The last day of school, already warm, the mothers in summer dresses, pale arms not yet brown from sun, the fathers in T-shirts, shorts, sandals, the children making their noisy way through the gate one last time, their backpacks now worn out of habit rather than necessity, the year’s class work already sent home. The oldest of the children, the fifth-graders, were making this turn for the last time. They had already visited next year’s middle school but were too young to be apprehensive about that impending transition. For now, they looked forward to summer, to camps and beach houses and trips upstate or to Europe, to swimming, splashing, to ice cream and the sun-soaked hubbub of the hot months.
Here they were, the sculptor, the playwright, the memoirist, the producer, the sound engineer, the photographer—even the gangster made an appearance, did a fist bump with each of the men, wishing them a great summer before he climbed into his large black vehicle and drove north. His son was graduating this year, and though his daughter was only going into fifth grade, she too would be leaving for a new school in September.
They were not necessarily liked, these men, but they were known by the community, and could be seen as a core of sorts, the masculine center of power and wealth and prestige, or at least the appearance of such. The producer, Sumner, led them down Chambers, past the vacant retail spaces where there used to be a bakery the children liked, and another retail cavity where there used to be a bar, and so forth. All the men, occasionally, in the quiet early-morning hours when sleep eluded, worried at their diminishing wealth, at their cracking nest eggs. Rumors spread of short sales amid a loft market frozen in nuclear winter—no buyers, no sales at any price. If just a few months or a year ago the nominal value of their lofts and property had given each an expansiveness when it came to imagining their prospects, they were now seeing futures that seemed just a little more cramped; their three thousand square feet in Tribeca was worth 30 percent less than yesterday. So as they walked past the shuttered retail spaces, the signs proclaiming 2000SF RETAIL alongside a commercial realtor’s name and phone number, they didn’t comment, but to a man, it made them uneasy.
They reached their destination, their last remaining breakfast joint. The steak house they once loved no longer served breakfast; the market that had stood on the corner for decades, Bazzini’s, was gone; Socrates on Hudson Street closed, the proprietor sending them off his last morning with an “Adios amigos”—so they now were stuck with a restaurant where on Sundays they sometimes had to brunch en famille; on weekday mornings, they could order overpriced eggs, bland toast, only one kind of bagel. There was the usual argument, to sit inside or out, alfresco in Manhattan meaning sharing the sidewalk with bike messengers, dogs on their morning constitutionals, the bleet trucks backing up, and the stench of exhaust. But they sat outside, and newspapers were spread open and coffee was ordered and there was nothing to mark this occasion, no ceremony to note that these men would never all be together at the same table again. There was just more of the usual banter and small talk, the self-aware wittiness verging on smugness that would put off anyone who wasn’t them, the vulgarity and obscenity that men delight in when there are no women around, the quick disseminating of summer plans, the polite asking after children and wives.
What held these men together? Even now, looking around at each other they wondered. The sound engineer staring at Sumner with disgust, the playwright thinking the sculptor a dull-witted goy, the memoirist resenting all of them for not speaking up on his behalf during his public castigation, the photographer thinking, generally, why did he ever hang around with such a gang of unattractive mediocrities. They were pulled together by coincidence, having children roughly the same age in the same school. They felt some kinship because of who they weren’t—they weren’t attorneys or bankers or hedge fund runners as were so many of the new fathers just moving in to Tribeca. But from this idea of what they weren’t, could a real bond be forged? Did they just not want to eat breakfast alone?
This is what fell over them each as they picked through their disappointing eggs and oatmeal, drank thin, watery coffee—Why were they here?
For each man saw in the others his own shortcomings. None of them was as successful as they once dreamed. Each might be wealthy by some global standard of accounting, but by the local measures of bankers and entertainment moguls they were middle-class. Levi-Levy asked himself, Why did the photographer live in relative splendor while a genius like me makes do merely with a very spacious loft? Why, Mark thought, is the sculptor allowed to carry on his affair with impunity while my drunken dalliance could end up destroying my life? Why, wondered Brick, is the photographer celebrated as a fine artist—a special issue of V devoted to his work, Lehmann Maupin curating his photographs of celebrities—while I still have to supplicate in hopes of a show at BravinLee? It could drive men apart, these small jealousies. The easygoing friendships of college and young manhood were as distant now as a collegiate summer romance. The relationships now all felt freighted; each felt like the others were the reason for his disappointments.
