In any case, after a few weeks, he’d stopped talking about buying a house in Massachusetts, and somehow this was Mina’s doing.
“We really have to do this?” Tom said, just once, before they hung up. “It means so much to her that we go to some high school orchestra concert?”
Mina pressed her fist to her mouth, biting down on her knuckles.
“Yes,” she said. “What with all that’s been going on, I really do think it’ll be nice for her to see our faces in the crowd. Reassuring, maybe. Do you disagree?”
He hung up without another word.
“You didn’t even take her up at the end of the summer. You sent her in a car,” Mina said to no one, her voice ringing clear against the marble floors in a way that it couldn’t have when her husband was still on the line.
She should have known that Tom wouldn’t allow himself to consider the possibility that his daughter was watching the news, interpreting the streams of jargon as indicators of her father’s failure. Mina realized that this was how she’d been picturing Tom, in his office all these days. That same gaping mouth, the frozen quality to his face that took over whenever Jaime squinted at him briefly and then composed her own face into a smile, to thank him for the misguided gift or the foolish suggestion or whatever else her father had done to confirm that he did not know her at all.
Mina wondered whether Jaime had been watching the news. Did her daughter watch the news? She couldn’t remember, but then Jaime had been fourteen when she left for boarding school, and hadn’t spent more than a week at a time in Greenwich since. Did any fourteen-year-olds watch the news, really? Or were they all just getting that new thing on their phones, Twitter. Everyone striving to be as arch as possible, too witty to live.
She shook her head clean and went back upstairs to pack Tom’s overnight bag.
THEY STOPPED AT RAJIV’S KITCHEN in Wellesley for an early dinner. Tom liked to drive up here several times each year, usually, but they hadn’t been since the previous winter; the impending panic all summer had cut these small extravagances of time from their joint schedule, and dinners at Raj’s restaurant had been one casualty among many.
Tom slid the car backward into a spot on the street and then parked with a jerk, cutting the engine so suddenly she was worried he’d do actual damage. He crossed the street just two steps ahead of her, so that she had to trot in a pair of already uncomfortable kitten heels just to reach the entrance beside him, rather than several paces behind him. She clutched vaguely at his arm as he shoved into the restaurant. She was well aware that Raj was probably on the floor, greeting patrons, that he might have seen them approaching through the restaurant’s broad picture windows. That even before they crossed the threshold they would once again be in public. That might mean nothing to Tom, but then, that’s why he needed her. She knew what it meant to rely on looking like someone other than who you were.
He shook his arm once, dislodging her hesitant fingers. I don’t care, she said to herself. I can take it all, just so long as he’s over it by the time Jaime sees us.
They were shown to their table by a tanned hostess with freakishly long, ropy limbs. Tom’s eyes barely even skimmed her shoulders, her cleavage. No sooner had the gazelle deposited their menus than he bolted for the bathroom, knocking the table with his knee and nearly upsetting Mina’s water. She cupped the cool glass and practiced breathing—four counts in, six counts out. It was just this dinner, really. Once they were at the inn, once he could sleep, things would look very different.
They would be late checking in, so she called ahead. “Why don’t we just say we’ll be there by midnight,” she told an exasperated employee on the phone, some teenage girl chewing her gum loudly into the receiver. They were still a new family; nobody knew them yet at the Andover Inn.
When her husband slid back into his seat opposite hers, emitting the growl mixed with a sigh that was his usual sign-off each night when he finally climbed into bed beside her, Mina felt such relief, such longing that she was almost embarrassed, as she so often was by her private thoughts. She leaned across the table, mindful of their water glasses, and reached to cradle Tom’s head with her hand, brushing her fingers through his close-cropped hair. She’d always loved that he kept it short, loved the way it sprung back at her touch like fresh-cut grass.
“How are you feeling?” she said. “I’ve got Advil if you need it?”
“No,” he said, “I’m sorry I’ve been like this. I promise once I’ve got some dinner in me I’ll be improved.”
