Matthew Mather's Compendium

by Matthew Mather

  An inch of gratitude propped our relationship back up.

  “I’m sure. I’ll just grab a few beers with the boys.” On reflection, this was sounding like a better and better idea. “You best get going. Maybe we can meet for a nightcap?”

  “It’s settled, then?” said Mr. Seymour.

  Within a few minutes they were gone and I was back with the guys, piling my plate with sausages and rooting around in the cooler for a beer.

  I slumped down in a chair.

  Chuck paused with a forkful of potato salad halfway into his mouth. “That’s what you get for marrying a girl with a name like Lauren Seymour.”

  I laughed and cracked my beer open. “So, what’s the word about this mess between China and India over those dams in the Himalayas?”

  November 27

  The family visit didn’t go well.

  Thanksgiving dinner started the disaster rolling, first because we’d ordered a precooked turkey from Chelsea Market—“Oh my, you don’t cook your own turkey?”—then the awkward dinner seating around our kitchen countertop—“When are you buying a bigger apartment?”—with the finale of me not being able to watch the Steelers game—“That’s fine, if Michael wants to watch football, we’ll just make our way back to the hotel.”

  Richard had invited us down the hall for after-dinner drinks, to his palatial three-story apartment facing the Manhattan skyline, where we were served by his wife, Sarah—“Of course we cooked our own turkey. Didn’t you?”

  The conversation had quickly turned to connections between the old New York and Boston family lines: “Fascinating, isn’t it? Richard, you must be almost a third cousin to our Lauren,” quickly followed by, “Mike, do you know any of your own family history?”

  I did, and it involved steel working and nightclubs, so I said I didn’t.

  Mr. Seymour finished off the evening by interrogating Lauren about her new job prospects, which were nonexistent. Richard offered suggestions about introductions he could make for her. They’d politely asked me how my business was going—I worked as a junior partner in a venture capital fund specializing in social media—followed by proclamations that the Internet was just too complicated to even talk about, and then: “Now, Richard, how is your family investment trust being managed?”

  To be fair, Lauren did defend me, and everything remained civilized.

  I spent most of the rest of the time chauffeuring them around to meet their friends at places like the Metropolitan Club, the Core Club, and of course the Harvard Club. The Seymours had the distinction of having had at least one family member of each generation attend Harvard since its foundation, and at the namesake club they were treated like visiting royalty.

  Richard even graciously invited us to the Yale Club for a drink on Friday night. I nearly throttled him. Mercifully, it was just a two-day visit, and we finally had the weekend to ourselves.

  It was early Saturday morning, and I was sitting at our granite kitchen countertop, feeding Luke, him in his high chair and me balancing on a bar stool while I watched the morning news on CNN. I was cutting apples and peaches up into little chunks and leaving them in front of him on a plate. He was merrily picking each piece up, shooting a toothy, gummy grin at me, and then either eating the fruit or squealing and throwing it on the floor for Gorbachev, the Borodins’ rescue dog mongrel.

  It was a game that didn’t get old. “Gorby” seemed to spend as much time in our apartment as he did at home with Irena, sneaking over to scratch on our door anytime their front door opened. Watching Luke throw food down to him, it wasn’t hard to understand why. I wanted a dog, but Lauren was against it. Too much hair, she said—even having Gorby over was testing her patience, as evidenced each time she asked me to help remove dog hair from a suit jacket or pair of pants.

  Banging his fists on the tray, Luke squeaked, “Da!” his universal word for anything involving me, and then stretched out his small hand—more apple, please.

  I shook my head, laughing, and began cutting up some more fruit.

  Luke wasn’t even two years old, but he was the size of a three-year-old, something he must’ve gotten from his dad, I thought with a smile. Wisps of golden blond hair floated about his chubby perma-glow cheeks. His face was always stuck in a mischievous grin, showing a mouthful of white button teeth, as if he was about to do something he knew he wasn’t supposed to—which was almost always the case.

  Lauren appeared from our bedroom, her eyes still half-closed. “I don’t feel good,” she mumbled, staggering into our small bathroom, the only other closed room in our less-than-thousand-square-foot apartment. I heard her coughing and then the sound of the shower turning on.

  “Coffee’s on,” I muttered, thinking, She didn’t drink that much last night, while I watched some enraged Chinese students in the city of Taiyuan burning American flags. I’d never heard of Taiyuan, so while I dropped more fruit chunks in front of Luke with one hand, I queried my tablet with the other.

  Wikipedia: Taiyuan (Chinese: pinyin: Tàiyuán) is the capital and largest city of North China’s Shanxi province. At the 2010 census, it had a total population of 4,201,591.

  Wow. That was bigger than Los Angeles, America’s second-largest city, and Taiyuan was China’s twentieth-largest. With a few more keystrokes I discovered that China had more than 160 cities with populations over a million, where the United States had exactly nine.

  I looked up from my tablet at the news. The image on the TV had switched to an aerial view of a strange-looking aircraft carrier. An anchor on CNN described the scene, “Here we see China’s first, and so far only, aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, ringed by a pack of angry-looking Lanzhou-class destroyers as they face off with the USS George Washington just outside the Straits of Luzon in the South China Sea.”

