Our Little Racket

by Angelica Baker

  “What do you mean, make them feel better,” she pressed. “Who?”

  “I thought your mother would have explained some of this already,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “She told me to have faith in you. She told me you’d take care of it.”

  “She said that? That’s good. I’m glad she included you in that.”

  He drank his glass down in two swallows, and Madison watched his hand reach out, without even looking in the direction of the bottle, to refill it.

  “Your mother knows all about this,” he said. “She takes the long view. Always has. This is what’s important, Mad. You have to marry someone whose strengths are the opposites of your own.”

  “You don’t take the long view?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, but then he answered other, unspoken questions. “Some good might come from it. Maybe they can explain to me what happened. That’d be . . . that’d be rich, right?”

  She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t understand,” she said. “You don’t know what happened?”

  “Oh, I know exactly what fucking happened. Everybody lost heart,” he said. “They couldn’t just ride it out. Jim was my undoing, just like we always joked he would be.”

  There was silence for a moment, and then Madison asked, “Who said he would? What did Jim do?”

  Her father stood again and crossed to the butcher block, dotted with bread crumbs and the ends of peeled garlic cloves. He stared at the remains of the meal he’d made, then began sweeping it all into the trash.

  “Do you remember Alan Pratt? You were too small, right?”

  “I mean,” she said, “I’ve seen the pictures. You used to vacation with them, right? Mom still sees Karen, doesn’t she?”

  Karen was, she was pretty sure, Alan Pratt’s widow. He’d died soon after quitting the firm, but she didn’t really know anything else about him. She knew she’d heard old stories, about nights when her parents were just a couple, when they lived in the city. The four of them together: Alan and Karen and Bob and Isabel. Six-hour dinners, going dancing. The people her parents had been thinking they’d try to be, before they got married to each other.

  “We haven’t seen Karen in years.”

  He said this quickly, as if admonishing someone at the dinner table for a faux pas, a belch or an indiscreet confession.

  “But Alan, he would have seen all this coming. He would have known. Alan was—I never should have let him go.”

  She hadn’t known that her father had fired that man, Alan Pratt. She’d always heard the stories and thought they were friends.

  “But it didn’t matter,” she said. “He died right after, right? Wasn’t he sick?”

  “Sick and tired,” her father muttered. “That’s what he used to say, when I’d go to visit him. He never wanted me there, really. It embarrassed him, he’d try to make jokes. Gallows humor and all that.”

  “But it’s nice you visited him.” She might as well have been speaking to the television, to a news report that would continue regardless of her response.

  “But I couldn’t have known, when we fired him. You spend your life figuring out what you’re good at. You say, okay, I’m going to be the opposite of that guy. He’s going to fail, and I’m not. I thought the best thing I could do was be the anti-Alan, be aggressive, trust my instincts. I might have made a mistake, there.”

  “Dad,” she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He seemed to see her again, for a moment.

  “No one does,” he said. “Just watch, I’ll be sitting there in front of Congress and they won’t even understand their own lectures. You think they understand the repo market? They don’t even know the term. You think they have a clue what was going on with the put options, those bets? The shorts? That’s where they should be looking. Whatever I did, even Jim, whatever he did back in June, we were too late. It’s irrelevant.”

  “Why,” she said, but he wasn’t listening.

  “It just doesn’t make sense. Of course you act, when nothing makes sense. You can’t just wait there like a fucking sitting duck.”

  She had a feeling, then, that something cold and quick had come into the room and taken a seat at the table beside them. She wanted to reach across the table to touch her father’s hand, to recall him to this night, to her face, but something had shifted and it had seemed possible he might react like a cornered animal, and strike.

  “Daddy,” she said carefully. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me. Have you said any of this, yet, to Mom?”

  “Now isn’t the time,” he said. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I just wanted to hear about you. About the party. Will you tell me about it? This can all wait.”