THE MOLESTER, MARK told them, he was never real—or so the indifferent law enforcers concluded. The girl was making up her story, the voice on her phone nothing more than a few minutes of Jerry Orbach from an old Law & Order. She tearfully admitted such to a female juvenile crimes officer. The whole story had been in the local free weekly. Her father still refused to believe it, couldn’t bring himself to confront her, and accused the detectives of manufacturing this tale to hide their failure to bring the perpetrator to justice. This gossip hadn’t been passed along with the same gusto as the initial news of the alleged crime.
“They are dropping the case; the girl’s story has inconsistencies. The father knows something horrible happened to his daughter,” Sumner reported. “But the police aren’t interested in pursuing it.”
That, Sumner proclaimed, was the real scandal. And then more innuendo, more confusions, rumors, the girl was bought off, the father was hiring private detectives, the local community rags weren’t covering this story anymore because of the further hit to property values such an anecdote might cause.
So the anxiety was left to simmer, now unfocused and undirected. Who or what was now threatening the children? The fathers couldn’t say, but there was still the notion that something sinister was at large.
Sumner, the producer, was always eager to mention the threats, the fears, the siege they were all under. It wasn’t enough that a guard now patrolled Washington Market Park, that cameras were trained on the play structures, that you couldn’t enter the school during school hours, that to sit down at Bubby’s on a weekend unencumbered by infants and toddlers made you the recipient of suspicious glances. Sumner had inveigled for more. He suggested the erection of an electrified fence around Tribeca, as that would keep out the molesters. (Unless the molester lived among us!) The rest no longer gave him full credence, but his insistent drone of concern had its unsteadying effect. It was Sumner’s voice they would hear when they considered perhaps letting their eleven-year-old walk the three blocks to the playground by himself. No, better not, for what if, what if?
There was no way to refute a rumor, no argument could be made against irrational panic. So that even Mark’s measured, careful explanation that it had all turned out to be a false alarm, a bout of teen hysteria, the hoax of a confused girl, drifted into an eddy of cross-talk and conjecture.
“What child-molester?” the playwright Levi-Levy asked, having forgotten, or never really considered, the threat.
And so the whole matter was explained again by Sumner; between coffee sips and forkfuls of eggs, he again laid out the causes for alarm.
And Mark said again, “Shut the fuck up, Sumner, why are you doing this again?”
“What?”
“Talking nonsense.”
But Sumner stared him down, and it seemed to Mark as if Sumner knew about his dalliance with the nanny—of legal age, but still, guilty, guilty, guilty. So Mark kept quiet.
BRICK THE SCULPTOR decided then and there, because of his fear, because of his worry, that he would stop joining for breakfast. Why spend twenty dollars on eggs and coffee, twenty dollars he might not be able to afford in the near future. Perhaps the right move was to start hoarding canned goods, he decided, head out to Peconic, start laying in staples, some fuel, maybe a hunting rifle.
He explained his idea to the gathered fathers, to become a survivalist, of sorts, to hoard against the day civilization breaks down.
“Have you lost your mind?” Mark said.
“When the masses rise up and we can’t use our iPhones anymore and Wolfgang’s runs out of steak, will you open for me a can of beans?” Levi-Levy said.
“You’re on your own,” Brick warned.
“Well,” Sumner said, “I might as well tell you guys now. We’re moving. We put our place on the market, rented it out. So, assuming our tenants pass the board this afternoon . . .”
Mark hadn’t realized Sumner was trying to rent out his place. Or had he known and forgotten?
“To where?”
“Westport.”
Mark knew Westport, Connecticut. Big houses, good schools, white people. (Basically just like Tribeca, only more so.)
“Oh, well, that’s good,” Mark said perfunctorily. “Probably safer for the kids.”
“Definitely,” Sumner nodded, “definitely. A lot of folks are moving out.”
“I hadn’t noticed that,” Mark said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not a trend: Escape from Tribeca.”
“Yeah, while you still can,” Sumner said.
MARK TURNED RIGHT upon leaving the restaurant, staying close to the buildings and out of the spray of a light rain. And just as he was making his way home, he saw Sadie, pedaling over cobblestones on her big, old bicycle. Shit, he didn’t want to see her now—ever—and intentionally avoided Lispenard because that was her street, but this was Franklin and here she was.
