The Darlings (21 page)

“I feel like there are two teams here,” she said deliberately, her face pinched. “And it's clear to me which one you're on. And so hearing you talk about switching teams, well, it upsets me.”

When he didn't respond, she continued, “Obviously, stuff went wrong at Delphic. But at the end of the day, this is about Morty and RCM. Just because he's not here, that doesn't mean you guys should pay for it. It's easy to Monday-morning quarterback and say, ‘You should have known' or ‘You shouldn't have let this happen.' But really, that misses the point. This isn't about Dad, or you, and it's not really about Delphic. They're just looking for a sacrificial lamb, because they need someone to blame for what happened. If you go to them now with your hands up and surrender, you're justifying what they are doing. But if you stand behind the firm, and behind Dad, it sends a very clear message. This is about family now.”

There was a certain kind of comforting logic to what she was saying. More than anything, Paul wanted everyone's interests to be aligned: his wife's, his father in law's, his own. He had always wanted to be one of them. Not because of the money, or the status. Not even the education and worldliness. It was their closeness he craved, their tribal clannishness. They were fiercely loyal to one another, even in times likes this. Especially in times like this. It all seemed so simple when she explained it. Family comes first. Family is unconditional.

Until he met them, Paul didn't know that kind of family existed. His own was a loose affiliation of people bound by genetics. They had been a full family once, but it was so long ago that Paul no longer remembered the touch and feel of it. There had been five of them. Casey was four andhalf when she had drowned in a community pool. Paul and Katie were eight years old. They had been at a friend's birthday party when it happened. No one had picked them up from the party. Instead, the sky had gone gray behind the trees and they were the last guests to leave, sitting at the picnic table with paper hats and noisemakers while the birthday boy's mother placed calls to locate their parents. Paul remembered feeling cold as the breeze picked up; he was still wearing a damp bathing suit and there was water in his ears and he worried that Katie would get sick from having wet hair. He had given her his towel. It was draped across her shoulders, her tiny body shivering beneath it. The streamers that had been tied to the trees fluttered nervously around their heads, and at their feet candy wrappers from the piñata lay empty on the grass.

The Ross house had gone silent after that, like a radio unplugged from the wall. It was a matter of months after the funeral when their father left, happier to start again than to live with Casey's specter. He was the one who had been in charge that day, taking them to the party and Casey to the pool while Patricia worked the weekend secretarial shift at the office. He remarried quickly, to a woman from Savannah. Paul and Katie went to visit them a few times. They would sit awkwardly in the living room of his new home, eating ice cream on the sofa out of orange plastic bowls and trying to be polite, as Patricia had told them to be. A year later, the stepmother was pregnant, and the new family moved to New York.

Patricia told Paul and Katie that their father was a banker. She said he was successful, and that he had moved away from them because it was the right thing to do for his career. He called them on their birthdays, on Christmas, and told them he loved them, that he was very busy with his new job and the baby. Paul would try to keep him on the phone for as long he could, peppering him with questions about New York, the Yankees, the weather up north. Paul imagined him in a big house with a silver car out front, and an office that had windows overlooking Central Park. He would tell his friends that his father was
a banker in New York
whenever possible. Whatever success his father enjoyed never translated into child support for Patricia. The bank foreclosed on their house the month after Paul and Katie turned thirteen. Paul never took his father's birthday call again.

Patricia was only twenty-one when she had gotten pregnant with Katie and Paul. She had met their dad in high school; he was three years older, and according to Patricia, “going places.” Young as she was, she was sometimes more of a friend than a mother. She and Katie developed together, like the trunk and branch of the same tree. On her better days (or Katie's worse ones), they could pass for sisters. Both were the type of woman who had never been entirely pretty but instead had always looked as though they might have been pretty many years ago. Their features were plain and unrefined, like oatmeal.

Paul hadn't seen either of them since his wedding. This worried Merrill; she felt as though she was in some way responsible for the separation. He knew that she wasn't. To Paul, there was no rift, just a natural separation that had occurred over the course of many years. The movement had been slow enough that it felt almost imperceptible, like a continental drift.

