Winter Street (3 page)

J
ennifer and the boys get into a taxi headed to Logan Airport, and Patrick watches them from the second-floor picture window, peering around the thirteen-foot Christmas tree, which took Jen and her assistant, Penelope, five hours to decorate with three thousand ornaments and 650 white lights.

Jen did not take the news well. There were forty minutes of screaming into a pillow, forty minutes of muffled sobbing on the phone to her mother (Patrick desperately trying to hear how much she was giving away), and then thirty minutes in a scalding-hot shower before Jen emerged with the news that she was taking the boys to San Francisco for Christmas, even though it’s their year to go to Nantucket.

Patrick is mute. He deserves at least this. He tries not to think about the cost of four last-minute plane tickets to the West Coast on the twenty-third of December, or about the bill for the hot water. Such things have never bothered him
before because he makes a tremendous amount of money running the private-equity division of Everlast Investments. But now, Patrick has a sick, sick feeling that the well is about to dry up.

He was careful about how he worded things with Jen, although his appearing at the house at eleven o’clock in the morning pretty much said it all. To make matters worse, she thought for an instant that he had taken off from work early so he could go Christmas shopping, or so they could go for a couple’s massage before the Everlast Christmas party that evening.

He said,
We’re not going to the Christmas party.

He then explained that he has been placed on a “leave of absence” until after the first of the year, and that his boss, Gary Grimstead, who is a great guy, asked him not to come to the Everlast Investments holiday party.

Because Patrick is under investigation by Everlast’s Compliance Department, and Gary thinks it’s best for Patrick to lie low until whatever they’re looking into blows over.

What are they looking into?
Jen asked Patrick.

Patrick asked the same thing of Gary Grimstead, but, although Gary is truly a great guy, he tends to play his cards close to the chest, and he wouldn’t exactly say.
Probably the perks,
Gary said. Meaning the “gifts” from clients that Patrick has received in the past eighteen to twenty-four months: private jets to South Beach to golf, floor seats for the Celtics, front-row seats for Billy Joel, trips to Vegas with
comped penthouse suites. Those he can feasibly explain away because he is hardly alone in the industry in accepting perks (although the trip to South Beach—a bachelor party for his deputy, Michael Bell—included three Playboy models, and he can’t have Jen finding out about that). But then, as he was walking out of Gary’s office, smarting from being uninvited to the Four Seasons that evening, he received a text message from an unidentified number that he knew belonged to the temporary cell phone of Bucky Larimer, his fraternity brother from Colgate. Back in September, Bucky had given Patrick key pieces of inside information about a leukemia drug called MDP. Bucky had assured Patrick that the drug was amazing and FDA approval was pending.
A sure thing,
Bucky told Patrick.
It’s going to change not only leukemia but maybe cure all cancers, man.
In the past three months, Patrick has invested over twenty-five million dollars of his clients’ money in Panagea, the company that makes MDP, and he invested money for Bucky Larimer as well, under the protection of Theta Chi Nominal Trust, named after their fraternity. Patrick is the trustee. It’s insider trading, and if Patrick gets caught, he is going to jail.

Patrick tells Jen that Compliance is probably going to slap him on the wrist for taking the perks but that they might find other things they don’t like.

Such as…?
Jen asked.

He then told her about the leukemia drug, and about how he hedged his bets on it, which is why they call it a
hedge fund. Then, because he can’t lie to Jen, he tells her that the way he invested the money wasn’t exactly legal, because he had privileged pieces of information, provided by someone he knows in the pharmaceutical industry.

He said,
Really, honey, the less you know about the specifics, the better.

Which was when Jen flipped out.
You might lose your job,
she said.
You might get in real trouble, Patrick. And think about the
public humiliation.

She said this to get a reaction. Patrick is very proud of his good name.

He closed his eyes and shook his head, which Jen understood to be a dismissal of her and her concerns.

As the taxi disappears down Beacon Street, Patrick gazes across the Common. He can see the skaters on Frog Pond and all the twinkling lights in the trees. Diagonally across the Common is the Four Seasons, where Patrick will not be headed this evening. Gary Grimstead is probably picking out his cuff links right this second. In a little while, the Bristol Lounge will hold 150 Everlast employees, who will all be talking about one thing and one thing only.

Patrick Quinn, fingered by Compliance.

Patrick goes to the freezer and pulls out a frosted bottle of Triple 8 vodka; then he walks down the hallway, to the master suite. He has a prescription bottle containing thirteen Vicodin, left over from when he tweaked his back playing tackle football in the front yard of the Theta Chi house
at his fifteen-year Colgate reunion, which was where the conversation with Bucky Larimer got going in the first place.

