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Two days later, John returned home. He had spent the day putting all their Greenwich possessions on the market. He felt that, in losing the Greenwich house and boat, he was losing all ties to his native country. With them sold, what reason did he have to go back? He felt like he had no home, no country. This is the expat feeling, he thought.
“Cass? Emily?” he called. He heard voices down the hall.
He found them in the master bedroom. Cass was trying on outfits from an assortment of shopping bags, each emblazoned with a famous designer’s name. Emily was lying back on the gray satin duvet, propped up by pillows covered in black and white silk.
He sat in an upholstered chair near the bed, even though it was heaped with Cassandra’s bras and slips.
“Kids, what is all this?” he said.
“Can’t it wait, John.” Cassandra sounded bored and kept posing and eyeing herself—tall, sleek, shapely—in a little black dress by Dior. It still had its tags dangling.
“No, it can’t wait!” John snapped, annoyed by her condescension. “I told you to stop shopping!”
“Don’t be so boring,” Cassandra said. She posed in several attitudes in the mirror.
John turned to Emily. “We’ve hit a speed bump in our finances, honey. No worries. But for now we aren’t rich.”
Cassandra was finally looking at him, thinking. He stood up, and a black bra, one of eight on the chair, slipped off and fell to the floor. He walked toward her, arms open for a hug.
“Cassandra,” he said, “we can get through this. I’ll start again. We’ll get there.”
She dodged his embrace.
“How could you let this happen?” she said. Standing In her little $2,500 black dress that he had paid for, she wound up and slapped him, her slim white arm a blur.
“Cass!” Her handprint began to show pink on his face. “We have to work together. Be reasonable!”
“I’m not interested in ‘starting over,’” she said, mimicking baby talk. She turned her back on him. “Unzip me.”
“Where’s ‘please’?”
‘You’re deadly boring, John. Emily, unzip me.”
“Aw, Mom, take it easy.”
In two quick strokes, Cassandra reached behind herself from the top, then the bottom, and unzipped the dress. She stepped gracefully out of it and threw it over the chair John had been sitting on. It slipped off. John picked it up.
“This goes back to the shop tomorrow,” he said. “That’s for starters.”
When Emily heard that, she made herself scarce, running out of the room and closing the door behind her.
John said, “And we have to move into a smaller apartment.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you!” Cassandra said, grabbing one end of the dress. She pulled. John held fast.
“You have six other ones like it in there,” he said, gesturing to the huge armoire.
“Yeah, but I want this one!” She stripped its price tags off and then yanked again. Stitching popped somewhere in the dress.
John let go. He was sick of her. “Fine, take it, I hope it falls off you in public.” He lurched toward the door, his old rugby injury flaring up.
“Bastard! Loser!” Cassandra screamed at John as he left, slamming the door shut after him. Then she yanked the door wide open. “You’re a failure! Go to hell!” she screamed and slammed the door again.
As John lurched toward Emily’s room, she slammed her door shut, too. John knocked on it softly.
“Open the door, kitten, this has nothing to do with you.”
Emily opened the door and stood with one hand on her hip, the other still holding the door, ready to slam it. She glared at her father. He took a step into her room.
“Honey, let’s talk. Let me tell you what happened.”
“Daddy, I—”
“—It was the worst day. Clients are threatening to sue me.”
“Daddy, I—”
“We’ll get through this. I’ll keep you in private school for now. No, no, forever! Don’t worry, your friends won’t know—”
“Daddy, listen—”
“I’m on your side, baby, you know that.”
“Daddy—”
“I promise you—”
“Daddy!”
“What, baby? I’m listening.”
“No, you’re not! That’s the whole problem. Why don’t you just leave me alone!” She pushed on John’s stomach with all her tiny girl strength, trying to budge him, trying to shove him out of the room.
“Not you, too, Emily! What’s this family coming to? What are we, monsters? Stop! I’m going, I’m going.” John stood just outside Emily’s door, looking in.
“Honey—”
“You don’t listen to me. I won’t listen to you,” Emily said with an inescapable logic and slammed the door shut in her father’s face.
John clutched his knee and grimaced with pain. He muttered to himself. “The brat! Slamming the door on her father!” He could hear his father saying, “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it!” His fist hardened into a knot, but he knew he could no more threaten Emily than he could fly.
He limped to the living room. With all that had been spent to decorate, money gleamed from every surface. He could hear Cassandra’s footsteps on the parquet floor of the hallway. She stood before him, half his size.
“Cass, let’s keep our family together.”
“My final answer on that is no,” she said coldly. “You have to leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I’m ready!” he roared. A hotel would just be more expense. Cassandra could go stay with one of her rich girlfriends until things got sorted out. That’s all he and Cassandra had in common: things. The bigger the price tag on them, the better, in Cassandra’s mind.
“Cassandra, you should be supportive of me as your husband.”
“I’m not the failure here, John, you are!”
“But I can start again, we’ll rebuild—“
“I don’t want to. I don’t want you, I just want my things, and I’ll find somebody else.”
Suddenly a rage exploded in John more ferocious than anything he’d ever felt. It boiled and fumed. She wanted this Baccarat cut crystal lamp more than him? He grabbed it, and little prisms jumped over the walls, ceiling, and parquet floor. He whipped its wire out of the socket.
“What did this cost, $7,000 was it?” he asked in a cool voice, revealing nothing of the anger roiling within.
“$10,000.”
He lifted it above his head.
“John, don’t, don’t—”
He raised his arm as high as he could and, with all the force of his six foot two inch frame, he dashed the lamp onto the floor. The crystal shattered, the shade bounced off, and the lightbulb exploded.
Cassandra shrieked.
“You idiot! $10,000! It was beautiful!”
“This stuff is shit!” he screamed.
His rage ebbed swiftly. He’d spent his life working for this stuff. And now he needed to sell this stuff. It wasn’t shit, it was cash. He could not afford to indulge his anger like this.
“Get out, you little bitch,” he said quietly. Cassandra heard the threat in his voice and retreated. As she went down the hall, she pounded on Emily’s door. “Pack up, we’re leaving,” she shouted.
Emily, that was another issue. John was too tired to take that one on tonight. One battle at a time, he thought.
John went to Emily’s room, hugged her, and said he’d see her Saturday, to keep her cellphone on and answer when he called so he’d know where she was. She nodded, tears streaking her face, tendrils of her blonde hair stuck to her wet cheeks.
When the taxi came, John let the driver heft Cassandra’s two huge, matching suitcases on wheels into the trunk, and Emily’s smaller bit of luggage.
“You’ll pay,” Cassandra snarled as she climbed in the back.
John stooped to peer more deeply into the car, where Emily sat crying quietly.
“I love you,” he whispered and closed the door. The taxi pulled away. He watched it go until it turned at Boulevard Saint Germain and disappeared.
The pain in his knee was now blinding. Suddenly he was exhausted. He staggered back up to the apartment, through the dining room to the kitchen. The cook had left a casserole on the countertop, covered with a glass lid. The kitchen smelled good. I need something to eat, he thought, then I’ll go to bed. He lifted the lid and the casserole’s fragrant steam, full of scents of thyme, bay leaf, rosemary, and crème fraiche, wafted to his nose. His stomach twisted. He leaned one hand on the counter, feeling lightheaded, and put the lid back down. He couldn’t eat.
