The Idea of Him (2 page)

2

Homefront

When I walked through my front door, I had to push every memory from that taxi ride out of my head. Lucy, in particular, would need me to focus on the excitement she'd had wearing the caterpillar costume made out of foam and pipe cleaners we'd worked on for days. Even after dinner, Lucy wouldn't let me take off her green face paint from the caterpillar role until her daddy got to see her.

“Wade. You have to make a big deal about Lucy's face.” I whispered. My husband arrived home about half an hour after I had that night, work forcing him to miss Lucy's kindergarten staging of
Alice in Wonderland
.

“Where's my superstar?” Wade said to Lucy on cue, as he rushed into our bedroom with a bouquet of purple tulips he had picked up at the corner market for her. “I hate that I had to be at boring meetings at the magazine all day and miss your show!”

Lucy jumped up onto the bed to see him at eye level. “Daddy! I didn't forget anything this time.”

He hugged her hard and then held her at arm's length. “You have a little something green on your face,” he said in a mock serious way that made Lucy first furrow her brow and then break into a giant smile once she got the joke. Wade released her, and she snuggled back up beside me as he pulled off his work shirt and tie in one big motion, throwing both into the hamper.

That's when a very strange thing happened. A casino chip with Five Thousand Dollars written on it fell out of his shirt pocket. I wouldn't necessarily have noticed had Wade not dove for the chip like a linebacker. I didn't let on that I'd seen it or the more alarming amount; instead I made a mental note of his unusually athletic attempt to hide it. Something inside made my heart break for no concrete reason except that it felt suspicious.

Once he got up off the floor and surreptitiously stuffed the chip into his khaki pants, I looked at my husband like I didn't even know him. He grabbed Lucy and carried her back to her room sack-of-potatoes style.

I stood in the doorway of the bedroom in our cramped New York apartment mulling over that chip. We didn't have five thousand dollars to throw around or to keep in our pants' pockets. Wade was the editor of a flashy newsmagazine, but that didn't mean we had a comfortable amount of savings. New York is like that. Everyone here except the Wall Street, one-percenter crowd is living on a financial edge where close to nothing is left over. My PR firm salary combined with his editor salary didn't pay for much beyond a small apartment and two private-school tuitions. Five thousand dollars really mattered to our bottom line.

And Wade wasn't a gambler. He didn't hide things from me. We were opposites, but we came together at a safe place in the middle where I harbored a notion that trust was key. When I first met Wade, he had six people glued onto him like a snake charmer and still had enough juice to lure me across a room and into his comforting spell. And despite the distraction of a persistent flame from my past, and to be honest, partially because of that flame, I leaped into a frenetic New York City life with Wade, covering my eyes and holding my breath.

I heard Lucy screaming from the bedroom, “Daddy, air lift!” I entered and saw Wade hoisting her skyward, missing the light fixture by mere inches.

“Wade. Please! You're going to hurt her on the light! And make sure you give Blake some attention before bedtime; he's upset over . . .”

“Who gets every joy of the earth?” he asked as he threw Lucy up again, giving me the eye.

“Lucy!” she shrieked, falling back into his strong hands.

“And who was the best caterpillar in the show?”

“Daddy, there's only ONE caterpillar!”

“And what girl does Daddy love best in the world?”

“Lucy!” They collapsed onto the bed, and Wade tickled her until she yelled out for him to stop, happy tears streaming down her face. Wade cradled her in his arms for a few more moments, singing a little song he had made up when she was a baby, then turned to me and held my face in his hands, dispelling any residual wifely annoyance over the casino chip I preferred to ask him about later.

“Allie, I know all you do to make the kids happy—making her costume so intensely the night before and keeping all your work pressures out of the kids' lives—and I love you for it.” He kissed my nose. “And don't worry about Blake; I know you're worrying about him too. I see that concern in your face.”

“Yes, I'm worried about him. They don't include him in so many of the little things his group does all day. All because of one kid who loves the power to exclude. I want so badly to call Jeremy's mom again and—”

“You cannot do that again. No way. She is going to tell the kid exactly what you said on the call even though she promises to handle it discreetly. And that'll just make Jeremy ostracize Blake more, and then you get busted for interfering. Fourth grade is rough, but he's got to learn to handle his friendships on his own.”

