The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund (12 page)

I smiled, remembering Tim's acute (and accurate) sense that Kiki was unhappy on our many Black Falcon trips together, remarking, “Roughing it for Kiki is when the Four Seasons is booked.”

“Well, you know . . . ,” I started, somehow feeling oddly guilty at my forthcoming betrayal, as I was sworn to secrecy about all things related to Comet Capital. “Tim and Hal bought the Black Falcon.”

“WHAT?!” Kiki was aghast.

“Fifty percent of it. A few months ago. I guess they've been raking it in and Tim thinks they can expand it and go global and stuff. Who knows.”

“Gross. That company is so weird and creepy.”

“They also invested in O.F.R.I.—remember that lab we visited?”

“No way!”

“Way.”

O.F.R.I. stood for Ocean Floor Research Institute and was started by these two guys who were the top underwater explorers looking for sunken treasure. They had made headlines six years before in their find of a 1623 Spanish ship filled with $300 million of doubloons. Now they supposedly had found a ship carrying a treasure from four hundred years ago that was meant as a war bribe to lure an archduke to switch loyalties, but got lost at sea, crashing to the watery depths below with an estimated booty of $5 billion. Tim was all hush-hush about the deal, as he had been competing with rival fund MajesticMount, but he and Hal managed to turn on their Talbott charms and seal the deal, with Comet now owning roughly 30 percent of O.F.R.I.

“You know, I'm not greedy,” Kiki said, shrugging. “But what we got is a pittance compared to what they have squirreled away somewhere. Forget their trusts—I'm talking that bullshit “carry” with Comet. It's so unfair. They're shit husbands and yet we get flushed down the toilet financially.”

“Well, we did sign the prenups,” I lamented, thinking of how Tim sprang it on me three weeks before the wedding. I was semihorrified, as its existence had implications that weren't exactly till-death-do-us-part, but Tim said Sherry Von made him do it. Her speech went something like this: No signatures, no inheritance. Either way, after all those years of exhausting Black Falcon travel and scuba dives down to quasi-frozen underwater wrecks, it was interesting to realize that if Comet Capital's ship came in (so to speak), neither Kiki nor I would see one doubloon. But in the hot pink sunset of that August sky, clinking glasses filled with minty green refreshing concoctions, neither of us cared at all.

We had never been the gold-digging types, and so we weren't bitter—we had each other. We had met through the two brothers, who were now fading away into the past chapters of our lives, but we remained side by side, closer than ever. I just hoped that after our warm summer sanctuary, I could get through the chilling ice-water plunge of September's reentry.

 

 

 

T
he first day of school, heart pounding, I walked beside a skipping Miles, eager to see his friends, as I cringed, wishing I had a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak. But I couldn't hide; I had to face up to everyone and diffuse any gossip with my big smile and confident composure. In other words, give Meryl Streep a run for her Oscars.

“Hi, Holly,” said the perfectly bobbed Mary Grassweather, looking me over. “You look . . . great. How was your summer?”

A loaded silence hung in the air as four nearby moms turned to hear my response. Miles had scampered off to gab with his friends, and I looked at them with a small shrug.

“Well, you know, Tim and I split up, so it was kind of crazy, but I'm hanging in there.”

“We heard,” said Emilia d'Angelo, with a faux-sadness in her eyes like that kitty-cat poster they sell in Hallmark. “I'm so sorry to hear it. But these things are usually for the best!” Mary, Emilia, and Posey all looked down briefly at their different candy-hued Tory Burch Reva flats in a nanosecond of silence as an imaginary death knell rang over the grave of my marriage.

I had a scarlet “D” on my forehead and could tell I somehow felt different to them now; maybe because I represented the fact that if it could happen to us, it could happen to anyone. There were reactions of shock at the demise of my marriage, patronizing looks of pity on the school steps, and whispers from perfect mommies who saw me as I approached. Women whom I myself had resembled only a year ago when kindergarten had started. I was the first divorcée of the first grade. Well, second, but Kathy Gilles had split from her husband when their son was only two. I, however, was the first singleton of the couples who had arrived intact. Posey was my only organic pal, and in my low pony and occasional sweats I always felt like an outcast from the other women who were so groomed and glittering. And the Cadillac Escalades and GMC Denalis at drop-off always reminded me of this.

Whenever Miles had a playdate and they rode home with his pal's chef-baked chocolate chip cookies and movies for the fifteen-minute trip, he always lamented that we didn't have the same amenities. But I didn't want some dude in my kitchen on call, and not to be cheesy but I liked the idea of Miles day-dreaming out the car window, watching the world go by instead of Spider-Man's webbing. I remembered one time, Hubert, Sherry Von's sweet and loyal butler, came to scoop us up. Kiki accompanied Miles and me to Locust Valley in Sherry Von's car, which was equipped with countless DVDs for Miles, all of which were age-inappropriate, skewing too young. But Miles was a captive audience and even though he was six, he preferred Dora the Explorer to green highway signage any day, so he zoned out to the quest to get the little ducky back to his momma, whose nest was perched at the top of a volcano. After the Map sang his round of “I'm the Map! I'm the Map! I'm the Map! I'm the Map! I'm the Map! I'm the Map! I'm the Map! I'm the Map!”

