Family Trust

by Amanda Brown

  “So you’ll have her call me after you’ve talked to her?” Thirstan pled.

  “Don’t worry about Becca. She’ll take it in stride.”

  Dick had agreed to tell Becca that her friend had died, but Thirstan kept to himself the second shoe—the information about the child’s guardianship.

  This morning he had finally also reached Edward’s secretary at his office number and related the sad news to her. Alice Carter was her name. He was pleased to find that she knew his wife; or rather, knew the secretary that worked for his wife, so he trusted her implicitly. She had a lovely way about her; very tactful. He had ceased worrying about Edward when he left the matter in Alice’s hands.

  Working on the probate paperwork at the Stearns’ kitchen table, Thirstan acknowledged the nanny’s declaration, called from the front hall, that she was taking Emily for her French lesson. They had something called a “playdate” in the park afterward; Thirstan scribbled the word on a manila folder, consulted the dictionary in his Palm computer that did not elucidate its meaning, and finally circled it with a question mark, considering it to be lost in the wide gulf of the nanny’s translation abilities.

  He had nearly an hour of solid, quiet working time, in which he had arranged most of the couple’s simple estate matters to the point where he could delegate the file to an associate. As he was gathering his files, he heard the door open. A second later, he heard a woman call his name.

  Becca Reinhart had burst into the apartment, calling for the lawyer in a faltering, uncertain voice, a voice full of worry. So she knew about the accident, he thought, sighing with relief. He hated to deliver this news ab initio. It was easier when people were prepared. He was surprised that she had gotten into the apartment without calling first, but perhaps she knew the family well. The doorman might have let her up if she were a regular visitor. He entered the morning room, a sunny sitting room with wide western windows overlooking Central Park, where he found Becca, leaning against the worn tapestry of a chair favored by Arthur, breathing in gasps.

  His heart went out to the woman, who had quite obviously been crying. There was a scarf around her neck, a cheerful Hermès print, a sort of climbing vine of cabbage roses on columns, printed on the lustrous silk in bold primary colors: fuschia, aqua, green. The scarf hung around her neck as limp as a rag, wet and crumpled, having been used, he guessed, to wipe the tears from her face.

  She turned a surprised expression toward him at once. He introduced himself, and approached her with an outstretched hand. He would like to have been able to console her, but he was incapable of empathy so there was no warmth or sympathy. He was a lawyer first. She lifted frightened eyes to him, her hair loose, framing a sorrowful face drained of color. She did not take his hand; she did not appear to see it.

  “She’s dead, I know. I heard it on the news,” she said. “Amy was a real thrill-seeker, she’d hike miles to get to a creek that was really wild—unspoiled. Arthur loved her for it. They could never push themselves enough, those two. For fish!” Becca sunk her head into her hands. “They would go anywhere to chase a damn piece of swimming lox! It’s hard…” she said, pausing to choke back a sob. “It’s hard to think that there’s any fish in the world that was worth this.”

  She and Amy, college roommates at Columbia, housed together as freshman in what they jokingly referred to as the “scholarship dorm,” had shared the love of travel, and went out of their way to take summer classes and semesters abroad, taking advantage of cheap student rates to see as much of the world in four years as was practically possible. Before then, Becca could name the islands she had visited on one hand: Long Island, Staten Island, Manhattan Island. But Amy’s love of adventure travel was contagious.

  The lawyer had no talent for consolation, but plenty of patience. He stood, with a sad half-smile, waiting until he thought Becca was ready.

  With a sudden flash in her eyes, Becca stormed across the room and ran down the long hall of the apartment. Thirstan could tell by her direction what was on her mind. He followed her, slowly, on steps as tentative as those of a burglar, to the child’s room.

