The Tenth Song (13 page)

She burned with anger and resentment, which was transformed into self-pity, and finally self-loathing, thinking of how Emily Kahn, her neighbor, had passed her by without saying hello. Was it deliberate? Or had she just not seen her? Of how Brenda Cohen had called her, wanting a lift to the Emanuel wedding, and how she had had to admit that they hadn’t been invited. Imagine! The Emanuels, who were such old friends!

“Maybe it’s going to be a small wedding. People are cutting back. You don’t have to take everything so personally,” Adam told her, perhaps sincerely or perhaps blindly. She couldn’t decide which would be worse. He was kinder than she. He didn’t see bad in anyone unless it was truly beyond a reasonable doubt. And even then…

How many clients has he lost? she wondered. Enough so that he would have to let his staff go, all those bright, promising young accountants he had selected and wooed with such care? Aside from the expense of the severance pay, it would break his heart. He had made them so many promises to win them over. And now, they would be unemployed, in this job market. And then there was the lease for the office space and equipment, which couldn’t be broken without penalty. He never spoke about it, getting dressed and leaving for the office the way he always did.

How much money did they have in savings? She didn’t know anything. Adam had always handled it all. “I just go to the cash machine, and pop, like magic, the money comes out!” she’d once told a dinner crowd of admiring friends. The women had all nodded. That was the way it was in their circles. Powerful, successful men who took care of them and their money. Why would you want to balance a checkbook, make a budget, and stick to it, if you didn’t have to?

There had been moments through the years when this state of affairs had tweaked her conscience. It didn’t seem adult, somehow, to be so far removed from the fiscal knowledge and responsibility on which your life rested. She had never paid bills, never balanced the budget. Not that she hadn’t tried. Once, in a particularly ambitious mood early in their marriage, she had purchased a
home-accounting notebook, and diligently gone through and recorded all their monthly expenses as Adam looked on, amused. “You’re not buying anything we don’t need” had always been his indulgent answer to her attempts at cutting back and cutting down. But not long after that, Adam had made some spectacular connections in the real-estate world, and their income had soared into the stratosphere, making her feel foolish.

The wake-up call had come with Adam’s health scare. She had been terrified, realizing she didn’t even know how to access their money-market funds; where the stocks or bonds were hiding; and what kind of life insurance they had. She had tried to get him to explain things to her. But he was going through radiation, and the whole subject seemed to hurt him. “So, you’re that sure you’ll be needing to handle all this alone soon?” he’d answered her bitterly.

And that had been the end of the subject.

Until now.

She needed to talk to Adam about money. But no matter how desperately she needed the information, she felt she couldn’t ask him, that it would smack of disloyalty or—worse—distrust.

Well, at least I still have a job, she told herself. But their lifestyle could not be maintained on a teacher’s salary. She lay in the dark, pondering: Were they going to have to let Esmeralda go? The gardeners? The maintenance man? And then, what would happen to their house? Even if she quit her job and worked at it full-time, she couldn’t possibly keep it maintained in the condition it was in. She just wouldn’t know how, especially the gardens, with all those leaves… ! That alone was a full-time job. It would be exhausting to even try. But then, she thought, could I be any more exhausted than I already am?

In bed, she lay awake imagining stacks of white envelopes holding bills that lay unopened on Adam’s desk. She couldn’t sleep. This fact dawned on her slowly.

At first she thought that she just wasn’t tired. Or that she had something she really wanted to find out about on the Internet. And so at one in the morning she would browse aimlessly, going from entertainment news gossip to the latest on Fritzl and his daughter, or Madoff. Then she checked out iTunes, and Web sites about Jews and Israel and terrorism. She avoided looking at her watch. And when she finally got into bed, she could not get up the next morning. She
dragged through the day, feeling like she was walking underwater, each footfall heavy and clumsy. It reminded her of her days as a young mother, when the clock had made no distinction between night and day, and the crying infant had disordered the universe. It was all the same, a twenty-four-hour period of wakefulness, with no time off.

