His job is designing and building furniture, mostly in fancy homes, and he even worked in King’s house, which is no longer Amy’s house, because Amy is in love with a really good man and going to be a mother. Bruce and I also never bothered to get divorced after this five-year pseudo-separation. Neither of us is dating anyone seriously, we just sort of work out a lot, run one-hundred-yard dashes on the beach together with the kids planted at the fifty-yard line. We don’t have a caregiver. We look better than we did a few years ago, we’re better parents, and we’re good to each other. We flirt like crazy and we remember how to be kind. We’re boring as hell, but aren’t bored at all.
The few women heroines the Glass Ceiling Club had have all been taken down. Ina Drew, one of the top executives at JPMorgan, was responsible for a group that managed a $6 billion loss and became a very public casualty for women everywhere. Sallie Krawcheck got promoted to run the two wealth management divisions of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch and was touted as the most powerful woman on Wall Street, at least for a few months, and then got fired in what the company described, in original terms, as “delayering.”
“Delayer my fucking wedding cake,” Amanda had shouted at the television when the announcement was made, hurling a box of pencil erasers at it for good measure. Just last month, Bank of America was ordered to pay fines to the federal government of close to $17 billion for their role in the mortgage crisis. They never saw it coming but, as I think to myself sometimes, I did, and so, I believe, did Sallie.
The report continued, “According to Bank of America, Sallie Krawcheck has no immediate plans for the future.”
“Get her on the phone!” shouted Violette, who, in the quiet of our own firm, has certainly found her voice. She is our largest producer. Who knew?
“She doesn’t want to work with us,” said Amy.
“She wants the fight,” said Amanda. “She hasn’t figured out the only truly successful women on Wall Street are at the small firms, where we can hold on to control.”
“It’s the Slaughter Rule,” I said, referring to the most emailed story of 2012. Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote an article for the Atlantic, talking about why women still can’t have it all, that they have to make compromises the men in their lives don’t have to make. When she mentioned that having control of your own schedule was the only way to make it work, it suddenly made sense to me. Of course my not knowing how each day would unfold was the basis of so much anxiety. And when you start every day in some anxious state, you spread it like a toxic odor. Everyone in your zone can smell it—your spouse, your kids, the cabdriver getting you to the meeting too late. Who would want to be around that?
By the time that story was printed, I was long gone, already running this firm and still wondering about the Feagin Dixon days, wondering what happened to me and who, for those years, was that unrecognizable woman I had become, changing so many things I believed in, all to pursue some belief that I was getting my family ahead. I never did end up with that fat pot of money that was going to allow me to retire young, but life now isn’t nearly as difficult. We don’t worry about money and I also don’t think I need a magical number in any savings account. We don’t splurge much, but we also don’t worry much, and living at the corner of No Splurge and No Worry is fine.
I’m looking through the glass walls into our boardroom, where Amy, in her seventh month of pregnancy, is leading a meeting with two marketing guys who’ll be representing our firm overseas and raising some capital for us. Elizabeth is in there too. She coded some of the trading screens for us and they’re spectacular even without the ability to front-run a trade. We use her as our consultant and she will soon join us permanently. She’s still dating the guy from that brunch restaurant, the one she hadn’t actually met at the time. He does have a name. It’s Matt.
Clarisse is divorced now and has tried her hand at some other large New York firms. She has never gotten back to the director level at any major bank. Alice came back to work in our New York office and so did Kathryn Peterson. I rarely see Kathryn, as she mostly works from home, but that’s what she needs. She continues to be exceptional at what she does. She invests our fixed-income money the old-fashioned way: she looks for value and yield and she buys and holds the bonds. I imagine her sitting cross-legged on her wooden floor, surrounded by candles, and knowing she is centered lets me know she’s also doing the best job she’s capable of. It’s just how she works.
When I called Kathryn, trying to hire her, I told her secretary I was trying to reach Ms. Metis. The secretary told me nobody with that name worked there.
“Then can you please ask Kathryn where she’s gone?” I asked.
Kathryn came on the phone quickly.
“How long have you known?” she asked, the closest to rattled I’d ever heard her.
“Since our walk,” I said.
“What walk?”
“Our walk to your apartment when you said something about tribal knowledge. I knew I had read that term only once before, in one of the Metis memos.”
Kathryn was silent.
“You were brilliant,” I reassured her. “Very gutsy.”
“I was brilliant.” She laughed. She actually laughed. “That club thing wasn’t for me, but you ladies sure did have a point.”
“We did have a point,” I agreed.
“Did you hear about Stone?” she asked.