  It seemed so obvious to her that it couldn’t, but she didn’t know what she could say to him to force his hand.

  “I saw people do cocaine tonight,” she said. He put his palms to the table and pulled himself forward, closer to her.

  “Jesus, really? Who? At Bill Welsh’s house?”

  She nodded. It seemed like this was the moment; if this night was an aberration, then this would break the spell. He’d become the same kind of father he’d been. There would be yelling, he’d be disgusted at her weakness in front of people like Zoë. She would be in trouble. If this was some temporary departure from their pattern, and not something wholly new, she would be in trouble.

  “Did you do any? Tell me the truth.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Good girl. Believe me, Madison, it’s not glamorous. You should’ve seen some of the guys, back before I met your mom. It’s not a pretty story.”

  “Did you used to do it?”

  “Oh, Mad, that was all so long ago. It’s like different people. It’s like actors playing us, when you try to remember it.”

  “So that’s a yes.”

  Her father smiled, and rested his chin on his fist. He looked at her.

  “What about now?” she said. “Did you do anything illegal?”

  “No. You know me, princess. You asked me a direct question. Would I lie to that? To you? No, I have done nothing wrong. I swear. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  She stacked her pasta plate on top of his, even though he’d never served himself any food.

  “Okay,” she said. “I trust you.”

  She waited, and then decided to say it all.

  “You won’t lie to me, right? As long as I ask you, from now on. You won’t lie. Because I told you about tonight. I could have gotten in trouble, right?”

  Her father shook his head vigorously, but did not answer.

  “I have some things to show you. You would be just the person to look it over with me, Madison. You know me better than anyone. And sometimes that’s the best approach, in a funny way. You need a fresh eye sometimes.”

  “Oh,” she said. She could not think of anything better to say to such a statement.

  “But that’s later,” he said. “Do you want a drink?” Madison waited for the punch line, and when none followed, she nodded again.

  “Madison,” her father said. “I wouldn’t put you in danger. You come first. You, Mom, and the twins.”

  “I know.”

  He clinked her glass with the lip of the bottle.

  “Our secret, yes? Not a word to Mom.”

  THE MORNING OF THANKSGIVING, Isabel announced that they’d be taking a car into the city. She never mentioned that it was a limousine. When it arrived Madison said nothing, just stood in the driveway staring.

  “I know,” Isabel said, something vague enough to leave it up to the listener to decide what she knew. “I just couldn’t resist, being able to sit and face you guys and chat for the drive in.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s not coming.”

  “Did you even ask him if he wants to?”

  Her mother moved a step closer to her.

  “Can we be on the same team? We just have to get through Thanksgivi
ng dinner today, and then lunch with Nonna on Friday. I need your help, Madison.”

  It was the first time her mother had said that, anything like it, since the night of the bathtub. I can do this, Madison thought. If her mother acknowledged it, the strangeness of the whole holiday weekend, and enlisted her aid, then she could do it.

  “I want you to tell me what’s going on with the art.”

  “Not in the car.”

  She rolled her eyes at her mother, something she would never have been allowed to do even three months ago.

  “No, obviously not. But later this weekend. I want you to tell me.”

  “Deal,” Isabel said, and Madison got into the car.

  By the time they were out of Greenwich, hurtling south on the Merritt, Isabel seemed to be relaxing. You could almost see it happening, one vertebra at a time. Her sunglasses perched atop her head and drew her hair back off her face, exposing the pink snail-shell coils of her ears. Her face appeared scrubbed of makeup in a way that meant she had spent an hour applying foundation, powder, under-eye creams, and forehead-tightening gels. She looked healthy, rested. She’d put this together carefully.

  The boys asked for and received sodas from the minibar, a rare treat. Madison unpacked her stuffed purse. She had a date with Chip on Saturday, they were going to a movie. Her brothers had sodas, she had a few secrets. Everyone was happy.