He goes back out into the living room and turns off all the lights except for those on the tree. The tree is beyond beautiful; it’s artwork. Jen likes glass balls set all the way back, nearly to the trunk of the tree, and then a second ornament placed midway on the bough, and then the best ornaments—the Christopher Radkos, and Jen’s favorites, a fancy fur-clad shopper and a dapper doorman by Soffieria De Carlini—on the ends of the branches, where everyone can appreciate them. In this way, the tree looks full and rich; the glass balls catch the light and the tree seems to glow from within.

Jennifer has serious talent as an interior designer. Their impeccably restored five-story townhouse on Beacon Street, with a roof garden from which they can view the Esplanade and the fireworks every Fourth of July, was just featured on the Beacon Hill Holiday House Tour, and won first place. Jennifer and her assistant, Penelope, garnered three new commissions—one of them a soup-to-nuts job on Mount Vernon Street, and one a renovation of a seven-thousand-square-foot house on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Julia Childs’s old neighborhood. Jennifer was swooning with her success, and Patrick, trying to be supportive of her burgeoning career, popped a bottle of Billecart-Salmon, then called the sitter and took her to dinner at Clio.

That, a mere ten days ago.

Today, the third-shortest day of the year, it is fully dark at four o’clock.

One shot of vodka, two Vikes. Patrick is still in his suit, but he takes his shoes off and reclines on the sofa.

He has left himself exposed. He is such an IDIOT!

He can’t stand to think about it, but he can’t think about anything else. If the stuff about MDP comes to light, he will be written about in the
Globe
and possibly the
Wall Street Journal
. Jennifer will lose her clients, and the boys will have to go to public school. Patrick will never get hired anywhere else in Boston. He isn’t the kind of person who has a “second act” in him; he is the kind of person who sets a path and then follows it. Except he deviated from the path, and now he will pay. They will have to sell the house and move… where? To Kansas City, where Patrick will manage the branch of a local bank? Would a local bank in Kansas even be able to hire him? The inside information and the subsequent investing might qualify as a felony. Possibly. He should get a lawyer, but that’s an admission of defeat, right?

Patrick doesn’t know who he’s kidding. Public humiliation isn’t the worst thing. Going to jail is the worst thing.

His mother’s name will be dragged through the mud. He hasn’t considered this until now. Oh God. Margaret Quinn’s son: cheat, liar, crooked good-for-nothing scoundrel. Playboy models, insider trading, placing bets on a drug for sick children.

Another shot of vodka.

His phone lights up with a text message, and then immediately a second and third text message.
It’s Jen,
he thinks. She got to Logan but couldn’t bring herself to board the plane. They’ve been together fourteen years and have never spent a Christmas apart. If she comes back, he might survive.

But the text messages aren’t from Jen. There’s one from his father, one from his sister, and one from his brother Kevin.

Dad:
Mitzi left.

Ava:
At Bar with Kev. Mitzi left Daddy. We need you to come home.

Kevin:
Dude, come home.

Patrick reads the three messages again, but his head is swimming with the vodka and the Vicodin. Mitzi
left?
For where? He gets confused, thinking of Jen at Logan, sipping a glass of good chardonnay at Legal Test Kitchen while the kids play on their iDevices at the gate. Patrick closes his eyes and pictures the Bar, where his brother Kevin works. Kevin is the happiest person in the family, and Ava, a music teacher at the elementary school, is second. They never felt any pressure to earn or achieve or propagate the Quinn family name—because they always had Patrick to do it for them. They don’t even particularly
like
Patrick, he doesn’t think. He’s only ninety minutes away, but they never come to Boston to visit; they think Patrick is a carbon copy of the
relentless bastard their father used to be before he quit his big, important job in New York and bought the inn on Nantucket and became a nice guy. Probably, when Ava goes to the Bar to have a beer with Kevin, all they do is talk about what a tool Patrick is. They need him now because there’s a crisis—
Mitzi left—
and neither of them is a problem solver. Patrick is the problem solver, always.

But what they don’t know is that Patrick can’t help today.

His phone accidentally drops to the floor with a clatter, but Patrick can’t summon the energy to retrieve it. Even though he knows they don’t like him as much as they like each other or Bart, there is still something appealing to Patrick about walking into the Bar to have a beer with his siblings. But he’s in no condition, and they don’t want him anyway, not really. If Bart were on Nantucket, Patrick would go, but Bart is in Afghanistan, nobly serving their country. Bart grew up idolizing Patrick—beyond Big Papi, beyond Santa Claus, beyond God. What would Bart think of him now? He would realize that Patrick is a little man behind a big facade, like the Wizard of Oz. Patrick does another shot of vodka and takes another Vike. Oblivion—how much poison must he ingest to achieve it?

