SIENNA TAKES ME HOME in a cab but I insist on going up to the apartment alone. Terrance, our doorman, walks a couple of steps ahead of me through the lobby to push open the heavy ornamental elevator gate. He reaches a white-gloved hand inside the cab to punch the “penthouse” button. “Tough night, Mrs. N?”
“You could say that, I guess.” Absentmindedly, I finger one of the elevator’s two alabaster sconces, imported from Spain and rumored to cost over five figures apiece.
“Everyone has their rough patches. This, too, will pass,” says Terrance—who’s been studying meditation with Madonna’s kabbalah teacher’s ex-assistant.
“Quickly, will it pass quickly? Like a breeze on the Sahara? Or Amy Winehouse’s attempts at rehab?” I ask, willing to grab onto any shred of hope.
“Not quickly,” says Terrance, as the elevator door slams shut. “But by the end of the journey you will be in a different place from the one you started out in.”
I fumble for my keys and open the thick mahogany door to our spacious apartment. How many times have I carelessly tossed the mail onto the Georgian table in the front hall and not even noticed the sumptuous bouquet of calla lilies that are delivered fresh like clockwork each week? I tiptoe down the wide front hall lined with family photos: the girls on their first day of preschool clutching my hands and their matching Pocahontas lunchboxes, the four of us splashing around in the waves at Easthampton, and—the one that gives me pause—a photo from the year Paige and Molly wore big feathery white wings and halos to go trick-or-treating and Peter dressed as the devil.
I call out for my husband but there’s no answer. I’ve been trying to reach him on his cellphone for over an hour, but he hasn’t picked up. Not that I’d know what to say. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” “Are we going to be okay?” “I’m mad,” “Angry,” “Worried” are all possibilities, as are “It’s just a job. You’ll get another one” and “What possessed you to buy me those wildly expensive antique gold filigree earrings just last week?”
At the end of the hall I stop outside the girls’ bedroom and glance at my watch. I don’t want to wake them, but I have to see for myself that they’re all right. Gingerly I open the bedroom door and circle past the mound of half-written-in notebooks, art supplies, DVD holders, backpacks, sneakers, sweatshirts, outfits worn (and outfits discarded because they weren’t good enough to wear that never made it back into the closet), and a copy of Catcher in the Rye—untouched since its purchase—that Paige, my messy, more tempestuous daughter, has amassed on her side of the room. I bend down to kick off my sling-backs. My bare feet sink into the plush hot pink flokati rug but I lose my footing in the darkened bedroom and noisily bang my knee against a swivel chair that rolls into the girls’ double-sized desk.
“You okay, Mom?” Molly asks, turning toward me dreamily and propping herself up on an elbow.
“Yes, honey.” I crouch down to kiss her forehead. “Sorry to wake you, go back to sleep.”
“No problem,” she says, nestling her lithe body back under the covers.
Paige, in the bed just across from her, typically doesn’t stir—like her father, she could sleep through an earthquake. It still amazes me how two girls nurtured for nine months in the same uterus could be so different. Paige is blond, fun-loving, and game for anything, while Molly, two minutes older, is a studious curly-haired brunette. I exhale and kiss them each one more time on the top of their heads before picking up my shoes and closing the door behind me. Stopping in the kitchen for a glass of water, I let the cool clear liquid wash over my wrists and splash some onto my face. Then, unable to avoid the inevitable for any longer, I steel myself to walk into Peter’s study.
Maybe Peter forgot about the party. Maybe he’s engrossed in a Mets game or tied up on an overseas call. Or maybe he’s sitting in his leather armchair with a stack of papers on his lap, exhausted and happy from having figured out a plan to save our financial future. But all of the possible explanations as to why he was a no-show at the party are dashed as I enter the teak-paneled room and snap on the light. Cellphones, text messages, a solid trusting marriage—none of the things I depend on to keep track of my husband are any help now. Peter normally keeps me abreast of his every move. I still tease him about the detailed message he left on my voicemail before our second date: “I’m having a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, returning the Samuelson textbook to the library, and going to buy a typewriter ribbon. Pick you up at three.” For the first time since college, I realize with a start, Peter—my loving, considerate, never-makes-me-worry-about-him husband—is nowhere to be found.