  When Chip had called her house, the previous afternoon, she’d found herself touching her own cheeks, the whole time, during the phone call. As if her skin were on loan from someone who had once worn it better, someone whom it had fit properly.

  “So what’s our schedule,” she said to her mother, her eyes on the French conjugations she had to do. She’d always been able to read or work in the car, she and her father both. This was something she knew bothered her mother, for whom the words swam on the page as soon as the engine roared to life.

  “No schedule,” Isabel said, her voice airy. Matteo sucked down his soda, pausing after each tiny sip to deliver a loud, lip-smacking sound of satisfaction. Madison knew he actually hated the carbonation; they weren’t used to it, growing up in a house where soda had always been an illicit, unknown quantity.

  “Well, we must be going somewhere,” Madison said.

  “Yes, Madison, of course. We’ve got dinner tonight at Coco Pazzo, boys, remember? We used to go with Gran?”

  “We’re eating out?” Madison said sharply.

  “Private room.”

  “Sounds good,” Madison said, turning back to the French. She doodled in her margins and thought about the skin on Chip’s face, just beneath his ears, where it had been the softest. She’d pressed the pads of her thumbs to that place.

  “And then, really, it’s whatever your little hearts desire,” Isabel continued. “We’ve got the room at the Pierre until Sunday.”

  “I can’t stay until Sunday,” Madison said. Isabel was running her hand through Matteo’s hair, measuring it between her index and middle fingers as if they were scissors. She looked up, but only for a moment.

  “Why?”

  “I have a date with Chip Abbott.”

  “Well,” Isabel said, “all right, I guess. We can have a car take you back by yourself. Lily said she’d be back by Saturday.”

  “Really,” Madison said. The boys looked up, hearing something in her voice, and Luke began to chew on his straw, his foot periodically knocking against his brother’s. Her mother began rifling through her purse. She had said the Pierre; surely it had occurred to her that they’d be able to see the new apartment at the Plaza, probably, from the windows of their hotel room.

  “Why are we staying at the Pierre?” Madison said, and it had its intended effect. Her mother’s smile skipped a beat, like a flaw on an old videotape.

  “Why not?” her mother said.

  “Which one is the Pierre?” Matteo asked.

  They all sat in silence, and now her mother was looking at her, looking her square in the face. Madison didn’t know, really. Maybe it had been kindness, her mother’s decision not to be strict about the date with Chip. Maybe she wasn’t asking questions, or saying no, precisely because of that night in the bathtub. Maybe it was a reward; when Madison tried, she could see all of it this way, the nights in the kitchen with her father and the disinterest from her mother. As rewards.

  Madison looked down at her French homework, because she knew the boys would get anxious if she and Isabel kept staring at each other.

  “We haven’t stayed there,” she told her brother smoothly. “It’s near the apartment, a little bit farther south.”

  “Why aren’t we staying at the apartment?”

  She knew that they probably didn’t even remember the new place; they were used to being taken in and out of large, fancy rooms, places they were told they’d be coming back to, places to remember. Very often, they didn’t actually need to remember them. Someone, usually Lily, would prep them on the particulars if they ever needed to return.

  “We just don’t feel like it,” Madison said.

  “Yes,” Isabel said. “We don’t feel like it. Thank you, Madison.”

  Outside the window, all the other cars were headed in the same direction, speeding toward the city’s tall ziggurat skyline.

  TWENTY-TWO

  It was a bit embarrassing, Mina thought, to be shopping at Whole Foods on the morning after Thanksgiving. It seemed to indicate some sort of girlish unpreparedness, something charming in a twenty-three-year-old but not so much in a forty-six-year-old. That either she hadn’t thought to buy groceries for the entire weekend when she made the big trip on Tuesday, or else hadn’t cooked enough food for leftovers. Nothing to set out in aluminum containers at big buffet brunches in the kitchen, for the guests who slept late and straggled downstairs in shifts.