  Emily’s bedroom, which Thirstan had always considered a bit too overdone, was part Hollywood starlet and part nursery school, but all—one hundred percent—little girl. Amidst this carefully constructed dream of a perfect rose-colored childhood sat Becca, slumped miserably on a gilded pink couch in the dress-up corner. She stared dully at the apricot walls, her eyes following the white rails that traced the walls. At her feet lay a Jean Bourget tutu, Emily’s dress-up of choice this morning before she scampered off for her French lessons. The tutu lay together with a hastily discarded marabou stole and a tiny sequined purse. The child’s closet door was open, and Becca glanced in the direction of the colorful room, making a note to herself to turn off the light.

  Emily’s closet had been a sitting room before Amy made it over with hanging bars, covering the window with a sheer pink curtain and standing in front of the wall a striped vanity bench beside a well-lit, oval-shaped standing mirror. A sparkling rainbow of dresses, from frothy Joan Calabrese party dresses in lavender silk and taffeta, to Florence Eiseman jumpers in deep red velvets, hand-smocked cotton dresses in cheerful blues and yellows, and pressed linens in sherbet pastels: All of these lined the walls like hopefuls at the dance of the sugarplum fairies. This was Emily’s world.

  Without thinking, Becca picked up the feather boa, royal blue in color, and lifted it to her cheek. It was soft, with a clean smell reminiscent of baby powder. She sighed, feeling the tears build behind her eyes as she remembered buying the cherry wood jewelry box she saw on Emily’s marble-topped vanity. When the top was open the tiny ballerina inside twirled to the music of Swan Lake.

  The lawyer walked toward her, slowly, holding a copy of Amy’s will in his hand. Without speaking he handed it to Becca, whose eyes spilled over with tears when she recognized Amy’s handwriting. Soon she got to the heart of the matter.

  She was Emily’s legal guardian.

  Becca dropped the page, which fluttered to the floor. Her stomach twisted inside her. She clasped her head in her hands, wishing she could shrink, disappear. She sat stone still, terrified.

  Until this moment, the biggest thing Becca Reinhart ever had charge of was money. It was millions at a time: It mattered a lot, but in the end it was just money. It fluctuated. It was won and lost in minutes. It didn’t look up to you or hold your hand.

  A four-year-old girl. Emily had just celebrated her birthday in August. Becca remembered shopping for her gift and the looks she had gotten at FAO Schwartz when she asked for a pink computer desk.

  Her eyes were wet with tears; she had simply stopped wiping them dry. She was responsible for Amy’s little girl. It was nothing she had prepared for, nothing she could have prepared for, nothing she was suited for. How could Amy have done this to her?

  “But—Amy’s parents—Don’t you think they’d want custody of Emily?” Becca knew Arthur’s parents were dead.

  “Yes. I thought so,” Thirstan said. “But I contacted them through the state department’s emergency system.” He paused. As unemotional as Thirstan was, he had been horrified by how cold was Emily’s grandparents’ response.

  “And?”

  “And they were happy to hear Amy had appointed a guardian. They wished you good luck and asked if you might see to the funeral arrangements. Said they’d be in touch when they passed through New York next year.”

  “You’re joking!” Becca’s remembrance of her grandmother’s love was precious and part of her self-image. In Grandma’s eyes Becca was brilliant, gorgeous, like a rare bird or a Stradivarius violin. She had been the reason Grandma kept going until she was ninety-two. Or so she said. There was a reason to cook chicken fricasse (which Becca and her mother laughed about with affection because it was so terrible), a reason to dress up on Fridays, because Becca always came home for Shabbos Eve in those days. And in the end, her grandma told her, she was the reason she could pa
ss on knowing that the future of their family would shine in Becca’s hands. What would make the Kolaskys so thoughtless about a child’s future—so easily able to discount that child’s love? Just thinking about this triggered Becca’s motivation to embrace Amy’s wishes.

  She remembered when Amy got pregnant—it was just about the time Becca went with Davis Capital. She and Arthur couldn’t marry—something to do with his trust money—for a while, she said, but her clock was ticking. She was going to have his baby anyway. They would be just like any other family until they were really a family. Emily could be her flower girl, she had laughed, when they finally got married.

