Dear Money

by Martha McPhee

  "You'll have to tell me all about this sometime, India," Cavelli said.

  "I will," I said and offered him my most lovely smile.

  Veronica, now part of the group, confided that she believed mine to be an amazing story: "It's all Tiger has spoken about for months." She gave me a genuine look of admiration, which warmed me to her, made me want to know more about her.

  "I should say," Cavelli said. "That's not the end I'd have imagined for India."

  I had once known Cavelli quite well, or well enough for a publisher. He liked to have long lunches with wine (on occasion, bottles) at his table at Dino's. I was not special; he did this with all the local authors, or the authors who came through town, on his list. He did not discriminate. If you were worth publishing, you were definitely worth having lunch with. Cavelli announced that I'd been an author of his who had left him for the ugly lure of money. Veronica offered me a sympathetic look, but apparently she'd had it with this encounter (ugly money?), and tugging gently on Tiger's hand, she told him they'd be late if they didn't get going. With farewells, they left.

  Theodor was called away by the girls, and Cavelli and I stood there for a moment before his wife called for him to leave. "That was your mistake, India," he said, assuming he understood the larger picture, the route that had led me to this—what to call it?—this decision, and once again I pictured vividly the eagerness with which I would return Monday morning. I had worn the dress of failure. I would never forget how it fit. My former world would never have power over me again. I was released. I was releasing myself. For what became clear right then, falling into sharp focus, for an instant crystalline, was that I had been so willing to throw it all away because the writing had stopped belonging to me. Rather, for me it had come to belong to the opinion of others and mysterious market forces and the power and influence of money, money as the great indicator of everyone's worth. I could not work so hard at writing when I could no longer allow it to belong to me.

  "We would always have published you, India," he continued. "I had great regard for your talent. I hope you don't mind my avuncular nature." Off he strolled, catching up with his wife, the boys running on ahead. As soon as I was out of his vision, I vanished from his thoughts, but he did not leave mine so quickly. What good would that have done me, his publishing me? I watched him make his way around the pond, his slow gait parting the Saturday idlers, not as a swan parting water, as once I would have seen him, but as the elderly man that he was. I had done this thing, you see, I had challenged myself here, and I was going to succeed. This did not have to do with Win now. Monday morning. My desire to return carried me aloft, for the moment, on the great wave of hope. This was a bet with myself now.

  Seventeen

  I WANTED ONE THING. I wanted to win.

  To feel the risk, the exhilaration, the intensity of the present moment, the never-ending now. Risk created the dancing-on-the-cliff's-edge opportunity I was seeking. Without risk, you were just a schlub selling Treasury notes. A plodder. Risk became the wind at my sail, the elixir that fueled me. I came to live under the influence of its sensation, under the influence of the whirl of events flashing across the Bloomberg screen. The challenge was to be the master of it, to use it to my advantage.

  The intensity could make me scared. The speed of the market could make me scared. The large sums in play could make me scared. But as Win reminded me, you're better at your job when you're a bit scared. You just had to harness that emotion. Stay over your skis. The bumps will come—no way around that. But if you're not risking something, you're not making as much. I wanted to win, so I went big.

  Sure, I'd had some small successes and had earned respect. But people seem to remember only when you tank, when you eat it or get eaten. It wasn't only for the small taste of Schadenfreude, but because, aside from tribal rituals—hamburger-eating contests and the like—the financial belly flop was the true test, which showed them who you were, whom they were dealing with. Equanimity in failure knitted you to the tribe. The trick was, then, to cultivate within yourself a fantastic and selective memory for such things, which became, with time, a lot of time—two years is a geological age in this world—like layers of sediment, the stuff that made and defined you in your own mind and in the mind of the tribe, that became the ground upon which you finally stood on your own, a made man, as the mobsters say, an equal among your fellows.