  Of course she had no houseguests that weekend—two of Tom’s younger associates had brought their wives for dinner, but they’d been speeding back to the city by nine o’clock the previous evening. But still, the leftovers in the kitchen was the image she always had in her mind, of what it would mean to host Thanksgiving out here “in the country.” That was how one of the women last night, Pamela, kept referring to it. “The country.” Like they were drinking milk fresh from the cow out back, or something.

  Her phone danced as she walked into the store. She hadn’t realized she was clutching it in her palm, and she was doubly startled to see Isabel’s name on the screen. Having been called in for reinforcement on Wednesday, Mina had expected not to hear from Isabel for the remainder of the holiday weekend, at least.

  “Well hello there,” she said, keeping her voice sugary and light from the start. She didn’t want to assume this was a distress call until she knew.

  “Hi,” Isabel said.

  “How are you? How was your Thanksgiving? Tom’s partner brought a new girlfriend, I swear to you Isabel, she looked twelve.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Isabel replied, getting into the spirit of things immediately. She sounded distracted, if game. “Did he want you to all let him tell you what he’s thankful for?”

  “She kept making these sweeping statements about—you know, what a shame it is that New York is so dominated by two industries, finance and fashion. How she finds it so tiresome that a new restaurant can put the word ‘artisanal’ in front of every vegetable or cocktail and claim to be doing something new. I mean, every single aspect of life in the city seems to have exhausted this girl, and I’m telling you she couldn’t be more than three years out of school.”

  “Oh my,” Isabel said.

  “At first I thought she was trying to make me feel bad for not knowing the restaurants she kept mentioning, in Brooklyn, but I think maybe she was just nervous,” Mina said.

  “Well, of course. You remember what it was like, when you were that age. Spending time around them in groups, with the older wives, being the date on the arm.”

  Yes, Mina thought. Yes I do remember, but because I’m the one who did it. Not you. Isabel
had never walked into a room and felt unwelcome, not once in her entire life. Not until this year, Mina reminded herself. You don’t begrudge her that past simplicity. You bring her closer, because you understand how she feels now. Don’t be so petty.

  “How’s the hotel?” she tried. “Where did you end up choosing?”

  “The Pierre,” Isabel said. “Madison’s been great. She’s so on top of things. You should have her come over to run your Thanksgiving.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “Oh, no, not really. Well, I just felt bad. When we got to the hotel, yesterday, I snapped at her. I just didn’t want her standing there when I checked in. I didn’t want her to know, it’s just, I used—I checked in under another name.”

  “Whose name?” Mina said, alarmed.

  “No, no one’s name. It was silly. April Wheeler. It’s a character from my mother’s favorite book. I just didn’t want to use my maiden name or anything, any name some underemployed and overenergized young hack from the Post or the Observer could trace—I didn’t want anything that really has to do with us,” Isabel said, leaving the thought to its logical, unpleasant conclusion.

  “No,” Mina said. “No, that was smart.”

  “I didn’t mean to keep it a secret, but at the last minute I just didn’t want her to know it was happening? I don’t know. I suppose I could have trusted her with it, but I just asked—I mean, I snapped at her, to go keep an eye on her brothers. And then by the time I got the room keys and turned around, they were talking to Suzanne Welsh.”

  “Oh,” Mina said, still lurking just inside the store’s entrance, her eyes scanning the checkout counters and the produce aisle for familiar faces. “Fantastic. Did she hear you use the name?”

  “No,” Isabel said. “It’s funny you should ask that. My first thought was, thank God Madison distracted her.”

  “Wait, why are they at a hotel? Did they get rid of that place on Fifth?”

  “So, I walked over, and Madison’s just chatting with her, Suzanne keeps looking over at me. And she starts telling me, you know, Bill’s sister is in town, the sister refuses to stay out in Greenwich, doesn’t want to ‘impose’ by using the apartment, Bill has to put them up at the Pierre—”