by K. C. Maher
But Amanda waited. With her finger in the book, she stood in front of me, staring at the floor, and then glanced up, ashamed.
‘Don’t be like that!’ Olivia said. ‘I told you Daddy doesn’t care.’
‘About what?’
‘I broke some flower pots,’ Olivia said.
‘No she didn’t,’ Amanda said. ‘I did. I’m sorry.’
‘Apology accepted. And good for both of you—Olivia for stepping up to take the blame and Amanda for honestly admitting a mistake. On Saturday, why don’t the two of you come with me to the garden store? We’ll get new pots and you can each get bulbs for indoor planting.’
The weekend was windy and rainy, so they were eager to visit the plant nursery. Amanda chose red tulips and Olivia black irises, despite being warned that they were unreliable indoors. I bought extras to compensate, as well as twelve of the recommended yellow iris bulbs. In the car, we agreed that mixing black and yellow would be interesting.
At home, the girls wrapped their bulbs in aluminum foil and stored them inside paper bags in the refrigerator. ‘A few weeks of artificial winter,’ I told them, ‘and when we pot them, the sunlight from the bay window will hit like early spring.’
After potting the bulbs, Olivia lost interest. But ten days later, Amanda came running from her house as I eased the Mazda into our garage. Sterling and Olivia had already seen, but she had been waiting to show me the first tip of green pushing through the soil. In her excitement, Amanda’s whole body hummed. I let her take my hand as she led me to the pots. We leaned over them, our chins in our hands, staring at the spot of green.
‘Pretty soon there will be lots of nubs, which will grow taller and greener every day.’
‘I know.’ She smiled, waved, and ran home. The next week she drew a sketch of the shoots with green pencil, and left it for me to see. Olivia said, ‘I gave her advice. At first, she made them too fat. And then too thin.’
‘You’re an excellent friend. What’s happening with your flowers?’
Olivia’s irises hadn’t broken through the soil. ‘I don’t care either way.’
Sterling bought sketchbooks and two sets of colored pencils for the girls. On weekends, Amanda would knock on the door and proceed to spend hours drawing the stems, then leaves, and finally the green sheaths over the buds that curled away, revealing streaky green and red petals that turned a complete and vivid red.
When the buds were big and beginning to open, Olivia helped Amanda carry her pots home. She hadn’t tended to her own flowers, and although Sterling had taken over watering them, they ended up limp and pale brown.
Olivia returned almost immediately from Amanda’s. ‘Her house is freezing. Her flowers will die overnight.’
‘No, they won’t. Tulips do well in the cold.’
Olivia scrunched her face in disgust. ‘You wouldn’t believe her life, Daddy. On weekends, Amanda does everything at her house that Judy does at ours.’
‘Her mother must have forgotten what it’s like to be six years old.’
‘Amanda’s smaller and younger than me but tons stronger. I tried mopping her kitchen floor. She said it’s easier than the bathroom. But before I was halfway through, I had to come home and lie down. I was so tired, I watched TV all day.’
Later, Sterling told me what she thought. ‘Amanda’s a remarkable little girl and I’m very glad she and Olivia are friends. Any other kid, certainly one her age, wouldn’t notice the house getting dirty.’
‘Maybe her mother has a list of chores.’
‘Most kids would ignore that, if nobody was around for weeks at a time.’
‘What can we do?’ I asked. ‘Her mother doesn’t even leave her enough money.’
‘We can’t do anything unless you want her to end up in foster care. Whatever you do, Walter, do not try to help. You’ll only make things worse for Amanda.’
‘That little girl has to fix all her own meals and eat alone. I was eleven when I felt abandoned at a fancy prep school, where I ate three meals a day at a table with six other kids.’
‘Now you can eat anything, anywhere you choose. And Amanda doesn’t eat every meal alone. During the week, she eats breakfast and lunch at school. On weekends, you always invite her to eat here.’
‘Do I?’
‘At least for dinner,’ Sterling said. ‘You need to be careful, because Amanda’s super-smart and living with more responsibilities than many adults. If you don’t hide your sympathy, she’ll sense it and feel ashamed.’
‘Ashamed—with me? I doubt it.’