Kiki blurted out, “OKAY, YOU'RE THE FUCKING MAP!” She asked how I could ever put up with that cacophony, and from that moment I knew we would not succumb to the in-car entertainment system that the hordes at drop-off and pickup were screening. Even Hubert, who never complained (and had been through way worse with Sherry Von's poison tongue lashing him when the coffee was too hot or not hot enough), exhaled in relief when I turned off the relentless chirp of our
amiga cantante
.

But because Miles's friends would always run in elite circles and possibly infect him with their yearning for stuff, I knew I had to ground him as best I could and keep his values centered, like the school's teachings did. I adored Miles's school and the unmatchable education it offered my son. But while I loved the soul of the place, I was loath to see all the moms whose husbands somehow worked with Tim—half the class was hedge fund wives. There were other professions, sure, but many—most—were hedgie molls. As I surveyed the school's steps from a distance, I saw everyone preened to perfection, blond locks glinting off the sun from a summer of beachside rays—and amped up shades at Fekkai.

But as I saw the blond heads whispering and casting not-so-subtle glances in my direction, I knew that not just good news, but also bad, travels fast: Within yards of the front door where the boys lined up outside school, I knew damn well that word had broken on Tim's extracurriculars to every last mom on those crowded steps, not just the Hamptons crew among whom gossip is texted at the Mercedes wheel between Hay Ground camp and town. My bomb's fallout had even reached those summering on their private islands off the coast of Maine and Canada. But while such salacious revelations would have spurred me to reach out to the poor humiliated wife, I weirdly had the sense that I was somehow diseased when two of the moms looked me over. I tried to change the subject.

“Wow, Emilia, that's a cool camera,” I observed, noticing a very sleek futuristic digicam with MoMA on it.

“Thanks!” She beamed. “For a five-million-dollar donation, you too can have one!” she said, in all seriousness. She then looked down, probably realizing (correctly) that post-divorce I was in no position to be a high-roller philanthropist any longer.

“Oh, they're letting us into school,” she was happy to notice, puncturing the pregnant pause. “Let's go, Prescott!”

And with that, they ran off to get in line with their sons. Emilia had looked away almost immediately and swept the whole thing under the proverbial rug, as if she needed to change subjects. Were all these perfect women somehow threatened by my split?

It got worse a week later when I heard Trish say to Mary, “Is there anything I can bring tomorrow night? We're so looking forward to dinner, we had such a nice time last year. . . .” Ah, yes. It was Trip and Mary Grassweather's black-tie dinner party in honor of the seasonal equinox on the twenty-first at their penthouse on Fifth. These hedge fund people will find any excuse for a party. Tim and I had met them a few times at birthday parties during the nursery school years, and when a mutual friend told us our kids would be in the same school for kindergarten, they invited us to a beautiful evening at their home at this time last year. I guess I was off the list now. I guess I'd be off every party list now. . . . I was the pariah of St. Sebastian's.

 

 

 

K
iki and I were standing in my walk-in closet. Miles was leaving for a sleepover birthday party at Corbett Grassweather's house, and I would be . . . alone. Free to go out on the town with Kiki. Sort of. I gripped my cell phone in case Miles needed me and wanted to be airlifted from the slumber party, which I was weirdly secretly hoping he would.

Corbett's party wasn't just a Spider-Man theme. No, no, no, no—that would be too easy! Too pedestrian! You see, Mary and her husband called the owner of Marvel and arranged for Stan Lee himself to come and do drawings for the boys! And: You guessed it, Tobey Maguire would be “stopping by” for the cake, since now many hedge funds were investing in movies and the Grassweathers had befriended the webbed one by funding a pet project of his. Nice. Here, without exaggeration, are party themes of some hedgie children Tim's friends had thrown for their beloved offspring:

It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. I wanted to shield him from the excess as much as I could, but I wasn't going to have him be the only one to miss the parties. All I could do was try and stay grounded in our new family of two. Keep him centered, read to him about other places outside this bubble. So far, so good: He was a truly loving, good kid with a huge heart and strong values. But as he kissed me at the Grassweathers' and skipped off with his Spider-Man sleeping bag and navy duffel, it occurred to me that he couldn't wait to have me bail. So there I was. Walking home alone to face getting ready to go out like the old times.

I stood staring at my closet wondering what to put on to face the world as a singleton again. I gulped wearily at the prospect of gussying up, until Kiki burst into my apartment, fiercely dressed in a chocolate brown leather mini, a chic cowl-neck sweater, high boots, and bloodred nails.

“Okay! Let's get this party started! We need wine and music.”

It had been so long since I'd done this: the revving up pre-night out. Choice after fashion choice that Kiki handed me was about as over the top as a spa day for six-year-olds.

“Keeks. I'm in my mid-thirties. This is too wild,” I protested as she handed me a red satin D&G clinger she'd brought. “You don't wear this hem length at my age.”

“Bullshit. All those
Sex and the City
girls were older than you and they wore Hermès scarves on their boobs, for Christ's sake!”