He felt guilty, of course. Patricia wouldn't take money from him, so instead he sent presents for the holidays that were overly expensive and inappropriate for their daily lives: Hermes scarves, Tiffany bracelets. The only real thing he could offer them was financial advice. A few years earlier, he'd set up small nest eggs for them both at Vanguard. Before that, they had only savings accounts, and mortgages that were unmanageably large for their incomes. It gave him a reason to call them at least once a month, and it gave him something to talk about when he did. Both women were overly grateful for his help. Katie sent him cards at the holidays, updating him on the kids' lives and thanking him profusely for “everything he did for them” in her loopy, childlike script. Katie's kids, too, sent letters: “Thank you, Uncle Paul, for the PlayStation” or “Thank you so so so much for the tickets to the UNC game.” The letters kept coming even though he told Katie they were unnecessary. He was their uncle, after all. Family never needed to send thank-you notes.

The truth was that he hated their letters. It worried him how much so little money meant to them. They seemed so helpless, so unable to make even small financial decisions without calling him first. Of course, what was a small financial decision to him was often monumental to Patricia or Katie. They had no idea how much money Merrill had, nor did they know that the Darlings had access to all kinds of resources they couldn't imagine: private equity investments with half-million dollar buy-ins, money managers, tax attorneys, estate planning advisers
. That doesn't take away anything from them,
he told himself
. It's not a zero-sum game.
But still, the guilt was pervasive some days, seeping into his chest like rising tidewater.

Now it all seemed inverted. More than once in the past twenty-four hours, Paul had felt an impulse to disappear to Charlotte, taking Merrill with him. Charlotte, or somewhere new altogether—Hong Kong, London, Paris, São Paulo. Somewhere that belonged to them, not to the Darlings.

His phone was ringing. They could both see it light up on the dresser.

“Are you going to answer that?” Merrill said.

“No. Let it go to voice mail.”

“Is it Alexa?”

“I don't know.” Paul rolled toward Merrill and took her in his arms. Her body felt stiff at first but then she relaxed into him. He buried his face in her neck, kissing it, his eyes closed tight. “I love you,” he said. “I'm so sorry I saw her and didn't tell you right away. I'm trying to do everything right.”

She squeezed him back, her torso pressed to his. “I know,” she said, kissing his hairline gently. “I know. You would do anything for me, I know that.” From the way she looked at him, it was a statement and a question and an affirmation all at once.

“I would.”

“Please talk to Dad before you decide what to do. Please.”

As they held each other, they heard the sound of a car pulling down the driveway.

“We should go,” she said.

“I love you,” he said again. “More than anything.” But she was on her feet already and didn't answer.

Downstairs, the table was being set. Ines's Thanksgiving china, rimmed in gold and emblazoned with tiny turkeys, had been unsheathed from its muslin coverings and laid out on an antique lace tablecloth. Candles flickered against the glittering silver. In the center of the table was a cornucopia overflowing with apples, pears, grapes, oranges, and chestnuts. All temptingly vibrant, but in fact, made of wax. Carmela had to place each fruit out with precision, as she did every year, striving to achieve what Ines referred to as “casual elegance.” Veronica had failed at this the first year—she had stacked the fruits too uniformly—and Ines had been forced to rearrange them frantically before anyone was allowed to sit down. The task had been reassigned to Carmela after that. John had removed one chair from the nine-person table. He had been instructed to bring it all the way down to the basement, completely out of sight. No one, Ines had told him sternly, wanted to be reminded that there was one person who wouldn't be at dinner. Anyway, the table was really meant for eight chairs; the extra had been brought up just for Morty. It was slightly different from the others.

On the sideboard was a stack of name cards for Ines's arrangement. She was already thinking about how to place them.

THURSDAY, 5:00 P.M.

M
arina was in Brooklyn, of all places.

