“The problem with that, Sylvia, is that you don’t earn a red cent. You haven’t worked in eight years. You don’t make those decisions.”
“I make the decisions that affect my children in this house. And, if you’re going to second guess me every day, I’ll…” she faltered.
“You’ll what?” Just a slight raise of the eyebrows. Sylvia knew that look. “Hmmm? You want to tell me what you’ll do?”
At that moment Sylvia hated only one person more than Jack: herself, for not being able to find a way out of this. Not a way that she could live with.
Jack closed the door behind him. The steps creaked as he made his way upstairs. He was leaving tomorrow for New York, some kind of merger/arbitration/litigation/who the hell gave a shit. Sylvia stopped listening.
After a moment, she actually felt quite calm, almost happy. Jack would be gone for two weeks. That gave her plenty of time to figure out her next step. Wasn’t there a Chekhov story like that? She tapped in her question.
At the end of the day, Celeste drove to her townhome, started boiling water for the pasta she would make, then opened a bottle of wine. Pinot Noir. Oregon.
Over a bowl of pasta, she opened her laptop and ran through her own accounts online. The mortgage balance was dropping nicely—the savings, the retirement, the mutual funds, the emergency funds, all accruing at the rate she had anticipated, some even higher.
But that’s how it should be. No use having a financial planner who can’t make her own money grow. Just to spice up the emotional component, Celeste had invested in something she never recommended to her clients unless they had a tolerance for risk as well as the financial capacity to lose money—a high risk investment. This one was a telecom in Ecuador.
When it quadrupled, Celeste sold half. When it next doubled, she sold half again. Now she held on to it just to see how low it could go.
Celeste logged off. No elation, no guilt. Not even a sense of accomplishment. Just another item to cross off her list. The charitable giving that she preached to her clients manifested in her own life through monthly automatic deductions. Her returns were higher than she anticipated, so now she wrote out a number of checks, little bonuses to Save the Children, World Vision, and Doctors Without Borders. Little bonuses to the masses of people living on such a mean scale of pain and desperation that it was almost, but not quite, incomprehensible to Celeste.
Celeste had heard Oprah say, “It’s not about writing a check, it’s about touching someone else’s life.”
“No, my dear Oprah,” Celeste said out loud, “Now there you’re wrong.” It is about writing a check. It’s quick, clean, simple and easy. As long as you have the money in the bank to back it up, it’s easy to give money, but it’s hard to give of yourself.
Herself, she had conserved for her family. Where had that gotten her?—Nataly cursing at her.
Well, there was no point in thinking about that now. Celeste poured more wine. Nataly, what did she know? How long would everyone let her be a thirty-two-year-old kid? How long would everyone pretend there was actually a future in stitching remnants of material together and labeling it as some kind of lofty art?
During college, Celeste had brought up the topic of socking something away for retirement. Celeste mentioned compound interest. Nataly had looked blankly at her, yawned and changed the subject. Why did that irritate her so much?
Because, for Christ’s sake, if she had yawned when Nataly was explaining the theory behind her tactile installation pieces, Nataly would have savaged her. Nataly was an artist, after all, something beyond the comprehension of practical-minded Celeste, right? Isn’t that exactly what Nataly said?
Celeste occasionally wished she were an artist. The hideous behavior of artists was so often excused because of their occupation. Financial planners, on the other hand, weren’t given much leeway in throwing fits and living irresponsibly.
She had brought up the thought of retirement because she could see that, at the rate Nataly was going, she would be impoverished at sixty. Because she could predict that if he wasn’t stopped, her father would permanently destroy her mother’s credit and all her dreams of security. Because she knew Sylvia was on a sinking ship, with two little girls.
Two little girls. What was that like? What could that have been like?
Nataly had already trampled her heart with all the force and skill of a flamenco dancer. Celeste retreated, exiling herself even further from her family, beyond her own borders. Would Sylvia ever dare to ask Jack about the money? Cada loca con su tema. Every crazy has her thing. Celeste’s craziness was that every word and every deed reverberated into the future.
She sipped the last of the wine. That had been a decent bottle of wine, Celeste thought, glancing up at the clock. Just 9:30. Where had she picked it up, anyway?
Tuesday afternoon. As Nataly ironed the white shirt until the collar and cuffs were crisp, she recalled visiting her father’s restaurant when she was eleven, trailing Sylvia and Celeste, a few steps behind their mother. Nataly watched as the waiters inspected her sisters out of the corners of their eyes. Nataly was somehow invisible. So she improvised with a cartwheel. And it would have been just fine, except that her sneaker collided with a tray table full of salads.
Nataly slipped into the black polyester pants she hated—except that they hugged her just right—and headed to work. She supported her artistic ambitions and addictions by working in a swank restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. Rimsky’s was proud of its vodka selections and Californian-Continental cuisine. It was occasionally featured in national magazines and catered to a glamorous clientele. She had once waited on Brad Pitt, who had left her a fabulous tip. (But she hadn’t wanted his tip, had she really? She wanted her work on his walls. She wanted him to see her as the artist she was, not the server she was forced to play).
Nataly had refined her serving skills as she put herself through Otis, then CalArts. She started out at a coffee shop, then worked at a steak house, where she grew familiar with complicated drinks and menus. She got her current job through her friend Yesenia. Nataly vowed that when she made it, when her stuff was selling, she would have Rimsky’s cater the event. She pictured the enormous specialty vodkas encased in blocks of ice, decorated with leaves or flowers or twigs. A few nervous and frighteningly thin young women would circulate with the blinis, crème fraiche and salmon caviar. They would carry trays of vegetable pirozhkis. The guests at her gallery opening would mirror precisely the glamorous clientele she waited on here.
She’d show them. In the meantime, there didn’t seem to be a particularly high demand for the intricate, labor-intensive textile work that Nataly loved to create. At Rimsky’s, Nataly appreciated the delightful allure of the place, especially during a quiet moment. The bar was sleek, shiny and intoxicating in its promise, the dining area quietly opulent with its floral accents and towering wine glasses. The table linens were crisp, gleaming and luscious to the touch. Everything was there to satisfy the whim of its clients. It was the product of the hidden work of undocumented busboys and immigrant cooks. There was a connection to her textile work, Nataly knew, a connection between invisible labor and exquisite presentation.
Eric, the manager, kept asking her out. She had made the mistake of accepting once during a lonely dry spell and sleeping with him. She had felt absolutely nothing. Pleasant looking fellow, tall, black hair tied back into a short, neat ponytail. He had five different pairs of glasses and was a few years older than her—thirty-four or thirty-five. But completely ordinary. Boring. That
