by Emily Giffin
“We were talking about what your son did to my daughter. Lyla.”
“Yes…and I can’t tell you how sorry Finch is.”
“Try,” I said, forcing a fake smile. “How sorry?”
“Oh, very. He’s very, very sorry. He’s a wreck. He hasn’t been able to eat or sleep—”
I interrupted with a brittle laugh, feeling myself start to lose my composure. “So…wait. Are you…Do you…Am I supposed to feel sorry for your son?”
“No, no. Not at all. I didn’t mean that, Tom. I just meant that he understands that what he did was wrong. And he’s extremely sorry. But he didn’t mean the caption the way it sounded. He just meant it as a…joke.”
“Does your son often make racist jokes?”
“Of course not,” he said, finally starting to squirm. “Is your daughter even…Hispanic?”
“No.”
His face lit up. “I knew it,” he said, as if the case were now closed.
“Her mother’s Brazilian.”
His smile faded into a look of confusion as I continued, “So technically, I think the word you’re looking for is Latina. Hispanic is a demonym that only includes Spaniards and other speakers of the Spanish language. And as I’m sure you know, the language of Brazil is Portuguese.” It was all information Lyla had fed me in recent months, research she had done to try to understand exactly who she was.
“Very interesting,” he said, as I got the feeling he was either patronizing me or searching for a good angle for his kid. “So…Brazilians aren’t a different race?”
“Brazilians can be any race, Kirk,” I said slowly, like I was talking to an idiot. Which I was. “Just like Americans.”
“Oh, sure. Right,” he said. “That makes sense. So Lyla’s white?”
“Mostly,” I said, unwilling to dignify this man with a breakdown of her lineage. I wasn’t even sure exactly what it was, other than that Beatriz’s mother was Portuguese Brazilian and all white, while her father was something like a quarter black. Which I guess made Lyla one-sixteenth African-Brazilian.
“Mostly?” Kirk asked.
“Look. Bottom line…Although Lyla’s mother did, at one point, have a green card, Lyla is one hundred percent American,” I said.
“That’s wonderful,” he said. “Just wonderful.”
“Which part?” I asked.
“All of it,” he said. “That her mother came here. That Windsor has this kind of diversity—”
“I actually don’t think it’s all that diverse….But it is a great school. I’ve been very impressed with the academics. And the headmaster,” I said purposefully.
Kirk nodded. “Yes. Walt’s very good at what he does. And I recognize that he’s in a tough position now. With this incident…And I think for everyone’s sake, he’s hoping we handle it privately….”
“Privately?” I asked, knowing exactly where this was going.
“Yes. Between the two families. I can assure you that Finch is being severely punished…and we would like to compensate you both for your…your time from work…and also any distress this may have caused you and your daughter.”
I stared at him in disbelief as he walked over to his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a white business-size envelope. As he returned to hand it to me, I could see my name written on it, and I was overcome with a fight-or-flight feeling. Should I punch this guy in the face? Or should I take the money and run? At the very least, I wanted to know how much this joker thought it would take to buy us off. Maybe he had done his research after all and already knew I was a carpenter. Maybe he even assumed I was a “Hispanic” carpenter. Maybe he had multiple envelopes in his desk. Envelope number one for the minority laborer. Envelope number two for the blue-collar white guy. Envelope three for a fellow suit. Fight or flight, flight or fight? Wasn’t it supposed to be an instinct, not a choice?
In any event, I decided to flee, standing to take the envelope from him. As I put it in my back pocket, I could tell it contained bills. A lot of bills.
A look of palpable relief crossed Kirk’s face. “I’m really glad we could have this talk, Tom,” he said. “I think it’s been very, very constructive.”
“Yes,” I said. “It really has.”
“And if you’d just let Walt know that we settled this…” His voice trailed off as I guess even he wasn’t brazen enough to actually spell it out: I’m paying you off.
In the ultimate head fake, I nodded, smiled, then allowed myself to be cheerfully shown to the door.
Kirk returned home from the airport only thirty minutes before his scheduled meeting with Lyla’s father. As he unpacked his roller bag, moving back and forth between his closet and our bathroom, I tried to engage him in conversation. I asked him what he planned to say to Thomas Volpe—and if he was sure he didn’t want me to join them. To my guilty relief, he said he was quite sure—then added that he’d rather not discuss the details.
“I don’t want to sound too rehearsed,” he said. “It needs to be natural.”
I nodded, not quite buying it but once again relieved.
A few minutes later, I left the house in a low-key panic. As I tried to distract myself with mindless errands, I thought a lot about my husband, how what I’d once loved most about him was now what frustrated me to no end. He had to be right. He had to be in charge. But in our earlier years, I was occasionally the exception to the rule. I could persuade him when nobody else could. At the very least, we had once been a partnership. Equals.
I thought of an earlier childhood crisis, when Finch and another boy had dipped the ears of a neighbor’s cocker spaniel puppy in blue paint. He’d denied it, despite overwhelming proof to the contrary, including the blue paint I’d found on the treads of his small Nike sneakers. Kirk and I had argued about how to handle it; he was in favor of brute force to extract a confession. But I’d convinced him to let me try my way first. The three of us sat at the kitchen table together as I told Finch we would always love him, no matter what, and how important it was to tell the truth.