She hated Brooklyn; hated taking the subway, hated how low all the buildings were. She hated how Brooklynites made it seem as though their decision to live there made them edgier or morally superior. What she hated about it most of all was how dislocated she felt from Manhattan whenever she stepped off the subway platform. It made her feel as if she were moving backward, away from the rotational center of the earth. Marina had come to New York straight from college, with nothing but a thousand dollars in her checking account, her possessions packed into a few brown boxes neatly labeled with a Sharpie, and a conviction never to live in an outer borough. She was proud of herself for sticking to it. She had ended up with two roommates in a Chinatown walk-up that inexplicably smelled like curry. But it was worth it because she was living in Manhattan.

Max had, evidently, elected to live in Brooklyn. Marina knew that six-figure apartments existed in Brooklyn Heights and Williamsburg and Park Slope, but until now, she had never actually been in one; only crappy tenements in Prospect Heights and Fort Greene. This, as she realized later when she was good and drunk, was because all of her cool friends were poor, and all of her rich friends were too boring to live in Brooklyn.

Max was neither poor nor boring. This surprised her. She had met him only a couple of times, usually at loud parties where she couldn't hear anything, but he hadn't impressed her. She had thought that Georgina could do so much better. After all, George was fabulous; she had that perfect, effortless, enviable sense of cool that rich city girls seemed to inherit, like long straight hair and perfect teeth. George had the metabolism of a whippet. Everything looked good on her: couture dresses, sweatpants, men's button-down shirts. She had grown up in a town house on Eleventh Street that had a back garden and a Cy Twombly hanging above the mantelpiece. She was the love child of a former model-turned-photographer and a guitarist who had once played with Bob Dylan. She was twenty-four. And she was at least an inch taller than Max. Still she was crazy about him, absolutely head over heels.

What George had failed to articulate was that Max wasn't just a software designer, he was a super-rich, super-successful thirty-six-year-old software designer who basically invented the iPod (or something like that). And his father was a billionaire venture capitalist who had a house in East Hampton next to Carl Icahn's.

So now it made more sense.

But when Marina had called George the night before, bawling and recounting every horrible detail of the Morgensons' Thanksgiving Eve party, she knew none of this. Max was simply George's chubby, curly-haired boyfriend, with his little paunch and scuffed red sneakers, the kind of guy who laughed awkwardly and one second too late, and probably still played video games. So when she accepted the invitation to spend Thanksgiving at his apartment, it was clear what a desperate, defeated state she was in.

The problem was that she had not made a backup plan. This was unlike her. Marina was typically extremely organized, methodical, risk averse (these were the characteristics that were most often cited by her parents in their on-going campaign in favor of law school). Clever as she was, Marina was also sadly prone to bouts of hopeless romanticism. Just as she had romanticized the job at
Press
(stylish co-workers, fabulous parties, mentorship from of a journalistic icon), she had also romanticized Tanner.

Slowly, she had fallen deeper and deeper into the throes of infatuation with him, the youngest grandson of William Morgenson. As she had done so, Marina had quietly turned down the volume on each of Tanner's shortcomings. It happened insidiously, over the course of many months, until one day all she could hear when he walked in the room was beautiful music.

Despite her admitted pedigree consciousness, Marina no longer cared that Tanner had gone to fair-to-middling schools. She had made peace with his decision to quit the analyst program at Morgan Stanley after only four months, as well as his decision to spend the subsequent two years “searching for the right opportunity.” Sometimes, though she would never admit it aloud, Marina actually relished Tanner's unemployment. He was always available to take her to art openings and dinner parties and benefit galas, which was refreshing in a city full of men who lived at the office. And if he could afford the tickets and the tux, really, what did it matter? Tanner was perfect.

Marina's friends had become quietly concerned. It was clear to everyone but Marina that Tanner had no intention of marrying her. In fact, word had gone around that they were on the outs and Tanner was on the prowl for someone more suitable. While Marina was very pretty and very well educated, she wasn't really marriage material for a Morgenson. She had attended Hotchkiss because her parents were on the faculty; she had gone to Princeton on a partial scholarship because she had been the valedictorian of her class at Hotchkiss. Her parents were lovely people with no social connections. As much as Marina had done her best to gloss over these subtle distinctions, they hadn't escaped the serpentine tongues of her competition. Marina wasn't unaware that a few of Tanner's female friends thought he could do better, and told him as much.

