Attraction to Ira had churned in the past—not with the knife of sexual pull Jake held over her, but with a more dangerous appeal for a married woman: the draw of a good man.
Before calling Ira, she examined her motives for all her actions. The truth didn’t put her in the best light. Jake’s cheating and Bianca’s book drove her into an emotional anger that offered permission to break ties with him. Why that and not his far graver crimes? This personal fraud missile was a direct shot, waking her from the comfort of melancholy. No more wallowing in self-pity.
Time to say good-bye, Jake.
Phoebe needed to find out the condition of the things she left behind, beginning with Mira House.
• • •
Phoebe pulled it all out readying for Ira. Her extended period of barely using makeup meant that her bag had remained stocked—she didn’t expect to own potions like this again. That the feds let her take her cosmetics without discussion testified to the FBI hiring too many men; they’d never imagine that the sum total of her sack of creams and makeup added up to nearly two thousand dollars. Certainly someone would have paid at least that to try the beauty routine of Phoebe Marie Antoinette Pierce.
Serum. Moisturizer. Primer. Foundation. Highlighter. Colors for her cheeks and lips. She’d forgotten the sensuous pleasure of smoothing these creams on her face. Phoebe wasn’t fooling herself that romantic glitter would return to her life, but damned if she couldn’t enjoy covering her lips in vermilion.
They’d meet in Rhinebeck, the town Manhattan folk loved, only a thirty-minute drive from Poughkeepsie. Dicey for Phoebe—it would be an easy place to be recognized—but screw it. She wasn’t a criminal on the run.
• • •
She arrived early enough to pick a private table. Aroi Thai Restaurant served all her purposes, with excellent food, a location at the end of the street—farthest from the main drag—and though a popular spot, nobody chose it for people watching.
Phoebe sat with her back to the entrance. “I’ll be the woman wearing a greying bun,” she had warned Ira.
“So it’s longer,” he’d said on the phone. “Your hair.”
“Among the many changes.”
“Is your heart intact?”
Without thinking, she had put her hand to her chest. “I guess I’d describe it as mildly defrosting, though I’m not sure that’s good. Sensitivity isn’t a blessing right now.”
Ira’s kindness made waiting less nerve wracking, but her pulse still raced. This was her first time seeing anyone other than Helen, Deb, and, more recently, Kate since Jake’s arrest.
A slim young man refilled her water glass. “Is your companion coming?”
Her heart slipped. For a moment, the waiter knew her and wondered if Jake would join her. Then she realized he was politely probing whether she’d been stood up.
“He’s coming.” She tried to sound sure, but anything could happen. Pretty Phoebe of Erasmus Hall died long ago.
“Something while you wait? A drink?”
“No, thank you.” No drinking and driving, thank you. The law remained in the front of her mind. Always. Plus, alcohol equaled relaxing. Phoebe didn’t know if Ira maintained his crush, but being vulnerable frightened her. Friendship. That’s the only thing she wanted.
“Phoebe.” Ira slipped in and placed a hand on her shoulder, providing the simple gift of touch. He put out his hands and pulled her to her feet. They stood for a moment, just looking, and then he drew her into him.
“I’m sorry.” He held her tight.
Phoebe raised her head. “For what?”
“I should have called. Waiting for you to reach out was wrong.”
She shook her head. “No. I understand. How could you know—”
“I know you.” He hung his coat on the back of his chair and then pulled out her seat. “I should never have questioned you.”
Phoebe half grinned. “I thought I knew Jake, and we were married since I was a teenager. How can I blame you for being unsure about me?” She stopped and put her hand to her mouth. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about Mira House. And the Cupcake Project. Calling that an understatement is an understatement. That I haven’t contacted you before now is wrong.”
“Now that we’ve determined we’re both truly awful, let’s say hello and enjoy a meal.” His hazel eyes radiated compassion. She’d devalued that trait during her life. Sconces above the white fireplace built a glow over his thick salt-and-pepper hair. The thought made her laugh: in her desperation for connection, she made Ira into a momentary Jesus.
