Sometimes the reality that she had married too young slipped past her denial. Marriage meant feeling shackled at a time when the world seemed to be cracking wide open for women.
In either circumstance, she forced herself to remember Rob’s cold face at the news of her pregnancy. With that memory, she embraced Jake with gratitude. When swimming in the brew of love, resentment, and indebtedness overwhelmed Phoebe, she’d note the ways their marriage had succeeded. Despite her mother’s pleas for an immediate grandchild, Jake had pushed her to graduate from college. After taking the stockbroker’s exam, he had started his own company, Jake Pierce Equity. Phoebe gained bragging rights as Jake hustled success at JPE from almost nothing. Her uncle Gus gave him cheap rent in his accounting office in the Bronx, but Jake had built everything else alone. Each time Phoebe saw Uncle Gus he’d grab her upper arm, pull her close and whisper, as though it were a secret, “He’s got some head on him, that man of yours. Smart as a whole college.”
Business rolled in so fast, he’d drown if she didn’t help him on Saturday, paying his bills and typing up lists of the stock trades he’d made that week. Yes. Exactly as he’d predicted, Jake began to tear through the world. He strutted. She smiled. When he became too in love with himself or worked crazy, long days, her sister’s advice helped Phoebe clamp down on the scathing words dying to escape.
“Remember?” Deb would ask. “Don’t you remember how Mommy nagged Daddy—how we hated it? Treat Jake like the man he is.”
• • •
The best hours of Phoebe’s week began when she arrived at the Mira Stein Settlement House on Rivington Street, on the Lower East Side. If it wouldn’t drive Jake nuts, she’d add Saturdays to her Mira House schedule. Her title was program associate, which meant she filled in wherever needed, getting involved with every age group. That Monday, when the exercise teacher didn’t show, Phoebe ran the senior workout class.
“What should I do?” she asked her boss, the assistant director. Energy shimmered off Trixie, who never searched long for an answer.
“Just make them move. Gently. Easily. You’ll think of something.”
Phoebe set up a circle of battered metal folding chairs. Elderly men and women, all over eighty, held on to the raised backs, kicking up their heels, marching in place, and bending side to side. All while “The Beat Goes On” played, the walking bass-line perfect for the exercise. Introducing them to Sonny and Cher gave her a kick.
In the afternoon, she settled in with the after-school kids, who stretched toward her like neglected plants too long in the shade. For a few hours, they got to play intricate games of make-believe and draw giant Ferris wheels, instead of caring for younger siblings or translating their parents’ symptoms to overworked doctors at the Orchard Street Clinic.
“Mrs. Pierce, help me!”
Phoebe ran to Anthony, who stood by the sink covered with clay. She turned on the water and rinsed the grit off his skin and on to hers. Then she washed them both clean until his hands were again pale gold. The boy hugged her, leaving proof of his affection with wet handprints.
“I love the days you come,” he said.
“And you’re the sunshine of my week.”
Tomorrow she’d welcome the members of Cooking for English—the highlight of working at Mira House. She’d proposed this class after spending months proving herself as a program assistant—even including the cost of the Cooking for English materials; a donation from her softhearted father. The idea sprang from a chance encounter with a mother who’d brought a jar of perfect borscht as thanks when Phoebe didn’t complain about the mother being late picking up her child. The gift of food generated the most animated conversation she’d had with any mother at Mira House. Clarity came: use food to bridge the cultures, exchanging recipes for knowledge of New York.
Her students taught her dishes and customs from their home countries: Russia, China, Hungary, Korea, and many others. She tutored them in English, the rules of rent control, and every other trick they needed to live in New York.
• • •
Phoebe stirred the beef in wine sauce in careful circles, determined to keep the roux from getting lumpy. She’d learned the dish watching her mother make it twice a month but still couldn’t get the liquid to the silky consistency her mother produced, where the merlot married the broth, flour, and touch of butter until it seemed as though Julia Child had visited the Beckett family.
