“What’s to worry about, I guess? That we look like shit when the paparazzi catch us?” Kate noted. “I can actually feel schadenfreude hitting me as I walk down the street. It’s a physical thwack.”
“Your father’s locked away. We’re the only punching bags available.”
“Missy Ross turns the other way when she sees me. Literally, Mom, she turns her head as though I carry a stench.”
“Missy is hardly one to talk. She has the morals of a rat. Isn’t she the one who slept with three of her personal trainers?” Falling back into this mother-daughter rhythm with Kate provided balm so unfamiliar it just about knocked Phoebe over. Reconnection wouldn’t all be this easy, but she drank the moment’s available comfort.
“Her husband works twenty hours a day. He wouldn’t know if Missy blew her trainer on their bed while he slept.”
“I guess I’m the last one to talk.” Phoebe took a napkin from the stainless steel holder and brushed crumbs off the table. “About not seeing things.”
“You? Come on, Mom. If anyone should have seen something going on it was us. Noah and I were the idiots.”
“Not true. What did you and Noah think was going on up there?” The box opened. Doubtless they’d pound on this for years. Phoebe imagined repeatedly picking at the same scab until she finally uncovered the answer.
“We thought Dad performed some old-school shit that he was both embarrassed by and proud of. The computers were a hundred years old; he didn’t use any of the new technology. We figured he sat around with Solomon and Charlie—’cause everyone knew he was a moron around computers—and used some sort of Daddy voodoo they translated into the computer.”
Phoebe said nothing, not wanting to interrupt their delicate connection.
Kate rubbed the edge of the laminated menu card. “Truthfully, we kind of believed he was an idiot savant when it came to stock picking and buying and selling.”
Phoebe examined the approaching waitress for any sign of recognition, but the woman shuffled as though the only thing on her mind was getting off her feet.
“Get you girls a drink?”
Phoebe’s and Kate’s eyes met in a moment of yes.
“White wine, please,” Phoebe said.
“Red for me.”
Phoebe shook her head at Kate’s words. “Um . . . the white is better.” She widened her eyes, hoping her daughter understood the message about the horrors of the tannic-ridden Carlo Rossi red served here, without Phoebe having to spell it out in front of the waitress.
“Uh. Okay.” Kate nodded at the waitress. “And a Greek salad. Dressing on the side, please.”
Phoebe shook her head again. “Not just that. Bring us a small pizza. With extra cheese. And pepperoni. You’re going to eat at least one piece, Katie.”
Kate shrugged the same way she had when forced to taste broccoli years ago. “I can barely get anything down.”
“Start trying. How’s Zach? Really?”
“A rock, but shaken, like all of us. His parents approach me as though I’m toxic.” She laced her fingers and brought them to her mouth. “They were invested with him too. Of course. Jesus, Daddy Voodoo spread his fucking tentacles everywhere.”
“Everyone keeps asking if I knew, if I suspected.” Phoebe groped in her purse for the cigarettes she rationed out like sticks of dynamite. “Who suspects their husband is operating a Ponzi scheme? I barely knew what the word meant. You and Noah worked with him, and you never mistrusted his honesty, right?”
“We wondered about his connections,” Kate confessed. “Noah and I worried that insider trading was how he kept those Club returns so high. We worried someone was giving him information.”
“Did you ever ask him?” This blunt analysis of Jake, mincing his actions without fear, soothed her, creating the connection provided only by family conversation.
“Once. Boy, oh boy, never again. Noah and I asked to take him out to lunch. Our dime. Like that was some proof of us being adults.”
The waitress placed small, thick-walled wineglasses in front of them.
“You might as well get us each a second one now,” Kate said.
The woman turned to Phoebe, who nodded. “And a plate of garlic bread, please.”
The moment the waitress left, Phoebe returned to the topic. “What happened at the lunch?”
“Daddy exploded,” Kate said. “He went nuclear. Some of it was the same as always. You’ve heard it: ‘This is my business. When I want to invite you in, I’ll tell you. Stick to what I assign.’ The usual, Mom, but also very different.”
“Different how?”
“I suppose it’s because we actually asked him, directly, about things like insider information. He went ballistic. ‘What, I can’t be smart enough to manage the Club without using bullshit methods? You think I’m playing the fucking edges somehow?’ Then he became scary calm: that thing where he’s wrestling with his temper—you know how he gets.
“He was like a machine spitting out orders,” she continued. “?‘You will stay away from the Club. I’ve built up years of exacting methods—whether you think I’m capable or not—to make that place what it is. Nobody fucks with it, including my nosy kids.’?”
“I’m so sorry,” Phoebe said.
Kate stared at her mother with pleading eyes. “Mom, stop seeing him. Noah needs you. He’s falling apart. He’s drinking. Noah thought he was honoring our fucking father by not drinking. Now that he figured out why Dad didn’t touch alcohol, he’s making up for lost time. He told me you’re emailing, but you need to really be in his life, which means cutting off Dad.”
Emails with Noah were lopsided conversations, with him writing lengthy tirades about Jake and having given up his life for his father, and Phoebe answering with attempts to apologize for Jake and then steer her son to a healthier place.
“I contact him every day. Like I do with you,” Phoebe said. “Each time I email or leave a message, I ask him to meet me. I don’t want to pressure him to the point of adding to his pain. He refuses to get together.”
“He won’t see you until you stop visiting and talking to Dad.”
“All I do is force myself to visit him once in a great while. Trust me, I hate every—”
“It doesn’t matter if you hate it,” Kate said. “As long as you keep going, you’re attached. It reflects on all of us when you give him some sort of forgiveness or tacit approval.”
“Approval? I fooled myself into thinking it took courage, standing by your father simply so he’d have one person in this world, but you think it makes you and Noah somehow complicit? That’s the opposite of—”
“Mom. He doesn’t deserve your courage.”
? ? ?