Opening Belle (30 page)

She won't let go of my shoulder. Even though I'm bent forward and not looking at her, Elizabeth hangs on to me. My kids grab at different parts of my lower leg and I'm being touched everywhere that invites access. It's very loving and very suffocating all at the same time.

I think of my current life and how different and grown-up I've become since my time with Henry. Our life together was something I once saw in a movie. I think I liked the movie for the most part, but it's faded from memory, with only the highlights and lowlights still on the reel. The highs and lows have narrowed in their intensity so much, becoming less and less discernible, moving toward each other until the whole memory will mercifully flatline with the passage of time.

“I'm fine,” I whisper to Elizabeth, “it's just a lot to hold together.”

I
ASK
K
ATHRYN
to meet for a drink after work, the third time I've asked her this week. Kathryn doesn't seem annoyed by my repeated requests, but just keeps saying no.

“It's just that I'd like to talk to you away from the office,” I say. “I'm a little rattled.”

“I don't drink,” she replied pleasantly enough. “And I like to leave work at work.”

Most people would feel offended or discouraged by her constant rebuffs, but the more I know Kathryn, the more I know not to be. I think of her desk, her clean, freakish life, and her perfection in all things. Losing any control is not her style. A request like mine is just a diversion from her original game plan. I need to reason with her, to show her the simplicity of the request, and when I do, she says no again.

“But why?”

“Is this about women's rights?” she sighs. “About you wanting me to join that group of complainers?”

“No, those women are pretty disappointed in me and we've disbanded. After the Gruss meeting it dissolved.”

“Very anticlimactic,” she says.

“Even Metis thinks I've failed 'cause the memos have stopped. I didn't exactly get anything done at that lunch, now, did I?”

“You did okay.”

“I swear, Kathryn, this group of women seem to think I hardly opened my mouth. You were there. You saw how catatonic everyone was.”

“You were right.”

“I was right. I don't regret a thing.”

“We all should have supported you. We were just in shock.”

“Well, thanks for nothing,” I say, “because in the end Metis was my only friend. Metis spoke up even if she did so while hiding behind an untraceable server. You know what's weird?” I ask Kathryn. “I miss her. I miss those spunky emails. I liked thinking there was some woman in a far-off office whom I could be friends with.”

“Don't get weird on me.”

“I'm only a little weird, but anyway, I want to talk to you about something else.”

Kathryn shrugs. “I have to be at yoga at seven p.m.”

“I'll walk you to yoga.”

“I do yoga at home.”

“I'll walk you home,” I say, not bothering to check in with Bruce about the time.

There's a small pause while she considers this before answering.

“Okay,” she says while sighing in a way that makes me think she feels sorry for me.

I'm not sure what type of comfort I think I'm going to get from Kathryn, but there's something wise about her and I want some of that to rub onto me.

Within minutes we're walking all the way down from Midtown to SoHo, giving us plenty of time to talk.

“So”—I cleared my throat—“When I spoke with Henry Wilkins today, um . . .”

“I know what you're going to say.”

“What am I going to say?” I ask shakily.

“You're going to tell me he's freaked out about the market,” she says coolly as she pulls up the collar of her cashmere coat. She looks regal while I look like her disorganized Sherpa.

“It's not just the stock market, Kathryn. It's the entire United States financial system, which is essentially the world financial system.”

“Calm yourself,” she practically hisses at me. Kathryn stops and glances around us as if she wants to see if anyone heard what I just said.

“What you meant to say is that Wilkins feels some banks may fail,” she says evenly.

“It's possible, right?”

Kathryn takes a moment before responding. “The Fed will open the discount window and lend us money. They'd never let us fail because every hedge fund, every mutual fund, every granny in the land would put a run on the banks. Nobody wants a banking panic and that's what we'd have. Worst case is government intervention.”