  Everyone knew what the calamities looked and felt like. The knot in the stomach like a bayonet. The sweaty palms. The sense of total isolation, of being thoroughly unfit to command the post entrusted to you, while the trading floor, all abuzz with actual traders earning their way to stardom, silently mocked you as you sat on the egg you'd just laid and braced yourself for the summons to Win's office. Then the yelling, the throwing of things across the room. The boys all wanted to see that—sure, it was spectacular entertainment of the sort comedians speak of when their fellow craftsmen bomb onstage. Now, that's funny! Nothing in the world funnier, really. But the boys mostly wanted to watch how I would walk through that, how I would carry myself. This they would note with the attention of connoisseurs, because in the end we relied on each other. We were under fire together. They wanted to know whom they had with them in the foxhole.

  And so, the day after the big failure I wore—into the foxhole, as it were—a skirt to work, chocolate-brown wool, a loose weave of lace at the hemline, an ivory satin shirt, chocolate slingbacks, a gold wire wrapping pink jasper (designed by Theodor, who was making his way into jewelry, mostly for me) around my neck—a style that could be called corporate chic. I wasn't going to subordinate my feminine side any longer. Most of all, I wore a big, broad smile. I knew one thing clearly: I was not going to make a career out of being a low-level associate. I swiped my security card like a pro, rode the elevator to my floor, swiped my card again, walked to my desk, said my hellos and did not look back, did not dwell anymore on the world I'd left behind.

  And two years passed. My drive and determination were an engine cutting across time and its debris. Two years, from October 2004 to September 2006. George W. Bush was officially elected President of the United States. Yasir Arafat died. Hamid Karzai was inaugurated as Afghanistan's president. An earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a tsunami that killed 225,000 people in eleven countries. Ruby played Offenbach's Barcarolle perfectly, and like a sixteen-year-old, in her winter concert, which, as it happens, I missed, as I missed most of the girls' events. But for now this was as it had to be, and I believed it was a good lesson for them to see their mother work. And Theodor could always attend. Brokeback Mountain won an Academy Award. Gwyneth was invited to play goalie on her lacrosse team, and she accepted. Pope John Paul II died. Will Chapman's Never Say Die was published.

  Let me pause here, amid the flotsam on the shoreline, to let you know that the reviews were universally spectacular. On May 3, 2005, there was an enormous sendoff for the book, hosted by Win on a rooftop terrace belonging to another banker friend of the Chapmans—champagne and canapés and men in tuxedos with gloved hands serving with silver trays, a mixture of artists and bankers who blended well, having ascended to the same plateau. Cavelli worked the crowd effortlessly. To me he said, "Ah, my bond trader. Mortgage-backed securities?" And I, "Good memory." And he, "We still need to get to the bottom of this." And I, tapped on the shoulder by Win, was swept into a different conversation. "You don't miss this world," Win said. Not a question but a command. He was dating a girl named Ginger now, a name more fitting than Beatrix somehow, sleek and young, with her eyes on him possessively as we spoke—the only girl of his I ever met, seen at this party and not again. High fashion, long silky hair.

  The reviews of Never Say Die: "Chapman is incapable of writing an uninteresting sentence." And "The author does not have a banal thought in his brain." And "He can write about the contours of a woman's desire like no other contemporary novelist." And "Never Say Die is a tour de force." And "His publisher has likened him to Thomas Wolfe, but against this
comparison it is Wolfe, not Chapman, who comes up short." More than just the book pages trumpeted his "riches to rags" transformation. Will held court, his strong jaw projecting the confidence of a man who knew his way in this world. Emma was radiant, all previous signs of fracture erased by the anti-aging elixir of success and its reward.

  That was all fine, if somewhat predictable. I, on the other hand, had gone the other way, done the unexpected—the skirt in Agency Fixed had become a made man, earned a reputation as a savvy trader with quick and unwavering views on market positions. My cut-to-the-chase nature was alluring to clients looking for clarity amid market ambiguity. The pace suited me. The constant need to be attentive to twenty things at the same time suited me.

