by K. C. Maher
The next thing I knew, I was perusing the mortgage bundles for the first time in months. I browsed through files from Florida. The raw material of mortgage-backed securities was delivered to me in rough bundles every week but, ordinarily, I had no reason to look at them. The information was online. But just skimming through these Florida mortgages, I sensed blatant fraud: loan documentation that smacked of NINJAs (No Income, No Job, No Assets). Less than seven years after the crash and low-level bankers were already back to the insane game—just to bulk up bonuses, which would have been fat enough without resorting to fraud. By the time these inflated bonuses came in, the poor borrowers would have defaulted on their homes in Florida. True, nobody at the bank was initiating the swindle, but unless I was wrong, we were peddling it.
Tomorrow I would track down the sources. And this time, instead of looking the other way, I would do what decency demanded.
*
At home, I parked in the garage and stepped outside. The air was oppressive, humid, and still hot. Clouds covered everything except for the new moon. Amanda’s house was dark—I hadn’t seen her all summer. School must have started last Tuesday. Yet there was no sign of her.
In the stuffy kitchen, I drank a glass of tap water and considered dinner. But I wasn’t hungry enough to expend energy preparing something. Upstairs, I undressed and showered in gloom. After drying off as much as I could in the humidity, I stepped into a pair of briefs before lifting the curtain. Now the light in Amanda’s bedroom shone. Perhaps she had moved a lamp, because her bedroom’s bright glow bounced off the asphalt and seemed to pool at my feet, causing me to drop the curtain.
In bed that night, I kept falling in and out of consciousness. Even half awake, I felt exposed. Finally, sometime after two, I rose and slapped cold water on my face. The previous year, the barber had talked me into growing my hair, and now it fell in a wave that just cleared my eyebrow. At first Sterling had liked it. Then, she didn’t. In the bathroom’s fluorescence, my black hair took on a blue sheen.
Back beneath the sheet, I listened to the wind stirring outside. It sounded like indiscernible murmuring, the muffled voices of all who had left my life.
Later, a crack of lightning woke me. Rain beat hard against the windows. I rose and checked that they were all closed. I lay awake while the storm became a drizzle. At four, I quit watching the walls, gave up trying to sleep, and showered. Half an hour later, I heard a car coming up the hill, threw on a T-shirt, and grabbed my raincoat from the downstairs closet. The Jeep Wrangler pulled into Amanda’s driveway. I dashed out the door to speak to Cheryl Jonette.
In the last shades of night, I hopped over puddles. Beads of water ran from my hair. I rapped my knuckles on Cheryl’s car window. She stared straight ahead at the slowly rising garage door.
I rapped her window again. ‘Ms. Jonette, a word.’
The window lowered and the garage light spilled onto my bare, wet shins.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.
‘I heard your car and seized the moment. As they say.’ My fake smile tightened.
‘I wasn’t able to be here last week when Amanda started eighth grade. I’m here now.’
‘Did she tell you that Olivia’s in Maine, staying with her grandmother?’
‘When did that happen?’
‘A recent development.’ I took a deep breath, but couldn’t bring myself to elaborate.
‘Well, Amanda can fend for herself.’
‘Your child is alone up here. Now that Olivia’s away.’
Sighing, she got out of her car and stood uncomfortably close to me. Unlike Amanda, with her burnished skin and huge wide-set eyes, Cheryl’s skin was slack and her eyes were small and narrow. Even in her business heels, she was shorter than her daughter, but she held herself as if to intimidate. Her dull, saggy face tilted up, fixed on mine.
‘What do you mean, she’s alone? You’re here.’
‘I mean no one is taking care of her.’
‘If you’re threatening to call some agency, Mr. Mitchell, I’ll fight you to the death. And I’ll win. Our congressman is my good friend.’
Congressman? I didn’t laugh, didn’t even blink. ‘Call me Walter, please. I would never go against your wishes. But look at how isolated Oak Grove Point has become. A few families at street level, and then only Amanda—and me—up here.’
In the watery limbo before dawn, I assumed my calmest aspect. ‘I want to be helpful.’