“Wade, I know you are right, but his circle is edging him out again, and I don't know how a nine-year-old is supposed to figure that out. They went to get snacks at the vending machine again at recess and told him he couldn't come.”

“Well, I'm going to help him man up a little, and then he'll work this out for himself.”

Another thing I loved about Wade: he knew exactly what our kids needed when they were down. What woman doesn't love a man for that? But that casino chip would pop up again and, in time, signal a transgression no wife could ignore.

3

Power Jaunt

The next morning, I rushed to see my boss for fifteen minutes before a client meeting at New York's famed Tudor Room. It didn't help my mood that I was meeting him at a restaurant that operated more like a private club for high-octane achievers than a pleasant place for lunch. Absolutely nothing in my makeup or past experiences prepared me to hold my own in the ring with the wealthy gladiators who lunched there regularly; I just happened to be employed by one of them. I walked into the restaurant lobby with a confident stride, wondering if the people watching my entrance pegged me as an imposter.

My boss, Murray Hillsinger, a toadlike man, had already positioned his large bottom smack in the middle of a coveted corner banquette, twisting his jowls left and right to survey the scene from his primo lily pad. He was very proud to have his square corner banquette (even though it wasn't as prestigious as the center round tables—those went to higher rollers with huger titles, companies, and net worths). I took a deep breath and walked over, smoothing my hair as I did so, trying to exude professional acumen, the only attribute I could for sure hold on to.

“Allie, come here. Glad you came before my lunch partner shows up.” He patted the leather next to him. “You're going to do fine, kid.”

Like so many guys named Murray, it seems, he grew up poor on the backstreets—in this case, Long Island City, Queens. His nose was crooked from one too many fistfights, and his large forehead was now crowned with an unfortunate shoe-polish comb-over. The expensive loafers he sported were not designed for feet that caused the leather to crack in a fault line next to his big fat pinkie toe.

I moved my way around the seat on Murray's right. “Relax. It's going to go fine,” he told me as he chomped on a large cauliflower cluster drenched in green dip and roughed up the back of my hair like I was his kid sister. I
was
a kid when I started this job a decade ago in my early twenties, and neither he, nor I, to my dismay, ever got past that initial dynamic.

Georges—the famous-in-his-own-right maître d' of the Tudor Room—rushed to the table, an invisible cloud of his cologne preceding him. Georges ladled more dip into the ramekin dish as he asked, “Would you rather I pour the sauce on your tie directly, or should I allow you to stain it yourself?”

The very French Georges knew that the powerful always favor those employees willing to show jocular insubordination. I watched as he moved off into the room, slipping from table to table making clever, and often hilarious, asides to the assembled men and women who pretty much ran every major hedge fund, real estate empire, and media conglomerate in Manhattan.

Murray sat at the helm of the biggest public relations firm in New York, Hillsinger Consulting, hell-bent on saving the reputations of most of the people in this very room, many of them guilty as charged for causing the recurring economic downturns that trickled down and crippled the rest of us. The Tudor Room was a new hotspot for these powerful warriors who dined in packs, many having migrated from the more clubby Four Seasons Grill Room. The new place was part lunch spot and part womblike secret society where they all felt cozy in their amniotic bubble—this protective coating thickening ever since they had been targeted by America for causing the biggest economic downfall since the Great Depression.

“Order something, Allie!” Murray barked, always solicitous in his own special way.

“Thanks, no food, my meeting is soon,” I said. “Besides, I'm too on edge.”

“About what? You're tough. That's why you got the big job,” Murray said, trying to prop me up for my meeting in fifteen minutes at the Tudor Room bar to placate the unreasonable newswoman Delsie Arceneaux. If I didn't always have the keen sense that Murray believed in me, and if I hadn't always witnessed him doing the mensch-y thing, like promoting all the smartest women in the office, I would have quit doing crazy things for him long ago.

Sitting at the bar, Delsie Arceneaux glanced over and winked at Murray through her signature large tortoiseshell glasses as she barked into her phone before our meeting started. She was the impetuous, African American news anchor of the “all Delsie all the time” cable news network, most famous for draping her fortysomething, voluptuous body over an army tank while she interviewed the commander of the U.S. forces in Kabul. The perennial glasses had been Murray's idea to disguise her beauty queen looks and highlight her legitimate cerebral side.