  Becca had swung her friend into a warm embrace, feeling a flash of joy mixed with defiance. “Of course you’ll have a beautiful baby,” she had said, as she tugged Amy out the door of her apartment, wondering where she could find a bottle of sparkling cider. “You’ll be a great mother. You don’t need a new last name for that—you don’t need to marry Arthur. Of course you don’t! You can count on me to stand by you, Amy.”

  Becca had been as good as her word. Arlene Reinhart, whom Amy had known since college, had helped Amy get the basics together: strollers, receiving blankets, pacifiers, silver rattles, tiny soft nightcaps.

  Becca had gone with Amy to the hospital the weekend Emily was born. She recalled how incredibly strange she thought it was that Arthur had picked that time to go bonefishing in the Keys.

  But four years had intervened since then, and as Becca circled the globe and watched the sun rise from her desk chair, Amy had overseen a Jamaican baby nurse, a pram-pushing English nanny, a ballet-certified French nanny, and a sparkling never-never land of cookies, puppets, and fairy tales that seemed as strange to Becca as sleeping in on the weekends.

  Through glassy eyes she looked out Emily’s bedroom window at the yellow taxis, the black limousines, the white-gloved nannies already pushing their strollers along Fifth Avenue, this citadel of privilege. She noticed a rocking horse, idle, pushed to the corner of the room. A rocking horse! She wiped her eyes, feeling them well up again, as if years of crying had built up for this moment.

  What would she do here? What would the child expect of her? She was so scared.

  Abruptly, Becca thought of her mother, and a hopeful light broke across the sadness of her face. She stood and waved her hand at Thirstan to indicate that, though shaky, she could manage on her own without falling.

  “I need a couple of hours,” she said, gulping back her tears. More resolutely, she added: “I’ll be back, don’t worry. I can handle this. I just need some time.”

  “I understand,” he said, though he knew understanding was impossible, and the best thing he could do was to get out of the way. But he had an obligation to tell her everything.

  “You’re not alone,” he said, thinking she would find solace in the promise of someone to lean on. “Arthur named another guardian. I’m sure he and Amy wanted you two to work together, to support each other.” Thirstan looked warily at her shocked expression, wondering if he had expressed himself right. “You have a partner, Becca.”

  “A what?” she said, stumbling back against the wall. Her mind raced wildly. She had no time, no experience, and no talent for child-raising—and now she had no control?

  “His name is Edward Kirkland,” the lawyer said. “Your coguardian.”

  The name meant nothing to her. Becca shook her head angrily, her dark hair cascading loosely around her face. She wheeled around to face Thirstan. “Listen,” she said, “I don’t do partner. I don’t do coguardian—co-anything. I’m no team player, all right?”

  He nodded uncertainly.

  Becca thrust her face into her hands. “Is this some kind of joke?” Her breaths came quickly, in short gasps. She paced the room, her mind whirling with protest.

  She looked at her watch and breathed deeply. Her life was coming apart. Her whole, balanced, precisely scheduled footrace of a life was tearing open, and she was alone with a lawyer talking about sudden, terrifying motherhood while her phone rang and her clients waited and her world was somewhere else. What should she do? Where was Emily? Had anybody told her? Becca hadn’t even seen Emily since she came to her fourth birthday party, a princess tea-party affair held in the lobby of the Plaza—she thought that was such a scream at the time, weeks ago, or was it months? She felt her hands trembling as she lifted them to her cheeks. Her face was burning.

  Thirstan approached her and spoke gently. “Becca, feel free to go and take some time to understand the obligation you have here. We’ll talk about what to do if you can’t handle this. Having a coguardian gives us some flexibility if you aren’t up to the task. I want you to be sure,” he said, looking into her eyes, “that you can accept this responsibility.”

  “Who’s with her?” Becca asked suddenly, her eyes darting around the apartment. “Where is she? Is she okay?”

  “She’s with her nanny. You remind me,” he added, “that she didn’t handle the news very well. She gave her two weeks notice, and she has already begun to pack. From what I can understand she is moving back to France.”