They ordered as though this were the Last Supper, keeping their conversation light as they waited for food. Rhinebeck: beautiful and expensive. Weather: decent for December. Obama’s first year as president: excellent. When their meals arrived, they nodded as though readying to reach the next level.
Crispy salmon infused with spicy mango, Thai spring rolls crunching in her mouth—for the first time in months, Phoebe didn’t eat like an animal crouched over her kill.
“Yes. Mira House lost a lot. True, true,” Ira said, picking up the trail of the serious conversation for which they were fated.
“An enormous amount. I’m amazed you survived.” The surrounding couples made her feel like she fit in and as though society had opened its arms for a night. “Credit probably goes to you. Your calmness.”
“Mira House is doing fine for a number of reasons. I figure it like this: the money we invested with Jake, well, we’d never expected those funds to begin with. That came from the Cupcake Project, and not everything went to Jake. We bought things, durable goods for all the programs. Sent kids to college on scholarship. Got new computers. Redid the gym. Hell, Phoebe. We’re ahead.”
Phoebe wanted to touch his worn and winter-dry hands resting on the table. This kind, kind man. “You’re a good man for thinking like that, Ira.”
“And you are a good woman, Phoebe, despite your determination to punish yourself. Do you even know what happened to the Cupcake Project? Do you want to know?”
She examined her ragged fingernails. The last thing that should matter, but still, she wanted to hide the fraying skin, the dry brittleness. “I didn’t call anyone after the one time I spoke with Eva. I didn’t think they wanted to speak with me. Shit. I’m lying. I was afraid of everyone’s anger: Zoya shrieking, Linh crying—”
“Stop. Before you rend your clothes, listen. The woman in charge of the . . .” Ira put his hands in the air, lost.
“The aftermath. Senda Dempsey.” Phoebe had read the name online.
“Right. Her. She appointed someone as overseer for the Cupcake Project, and that person allowed Eva, Zoya, and Linh to remain as managers. They’re making money. My guess is Dempsey is going to have it valued and then sell it.”
“Maybe the three of them can buy it.”
“I doubt it. They’re living check to check like the rest of the world.”
“Maybe I can help figure something out. Maybe—”
“Maybe you can. And maybe you can’t.” A stern expression appeared on Ira’s face. “But you can call Eva. Connect and find out how they are. You weren’t sent to jail. Undo your chains.”
CHAPTER 36
Phoebe
The rituals of entering Ray Brook prison never failed to terrify Phoebe: long lines of cheerless women, restless children frightened into good behavior, and a few stone-faced men waiting to visit, the lack of anything bringing optimism or dignity—color, art, music—and guards pushing all limits of hierarchy as they inspected every scrap of identification offered.
Phoebe compulsively checked to make sure she’d not worn an underwire bra. The website Prison Talk provided too many threads where women described being turned away if the metal in an underwire set off the metal detectors.
Her identification checked, her clothing approved, and having proven she carried nothing but her ID, Phoebe entered the visiting room. Staking out a spot required thought, not because one molded plastic chair might be b
etter than another, but because corners provided a modicum of privacy. Her drab tweed sweater blended with the furnishings.
Phoebe nodded at an older woman waiting at the next table: a sister member of the sorority of sad wives, one she’d seen before. The tired-looking woman, her roots an inch long, returned the nod with her lips pressed tight. Maybe she had dental problems; maybe she wanted Phoebe to mind her own damned business.
The prisoners lined up and, five at a time, entered the visiting room. Some searched the tables with desperation; others emanated a lack of concern so seemingly forced they belied their casualness. She saw Jake before he found her. Thinner than last time, his green prison uniform somehow pressed and impeccable. His thick hair, cut short, almost buzzed, gave him a rough appearance.
He spotted her and gave her a tough-guy smile, as though they were on the playground, and he couldn’t appear weak in front of his buddies.
She remained seated.
