New York University students pass in clusters and some snuggle into each other as they walk. Their lives seem light and optimistic, and I miss that. I should get home to Bruce and the kid, and I will go home but not until I expel this nervous sparking energy. If he’s still awake, he’ll want to talk; if we talk I will tell him the story and if I tell him what just happened he will want to do some caveman thing, which will be both a satisfying and expensive choice for all of us. He will lapse into some predictable speech on the evils of Wall Street, which is convenient for a guy with three digits in his paycheck and four digits of personal expenses every month.
I should want to quit, especially after a scene like tonight. But, if I can put on blinders and earplugs each morning, I’ll be fine. I love what I do, we need my income, and who are they to get me so upset? I keep telling myself the culture is the price I pay for the thrill of my job and the great paycheck. I keep walking, toy sacks and all.
A young man and woman, in their early twenties, walk in front of me on the west side of Washington Square Park. The lights in the trees reflect down, forming something like a halo around them. Their jackets swing open, oblivious to the piercing cold air. Steam puffs from their mouths as they laugh uncontrollably at something the man just said. Their fingers touch, without holding hands, and their raging hormones are almost visible in the air around them. Her long hair bobs in and out of her coat collar, tangling recklessly the way mine did before I thought it unprofessional and chopped it to my shoulders. (“Damn,” Bruce had said.) Her boyfriend wears jeans with unpremeditated holes in them. I love that. I miss that. Bruce wears khakis now and I can’t remember when we stopped looking like that couple and became our own version of a couple just trying to get through the day. I trudge on, wondering about tomorrow morning in the office and what people will say about Barbie’s head.
Children can make an intolerable job tolerable. Humiliation takes my relatively thick skin and morphs it into full-grain leather, but my kids are worth it. On days when I fancy myself to be some working mother’s version of success, someone who does it all with decent capability, I feel pretty happy about everything. I once relayed this thought to Bruce and he responded by drawing me a pie chart, showing me the time I spend with the kids while they’re upright and awake versus time spent with them in the horizontal and asleep position. If it were a Weight Watchers chart, the allotted amount of sugar would be equal to my time spent with children not deep in a REM state.
“That’s hurtful,” I told him. “And you’re only working part-time so it’s not like they’re orphans and don’t you think it’s decent of me to bring home real money?” It was a harsh thing to say but Bruce’s ego was solidly intact.
“Of course I do,” he said. “But at least I’m proud of my life and I’m not answering to people like those guys you work with.”
I had wanted to point out that he frequently answers to his playmate, the ATM, withdrawing money I work for at a gasp-worthy rate, or that he finances obscure interests in sports equipment, music, and anything to improve himself that he follows with abandon and then drops. He made me wonder if people who grew up rich and didn’t stay that way inherit the unfortunate habit of deploring wealth while at the same time remaining unable to live the frugal existence they extol.
A woman who was in Bruce’s boarding school class at Choate, a self-proclaimed “scholarship kid” named Aripcy Salinas, liked to take me aside and fill me with her insights on guys like him. She worked at a competing bank and we sometimes found ourselves in the same room. I found myself listening whenever she asked me what he was up to and I told her some inflated lie about his technology business or his unusual hobbies. Ari saw right through it. Because she was surrounded by those bred with wealth while not having it herself, she had insights I didn’t have. As she explained once, “By not taking corporate jobs like in retail or accounting and taking up the arts or fitness therapies or being an expert at throwback stuff like vinyl record collecting or retro ski equipment, they seem cool and creative, like they’re making their own way in the world. But,” she added, “after a decade or so, it seems stupid.”
“Bruce helps a lot with the kids,” I lied. “Men don’t get enough credit for staying at home.” But the reality was that the more money I made at work, the more Bruce’s spending climbed on just the sort of stuff she described.
Ari, a Mexican-American, self-starting, no-nonsense beauty, sighed like an old sage. “At least you’re not telling me he’s a Tibetan pastry expert or a champion three-wheeled bike racer or that he plays the lute.”
“Can you at least laugh when you say that?” She wasn’t even smirking. “Bruce is a great dad,” I said truthfully, “and he’s trustworthy.”
“Look, it’s a gender-neutral problem. The girls I knew who grew up rich and never worked became surfers.”
“Surfers?”
“All of them.”
“I’d think they’d buy jewelry or something.”
“The jewelry and fancy car thing is for the new money. No, they surf and sometimes design stuff that they then have someone else make, and then they sell that to each other out of their living rooms. It’s all based on insecurity.”