  “Sorry about my parents, honey,” whispered Lauren as she snuck up behind me, mopping her hair with a towel and dressed in a white terry cloth bathrobe. “Remember, it was your idea.”

  Leaning down to cuddle Luke, she kissed him and he squeaked his pleasure at the attention, then she wrapped her arms around me and kissed my neck.

  I nuzzled her back, enjoying the affection after a tense couple of days. “I know,” I replied.

  A US naval officer had appeared on CNN. “Not five years ago Japan was telling us to get our boys out of Okinawa, but now they’re begging for help again. Japs have a fleet of their own aircraft carriers coming down here, why on Earth—”

  “I love you, baby.” Lauren had slipped one of her hands under my T-shirt and was stroking my chest.

  “I love you too.”

  “Have you thought more about going to Hawaii for Christmas?”

  “—and Bangladesh will be hit hard if China diverts the Brahmaputra. They need friends now more than ever, but I never imagined the Seventh Fleet parking itself in Chittagong—”

  I pulled away from her. “You know I’m not comfortable having your family pay.”

  “So then let me pay.”

  “With money that comes from your father.”

  “Only because I’m not working because I quit my job to have Luke.” It was a sore point.

  She turned to grab a cup and filled it with coffee. Black. No sugar this morning. Leaning against the stove, she cupped her hands around the hot coffee, hunching inwards away from me.

  “—starting cyclic ops around the clock, constant launch and recovery missions from the three American aircraft carriers now stationed in—”

  “It’s not just the money. I’m not comfortable spending Christmas there with your mother and father, and we did Thanksgiving with them.”

  She ignored me. “I’d just finished articling at Latham and passing the bar”—she was speaking more to herself than to me—“and now everyone is downsizing. I threw the opportunity away.”

  “You didn’t throw it away, honey.” I looked at Luke. “We’re all suffering. This new downturn is hard on everyone.”

  I
n the silence between us, the CNN anchor started on a new topic. “Reports today of US government Web sites being hacked and defaced. With Chinese and American naval forces squaring off, tensions are heightening. We go now to our correspondent at Fort Meade Cyber Command headquarters—”

  “What about going to Pittsburgh?” I proposed. “See my family?”

  “—the Chinese are claiming the defacement of US government Web sites is the work of private citizen hacktivists, and most of the activity seems to be originating from Russian sources—”

  “Seriously? You won’t take a free trip to Hawaii and you want me to go to Pittsburgh?” A muscle tightened up in her neck. “Your brothers are both convicted criminals. I’m not sure I want to expose Luke to that kind of environment.”

  “Come on, they were teenagers when that happened. We talked about this.”

  She said nothing.

  “Didn’t one of your cousins get arrested last summer?” I said defensively.

  “Arrested.” She shook her head. “Not convicted. There is a difference.”

  I stared into her eyes. “Not all of us are so lucky as to have an uncle who’s in Congress.”

  Luke was watching us.

  “So,” I asked, my voice rising, “what was it your father wanted you to think about?” I already knew it was some new offer to entice her back to Boston.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Really?”

  She sighed and looked down into her coffee. “A partner-track position at Ropes and Gray.”

  “I didn’t know you’d applied.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I’m not moving to Boston, Lauren. I thought the whole idea of us coming here was for you to start your own life.”

  “It was.”

  “I thought we were trying for a brother or sister for Luke. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “More what you wanted.”

  I stared at her in disbelief, my vision of our future together starting to unravel with just those four words. But there had been more than a few uncomfortable words lately. My stomach knotted.

  “I’m going to be thirty this year.” She slapped her coffee cup down on the counter. “Opportunities like this don’t come around often. It could be my last chance to have a career.”

  Silence while we glared at each other.

  “I’m going to the interview.”

  “That’s the discussion?” My heart began to race. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I just told you why.”

  We studied each other in mutually accusatory silence. Luke started to fuss in his chair.

  Lauren sighed, her shoulders sagging. “I don’t know, okay? I feel lost. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  I relaxed, and my pulse slowed.

  Lauren looked at me, and then away. “And I’m going for brunch with Richard to talk about some ideas he had for me.”

  My cheeks flushed hot. “I think he beats Sarah.”

  Lauren gritted her teeth. “Why would you say something like that?”

  “Did you see her arms at the barbecue? She was covering up. I saw bruises.”

  Shaking her head, she snorted, “You’re being jealous. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “What should I be jealous of?”

  Luke began to cry.

  “I’m going to get dressed,” she said dismissively, shaking her head. “Don’t ask stupid questions. You know what I mean.”

  Ignoring me, she leaned down and kissed Luke, whispering that she was sorry, she didn’t mean to yell, and that she loved him. Once she’d calmed Luke down, she gave me an evil look and stalked off into the bedroom, closing the door heavily.

  Sighing, I picked Luke up, eased his head onto my shoulder, and patted his back. “Why did she marry me, huh, Luke?” After two or three sniffling sighs, his little body relaxed into me. “Come on. Let’s take you over to see Ellarose and Auntie Susie.”

  December 8

  “How many of these are there?”

  “Fifty. And that’s just the water.”