She knew, vaguely, that she couldn’t keep it up, that she was betraying Adam, who needed her to be strong. She wanted so much to prove to everyone that she was. She wanted so much to be one of those people about whom others say with admiration: “Through it all, she was magnificent.” “She never wavered.” “I don’t know where she got her strength.” It was heartbreaking to admit to herself that—as much as she wanted to, as much as Adam deserved it, and as much as her children expected it—she couldn’t be that person. It was a surprise, a disappointing failure for which she hadn’t been prepared.

She was falling apart. If anything, it was Adam who was holding her up.

Finally, she confided in her doctor, who listened sympathetically and prescribed sedatives. “Now you aren’t going to take these every night, are you?” He smiled, that kindly I?know-I?can-count-on-you smile, the smile that told her she was a sensible woman who could be relied upon not to take too many pills too often, because they were addictive.

Abigail, a woman who didn’t like drugs, and hated to swallow pills of any kind, even vitamins, took a sedative and slept for over eight hours. It was such a deep, restorative sleep. She loved the way those little white pills made her feel—as if nothing was important. Soon, she couldn’t sleep without them. But when she went back to renew her prescription, her doctor balked: “Abigail, it’s not that I don’t trust you. I’ve known you a long time. But perhaps we should be dealing with this in another way.” He suggested antidepressants.

She called Debra, the only person to whom she always admitted the truth.

“I took them once, a long time ago, when Ben and I were having our problems. It helped. But I didn’t like the way they made me feel,” Debra recalled.

“What way was that?”

“Like there was this glass window between myself and the world. I was part of everything, functioning, but I didn’t feel anything. Nothing made me sad or upset. But nothing made me happy either. I couldn’t stand that! I finally stopped.”

“What happened?”

“I felt miserable, but so what? Isn’t it better to feel miserable when you’re miserable than not to feel anything at all? Yes, I was angry and upset and everything else. But at least I felt alive. You remember that movie
Tootsie
? Remember what Teri Garr says to Dustin Hoffman when he tells her the truth, that he’s in love with another woman? She says: ‘I’m going to feel this way until I don’t feel this way anymore, and you’re going to have to know that you’re the one that made me feel this way, you schmuck!’ ”

She laughed. “But I can’t sleep.”

“I know. Try some Chi Qong. It’s very relaxing. Or recite some psalms. You wouldn’t believe how comforting they can be. Believe me, everyone who has ever lived has gone through this crap. It’s part of the human condition, as our Lit professors liked to say.”

She bought a book on Chi Qong. She tried standing perfectly still, her feet gripping the ground, her hands weightless at her sides, feeling her mind empty of all thoughts. She concentrated on her breathing, feeling the cool air as it entered her nostrils, making her little nose hairs quiver like sea anemones, feeling it fill her lungs and make her stomach rise and fall. She beat back her thoughts, until there was nothing left but her breath. She timed how long she could keep it up: five minutes, ten at the most, before she found herself back at square one—pain, pain, and more pain.

And then, one morning, as she was walking down the street, she crossed on a red light. Cars screeched to a halt, barely missing her. Instead of being shaken and grateful, she realized that some part of her was disappointed. How comforting it would be if it were just all over. Dying wasn’t so frightening, she thought. She’d had a great life. Great kids, grandchildren. Maybe it was enough?

“I’m not coping very well,” she told Adam. She was standing outside the door of his home office, watching his back hunch over the keyboard of the computer.

“Look, I’m sorry. Can we talk later?” He was brusque, abrupt.

She felt offended, brushed away. And then she felt guilty for her resentment. How could she think about burdening him even more with her own problems?

She went to the kitchen and made him some coffee as a peace offering, climbing back up the stairs with it. He was on the phone.

