Opening Belle (38 page)

I stood motionless in the locked stall, and I begged for a do-over. In fact I demanded a big do-over, a many-years, many-choices do-over and I wanted it to begin right away. I had always been the good girl, the cooperative one, the girl who didn't party too much or get facial tattoos or sleep with strangers. I was the one who answered the teacher's questions, who did her homework, who opted to rise early and work late after everyone else left. Shouldn't it be guaranteed for that girl to not have her life turn out like this? Isn't there a pact with some sacred being, a deal with the angels? I didn't realize I was actually pounding on the metal wall that separated my stall from the one next to me. I didn't realize I was moaning in some guttural, frightening way that would send little girls running for their mommies. I also don't know how long it went on.

Some man was sent in to save me from myself though I could hardly see him through my tears. I caught sight of something paper and golden on his head that appeared to be some sort of crown. I think he was the King of Burgers, and somehow he got assigned to the lunatic in the ladies' room. He was a nice man, large and Spanish-speaking. I know enough Spanish to understand the word
loca
, spoken into a radio receiver. He was telling people this white lady in an expensive suit was nuts. He put his large, brown arms around me in an effort to contain me but I interpreted this as his desire to hug me. I hugged him right back, with a force that I'm sure surprised him. I couldn't hold tightly enough to his thick middle that smelled like French fries. My ferocious grip caused his crown to fall into the toilet but I didn't let go, wouldn't let go of this adult-sized human who felt strong and supportive and in charge of something, even if it was security at the Rutherford Burger King.

Eventually my heart, which had been racing, slowed. I heard people come and go, turning on water, pushing on hand dryers, sighing at us just standing there in our open second stall. Another man came to the door to ask if he was okay and he said, “
No problema.
”

I pushed back enough to read the name tag on the man's shirt. “Leonardo,” it read. He winced and adjusted the tag and only then did I realize it had opened and I'd been stabbing him with the pin. He even had droplets of blood forming on his mustard-yellow shirt.

“
Lo siento
,” I said, reaching for toilet paper to dab at his wound.

He shook his head and squeezed my shoulders and said, “You're okay.” It wasn't a question. It was a statement.

I thought about my next move, about how I should call Hertz or call a locksmith. I thought of the fact it was now 6 p.m. and that Friday evening at 6 p.m. in New Jersey is probably a time that all locksmiths and all Hertz car rental agents have universally agreed to go home. It's the time that no human should ever do something stupid.

I went into the dining area and sat in a Formica booth watching some soccer team scarf down food and grab fries from each other's pile, chattering over each other's words. I could see Leonardo playing some sort of Simon Says game with a group of kids inside a glassed-in room. It seemed everyone around me was speaking but I couldn't understand anyone's words.

I rose and went outside to find the wind had picked up on this early spring evening. I peered in the car window and took inventory of what was inside: my work computer, packets of deal material for an IPO, an HP calculator, and a cold cup of coffee. Then I looked at what I had with me outside the car: my wallet and my phone. Really I had everything I needed. A police car pulled into the parking lot and I thought about asking them to jimmy open the door but everything in my car appeared to be so bulky, so heavy, my car was full of quicksand. Instead I asked them if there was a bus to New York City.

The young officers looked curiously at my suit and boots not designed for walking, but they pointed and said it's about three miles from there and that was good enough for me. The road rose about one hundred yards away from that Burger King and I stopped for a moment to look back at the car and all I was leaving behind. The hill offered just enough pitch for me to catch the final moment of daylight reflecting off the darkened Taurus's window. It was there I said good-bye to the Glass Ceiling Club, which, while well-meaning, represented nothing in the end, good-bye to obsessing about Bruce screwing his flexible friend, good-bye to that white car with its load of papers and the suck of the money inside it. I said good-bye to it all on a hill in New Jersey as a last flash of sunlight hit the driver's window at just the right angle. For a moment I could have sworn I saw that car wink right back at me.