  "A little ADD is a good thing," Win had once said. And I now understood what he meant. Up at 2 A.M. with Japan, calculating figures, the hedge rations of MBS as the market moved. On the line with clients—Blackride, Johnson, with Texas and Georgia. I could do it. It wasn't so different from managing the family—the finances (or, I should say, the debt), the appointments, the insurance, the playdates, the sleepovers, the scheduling of school and camp and lessons and how we'd juggle this and that to pay for it all—grateful every day that those concerns no longer occupied me. I had so many balls in the air at once, and I loved it, loved catching them for an instant simply to throw them right back up there into the swirling circle. I flew to Georgia, to Iowa, to Texas, to South Dakota, to coddle clients, play a little golf. The duffer's game I'd learned under my father's tutelage I had to relearn with the help of a pro, became good enough, just, to pass. I wanted these clients to believe I cared. I listened to them talk about their children, their marriage woes, their third-home ambitions: a chalet in Aspen—was invited there with a ski tour of Ajax, led by an impossibly handsome Patagonian ski instructor. The wife of my client whisked me away from the slopes for a manicure-pedicure at the chateau, administered by an overly Botoxed mobile manicurist—her age hidden in her face like the faintest silhouette of a boat sunk in the shallows of a lake—who announced several times, "I only use French polish," and filled us in on the local gossip (a movie star, a former President, a renowned CEO and their revolving lovers), the wife believing that I'd prefer nail pampering to skiing with the boys. I pretended to keep up with their epic drinking, all of us believing (if not admitting) we were all fine—just fine!—up here, breathing a thinner air.

  July 7, 2005: London's subways and one double-decker bus are hit by Islamic terrorist bombs, killing fifty-two, wounding more than seven hundred. Britain's worst attack since World War II. The Dow continues to rise, breaking records; stock options multiply. Again we vacation in Maine, spending our week in a rented house down the beach from the Chapmans', all of us falling in love with the spot, the intoxicating view working its way into our bloodstream, my daughters coming to think of Pond Point as their summer spot where they will return year after year, summers following summers to the remotest outposts of time. Hurricane Katrina slams the Gulf Coast, killing more than a thousand, displacing millions, nearly wiping New Orleans off the map. Our infrastructure begins showing signs of inevitable collapse—bridges fall, roads crumble. Saddam Hussein goes on trial, and on the same day an earthquake in Kashmir steals some seventy-nine thousand souls.

  "It never stops," my mother used to say when I was a girl. "If it's not one thing, it's another. It never stops." I would look at her and wonder about the consequences of it stopping, of it all suddenly stopping.

  My annual bonus doubles, then triples, then the sky's the limit: B&B stock options that start amassing a beautiful, billowy wealth. And wealth, like certain kinds of sleek sailboats, made one swifter, allowed you to sail faster than the true wind of the market.

  My father tells me he is proud of me for taking responsibility for myself. "But," he asks, "what is it you make? What are you making? What service do you provide?"

  My mother asks, with solemn, doubtful eyes, if this is what I truly want.

  My brother says nothing. I want my brother to say something. I remember the first summer he went away to camp, remember his return. I shadowed him for days, kissed him whenever I could. It was the first time I understood that people left.

  The Dow hits a milestone, topping eleven thousand for the first time since 2001. Vice President Cheney accidentally shoots his friend in the face and chest while quail hunting. Representative Tom "The Hammer" DeLay steps down, forced out of politics altogether. Saddam is found guilty and sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair admit mistakes were made and express regret for the abuse of the Abu Ghraib prisoners.

  It never stops: journalists killed in Iraq, soldiers killed in Iraq, civilians killed in Iraq, riots in Afghanistan, nuclear missile tests in North Korea, Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling convicted, thousands dead in Indonesian earthquake, sectarian violence in the Sunni Triangle, Darfur genocide, Fidel Castro pretends not to be seriously ill, gay marriage rejected, secret court to rule on wiretaps, U.S. revises torture policy, Democrats revise primary schedule, Kenneth Lay dead, grim report on Iraq, Pluto demoted and no longer a planet.

