“You know that’s not true,” Isabel said.
“No,” Lily said. “It actually is.” They were murmuring, not looking away from the field.
“I’m sorry if you disapprove,” Isabel said, “of how I handled her this morning. But she is not the only variable in my life right now, Lily. I have other things on my mind.”
“Right,” Lily said, “of course,” and she knew right away that she’d let too much of her opinion drip into the words.
Isabel stood up. The thick heels of her boots chirped against the corrugated metal bleachers as she moved, shaking the entire row. She sat down with a cluster of women a few bleachers closer to the field. Lily could see her ease herself in with small talk, could see that she had manufactured some reason for relocating. But she could also see that Isabel’s movements had that jittery, fragile quality of someone who was trying hard to conceal her anger, who was smiling to soothe an eruption. And it was satisfying, to see that.
Once or twice, she looked back over her shoulder. Bob sat in total silence, hunched and gray, his chin resting on one fist. He hadn’t shaved in a few days. Madison sat silently beside him, her history textbook propped on her knees, chewing the end of the highlighter she held in one hand. They looked, Lily thought, like partners. Conspirators, even.
That was how she would remember the morning, much later. Bob and Madison in silent communion up behind her, Isabel chatting up strangers down below. And Lily, left alone on the cold metal between them.
THIRTY-EIGHT
When Amanda turned from the cash register, her Pinkberry in hand, Madison was standing at the end of the line. It had been so long since they’d interacted beyond brief encounters in the hallway at school, eyebrows raised in vague distaste. The way you’d lock eyes with another pedestrian if you passed a patch of vomit on the sidewalk, or something. Amanda had accepted this back in October; she had been relieved of her job, whatever that job had been.
But now, she saw Madison before Madison saw her. Alone, without the boys or Lily or even her mother, Madison projected an uneasy alloy of steeliness and grace. You could see the grated vulnerability of her knowledge that if you forced her to meet your eye, then she’d have to respond with avidity and warmth. She looked like she was trying to keep herself locked away without claiming any physical space for herself.
When she finally saw Amanda, they stepped out of line together. Amanda kept her back resolutely to the other women there, but she saw Madison’s eyes flicker.
“Hey,” she said.
Madison smiled, and this in itself was so surprising that Amanda felt emboldened, safe.
Her father had gone quiet for a while, but the past few weeks had been every bit as bad as October. Jake had written about Madison’s father, either indirectly or by name, for his past five columns.
“I was just killing some time while Lori runs errands, I didn’t want to sit at home alone. Do you want to walk around?”
“Sure,” Madison said. “Isabel is with the twins, at Le Pain. I told them I wanted yogurt instead, but I probably don’t have to go back right away. Isabel got stuck talking to a bunch of other women there.”
“Yogurt?”
“No, let’s just leave. I’m not even hungry.”
“You don’t really get hungry for frozen yogurt,” Amanda said, swirling her spoon into the creamy peak she’d dotted with yogurt chips and graham cracker crumbs.
“Well,” Madison said, “that’s dessert. So don’t delude yourself.”
“You know me,” Amanda said, and they walked out onto the Avenue.
“The boys had a tee-ball game,” Madison said. “We all had to go.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, he came, too.”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” Amanda said.
“No, I know, but you were thinking about it, right? We all went.”
“That seems good.”
“Maybe. I didn’t see him actually speak to my mother.”
“Well, how often have you gone out in public, so far?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“They’re probably just nervous, you know? I mean, I don’t know if he gets nervous.”
“He does,” Madison said, and she was nearly whispering. “People always act like this. Or I mean, used to. Like just because my dad is scary and yells and everyone who works for him is always terrified—I mean, that’s not his real personality. That’s a performance. It’s not like he’s scary with us, like we’re all tiptoeing around him. He has normal emotions when he’s at home.”
“I know he does,” Amanda said.
They were walking past the park, then the bank, still walking up the hill. They’d moved in the exact opposite direction from where Isabel was waiting for Madison’s return, and this knowledge made Amanda anxious. Even now, she thought, I don’t want Isabel to dislike me. It’s kind of pathetic. After this whole year, I don’t want to be any kind of wedge between the two of them.
“Are you going to the party next week?” Madison said, and Amanda shuffled names and dates frantically in her mind. When it dawned on her, she almost laughed.
“The museum benefit? Suzanne? I think I got plenty of that house at Halloween,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve gone since I was little.”
“Right,” Madison said. “I wasn’t sure. We ran into Suzanne a while ago, in the city, and she made it sound like it would be bigger this year, like she’d invited way more people, so I thought maybe.”
Amanda let this pass, let her yogurt mass at the roof of her mouth before she swallowed it. She knew Madison hadn’t meant anything by it.
“You don’t have to go,” she told Madison. “If you don’t want to go, don’t go. What are they going to do to you?”
They crossed the street and began moving back down the hill. Amanda knew that soon, they’d be at Le Pain, and she hadn’t yet done anything she couldn’t have done months ago. She hadn’t learned anything in all this time they hadn’t spoken.
