Regardless of Bruce’s limited earnings power, he used to be a man who got off the couch and rolled up his sleeves but now seems like a boy to me, careless with responsibility and fixated on his appearance. The search engine history on our home computer lists all self-improvement sites, and he buys protein shakes by the case. I don’t mind the low-earning-working-guy thing, but the deadbeat dad from a bad sitcom, who flexes his muscles in every mirror he passes, does nothing for my libido. I desperately want to know what’s up with him but every word out of my mouth is taken as an insult. We are roommates who barely tolerate each other.
Before I left the apartment this morning, I came upon a scene of mismatched pajamas, kid hair that seemed whipped in a wind tunnel, and my husband doing a Sunday-morning-chef routine with no regard for time management. It was clear they’d all be late for school.
Eminem songs rapped in the background. Plates containing eggs and pancakes were placed around a vat of syrup that Owen was drinking from with a straw. Bacon, hash browns, and fresh-squeezed orange juice were spread about while Kevin lay sprawled across the banquet with his hands down his pants. Brigid dabbed syrup from Owen’s hair with a wet paper towel and nobody was actually eating anything.
I think Bruce has made some decision to be at home, to be with the kids and maybe just let me earn the money. I’m fine with that but wish I had been consulted. Am I really fine with that? I’m not sure. I think I like telling people my husband has a job only because I also have a caregiver, a dog walker, and an occasional housekeeper, so I need to know what his role is. The stay-at-home-dad scene this morning should have warmed my somewhat frozen heart but lately I’m in a semipermanent state of anxiousness and Bruce isn’t helping that at all.
Looking at that kitchen scene, I wanted to be the cool mom, a relaxed, fun lady who throws up her hands and shakes her booty along to repulsive lyrics no three-year-old has any business listening to. I wanted to be the hip-bumping wife who high-fives everyone, kisses their foreheads, and boogies on out the door. But instead I frothed over the immaturity of a husband pushing forty years old. It made my heart race and my mouth want to say things I’d regret. I swallowed my comments like acid and silently turned and walked out.
Henry has been distant ever since the night of the mermaid dress and I blame the slowing mortgage market. He owns a tremendous amount of inventory that has few buyers. He has sent me exactly zero flirty emails and dozens of business ones. I’d like to say this relieves me but mostly what I feel is loneliness. He seems troubled and aloof but I can’t exactly reach out to him without crossing that zone of intimacy.
Over the past three weeks, I’ve met Henry four times at his office, a sleek forty-ninth-floor corner of a building built of glass and chrome. His personal office looks over Madison Square Park to the north and the Hudson River to the west through floor-to-ceiling glass. His two interior walls are made of cerused oak and have paintings hanging on them that even I, not a terribly cultured person, recognize. Henry’s office has professional photographs of his children, all taken on beaches with everyone in the family wearing white and pale blue. Nothing is left to visual chance and everything is perfect. The sole photo of his wife stands tastefully on a low shelf. She’s coyly looking away from the camera in her wedding dress, as if dreaming of her future life with Henry. She sits wrapped in silk and satin in some version of a fairy tale that I could never have pulled off.
Henry has a small wine cooler in his office, a private bathroom, and fresh flowers in the corner. Spending most of my day in trading chaos, I inhale the order here, the small stack of aligned papers on his desk and the three large screens that scream the details of markets overseas. When I peek at his holdings screen, it lists the symbols for CeeV-TV, Emergent Biosolutions, and so many names I’ve helped put in his portfolio. I feel grateful to Henry. Maybe he couldn’t be faithful to me as a boyfriend, but as a client he seems to only trade with me.
We meet this morning so I can help him pare down his mortgage holdings. We painstakingly review his inventory the logical way, the way most investment banks don’t bother to do in their efforts to move merchandise at sparking speed. We dissect the real humans on the other side of the trade and try to guess the probability of their paying a loan back, and the likelihood that Henry will or will not get screwed on his investments. Henry has given up on Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, who have slapped triple-A ratings on bonds that appear to be junk. I’ve been leaving these meetings with plenty of sell orders and never a buy.
In the afternoon, I will bring the sell orders for unloved mortgages to my trading desk and the traders will try to find a buyer for them at any price. Most likely it will be our own desk that will buy them.