‘You aren’t in a position to change things, Walter. If she knows you feel sorry for her, she’ll stay away.’
‘It’s not just feeling sorry for her, Sterling. I feel responsible. She’s Olivia’s best friend.’
‘Don’t go overboard just because you didn’t have any fun as a kid.’
I nodded but left the room before giving in to a fierce impulse to tell her she knew nothing about that.
Five
2008–2011
Wall Street shuddered, and in the third quarter, it collapsed.
On September 15, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and dozens of my former co-workers phoned in distress. I wasn’t worried about them. Those who had caused the crash would rebound. If they felt a pinch, they might lay off their children’s music teachers and/or take less extravagant vacations.
It was Lehman’s support workers–-the secretaries, mailroom people, and the dining room staff—who were in trouble. They had listened to the bankers who advocated keeping the entirety of their retirement savings in Lehman Brothers stock.
Ultimately, the banking crisis’ worst casualties were those on New York City’s streets: the homeless men and women I hurried past or, I’m ashamed to say, even stepped over, early each morning and again each evening, the ones so poor they appeared to have nothing to lose. What they lost was the ghost of a chance, the possibility of employment—crumbs from the table. Their opportunities were gone. No crumbs would fall, because I had spent years gluing them together until they were appetizing enough to sell as a meal for bankers.
Suddenly, my risk management skills were in greater demand than ever. I worked nearly nonstop restructuring the bank’s hollow products. I salvaged everything possible for Merrill Lynch, which Bank of America had absorbed. I was so valuable that, at the end of the year, the bank gave me a big fat special bonus.
This bonanza, huge as it was, didn’t reassure Sterling. Her panic about money puzzled me, considering how astute she’d been as Vince Ferraro’s gatekeeper.
Our personal losses were minor. We still had far more money than we needed. When Sterling remained sad and skeptical, I said, ‘Now’s the time to grab what you’ve always wanted. Million-dollar mansions must be standing abandoned all over the place.’
Surprisingly, she didn’t relish snatching up an empty dream house. Many of her high-living country club friends, having splurged every credit offered them, were now moving to Iowa or Nebraska—wherever the cost of living wasn’t preposterous.
Sterling stopped going to open houses and looked instead to a local contractor named Kevin Dalton. He was popular for building brand-new homes to replace old ones, called ‘tear-downs’ by the wealthy families who hired him. When she wasn’t drinking daiquiris with Nina Malloy, Sterling began spending her time at estate sales with Kevin.
*
For the next three years, I woke before dawn, ran five miles, and caught the 6:35 train. I rarely returned home before 9:15 at night. Minimizing the damage done by defaulted debt, shoot-the-moon derivatives, and extend-and-pretend loans was a herculean job. Fortunately, I took satisfaction in salvaging possibilities from the wreckage.
We visited Kaye in Bar Harbor, or she visited us, regularly. The bond between Sterling’s mother and Olivia was almost palpable—strong and unique. To protect Sterling from feeling jealous on these occasions, I did my best to lavish my wife with attention. Sometimes this pleased her. More often, my a
ttempted intimacies only reminded her that her mother and daughter understood and appreciated each other—without her. To Sterling’s credit, she accepted this fact.
Each year, I received larger bonuses and more vacation time. One year, instead of going to Bar Harbor, we rented a house on St. John in the Virgin Islands. Busy with her sailing club, Kaye was unable to join us.
Without Kaye there, Sterling and Olivia bickered.
Despite the beaches and terrific snorkeling, Olivia was bored and, somewhat to my dismay, spent every spare moment watching television.
When I worried about her boredom, Sterling said, ‘Entire childhoods used to be nonstop boredom. Until, eventually, your imagination kicked in. Before we leave, Olivia will have learned to follow her thoughts.’
I liked this idea and took my pampered wife to bed.
We were away seven days. The flight home was exhausting. When Olivia had finally gone to sleep, Sterling nudged a bag of art books I had bought in the airport bookstore. ‘Guess you’ve got quite the hobby.’
Why the word ‘hobby’ set me off, I can’t say. ‘Your hobby, Sterling, is drinking daiquiris with Nina Malloy.’
She laughed at that. ‘Did I make calm, collected Walter mad?’