“I did it, Mommy,” Finch finally said, breaking down in tears. “I’m so sorry!”
I still remember the way Kirk looked at me, the way we later made love and he told me that he’d picked the most wonderful mother for his son.
It had been a long time since he’d looked at me like that.
* * *
—
ABOUT AN HOUR later, as I was still running errands, Kirk called, asking if I wanted to meet him for lunch.
“Oh, no. Was it that bad?” I said, thinking that Kirk never had time for lunch. At least not a lunch without a business purpose.
“No. It wasn’t bad at all. It went great, actually,” he said, his voice notably chipper.
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah. We had a good talk. I like him.”
“And…did he like you?”
“Of course,” Kirk said with a laugh. “What’s not to like?”
I ignored his question and asked for more details.
“I’ll tell you everything over lunch. Meet me at the club?” he said, referring to Belle Meade, the country club to which we belonged—and his family always had.
“Um, can we go somewhere else?” I said, remembering how I’d felt about the club when I first started to go with Kirk and his family. It had made me uncomfortable—the fawning staff in their stiff white jackets, the formal rooms filled with Oriental rugs and antique furniture, and most of all, the lily-white membership. There were no black members at all until 2012, and almost all the staff were people of color, though to be fair and as Kirk had pointed out, plenty of African Americans had been approached to join but had simply declined. I couldn’t say I blamed them.
Somewhere along the line, though, I had succumbed to the luxury, focusing less on the exclusivity and more on the beauty and serenity a
nd utter convenience of our membership. It was a rare week that I didn’t spend at least a few hours there, whether playing tennis, meeting Finch and Kirk at the casual grill for dinner, or having drinks with my friends on the veranda overlooking the golf course.
“Do you have something against the club now?” Kirk said, as if reading my mind.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just not in the mood to talk to people. Given everything…”
“Okay,” he said, acquiescing faster than I’d thought he would. “Want me to call Etch or Husk?”
The likelihood of running into someone I knew was pretty high at those restaurants, too, but I didn’t want to be too difficult. Besides, I loved Husk. It was probably my favorite restaurant in the city. So I told Kirk I would meet him there.
“Great,” he said. “See you soon.”
* * *
—
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Kirk and I were seated at a cozy table on the art-lined lower level of the restaurant, set in a nineteenth-century home in Rutledge Hill. He still hadn’t told me what happened, keeping me in total suspense, insisting that we have a glass of wine first. I was annoyed but hopeful, as we chatted with a waitress we’d had several times before, then put in our order for a burger (him) and shrimp and grits (me), as well as one glass of wine to split.
As soon as she departed, I said, “All right. Could you please tell me now, Kirk?”
He nodded, then took a deep breath. “So. He got to the house right after you left….We went to my office and made a little small talk….Then we got into everything. At first he was a little touchy, but then I just gave it to him straight….”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning…I told him how sorry Finch is. How sorry we are, too.”
“And what did he say?”
“Honestly, not too much. He was pretty quiet. But I think he agrees that we can handle this privately….”
“He does?” I said, more than a little surprised.
“Yes.”
“Meaning he doesn’t want it to go before the Honor Council?” I asked.
“Correct,” Kirk said as the waitress brought two rolls to the table. He began to butter one of them, looking smug.
“But…how? Why?” I said. “He just agreed with you?”
“Well. Let’s just say I gave him a little…incentive….”
I stared at him, my heart sinking. “What kind of incentive?”
“A financial one,” he said with a shrug.
“What?” I said.
“What do you mean ‘what’? I just gave him a little cash,” he said, stone-faced. “No big deal.”
“Oh my God. How much did you give him?” I asked.
He shrugged again, then mumbled, “Fifteen thousand dollars.”
I shook my head and let out a whimper. “Please, please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Oh, c’mon, Nina,” he said, his expression confirming that this was no joke. “You don’t think our son’s future is worth fifteen grand?”
“It’s not the amount,” I said. “If we’re just discussing the amount, I’d question the lowball—”
“Fifteen thousand is a lot to the average person,” he interjected, always a man of the people when it was convenient to his narrative. “And this guy’s a carpenter.”
“That’s not the point!” I shouted. I glanced around, reconfirming that we didn’t know anyone seated in the galley area, but still lowered my voice. “The point is—you gave him hush money.”
He rolled his eyes and gave me a condescending smirk. “This isn’t a gangster movie, Nina. It’s not hush money. I’m not asking him to be quiet about anything.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“Well, for one, it’s a token of our apology. For another…it’s an incentive.”
“An incentive to do what?”
“An incentive to tell Walt he doesn’t want this thing to move forward to the Honor Council.”
“Did you actually tell him that?” I asked, my disapproval growing by the second.
“Didn’t have to. It was understood,” he said. “Look, Nina. The guy willfully and gladly took the cash.”
“You gave him fifteen thousand in cash?”