Kathryn acts casual but I can tell she's thought this through. Just like at work, she never looks my way, always forward, as if she's containing herself. All the way from our offices, with only the switching
walk
and
don't walk
signals slowing us, we talk through every possible scenario of doom.

“The discount window is for commercial banks, not investment banks, and I don't think the government is about to bail out a bunch of rich people,” I say.

“That'll change if something terrible happens. It'll change in a nanosecond,” Kathryn answers calmly.

“Still. Henry's pretty confident Feagin, Bear Stearns, and even Lehman Brothers are looking for someone to buy them. He thinks we aren't able to go it alone anymore, that we're getting so many requests for cash we're running out of money. He thinks Morgan Stanley could fail.”

“That could be true,” she says, adjusting her leather gloves just so, and then she is silent while she thinks. “By nature that Wilkins guy runs extremely hot and cold. Are you sure he isn't short the stock?” She stops to take a good look at me, as if she suspects something about him. “People are making a lot of money from our stock going down. It wouldn't surprise me if Henry is one of them.”

I think about this. What if Henry had a short position in Feagin Dixon stock? What if he were actually helping to create this doom scenario by scaring people like me to sell into the panic, sending the stock down and making him even more money?

Kathryn has moved on in her thoughts. “Worst-case scenario is Feagin Dixon finds a buyer and life goes on,” she says like she's convincing herself of this.

“But whether or not the rumors are true, our stock is crashing,” I note.

“It's short sellers and dumb money that's selling into this. It's panic. Buy on the weakness.”

“Yeah, but it doesn't
feel
dumb.”

Dumb money is arrogant street lingo referring to the individual investor, the lemming, and the uneducated in all matters financial. If Average Joe is selling stocks, it's probably a good time to buy.

“But this feels smart. It's the hedge funds that are shorting the life out of the financial stocks. They can make this disaster happen by making the individual so frightened she'll run to liquidate her retirement account. This disaster can be self-fulfilling and could take all of us down with it.”

“So how can this be something you control in any way? Why worry about it?” Kathryn asks in a mantralike voice, as if she's in a trance.

“Because, it's our firm, our country, my family, and lots of families. It's all our money and my job. Being complicit in this, whatever this is, bothers me. I used to think we were doing something good. Now it all feels dirty.”

Kathryn looks at me again, this time raising one eyebrow into the most perfect question mark.

“You're such a complex creature,” she says, and actually smiles.

What I haven't told Kathryn is that Henry told me to get out. That if I quit right away I could cash in some of my depreciating stock within two weeks, take my profit on CeeV-TV, and be gone. But I don't want to quit. I'm haunted by this thought of Henry possibly shorting my stock, of what a keen trading sense Henry has and how he's always one step ahead in the race. Henry thinks the common man and woman is about to get crushed but what if he's part of the crushing?

We've walked all the way down to loft-filled TriBeCa, where people look cool and arty and where fancy women like Kathryn appear lost. I did notice that we passed right through SoHo but didn't want to say anything.

“Come upstairs,” she says while turning abruptly into a nondescript building with grating across the windows. A single digital keypad gives her access.

She lifts the gloves from each finger as if she is plucking flower petals. She touches the keypad and buzzes us in.

“You live here?” My voice squeaks a bit, embarrassing me, and I want my heart to stop racing. “I thought you said SoHo.”

“Surprised? Don't tell anyone. I demand privacy. TriBeCa.”

“I, um, I just had you pegged somewhere north of here.”

“We all do that stereotyping thing. You may need to open your mind, Miss Isabelle. You may be enlightened.”

I'm in an industrial elevator large enough to hold a Volkswagen with a woman who belongs in a mannequin catalog. The elevator opens into white space, large and mostly empty, with a few white couches, a single white orchid, and some white candles, mysteriously already lit. There is no obvious center to the place, no nucleus where one can imagine the kitchen sitting just to the left or the bedroom just behind a hallway. There isn't a magazine, a book, or a forgotten coffee mug. I feel as though I'm in an under-construction, minimalist spa.