Despite my commitment to saving energy, Peter just can’t get used to turning off the computer screen and its flickering light beckons me toward his wide cherrywood desk. Stacks of colored folders are fanned out like cards in a game of solitaire, waiting to be shuffled and reorganized into a winning hand. I’ve always left everything to do with money up to Peter—how much we have, what we can afford to spend. But now as I flip through the monthly bills I see that they’re staggering. Cable, Con Edison, cars, cellphones, Chapman (the girls’ private school), clothes, cello lessons, a particularly thick folder for credit cards—and that’s just the C’s.
I sink into the black desk chair, my head in my hands. My expenses come out of our general house account that Peter just refills, whenever I ask him to, the way you would a tank of gas. I have no idea what he knows, or doesn’t, about the actual cost of the things I buy. And when he finds out, what he’s going to want me to cut down. “Does Peter have any idea what I spend on Botox? Or that milk is four dollars a gallon?” I say despondently.
“I’ve read that it’s the price of toilet paper that’s truly shocking,” says Peter softly as he walks toward me. The top button of his tuxedo shirt is undone and his silk black bow tie hangs like a Rat Packer’s around his neck. “Tru, honey, I’m sorry,” he says, bending down beside me and pushing aside the folders. His jacket, which was slung over his shoulder, falls in a puddle to the floor and he interlaces his hand with mine, squeezing my fingers tightly, the same way the girls used to when they were getting a booster shot. “I didn’t want you to worry, I was sure I’d find something else. The market, the subprime loans, business has been terrible, everyone’s downsizing. They let five hundred people go, I never expected, it’s been three months … Can you ever forgive me?” Peter asks, as his run-on sentences wind down and his voice starts to crack.
I could tell him that I’m furious that he kept me in the dark. I could cry or scream or make him sleep in the guest room. But all I want to do is hold him.
“Come here,” I say, taking Peter’s hand and leading him toward the sofa. I sit down and as he stands in front of me, I unbuckle his belt and tug at his zipper. Admiringly, I run my hand across Peter’s smooth, muscular midsection and cast my gaze below. “Funny,” I say, as I reach for my husband and entreat him to come inside me. “No downsizing that I can see going on here, mister.”
IN THE MORNING, I get the girls off to school by pretending it’s just another day, and after they’ve left, I try to assess the damage.
“It can’t be that bad, right?” I ask hopefully as Peter plugs in the coffeemaker. “I mean we can still afford the Splenda?” I set out the creamer and sugar bowl—which more accurately should be renamed the 1% milk and artificial sweetener holders.
“It’s not good,” says Peter, as he pushes two pieces of whole wheat bread into the toaster. He turns to face me and I realize from the helpless look in his eyes just how not good things are. “Our savings, my pension—everything tanked along with the company stock. I borrowed money against the apartment hoping to turn things around, but that didn’t happen. We’re going to be in default to the mortgage company and the co-op board in sixty days. Sixty days! Our home, the earrings I bought you because I didn’t want you to think anything was wrong, all of it, our whole damned lifestyle, everything is built on a house of cards.”
“A house of cards?” I gasp, thinking that wood—or even straw—sounds sturdier.
“Visa and American Express. And they’re totally maxed out.”
“Peter, how—how could you?” I stutter. “How could you gamble with our futures like that and not even say a word?”
Peter bangs his hand in frustration against the polished black granite counter we had installed just last year. “That’s what investment bankers do: We gamble. You didn’t seem to mind when we were winning.”
My eyes well up with tears and I grab my purse from the counter.
“Tru, I’m sorry, I was just trying to protect you,” Peter says as I brush past him to head for the door.
“I know. I know you didn’t mean to hurt us. I just have to get out of here and get some air to clear my head.”
I WALK UP and down Fifth Avenue for what seems like hours, looking into store windows that for once don’t seem the least bit tempting, past the flower-filled sunken plaza at Rockefeller Plaza. The towering Art Deco buildings cast a gilded shadow and I stop to look down at the skating rink, remembering all the good times we’ve had there and that we’ll probably never be able to afford again. At one end of the plaza is a gleaming gold sculpture of Prometheus, who stole fire from Zeus to give it to mortals. At the other, a hulking statue of Atlas, who’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“I know how you feel, big boy,” I say, reaching out to pat one of the overworked Greek god’s well-toned bronze calves.
At the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fiftieth Street, across the street from Radio City Music Hall, a well-dressed man is standing on top of a makeshift stage with a bullhorn. Beside him, a comely woman presides over a card table stacked high with books and motivational tapes featuring a grinning picture of the speaker.