“I need to ask you something,” Madison said. “You’d be a good person to ask.”
“Doubtful, but go ahead.”
“What if you knew they were doing the wrong thing? Jake and Lori. Like, you knew they were just too upset about something to think clearly, but they weren’t asking for your opinion even when they probably should. What if you were actually a big asset and they didn’t get it.”
“You’re describing my daily routine, but okay.”
“I mean, no one’s going to listen, right? Nobody’s going to listen to us. But what if someone would, and you could explain it better, because those are your parents. Like, nobody watches our parents as much as we do. Right?”
“I guess,” Amanda said. “Tell me what you mean. Give me an example.”
“There’s no example,” Madison said, shaking her head, looking beyond Amanda down the Avenue. “But would you trust your own judgment? More than theirs?”
Amanda bit her lip, and looked down at the empty yogurt cup. The yogurt had liquefied, gathered itself in the seams of the paper cup. When this conversation had started, she had thought maybe they would commiserate, that they’d complain about their parents in generic, normal teenage ways. That maybe if it seemed like forgiveness was really coming, she could even tell Madison about the Riverdale boy she’d met at the swim team weekend retreat in the city last week, or something. And Madison, in turn, could fill her in on what, if anything, had ever happened with Chip. That was the conversation she’d thought they might have. Just, for once this year, a conversation that wasn’t about their fathers.
Madison put her hand to Amanda’s arm, and they looked at each other.
“I would trust your judgment, I guess,” Amanda said. “I always would, Mad. You’re the smartest D’Amico by a long shot.”
Madison didn’t smile, but somewhere back behind the face she was showing to Amanda there was a small turn, the recognition of banter, of closeness. Of insulting their own tribes as a show of loyalty toward each other. Am
anda squeezed Madison’s hand.
“But if you had stuff people wanted to know about,” Madison said, again. “You’d want people to know, right?”
“I’ve never had access to anything important,” Amanda said. “Come on.”
“It just seems like there are better ways to handle most of it. I’m sick of waiting to see if something’s going to happen. I’m sick of waiting for it to get worse.”
“Understandable,” Amanda said. “Just tell me what you’re worried about. Maybe I can help.”
THIRTY-NINE
Madison noted with pleasure that Gabriel Scott Lazarus looked almost nervous when he spotted her near the back of the darkened bar. He stood just inside the street door for a moment, shaking the rain from his pea coat. It was too big for him. When his eyes met hers, he put one hand into the air, as if it wasn’t clear that she was already looking right at him. He walked back along the length of the bar.
She didn’t know anything about this place, Corner Bistro, but she’d heard Lily mention it once as having the best burger in the city. She figured straining to choose somewhere chic, somewhere Zoë would approve of, ran the risk of tipping him off to how little she felt she controlled the situation. This place, quite clearly, wasn’t a move made to impress him with her street smarts or her prowess.
“I love this place,” he said. “You’ve been before?” She reminded herself that she shouldn’t fire back some tart dismissal of the way his voice was smooth with condescension, of how carefully he was trying to show her that he knew she seemed older than she was, wise beyond her years. She just smiled, as if she came to this bar all the time. Like he should have known it without asking.
His glasses were fogged, and he took them off and slipped them into an inner pocket of the pea coat before slinging it over the back of his chair. When he sat down, the chair rocked him forward. For the remainder of their conversation, he would totter back and forth like this, on the uneven legs of the chair.
“Are those fake?” she said. His face scrambled for a moment before she saw him realize she’d meant the glasses.
“Not at all. If you were standing on the other side of the room, holding up cue cards, I’d definitely need them. But the situation we’re in, I think just my own eyes will do.”
He smiled at her again. This is someone who doesn’t really have a problem flirting with a fifteen-year-old, she reminded herself. This is relevant information to consider when you’re talking to this person.
“I’ll take a vodka soda,” she said. He cleared his throat and spent a few seconds longer than necessary unraveling and folding his scarf.
“I’m not sure it’s a great idea for me to buy you alcohol,” he said. “I think we’re probably squeaking by right now because, this early in the afternoon, this place is sort of a restaurant, too. But it’s basically a bar, and if they haven’t noticed you in here yet, I don’t think we should flag ourselves.”
“All right,” she said, “you’re probably right. I shouldn’t be here at all.”
He went to the bar.
What’s the harm in talking to him again? Amanda had said to her. You haven’t even looked at any of the papers. You haven’t asked your dad about them specifically. For all you know, the key isn’t still in the same place. You have literally no information yet, nothing he’d want to trade. So what could it possibly hurt?
“I’m glad you called,” he said when he returned. He lowered his neck to sip directly from his full glass, swiping at the foam that clung to his lip afterward with one finger. Then he pulled out a reporter’s notebook, a pen, and his iPhone.
She had looked at his card so many times. She’d been keeping it in her wallet, next to her school ID and her Pinkberry punch card. She slipped it out sometimes in the middle of class, slowly, letting the sharp, thick corner poke up out of the wallet. First she’d thought she’d call him right after Christmas, and then it seemed that she’d left it too long. And now she was here.
