Through the Heart (25 page)

There was something in the way he said it, and for the first time, I wondered if Marcus knew about me and Celia. The thought had never occurred to me before. I had been certain I was the one with all the information, and he was the one in the dark. In that scenario, he got to be the good guy, but it also made him the dupe. If he knew about the affair . . . I didn’t even know how to process the possibility. I would have to completely change my idea of who Marcus was. In that event, I realized that I would have no idea who he actually was. He would be like a black hole. A place where information disappeared. Where the normal rules didn’t hold.

We were supposed to stay on for dinner, but you’re probably not surprised that I made an excuse and got us out of there. I knew that Nora wanted to have dinner out, but I had the car take us home instead, and I told her I wanted a quiet night in and that we could order whatever she wanted. I just didn’t want to take her out looking like that. I wanted her back in her baggy jeans and big sweaters.

When we got back into the apartment, I suggested, “Why don’t you change out of that and into a robe or something?”

“You didn’t like my dress,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Where did you get it?”

“Barney’s.”

“I like you better in your clothes.”

“I look like a tourist in my clothes.”

“Well, that’s what you are,” I said, maybe a little roughly.

“Oh.” She was silent for a long minute. “So when is my visit over?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“But you could send me back at any time.”

“Do you worry about that?” I asked her. It had never occurred to me to even think about it.

Her voice was quiet when she said, “Of course I do. I’ll never measure up against women like Celia. I don’t know why you would want me when you could have someone like her.”

She was so blind. How long would she stay that way? How long could it last?

I reached out and pulled her in. Wrapping my arms around her, I said, “I don’t want Celia. I want you. And you know what else I want?”

“What?” she asked, tilting her head back. Normally she just came up to my chin, but she was taller than normal because of her high heels, and it was easier for her to look up into my eyes.

“I want you to go take that dress off and put on some pajamas or a robe.”

“I knew it,” she said. “I knew you didn’t like the dress. I was so sure you would. I thought I looked good in it.”

I didn’t want to tell her that that was the problem.

“It’s not that. It’s just that I like your sweaters.”

“If you want, you can come with me when I go shopping and show me what else you like.”

She saw my answer in my face.

“In that case, Celia offered to go with me.”

“No,” I said, probably too quickly. “I don’t want you looking like a little Celia clone. I liked the dress. Really. You have great taste.”

When I said that I was thinking that if I was lucky, I would be wrong about her having great taste, and she’d end up with more sweaters. But my hopes of that were dashed when she said, “It’s amazing you think so, considering the clothes I showed up in. Those are mostly old clothes from my sister when she was in her outdoorsy phase. I never liked them, but I just never bothered to get new ones. I didn’t see the point.”

“And you see a point now?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “You.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day was the weekly family dinner.

I told Nora I needed to go out alone that night—to the family dinner. Nora knew all about the family dinners. She grinned, rolled her eyes, and wished me luck.

I hadn’t attended a family dinner in over a month. I got there, and the table was set with gold. Yellow flowers, gold tablecloth, and the china that had an inlay of gold at the edge. I wondered if it was in celebration of the fact that our money was intact because I had pulled out of the market. The stocks had plunged yet again the week before as a result of terrible economic data and the inescapable fact that we were headed into the worst recession in decades.

I was late, so everyone was already seated. I went around to kiss my mother hello, and the reception was decidedly chilly. That wasn’t a surprise. There had to be some retribution for the fact I had disappeared for so long.

But in the past, no matter what I had done to piss her off the first thing we talked about at dinner was always the portfolio. Of course, I had started sending her an update on Fridays ever since my sister had come to the office and harangued me, but I didn’t really think it would be different.

I was wrong.

My mother ignored me, as if I wasn’t even there. She skipped right over me and turned to Andrew. It seemed that she had decided Andrew’s boys should be homeschooled since they hadn’t gotten into the only school she thought was worthy of them. She wanted to talk about the subjects the boys were going to study. She was apparently helping to design their curriculum and had plans for them to get through the subject matter of at least three grades in one year.

Once my mother felt like the path to Harvard had been assured, even though the boys were only four and six, she turned to Edward. Apparently, while I was gone he’d had a story accepted somewhere or other. It was some magazine I’d never heard of, but I guess it was prestigious enough for my mother to approve. I thought about the books Emily claimed he had written. I wondered if it was true. So many people pretended to be successes when they weren’t. It would be a nice twist if my brother was pretending to be a failure. I had thought about trying to find out if what my sister had told me was true. But I hadn’t. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know. The foundations of my world had been shaken. I wasn’t ready for them to come down.

But it seemed like I might not actually have control over that, because just then my mother did something that truly shocked me. She turned to my sister and said, “How is Alejandro? Can he make it for coffee?”

I couldn’t believe it. Not only was my mother saying his name aloud, voluntarily, but even more amazing, he was invited for coffee? No one had ever been invited for coffee.

Then it got worse. I thought certainly when she was done with my sister she would turn to me and chew me out for disappearing, but she somehow never did finish with my sister. They were going over details for the wedding, which I had heard nothing about. It was still over a year away, but they talked wedding and church and reception and food until Alejandro himself arrived.

