“Do you resent giving your siblings money?” Maria asked.
“No. I just feel like it’s a sign… I don’t know… that our family failed. That we all blew apart somehow, but I can never figure out why.”
“Your father’s affair.”
I shook my head at this. “How long can you be pissed at the dead? That’s what I tell Allie, at least. Dad had to live with our mother, so how am I supposed to blame him when I couldn’t stand to be around her.”
“That’s still an upsetting thing to learn, Jackie.”
I didn’t want to talk about my family anymore. We always circled the same things: Dad’s affair, Allie’s bitchiness, Erik’s shittiness, and my mother hanging by a black electrical cord from the banister. The first time I told Maria, she didn’t even blink. “You’re not the first person to find a loved one dead of suicide, and you won’t be the last,” she had said. I’d considered being offended by her dismissive approach toward what I, at the time, felt was a shocking and unconquerable trauma, but by our third session I’d decided I liked this attitude, and I liked her. To Maria, nothing was surprising, nothing too traumatic to be processed and overcome. However, I had lied to Maria about the dreams. They were nightmares, and I did wake up sweating.
“How’s Fred?”
“He’s good. Stressed from work, but good.”
“You’re spending enough time together.”
“Yes. After I talked to him, we sort of worked out an agreement. At least two evenings and one day a week when he has to put all the screens away. No data, no reports, no investor calls.”
“How do you feel about his divorce or lack thereof?”
“I understand where Fred’s coming from. His wife is going to massacre him if he asks for it. He stands to lose sooo much money, and trust me, she’s vindictive. She will not let this go easily. She hates me.”
“How do you know that?”
“Way back at the hearing for Fred Jr. when he got out, just the way she shook my hand. Fred’s only eight years older than me, but maybe it’s the younger woman thing.”
“This bothers you?”
“No, but—this is dumb, but I want the wedding. I want to invite all my old friends from college or Chicago and say ‘I do.’ Get my stupid sister to be the matron of honor. Maybe that’s retrograde, but it means something to me.”
“That’s not retrograde at all, Jacquelyn. You’re asking for something utterly reasonable. And you know what? If it costs Fred half his money, he’ll still be more than fine. He can ask you for an allowance.”
I had the doorman standing there for a moment, wind blowing in from the street, because the TV overlooking the art deco lobby caught my attention. CNN had a camera crew pointed at a view of Manhattan looking south across the East River. An enormous crowd had gathered in front of two loading bay doors at a warehouse because a truck had crashed into one of the metal shutters, warping it inward. The chyron said something about looting, and I felt a curtain of dread, but there was the doorman, smiling, waiting for me. Exiting onto Park Avenue, I decided to walk. The day was cool for late April, the sun half-fugitive behind a cloudbank, but I never walked much anymore. I took the time to mull what I’d said in the session.
After the funeral, we’d sold the house for pennies to an ag company. The flood damage wasn’t worth any salvage job, and it was torn down. The home that had been in our family since 1902, that had survived tornadoes, storms, and countless brutal winters, finally fell to the Great Eastern Flood. Mom left behind only debts, and I knew it was the last time I’d ever set foot in Amber, Iowa, a town that had all but collapsed save a couple of big-box stores and fast-food joints. That my childhood home was gone, it hit me now, as it sometimes did, and I saw in my mind’s eye my father hunched over the soil, grabbing a loose handful and kneading it between his enormous hands to test its properties, to feel close to it.
This memory brought a surprising bout of tears as I walked up through Hell’s Kitchen. The wind blew ragged over the city, rushing between the skyscrapers. Not far from our building, I passed a gas station where five kids stood in the way of a car, holding signs, arguing with a policeman who was trying to scoot them along. One sign read WHAT YOU DO HERE STARVES THE WORLD; another, WE ARE OUT OF TIME with a picture of a clock; another, WE ARE THE DELUGE. I overheard the cop in his New Yawk drawl tell them, “You can either stand outta the way or I can take ya to the precinct. Then your little protest is over. Your call.” Waiting at a crosswalk, I turned back to see the teenagers all dutifully complying.
Past our doorman and the security team, the trickling fountain and tall bamboo plants, down the handsome slate-tiled hallway, up the private elevator. We were Upper West Side, an expensive zip code to be sure, but not Billionaires’ Row. For a relatively cheap $5.6 million we had our own floor, forty-five hundred square feet, a Juliet balcony, and a fireplace. Most importantly, it was not ground floor, and the building had the best flood-resistant measures architecture could buy: natural gas generators, clean water storage in case of power outages, and all heating, ventilation, and electrical machinery elevated seven meters above street level.
I found Fred in his office, hunched forward, eyes darting in his Apple ARs like a boy watching Saturday-morning cartoons. His hands swiped at the air as he manipulated the augmented world, while at his desk, three old-fashioned screens streamed data on Tara Fund’s holdings.
“Where are you coming from?” he asked absently.
“Therapy.”
“Figure yourself out yet?”
“Maria thinks I should leave you if you don’t divorce Linda and marry me.”
“Is Maria going to reimburse us for the millions Linda will take out of our pockets on her way out the door?”
Kicking off my workaday pumps, I slid into his lap, draping my arms around his neck and kissing him. He wore a charcoal zip-neck sweater that set off the salt and pepper of his beard and cool slate of his eyes.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” He kissed me again. The Liebherr all-purpose cleaning robot zoomed quietly past us on its way to some detected dirt I’d no doubt tracked in. I barely noticed the oversized egg pod and its wizard arms anymore.
“What are you working on?” I asked.
“The usual. Komatireddy has us up to our necks in the NHS, but if Parliament gets cold feet and backs off—I mean, these valuations are going to tank and we’ll be out a fortune.”
These days I was hearing a lot about Komatireddy, one of Tara Fund’s star analysts, as he made aggressive bets on the companies set to benefit from the full privatization of the NHS, which was sending England into political conniptions. Marches in the streets as the Tories moved toward the long-overdue reforms. I didn’t have much of a stomach to hear about it now, but my eyes drifted to the report anyway.
“I meant to tell you, Linda’s in town, so we were going to get dinner tomorrow.”
“Linda as in my Linda?” he said, bewildered.
“No, dummy, Linda Holiday. From my Don Draper days.”
“Oh, right right.”
“Maybe it would be nice to get drinks with your should-be-ex-wife, Fred.”
The report was called Positioned for Disruption: Strategy for Energy, Commodities, and Security Investment.
“That’s quite the apocalyptic title.”
“Smart kids on that team, but they’re hyped on the grandeur of thinking they can puppeteer the world.” He clicked all three screens off at once and pushed the ARs up onto his head. Without the throb of the data, his office returned to just being a bright white room with a beautiful view of Manhattan to the south. The floor-to-ceiling windows could tint to control the temperature on hot days. “Wanna get lunch?”