“Eliminate the word ‘failure’ from your vocabulary. Think positive thoughts, have positive energy in every day, every way,” the man says to a growing crowd that seems to be hanging on his every word. “Repeat after me, ‘I am money.’ ”
“I am money!” the crowd says as the man with the bullhorn entreats them to say it again with more conviction.
“I am money,” I try chanting with them. As if a simple verb switch—from “I spend money” to “I am money” is all I need to change my ways.
“Again!”
“I AM MONEY,” we roar back in unison, as the man tells us, “Close your eyes and picture prosperity.”
Images of hundred-dollar bills float through my mind, huge stacks of them, piled high to the ceiling. I visualize myself picking one up, and like Narcissus looking into the water, I see my face, instead of Ben Franklin’s. If I remember right, the Founding Father believed that success was the result of hard work. But that was so three hundred years ago! I was raised on Tinker Bell, Field of Dreams, and Joel Osteen—wish it, build it, or tithe to a televangelist to pray for it, and your every request will be granted.
“I-am-money, I-am-money.” I’m practically humming now. The man with the bullhorn tells us, “My books and tapes will teach each and every one of you how to be a magnet, attracting people, places, and opportunities that will increase your fortunes.” Judging by the people jockeying to buy his products, at the very least the program is working for him.
I’m just starting to slap down a twenty-dollar bill of my own for his words of wisdom, when the speaker issues one more instruction.
“Picture your life five years from today.…” he says as a gush of steam rises out of the sewer grate next to the sidewalk where I’m standing.
I imagine myself wearing a babushka and a long soiled skirt. I’m clutching a paper cup containing a few coins. “Oh no, oh no, oh no!” I wail. “In five years I’ll be a bag lady!”
I’M STILL SHAKEN when I arrive back to the apartment, but I pull myself together for the sake of the girls. Paige and Molly are sitting at the dining room table with yogurts, granola bars, and their textbooks spread out before them. Molly’s on Facebook, one of the Twilight movies is streaming through Paige’s computer, and it’s anyone’s guess what’s swelling through the iPods each of them is connected to.
“How do you girls ever manage to get any work done?” I say, gently tugging on their earphones so they can say a proper hello.
“Mom, you ask us that same question every day,” Paige says, with just the right tone of teenage condescension that lets me know I am so out of it. Molly smiles and reaches across the table to offer me a snack. “Strawberry or chocolate chewy?”
“Chocolate,” I say without, for once, glancing at the nutritional label. They may sell these energy bars at the health food store, but some of them have more artery-clogging fats than a Milky Way. When the girls were little I wouldn’t let them eat sugar or processed foods and until they went to school, the only McDonald they’d ever heard of was the farmer. But now that the twins are teenagers I’m just glad they’re not doing crack.
Rosie, the perky housekeeper we hired two months ago after the girls’ nanny finally retired, comes in. She’s carrying a bamboo tray loaded down with fresh-baked cookies and cans of cola. “For the workmen,” she explains, bustling toward the back of the apartment.
“What workmen?” I ask, flustered, as I hurry after Rosie wondering what in the world I could ever have imagined was bad about anything that smelled as delicious as those oatmeal raisin cookies she’d just baked. And who the heck she’d made them for.
The girls traipse single file behind us, trusting baby mallards. We march through my bedroom past the four-poster bed that Peter and I bought at a garage sale when we were first married. An old straw hat with blue ribbons, a souvenir of my chorus role in our college production of The Music Man, sits gaily atop the broken spindle that we never bothered to replace, just as it did in the old days. As we cross into the bathroom I see two workmen in overalls leisurely kicking around stray tiles. Wrenches, rags, crowbars, copper piping, army-sized tubs of caulk and putty are strewn about everywhere. My claw-foot tub has been uprooted from its spot in the middle of the room and rudely pushed up against the mirrored vanity. Our beautiful nickel-plated faucets sit like orphans ten feet away from the tub and a trio of cut pipes spring through the debris like weeds. One of the workmen reaches for a cookie. “Thanks,” he says.
“Oh shit, I mean damn, I forgot you were coming. That’s right, you’re installing the new tub today,” I say, realizing that the eighteen-hundred-pound Carrara marble model we’d ordered is nowhere in sight.
“We were,” says the other workman, reaching for a cola. “Our boss just called. Says we can’t install the new tub until you pay the eleven thousand dollars you owe us. The check Mr. Newman gave him bounced.”
The girls look at me quizzically. Rosie sighs deeply and shakes her head. “Not again,” she says, her brow knit in frustration. “This is why I had to leave my last job.”