“No,” I replied. “You got the big job. I service your requests and put your crazy notions on paper.” Today's particular request was to placate a news anchor, known for alienating her staff by overriding their every decision and action. “Does she even know we are also representing the people who are asking her to speak . . .”

“Order some broth, Allie.” Conflict of interest was a concept that Murray Hillsinger found utterly tiresome. “Calm the fuck down. Nothing wrong with us booking our own clients for our other clients and taking a little cut on both sides.” He pushed the tan parchment paper menu too close to my face and pointed at the appetizers.

Georges came over to hover and pour two thousand more calories of dill cream into the dip ramekin.

“I don't want any soup, Murray.”

“Give her the soup, Georges. She works too damn hard and deserves a little pleasure once in a while. You know the good one I mean. The light one, the brothy one. With those duck balls.”

“Foie gras wontons, sir.” Georges wrote the request down with his dainty fingers wrapped around the tip of a miniature gold pen.

“Really, Murray?” I pleaded. “Thirty-eight dollars for consommé I don't even want?”

“She'll have the consommé.” Murray looked at the maître d' and then back at me. “You got some time before your meeting. It'll settle you down. Gimme the lobster salad before my guest arrives as a little preappetizer. Double order.” Georges nodded and left the table.

“Why are the most famous people also the most neurotic about public speaking gigs? She looks into a camera and speaks to four million viewers and she can't give a speech to two hundred people?”

He patted my hand. “All the news anchors do this. The camera is her guardian and her barrier. Without it, the live audience terrifies her. Just go handle her nerves for me. And have some soup.”

Next to me, a glamorous newspaper publisher in a sunny yellow Oscar de la Renta spring dress and matching bolero sweater raised her index finger in the air at Georges and mouthed
Charge it to my account
as she sashayed toward the door.

I leaned toward Murray, whispering, “I don't need the soup because I don't like to throw money away like all your friends in here.”

“It's not about the money in this room. It's about what you've accomplished.” He stole my nose with his finger like I was five years old. “M-E-R-I-T-O-C-R-A-C-Y, kid. 'Tis the beauty of this room. Money gives you power in here, but only if it's ‘fuck you' money you earned. There's no one with Daddy's inherited cash in here. Self-made or get the hell out.” Murray's voice was thick, more truck driver yelling at someone to get out of the way than genius spinmeister. As Murray turned his head to wave with feigned friendliness to a rival, two little curls of hair behind his ears bounced out from the hair gel meant to smooth them down, making the flat part of his comb-over seem that much more incongruous.

I looked at my watch. Five more minutes before my meeting. Across the room, I saw Delsie throw the long end of her spring, lime-green cashmere scarf around her neck and behind her shoulder. “What about Delsie with her four-point-five-million-dollar annual salary you worked so hard to leak?” I asked. “It's not about the money in here?”

“That broad's got raw star power and black and white viewer appeal no one can touch. Delsie took over that cable network and got the ratings they'd coveted for years. No one can say she didn't do that on her own.”

“On her own? Really? You believe everything you peddle, Murray? Delsie secretly pays us to doctor her appearances and often her scripts. Did you forget you have me fixing her lame copy at all hours?”

He smiled at me. “Even a fuckin' genius like me can't spin something out of nothing. Everyone in here has to deliver the goods.”

I didn't try to argue. I knew he was right on some level: Manhattan did harvest a huge crop of people who came to this city from small towns across the land and rose to become the lead players in their fields of art, fashion, publishing, or banking. Most of those tried and tested winners were in this very room.

The consommé arrived, and I know Murray made me order it just to prove his point: that a foie gras wonton floating in a small bowl of duck broth could actually command a $38 price tag. I tried the broth first. It went down smoky, gamey, with a big hint of honey. Even though it was a clear soup, it was so rich that just two sips made me thirsty. Like their patrons, the chefs had also overachieved to create something outstanding: they must have roasted three hundred duck carcasses to produce the heft of this broth.

I smiled. “You're right. I mean, it's not worth thirty-eight dollars of my money for a small cup of soup, but if you can afford it, I guess, yes, it's very special.”