He watches the tree sparkle. Three thousand ornaments. Despite everything, he thinks, it is still so pretty.

S
he drinks another beer at the Bar with Kevin, who has to work until closing. He will be no help except in numbing Ava’s senses, impairing her judgment, and getting her drunk—but this has always been the case with Kevin. He calls himself the Underachieving Quinn, the slacker, the loser, the Big Zero, names Ava scoffs at, although she realizes that Kevin’s sense of worth has suffered from his life choices, many of which have been dictated by his dead-end relationship with Norah Vale, whom Ava always thinks of as Norah Vale the Cautionary Tale.

Kevin and Norah started dating in tenth grade, and they famously became engaged in eleventh grade. Kevin bought Norah a silver claddagh ring, and together, they announced they were going to get married as soon as they turned eighteen.

Kelley, Mitzi, and Margaret had all tried to talk Kevin out of it. Kevin had already been accepted to the University of Michigan; Norah wasn’t going to college. She didn’t have the grades, or the money, or the interest. None of the parents came right out and said it, but Ava now understands that they didn’t think Norah Vale was a quality choice for a life partner. Norah had five older brothers, but only the eldest of the brothers and Norah shared a father; the four boys in
between had been sired by two different men. Norah’s eldest brother, Danko Vale, was a tattoo artist. He had tattooed a fearsomely realistic python around Norah’s neck and shoulders. The head of the snake had been done in trompe l’oeil style, so that it looked like the python was striking from just below Norah’s clavicle.

This tattoo had given Ava nightmares. She had never been able to hug Norah Vale, not even on her wedding day.

Norah had gone to Ann Arbor with Kevin, but she was
miserable
there. And so Kevin dropped out after his freshman year, much to the family’s consternation. He then enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America in Poughkeepsie. He and Norah lasted three years, although Norah spent much of the third year at home, on Nantucket, working at the Bar. And then, with only a six-month externship to complete, Kevin dropped out of the CIA. He came back to Nantucket and got a job at the Bar, which was like climbing back into his smelly, unmade childhood bed. He had no degree and nothing to show for his years since high school graduation—except his devotion to Norah Vale.

Now, Norah Vale lives in Miami, where Ava is pretty sure she works as a stripper, and Kevin is the manager of the Bar and is hoping to buy it someday from the elderly man who owns it.

Ava loves Kevin. She loves all her brothers and takes a distinct pride in being the hub of their wheel.

“Have you heard from Bart?” Ava asks Kevin.

“Have not.”

“No,” Ava says. “Me either. What do you think it’s like over there?”

“I have no idea,” Kevin says.

“Me either,” Ava says. “I don’t even know if it’s hot or cold. I was thinking desert, hot, but Afghanistan is mountainous, too, so maybe it’s cold.”

“He’s in the Marines,” Kevin says. “I’m sure he’s prepared for both extremes.”

“Do you worry about him?” Ava asks.

Kevin smiles at her. “He’ll be fine.”

He’ll be fine.
Well, he
has
to be fine, because anything else is unthinkable.

“Have you gotten a response from Patrick?” Ava asks.

“No,” Kev says. “You?”

“Of course not,” Ava says. Her fifth ice-cold Corona with double limes sits in front of her; she should probably start thinking about getting home for dinner. However, Ava is savoring a secret triumph: Nathaniel has called twice from the road, and she let both calls go to voice mail. She is determined to be present and enjoy being at the Bar with Kevin, especially since it looks like they both might be getting a bona fide family crisis for Christmas. Mitzi has left their father, Patrick isn’t coming home, and Bart… Ava can’t even think about Bart anymore. Or rather, what she thinks is that if Bart will just text and say he’s all right, she’ll be able to handle the rest of it.

She says, “What do you think happened with Patrick? Do you think he and Jen split?”

What are the chances, she wonders, of two marriages in the same family falling apart
on the same day?

“Fight, maybe,” Kevin says. “Holiday stress, or her mother is sick, or he was short a couple diamonds in the tennis bracelet. But they didn’t ‘break up.’ They’re made for each other.”

Ava agrees: Patrick and Jen are one of those couples who are oddly synced in their Type-A-ness. Jennifer is so tightly wound, it makes Ava’s head hurt just to look at her, yet Patrick worships her in all her glorious anality.

“Is ‘anality’ a word?” Ava asks. Kevin has loaded the jukebox with all her favorite holiday songs. Right now, the Boss is singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

“If it’s not, it should be,” Kevin says. “With a photo of Jen right next to it. I know that’s what you were thinking.”