“Yes. And again—he took it. It was a meeting of the minds, for sure. A contract.”
I pressed my lips together, thinking. There was so much wrong with what he was telling me, I wasn’t sure where to start. “What about Finch?” I said. “Are you going to tell him about this little contract?” I said.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” he replied. “I think it’s better if we leave Finch out of this.”
“Leave out the person who single-handedly caused all the harm?”
“We’re leaving him out of the solution. Not the punishment. He is being punished, Nina. Remember?”
“Okay. But what if it gets out? What if Finch finds out his father did something shady?” I asked. “And his mother went along with it?”
He shook his head. “No way. This guy’s not going to talk….Think about it this way….When you slide someone a fifty to get a table at a restaurant, do they make an announcement? No. They don’t. Because it’s shady on both sides.”
“So you do admit you’re being shady?”
He shrugged. “You want me to admit that? Sure. I’ll admit that. It was a little shady. But I did it for a good cause. I did it for Finch. And it worked.”
“How do you know it worked?” I said.
“Because he took the money, Nina….And before that, he was giving me an immigration lecture on how Brazilians aren’t Hispanic. And that his daughter is an American. Yada yada…He had an attitude. But then I handed him that cash and suddenly he was all cool, calm, and collected. So you tell me, Nina. Did it work?”
When I didn’t reply, he answered his own question. “Yes. It did. And you can sit there and be self-righteous all you want, but deep down, you have to agree that it was worth it.”
I stared back at him, my thoughts scattered and racing. A very small, guilty part of me was relieved that Lyla’s father had been complicit. Besides, what choice did I have? I couldn’t make him give us the money back.
“Well, putting that aside, I really think it’s high time that Finch apologizes to Lyla. Face-to-face,” I said as the waitress poured our glass of wine.
I paused as Kirk tasted it and okayed it, then resumed when she left. “And I would also like for the three of us to sit down again and talk a bit more in depth…about everything. He’s been avoiding me for two days…for longer than that, really….And I can’t tell if he’s sorry or pouting,” I said, getting a little bit choked up. “I can’t tell what’s in his heart right now.”
“He’s sorry, Nina. And you know he has a good heart….We’ll get through this, I promise.”
I started to say that I thought I knew Finch’s heart—but Julie was right, the sweet kid I once knew could never have done this to a girl. To anyone. It just didn’t make sense.
But there was something so reassuring and strong about the way Kirk was looking at me that I just couldn’t bring myself to argue with him. Instead, at least for the moment, I put my faith in my husband, believing that he was right. That the three of us would get through this, somehow.
* * *
—
THAT NIGHT, I tried to talk to Finch. Kirk and I both did. But he insisted that he had to study for a test. Could we talk tomorrow? We relented, and then Kirk went to bed early, declaring himself exhausted. I tried to do the same, but I found myself lying in bed next to him, wide awake and more anxious than ever.
Around midnight, I got up and went to my office and pulled the Windsor directory from a desk drawer. I flipped to the end of the alphabet and found the entry for Lyla and Thomas Volpe. No mother was listed, unlike most divorced families with dual ent
ries, and the only explanation I could think of was that she had died. I hoped not recently; then again, I would have wanted Lyla to have had as many years with her mother as possible. Feeling increasingly melancholy, I scanned down to read their address. They lived on Avondale Drive, a street that didn’t sound familiar, though I knew the 37206 zip code was in East Nashville, over the Cumberland River. I opened my laptop and typed it into Google Maps, seeing a street view of the small bungalow located in Lockeland Springs. From what I could tell of the blurry photo, the house sat up high on a narrow lot, stairs leading from the street to the front door. There was one small tree in the yard and a few bushes planted along the house. After studying the picture from every angle, I typed the address into Zillow. I saw that Thomas Volpe had purchased the home in 2004 for $179,000. I felt a stab of sheepishness approaching shame, thinking of our own house, its price tag just under $4 million. From there, I pulled up our online AmEx statement, cringing at what we’d spent over the last billing cycle. It was amazing how quickly things added up, a few hundred dollars at a time. This particular month, I was the most culpable of the three of us, but I did spot Finch’s thousand-dollar charge at the Apple Store, a $200 charge at Imogene + Willie, and $150 at Pinewood Social, the night before Beau’s party. I seemed to recall a conversation about him “needing” a new phone but couldn’t remember if he’d asked me for permission or simply informed me of the purchase after the fact. I felt certain that he hadn’t mentioned any shopping or dining otherwise. Not that we had any real rules around his spending.
In fact, money was something Kirk and I seldom discussed with our son. Five years ago, when the financial picture had changed, the analysis of what to spend became pretty simple in our family. The question wasn’t “did we need it” or “could we afford it,” but simply “did we want it.” If the answer was yes, we typically got it. The result was that Finch didn’t dwell on money—or think about it at all, really—and had no clue about budgeting or anything normal people, let alone those in actual need, went through. I told myself to stop going off on this mental tangent. What did money or material things have to do with any of this, anyway? Nothing. Character has nothing to do with finances.