Tonight Phoebe planned a perfect dinner. Water boiled, ready for the egg noodles. Baking powder biscuits punched out in flawless circles covered a cookie sheet and waited for the oven. Russian vegetable pie cooled on the counter. All his favorites.
Devil’s food cake decorated with two tiny rattles—one pink, one blue—waited, secreted in the back of the fridge.
As the stew thickened, the phone rang. Inevitably it would be Deb—also married and a supper maker now—or her mother. This was the hour the three of them prepared dinner and called back and forth.
She didn’t miss a circle of stirring as she reached for the phone. “Hello.”
“So, answer me this one, okay? When do we get to stop taking care of your mistakes? Daddy told me everything.”
“Mom?” Phoebe put the receiver in the crook of her neck and searched the table for her cigarettes. “What are you talking about?”
“Your genius husband didn’t tell you?” The click of her mother’s lighter traveled through the wire as she lit her own cigarette. “What’s the noise banging behind you?”
“The radio.”
“What station is that? Screeching cat sounds?”
“I’ll turn it down.”
“Not down. Off. I can’t hear myself think.”
Phoebe shut off the music, reflexively obedient to her mother’s demand.
“So, did he tell you?”
“Did he tell me what?” Phoebe dipped into the pot and sampled a bit of sauce. Almost perfect. Velvet smooth.
“How he lost everyone’s money?”
Phoebe sighed, deliberately loud enough for her mother to hear. Who should be called Sarah Bernhardt now? “He lost whose money?”
“Are you listening? Jake needed Daddy to bail him out. He didn’t tell you before he came to us begging? What kind of marriage are you in? I’m aware of every single thing Daddy does. Do you even know who Jake is?”
Phoebe didn’t bring up the money while they ate supper. Jake seemed oblivious to her silent serving, probably grateful she didn’t beg for a Walter Cronkite–free dinner when he flipped on the small television on the kitchen counter. As he listened to the news, she searched for ways to approach the subject, until finally, while clearing dirty plates, she blurted out her anxiety.
“My mother called,” she said. “Fuming. Why didn’t you tell me about the loan?”
“What are you talking about? And for the love of God, when isn’t Lola fuming?”
Phoebe squeezed dishwashing liquid in the sink. “Don’t play dumb.”
“Since when are my work issues any of Lola’s concern?”
“When you ask my parents for money.”
“The money was between your father and me.” He stood, picked up the silverware, carried it to the sink, and dropped in the knives and forks, looking pleased when they clattered off the dishes.
She clutched the edge of the counter and tried not to scream. After counting to twenty, Phoebe spoke in a calm and even tone. “So what happened?”
“Nothing. It wasn’t a big deal. A cash crunch, that’s all.”
“My mother said you needed Daddy to cover your clients’ accounts.”
“Your mother’s always made it pretty damned clear that she doesn’t like me.”
Phoebe pressed her lips together, returned to the table, and sat across from Jake, her hands clasped on top of the bright-yellow tablecloth. “You lost clients’ money?”
“I didn’t lose anything. An investment went south. Normal stuff.”
“Why did you have to cover something normal?
I don’t understand. They invested. Isn’t it their risk?”
“This is so not a big deal.” Jake picked up his crumpled napkin and smoothed the wrinkles. “There’s a time and a place in business to show losses, and this was neither the time nor the place. You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
Jake grabbed a pad and pen from the junk drawer, flung it on the table, and dropped back into his chair. “Okay. Watch and learn, baby.” He drew a black line with a Flair pen, creasing the paper as he bore down. “I’m giving you the easy version.”
She worked to concentrate. Numbers and the whole world of investment sent her thoughts to her plans for Mira House the next day.
“There are two sides of my business.” Black ink dotted the white notepad as Jake jabbed at the left side of the paper. He wrote “JPE” across the top in letters so thick they shouted off the page. “This is the brokerage. Think of it as plain old vanilla.”