She didn’t look like a child. With her scarf, thick-frame glasses, and vintage romper, she looked more like, well, Amelia Earhart. He couldn’t fathom whatever lust had momentarily swelled for her. She had nothing of that nubile, prosthetic sexuality too familiar now from Internet porn and music videos—Sadie had the sexuality of a stenographer at work.
He had embarrassed himself not only with his act, but by his partner. But wait a second, he thought, who was he, late thirties, verging on middle age, heading into the third turn perhaps, to be judging?
Sadie saw him making his way down Franklin, past the atelier with an Asian name no one in the neighborhood had ever seen anyone enter or depart, and steered in his direction, immediately, without hesitation.
Over the past few months they had been often in each other’s vicinity, she still had been caring for his children, yet they had had no more than ten minutes of conversation between them. Drop-offs, pickups, payment, hours, that was all arranged by Brooke. Mark spent more time arranging bank transfers from his studio account to her account, figuring how to hide them as equipment purchases and lease payments, than he had spent talking to Sadie. Which was fine with him.
“So,” she said, putting her plimsolled feet down on the pavement, steadying the bike.
He nodded. “Hello, Sadie.” He didn’t know what tone to take. Angry? Sad? Defeated? Indifferent? He opted for a mechanical monotone.
“So, I’m going to Wellesley,” she said, as if he had been awaiting her decision.
He didn’t know what to say. “Did you consider a state school?” he said.
“You mean Purchase? Or Binghamton?”
He didn’t know the names of state colleges. He shrugged.
“They’re supposed to be good,” she said, “but I decided to go to the best school I got into, because, you know, I’m not worried about the money.”
“I guess not,” he couldn’t resist saying.
“So, I told Brooke my last day is July first. I’m going to be a counselor at this camp, and then, you know, college.”
Mark felt a sudden surge of pride at Sadie’s success. “Wellesley? Isn’t that where Obama went to school? No, wait, Hillary Clinton? Right? Didn’t she go there?”
Sadie nodded. “Well,” she said, “Mark, I want you to know that I really love your kids. You have two great daughters, a really cool family.”
Where did an eighteen-year-old get this kind of composure? he wondered. Oh yeah, in Tribeca.
Sadie continued, “And I don’t want to ruin your family. So, well, after these funds I’ve gotten from you, that’s it. I’m not one of those people who is going to keep coming back and back and asking for more. So, I wanted you to know that, because I feel guilty and weird.”
You should, he almost said, you should feel guilty and weird. Then he thought, so that was the price? A hundred thousand dollars? And now he is free?
“Sadie,” Mark said, “you’re going to do very well.”
“Thanks, Mark.”
She mounted her bicycle and pedaled away down Franklin.
HE MADE A decision at that moment to tell his wife everything. He was tired of this hiding. His initial calculation, that the marriage was worth the dishonesty, that the value of the unit was greater than the integrity of any of its constituent parts, was mistaken. Marriages must rest on sound foundation—he surprised himself by his embrace of this bourgeois notion, but then look at his life: he surrendered to the perquisites of that class long ago, so how could he now be questioning the values that came with it?
But how to inform his wife of his transgression, his only transgression, albeit with the babysitter? Does it being a cliché make it less or more of a violation, easier or harder to excuse? Brooke would be furious. At the act, and then, he supposed, at this woman for staying and working in their loft these past several months. Sadie was to go off to college in the fall, that being the terms of their blackmail. And she was such an unassuming girl, to pull a stunt like this.
The rain now diminishing, sunlight popped through hazy clouds, and for a moment there was that disorienting sight of drizzle amid sunshine. Mark decided he wasn’t quite ready to see Brooke, and would instead go to his studio and check the schedule. Work was slowing down, for sure. Marketing budgets had contracted, meaning advertising spends were down, so fewer commercials were being produced and so less studio time was required. Everyone was trying to get a deal, saying they would take off-peak, short-notice space if that meant a better hourly rate. He had no choice but to accommodate, which added up to a few thousand dollars less a month in income—he had long ago set aside and subtracted the tens of thousands for Sadie. But he had somehow known during the boom years, when his loft and his studio spaces were all appreciating and his income rising, that that was aberrational. Rich people were, well, different, mysterious in their sources of wealth—dynasties or trusts or vast timber or mining holdings, or at least they did something unfathomable and now discredited in finance. You were not supposed to become wealthy by, essentially, owning space and letting it by the hour, like the proprietor of some No-Tell Motel, yet that was exactly what Mark’s income stemmed from, all those hours, which during the good years had been a great many hours indeed.