  “You’re kidding. I’ve only got half an hour before I need to be upstairs for the sitter.”

  Chuck shrugged. “I’ll ring Susie. She can watch Luke.”

  “Wonderful.” I was struggling down the stairs holding a four-gallon container of water in each hand. “So two hundred gallons of water you’re paying five hundred dollars a month to store?”

  Chuck owned a chain of Cajun fusion restaurants in Manhattan, and you’d have thought he could store stuff at one of them, but he said he needed to have it close. A card-carrying member of the Virginia Preppers couldn’t be too careful, he liked to say. He had some decidedly non–New Yorker sensibilities.

  His family was from just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. He was an only child, and his mother and father had died in a car accident just after he finished college, so when he met Susie, they’d decided on a new start and had come to New York. My own mother had passed away when I was in college, and I’d barely known my father. He left when I was a kid, so my brothers had pretty much raised me. Our similar family situations had bonded us when we met.

  “That’s about the size of it, and I’m lucky I got this extra locker.” Chuck snickered, watching my efforts. “You need to hit the gym, my friend.”

  I trudged down the last few steps to the basement. Where the rest of our complex was beautifully decorated and maintained—manicured Japanese gardens next to the gym and spa, an indoor waterfall at the entrance, 24-7 security guards—the basement was decidedly utilitarian. The polished oak steps leading down from the back entrance gave way to a rough concrete floor and exposed overhead lighting. Nobody really went down there. Nobody, that was, except Chuck.

  I laughed halfheartedly at his jab, not really listening. My mind was turning over and over, thinking about Lauren. When we’d met at Harvard, anything had seemed possible, but it felt like she was slipping away. Today she’d gone for the interview in Boston and was spending the evening with her family there. Luke had been at preschool this morning, but I hadn’t been able to find a sitter for the afternoon, so I’d returned home from work. Lauren and I had had some heated exchanges over her going to Boston, but there was more to it than that. There’s something she’s not telling me.

  At the end of the hallway, I stopped and elbowed open the door to Chuck’s storage locker. With a grunt I lifted my two water jugs and stacked them on top of the pile he’d started.

  “Pack ’em tight,” said Chuck, waddling up behind me with his own load. He stacked his, and we turned to go back and get more.

  “Did you see that stuff online today?” he asked. “WikiLeaks published Pentagon plans for bombing Beijing.”

  I shrugged, still thinking about Lauren. I remembered the first time I saw her walking between the red-brick campus buildings of Harvard, laughing with her friends. I’d just gotten into the MBA program, which I was paying for with money I’d earned from selling my stake in a media start-up, and she’d just started the law program. We’d both been filled with dreams of making the world a better place.

  “They’re making a lot of noise about it in the media,” continued Chuck, “but I don’t think it’s a big deal. Just role-playing exercises.”

  “Uh-huh.” Soon after Lauren and I met, heated debates in Harvard Square beer halls had led to passionate nights. I was the first of my family to attend university, never mind Harvard, and I’d known she was from an old-money family, but at the time it hadn’t seemed relevant. She’d wanted to escape from the confines of her family, and I’d wanted everything she represented.

  We’d married quickly after graduation—eloped—and moved to New York. Her father hadn’t been impressed. Almost as soon as we were married, Luke had been conceived—a happy accident, but one that had forever changed the new world we’d barely settled into.

  “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”

  I looked up
. Chuck and I had come through the back entrance of our building and were standing on the sidewalk on Twenty-Fourth Street. It was raining, and the icy gray skies matched my mood. Just a week ago it had been warm, but the temperature had sharply dropped.

  This section of Twenty-Fourth, less than two blocks from Chelsea Piers and the Hudson River, was more of a back alley. Parked cars lined both sides of the narrow street below windows covered in mesh grills. The sound of cars honking floated down from Ninth Avenue in the distance.

  To one side of our building there was some kind of a taxi repair shop, and a small group of men had gathered outside under the grimy awning, smoking cigarettes and laughing. Chuck had had his delivery of water shipped to the garage.

  Chuck gently clapped me on the back. “Are you okay?”

  We wound our way through the taxi drivers and mechanics to his pallet, off to one side of the garage, and picked up some more containers of water.

  “Sorry,” I replied after a pause, grunting as I picked up my load. “Lauren and I—”

  “Yeah, I heard from Susie. So she’s off for that interview in Boston?”

  I nodded. “We live in a million-dollar condo, but it’s not good enough. When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, I couldn’t even imagine living in a million-dollar home.” Affording the condo was a stretch on my salary, but at the same time I didn’t feel like I could afford anything less.

  “Neither could she, and by that I mean only a million-dollar home.” He laughed. “Hey, you knew what you were getting into.”

  “And she’s always off with Richard when I’m working.”

  Chuck stopped and put down his water containers. “Cut that thought short. He’s a creep, but Lauren’s not like that.” He swiped his badge past the security device on the back entrance. When it didn’t work after two tries, he rummaged around in his pockets for a key. “Stupid thing doesn’t work half the time,” he muttered under his breath. Opening the door, he turned to me. “Just give her some time and space to figure it out. Turning thirty can be a big deal.”