‘You mean, you’ll check on her?’ Cheryl’s face became a flat but eager mask. ‘Can I tell her to phone you in case of an emergency?’
‘Amanda knows she can do that. But you might tell her to call me if she ever needs anything.’ Fingering the inside of my raincoat for a business card, I explained that I worked long hours, downtown. I showed her the card, pointing out the phone numbers, including my cell, and my email. ‘If I’m unavailable, Amanda should leave a message.’
‘Excellent.’ Cheryl extended her hand and shook mine enthusiastically.
*
In my midtown office before the market opened, yesterday’s dismay slid toward horror as I tracked down the mortgage sources. Brokers in Florida were passing corrupt deals onto us by the hundreds. My group was repackaging them almost like money launderers.
I phoned Glen Engle, who misheard my mention of Florida as a vacation request. ‘Just the thing,’ he said, ‘before stepping into your new role here.’
‘That’s not it,’ I said. ‘I glanced at the raw mortgage files last night and mistakes—or frauds—from Florida kept jumping out at me.’
‘Troubling,’ he said. ‘We’ll correct the situation in February. Now’s not the time.’
‘I realize people have already used these to boost their bonuses, but waiting five or six months is sowing misery—in Florida, and eventually here as well.’
‘I’m not defending the practice. But there’s good reason to wait.’
‘Personally, I find it unpalatable.’
‘Unpalatable, I like that. If you can learn to wait, you could be running this place before you’re forty.’ He paused and cleared his throat. ‘Walter, don’t worry. We’ll take care of this early next year.’
‘I won’t look the other way, not again.’
Another pause. ‘All right, don’t. Hold onto what you’ve found, but put it aside until February. For now, leave it alone.’
‘I’m going to redo our latest products. Do you have a moment to see me today?’
‘Don’t do this, Walter.’
‘I refuse to participate in ruining more people’s lives.’
He cleared his throat a second time. ‘Don’t say that again and we’ll forget this conversation.’
‘I cannot allow this.’
‘Fuck you, then! Be here at three.’
Half an hour before our scheduled meeting, Glen’s boss, the bank’s number two, phoned to offer me a leave of absence. ‘Glen said six months off should satisfy you.’
‘Thank you, but no,’ I said.
At precisely three, Glen’s assistant ushered me through the door. She offered to bring coffee or tea, hot or cold. But Glen said, ‘That’s all right, Heather. We have everything we need.’
I sat in one of two chairs facing his desk, a file balanced on my lap. He got up from his desk and sat in the chair next to mine, adjusting it so that he faced me. I handed him the file. After skimming its contents, he glanced at me, frowned, and then gestured—not quite drawing a palm down his face but indicating exactly that—with a sad turn of his hand. ‘May I keep this?’ Glen held up the file.
‘I’d prefer it. And you have my word—I won’t speak of this again.’
‘I know that. And you have my word. But it won’t help.’
‘I know that.’
Glen Engle stood up, and then we parted in haste and small sorrow.
*
Pushing those mortgages in Glen Engle’s face was akin to handing in my resignation. Why did I do it? Partly because preying on the poor really do
es outrage me. The last time brokers had targeted the destitute, the whole economy crashed.
But I can’t deny that fear of failure played into it as well. I knew I wasn’t cut out to run a department of mortgage traders. All my life, I had surpassed expectations with ease. Failing as the head of mortgage trading would show Bank of America and Glen Engle that their estimation of me had been wrong.
So, instead I chose a way to save face. Money wasn’t a problem for me. I had more than enough to take my time finding a benign or possibly even an honorable career.
The next few days would be unpleasant as the bank decided what to do with me (though the outcome was certain), but I would continue to go into the office until they fired me. Requesting my fate be delivered via FedEx would make me a coward.
That Wednesday, I left the office at five, falling in with the first wave of rush-hour commuters. Senselessly relieved to find my home unchanged, I undressed and sipped Dewar’s with ice.