You should have seen this performance. He was dressed to perfection: perfectly cut jacket, creased pants, shined shoes, and he wore them in a way that seemed perfectly natural—as if he were at home in perfection.

When he came in, he went straight to my mother’s chair and bowed over her hand in the way that only a foreigner could really get away with without looking silly. Then he went to Emily and kissed her on the cheek. Then he shook my father’s hand, then Andrew’s and Edward’s. He had obviously met them all before.

Then he came to me. I saw my sister frowning at me over his shoulder. But he was polite when he shook my hand and said, with only the slightest hint of an accent, “Timothy, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

I had the feeling that he could speak without an accent if he chose, but he knew the accent lent something to his presence.

He sat down in a seat that was brought in for him, right next to my mother. It was, I realized, where I usually sat, but I had been moved further down the table. I hadn’t even noticed till then.

That’s when my mother finally turned to me, and she smiled. That was never a good sign. My punishment for ignoring her calls and not returning to New York immediately was not over.

“Timothy, did you know that Alejandro manages money as well?” She paused, waiting for my reaction.

I just raised my eyebrows.

She went on, “He specializes in international investments, and his performance has been extraordinary. I was thinking, since you’re not doing much with the money right now, that we might transfer some over to Alejandro’s fund.”

I glanced over at Alejandro. He was very intent on stirring sugar into his coffee.

I looked over at my father, and he shrugged. “Alejandro’s performance history does look good,” he said.

I had been managing their money for more than fifteen years, with only two down years, and now I had managed to protect it against loses in the worst financial market in decades, and this was what happened. Even if you did well, people were always looking for someone who might be able to do better—even, apparently, your own family. If Alejandro’s performance was much better than mine, then it was because he ran his money with more of a tolerance for risk—unless he had inside information, in which case he would be a very good bet. Cheating always was.

“How much?” I asked.

“Well,” my mother said nonchalantly, “I thought whatever you had liquid at the moment.”

She knew very well that when we made back our losses, I had divested much of the fund, which meant she was proposing to give Alejandro almost all the family money to manage.

I was suddenly so angry I could barely speak. She wanted to leave me sitting around with nothing, waiting for when they’d throw more money my way.

But my mother was always doing ridiculous things, and I’d always prided myself on the fact that she wasn’t able to get to me. What was going on? When had I lost my cool?

I took a deep breath before I spoke, just to check to make sure I wasn’t doing something I would regret. But if she moved the money to his fund, I didn’t want it back. At the age of forty-three, I suddenly realized it was time for me to be on my own.

I said, “Why don’t I figure out what portion of the fund is mine, and then I will turn the rest over to you? I think we should hire someone with no affiliation to oversee the division. Dad, do you have someone you’d like to suggest?”

“Hold on a second, we weren’t suggesting that you stop managing all the money,” my father said quickly.

“No, I don’t want you to do that.” My mother sounded angry. “We just were going to take out the money that was liquid, that was just sitting around,” she said again, not able to resist another potshot at my investing decisions.

I turned to her. “The bulk of the portfolio is liquid right now, as you know. Not to mention the fact that in taking that money, you would also be taking my money since a percentage is mine and part of the principle is mine, and as talented as Alejandro might be, I would rather continue to manage my own capital. So I think the best thing would be to unwind the finances, and we can revisit it in the future if you want to go another route.” I said this as calmly as I could manage.

“I don’t understand why we can’t just take what you have sitting around, and give it to Alejandro. Why do you need to make it so complicated?” my mother repeated stubbornly.

Alejandro finally stepped in. He turned to my mother and said, “What Timothy says about unwinding the fund makes sense. There are accounting issues and legal issues, and I think it is really simplest this way. You can always reinvest with him in the future, but if you’re going to be taking out the bulk of the funds, it makes sense for both you and him to dissolve the arrangement as it stands.”

His voice seemed to have a soothing effect on my mother. Like music calming a beast. And even though this bastard was taking my livelihood right from under my nose, I had to admit I had left town and hadn’t been in touch. My mother had been unhappy, and he had been there with great numbers and a manner that seemed perfectly designed for ingratiating himself. I had to give the man credit.

My mother obviously did too, because she seemed like she might actually be willing to listen to him.

“Do you really think that might be best?” she asked.

“I do,” Alejandro said.

“Would you be willing to work with Timothy to sort that out?” she asked. “I would trust you to see that it’s done right.”

“I don’t know . . .” Alejandro started to say. He had the good manners to look embarrassed.

As far as I was concerned, Alejandro was as good as anyone.

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “You can come by Monday. Do you know where the office is?”

Emily spoke. “I can give him the address.”

I looked over at my sister, and I knew she was thinking about the last time she had seen me there. Instead of being cut off without a cent, in a way she was getting the whole fortune. And from the look on her face, she was definitely enjoying it.

I glanced around the table then, and I didn’t see a single friendly face. I knew Emily loved it, and Andrew didn’t even try to hide a smug grin. Edward wouldn’t look at me, and my father—he didn’t look pleased or embarrassed. He didn’t even seem to realize anything was at all wrong.