Sunday evening, evening gray. All day the storm did not quite storm. Clouds closed in, sulked, spat. We put off swimming. Took in the chairs. Finally (about seven) a rumbling high up. A wind went round the trees tossing each once and releasing arbitrary rivulets of cool air downward, this wind which came apart, the parts swaying out, descending, bumping around the yard awhile not quite on the count then a single chord ran drenched across the roof, the porch and stopped. We all breathed. Maybe that’s it, maybe it’s over, the weatherman is often wrong these days, we can still go swimming (roll call? glimpse of sun?) when all at once the sluices opened, broke a knot and smashed the sky to bits, which fell and keep falling even now as dark comes on and fabled night is managing its manes and the birds, I can hear from their little racket, the birds are burning up and down like holy fools somewhere inside it—far in where they keep the victim, smeared, stinking, hence the pageantry, hence the pitchy cries, don’t keep saying you don’t hear it too.
—Anne Carson, “Little Racket”
I give you fourteen years of earnings. I have one bad quarter. This is how you respond?
—Richard Fuld, former CEO, Lehman Brothers
THIRTY-FOUR
Isabel sat at the mirror in her bathroom, slowly applying her evening face. Behind her, out the window, the sky was only just now beginning to seep into something darker. The clock had jumped forward the previous weekend, and now they were all waiting in that deadened space between seasons.
All of her children were elsewhere. The twins were at a birthday party in town, that Japanese hibachi place all the little boys loved, and Madison was apparently having dinner with Zo? Barker, of all people. Isabel had never taken her daughter for someone who’d fall under the sway of Alexandra Barker’s spawn, but she couldn’t very well say anything about it now. Madison had come to her, in those first weeks after it all began, but Isabel hadn’t been ready yet. She hadn’t had a plan in place; it had been too soon for her to start setting aside energy to comfort her children. She’d left the twins to Lily and she’d avoided Madison’s questions. She’d still needed all of her own resources, back in the fall. And even at Christmas, she’d done the best she could. She’d had Bob walking around in an actual Santa’s hat, she’d tried to make things cozy. It had not been, all things considered, such a terrible holiday.
When Madison came back, Isabel would be ready. She’d find something to say. But for now, her daughter was going elsewhere for comfort, and she had to respect that.
Isabel knew many women would have chosen a different tack, in September, would have clutched a daughter closer rather than leaving her, largely, to wade through it all on her own. Crawled into bed with her when you were both awake and heard each other wandering the house. Lavished her with compliments. Immediately gotten out of the bathtub, on that one night, and rubbed her back, brushed her hair, told her everything was absolutely fine.
It had been so obvious, really, how little she might have offered Madison, how meager the reassurance her daughter needed to feel safe. But Isabel had balked at those moments. She’d never been that kind of mother, and it seemed insincere to try to become one now.
SHE WAS DOING HERSELF UP tonight for dinner with Mina, who had called in a frenzy about something as yet unexplained. It was always tricky to locate the source of Mina’s most immediate panic, since she lived her life in a state of constant apology. Apologies for any remaining traces of the girl she’d once been, apologies for the child her daughter didn’t turn out to be, for what she hadn’t been able to contribute to the world she found herself living in. Mina was hardly the only wife out here who’d come from Long Island, Redondo Beach, even the Jersey shore. But Mina was the only one who seemed to think treachery awaited her if she couldn’t conceal every trace of that former self.
Still, Mina had been endlessly helpful this year. Many times since Christmas, she’d stepped in when Lily hesitated. Isabel could go to dinner with her, could reassure her that they were still friends. Remind her that even if Isabel chose to confide in no one, at the very least there was no one she’d be confiding in before Mina.
Isabel had known, as soon as her phone buzzed, that her hopes for a quiet evening had been futile. The house was empty, and it might have been nice. No one would have needed even a second of her time. Lily was still, whenever possible, hiding from her, just as she had been since that night in December when Madison had staged her faux escape to the city. In a way, it was a relief. Because Isabel had not fired Lily that afternoon, had never even spoken of it again, the nanny had been forced to put a stop to her constant, smug expressions of unspoken disapproval. Lily had never been one for these, not before. She’d never inserted all those little barbs into daily life in the house, the sorts of tiny power struggles Isabel had always found so petty, so sad, when other women described them. Housekeepers who reorganized pantry shelves and other corners of the house in which they had no real business, just to prove to you that they knew the lay of the land better than you did. Nannies who issued orders to your children that directly contradicted the things you had told them earlier, or at least the implicit understandings you relied on in your dealings with them.
But Lily had spent the fall implying, with her every raised eyebrow or disregard for Isabel’s orders, that her boss was bobbling the fragile, breakable thing she held in her hand. That she wasn’t the woman her family needed right now.
By all means, Isabel thought. She dipped a finger into a pot of under-eye concealer, tilting her head away from the mirror so that the light fell on the hollow just above her left cheekbone. Find me that woman. Find the woman this family needs, and let her set up a war room downstairs. She can sleep in one of the guest rooms. Our treat.
But Isabel missed the old Lily, she did. It seemed laughable in retrospect, like the cartoon version of some old rich lady, but Isabel had always taken some measure of private pride in the fact that Lily seemed to like her. More than she liked Bob, yes, but even without that qualification. They’d liked each other; they’d gotten along.