None of her teachers had said anything specific yet. In Trig she’d seen Mr. Warren try to catch her eye a few times, just after dismissal. He always looked so young when he tried to stand at the front of the room and give them all some command. His dirty blond curls looked perpetually shower damp, cropped short and beaten into submission. His cheeks were flushed and clammy, his short-sleeved button-down surely clinging to the part of his back just between his shoulder blades. He was in a band with a few of the other math teachers; she knew that about him. She also knew, just from the way he shifted his weight from foot to foot when he wrote the answers to their homework on the board, that he hadn’t grown up any place like her part of Greenwich. And so she always wondered what he thought of them, his students. The blithe way they tumbled into each minute of the future, the way their hands curled instinctively around the screens of their iPhones, the sparkling BMWs in the senior parking lot. She had wondered these things even before, about Mr. Warren, even during that first week of school in September. She thought about things like this, even if everyone around her assumed that she didn’t.
“None of my teachers have mentioned it,” was all she said. Isabel nodded.
“You haven’t been sleeping a lot, have you?” Madison said. “I’ve been seeing your coffee mugs downstairs, sometimes. When Lily doesn’t get to them first.”
“Should I have been hiding them from you?” Isabel’s eyes remained closed but she let her hand flutter through the air above her.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Well, you know, I wouldn’t allow this if I didn’t know Lily was capable. She’s beyond capable. I mean the boys are more comfortable with her than they are with me, aren’t they?”
“No,” Madison said, because her mother’s eyes were still closed, and what other reply could she possibly give?
“You never did that. But then of course you were older by the time we’d hired real full-time help. When you were small, I guess I was all you had.”
The words were strange, altered; they sounded like they’d made their way all around Isabel’s mouth by the time they hit the air. Still; her mother never talked about what it had been like, when Madison was a baby.
“I don’t remember that,” Madison said. She didn’t think it was true that they hadn’t yet had full-time help when she was a baby.
“You should have seen Gran’s face whenever she was out here,” Isabel continued, following some trail of thoughts only she could see. “There was no telling her, you know. She had no idea, what it meant to run this kind of house. It was a totally different life for her, hers was. And I should have been the one giving you your goddamn breakfast every morning? I don’t know how she justified Frank and Antoinette, they weren’t there on a volunteer basis. Do you even remember those first few years out here?”
Madison thought of the enormous, unmanicured yard, of the swimming pool so dark and murky, its surface clotted with leaves. She thought of the plaid blanket her mother used to spread beneath a tree for them both, the tea sandwiches in an actual picnic basket, and of falling asleep in the sun, opening her eyes to follow the swaying patterns the leaves of the tree cast down on her skin, the landscape marking her in the haziness of the afternoon. And of her father’s car, the older Mercedes he used then for a station car, sputtering to a stop beyond the house and then her father himself, jogging down the slope of the lawn like an athlete to pick her up and press her sun-warmed hair to his cheek.
“What do you mean,” she said, “like, our picnics?”
“Everything,” Isabel said. “Our picnics. Just the two of us out here, and your father in the city. We never should have built this house, I should have never let him convince me. But your father wears everyone down. The Plaza, of all places. That has nothing to do with us, we don’t need that. I don’t know what he was thinking.”
The words folded something in Madison’s stomach, for she hadn’t given the new apartment any thought at all in the week since the news, and of course she should have known that it was causing her mother distress. The year before, Madison’s father had taken one of the new penthouse apartments in the Plaza. They hadn’t sold the old place yet, but he said they’d have no trouble unloading it. He’d brought her into the city once, with her brothers, to see the place just after the deal closed, but Isabel had refused to come along. She’d said that chopping up the Plaza into condos was a travesty.
It was beautiful, the apartment, but Madison had felt nothing much for it. Despite its views, despite Central Park laid out beneath the soaring windows like their own personal carpet. Because she’d never expected to live there in any significant way, any more than she “lived” at the ranch in Idaho. Even her mother went only once a year with the other partners and their wives for the firm retreat. Sometimes she brought Madison and the twins out for a week of skiing afterward, but the rest of the year it existed for them like the setting of a dream: somewhere they remembered, thought of sometimes, but mostly did not mention.
Isabel’s head had begun to nod, making short, abbreviated movements through the air, as though she were tracing shapes with the point of her tiny, sharp nose. It was not a gesture Madison recognized.
“In any case,” her mother said, “I’m aware. I haven’t been around much these days.”
“Well,” Madison said, “haven’t you been down there every night?”
Isabel sighed, as though she’d been holding the air deep in her lungs, and even the sound of the sigh had edges.
“Some things are easier to take care of while you guys are sleeping,” Isabel said.
“Like the black cars outside?”
Isabel slid down in the tub, letting her chin graze the water.
“Mina gave me these pills,” she said. “She said they would help, but they’re not. I’m going to throw them away.”
Madison knew that she would not get another chance, to ask about the pills, and she knew that was why her mother had brought them up in this moment. But see, she thought, it’s fine, she’s taken them once, she won’t take them again. I won’t give her the satisfaction of asking for more.