Marina's parents taught at Hotchkiss so that they could give their daughter the very best education available. They had achieved this end, but with an unfortunate side effect: they had unwittingly exposed Marina to a world of obscene privilege and excess of which she wanted nothing more than to be a part. Because she was pretty, she was popular, and because she was popular, the majority of her friends were very rich indeed. She vacationed with them at their homes in Aspen; she borrowed their Chanel jackets for parties at the Ivy Club; she watched as they took glamorous, impractical jobs (jewelry designer, novelist) instead of worrying about their salaries. Somewhere along the way, Marina became determined that she, too, was worthy of all this. She would simply have to go out and get for herself the life her friends had been given. It would require careful planning and execution, but Marina always accomplished everything to which she put her mind. She made a lot of spreadsheets.

Law school was out. It was a reasonably sound next step for a liberal arts major, and the promise of $160,000 starting salary was certainly appealing. But after some consideration, Marina concluded that relegating herself to seventy hours a week of document review among schlumpy, poorly socialized colleagues would be an underutilization of her talents. She was smart, yes. And diligent and logical and all the other things that made for a good lawyer. But Marina knew what truly set her apart from the pack: her looks, her wit, and her innate sense of style. And those she had in spades.

What Marina saw, that her parents failed to see, was that law school was just too provincial an aspiration for her. She loved her parents deeply, but for reasons she could never fully understand, Richard and Alice suffered from limited horizons. They had chosen to live out their lives in quiet anonymity, settling in a pleasant Connecticut town, teaching high school European History (Richard) and French (Alice) when both could have easily gone on to tenure track professorships at major universities or even careers in consulting or law. They wore duck boots and polar fleece, and were almost always covered in dog hair. Their ancient yellow station wagon (fondly dubbed Old Yeller) had, for several years, wheezed like an old accordion when the key was pulled from the ignition. It had ferried the family everywhere, from Marina's middle school soccer games to her college graduation. Periodically, Richard and Alice revisited the idea of replacing Old Yeller, but Alice would get misty-eyed, as if they were discussing putting down one of the actual dogs, not a seventeen-year-old station wagon with gummy seats and no CD player. Marina knew they would drive it until it literally died on the side of the road.

Her parents were happy, and Marina knew that was all that really mattered. Yet she felt strongly that her own life would be something of a grander and more cosmopolitan construction. She didn't want to look back on her life choices; her career; and, most of all, her marriage and feel that she had settled.

For a year or so, everything fell into place. Marina landed a coveted spot as Duncan Sander's assistant, a job for which most socialites would pull out their eyeteeth. She finagled her way onto a few benefit committees, turned up at the right kind of parties. Most impressive, she had snagged Tanner.

Tanner Morgenson was, on a number of metrics, a catch. He wasn't handsome, but he wasn't unhandsome, either. He was well liked. He dressed well. No one would say Tanner was funny, exactly, but he was lively and had entertaining friends. He was fun. He took socializing very seriously. It wasn't uncommon for Tanner to spend whole days drifting from one private club to the next: a long lunch with his father at the Knickerbocker Club; a squash match and a steam at the Racquet Club; a dinner dance at Doubles. Tanner ran with a fast crowd, almost all native Upper East Siders who had known one another since birth, all rich and well connected, but because his grandfather was William Morgenson Sr. (founder of Morgenson Gas & Electric) and his mother was Grace Leighton Morgenson (heir to Leighton & Leighton Pharmaceuticals), very few were as rich or as well connected as Tanner.