Indeed. So mad that I smashed a wooden chair on the kitchen’s hand-glazed tiles. The next morning, I put the splintered wood into two garbage bags and carried them outside.
*
The next summer, while researching vacation spots, I found a lakefront house in the Adirondacks that I thought we should buy. Curiously, Sterling, who spent her life house-hunting, disagreed.
‘I don’t need two homes. Just let me have one beautiful residence in Olivia’s school district.’
Fine by me. ‘But what about a time-share? Olivia could invite Amanda to come up there with us.’
‘First, we would have to find Amanda’s mother to make the invitation,’ Sterling said. ‘And Cheryl Jonette is missing in action. Or has that escaped you?’
It had not escaped me. ‘All the more reason for us to invite her on vacation.’
Sterling waved her finger at me. ‘Do not make Amanda a charity case.’
‘Inviting her to the Adirondacks is not making her a charity case. Don’t act like I’m abnormal.’
‘It’s Cheryl Jonette who’s abnormal. The way she leaves her daughter alone for weeks on end is criminal. But the legal system—really any intervention—would only make Amanda’s life worse. And contrary to what you might think, she’ll need more attention during middle school, not less.’
Six
Summer 2012
By the time the financial crisis subsided, I had acquired enough status at the bank to leave early on Fridays—just like the managing directors with houses in the Hamptons.
One Friday in June, I arrived home while the light was still bright and took Olivia by surprise. The guilty look on her face prompted me to ask, ‘What are you up to, young lady?’
‘Nothing, Daddy.’
I followed her upstairs and noticed Amanda in Olivia’s bedroom, putting down a cell phone. Seeing me, she waved.
‘I know what you’re doing,’ I laughed. ‘You’re calling boys.’
Olivia hopped in the air. ‘Daddy, it’s so fun!’
‘I thought kids didn’t use phones except to take photos and text.’
‘That’s what makes it so fun!’
In their last few weeks as fifth-graders, Olivia and Amanda invented their own language. Olivia showed me a note Amanda gave her in class. I didn’t mean to decipher their code, but I couldn’t help myself. I saw diphthongs in place of prevalent consonants. They reversed vowels and used ‘y’ for short sounds and ‘e’ for long ones. I assumed the scatterings of ‘l,’ ‘m,’ ‘n,’ and ‘r’ were phonetic, because when they spoke their private language, it flowed fast and comical.
When I told Sterling this, she said, ‘Get real.’
But I loved listening to their coded speech—it was exactly like them to have created it. To my mind, Olivia and Amanda were the most brilliant kids who ever lived.
*
After being out with Kevin Dalton one Saturday, Sterling came home with a major announcement—she’d found her dream house! Or rather, she’d found the property for her dream house.
‘We’ll demolish the split-level eyesore and build new,’ she said. ‘Three tall stories and soaring windows throughout. We’ll be able to see the river!’
‘Did you bid on it?’ I asked.
‘Yes, and they accepted like that.’ She snapped her fingers, happier than she had been in a long time. (And I was happy, too, because if she demolished one house and then built another, we wouldn’t be moving for a while.) She wanted to show me the property right away and waited while I changed my clothes.
By the time we left, the bright daylight was dissolving into the first tiny grains that would soon become a soft, calm dusk. Olivia appeared, dancing in the road, showing off an old skateboard that her ‘boyfriend’ Simon had given her.
‘Amanda has better balance, but I’m more daring. And don’t tell us to wear helmets, Daddy.’
‘Then don’t ride it.’
Sterling dropped her voice. ‘Come with me and leave them alone for twenty minutes.’
In the Volvo, she assured me that the girls couldn’t ride the skateboard. They stood on it and tipped side to side, at best. ‘Wait till you see the property.’ She drove through the woods, along a winding road, and parked by a well-designed landscape. Goose bumps lifted the fine hairs on her pink arms. The split-level house at the opposite end, I agreed, looked out of place.
‘Overall, it’s beautiful, Sterling.’
She pointed to a distant spot between tree branches.
‘Ah, the river,’ I said, but my voice lacked enthusiasm.
‘You can’t see it, can you?’
‘Yes, I can. It’s right . . . right there.’
‘We’ll see it clearly from our bedroom window.’
