“I have soup and grilled cheese for you, Viv,” Mom said. “I am going to go find my other grandchildren, and then I believe I’ll take a nap.”
“Solid plan, Mom,” I said. “I think I will, too.”
James took my hand and helped me out of the chair. Then he put my arm around his waist and half carried me up the stairs, which was quite nice, actually.
“Thank you for letting me see him today,” he said.
I nodded. “He’s so perfect. He really is.”
James helped me into bed. As I closed my eyes, I heard Preston crying.
“It’s OK,” James whispered. “I’ll get him.”
He hurried back, handing me the baby, and lay down on the other side of the bed to watch me feed him. I couldn’t help but think that what he had done in bed with Edie Fitzgerald was quite different from this. Oh, that hurt.
I wanted to protest his being there, but I was too tired. So I said, “If I fall asleep, please take him back to Hummus. I don’t want him to get used to sleeping in bed with me.”
“Oh, yeah.” James laughed. “That’s a slippery slope.”
Vivi had slept between us for years.
My eyelids got heavy, and between the exhaustion and the sweet smell of baby, it was impossible not to drift off. I couldn’t move on from the past, and I wasn’t ready to let go of the pain that James had caused me. But I couldn’t help but think, with him on the other side of the bed and Preston between us, that this was the way my life was supposed to turn out.
TWENTY-ONE
nest egg
ansley
New Year’s Eve, like every other important or unimportant holiday, is a huge deal in Peachtree. The town hosts an event called Marshmallows and Goals. There are fire pits all over town, actual bonfires on the island, and firefighters absolutely everywhere. I have this notion that there are so many flames you can see Peachtree from space.
Kids and grown-ups alike spend hours roasting marshmallows and talking about what they are going to do differently on their next turn around the sun. Not me, though. I have lots of goals, but I’ve never said them out loud to anyone. I like to play it closer to the vest than that.
Which is why I always used to tell Carter not to say anything to the girls about the money. Because you never knew what was going to happen. But he was adamant that they know they would always have a fallback plan. He was wonderful and caring and kind. But when he was adamant, there was really no arguing.
The year after Emerson was born, Carter had finally started to get those big breaks he’d always believed in. He had always done well. We were all taken care of, and that was all that mattered to me. But he was suddenly starting to pick stocks with amazing accuracy, something that can be as much about luck as it is about skill. Carter was a realist, though, and decided to diversify instead of keeping all of the money in the market.
He invested in a large whole life insurance policy with a company that was getting incredible returns. It was a huge security for me, no doubt.
Around 2000, I had noticed some strange patterns in Carter’s behavior. He was keeping odd hours, which, according to him, was because he was investing in overseas markets. It made sense, but something still felt off to me.
I wouldn’t find out until after his death that Carter’s job had turned into almost an addiction for him. The stock market is, after all, gambling by any other name. Looking back over our books, I saw that he had won big, then lost big, then won big, then lost big. I had no doubt in my mind that he would have won big again. But he died. So he never had the chance. And he never told me that he had taken out a mortgage on what I believed to be our paid-off apartment.
The one worry I knew I wouldn’t face when Carter died was money. The life insurance policy was there. We would be fine, despite the fact that the rest of our assets were minimal at that moment.
Brad, our insurance agent, had been a good friend for a long time. When he rang the doorbell on September 21, I was unfathomably relieved. The insurance companies were having a tricky time, because who knew who was really dead? But they had determined after ten days that Carter was gone. I was living my second-worst nightmare on a scale that was indescribable. Terrorized didn’t begin to cover how I felt.
Brad came in and looked around. The girls were at school. I had finally made them go back to take their minds off their father. What I was going to do to take my mind off him I wasn’t sure. Brad had sat me down and handed me an envelope. I assumed his grave expression was for his friend who had died in such a gruesome way.
“Ansley,” he said. “I have some bad news.”
I laughed ironically. “Brad,” I said, “it can’t get any worse.”
Only it did. The economy had been wonderful for years, and the policy had accrued a massive amount of cash value—which Carter had been slowly either taking out or “borrowing” from the policy. As he took the cash out, the face value of the policy diminished, and the money he had borrowed from the policy was also subtracted from the total amount I would receive. Long story short, my millions had dwindled to barely enough to pay the three girls’ college tuitions.
My first reaction was to panic, obviously. Not only did I have a giant mortgage that I hadn’t known existed, but I had no way whatsoever to support our massive living expenses. And I hadn’t worked since Caroline was born. I was a nobody interior designer who hadn’t so much as picked up a shelter magazine in ten years. Who on earth would hire me over the big names in the city?
“So what now?” I asked Brad.
He looked at me hesitantly. “I don’t know, Ansley. I really don’t.”
I handed Brad the check.
“What are you doing?”
“Invest it,” I said. “I have to have that for the girls’ college, and if there’s a little interest every year, it will help us get by.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
I shook my head and looked down at my feet. “I’m going to do the only thing I can do.” I sighed. “I’m moving to Peachtree Bluff.”
Brad was a true Manhattanite, a real New Yorker, one of the ones John Updike wrote about, who believed that people living anywhere else must be kidding. If you were going to go to Brooklyn, you might as well jump off the bridge on your way. “Ansley,” he said, “get serious. Your life is here.”
In that moment, so full of pain and dread and confusion, I looked him squarely in the face. “Brad,” I said, “my life is over.”