Of course, it helped that Brooke could tap vast family resources. His girls would never know a day of hunger, an hour of insecurity about shelter, clothes, warmth. He knew enough to know that he had no real financial problems.
Yes, he could end up living on scrambled eggs, or takeout Thai food and the bar menu at Odeon if Brooke decided enough was enough. Could she ever forgive him? Should she? Or would there follow the predictable moving out to a rental somewhere in the Financial District and uneasy joint custody, sales of the real estate, the business, dividing of assets? And he the cast-out man, the philanderer who destroyed a charmed home, the schmuck who tore apart his family lusting after a kid, barely eighteen. Wives were fickle, wives were unpredictable, you just never knew if they would stay or go. Look at Rick; his wife, Marni, scrammed at his scandal. But who knew what else Rick might have been doing? Perhaps in addition to fabricating memoirs he, too, had been screwing the help.
But still he felt that telling his wife would be, as politicians caught in a scandal always say, the right thing to do. This is the time, he thought, this is the moment when he can start all over, with or without beloved Brooke. The time has come, he tried to convince himself, to come clean.
He was walking down Church, past one of the terrible Italian places, when he came upon Sumner again, with his two daughters riding on Razor scooters. Ah yes, he remembered, last day of school is a half day. Brooke must be with the girls right now.
Sumner had not yet noticed him, and so he considered a hasty crossing of the street, but then there was Sumner’s grin.
“Hey Mark.”
Mark nodded in greeting. He didn’t want to see Sumner, not now, not ever. But he was stuck.
“Well, it’s official,” Sumner said, folding his arms. He had sunglasses folded into the top of his V-neck T-shirt.
Official? Mark worried this was more molester-related news. Some new statistics perhaps, the latest white paper from Protect the Children?
“We’re definitely moving. Our tenants passed the board.”
“Hm,” Mark said. “Escape from Tribeca before your children are sodomized.”
Sumner didn’t find that funny.
The daughters were becoming impatient, their silver scooters at rest on the slick sidewalk. Their helmets glistened from drizzle. Sumner turned to them. “Val, Chantal, stay out of the street.”
“And Mark,” he said, “let’s get a drink, before we go. Or coffee.”
Mark nodded. He was sure he would never have to see Sumner again.
MARK WANTED A drink. He walked over to the steak house and sat at the bar, where he ordered a martini, which he knew was a mistake, and then decided he may as well have lunch and ordered a rib eye and spinach and a baked potato and said he’d take lunch in the dining room. The floor-to-ceiling windows at the front of the restaurant looked out on Greenwich, at the investment bank across the street—whose employees filled this restaurant at night—and the line of town cars idling next to the curb. Across Hubert was another stalled condominium complex. He recalled reading online about the sponsor’s financial problems, the buyers suing to get out of their contracts, yet as he studied the building now, the graceful arches, the vast windows, the elaborate masonry, it looked like the structural embodiment of prosperity. Only now, instead of a rich man living on the third floor, a yoga studio had rented the space. Perhaps if his receipts kept on declining, he, too, would have to sublet to a yoga entrepreneur. The yoga industry seemed recession-proof.
In walked Levi-Levy, wearing heart-shaped sunglasses, a Hulk T-shirt, and pants with rainbows on them.
He was genuinely pleased to see Levi-Levy, though he detected, for a moment, an uneasiness in him.
“Aren’t those rainbows the symbol for gayness?” Mark said, attempting to make a joke. “Are you wearing pants that are sending coded messages to other guys that you are available?”
Levi-Levy smiled at this, and whatever initial reservations he’d had when spotting Mark now seemed to have evaporated.
“I hope so,” Levi-Levy said, and took a seat at the table.
He ordered a martini as well, and steak. They talked for a while about Sumner and his moving to the suburbs, about other families who were fleeing Tribeca.
“Pussies,” Levi-Levy said.
Mark regarded Levi-Levy as capricious, flaky, unreliable, a bad husband, failed artist, and lazy drunkard: the perfect person with whom to discuss his newfound desire for clarity and truth in his marriage.