“No, Rosie, no problem,” I say, trying to reassure us both that we won’t have to let her go. I take the plate from her hand and urge everyone to have another cookie, playing hostess to my worried housekeeper, confused daughters, and bathtub installers in the unlikeliest room in the house for entertaining.
“I’m sure it was just a mistake?” Molly says, sounding confident until the last syllable, when she can’t help turning her statement into a high-pitched question. “Right, Mom?”
“Absolutely. Daddy is no longer affiliated with the bank and we’re just having a little cash flow problem,” I say carefully.
“Daddy lost his job?” Paige shrieks.
“He’s going to be working for a new company any day now. We’ll talk about it later,” I say as calmly as I can. And then turning toward the workers I add, “This is all just a silly misunderstanding. Why don’t I just write you a postdated check and you can finish up here.”
“No can do. Cash or nothing, otherwise we have to leave.”
I search for a compromise. “How about this: Why don’t you just put the old one back? We don’t even want a new bathtub, I can’t imagine why I ever thought we did. I mean, all we need is something that holds water.” I wedge myself between the vanity and the claw-foot tub. I grip my fingers around the lip of the tub and try to push. Hard. Nothing happens. Hold your breath, count to ten and push, I can still hear my Lamaze teacher’s voice in my head. But nothing, unless you count my quickening pulse, bulging eyes, and the vein that’s starting to pop out of my neck. The girls and Rosie line up behind me, but still the stubborn tub—more difficult to move across the room than a pair of five-pound twins through a three-millimeter birth canal—doesn’t give, not an inch.
“Sorry, lady, it’s out of our hands.” The cola drinker shrugs as they both collect their tools and the rest of the cookies and leave. Rosie and the girls and I plop onto the cold torn-up floor and lean against the back of the tub. The girls start to pepper me with questions and I promise I’ll explain everything later, after Rosie’s gone and Peter and I can talk to them together. Peter comes into the bathroom, drops his briefcase, and slumps down beside us. He takes off his shoes, loosens his tie, and starts pitching broken tiles.
“ ‘We don’t have any openings.’ ‘You’re overqualified, Mr. Newman.’ ‘Wow, you were earning how much?’ ” Peter says, recounting what amounted to another fruitless day of job hunting, as with each shot he tries to land a tile in the toilet and misses. “Guess it’s not my day,” he says, shrugging and giving up.
“That’s okay, Daddy,” says Paige, who despite her occasional outbursts these days is still a sweet girl at heart. She picks up a handful of tile and leans over to give Peter a kiss. “How about ten out of twenty?”
My eyes well up with tears at the sight of Peter and the girls playing toilet tiddlywinks, though I hope they keep missing their mark—the last thing we can afford is to call a plumber.
“Who needs money?” I say jauntily. “There are two other bathrooms in the house that work just fine. And you know what?” I say, turning around and running my hand along the inside of the cracked porcelain tub. “I’ve always thought this baby would make a great planter.”
Of course, eventually we have to leave the cosseted, fairytale world of the master bathroom, and when we do, my Pollyannaish attitude fades more quickly than my blond highlights. I retreat to the library, where I have a small desk and a computer to keep track of my charity work and appointments. I pull out a legal-sized yellow pad and with a black Sharpie left over from labeling the girls’ summer camp clothes, I start making a list of “How to Save Money.” Turn down the thermostat (better for the environment!!!!!) I write in big, loopy letters. I pause, stumped. I go back and write a big number 1 next to my one and only brainstorm. As I sit puzzling over number 2, Paige and Molly come in, full of anxious questions about the future.
“How bad is it, Mom?” Molly, my practical daughter, wants to know. “Will we be able to stay in school?” Paige is worried that we’ll have to cancel HBO and her extra Verizon minutes. Both of them ask if we’re going to have to move—according to Peter, a very real possibility.
“Daddy and I are very resourceful,” I say, trying to allay their insecurities without actually lying. “We’ll figure something out. We love you, we love each other, we’re a great family. Everything that we need we have right here.” I give them each a kiss. Pleading that they need to finish their homework, the girls head back to their room.
“I told you,” says Paige poutily, when she thinks she’s out of earshot. “We’re not going to be able to go on the class trip to The Hague.”
“Oh my God, you are such a retard,” Molly says, as the bedroom door slams behind them. “Didn’t you hear what Mom was really saying? We might not even have a place to live.”