Phoebe shook her head and held out her hands. “I know I’ll get this wrong. That’s probably why I shouldn’t say anything about this. Jake barely accepts new clients. He doesn’t want aggravation. He likes beating the system with smart caution, loves getting profit for people, but he despises them trying to pick his brain.”
“I don’t care how he makes the money.” Joan lifted her glass toward her husband, looking the very picture of cognitive dissonance to Phoebe, this man she usually saw at club dinners wearing the most conservative of suits. Now Joan’s husband, shaved to the pink, and rotund, stood at the gleaming bar wearing bell-bottoms and a tie-dyed headband. “I just care about the profits. So what are we talking about?”
“Promise me you won’t repeat this, or I’m screwed.” Phoebe spun her heavy-bottomed glass in circles. “It probably won’t even sound like a big deal to you. Ugh. I built this up too much.”
“Enough!” The fourth woman at the table, shaped like a mouse with similar coloring, surprised Phoebe with her deep, throaty voice. “We’ll be the judges.”
Phoebe gave a cautioning glance around the table. “He says the last few years have never been lower than ten percent. And never higher than twenty. This is no get-rich scheme. For goodness’ sake, I don’t even know how I began talking about this. Shhh! The guys are coming.”
Joan put her head close to Phoebe’s. “Do you play bridge?”
Part 3
* * *
Living the Dream
CHAPTER 12
Phoebe
June 1980
The black Town Car glided down Sixth Avenue with the slickness of money. Each week, Phoebe debated taking the train—her stated preference—versus arguing with Jake who insisted on sending a car as though she were made of sugar and angel wings. Debating with him left her so limp that by the time she arrived at Mira House she needed a strong cup of coffee before leading her Cooking for English session.
In truth, the train drained her, though she’d never admit it to Jake. The subway improved marginally after Edward I. Koch had become mayor two years ago but she remembered her mother nagging her to turn around her rings so that the stones didn’t show, and besides, dragging in supplies by the commuter rail and then subway was a lot of work to prove she hadn’t lost her edge. She liked to think of herself as retaining the girl who rode the subway from Brooklyn to Harlem, traveling up to City College every day. The girl who caught the eye of the coolest professor on campus.
Older and wiser, Phoebe could now appreciate what a liar and louse Rob Gardiner had been, while also smiling at the bit of rebelliousness she’d shown by sleeping with him. She didn’t, however, welcome the other signs of aging. Faint lines around her eyes signaled she was five years from forty. The fifty sit-ups and leg lifts she’d added to her morning run at six o’clock barely kept gravity in check. One of the many reasons she’d returned to work was her desire to wake up her mind along with her muscles—both of which had slackened since having children.
Jake and the kids were wary of the energy Phoebe gave to Mira House, her closeness to the staff—basically everything that removed her from the center of their lives. She’d spent since forever fully concentrating on the kids, him, and socializing for the sake of the business, but this year, with Katie going into seventh grade and Noah entering fourth in September, Phoebe’s choices were leave the house or choke. In September, despite Jake’s grumbling, she’d revived her Cooking for English classes.
Katie and Noah didn’t want to relate to her in that constant way of little kids anymore—but they wanted her there and available at all times. Like a lamp. Perhaps you didn’t need to turn it on every minute, but you sure as hell wanted to know that the moment it got dark, you could. Maybe Phoebe was fooling herself, but teaching children how to fend for themselves every now and then seemed part of the parenting job.
She didn’t worry that much about Katie. Her daughter retained the same stubborn self-concern she’d always had, though thankfully, as Katie grew older, Phoebe had managed to build up her empathic side. After registering her in a horseback-riding academy that mainstreamed special-ed students into their programs, Katie’s view of the world widened. Both she and Noah attended a session of day camp at Mira House each summer to offset their idea that all children vacationed at oceanfront resorts. More important, they discovered a world where popularity and worth were measured using scales other than money and blondness.
Noah’s problem had never been a lack of empathy for others. If anything, he soaked up the world too readily, feeling the pain of everyone he met. Phoebe hoped that his not having her immediately accessible all the time might build up Noah’s resilience.
Jake wanted her to somehow be at the ready for him every moment while still being interesting and relevant to his potential clients. One day he’d be praising her commitment to what he called “the halt and the lame,” as though she were Jane Addams, and the next day pout if she couldn’t go to the movies with him. She’d thought that after being married for so many years, he wouldn’t be so needy of her company. Instead, it often felt as though it was only when he was alone with her that he could relax.
Last week, during their Phoebe-taking-the-train-versus-being-driven argument, Jake joked, “Maybe you should be teaching social studies on Long Island, like your sister. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about you being on the subway.”
At the moment, teaching sounded heavenly. Years ago, Phoebe had tired of enticing people into the Club. Sumptuous houses, designer clothes, and precious jewelry were still just houses, clothes, and jewelry. Jake’s work talk brought on near comas of boredom. Within two sentences of listening, she zoned out. The words—the split, the spread—floated like threads of DNA, another topic beyond her visualization.
Phoebe liked subjects she could visualize, such as the sociology Rob had taught her years ago. Class differences continued to fascinate Phoebe. For instance, her beige linen pants—so simple against the limousine upholstery. Nobody at Mira House would guess what she’d paid for the pants she’d bought at Saks. Just the idea of spending that much constituted a leap up the hierarchy of earning potential. They wouldn’t suspect that her striped bateau-neck shirt represented a day’s salary for a typical Mira House employee.
Mira House kept her connected to the girl in love with Rob: the Rob she’d thought he’d been. She mostly kept her memories of him hidden, unwrapping them on nights she couldn’t sleep. When she saw the 1973 film The Way We Were, with Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand as two star-crossed lovers, she realized Rob had been her short-lived Hubbell Gardiner. Sometimes she wondered what became of him. Mostly she was grateful that she hadn’t married him. Hindsight said he would have treated her like crap.
The car pulled in front of the settlement house. “I’ll be about three hours,” she said, leaning forward.