  The mortgage market frothed. Homeownership rose to a record of almost 70 percent. Three headlines I particularly remember:

  June 2005:

  The Trillion-Dollar Bet—Homeowners Take Risks

  in a Bid for Lower Mortgage Payments

  May 2006:

  The New Road to Serfdom—An Illustrated Guide

  to the Coming Real Estate Collapse

  September 2006:

  Mortgages Grow Riskier and Investors Are Attracted

  In April 2006, Lily Starr published her second novel. It became a much-publicized bomb, panned in the daily and Sunday papers. "It took her twenty years to write the first, radiant book. Apparently that's the span of time she needs to write something worth reading." And "This inelegant attempt proves she's a one-book wonder." By June the novel was buried beneath the sediment of other books. I felt sorry for Lily; I remembered the penetrating humiliation; the reviews were likely unfair. But I did not have much time to reflect. I had taken the plunge into what made the world go round, into multimillion-dollar trades and dazzling nights. Was I throwing money away? Yes, I was. And the more I threw, the more the apparent wind behind my sleek vessel brought money my way.

  Theodor had found an entirely new and powerful focus, which allowed me to see for the first time that he hadn't been so carefree in our previous life as I'd always supposed. Our grinding financial concerns had bothered him, but now he seemed re-leased from those concerns, and this I relished and celebrated quietly every day. I loved that he was fabulously lost in his work. He'd completed two new commissions and had a show opening in Amsterdam. He'd hired an assistant—a grad student named Harrison, who wore the same T-shirt every day and followed Theodor around like a shy but earnest puppy—and the studio was full of the lively sounds of tinkering and banging. Theodor's sketches were all over the walls, his plans for new projects expanding. In his spare time he made necklaces, really smashing in their filigree design. He would come home from the studio and we'd have long, amusing conversations over late dinners, and I'd catch myself thinking, in a blinding flash of the obvious: Hey. He's funny, this guy I married! I kind of like him.

  Every day, crossing the bridges into Manhattan, the morning sunlight in all the glass, the traders wonder if today will be the day—because it might, and often is, at least for someone. Every single trader out there is waiting for that day. Again, it is not dissimilar to the writer waiting for the big moment of recognition to occur, to be hailed as great and showered with the reward. Today could be the day. But of course, it comes when you are not expecting it: the big day in the big game.

  The first sign was the lights on the turret, the phone. They were blinking wildly. I knew who was calling. I could tell from the impatience of the lights. I will never forget the day. I will never forget what I was wearing. It was the skirt I'd worn on
the Monday after my first failure: chocolate-colored, a different cream shirt. The skirt had a good vibe, made me feel lucky, strong in my perseverance.

  Snake was in Calcutta for a funeral. So I was first on the desk, Tiger having been stolen away by another bank the year before, along with Josh. Sam had moved to the Wild West of subprime, along with the fabulously successful June Scarpetti. Gus, the analyst, was now an associate and next to me in the hierarchy. The new kids were kids, smart, sharp, going places, but still just on the threshold, freshly minted from the London School of Economics and MIT: Jon, English, a cricket star, and Pat, American, a swim team star, both white boys. They called me, with Jon's British affect, "Mum." The tag stuck after I'd taken them into Win's office for a sit-down, spent a half hour explaining how the floor worked. Did I feel as if I were speaking a foreign language? Yes, but it was a second language, one in which I'd become fluent. Did I borrow something from the Win Johns playbook? Yes, and I may have laid it on a little thick. I was unseasoned enough to want to impress these two by baffling them. Win would not have done that, and when I was finished the young boys sat there, completely flummoxed. "Jon, Pat, you're staring." Two schoolboys in their coolly pressed white shirts, jaws agape. "Yes, Mum. Sorry," Jon said. And it stuck.

  I caught hold of the blinking lights: Cerbeus from Houston on its direct line. Just then our salesperson—a thirty-year-old girl with perfectly blown-out hair, just the same every day, and smart, demanding eyes—marched over, pointed to me and said, "You. With me, now," lifting me with her finger, using that tone of the salesperson, a tone that won't quite accept that she's not a trader, that at the end of a long day she goes home in a cab rather than a town car. Okay, I thought, I'll give her this. This is big and she wants me next to her.