“Because, it’s our firm, our country, my family, and lots of families. It’s all our money and my job. Being complicit in this, whatever this is, bothers me. I used to think we were doing something good. Now it all feels dirty.”
Kathryn looks at me again, this time raising one eyebrow into the most perfect question mark.
“You’re such a complex creature,” she says, and actually smiles.
What I haven’t told Kathryn is that Henry told me to get out. That if I quit right away I could cash in some of my depreciating stock within two weeks, take my profit on CeeV-TV, and be gone. But I don’t want to quit. I’m haunted by this thought of Henry possibly shorting my stock, of what a keen trading sense Henry has and how he’s always one step ahead in the race. Henry thinks the common man and woman is about to get crushed but what if he’s part of the crushing?
We’ve walked all the way down to loft-filled TriBeCa, where people look cool and arty and where fancy women like Kathryn appear lost. I did notice that we passed right through SoHo but didn’t want to say anything.
“Come upstairs,” she says while turning abruptly into a nondescript building with grating across the windows. A single digital keypad gives her access.
She lifts the gloves from each finger as if she is plucking flower petals. She touches the keypad and buzzes us in.
“You live here?” My voice squeaks a bit, embarrassing me, and I want my heart to stop racing. “I thought you said SoHo.”
“Surprised? Don’t tell anyone. I demand privacy. TriBeCa.”
“I, um, I just had you pegged somewhere north of here.”
“We all do that stereotyping thing. You may need to open your mind, Miss Isabelle. You may be enlightened.”
I’m in an industrial elevator large enough to hold a Volkswagen with a woman who belongs in a mannequin catalog. The elevator opens into white space, large and mostly empty, with a few white couches, a single white orchid, and some white candles, mysteriously already lit. There is no obvious center to the place, no nucleus where one can imagine the kitchen sitting just to the left or the bedroom just behind a hallway. There isn’t a magazine, a book, or a forgotten coffee mug. I feel as though I’m in an under-construction, minimalist spa.
Kathryn pushes something on the wall and a white door slides back to reveal white coat hangers and about ten pieces of clothing, all dark-colored. She mechanically removes her coat, places her hat on the one empty shelf, and offers to take my coat. As she hangs it she seems to sniff it for bedbugs or kid remnants. Yet whatever Kathryn does I find more intriguing than insulting. There’s nobody like her. She removes her shoes and indicates that I do the same while handing me Asian-influenced slippers embroidered with white silk and I dare not refuse.
I wonder to myself, when was the last time I wore slippers? I believe it was in the hospital after having my last baby. Children make some things fall to the wayside, where they enter a black hole of distant memory. They’re the incidentals, the side items. For me it was things like nice makeup, jewelry of some value, manicures, cashmere, and waxing. Those left my life one by one until the last slipper was lost and never really missed. For me wearing slippers was replaced with Owen’s life. That was a good trade.
I want to say “Nice place” to Kathryn but it doesn’t feel nice. It feels big.
“Big place” is what comes out of my mouth. “Did you just move here?”
“Bought this place six years ago when I got divorced,” Kathryn says. “It’s how I keep centered.”
“Centered,” I say simply, wondering if she has a hired candle lighter. Surely she doesn’t let them burn all day.
“I had a life that didn’t work, chaos, drama. I was always behind,” she continues. “I always felt panicked and encumbered and confused.” I listen as I hear Kathryn describe me. “Then I met someone who taught me to unfetter myself, to keep my eye on the prize.”
“The prize being . . . um, becoming a managing director?”
“Aren’t you proud of us?” she says, with some acknowledgment of sisterhood on her almost smiling face. This is the closest she’s ever come to being human around me.
She steps behind a white screen and speaks from there. The slight exertion necessary when one changes clothes alters her cadence slightly.
“So how exactly did you unencumber?”
“Got a life coach and a yogi. Traded them for my needy husband and thoughts of having a family. I wasn’t getting pregnant no matter how many drugs they pumped into me. The coach made me get laser sharp about the things I wanted, the yogi gave me my mind and body back. My shrink pointed out that I couldn’t have it all, nobody can have it all, at least not at the same time. I made my choices about the things I needed to change to get what I wanted and it worked.”
I thought about this. Was that why I was so unhappy with Bruce right now? Was I just trying to have it all at the same time and squeezing him in the middle of my own personal pressure dome?