Levi-Levy was quiet as he listened to Mark describe this potential scandal—so much more interesting than anything they had ever discussed during their innumerable morning coffees together. And Levi-Levy even forgot during the tale that he had, for a brief and wonderful while, been cuckolding this man himself. Only a genius like him, he reasoned, could separate his emotions and own interests from those of his lunch-mate and fellow steak-eater.
To accompany steak, wine followed martinis, and Levi-Levy recoiled in horror at Mark’s declaration that he was going to tell his wife the whole truth.
“Who does that?” Levi-Levy said. “Are you new here or something? Though I have to admire the chutzpah of this babysitter of yours. And I had no idea you were so wealthy.”
“I’m not. But don’t you want there to be no secrets between you and your wife? To know everything about each other?”
Levi-Levy chewed his steak and didn’t know where to begin. “Wow, you can have breakfast with someone for years,” he said, “almost every morning, and still have no idea who they are.”
Levi-Levy urged restraint. “How about you start by telling the truth from now going forward? Future-facing? Who wants to spend all that time sorting through the messy past?”
Mark shook his head. “But the past is precisely the issue.”
“What are you talking about?” Levi-Levy asked. “Guilt? You’ve gotten away with it! You’re getting away with it. There is no guilt.”
“I would want to know if Brooke had screwed around.”
No you don’t, Levi-Levy thought, or, no I don’t want you to know.
“Take it from me,” Levi-Levy said, “you don’t want to shine the harsh light of probity upon your marriage. A marriage is like a very sensitive virus that thrives in darkness, in the damp, airtight dungeon of secrecy. It will die upon exposure to the light.”
“And this coming from someone who is no longer living with his wife,” Mark said.
“That doesn’t mean I’m not right. Besides, my marriage has actually improved a great deal since I moved out and stopped speaking to my wife.”
IT WAS THREE p.m. by the time they finished lunch, the rain and overcast now blown over so that they emerged into hot afternoon light. They squinted, weaved, the gin, vermouth, and wine now making them feel too warm, slightly queasy in the sun. Levi-Levy checked his phone, said he had to go pick up two of his boys from a last-day-of-school picnic.
“Your summer plans?” Mark said before they parted.
Levi-Levy seemed surprised by this question. “I’m going to wear lighter clothing,” he finally said.
THIS IS THE day, Mark was telling himself, of big changes. Associates were leaving, renting their lofts even—he had thought you couldn’t do that in this market—the older kids were moving on to middle school. And he too could now affect great transformation. Perhaps what he wanted was an end to his marriage, perhaps that’s what he was really trying to achieve. To tell Brooke what happened in the hopes that she would call it off, would tell him to go so he could return to being himself? Is that the dilemma of the husband in marriage, that he felt he was an impostor, that all this, the home, the wife, the children, it was a long detour keeping him from the path he was supposed to be on, the women he should be screwing, the drugs he should be taking, the grand, decadent life he was sacrificing to be a dad?
But who was he kidding? Who did he think he was? Bob Evans? He would be another forlorn, single guy in his late thirties, the oldest guy in any nightclub he happened to wander into. He had gone out for dinner and drinks with his divorced friends before—they always had plenty of time—and despite their freedom they seemed even sadder than the shackled husbands. And what about the kids?
He walked up Greenwich, stopped at ’witchcraft for a cup of coffee, and while waiting for his Americano, he saw through the window a black Escalade like the one Rankin drove, waiting at the light for the left turn onto Laight and then, presumably, the West Side Highway, the FDR, the Midtown Tunnel, the BQE, and so forth until the Hamptons.
Why did a guy like Rankin stay married? Mark wondered. What was in it for him? Or consider it this way, if a guy like that could stay married, then why couldn’t he?
Coffee in hand, Mark walked east again, bloated, unsteady, unsure of his destination. The mistake of midday drinking, wiping out thought and decisions. And decision making was not his strength. He was at his best with technical calculations, with analyzing digital files, manipulating sound waves, with hearing, not speaking. Even getting married had not seemed like his decision; he had simply stayed with the prettiest girl who would have him, he now realized. Of course, he loved the perks, but it was never a matter of Mark saying yes, rather it was Brooke never saying no. So this wasn’t about that stupid affair, the blackmail, the mistake of infidelity, no, this was about the marriage, the act of will of staying together. Mark now concluded that what he was thinking about was not the affair, not telling the truth, not honesty or love, it was whether or not he wanted to be married to Brooke.