“There were more cars today,” she pressed. “There were, like, two of them around back, behind the hedge. By Lily’s house.”
Isabel lifted one hand to her own chest, just at the dip of her clavicle. Madison couldn’t see any other part of the arm; the hand just lay there against Isabel’s neck as if a stranger lurked beneath the surface of the water.
“Someone tried to get into the apartment. In the city. So we wanted to—an abundance of caution. There’s no reason not to.”
“The apartment? While Dad was home?”
Isabel said nothing.
“Was he home? Is he being careful?”
“Madison, I’m not going to discuss it further. Plenty of people are worrying about it right now. Adding your name to the list doesn’t help me at all.”
Madison crossed the room, crawling onto the steps that led up to the bathtub and folding her elbows on the edge of the tub. She rested her chin there on her arms. She might have been doing this all her life, she thought, sitting above her mother as she floated in the bathtub, telling her stories. Isabel said nothing, though, just plucked a washcloth from the fragrant basket on the ledge.
“Have you talked to Daddy?”
There was only the slightest stutter to Isabel’s movements, and she began to dunk the washcloth into the water. “He’s very busy right now. It’s been chaos in the city, or so I hear.”
“Did he ask about us?”
“Madison, it’s a very complex process. He can’t do it from Greenwich.”
“What is? What’s complex?”
Isabel didn’t answer. She put her palm to one of the frothy peaks of bubbles and sliced it in half with a slow motion, like a karate chop played at delayed speed.
“You mean when a company gets liquidated.”
The word had the exact effect Madison had hoped for. She saw that her mother was wondering what
she’d read, how much she understood.
“I just thought he might have asked about us. About me.”
“Your father misses you, sweetheart, do you really need me to tell you that?”
Yes I do, she thought, why don’t you know that?
“You know I leave the business to your father. Unless he needs me.”
Isabel spread the wet washcloth across her chest and breastbone, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes again. Speaking to her mother this way, eyes closed, nose and chin in the air, felt to Madison like they weren’t really speaking at all. The bathroom had become a pale bubble of untold strength, as though Madison could talk and talk without piercing its surface, without exposing them both to the world beyond.
“What have people been telling you?”
Who, Madison thought, who could she possibly think I’ve been talking to this week?
“He signed up for it,” her mother continued, having barely left Madison any time to respond. “When he agreed to be the CEO. You can’t get the worship without the blame. That’s something your father’s always struggled with. He wants all of one without any of the other. But where are you getting this? Jake Levins?”
“Did you read his column today?”
“Please. You think I care what that little man has to say?”
“I love Jake and Lori,” Madison whispered, peering down at her toenails, at the chipped purple polish she’d applied a month ago, five years ago, it was impossible to tell the difference.
“I know you do. But in this particular area, Amanda’s father is a man possessed, Madison. He thinks it’s a good thing that he’s the lone voice crying out in the wilderness.”
“But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong,” Madison said. “Just because he’s thinking for himself.”
Isabel let out a sound that was jarringly close to a snort.
“There was an article this morning about victims,” Madison pushed. “It was about people who invested their money other places, and now—”
“Those people gambled,” Isabel said, as if Madison’s stupidity were exhausting. “They made a choice, Madison. They didn’t do anything wrong, but neither did your father. And pretending that he did, so everyone can feel better, won’t fix anything. He’s no use to anyone if he’s put—”
She stopped speaking suddenly, and Madison knew what they were avoiding, the forbidden words. Anything to do with prison, anything to do with criminal. The words Jake Levins so relished.
“I love Jake Levins, too,” she began again, breathing deeply. “Sometimes. But look at someone like him, or even—take Tom Dawes. God love Mina, really, but Tom got everything he has because of his father. And what does he have? He’s glorified middle management, and he always will be. He’s no one of consequence, not really. So it would be too delicious for them to pass up, if he’s run things into the ground.”
“Jake?”
“No,” Isabel said, her voice almost dreamy again, not at all perturbed by her daughter’s slowness in their conversation. Isabel was not usually understanding when you couldn’t keep up with her. “Your father. If he’s run it into the ground.”
“Okay,” Madison said. She tried not to picture them all on a plane, on the jet with the firm’s insignia on its side. Her father storming the cockpit in a drunken rage, seizing the pilot’s controls, running the plane into the ground.
Isabel opened her eyes and fixed them on Madison, as though surprised to find her in the same place. Madison tried to hold her gaze but the eyes were so pale and blue, so unblinking. It was like looking up into the noon sky and trying not to squint.
“They hate how successful he’s been,” she said. “They always hated all of them, all the guys, because they weren’t as polite as everyone else pretended to be. I mean, I felt it, too, when I first met him, you know that. They want him to apologize for that more than anything else. Can you understand that?”
Madison nodded. She did not look away from her mother’s eyes. Isabel nodded, too, as if in response.