Murray splashed his big spoon in my broth, spilled a little on the table, and slurped up some for himself. “No. It is worth that money!” He was almost yelling at me. “It's supply and demand and the effort to . . .”

There were supersized personalities back home in Squanto, Massachusetts, for sure—many of them in fact. My own father had led the pack. He had had no money to speak of, but I remember so much about how he behaved around the house: he always had his fellow fishermen over after they'd all chartered their boats out or had come in from a day on the sea. Everyone would bring burger patties or beer and they'd sit around pontificating just as loudly and confidently as the men and women in this restaurant. My father was one of the loudest and most charming ones—boisterous and charismatic—but he didn't think everyone had to agree with his every opinion just because he walked into a room.

“And don't forget to tell Delsie I want her covering the Fulton Film Festival I've worked so fuckin' hard to put on the map. Art films. Science. Action. Whatever. Fuck Sundance!” Murray picked up an entire lobster claw from his salad with his fingers, put it on half a roll, and mashed both into his mouth. “Mark my words, Allie, maybe you'll never have big money or pick up the check. But you're going to be respected 'cause you did something great. You saved people. You invented people. Your PR helped them reach their greatest potential.”

Creating illusions had never actually been my plan. My plan had been to write novels or long magazine essays, not use my MFA creative writing degree to craft press releases that got people out of trouble or made them appear to be something they weren't.

“Take that guy over there for starters,” Murray yelled as he glanced over to the podium at the entryway of the restaurant where Wade stood to have lunch with a potential interview subject. My husband came to the Tudor Room as a way to network with important people he needed to put in the magazine or to entertain potential advertisers. He was able to play in the power brokers' sandbox by charging every lunch to his parent company.

“Maybe,” I allowed. Across the room, Wade smacked Georges's shoulder while whispering some delicious bit of gossip into his ear. I adored my husband's ability to get everyone on his side, but his arrival also made me feel even more out of place here, like everyone but me had a code and language and sense of humor I could never quite grasp.

When I first met Wade, I was instantly drawn to the symmetrical, thick, blondish-gray waves in his hair that neatly rolled down the back of his head, ending about a quarter inch below his collar. As I watched him walk up the movie aisle that first night, he flashed his smile back at me, having noticed me a few seats down. I felt my stomach churn because the long hair reminded me of brawny guys on the Squanto fishing docks I'd grown up with. When he joined a group of rapt partygoers to grab a drink beside the bar in the lobby, I instantly felt left out. That's the effect he had on a room: his circle was the one to be in—and most of us were on the outside looking in.

Murray beckoned for Wade to come over. “Well, for one thing, your husband's the only prick cocky enough to walk in here in jeans, and not even Georges stops him.”

My husband did have an uncanny ability to skirt the rules without acknowledging them in the first place. A brass plaque on the coat check downstairs clearly read:
Jacket required. Please refrain from wearing blue jeans at the Tudor Room
. Wade had on very blue jeans, a white Oxford cloth shirt, a beat-up leather blazer, and black sneakers. He was a bit of a rebel in his industry by always going after people in print he seemed to be cozying up with on the social front. “Always bite the hand that feeds you” was his professional motto.

Wade glad-handed his way toward us as Murray watched him. “M-E-R-I-T-O-C-R-A-C-Y, baby, I'm telling you. Your husband isn't known for having much cash on hand, but he's a member of this crowd no doubt. That magazine he runs is still a juggernaut, despite the fact that it's a fuckload thinner than it used to be. Maybe his parent company is deep in the red right now and he's always going to be low on personal funds because what the fuck does an editor make? Peanuts in this city.” Murray slammed the table so hard that the cauliflower popped out of the basket. “But he's got primitive power—he turned
Meter
magazine around from a piece of dilapidated dusty old shit into the absolute number one must-read for everyone in this room.
The ultimate media macher
.” I didn't remind Murray that my husband, ten years my senior, did all that twenty years ago—before YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blogs, and online anything. People who still worked on real glossy paper in 2013 had far more uncertain futures than anyone in the room, even if Wade did everything he could to dispel that. “And he had the sense to marry you!” Then Murray added, “
And if he ever doesn't treat you right, I swear I'll kill him.
”