“Where’s my permitted contact?” He held his hands in askance, waiting for her to rise and hug him.
Phoebe debated refusing his touch until she saw the guard, the pockmarked one, staring as though wondering if a situation was developing, what with Jake standing over her. Getting up without a smile, she allowed an embrace, while averting her head to keep his lips away.
“Something wrong?” he asked as they sat. “Kids okay?”
“It’s been a long time since the kids were okay.”
“You know what I mean.” He glanced around as though checking to see if anyone listened in. As though his life was so interesting that someone might sell their conversation to People.
Which could happen.
Fine. Let some drug dealer make money off them.
“Are they healthy?” he asked finally.
“Noah’s drinking. Kate looks like she hasn’t eaten in months.”
Jake poked his head forward in question, unused to this attitude. She usually kept things light, wanting only to skate along the surface until she could escape from him and prison.
“Deb and Ben drive people back and forth from the airport, schlepping their bags, so they can pay for groceries, and Ben became a ‘rental husband.’ They’re trying to sell the condo.”
“Rental husband?” Jake leaned in just enough not to get called out over the loudspeaker. “Did you bring quarters?”
Vending machines, the highlights of the visiting room, lined one wall. Chips, candy bars, even yogurt.
“Rental husband, meaning he rewires retired women’s lamps for ten bucks. On weekends he bags groceries. And no, I forgot the quarters.”
“Christ, Pheebs. I have little enough as it is. You know how much I look forward to this.”
“Really?” she asked. “As much as you look forward to, um, eggplant parmigiana?”
“What are you talking about?”
“As much as you wanted asparagus tips with pepper? Softened ice cream with cake? Big breasts?”
Jake glanced around as though expecting rescue from those surrounding them. Maybe the pink-swaddled baby held by her daddy. Perhaps the woman so heavy her arms draped over themselves. Or maybe the woman to Jake’s right, Ms. Tight Lips—perhaps she’d give him a way out.
“Keep your eyes on me, Jake. Me.” Nothing would stand between her and this low-pitched confrontation, this end to her marriage.
When he fully concentrated on her, she asked, “As much as you looked forward to Bianca?” She lowered her voice more. “Playing games?”
He flinched. Never underestimate the surprise factor. Phoebe couldn’t say any more; she wouldn’t repeat the bedroom practices described by that woman or be the one to give him the book. Let him wonder. Let him worry. Let him find someone else to fetch and bring quarters for him.
Jake remained silent, holding out for a loophole. A coward here, like every place else. He’d make her do the heavy lifting, wait her out. Rage gnawed and grabbed her head.
“Say something. Tell me. Give me back my life. All of it was a sham. Give. It. Back.”
“What do you want?” Desperation to calm her poured like sweat from Jake.
“What do I want? I just told you. Truth.” She shook her head. “No. I want nothing from you. How could I believe a word out of your mouth?”
“You know I love you.”
“I don’t know anything about you.” Pain sliced through her head and neck, clusters of nauseating spasms, sharp and then thudding. She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead.
“What’s wrong?”
“An advance copy of your Bianca’s memoir came in the mail,” she said. “She wrote an entire book about you.”
“She wrote a book about me?”
That he didn’t deny it, that he immediately went to “she” and “me” shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did.
Calm down. She needed to calm down right fucking now. Jake, in his pressed prison pants, worried because one of his whores wrote a book about him, and the pain in her chest and the flickering, long fluorescent lights and stale air and the woman’s fat hanging off her chair and the smell of pent-up men and the vibrations of violence and the shaking hands and knife in her head and the pains in her arm and the feeling her heart would explode out of her body and—
• • •
She lay on the cold concrete floor. A concerned guard knelt beside her. “Stay still. Medics are coming.”
She moved her eyes from side to side. Everyone had been pushed back, visitors on one side, prisoners on the other. A line of guards separated them.
Jake stood to the side with Pockmark.
“Do you want your husband?” the guard asked.