“This is Adam Samuels. Is George Cook there? I’ll hold… . George, it’s
Adam Samuels. Yes… thank you very much. I appreciate your loyalty more than I can say. But I think it would be in your best interests to find another accountant. I am innocent of these charges. I have done nothing wrong. But your company could be adversely affected by my legal battles, and it is just not in your best interests to be involved in this… . Thank you very much for saying that. I appreciate your honesty also, George. Yes, thank you very much. Let me know when you want to pick up the files.”

She stared at him, speechless. “What are you doing?!”

“Abby, I have no choice. This is the honest thing to do. These people could find themselves investigated just for their association with me. It’s my responsibility to…”

“What about your responsibility to yourself, to me, to this family? How can you do this? Blow off all the clients who didn’t go running?”

“It’s the honest thing to do,” he repeated stubbornly. “I’m sorry. I have no choice.”

Her hands trembled. The hot coffee sloshed over, burning her fingertips. She said, “OH!” and opened her hand, letting the cup smash on the floor.

He sat down heavily, staring at the dark brown circle widening across the blue-and-cream carpeting of his office. “I’ve got work to do, Abby,” he said tonelessly, swiveling his chair around to face his computer.

She wanted to scream: “Explain to me why my life is falling apart! What happened? What did you do? What do they think you did?”

But she could already see in her mind exactly what would happen: He would turn around, his jaws clenched in fury. He would say: “I’ve already told you everything I know, Abigail.”

To which she could only answer: “Tell me again!”

And he would repeat what she already knew: that he had transferred a client’s money to a hedge fund in England that came highly recommended. Unbeknownst to him, this fund had a manager who had transferred that money to terrorist groups. The feds were convinced he was a venal, willing participant. “But I didn’t know…” he would beg her, his voice growing louder and louder.

And she would have nothing left to say to him but the worst thing she could say: “Why didn’t you know? Why weren’t you more careful?”

So she didn’t say anything, swallowing the words like a cup of arsenic.

She looked at his back, then walked out the door.

Second by second, minute by minute, her anger grew and multiplied like some splitting amoeba that infects the entire body in record time. It did not stem from any question of her husband’s guilt or innocence. At most there might be a remote possibility that he had made an honest, stupid mistake, or there had been some innocent misunderstanding now misconstrued. No, it wasn’t that. It was the idea that this was hanging over his head and he was doing all he could to exclude her. She felt like a child whose parents had made decisions that were only now being discovered because of the consequences which had fallen on her. She felt completely in the dark, forced to stare through keyholes and under doors, scavenging for information.

It had been like this with the cancer too, she thought, that same infuriating desire to go it alone. He’d pushed her away with both hands. What had she done to deserve this kind of dismissal? Didn’t he understand? She didn’t want to be separate from him. Like that old wedding vow that gentiles took:
For richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.
She was in it with him. He was the love of her life. Her partner. How could he not understand that, not trust her enough to let her in? She thought of that old couple in the movie
Titanic
who refused to be parted even when the ship was going down, the wife refusing her place on one of the lifeboats.

It had been
their
cancer; and now it was
their
court case. They would float above it or go down together. Why couldn’t he understand that? And what would happen to their marriage if she couldn’t convey this to him before it was too late? Like the ball bearings in some never-quiet machine, they scraped and scraped against each other, until their nerves were raw and their wounds bloody.

Small things irritated her: a sour look on his face; the way he rose from the table after eating without lifting a finger to help clean up; the way he closed a door just a tiny bit too hard; the way he let the phone ring without answering it. And there was that look he got when the fax machine beeped—a look of anguish.

“How many eggs did you use in this omelet?”

“I don’t know. Two… We’re running low.”

“Why is that?”

She could see his jaw flinch in anger.

“I… I didn’t get to the store yesterday. I was so busy.” She smiled, but he didn’t respond. “I’ll get to it today.”

“What, are you trying to save money, is that it?”

Like being inches away from a person with pneumonia who coughs on you without covering their mouth, the germs of his anger and pain infected her.

“Why, is that such a bad thing?” she shouted back.

“Right, let’s talk about it! I know you blame me for everything that’s happened. We’re going to be poor! Is that it?”