I could easily crawl into the shell of my own misery and never find out. It’s none of my business, and I certainly have enough to keep my mind occupied. Our family believes that silence shows respect for someone else’s interior life. I could pretend it’s perfectly normal that she’s leaving midsummer, and Yardley would probably appreciate it.
But I reach out. Without Bess, without Penny, without Rosemary (really), and now without Yardley, there will be no one on Beechwood who is my ally. Yardley and I have been every-summer compatriots. We have shared probably one hundred bags of potato chips, read the same books squashed together in the hammock. We have paddled kayaks together, sung campfire songs, picked berries on the Vineyard. We have built imaginary worlds and hunted for lemons.
I gesture that she should stand by me at the wheel. “You want me to drive?” she asks.
I put my arm around her. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I can’t stay.”
“Why not?”
Erin can probably hear snatches of what we are saying, but not much. The motor and the wind make conversation impossible from one end of the boat to the other.
Yardley sighs. “So you know when you asked me about that photo? Of your mom and the guy, whatever, from a long time ago, with the face scraped off?”
Buddy Kopelnick. “What do you know about it?”
“Nothing, not that,” says Yardley. “But what I said to you, remember? When you asked, during the Lemon Hunt?”
“You said not to get involved.” But now the conversation comes clear. I can see Yardley’s face that night, lit by the moon, her yellow floral dress, her hands gripping a wicker basket with a large yellow bow. “You said something like, let the stupid grown-ups deal with their emotional garbage and their illegal stuff. Something about shady guys coming over.”
“Yeah,” says Yardley. “That’s it.”
“Is that what this is about? Why did I not even remember that till now?”
“You were dealing with your own worries; it’s fine.”
“What shady guys?” I ask.
“Yeah, exactly. ‘What shady guys?’ is the question. The thing is, once that came out of my mouth, once you asked me about the family and stuff they might be hiding, that changed everything. I heard myself say those sentences aloud, I was just like—what did I mean, ‘illegal stuff’? I kind of knew what I meant, but I had never actually spoken to anyone about it. I was just like lalalalala, if I look the other way and think about something else, this isn’t really happening.”
I nod.
“But you—the thing about you, Carrie, is you’re willing to say things. You ask questions. Everybody else wants it all swept under the rug. When I said that to you, about illegal stuff, I was like, Oh. Okay. There’s something bad here.”
“What?”
“My dad—the way he makes his money.” Yardley shakes her head. She takes a moment. “He’s like a money guy that no one ever suspects because he wears a suit and went to Harvard, but he does like all kinds of financial stuff for these white-collar criminal people.”
“My god.”
“I made this friend in sixth grade,” she says. “Jenny Neugebauer. Jenny used to come to my house, sleeping over and all that. We were friends for years, ’kay? But at the start of tenth grade, she disappeared. She never called, or wrote. Like, poof! Gone. All she is to me now is a sweater she let me borrow that I never gave back.” Yardley sniffs and glances at Erin before continuing. “People at school said Jenny’s mom lost all her money, like her business went under and completely ruined her. So Jenny had to go live with her grandparents in Florida. Anyway, I miss her. I never got to say goodbye. And then I went to the library in Edgartown a couple weeks ago,” Yardley goes on. “I had been thinking about what I said to you. I wanted to look up some people my dad works with. Business friends of his who have been over for like, pork chops and applesauce. They ask me how my classes are going, you know. And when I looked them up—it was very bad news.”
“Like what?”
“One guy invested in all these small businesses and then deliberately undermined them so they failed. He made money off of ruining these people’s lives. Now he’s left the country to escape going to prison. Like, he’s an actual fugitive from justice. My dad is his financial advisor.”
“Wow.”
“Yes. And one of the people that guy ruined on purpose? Was Jenny Neugebauer’s mom. It was a documented fact. In the newspaper.”
“You think your dad knew about it?”
“Oh, for certain. And another friend of his—this couple he advises—they were indicted for embezzlement. My dad is way deep in, no question. His list of client friends is full of seriously disgusting people.”
I don’t know what to say.
Yardley goes on: “The thing is, Jenny Neugebauer—my dad knew her. He knew her mom, too. I mean, I know I should care about all the people he’s been screwing over, and all the laws he’s been helping people break, but when I saw that name—Miriam Neugebauer—written down, that’s when I really got it. He doesn’t care who he hurts if he’s making money. If he’s having a good time. He likes a bit of danger, probably, or he likes the feeling of getting away with stuff. And these clients are making him rich.”
“Ugh.”
Yardley sighs. “He’s a good dad. Stupid annoying, a lot of the time, and he drinks too much, but a good dad. Like, he’s horsing around with Tomkin in the water all the time, and making steaks on the grill, and seeing us every weekend when we’re at Mom’s. He takes us places.” She wipes her eyes and sniffs. “And now I basically don’t want anything to do with him. So I told Harris. Last night.”
“What did he say?”
“He got very serious. He said that if everything I said about Dean panned out—that he planned to cut ties.”
To Harris, family means the good name of the family. They are one and the same to him. You must be a credit to the family or he wants nothing to do with you.
When I think about it later, I see that this thinking is compromised. My mother’s family money is dirty—earned by the exploitation and enslavement of people. But Harris can imagine that money washed clean, because it came into the family so very long ago. Then there is dirty money like his own, earned by hard work but also by the exploitation of nonunionized and vulnerable workers. But he can imagine it’s clean because it’s legal, and he cares very much about freedom of the press.
Dirty money like Uncle Dean’s? He cannot imagine that money clean.
I cannot articulate any of these thoughts, nor even think them clearly when Yardley is talking to me, but I feel the force of the situation nonetheless.
This is the last summer we will be together.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“My dad still thinks it’ll blow over. He tells me I don’t understand how he does business.” Yardley takes a deep breath. “But I don’t want his college money and I don’t want his spending money and all the money just seems, whatever, tainted to me, basically. It’s toxic. That’s the money he paid for this shirt with, and ugh.” Yardley wipes the hem of her shirt as if it’s filthy. “I told Harris before supper,” she goes on. “And then I told my dad that I told Harris, and he was all, ‘Honey, don’t worry so much,’ and I was all, ‘I’m leaving.’ And then we all ate, and I was going to tell you, but then we were cleaning up with Tipper and then there was the thing with Penny and Pfeff, and then everyone was all worked up.”
“Who was worked up?”
“Bess, of course. And Erin. And George, actually. Major didn’t care. Sorry about Pfeff, by the way, but I did tell you to watch out.” She pokes me and smiles through her misery. “I completely did tell you to watch out.”
“You did.”
“Pfeff’s a bastard and I hate him and he sucks and I’m never speaking to him again, in case that’s any help. And I told Penny off, as well. I called her the b-word and the f-word and a lot of other words. It was pretty cathartic.”
I feel tears and rage rising behind my eyes. “Let’s not talk about it yet,” I say. “I don’t want to cry.”
She pats my shoulder and returns to her own problems. “So I dragged George away and I told him I needed to leave in the morning. I said I didn’t want anything to do with my dad or his money ever again. And do you know what George said?”