  Becca stared at him in disbelief. An inadvertent shudder ran through her shoulders.

  “Do you have any other questions?” the lawyer asked her gently.

  “Has anybody told Emily about her parents?” Becca asked, her voice trembling.

  “No.”

  She caught her breath, feeling her eyes threaten another storm. What would she say? What do four-year-old children even know?

  Becca stepped past the lawyer, out of the room. “I’ll be back tonight,” she said over her shoulder. She faced away from him, her eyes hot with tears. “But first I have to go to Brooklyn.”

  Thirstan didn’t question this explanation, though it seemed slightly odd.

  Her head swimming, Becca staggered to the lobby and hailed a cab. She thought about this day, which until an hour ago had seemed just another ordinary, unbearably busy day. She had deplaned this morning with nothing but the Wasserstein meeting on her mind. That meeting ended before it began, as the firm had already accepted an offer from Deutsche Bank, and Becca headed to the office with what she thought were a few stolen minutes to catch up on her reading. But as soon as she arrived, Dick called her into his office.

  She had already missed a breakfast meeting; she needed to reschedule it while the principals were still in town. She had three other meetings today, and no matter what happened, she couldn’t get out of the trip to Hong Kong. The whole Asian fund hung around her neck. She had to return dozens of calls, the usual backlog that pooled every morning by the hour.

  She knew these things, but as she caught her own reflection in the dull, dirty window of the cab to Brooklyn, Becca nearly choked with the surprise of knowing something different. She looked like a zombie, a pale, empty shell of a person. Oddly, the time change from London was hitting her; she felt unbalanced, and her hands were shaking. She couldn’t do anything today. She called Philippe, instructed him to redirect all her calls and cancel her meetings, and directed the cabbie to the shabby little row-house in Brooklyn where she knew she would find her mother.

  CHAPTER 5

  Bubbe

  Arlene Reinhart was cooking when Becca staggered into the house. Without a word her mother rushed to embrace her in the warm, fleshy arms that Becca had to lean down to in order to meet, and tugged her into the kitchen for some food.

  With a soft dishcloth she wiped Becca’s tear-stained face, poured her coffee without asking, and turned a chair from the small, round dinette table for Becca to sit in. In a flood of emotion, without logic or order, Becca told her mother what had happened to Amy, about Emily, and what it meant for her. She was a mother. She was terrified.

  Arlene brushed Becca’s loose hair back, cupped her daughter’s face in her soft hands, and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Becca,” she said. “I’m so sorry about Amy. She was a great friend.”

  Arlene’s tears met Becca’s in a moment of si
lence.

  “But don’t worry about being a mother,” Arlene said, rising from her chair to rub Becca on the head. “You’re a natural.”

  “Mom, how can you say that?” The color rose in Becca’s white cheeks. “All I’ve ever managed is money.”

  “You’ll do fine. Trust me,” she said, turning from the pot where she was stirring a warm, fat chicken in heavy broth. It smelled delicious. “There is no such thing as a bad mother.”

  Becca smiled to herself.

  “Mom, really,” she protested, nodding her thanks at the plate of food her mother plunked in the center of the table. Brown bread, sour pickles, cold veal chops, and honey cake.

  “Eat,” her mother directed.

  Becca felt hungry and ate a little of the cake, but her frustration returned when she thought about how little sympathy she was getting in this, what should be the most supportive quarter of the universe.

  “You can’t believe the week I have,” she said, “the month, the year! Meetings, more meetings, and travel, and in between I’m on the phone. I hardly have time to shower! When will I have time for a four-year-old?”

  Arlene finished chewing her pickle. She was on a diet, consisting mainly of choosing pickles over honey cake when she nibbled, drinking Diet Coke by the case, and ordering salad dressing on the side. Her cooking—her mainstay—was unaffected. Who could change what is?

  “Make time,” she said simply.

  “Mom!” Becca complained. “You don’t understand. It’s not like with you. This just happened to me. I’m not ready!”