She closed her eyes, but the room spun, forcing her to open her heavy lids. “No.”
• • •
“Mrs. Pierce, you have too many signs of severe stress for me to enumerate.” The doctor perched on a padded blue stool with a stethoscope hitched around his neck. Bearded, burly—they’d given her some sort of Paul Bunyan mountain man doctor. “It’s atypical for panic attacks to cause fainting, but it can happen.”
“Just lucky, huh?” She plastered on a smile while trying to figure out how fast she’d be able to leave this community hospital and drive home. Adrenalized anxiety had compelled her to race straight to the Adirondacks without stopping, leaving early in the morning to be on time for the last hours of visiting, planning to drive back home that night. Now someone had sewn rocks into her body and soul.
“My guess is that you hyperventilated, constricting the blood vessels to your brain. Then this, combined with adrenaline, and anxiety and panic, overpowered you. Some parts of your brain actually shut down during a panic attack, while others rush into coping mechanism mode. In other words, your body said it couldn’t go on and shut down by fainting.”
Hearing this, Phoebe never wanted to leave this sterile emergency room cubicle. She wanted to remain here with Dr. Paul Bunyan and the angel-nurses who’d brought her apple juice and crackers, safe in this disinfected room.
“Do you have someone to call? Someone who could help you?”
• • •
Helen steered Phoebe’s car with ease. When Phoebe had called, after hearing the initial garble of words, her friend said simply, “Give me the name of the hospital.”
“I’m sorry you had to rescue me again.” Phoebe leaned against the cool window glass, her headache still throbbing, though at a softer beat. “Kate wanted to come, but there was nobody to watch the girls and Noah . . . well, Noah isn’t doing well and—”
“Let’s not call it a rescue, and please don’t apologize. It’s friendship. Hey, Alan and I got to listen to an entire audiobook on the way up. After all these years, that’s practically sex for us.”
“Eva spoke to me the other day. She’s not that angry at me.”
“Why would she be?” Helen’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Jake’s the bad guy, remember?”
Helen, not having lost anything through the Club, didn’t understand how ange
r at him fell on her. But that worked out well, giving Phoebe one friend with whom she could be the same person as always. “The woman appointed to oversee the bakery isn’t that awful, apparently. She let them stay on as managers, but eventually the feds want to sell the place.”
“Why don’t you get involved?”
“How?”
Helen squeezed her arm. “There’s your first step. Figuring it out.”
A wave of interest came through for the first time in too long. Swift adaptation saved you, not wallowing in the muck. Bianca had freed her.
“I left Jake,” she said. “Although considering he’s in prison for his next two lifetimes, that’s a tough one for me to claim.”
“No. Prison or not, you were still tied to him. Strangle-tied.”
Phoebe opened a sleeve of Oreos, handing two to Helen before stuffing one into her mouth. She crunched the brittle cookie and comforting cream, grateful to be shooting down a dark road. Highways were built for confessions.
“Noah is locked in the past,” Phoebe said.
“The past isn’t far away. You shouldn’t be surprised.”
“I don’t think he’s trying to get out. I don’t mean he’s enjoying it, but an undertow of depression is pulling at him. I’m worried about him. About Kate too, of course, but Noah is drowning in everything. Kate says he’s online all day, seeing the awful things being said, worrying about the case against them—”
“Is that going anywhere?”
“The lawyers are confident criminal charges won’t be filed, but public perception is killing him. All their money is tied up. Kate’s also, but it’s worse for Noah. They only had his income. His wife is back to teaching, but they can’t live on what Beth brings in.”
Drifting thoughts floated on the Valium cloud where Doc Bunyan had sent her. “Jesus. The book! I have to get in touch with Kate and Noah.”
“Call. Now. From the way you described it, they’ll need as much preparation as possible. Call Kate first.” Helen didn’t have to say why.
Kate answered the phone saying, “How are you? Helen called.”
“Did you realize your father had mistresses?”
The Widow of Wall Street Page 29