Wandering upstairs, I soon found myself standing by the bedroom window. With the curtain in one hand, I rattled the ice in my empty glass with my other—and recalled how Amanda’s bedroom light had cast a pool at my feet.
The thought disturbed me, and I dressed quickly: jeans, a fresh shirt, belt, socks, and shoes. My glass needed a refill. There, on the bedside table, stood the open bottle of Scotch. So uncharacteristic of me not to have put it away. So convenient as well. I filled the glass. A text sounded.
But it wasn’t from Olivia!
Seeing that it was from Amanda, I swallowed a searing gulp.
Hi! Mom said to check in or else you’ll call the cops!
I couldn’t help smiling at this and tapped a squinting emoticon along with, Your mother doesn’t know we’re already friends.
In reply, she sent: Promise me that will always be our secret pact!
Her intimate demand pierced me like a dart. Should I be texting with a twelve-year-old girl, not my daughter? Then she added: Please, swear nobody else will ever know!
Miraculously, Amanda’s little addition scattered my guilty fears. She needed a protector. Okay, I typed, and added a thumb and forefinger touching. Then it’s no secret that I’ve always liked you. Sterling and Olivia know it.
She wrote back, fast: Liking each other is different from being secret friends!
My fears started to return. But I reminded myself that her mother had encouraged this. And that all girls love secrets. A girl like Amanda, deprived of attention, might very well need this secret.
Our secret friendship is sacred, I texted. So let’s check in with each other.
A goofy smiley face and what looked like a tiny star circling a larger one appeared in response.
Clicking off the phone, I drained my glass. I shook it, sipped again for any last whiskey clinging to the ice, and set it down before lifting the window curtain.
Behold: Amanda was standing within the window frame. Her hair looked wild, as if she’d hung her head over the edge of her bed and jumped up. Smiling, she pointed to her shirt, one that I had bought for her. Bright orange-pink, with a big brown monkey’s face on it.
Then, she disappeared from view.
*
No one stopped me from attending the next morning’s investment committee meeting. I spoke at uncharacteristic length. Without prompting, I showed my well-grounded projections for a rebound in the housing market. I advocated leveraging all that we could.
Then, to avoid small talk or worse, I waited until everyone left the conference room before closing my laptop and standing up. Neal Patel, one of the senior investment bankers, was waiting in the hallway and matched me stride for stride as we marched toward the elevator. ‘I spoke with Glen. Excellent work, catching those Florida properties. I’ll be happy to give you a reference.’
‘Without mentioning that I yelled Fire! much too soon?’
‘A superior reference, Walter. You’re smarter than anyone here.’
In the elevator, he took out a card and made a note on the back of it. He slipped it to me and said, ‘Tell the headhunters to call me at that number.’
I thanked him, wishing I’d gotten to know him better.
Friday morning, my time had come. I knew it and took a last look from my corner office, Times Square in one direction, Bryant Park in the other. Then, I walked through the department. At each doorway—all open—I paused for a moment. Most people didn’t look up. Denise had waited until this week to take me up on my suggestion that she go on vacation. I was grateful that she wasn’t there to witness my exit. I had emailed Glen Engle recommending her as a replacement for me, but he responded quickly that Joe Schumacher already had the job. A poor choice, I believed, yet I stopped by Joe’s office anyway to congratulate him. When he didn’t respond to my greeting, I commended the back of his head and wished him great success.
Marjorie, who had been my secretary for seven years, told me that Claudia Hirsh in HR wanted to see me at 10:30.
‘I wonder what she’s doing now.’
‘Perhaps,’ Marjorie said, ‘the wait is to encourage impossible hope, which is really just another form of torture.’
‘Yes, but what’s a bit more?’
Marjorie and I had enjoyed working together. ‘Best of luck,’ she said.
‘Yes, you too.’
She had The New York Times on her desk. I asked if she had started the crossword puzzle. She said she never attempted it on Friday. ‘Do you want a pencil?’
Taking the newspaper, I pulled a pen from my pocket and she smiled. She’d miss me. Likewise.