“No,” she said. “I’m not going to talk about anything with you today. I have some questions for you.”
She marveled at the smoothness of her voice, the way she wasn’t even having to pause at the beginnings and ends of her sentences to take a breath. With every sentence uttered this way, she felt better, more confident, felt the hard, glassy shell she wanted to feel all around her when she talked to this guy.
“Fire away,” he said.
“I want you to tell me a little bit more about your site.” She removed the two thin red straws from her glass and wrinkled her nose, dropping them onto the etched and re-etched wooden table.
“It would be financial news, from a human angle. It was an idea I’d been batting around for a while, with a friend, actually, but when Bear happened last spring, we figured it might be even more essential now than ever.”
He didn’t interrupt his speech to ask her if she knew what had happened with Bear.
“Basically, you know, what’s happening now in very specific neighborhoods in Manhattan is going to affect everyone in the country. But so few people in this country even understand what’s going on. And it’s so easy to fall into a very simplistic view of what’s happened—Wall Street is evil. That’s what a lot of people think. And we just think that fleshing these banks out, making these men real people, reporting on every part of what’s going on—we think that could be a real game changer.”
It must be so sad, she thought, to use that term, game changer, to refer to yourself. Not to realize that it’s only people who will never be game changers at all who see that as an impressive way to speak.
“So, financial gossip,” she said. He jutted his chin out slightly.
“Not at all. That’s one way to go, of course, but we’d consider that a failure. That wouldn’t be true to our vision, really, at all. And there’s plenty of that already. The market’s pretty well glutted with it. My partner runs one of the smartest ones—Of Hedonists and Hedge Funds? I don’t know if you’ve ever read it.”
“No, but that’s a dumb name,” she said, crunching an ice cube between her molars.
“It’s not the snappiest title. I’d be the first to admit that. But in any case, what he’s been doing over there is much more in the vein of overheard in the elevator from a first-year analyst, stuff like that. Gossip, just as you said. And he’s very critical of that world, all the more so because he’s a part of it.”
“What’s his name?” Madison asked.
“That’s the thing. He’s anonymous, and I have to protect that. He’s an investment banker, and if he were to be found out, he would be summarily fired. And he’d also lose his access to that world.”
“So,” Madison said, crunching another ice cube, “he makes fun of the people he works with, and he won’t sign his name to any of it?”
Gabe lifted his beer and took a gulp.
“Like I said, he’s looking to make a change. And I’m obviously looking for a little more flexibility than I had at DealBook.”
“I looked you up,” she said. “You haven’t written for them since last year.”
“I left to do this.”
“And why do you care about someone who doesn’t even work in finance anymore?”
He set his beer to the side and moved her drink, too, leaning forward over the table.
“Your father works in finance.”
“You don’t seem all that up to speed, for a future game changer.”
“You think your father’s going to get a different job? Like what? Cardiac surgeon? Electrical engineer?”
She felt it suddenly as a struggle, the effort to hold her jaw steady, to keep her gaze even.
“Thank you for your concern,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure my father is qualified for all kinds of jobs.”
“Madison,” Gabe said. “He’ll be working in finance forever, now. One way or another. You’ll be a daughter of finance for the rest of your life. You get that, right? This is exactly what I want to talk about.”
S
he didn’t know what her own face did, but his slowly creased as he watched her. He looked down at his beer and passed a hand over his face before drawing it away and leaving two index fingers pointed at his temple. As he spoke, he kept them cocked there, like a rifle, and every so often waved them into the air just next to his head.
“I didn’t mean for that to sound the way it did. Okay? But I told you. I truly believe the most incredible things anyone could learn about Bob D’Amico right now would be, what is he like as a man? A husband, a father? To humanize him. People want to demonize these guys, but they don’t know anything about them. All we know about you guys is, some of the wealthiest people in the country fucked things up for everyone else.”
He held up his hand when Madison started to speak.
“I wasn’t saying that critically,” he said. “Your father couldn’t possibly have known what would happen to the world right after he bought that second uptown apartment, for example. But that’s my point. All people have from him is what’s on paper. And, if they’re motivated to do research, his congressional testimony. But most of America, even most Times readers, have absolutely no motivation to explore anything that might broaden their outlook on anything. Not to mention, that testimony is pretty dry.”
Madison swallowed the rest of her drink.
“I haven’t watched it,” she said.
“No,” he said, his voice softer. “Of course. I wouldn’t, either.”
She regretted, then, having told him the truth.
“All I’m saying,” he said after a moment, “is just . . . tell the world what your family’s life has been like these past few months. That is the most radical thing anyone could do to rehabilitate your father’s image. To help understand. And very, very few people are in any position to do that with any authority. And one of them is you.”
“And the only way to do that is to talk to a reporter starting a blog?”
“It’ll be a lot more than a blog,” he said.
“Sure.”
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