hardware, and stenciling the old wooden floor. George had once said he wanted a black bedroom. I found wallpaper with large red roses on a black background. I bought a black quilt and black pillow shams. He perked up when it came time to decorate his study. He put in a daybed, a television, and a desk. It was spare, but he liked it. I knew he was happy with the job I had done by the way he showed guests around the house.

  I saved rent and gained us a tax deduction by moving my office from Nassau Street into the house. It was a beautiful setup. Patients walked up a flagstone path onto the terrace and into a sunlit garden room with a straw rug and wicker furniture. Curtained French doors blocked off the waiting room from the rest of the house. My office, off the garden room, had a gas fireplace rimmed with old Dutch tiles, pine wood paneling, and built-in bookshelves. Patients lying on the couch looked up at a peaked ceiling with exposed beams, painted in a quiet William Morris pattern. Sometimes I wondered if they came to see me, or to simply rest in the warmth of the room.

  George was happy in Princeton, as I knew he would be. We went to the Princeton football games and to the plays at McCarter Theater, but something was wrong. He was surly and hard to live with. I was tired from long days in the office and short on patience. Our squabbles had become fights—angry voices, slamming doors. I was told he bragged about me behind my back, but, to my face, he minimized every contribution I made.

  “You’re not putting in as much as you think,” he’d say. “I’m still paying your taxes.”

  “But I’m also paying Rob’s tuition at Lawrenceville,” I said.

  “I’m still paying your taxes,” he reiterated.

  I thought that if I opened my own brokerage account he would take me seriously.

  “Buy Exxon.” he’d call and say.

  “Why? What are the upside potential and the downside risks of Exxon these days?” I asked.

  “Just buy it,” he said. “I wouldn’t recommend it if it wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Yes, but I need to know why you’re recommending it now,” I said.

  “You know, Linda, you’re a pain in the ass. I don’t have time for this. Do as I say or don’t, but time is money and I don’t have the time,” he said.

  Most of George’s clients did what he told them to do with no questions asked, but I was no longer a yes girl. I severed our business relationship in the service of our marriage and my savings—I found a female broker who took the time to explain her recommendations. I began to pick my own stocks and oversee my own account. George became more remote. The further he backed away, the harder I leaned in. It was a tango, without the sex and without the music.

  “Why do you have to play paddles every Sunday? Wouldn’t it be fun to sleep in and fool around a little?”

  “I need to get out,” he said.

  “Of what? Get out of what?” I asked.

  “The house,” he answered.

  Blood from a stone, my mother would say when her efforts to win my father’s affections failed.

  I would hear the car go down the driveway. I’d call my friend Susan.

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “You know that hole in my ego?” I said. “Well, I’ve fallen in.”

  “You’re great,” she’d tell me. “He loves you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I love you. You’re very loveable,” she’d say.

  “That doesn’t make any sense, and, besides, you’re prejudiced.”

  When I got off the phone, I’d feel better, hopeful, knowing that when George got home, I’d try again.

  In 1982, George and I built a country house together. It was truly a joint enterprise, and, for the first time in our relationship, we felt like a team. On weekends, we would drive up to the mountains to see how far the contractor had gotten with our project. We’d stand on the beams and measure the rooms. We watched the mason carefully build the fireplace with cobblestones taken from the creek below. I imagined George building a fire on cold, winter nights, us sitting together, having intimate conversations—the fantasy I’d had since that day on the steps in Fire Island. George was excited for the house but filled with trepidation. The stock market didn’t cooperate. The market tanked on the day we broke ground. They called it Black Friday. George, to his credit, did not pull the plug on our project, and the building moved ahead.

  One summer night, we were standing on the deck of the country house, the sun was setting, and there was a chill in the air. George had his arm around my shoulders. We had been getting along better. I felt safe enough to take the risk. I wanted that proposal I’d never received long ago.

  “Ask me to marry you,” I said. “I promise I’ll say yes. I just would love to hear you say it.”

  His face was in silhouette, and I couldn’t read his expression. He took his arm away and stared out at the mountain. I thought he was formulating the answer. I waited patiently.

  “Look at the bats,” he said, pointing out the dark shadows swooping through the sky. “They are rodents with wings. Look how close they come—as if they are going to fly directly into your face, making you want to duck for cover. Amazing creatures,” he said.

  “You’re amazing,” I said. “Didn’t you hear me? Why are you talking about bats?”

  “What do you want from me?” he said.

  “Didn’t you hear me? I just said what I want.” I pulled my wedding band off my finger—a ring I’d made for myself from diamonds I’d inherited from my mother. “Here,” I said, “put it in a drawer. Do whatever you want with it. It isn’t going back on my finger until you propose.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said putting it in his pocket and going back inside the house. The screen door slammed behind him. I stood on the deck and cried. The stars were out, and the bats were gone. The ring stayed in the drawer.