I waited on the fifteenth floor on a small couch outside Claudia Hirsh’s office. I finished the puzzle in a matter of minutes. Last year, at the winter holiday party, Claudia had gotten so drunk she couldn’t balance on her high heels. So she’d taken them off. It had been snowing lightly. Standing beside me in her stocking-clad feet, she had asked me to carry her outside.
‘Pardon me?’
She didn’t want to ruin her shoes. Her feet were freezing.
Claudia was a big woman. Holding her upright while trying to hail a taxi had been tricky. I was strong, of course, and even stronger in recent years, lifting weights in the company gym. But she was cumbersome on the slippery pavement. Later, she blamed me for causing her to lose her shoes. Supposedly, I had ‘dumped’ her into the taxi. I apologized but refused to reimburse her for the thousand-dollar designer heels.
‘Good to see you,’ she said now, opening the HR department’s outer door. In her glass office among a dozen other glass offices, she read aloud a note from Glen Engle. My tenure at Bank of America had made a difference. My work during the financial crisis remained unparalleled. My contributions had been first rate.
Claudia cleared her throat and said, ‘All right. As for severance—’ I would receive my full salary for another year and—this wasn’t standard—next year, a bonus equal to what I would have received had I remained head of risk management through December. I signed several documents and two burly young men in suits escorted me from the building.
I knew the protocol. Often, these security guards wear uniforms, including handguns in holsters. So my walk of shame was relatively gentle. Nevertheless, it had a surreal quality as if I were watching myself on a black-and-white screen full of glitches.
The Metro-North train at midday was virtually empty. I sat in one of the seats that faced another, the way Jimmy Quinn and I always had. Those days weren’t just long gone—they no longer even felt real to me.
Out of nowhere, a disheveled, obese woman set an enormous Duane Reade bag in the seat next to mine and settled herself opposite me. I angled my knees away from hers. The train rolled from the station into the light. She lowered her head to the empty seat beside hers and vomited. Without a thought, I reached out with a handkerchief, which she didn’t use to wipe her mouth but to cover her sick.
‘Excuse me,’ I said and, nimbly extricating myself, quickly proceeded to the next car. Alone in that section of the train, I stared
at the Hudson River. When the train stopped at my station, I completely forgot the Mazda parked in the lot, the municipal permit stuck on the windshield. Mechanically, I trudged up the steep hill of Main Street, proceeding a mile on Broadway before turning right into the enclave and up Oak Grove Point’s spiraling lane.
I sat on the middle step of the wrap-around front porch, which Sterling had added to the house two years ago. The sun moved across the sky. When it reached the treetops, I found my keys and opened the front door.
Upstairs, I thought about going for a run—only to realize I was weak with disgrace. I undressed and shoved my expensive suit, shirt, socks, and underwear into one bag; my shoes, belt, tie, and cuff links into another. I would never wear them again, but cleaned, pressed, and polished, some other guy might use them to get a decent job. I threw my watch in after the cuff links. Then, in the shower, I scrubbed off the residue of cold sweat. But a raw indignity stuck. Clean but humiliated, I lay on the bed, aware of a perverse freedom hovering above me. I had never regretted blasting through my education and starting my adult life ahead of the usual timeline, but by now my youthful plans for law school no longer aroused my interest. I needed a few days before confronting the question of, What next? Standing and pacing, I drifted to the window. When I lifted the curtain, coincidence and fate converged:
Facing my house, Amanda throws her backpack on the ground. She tears off a denim jacket and tugs at the white sweater covering pointy little buds on her chest. She stands on tiptoe and extends her arms from the shoulders. I watch her turn cartwheels up and down the asphalt between our houses. Her arms and legs remain straight and symmetrical. She rolls hand to hand, foot to foot, her long tawny hair flying. Her arms and legs trade weight and balance in circling precision. Up the street six times; down the street six times. Face flushed, hair tangled, she stands opposite my window and looks up. She smiles and waves at me. Alarmed, I grab the curtain to cover my naked body before waving back. Then I fall backward into bed, where I struggle against terrible hopes and fears that are one and the same.
3. RATIOS AND PROPORTIONS