That old question, again.
He went home.
BROOKE AND THE kids were out, presumably at some last-day-of-school picnic festivities. Mark lay down on the sofa. He needed a nap. But he kept seeing the faces of the families they knew, the other fathers, the mothers—he tried to keep his focus on the attractive mothers—the other children; he wasn’t very fond of other people’s children, actually, just his own. But he had to admit, these men and families, this crowd and this place, as flawed and embarrassing as it was, this was his life now.
THAT EVENING, OVER dinner, as he watched his children pick through their Thai food, he looked around the loft and appraised the art. If they were splitting up, he would like to have a general sense of what they were splitting up—there was the Daniel Richter abstract, the old totem-pole sculpture by Marisol, those would each have to be worth close to six figures. Maybe even the modest-size George Rouault over the piano was worth something now, and when was the last time he’d even noticed that dreary little smudged clown?
Later, after the girls were in bed and he was trying to reset the television, which one of the girls had managed to deprogram into static, Brooke mentioned that the mother of one of Cooper’s classmates (the gangster’s wife, he dimly realized as he half-listened) had confronted her today.
“She said her daughter was still upset that Cooper and Amber could never get along—”
He nodded. Which was the input again? HDMI 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5? And why are there five anyway? What can you input? Say, the cable system, a Blu-Ray player, a computer, a game console. And then what else? Maybe a camcorder? Do people still use those or is it all iPhones now?
“—she said that Cooper had still been excluding Amber from jump rope or whatever. Amber was very upset—”
There it is. HDMI 5. Still nothing. Unplug the cable box and wait for a reboot.
“—Cooper told her, apparently, ‘We don’t have to stay friends forever—’ ”
Ah, there it is. Back on NY1, the official you-have-successfully-rebooted-your-cable-box channel.
“I talked to Cooper about it and she said that she and the girl just didn’t get along and why should she be friends with a girl she doesn’t like. If Cooper doesn’t like Amber, then why should she be forced to like her? Can we force her to like Amber? I can’t even get Cooper to eat a piece of broccoli. I mean, the school year is over, why bring this stuff up? She should just tell her daughter that sometimes people change, friends change, relationships evolve, you know?”
He agreed.
Relationships evolved. People changed. Perhaps all this extramarital activity was simply part of that evolution. Why should he impose his morals and standards upon his marriage? It was an organism larger and more varied than he could comprehend. He needed to let it flow, to let the marriage have space and oxygen rather than examine it for flaws and imperfections. In time, he was sure, this was the kind of personal trial that makes a marriage stronger rather than weaker. Fucking the babysitter, in other words, was good for his marriage! It sounded ridiculous, but how else could a man know whom or what he really loved or needed? You learn from the deed, not from the theory.
Another drink in him, and he felt the rekindling of his afternoon buzz, the soothing, vague assuredness that his life was, somehow, in its own rather predictable way, working out. The art on his walls, the children, the wife, it was all flawed, perhaps, but it was all good enough.
BROOKE WAS IN the guest room/office, and she reappeared now, a serious expression on her face.
“Can I tell you something?” she said.
“Anything.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “I think I should tell you this because I want to be honest and I think it’s better if we just get this stuff out in the open so that . . . so that it doesn’t grow and become something worse.”
“Sure,” he said, not liking where this was going. Hating, in fact, where it might be going.
“I’ve kind of realized that I have a problem with, with smoking too much marijuana. I need to stop, I think, and I’ve been seeing a therapist about it, someone my friend Anna suggested, and he told me that it might be helpful for me to go to NA meetings or MA or one of those, and so I went to one, on Broadway down near Wall Street, and I don’t know about those meetings. I mean, I hate meetings, and joining stuff. That’s not really me. But anyway, I do know that I need to quit, because my behavior when I’ve been smoking—and this was an everyday thing for me—hasn’t been very positive, very, um, yeah, not positive.”
Behavior not positive? He did not ask in what way. He had not been a shining exemplar of positive behavior himself.