Kevin is the greatest guy on earth, Ava decides. They used to fight when they were younger, which Ava always understood to be a scramble for second place. Patrick always claimed first place.

“How can you tell if two people are made for each other?” Ava asks. She has moved on from anality to deep philosophy. Kevin survived Norah Vale, and this gives him a certain authority when it comes to love and relationships. “What’s the criteria, in your opinion?”

Kevin leans his elbows on the bar, dirty rag slung over his shoulder. His hair is a brighter shade of red than she
remembers from when she saw him this morning; his freckles are more pronounced. A string of colored lights twinkles overhead. The Kinks sing “Father Christmas.”

He says, “Not sure. But Patrick and Jen meet the criteria, whatever it is.”

“What about me and Nathaniel?” Ava asks, then hates herself.

“Nathaniel’s a good guy,” Kevin says. He heads to the end of the bar to get another round for the two construction workers who are the only other people in the place.
Why aren’t there more people here?
Ava wonders.
Because everyone else is Christmas shopping, or they are, like Nathaniel, headed south on I-95 in order to celebrate the holidays in the homes they grew up in, and drink beer in the backseats of cars with the girls they lost their virginities to.

Ava feels a scream coming on.

She misses her mother.

She should go to Hawaii with Margaret, she thinks. Four Seasons Maui. Last year, her mother spent all day in a chaise longue by the pool, next to Bob Seger. He knew who Margaret was, but she thought he was just some old hippie dude from Detroit until the end of their conversation, when he introduced himself and Margaret asked him to sign a cocktail napkin for Ava.

Nathaniel is a good guy, but Kevin’s answer seems to indicate that he does not necessarily think Nathaniel and Ava are made for each other.

Before Ava can ask him or herself why not, someone pulls up a bar stool next to her and says, “Hey, Ava.”

Ava turns. It’s Scott Skyler.

“Hey,” she says. “I thought you were serving dinner at Our Island Home.”

“I finished,” Scott says. “I was driving home and saw your Jeep, so I thought I’d come in and have one with you.”

“You
finished?
” Ava says. “What time is it?”

“Quarter to eight,” Scott says.

“Whoa!” Ava says, and she jumps backward off her stool. Where did the afternoon go? She sways on her feet. The Barenaked Ladies are singing “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” Kevin leaves the construction workers, then drops a Bud Light in front of Scott, and they execute some kind of complicated handshake.

“Ava?” he says. “Another?”

“It’s almost eight o’clock!” she says. “I have to get home!”

“You’re not driving,” Kevin says. “Sorry, sis.”

She’s about to protest, but she knows he’s right.

Scott stands up. “I’ll drive you home.”

“No,” she says. “You stay and enjoy your drink. I’ll… walk.”

“Walk home?” Kevin says. “No, no, and no.”

“I’ll take you,” Scott says. “I didn’t want a beer, anyway. I just wanted to see you.”

Ava puts on her coat and dutifully follows Scott out to the parking lot. She can feel her phone vibrating in her
purse, but she doesn’t check it. She hopes it’s Nathaniel, she hopes he understands she’s hurt that he left the island without saying good-bye or Merry Christmas. He prides himself on his freedom and spontaneity, his ability to fly by the seat of his pants. But Ava wishes he felt more of a sense of commitment to her. She wishes that, since it’s
Christmas,
he’d had a bit more foresight. Just twenty-four hours earlier, he cooked her dinner at his cottage, as he did every Monday night in football season, so they could watch the game together. He made white chili and corn muffins, and tapioca pudding, because it’s Ava’s favorite dessert from childhood. The evening had been wonderful, just like every evening with Nathaniel. But if Ava had known he was leaving today, she would have suggested they exchange presents, or do something else to mark the holiday together.

Did Nathaniel not think of these things because he was male, and therefore oblivious? Or did she just not matter to him? He had made her tapioca pudding, and then, at halftime, he threw her over his shoulder and carried her into his bedroom, where he devoured her like a starving man. So he did love her. But then today, he just
left
—either because his mother’s entreaties got to him, or because Kirsten Cabot sent another message on Facebook too enticing to resist.

Ava emits a long, loud, confused sigh, which Scott ignores. He takes her arm and gently helps her up into the passenger seat of his Explorer.

She shivers in her seat until Scott starts the engine and
cranks the heater.
I just wanted to see you.
There isn’t any ambiguity where Scott Skyler’s feelings are concerned. He likes her, he has always liked her, but he has accepted the role of best friend, and for that, Ava is grateful.

“I hate ‘Jingle Bells,’ ” she says. “I’ve always hated it.”

“Yeah,” Scott says. “Me too.”