Phoebe tried to stay engaged. “For which I type up orders, right?”
“Exactly. Joe Blow calls and orders ten shares of XYZ stock, and we make the transaction for him. He sends us money. We send him the stock. Got it?”
Her mother probably blew this whole thing up. Phoebe snuck her hand in his and squeezed, looking forward to his expression when he saw the rattles on the cake.
“This side . . .” He jabbed at the paper. “This is The Club. The investment advisory I told you about. People give me money they want to invest, and I make the decisions what to buy. Then—”
“This is the business you have with Uncle Gus?”
“No!” He held his palms out again and took a deep breath. “Sorry. It just drives me a little crazy. Gus acts like he owns part of the Club, but all he does is send some clients my way. After that, he’s out of it. I don’t even let him keep the books. He only tracks the brokerage. For which I pay him fair and square.”
“Why not the Club books?”
“What I make for the clients is nobody’s business.”
“Doesn’t he send you them?” she asked.
“If I send your sister to Dr. Klein, does it mean he should tell me how much she weighs?”
“Good point.” Phoebe pointed to the paper. “Okay. Make it crystal clear.”
Jake gave an authoritative nod. “Short and simple.” He labeled the right side of the paper “Brokerage.” “Once more: this is the stock-trading business, the brokerage. Here, in Jake Pierce Equity. I buy a stock and sell it ten minutes later for a few pennies more. If I misjudge or don’t move fast enough, I lose. Sometimes I purchase stocks ’cause I know someone wants it; sometimes because I think it’s a good price and I can find someone who wants it. I don’t make much profit per sale. It’s about volume—making lots of sales.”
“And if you buy a stock nobody wants?” Phoebe asked.
“I own it, and I take the bath.” Big-shot teacher was Jake’s favorite role, even with an audience of only one. “Sometimes I sell it for less than I paid.”
“And we take a bath,” she said.
“Trust me, I’ll do all the worrying. Now, on the other side, we have the private investments. The half that Uncle Gus christened the Club.”
When he wrote “Club,” the paper tore a bit. “This is where I build up slow and steady. Unlike the brokerage—where I am basically a middleman—here I play a long game. We want these customers for life. I invest their money in stocks and bonds that I choose and get a small percentage of their gains as my fee.”
“And if they lose?”
He grinned. “Then I earn a pretty small fee, eh? Bottom line? With JPE, I buy with the intention of selling right away. I’m a broker. The government sets the rules of the game. The Club is different. I’m the advisor and the manager. I make the decisions. I write the guidelines. I choose, invest, and hold the funds for the clients. I send them statements each month. The first clients were the ones your uncle brought in.”
“Are you gonna do it every time a price goes down? Cover the losses in this club? Are you running a business or a charity?”
“I’m not going to fail. Ever. Soon I’ll make more money in a year than your father makes in ten. This was just a blip at a bad time.”
“You know I want us happy more than rich, right?”
“We’ll be both.” He rose and offered his hand, bringing her into his arms. “I’ll earn damn castles of joy. Our lives will be magnificent, baby.”
“I don’t want my mother calling and driving me crazy. You have to warn me if you go to my father. It put me in a terrible position.”
“It won’t happen again. I’ve got this. Maybe I should have told you, but, Pheebs, this investment should have been a sure thing. It was a one-in-a-million mistake.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?”
He sank into the sling chair. “Haven’t you ever been embarrassed?”
Phoebe sat across from him. “But you could tell my father?” She rubbed the chrome and leather sofa arm, shaken, thinking of the cake hidden in the back of the refrigerator, the rattles ready to break her news. This man she thought capable of anything, the man about to be her baby’s daddy, it terrified her to think he could end up like his loser father.
“I needed to be sure I could fix things before we spoke.” He rose from the chair as though trying to escape.