THERE WERE NO revelations and recriminations that summer but instead a growing tension and discomfort in each other’s presence, a short-temperedness with each other that reached the point where Mark took to sleeping in the guest room/office of their loft, where, if the truth be told, he slept quite soundly.
What was awful about this situation was how every past malfeasance, misbehavior, or fuckup was now trotted out again: Mark’s early-in-the-marriage drug problems; Brooke’s dope-smoking. And then, of course, Ed.
Brooke had always maintained that Mark had never understood her heartbreak and anguish at losing her brother. Or, even more troubling, at never finding him. The lack of a corpse had caused in Brooke an anxiety that Mark did not understand. “Ed is gone,” Mark had once barked in a fit of impatience. “Let him go!”
But all these points and counterpoints were just circumlocution to cover the starker truth, that whatever mutual lies and complicities had been told or untold to keep the edifice of their marriage going were suddenly crumbling. What kept two people together for year after long year? A recalled sexual spark? An entente cordial of forgiving each other’s annoying habits? An ability to ignore each other for extended stretches? The kids?
Even the best of marriages are based, to some extent, on being willing to overlook how much you can hate your spouse. And when something stirs the coiled snakes of convenience, fatigue, resignation, and disinterest, and you glimpse through the writhing bodies the thing itself, then you see how much you hate her. And the feeling is mutual, all concealed by the elaborate staging of a modern, affluent lifestyle.
LATER THAT SUMMER Brooke took a trip up to Maine to spend a few days with her tattooed and now fifteen-years-sober mother, who lived in a Bar Harbor barn with a woman Mark assumed to be a girlfriend but that Brooke never conceded as such. The purpose of the trip, according to Brooke, was to think things over, take stock, and make a decision about the viability of the marriage, because she knew in her gut things weren’t quite right—as if such things could be decided. Mark had always felt a distant warmth for Virginia, a mother-in-law whose unobtrusiveness—the best trait of the truly self-involved—limited her interactions to odd Christmas presents for the kids—patchouli-scented candles, vintage Sweet Valley High novels, and, one year, a set of costume mustaches—and an annual visit on her way to an Earth Day dance somewhere in Pennsylvania. She had been a handsome woman, now grown wide in the hips but with a still-formidable carriage over-scrawled by too many tattoos. Her own marriage hadn’t fallen apart so much as had become irrelevant. One Labor Day, when her husband had packed the car to drive back to Connecticut, she had simply decided to stay on. Brooke and Ed were already flown. Brooke’s father had shrugged, climbed into the Saab, sparked up a roach, and headed south.
Brooke packed a bag, hailed a cab to the airport, and was off, the first leg, Mark knew, of the multi-leg journey from New York to Bar Harbor.
Cooper was just old enough to suspect a crisis in the hearth, though she could never have fathomed the scope and complexity of the strife. She imagined her parents’ fights as being grown-up versions of the spats she had with her sister, only more convoluted. Whereas she and Penny had specific causes—Penny using Cooper’s nail polish, for example—her parents’ disputes seemed to arise from mysterious sources, steady springs of discontent that could at any moment violently geyser.
That family frigidity, Mom and Dad not speaking, Penny breaking down in frequent sobs at the slightest of provocations—a missing doll, a lost button, anything (her misplaced response to something being wrong, though she couldn’t be sure what)—Cooper would ignore it by putting on her headphones to kill the hours until one of her friends’ parents would drive her and the friend out to their summer house.
Cooper hardened and Penny softened.
For Mark and Brooke, the sense of mutual discontent felt akin to their omnipresent sense that they were depreciating, their real estate wealth evaporating in the midst of the various investment-bank failures and the bailing out of those who remained. Bankers were unloading lofts in Tribeca; the writers, sculptors, playwrights, even puppeteers had stopped moving in decades ago. It turned out, for all their bohemian airs, as a community they were more dependent on Wall Street, more defined by the financial services, than they cared to admit. If those bankers, whom Mark had always skirted in the school yard at drop-off, were really going bust, then there went the whole neighborhood, their marriage included.
THREE DAYS AFTER Brooke departed, she called and said she was returning, a ride to Portland, a bus from Portland to Boston, a flight to LaGuardia. Mark was exhausted just thinking about it.
“Mommy,” Penny shouted when she picked up the phone. “Tell Virginia I’m getting a tattoo.”
“No you’re not!” Mark and Brooke both said, in unison.