  “I’m too demanding,” I told my analyst. “I want too much. My mother was right. She always said, ‘If I give you a finger, you want a whole hand.’ He’s a good man. What’s my problem?” I said, crying.

  “It’s not just your needs, Linda. It’s also his limitations,” she said.

  “Am I trying to get blood from a stone?” I asked. She didn’t answer.

  It took me more than twenty years to realize that George was a gambler—he didn’t invest in stocks, he bet on them. He was cautious when he bet his own money at blackjack, but wild when he played the market with other people’s money. My friends and colleagues, dazzled by his confident persona and air of authority, readily gave him their savings. In every case, he lost their money. They looked at me as if I had reneged on a promise. I started to keep a low profile and avoid professional gatherings. Despite bad results, those clients kept giving him their money. Like a smooth operator, he was deft at shifting the blame. Maybe Etienne was right. Maybe I did marry my father.

  H
e had a large book of business and he was successful for many of his clients but rich, older, male clients were particularly at risk. They became the father George was never able to impress. He felt an undue pressure to prove he was smart and worthy of attention—a man to be admired.

  Ah, I thought, so this is why George was never comfortable at the Director’s Council. Once I saw it, I saw it everywhere, but I also questioned myself. Had I been blind because of all the ways I’d benefited from his misdeeds? I decided that I was no better than a mafia wife enjoying the ill-gotten largesse. We went on adventure vacations all over the world. I bought an Audi and, at my urging, he bought a Jaguar. We bought the Princeton house and built the house in the Catskills. We sent five kids through private schools. How much was paid for with gambling monies?

  When George developed a failsafe scheme for investing in naked options, I could no longer contain myself. I was sophisticated enough by then to know that naked options were highly volatile—they were not called naked for nothing. When they got away from you, they were like renegade horses—almost impossible to rein in.

  Herbie Shapiro fit the prototype of the father-man. George convinced him to “invest” in options and trust his strategy. Herbie bet on George, and when George didn’t deliver, Herbie got pissed; more than he hated to lose, Herbie hated to be wrong. He brought George to arbitration. Arbitration to a stockbroker is like a malpractice suit to a physician—not good.

  George won the arbitration but lost the confidence of his firm. He was put on probation and was not allowed to trade options or commodities. He had a manager who looked the other way as George continued to play the market. Now there was more than his self-esteem on the table; his job was at stake, and a potential civil suit, but the market was going his way, so clients kept bringing in money. George, a bottom fisher, loved to bet on stocks at their low. “A good broker,” he said, “is like a fireman. He runs in when everyone else is running out.”

  He was glib. He was sure of himself. My anxiety increased.

  I waited for a commercial break in the Knicks game, handed him a Black Russian, and casually asked, “What’s going on at the office?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Let me watch the game.”

  “I’m worried. Why don’t we take some of the pressure off, downsize, and reduce our overhead?” I couldn’t get his attention.

  “Stop worrying,” he said patting my hand. “I’m fine. Relax. Let me watch the game.”

  The brokerage business was changing. The emphasis was on investing in managed money rather than buying individual stocks. Who Moved My Cheese? was a gift book to all the attendees at the Council. George and I sat on a chaise by the hotel pool.

  “Your cheese moved. You’ve got to change your game. Enough with betting on stocks, you have to start putting your clients in managed money,” I said.

  Managed money meant that George could no longer trade stocks on a daily basis. In other words, there would be no action.

  “And when did you become the maven?” he answered.

  I went to a lawyer and drew up papers to put all of our assets in my name.

  “It’s for our protection,” I explained. “I’m not trying to cheat you out of anything. If we get a divorce, the papers state that half of what we own belongs to you, but I can’t count on you to protect us.”

  He began to argue, telling me that I was crazy, and who did I think I was, but I’d come a long way from the woman who’d initially been afraid to strip the wallpaper.

  “Don’t put me off,” I said. “Either you sign or I walk.”

  He signed, but I paid. Every night he fell asleep in his study. He would wake up and slip under the covers after I’d fallen asleep. I would find him next to me in the morning. In the evenings, as if nothing was wrong, he’d be waiting in the living room, martini in hand, waiting for me to come out of my office. He’d ask about my day. We’d talk without touching.

  Over the next few years there was no more talking. We’d sip our drinks in silence. I used every prompt I could to start a conversation, but George would answer my questions with shrugs and grunts. He wasn’t just angry, he was depressed. I thought it was a reaction to me and his situation at work, but soon we’d find out that depression was an early sign of pancreatic cancer.

  The Thanksgiving after he was diagnosed, all the children and their partners came to dinner. George stood, glass raised.

