To Nina and Eric’s astonishment, according to the two young women who ran the prenursery school, Luke was the favorite of his class, always in demand, chosen by the other children to arbitrate disputes or as a spokesman for their desires. Today’s easy separation from Luke was thoroughly different from the first month of taking Luke to the prenursery school. Then he had clung to Nina’s side, peering out from a lowered brow and half-concealed head. He was a growth on her body; baby kangaroo in the pouch. Now Luke woke up early, asking, “Is it time for school?” He squirmed out of her pouch, rushed from her at the entrance, ran to his world. He loved his new friends, their habits, their mistakes, their games. Nowadays Nina had to plan ahead for the weekends, ask Luke which friend he wanted to see, make a date, and then tactfully say no to the others when their mothers phoned, eager to reserve time with her Luke. Solitary Nina had raised a friend to all toddlers. She worried his popularity was merely a by-product of his poor self-defense mechanisms, but it didn’t seem to be in practice: Luke had the ultimate threat, that there were others who wanted to play with him, and so he was wooed, given what he wanted, without the need to demand it.
Luke’s development gave Nina confidence. When Tad turned over to Nina more and more of the supervision of the line, she felt competent, assured of the future, because her Luke, the mewling, unhappy, constipated, nervous infant, had grown into a strong, smart, loving, and happy child. Why didn’t it mean that to Eric? He was responsible for much of Luke’s maturation; why had Eric’s self-esteem declined?
Eric phoned in the midst of a hassle with two models. One had arrived late for a fitting and said she had to leave early for a shoot; Nina needed more time with her. Nina wanted to concentrate on persuading the model and Eric’s call was a distraction. “Ask him if I can call him back?” Nina said, and tried to reason with the model, but she overheard Tad’s secretary say to Eric, “Then where can she call you back?” and Nina smelled Luke’s hair from the morning: baked and soft and hard.
“Wait!” she called out. “I’ll take it.”
“Nina?” Eric’s voice answered her hello. He called out from the bottom of a canyon of New York noise — trucks, horns, shouting pedestrians.
“Eric? Where are you?”
“On the street.” He was desperate. “Can you — are you busy?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve had it with Joe!” The words were strong, but Eric’s tone was scared.
“You’ve quit?”
“No, I — uh — I just told him. I’m going short the market, I can’t— I sold out all the stocks, your father’s stocks, and I’m gonna go short.”
Short meant betting against them, Eric had once explained to her. Over the years, Eric always made going short sound dangerous, immoral. It was something he was tempted to do and feared; he often spoke of it the way teenagers talk of breaking some rule; trying something adult they weren’t supposed to: sex, drugs, running away from home. She knew that much; it was a step Eric feared and desperately wanted to take.
He was babbling his financial talk now: “The P/E’s are too high, interest rates aren’t coming down anymore, everybody’s bullish— so who’s gonna buy? Everybody’s in the market, so there’s no one left. All the greater fools have bought. There’s the Iran-contra scandal, there’s — we’ve had a great run, but it’s over, it’s 1929 again. Joe says it’s 1928, but that’s exactly the way people get trapped, convincing themselves—”
“Eric,” Nina interrupted. He could go on endlessly and never state his problem. Like Luke, wanting you, the one he loves, to discover it for him. “Why aren’t you in the office? Have you had a fight with Joe or did you—”
“Yeah — I shouldn’t have left. I’ve gotta talk to Billy on the floor. I haven’t gone short yet. Just sold the longs. Nina!” he cried out. Music passed by him; a truck roared.
“What!”
“Nina,” he said again, this time in a sad, hopeless tone.
“Do you want to come here, Eric?”
“Can you come downtown?”
“No,” she managed to stammer out past her feeling that she was wrong to deny him her presence. But she had promised Tad the dresses would be fit today. “I just can’t. If you can come here, I can—”
“No, I–I gotta get back. Do you think I should call your father? Tell him what I’m doing?”
She felt disappointed by this. She had thought Eric wanted her, needed her — not her relationship to her father. “He’s put you in charge,” she answered. “Isn’t that right? Are you supposed to consult him on every move?”
“This is a reversal. What if Joe — he could be calling Tom right now.”
They were looking at her, the models, the tailor, Tad’s secretary. Waiting for her to take charge. Why did Eric have to stir the pot? Their life was so good, they were so lucky compared with everyone else, why couldn’t he let their happiness simmer quietly, why did he have to bring everything to a furious boil?
“Why don’t you come here, Eric? I’ll almost be done — we can go to lunch.”
“No. I gotta go. Call you later.”
And he was gone.
But, like Luke, his absence was incomplete. His voice inhabited the model’s clothes, shone on the tailor’s pins.
Months ago, after she had ignored Sal’s protestation of love, he had backed her against the wall on a stairway at FIT and pushed his mouth at her. Nina had forced him off and said, “I don’t want you.” It had leapt out of her, this impolite sentence.
“I want you,” he had answered.
“But I don’t want you,” she shouted back. She couldn’t say that to Eric. She couldn’t say that to Luke. Sal’s face reddened. “You’re a cunt,” he said finally, and walked away.
Rejection met with rejection. The way of the world. Say yes or I’ll hate you. She had always said yes to Eric, now she said maybe, or do it my way, and he hung up quickly, cut her off from his confidences, looked at other women while walking with her, and his eyes were pained, wounded, a child without his chocolates.
I don’t care if you make money, Eric. She wanted to shout at him: I don’t care about money. We have enough.
What would he say?
She knew what he would feel. He would hate her.
THE LINEN was thick. Peter held the corner of the tablecloth between his index finger and thumb. He felt its solid weight.
Gail was across from him, studying the Four Seasons menu. Peter watched her face consider choices; thick with age and thought, it was the face of a very smart woman. At a cocktail party, Gail showed only a vacant pleasantness in her eyes, and her smooth hair, pulled back, seemed to strip her of weaponry; but in this pose, considering her choices, her eyes were clever and concentrated, her hand strong as it caressed her naked forehead. He imagined kissing his mother’s neck, her long, thin neck, and feeling her head lean on his in surrender to the pleasure.
Peter squeezed his eyes shut to dissolve the image, as if it were really happening.
She must have been deliciously sexy, a tempting prize: thin body, arrogant mind, teasing wit. Kyle, his stepfather, had wanted her; he still puffed up proudly when he was introduced as her husband. Kyle had made his money years ago, when Peter was six; that unsophisticated westerner, his millions made by age forty, had come to New York and seen this jewel of the East, daughter of privilege, helpmate of the arts, and Kyle wanted his cock to conquer her, to be more important to her than even her own son.
I’d like to kill him.
(“Really?” Kotkin asked.“It’s your stepfather you want to kill?”