“Well, it’s nice to see you, improvement or no,” she said, stroking his hands with her thumbs.
“Min, I tried to explain last night, if you knew what hell on earth it’s been in that office this month—”
She shook her head, careful to keep a certain look on her face, something like tender dismissal.
“I wasn’t,” she said. “I was just being honest. It’s so good to see you. We can go right to sleep, just the second we get to the inn. Once we’ve got a good meal in you. But I really do worry about you.”
He nodded and drew his hand back. They opened their menus.
“Fuck me, Dawes, it isn’t fair. What, do you have a painting of yourself crammed in a closet somewhere back at the manse, aging for you?”
Mina winced, still unaccustomed to the way Rajiv Dhalwala, the silver-tongued owner of the restaurant, seemed to cast aside his gracious front-of-house demeanor as soon as he spotted her husband. They’d rowed crew together at Princeton and trained side by side at Goldman until Raj had decided finance wasn’t for him, and they still spoke to each other as though they were pumping up for a race, or goading each other into one more shot at some bar on Stone Street. Usually, Tom loved it—loved being called an asshole from across a genteel Wellesley dining room, loved the way forks paused for a moment before the general music of the restaurant resumed when people realized that the disruption had come from the owner himself. But tonight, she saw her own exhaustion mirrored as Tom’s eyes widened and then adjusted. She smiled at him, and he nodded.
“Raj, my brother,” Tom said, standing to shake his friend’s hand. “I see you’re still conning people into eating this crap.”
“I’ve told your husband once, I’ve told him a thousand times,” Raj said to Mina, kissing the back of her hand with a flourish. “If you call ahead, I’ll always save you a window table! We can’t have you out here among the riffraff!”
She never knew whether he was going to fawn over her or ignore her completely. Truth be told she preferred the latter; when he was like this, touching her wrists and clutching her upper arm and glowering at her like she was some just-ripened exotic fruit to be sliced and pared for one of his fusion dishes, it was all too easy for her to imagine what his role must have been back at Princeton. Always at Tom’s side but shorter, stockier, sweatier. His face a collection of soft, rounded features, as though a stronger face had been smashed against the wall and remained that way. When he flirted with her, however harmless or false it was, she could only imagine him approaching the women at the crew parties, talking, getting them loose and lubricated, preparing them for the moment when her husband would swoop in for the kill.
“Maybe he prefers life among the riffraff,” she said, smiling up at him and returning her hand to her own lap. Tom cleared his throat and sat down again. Raj remained at the table, looming over them, crossing and uncrossing his arms.
“Sure,” he said. “Sure, sure he does. This is why you’ve all settled in Greenwich. Living in a little garden shed, was it? Have I got that right, Monsieur Dawes?”
“All right, Raj, ease up,” Tom said. “I know deep down you’re happy to see us.”
“Not pretending otherwise,” Raj said. “I’ve got a killer new dish actually, I’ve been hoping for someone I trust to stop by so I can test it out. Might be a bit out there for the good folk of Wellesley, Mass. They’re happy with their tandoori chicken and nothing too spicy, thanks much.”
“You do
n’t even have a tandoor oven here, you fraud,” Tom replied. “And you still talk about this place like it’s the boonies. You are that worst kind of New York City snob. You can take the kid out of Queens, but . . .”
“Don’t even finish that, it’s tired before it’s been said,” Raj said, and began describing his new curry to Tom.
Mina watched her husband listen. So little about his face had changed since the night they’d met that the few concessions to age were all the more unsettling. He looked like a handsome young man who’d been exposed to some sort of apocalyptic weather conditions, the skin on his cheeks and nose and neck strafed by wind or hail. If he went more than a day without shaving, now, he looked grizzled rather than scruffy and adorable. There was a general heaviness around his eyes and mouth, as though the handsome original face had been simply weighed down, pebbles placed somewhere beneath the skin to drag it all toward his chin. When he smiled (or, as was the case tonight, grimaced) wrinkles fanned out from the corners of his eyes, like fragile clay that hadn’t been kept long enough in the kiln.