September 2015

T
HE GLASS DOORS
of our offices at Arbella Financial are propped open, letting the spring ocean breeze fill the trading room. If it weren't littered with LCD screens, the place would look like some trendy downtown showroom, rather than a boutique investment bank. Colorful boxes, all framed in white plastic, contain the few papers we deal with each day. Amy designed and Bruce built out the trading turrets. As a single man he's become a fantastically talented carpenter and the result is stunningly beautiful.

Once you grab your egg crate of possessions each morning, you pick your favorite colored cushion and go find yourself a seat—not unlike a preschool class where each kid chooses her circle spot. We make ourselves sit next to someone different each day, to help us share ideas and to avoid planting the seeds of clique-gossip that exists in most offices. Our mission is far too important to play the games of the past years.

We have a Ping-Pong room, which makes us look like a hip technology start-up, which we are not. We aren't very cool and we haven't overextended our adolescence; we have a playroom because we have kids. We are a boutique investment firm, predominately run by women. While we have a tiny office in Manhattan to make us seem more legitimate, our headquarters are here in Hampton Bays, New York, about two miles from the Atlantic Ocean and ninety miles from New York City. It's a town with simple ranch houses and no celebrity visits. A yellow school bus stops outside our door each afternoon and deposits five of my employees' children, plus my three, whom I now get to see while a bit of sunlight still is present. I like just about everything going on in my life right now, here in September 2015.

We started this place with settlement money the GCC received. Manchester Bank set aside money for pending Feagin Dixon lawsuits. Once they got to know the firm they bought, they foresaw litigation raining from the sky regarding shady mortgages, extreme financial instruments, and, where the GCC came in, harassment and unfair pay practices.

An accrual or reserve was set up to hash this stuff out before the banks became one. For a brief while, the management of Feagin Dixon still ran the firm and settled these smaller issues before the deal closed. While a small rounding error in the face of the mortgage crisis numbers was to come, the GCC was handed $27 million. It was a lot of money with not one cent for me. I was too puzzled to sue and was unclear what exactly I was suing for. But my friends, yes friends, from the GCC were rich. They combined their settlement money to start this firm, and they chose me as their leader at a nice salary, which rocked my pride button more than any promotion I've ever received. We manage our own money and provide seed money to small, promising companies. We help them to grow and one of them has even come public. We aren't making millions but we're doing really well.

Why didn't I sue? That night I was racing from a Burger King in New Jersey to New York City, desperate to pick up the kids on time, I was supposed to have swung by a law office to join the other women in their complaint. I took the glass elevator up to Bruce's sex pad. Instead of him being mad, he fixated puppy eyes on me and acted like he was in mourning.

“So run and do your thing and leave the kids here tonight,” Bruce had said in a tone far too nice for me to trust. He sounded so giving and borderline loving. He sounded like someone I used to know.

“Yes, but I'm late, and what if you use that against me?”

“Against you?”

“With the judge and all.”

“Belle, we aren't living out some episode of
Kramer vs. Kramer.
”

“We're not?” I hated that Bruce was looking so well. I thought he'd get scruffy and fat. I had heard he broke up with his young girlfriend and hadn't dated since and was working. Some part of me wanted him eating Fritos on the couch and bankrupting himself.

“We're in this thing together,” he went on, “and you got stuck in traffic or whatever, so no biggie.”

“Yeah, traffic, or lost my rental car keys, actually,” I said.

“You lost them? You don't lose stuff.”

I remember thinking that even though I was still wearing the spiky boots and a nice suit, I was anything but hot-looking. I looked more like what I was, the bedraggled soon-to-be divorcée. I sat on his bottom step and Bruce instinctively bent over and pulled each boot off. They made a sucking sound as they detached from each foot and he laughed while we looked at each other awkwardly.

“Sorry,” he said. “I forget who we are now.”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to change the subject fast. “Well, all I know about the keys is that they're still in New Jersey. Maybe underground.”