Everything they’d bought resembled showroom furniture: modern and hopeful, Danish and sleek. Everything had to be perfect. Jake hated things out of place and insisted on a hand in everything. Even her perfume had to be Jake approved. Muguet des Bois, her scent since high school, had become tiresome, but she still smelled like seventeen and lilacs because Jake hadn’t yet sanctioned something new.
Wait until this place matched Deb’s, with baby mess everywhere. Charlotte wasn’t even crawling yet, but she’d overtaken every room in Deb and Ben’s apartment.
He paced the perimeter of the room until Phoebe stood in his way and placed her hand on his arm. “I don’t want you to trust my father more than me,” she said.
“It’s not trust, honey. Your father knows business; he understands how things can slip away if you don’t pull them right back.”
“My father’s not J. Paul Getty, he’s a dentist. Twenty thousand is hardly chicken feed. You know he tells my mother everything. She probably called me before you even closed the door at my parents’ house.”
“Enough.” Jake imprisoned her upper arms in his hands. “You’re married to me, not your mother. If I screw up, I’ll make it good. Red is my father-in-law, and if I want to ask him for money, I’ll do it. If you don’t trust me, we can’t be a team.”
He released her, traced the lines of her face, and then smoothed her hair. “Don’t worry. I know you trust me. You’ll never regret it. We’re going to end up the greatest team the world has ever seen. I’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted, Pheebs.”
“What I want most is . . .” She stopped. What did she want most? “Honestly, all I need is for us to do three things in this world: take good care of our family, do good work we can be proud of, and concentrate on bringing out the best in each other.”
“Hold that thought.” Jake went to the hi-fi console they’d inherited from Phoebe’s parents and flipped through a stack of LPs. “Ah. Here it is.”
He held up The Genius of Ray Charles, the album with the song that played for their first wedding dance and the one that they always pulled out to mark the end of squabbles. He placed the disc on the turntable and set the needle on the track.
As the first bars of the old standard “It Had to Be You” spilled through the room, Jake bowed from the waist and held out his hand. Phoebe took his hand and joined him. She leaned against his chest, feeling under her cheek the still-starched front of the shirt she’d ironed that morning, taking in the big-band brass over Charles’s bluesy voice. She breathed in the very Jakeness of her husband: the warm, mossy smell of Aramis cologne, the lime tonic he used to control his thick hair, and the inky sme
ll he brought home from the office. He brought her closer. She felt him hard and pressing against her.
“Is it still safe?” He nodded toward the bedroom.
“How did you know?” she asked.
He tipped up her face and kissed her with a new depth of love and gentleness. “Roses in your cheeks and rattles on the cake.”
“You peeked!”
“I hate secrets,” he said.
“Unless you’re keeping them.” She ran her hand down the muscle in his back. “And yes. It’s safe. It will be safe for a long time.”
“You’re sure?”
Memories of her miscarriage probably worried him. After all, they’d been making love when it happened. “I talked about it with the doctor,” she said. “He said there was no reason to think the two were connected. Losing the baby and . . . what we were doing.”
“Still and all. I’ll be gentle.” He spun Phoebe to the right and then gently dipped her. “Everything important is right here in my arms.”
CHAPTER 8
Jake
October 1968
“You believe this schmuck’s luck?” Jake stabbed at the New York Times that covered his desk. He moved over the wax paper from his thick pastrami sandwich to read more of the article.
“Fucking Onassis. More dough than God, and he gets Jackie Kennedy? The guy looks like a frog. Money makes you rich and handsome, huh? Listen to this, Gus: The thirty-nine-year-old widow of President Kennedy, two inches taller than her new husband, stood beside the sixty-two-year-old multimillionaire during a thirty-minute ceremony and gazed intently at the officiating Greek Orthodox prelate.”
Gus made a vague humming sound. The old guy wouldn’t stop working unless you stuck needles in his arm. His thick black glasses appeared welded to his pale face. Half the time, his hair pointed toward heaven, since he raked the grey with every stroke of his pen. Jake loved the guy, but he was a mess.
The Widow of Wall Street Page 6