“The thing right now is to be strong. It’s a system, Madison. He operates within a system. He didn’t create it, but it’s what he knows how to do. And he needs us to be strong while he fixes this. All right?”
Madison said nothing.
“I need to know that you understand what I mean.”
“I think so. I do. But also, couldn’t we go see him? For a weekend, couldn’t we? What’s stopping us?”
Her mother sailed her hand into the air, a dismissive gesture curtailed when it hit the water.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Madison, please. You think I might know what I’m talking about? A trail of shoe trees and crumpled ties along the floor, from his bathroom to his bed to the kitchen. All over the carpet. Clamshell cartons on the floor. Your father left to his own devices, it’s not a pretty thing.”
“He’s only left to his own devices because we aren’t there,” Madison said.
The old apartment was on Park Avenue, fifteen blocks north of Grand Central. Everything inside was white or stainless steel, sharp corners and fabrics that felt cold to the touch no matter what the season. Isabel hated sleeping there. But it was an empty shell, really. To hate it so much—it was like hating a blank wall, a crisp white shirt.
Sometimes, when they were all there together and Madison woke up in the night, she’d wander into the living room to see if her father was up, watching television. If he was in a good mood, he’d bundle her into a cab, still in her pajamas, and take her to one of the twenty-four-hour diners on Second Avenue. He’d tell her they should wait a few hours, take the car to his old part of Williamsburg for two Italian subs at his mother’s favorite grocery, but she never wanted to wait. She just wanted her father at the table across from her. The unnatural buttery glow of the lights in those old diners, everyone else there pale and faded, already resembling photographs of themselves. And the way those people eating alone at four o’clock would stop and stare at them when they walked in, she and her father, giggling, his hand wrapped around hers.
She was the only human alive, she knew, who had ever seen her father really giggle.
“We could be there,” she told her mother. “We could be there with him.”
“I’m done talking about this.”
Madison looked at her feet once more, gripping the marble step she’d crouched on, and could not believe her mother’s cruelty. It wasn’t so much, she realized, that her mother didn’t care that Madison might feel mistreated or resentful. It was that these possibilities had never even crossed Isabel’s mind. It wasn’t Madison’s place to demand anything from Isabel, and her mother thought that this meant she never would.
“Well, then, I guess I’ll go back to bed. If you’re done talking about everything I ask about.”
Her mother resettled herself among the deflating suds. Madison stood up and walked over to the door; when she turned back, Isabel was examining the backs of her own hands, rubbing at the wrinkles, the knuckles chafed and red from the warm water.
“I have one more thing.”
“Of course.”
“Are they going to take the house away?”
Her mother emitted a small, harsh laugh. “Well, who’s they?”
“Please don’t laugh at me.”
And immediately the laughter died, like magic.
“Would that be the worst thing? You know this was never what I wanted. This cavernous house where if I put my sunglasses down, I’ll never be able to find them again. I’m not sure it’s how you three should be raised, either.”
Madison tried not to stare at her mother, bare her own disbelief. Yes, she thought. Yes, I think that would be pretty bad. I think that would be the worst thing.
Isabel squeezed the washcloth, letting the excess water stream down into the tub. “I just wish he’d listened to me more. Of all the times to buy an apartment in the Plaza, I mean. Last year. Of all the times. And really, basi
cally, your father is so disciplined. But they’ll find everything, you know, his silliest things. The sheets, those sheets he has FedExed ahead of time to the hotels? They’ll jump on that, I promise you. I promise you.”
“Who?” Madison tried. “Who will jump on it?”
“Everyone. Listen,” Isabel said, looking up at her again. She moved forward suddenly, the water sloshing at her shoulders. “We could have a fresh start, you know? In a way, as long as things don’t take a turn for the worse, this is a blessing.”
Madison tried to ignore the panic rising in her throat, flooding up from her feet. “What?”
“Sweetie, can you trust me? I need you to trust me that I am doing everything I possibly can to keep you all safe.”
The word hovered in the room; the idea of safety, twinned as it must be with danger, was there now. Her mother had said it.
Madison waited for moments, watching the tiny beads of sweat form along her mother’s hairline, clustered together like champagne grapes.
“I miss Buck,” her mother said, unprompted, worrying her bottom lip between her thumb and index finger. Her mouth had slackened, giving her whole face an unfinished sheen.
“I know you do.”
“He was very good in a crisis. Say what you will about my father, but he was good in a crisis. Your father, Madison, the man is excellent at preventing crises, but God forbid something actually goes wrong.”
“That’s not true,” Madison said. “I remember the paper, after September eleventh. That’s literally exactly what they said about him. He got them through a crisis.”
“He got them through it,” Isabel whispered, and again Madison felt the chilled knowledge all around her, that her mother was not talking to her at all.
“That was his job, Isabel.”
Madison hardly ever tried to get away with using her mother’s first name, but now it didn’t even register on Isabel’s face.
“You trust him, don’t you?”
“I do,” Madison said. “I trust him. Do you?”
Isabel shrugged. “I trust our tribe. Just like Buck used to say.”
“All right,” Madison said.
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