And still, she knew, he was handsome. In an unusual way, more than just daily handsome. If he sat down next to you on the train, you’d blink and look again.
She felt a sudden urge to lean across the table, knocking over the water glasses if necessary, to kiss each of the wrinkles emanating from the corner of his left eye.
“So,” Raj said, clapping his hands. “I’ll pull out my special Tom Dawes bottle of scotch, of course, but what can I bring you, darling?”
She shivered again at the false obsequiousness, the hollow chivalry. “I’m sticking with water for the moment,” she said.
“I’m not,” Tom said.
“I don’t blame you,” Raj chortled, pausing for a moment and looking at them both before he continued. “Greenwich must be a bit of a fishbowl right now, no?”
Of course he was going to ask, because the man had not one truly tactful bone in his body. He knew that she was friends with Isabel. He’d come down to Greenwich for Tom’s fiftieth; he’d probably kissed Isabel’s hand, for God’s sake.
“I’ve barely been there, to tell the truth,” Tom began, and she could see him parrying with himself, trying to say as little as possible and keep a smile on his face. “You can imagine the scene downtown. It’s not pretty.”
“Well of course it isn’t. Did you guys think it would be?”
Tom gripped his fork, lifting it from the table and then replacing it with such exaggerated care that it was more disturbing than if he’d thrown it right at Raj.
“Easy there,” he said. “I wouldn’t be saying ‘you guys,’ if I were you. Weiss is its own animal.”
“But of course,” Raj said, back to soothing. “And D’Amico made his own bed to lie in, I’m sure. How’s he holding up? They’ve got kids, right?”
“Well, he has a lot to answer for,” Tom said. “No way around it, right? History is not going to be kind to Bob D’Amico.” Raj chuckled as though Tom had told an off-color joke.
“I think we can all give them some privacy,” Mina said. “I think a little empathy might be in order. This could have happened to anyone. Or to many people, I mean.”
Tom looked up from his silverware and fixed his eyes on hers. Raj stood above them for a few moments more, dead weight, before saying something about Tom’s scotch and bustling off, removing his suit jacket as he crossed the room.
They sat in silence until a waiter returned with the glass of scotch. It was a generous pour, something Tom usually frowned upon, because he said only frat boys and unrepentant alcoholics poured more than a few fingers’ worth. It had always seemed to her that only alcoholics had to craft for themselves such a complex rule system, but she kept this to herself. The fact was that the alcoholics she’d grown up with guzzled Crown Royal and so on down the scale, and in that way her husband resembled not at all what she thought of as an alcoholic.
He drank the scotch down in one gulp.
“Get up,” he said then.
“Excuse me?”
“Get up. We’re leaving.”
“Sweetheart, we haven’t even eaten.”
“I. Am not. Fucking. Hungry. At the moment. Get in the car. We’re driving to the inn.”
Out on the sidewalk, the evening was unusually brisk for early October. Tom’s fist was in the small of her back, propelling her across the street, toward the car. She stopped short when a car’s headlights reeled up out of the darkness at the end of the block. Tom collided with her for a moment, an embrace without warmth.
“What the fuck was that,” Tom said, though she noticed that he waited for the car to pass. You never knew, these days, who might be driving by with a camera phone. Her husband was nothing if not careful.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she tried.
“The hell you don’t. It could have happened to anyone? Do me a favor, Min, try not to make your analytical debut when we’re with the single biggest gossip in Princeton history. All good? Can we agree at least on that? You show an ounce of fucking judgment? Maybe some consideration for the man who’s been working around the clock to keep you sitting in that house without anything to worry about?”
“Tom,” she said, placing her hands out in front of her as though there was a table, or anything solid, to balance against. She kept them there, in the air between them. “I’m sorry. All right? I’m tired, too. I misspoke.”