‘It’s wonderful, Sterling. And if you’re happy, I’m happy.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course.’ She wished for me to be thrilled, but showing an elation I didn’t feel would have been worse.
She knew that and patted my shoulder. ‘Well, good.’
‘No,’ I drew her toward me. ‘It’s much better than good. Really, much better.’ I kissed her, which felt so liberating in the open terrain and accumulating twilight that I leaned in and kissed her again for a long time.
Later in the evening, I mentioned to her that, before we knocked down the split-level house, we needed to have it certified as worthless and petition the zoning board.
‘I never said it was worthless.’
‘If you don’t, the ruling will go against us.’
‘Know-it-all.’
Sterling and Kevin Dalton met often, supposedly to discuss the demolition. The only crew Kevin trusted couldn’t begin until next year. So, obviously, they talked about other things.
Autumn 2012
Another September, and Olivia and Amanda were in middle school. Like most sixth-grade girls, they preferred the mall to the daylong hikes that I proposed. Against expectations, I liked the mall’s first floor. Around two huge escalators, the first level contained bright, comfortable chairs and a few long benches arranged near a wall of bronze, down which unending sheets of water flowed.
Darkness fell earlier every week, and that autumn—more so than in any other before it—I felt sad, almost sick, dropping off Amanda in her dark driveway leading to her even darker, empty house. One night, when Olivia was going to bed, I asked if the light in the second-floor window across the street, the light that was always on, shone from Amanda’s bedroom. It did.
Spring 2013
Olivia decided at the end of sixth grade that she wanted to attend the year’s last school dance. Held in the gym from 9:30 pm to almost midnight, the monthly dances hadn’t interested the girls before. Amanda agreed to go with her and knocked on our door fif
teen minutes early.
Sterling ushered both girls into the TV room. I was in the living room, poring over a book about the golden ratio in classical architecture, and couldn’t help overhearing the conversation. In order to see them, I moved from the couch to a small chair. Olivia was wearing new clothes, sleek black pants and a silky blue sleeveless top that matched her eyes. Amanda was wearing an oversized YMCA T-shirt and a denim skirt Olivia had outgrown. Sterling didn’t like the way the belted skirt bunched beneath Amanda’s T-shirt.
‘Wait here,’ Sterling said. And then, ‘I got this for you when I was buying Olivia some things.’
‘Oh, my gosh, thank you! I love stencil tees.’ After changing in the bathroom, Amanda said, ‘I love it!’
‘Why can’t I have a shorty T-shirt?’ Olivia said. ‘Or one with palm trees on it?’
‘You have so many clothes, you’ll outgrow them before you can wear half of them,’ Sterling said.
‘I’m a spoiled brat, is what you’re saying. Daddy, are you ready? In another minute, we’re gonna get the anti-smoking speech.’
‘Olivia, don’t be rude. Apologize to your mother.’
She did so, barely.
When I returned from dropping off the girls, I coaxed Sterling into taking a walk. We strolled along the aqueduct, dark but for the light of nearby houses. She let me take her hand and we walked in silence for a few steps. I led my wife to a pair of boulders where we watched eighth graders smoking behind an ivy-covered fence. The smoke in the early June night smelled like marijuana. The teenagers’ hushed voices occasionally burst into a few emphatic curses followed by laughter.
Sterling wouldn’t sit on a boulder. She didn’t wear jeans. That evening her tailored slacks were a luxurious beige material.
I suggested we go inside the church. She wasn’t convinced, but I opened the door anyway. A white-haired choir practiced by the altar, but nobody stopped us from climbing the stairs to a room with a bench facing a pair of open windows. It overlooked the smoking eighth graders, a group that slowly grew. The light in the room wasn’t strong, but when I draped an arm around Sterling and she brushed the hair away from her face, I noticed new lines on her freckled, reddish neck. She wore make-up applied so carefully you wouldn’t notice it unless you looked closely. But I was entitled to look as closely as I wished. It saddened me to see small pouches under her eyes and the indentations running from the sides of her nose to the corners of her mouth. She was forty-four years old and had grown up by the ocean. Her hair felt dry and stiff. Once a month she went into the city and had several hues of brown applied at an expensive salon.