  “Linda always said that she wanted to have time to say goodbye before she died. I always thought I wanted to just keel over,” he said, laughing, “but Linda was right, and I’m glad I have this time.”

  He went around the table, and one by one, told each of the children why he loved them and what they meant to him. He thanked them all for everything they had done for him. I was moved. I loved him so deeply in that moment.

  I waited for my turn. What would he say about me? I had done the research and found a clinical trial. I drove him into the city for every chemotherapy appointment, doctor’s appointment, blood test, cat scans, pet scans—but my turn never came. He passed me by.

  Why do I care? It isn’t what matters. Go check the turkey. Forget about it, I told myself.

  I slipped away to the kitchen. I didn’t want anyone to see my tears. Had they noticed? I hope they hadn’t noticed.

  Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2007, the month before he died. I came out from my office, having seen my last patient. He was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to read the paper, but his eyes were shot from the chemo. He had trouble focusing. I walked up behind him, put my arms around his shoulders and gave him a kiss on his head. He was frail—too tired to shave. His clothes hung off him like a homeless man. It broke my heart to see him this way. He patted my hand.

  “Had I been well enough,” he said, his voice weak, “I’d planned to go to the jewelry store, buy you a ring, and propose in the way you wished I had before we married”

  I was moved. “It’s not the ring that counts. I don’t need a ring,” I said. “You can propose without a ring.”

  He smiled. I waited. He reached up and gave me a peck on the cheek and went back to reading the paper. Five weeks later he was gone.

  One month after he died, when cleaning out his desk I found this card. It said all that I ever wished to hear. Why he hadn’t given it to me I will never know. I am sitting on the deck of the country house, drinking a martini. The air is cool and smells of pine. Each evening, I wait for the blue heron to cross the sky, returning to his partner in a nearby lake. He is a devoted and dependable bird. The sun is setting, and the soft gray clouds, shaped like cherubs and dragons, are rimmed in gold.

  Inside, there’s a fire to be made. I would start with a teepee of logs, just as George had shown me.

  the spring line

  I look down at the street from my apartment window. Sixteen floors up is not that far down. People walk their dogs—always the dogs, guaranteed to get you outside in the worst weather—trying to juggle their umbrellas, hold on to the leash, and scoop up the poop. The strong wind blows the umbrellas inside out, making the task impossible.

  Mounds of dirty snow and slush push up against parked cars—cars covered in snow, like frosted cakes in strange, elongated shapes. A man stands in the street wanting to get to the sidewalk. He walks this way and that, measuring with his eyes, not sure where best to put his feet to climb the mountain.

  In New York City, February is not a short month. An unbroken string of gray days blends one into the next. My mood is as clouded as the sky. I’ve decided, weather or not, I must get out of the house. I must breathe fresh air, even knowing that the cold will make me gasp. I am wary of the ice. Normally I appear to be in charge of my long, lean, seventy-two-year-old body—steady on my feet and purposeful. But since the fall last January, I take mincy little steps, like a child learning how to skate. Steps that are more likely to cause me to slip than the confident strides I took before the fall. I can’t help it; I am afraid.

  The people at the Pilates s
tudio, where I had just been, heard me fall down the steps. What could that have sounded like? A series of thumps? A scream? A loud groan? I was on the descent in the narrow hallway on the marble steps, between the second floor Pilates studio and the street. They found me head first, lying, I’m told, like a harpooned porpoise, in my gray down coat, my head swimming in blood.

  “Linda! Linda!” Their voices were a faint echo from a faraway canyon.

  “Linda! Can you hear me?”

  That’s me, I thought. I think that’s me: Linda. I want to tell them that I smell, I taste iron. Do you smell the iron? I want to ask.

  “Who should we call?” they ask.

  I hear myself mumble, “Paul.” The man I’ve been with for three years—the boyfriend, with the big brain and seductive smile. For more than three decades, the correct answer to who should we call would’ve been my husband George.

  “What’s his number?”

  “Favorites,” is all I can answer. It is too hard to listen. Harder still to speak. I go back where it is soft and black and fluid.

  A siren. Motion. An ambulance? A woman in a uniform holds a bottle on a tube.

  “Who should we call?” she shouts.

  Why is she yelling? Why is everyone yelling at me?

  “Why are you yelling?” I think I say aloud.

  “Who should we call?” she yells again.

  “David,” I whisper.

  “Who is David?”

  Why so many questions? Leave me alone. I am floating, weightless, in a warm, purple pool.

  “My son,” I manage to answer.

  “What’s his number? We need his number.”

  I am too tired, too far away. I want her to shut up. I come up one more time and remember the number. Imagine that, I think.

  In a room. I can’t move my head. The lights are too bright. Faces without form peer down on me.

  “How did you fall?” someone asks.

  “I don’t know,” I groan.

  “Where is this?” I ask and I ask, but no one will answer.