Jane Smiley - Golden Age

Richie grabbed her hand and pulled her down on his lap, then kissed her and said, “Do you remember that Foreigner song, ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’? All the howling at the end, ‘I want you to show me!’ ” She kissed him back, fully, richly, with fervor. She murmured, “Sort of,” and closed her eyes. Richie remembered it as if it were on the radio right now, that desperation that had gobbled up his own and screamed it back at him. Jessica said, “I can’t believe how you love me. I never met anyone like you.” But Richie knew that he was the lucky one.

—

ANDY’S FIRST URGE when her money disappeared again was to look for a set of pearls she’d mislaid months before. She had checked everywhere when she realized they were missing — under the seat of the car, under the bed, behind the couch, in the canisters in the kitchen, in all of her suitcases and handbags. The Hut was clean and neat, but she tore it apart, remembering how nice those pearls were — not terribly valuable, plain and old-fashioned, but they could be reset in a more stylish way, interspersed with something semi-precious, like tourmaline. She didn’t know why she wanted them; perhaps they had simply slipped off her neck at the movies or something, and, in her inattentive way, she hadn’t noticed. But she was newly certain that they had to be somewhere. It took her most of the afternoon, but she didn’t find them when she was thrashing around in every box, she found them when she was picking a coat up off the floor in front of the closet by the back door — and they slipped out of the pocket and landed with a rattle on the tiles, arranged in a graceful curve, as if in a store window. She bent down, picked them up, pulled them gently through her fingers, touched them to her cheek, carried them into her bedroom, and put them in her jewelry case.

Then she went back to cleaning up. First she gathered up everything she had thrown down, rearranged everything she had dug through, set back the cushions that she had tossed on the floor, lined up the shoes she had pulled out of the closets, straightened the rugs she had looked underneath, made the beds, unloaded the dishwasher, put the books back on the bookshelves, organized her cosmetics, threw out some shirts and pairs of jeans that were out of style. Only after all of that did she let herself wonder where that money had gotten to and whether it was a bigger deal, since it was a bigger sum. In 2000, when the absconding broker transferred his clients’ money to Venezuela, she had been worth ten million. Since then, she had gone up to twenty-five, but recently she had settled temporarily at seventeen, or thereabouts. She’d been tempted to buy this investment and that investment, but for two years now, it had been rather like the old days, when she’d gotten over the first flush of having money — say, when the twins were three or four. She would leave them with Nedra and go into Manhattan and wander around Bergdorf’s or Bendel’s. Her eye would see something, her hand reach out. She would try it on and be told by the saleswoman that it looked wonderful, and indeed it did, but as the moments passed she would find it, whatever it was, more and more awful. She could have those two thoughts at the same time — it suited her, but it was awful — and she would shake her head and walk away. Once, a saleswoman ran after her and said, “Madam! Please! I always lie, but this really was made for you, it really was. The designer ought to give it to you!” She had thanked the woman, regretfully shaken her head. She couldn’t buy it.

Thinking of this, she knew she would do nothing about the money. She knew it had gone to Michael somehow, though she didn’t know how. She was eighty-eight, she had no desires, she had found her pearls. Some abyss, perhaps, gaped around her, but it looked like a vista up in the Catskills, hills receding, orderly and green, into the distance. She could not make herself afraid of it.

—

November 10, 2008

Dear Janet, Jared, Claire, Carl, Jesse, and Jen,

I understand that it has fallen to me to write a little history of the last two months, in order to explain what has happened. I admit that all of this was as much of a shock to me as it must have been to you, and for several weeks I did not know how to address, or, perhaps, want to address it, but Riley Calhoun, Charlie’s widow, my housemate, and my fellow parent (and Richard’s former aide), has impressed upon me the need for clarity. Whether we will be able to put any of this behind us, I sometimes wonder, but history says that we will.

Riley has assembled a timeline that I am using to relate all of this. She is a very dedicated and organized young woman. At any rate, let me get started.

It now appears certain, that on or about September 15, Michael did forge papers that transferred his mother’s trading account to his own firm. For most of the end of September, no one understood this. When Andy’s broker asked her if she had authorized the transfer, she said that she had, but the broker was, let’s say, both suspicious and disappointed, and he called a friend of his in the Manhattan DA’s office and asked him as a favor to look at the papers. It turned out that there were a few errors in the wording of the transfer, and that, when they had a forensic handwriting expert examine the signatures, there was reasonable uncertainty about Andy’s signature. She continued to resist pressure to admit that she had not signed the papers, but in the end, they noticed, she could not say that she HAD signed the papers. I guess she kept saying, “The signature is fine. It looks fine.”

When the realization hit that Michael’s company had gone bust right at the end of September, the coincidence was just too great, and so the DA’s office began investigating Michael. There was that picture in the Post , you will remember, of Michael in handcuffs, with the caption, “Is this the only financier who will pay the piper?” Of course, Michael only spent one night in jail, and maybe, if the picture had been in the Times rather than a more populist paper, it wouldn’t have had such an impact. He was very well dressed in that picture, which I think turned out to be a disadvantage. I believe the immediate motive for the forgery was that Michael was, as they say, “short” on some investments, and that he was trying to maintain payments on them, so that if they crashed he would benefit and repay his mother’s account. However, this did not work out. I do not know when his trial date is, and I don’t think he does, either.

At any rate, the newspapers were now on to him in a way that they were not on to other traders that perhaps behaved even worse, and of course Michael always has a certain facial expression we are all familiar with, which I suppose is best described as “haughty,” and it does no good to explain to the average person that he has always had that expression, Wall Street or not.

All of this was happening around the same time as the bailout, so there was a lot of chaos. Riley informs me that she did not allow Richard to vote for the bailout, either for the first bill or the second bill, but, as you know, neither his remarks concerning the unpopularity of the bailout (I guess Riley read that government purchase of toxic assets always has a deleterious effect on recovery, and stood next to him during both the votes) nor his vote had any effect (but see below).

You may have read the article in the Times about Richard. If not, I enclose a copy. I believe that this was a hit job, unwarranted by the true circumstances, but Riley says to me that, as soon as they saw it, Richard and the office staff started packing up to leave Washington. No one in Congress would sit with him at lunch, or even talk to him. The writing, as they say, was on the wall, written there by The New York Times . I have only spoken to Richard once since the election. He and Jessica are still in Washington, of course, because it takes a while to undo sixteen years of your career. Their condo is on the market. The housing market is pretty bad, but it may be that, once the new administration is inaugurated, the market will pick up.