“Misspoke!” he yelped, and for a terrifying instant she thought he might erupt into laughter. “Well, I do know one thing. I bet you’re damn happy not to be Isabel D’Amico. I bet your little-girl hero-worship bullshit, whatever it is that keeps you following her around like you’re her kid sister, has taken some hits the past few weeks.”
“Please stop. Please.”
“You know how long it’s going to take to clean up after him? Months, Mina. Maybe years. He put us in danger. I mean us, our family.” He poked his own chest with his thick index finger, again and again. “Us. You, me, Jaime.”
They both pretended not to flinch at their daughter’s name.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Tom said, “I can’t breathe.” He started loosening his tie and then, absurdly, ripped it off over his head, started undoing the buttons of his dress shirt. He discarded the shirt like a damp towel on the hood of the Jag and stood there in his white undershirt, which he quickly untucked from the waist of his pants. He breathed through his nostrils for a moment, then continued.
“You know what nerve that takes? To put everyone in danger like this? It’s not just us—I’m all for the people who hate him now, but they don’t get it. Everyone will suffer. It’s unconscionable, what he’s done. It is. And now I’ve got my wife running her mouth off about how it could have happened to anyone? Jack all happened to him. He did it. And you think that could’ve been me?”
“All I meant,” she said, “all I was saying, was that maybe he’s just the first domino to fall. I mean isn’t that what everyone’s saying? Everyone was a little extended and now things will have to change? I mean maybe that’s, you know . . .”
“Oh, thank you for pointing out the silver lining,” Tom said, holding his thumbs and index fingers like guns and pointing them at each temple. “First domino to fall. That’s a sharp turn of phrase there, sweetheart. You sound like quite the expert. Tell me more, by all means. Lay it out for me.”
He had his hands on his hips and as he spoke sometimes he threw them into the air above his head in disgust. When he did this his undershirt rode up, showing his lower stomach, taut, and the tops of the pelvic muscles that cut across his lower torso at diagonals. It was her favorite part of his body.
She felt the stinging behind her nose, so similar to the way it felt when she was about to sneeze, and she swallowed several times, quickly. He hated it when she cried.
“I don’t know why you’re talking to me like this. I’ve done everything I can to be helpful and—”
“Damn it, Mina, do you think we’r
e morons? Do you think I’m a complete fucking incompetent? I may not be the CEO of Weiss and Partners, and Lord knows I can imagine how hard it’s been for you to keep your head high around your little friend, but I guess it just turned out pretty lucky for you that you didn’t hold out for the CEO, right? I may not be the top dog, but things are pretty sweet for you, aren’t they?”
She was crying now. She couldn’t help it. He continued to rail at her—her ignorance, the pressures she put on him, the fact that he, Goldman, that they’d done nothing wrong. That Bob D’Amico had been the only idiot on the Street who thought he could keep taking the risks everyone else had forsaken months earlier, for fuck’s sake, Mina, years earlier. Bob thought he was so much fucking smarter than us, he kept repeating. Look where it got him. We were careful. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
“Get in the car,” he said, finally, when another car went by, its white headlights washing over them like judgment. She thought the car slowed a bit as it passed, but she couldn’t say for sure.
“Get in the car,” he repeated.
“No,” she replied. He looked at her in disbelief. For the first time in so long, she did not question her own resentment. Her husband was being unfair. The fact that he wasn’t a violent man, that she wasn’t a battered wife, didn’t excuse this. She was a grown woman, and she could call his bluff. It was a risk, to do so, but she could take it.
She put one hand to her chest and it fluttered there, as though it couldn’t quite endorse her sudden boldness.
“Cut it out, Tom. Just, enough. I’ve apologized for, quite frankly, not really doing anything wrong in the first place. So just stop. If you’re going to talk to me like this, I will get myself a second room when we get there. I swear to God I will. And you can sleep alone.”
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