Kathryn pushes something on the wall and a white door slides back to reveal white coat hangers and about ten pieces of clothing, all dark-colored. She mechanically removes her coat, places her hat on the one empty shelf, and offers to take my coat. As she hangs it she seems to sniff it for bedbugs or kid remnants. Yet whatever Kathryn does I find more intriguing than insulting. There's nobody like her. She removes her shoes and indicates that I do the same while handing me Asian-influenced slippers embroidered with white silk and I dare not refuse.

I wonder to myself, when was the last time I wore slippers? I believe it was in the hospital after having my last baby. Children make some things fall to the wayside, where they enter a black hole of distant memory. They're the incidentals, the side items. For me it was things like nice makeup, jewelry of some value, manicures, cashmere, and waxing. Those left my life one by one until the last slipper was lost and never really missed. For me wearing slippers was replaced with Owen's life. That was a good trade.

I want to say “Nice place” to Kathryn but it doesn't feel nice. It feels big.

“Big place” is what comes out of my mouth. “Did you just move here?”

“Bought this place six years ago when I got divorced,” Kathryn says. “It's how I keep centered.”

“Centered,” I say simply, wondering if she has a hired candle lighter. Surely she doesn't let them burn all day.

“I had a life that didn't work, chaos, drama. I was always behind,” she continues. “I always felt panicked and encumbered and confused.” I listen as I hear Kathryn describe me. “Then I met someone who taught me to unfetter myself, to keep my eye on the prize.”

“The prize being . . . um, becoming a managing director?”

“Aren't you proud of us?” she says, with some acknowledgment of sisterhood on her almost smiling face. This is the closest she's ever come to being human around me.

She steps behind a white screen and speaks from there. The slight exertion necessary when one changes clothes alters her cadence slightly.

“So how exactly did you unencumber?”

“Got a life coach and a yogi. Traded them for my needy husband and thoughts of having a family. I wasn't getting pregnant no matter how many drugs they pumped into me. The coach made me get laser sharp about the things I wanted, the yogi gave me my mind and body back. My shrink pointed out that I couldn't have it all, nobody can have it all, at least not at the same time. I made my choices about the things I needed to change to get what I wanted and it worked.”

I thought about this. Was that why I was so unhappy with Bruce right now? Was I just trying to have it all at the same time and squeezing him in the middle of my own personal pressure dome?

Kathryn emerges now in yoga pants and an exercise bra. Her abdominals look like mine used to but I can't remember the decade. She comes and sits before me, cross-legged.

“What you should be concerned with is hanging out with those women. They're so non-contributing and they're not at your level. They're sucking energy from you and you should distance yourself. They're giving you a bad reputation and you're not like them.”

I know Kathryn is referring to the Glass Ceiling Club and I have a déjà vu moment, where my mother is telling me to rid myself of my fourteen-year-old friend Abigail Acuna because she wore bright blue eye shadow and Miss Sixty jeans.

“We aren't exactly friends, Kathryn, we have a professional motive that unites us. We know we can change some things at Feagin. We never imagined these other firms getting brought to their knees like this, never foresaw where crummy loans and hedge fund rumors could get us. Seems like a bigger problem now than crappy treatment of women.”

“Oh, Belle, we aren't some government agency, we aren't a team. Nobody can succeed in these jobs without some ice chips in her veins. Your emotional lovelies weigh on you. Be free of them and any other baggage and you'll find happiness.”

I think about this insight for a moment and find myself liking Kathryn just a little bit less.

“There's nobody in my life I want to rid myself of,” I say bluntly. “I mean, maybe there are a few who should hit the road,” I say, sadly thinking of the two-faced Henry. “But I really like them all. So what if I'm spread a little thin?”

“Belle, look at you. You're a wonder in that you've gotten so far despite your parade of dependents. Those women are hangers-on and completely disposable. Do yourself a favor and cut the cord.”