Marina had had her eye on Tanner since college. He would come to visit his sister Clay now and again up at Princeton, usually with the aim of hitting on her friends. One dewy spring evening on the cusp of graduation, Tanner appeared on campus without warning. By midnight, he was standing on a table at the Ivy Club, his arms entwined with two swaying lacrosse players who had successfully goaded him into singing “You've Lost that Loving Feeling” into a beer bottle. His Nantucket reds were stained and he looked wild-eyed. Clay confided to Marina that Lily Darling, Tanner's on-again, off-again sweetheart, had married an older guy who worked for her father. Though Tanner had never been able to fully commit to Lily, he was devastated. Smelling blood, Marina had moved in for the kill.

By the end of the summer, Marina had moved to New York and Tanner was hers. Well, almost hers. She learned quickly that Tanner wasn't a subscriber to the concept of commitment. She tried not to take this personally. After all, Tanner was universally noncommittal. He had dropped out of two summer camps as a child (hockey camp in Maine; squash camp in Newport), owned but couldn't play a multitude of instruments (a guitar, a saxophone, a paddle-tennis racquet). He had never stuck with a job for more than four consecutive months (JPMorgan held the record). Dinner reservations were often canceled at the last minute; weekend trips to Aspen or Palm Beach were penciled in on a whim. Marina spent her first fourteen months in New York engaged in an elaborate form of romantic brinkmanship with Tanner, a delicate, diplomatic operation involving seduction, feigned disinterest, patience, impatience, bikini waxing, ultimatums, open flirtation with others, and one extremely drunken couples weekend in the Napa Valley.

By the end, Marina had lost all perspective. Never before had she failed to achieve something, and she wasn't about to start with Tanner Morgenson. So desperate was she to believe that her affections were reciprocated that she broke a cardinal rule of courtship. She had (eagerly, blissfully) believed Tanner when he said that she was more than welcome to spend Thanksgiving with his family. Immediately, she called her parents and announced that she would not be making it home to Lakeville this year, much to their disappointment. This was an unfortunate misstep, and one that could have been avoided if only she had remembered never to take to heart the words of a drunken man.

“Never, ever,
ever
believe anything a man says when he is drunk!” George shook her head vigorously after this proclamation, her honey-colored ringlets flying. “And definitely don't when he's drunk and about to get laid. I mean, that's
rule number one
.” She glared sternly at Marina, who looked away and busied herself rearranging the rack of leather pants and bustiers that they were supposed to be bringing downstairs for a shoot. A moment earlier, Marina had felt effervescent. Then George had come along and uncorked her.

“I know,” she said feebly. “But he wasn't that drunk. And things are going so well! I think he really wants me there.”

“Were you naked?”

“What kind of a question is that?” Marina scanned the hallway to make sure they were out of earshot.

“Well, were you? Just answer the question.”

“Fine. Yes. So what?” she hissed.

“And he said it before, right? Before you slept with him.”

“I get the point.”

“I'm just
saying
—” George raised her eyebrows in a way that made Marina want to slap her. “Just be careful. Weren't you going home to see Richard and Alice? They're going to be
so
disappointed.”

“Let's drop it,” Marina said coldly, and pressed the elevator button twelve times in rapid succession.

“Dropped,” George said. She raised her palms in surrender.

Marina stewed for the rest of the day, trying to decide what annoyed her more: that George liked to call other people's parents by their first names or that George was right about Tanner.

So Marina's humiliation was complete when she was (1) made to suffer through the Morgensons' Thanksgiving Eve party, during which time it became slowly but excruciatingly clear that the Morgensons not only had no idea that Marina was dating their son but also that they had no intention of hosting her the following day, and (2) forced to call George to admit what had transpired. She had no one else to call.

“He introduced me to his mother as ‘Clay's friend from Princeton'!” she said. “
His mother
. You should have seen her face. Totally blank. No idea who I was.”

“Oh, my God, don't say another
word
. You're dumping him immediately. In fact it's done; he's been dumped. You're coming out to Brooklyn to have Thanksgiving with Max and me. It is going to be fabulous and by the time it is over you will have completely forgotten Theo Morgenblatt the Third or whatever his name is. Fuck him.
You can do so much better
.”