Bruce lifted his eyebrows, making his face look adorable. “Underground? So how did you get to the city with no car keys?”

“I took a bus,” I said. “Like on Buses of New Jersey or something. They offer very slow service.”

When he gave me a slight smile, I suddenly remembered how I once loved this man. It all came back to me.

“Well, I think that subliminally you didn't want to be on time. You didn't want to sign on to any lawsuit,” he said.

“Not true.”

“You were treated poorly and you were treated great,” he said, nailing exactly what I was thinking. Despite the sometimes insane working conditions, that place gave me a shot to move so far, so fast, at least for the first bunch of years. This was what I loved about Bruce. He could see through everyone and everything and then could tell me what I already knew about myself. I forgot he could do this. I forgot that once, Bruce had been my friend.

“I just didn't think that my getting money out of this was going to help change anything about Wall Street. I mean, how is paying
me
going to help the women coming behind me? Besides, I do like to move on.”

“Yeah,” Bruce said. “You move on fast.” His eyes misted up.

I couldn't believe it. While this whole gut-throbbing, anxiety-plagued, crappy separation managed to bring me to my knees, and sometimes had me walking around teary and terrified, Bruce had shown as much emotion as the guy who collects toll money on the George Washington Bridge. I was starting to think he should date Kathryn Peterson just to see who could exhibit less feeling. But that night something was changing about him, or some feeling was returning to him. There we stood, on child-defying slate floors, with bad modern art canvases hung at finger-painting level, and he went gooey on me. I could tell the guy still loved me and I wanted to figure out a way to love him back. But I couldn't. Not then.

That was the night that Bruce and I became friends and he started growing up. He supported my decision to go live in the Tea Bag House, and to put the kids into a public school. Within three months he missed our joyful chaos far too much, so he gave up his bachelor pad and, I believe, his tantric yoga practice. He rented a quaint, tiny house in Southampton and planted a vegetable garden with the kids and got a job. He has a young, single, next-door-neighbor lady, who hits on him, leaves him cutesy notes and (gag me) casseroles. Really. A frickin' casserole with condensed soup as an ingredient, which I asked him to not serve the kids, as canned foods are a known carcinogen. That was my own way of saying, “Please don't take your neighbor's bait. Please. We may just still have a chance.”

His job is designing and building furniture, mostly in fancy homes, and he even worked in King's house, which is no longer Amy's house, because Amy is in love with a really good man and going to be a mother. Bruce and I also never bothered to get divorced after this five-year pseudo-separation. Neither of us is dating anyone seriously, we just sort of work out a lot, run one-hundred-yard dashes on the beach together with the kids planted at the fifty-yard line. We don't have a caregiver. We look better than we did a few years ago, we're better parents, and we're good to each other. We flirt like crazy and we remember how to be kind. We're boring as hell, but aren't bored at all.

The few women heroines the Glass Ceiling Club had have all been taken down. Ina Drew, one of the top executives at JPMorgan, was responsible for a group that managed a $6 billion loss and became a very public casualty for women everywhere. Sallie Krawcheck got promoted to run the two wealth management divisions of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch and was touted as the most powerful woman on Wall Street, at least for a few months, and then got fired in what the company described, in original terms, as “delayering.”

“Delayer my fucking wedding cake,” Amanda had shouted at the television when the announcement was made, hurling a box of pencil erasers at it for good measure. Just last month, Bank of America was ordered to pay fines to the federal government of close to $17 billion for their role in the mortgage crisis. They never saw it coming but, as I think to myself sometimes, I did, and so, I believe, did Sallie.

The report continued, “According to Bank of America, Sallie Krawcheck has no immediate plans for the future.”

“Get her on the phone!” shouted Violette, who, in the quiet of our own firm, has certainly found her voice. She is our largest producer. Who knew?

“She doesn't want to work with us,” said Amy.