Damaged Goods, page 17
“Send it to me,” Brendan said. “I’ll pay it right away.”
“No,” Tom said. “Shannon is my client. I want him to understand his responsibilities in this matter. If Daddy keeps protecting him, how will he become a man?”
It stung Brendan to admit it, but Tom was right. No one had ever bailed him out when he was a teenager, so why was he coddling Shannon instead of making him face the consequences of his actions? Still, Brendan hated Tom for rubbing his nose in his shit. He fought his instinct to leave without discussing Cassie’s eggs.
“May I sit down and rest for a minute?” Brendan asked.
“Of course,” Mark said. “You’ve had a tough night, and you look tired and sweaty. Come to the kitchen table. I’ll get you some water.”
The three men sat at the table. Brendan took a long gulp of water before setting down the empty glass and leveling his gaze at Tom and Mark. “Your story last night touched me,” Brendan said, “the challenge of finding the right situation to suit your circumstances. You need a Harvard law degree to navigate the IVF, egg procurement, and surrogacy issues.”
For the first time since the previous night’s dinner, Tom smiled.
“I believe I can help you have a child,” Brendan said.
Tom and Mark exchanged glances. “How can you possibly help?” Mark asked.
“My sister Cassie passed away last December. She was fifty years old and died from cirrhosis of the liver. She lived an eventful life filled with extraordinary adventures and terrible heartbreak. It was painful and frustrating to watch the alcohol erode such a beautiful person.”
“I’m sorry about your sister, but how’s that relevant?” Tom said.
“Unbeknownst to me,” Brendan said, “she had frozen her eggs while living in Canada during the eighties. When she died, I became the custodian of her eggs.”
Tom gestured with his hand, signaling Brendan to continue.
“That’s not all. A girl I dated in high school who was Cassie’s best friend—her name is Emily—is a doula living in New Hampshire. She understands the inner workings of the gestational surrogate community in Massachusetts. I’ve been collaborating with an agent in New York to find egg recipients, but I haven’t had any luck so far. If you’re interested in exploring the idea of taking Cassie’s eggs and talking to Emily, I can help you.”
“This is so out of the blue,” Mark said.
“I feel the same way,” Brendan said, “but there are people who think the world works this way—guided by some unknowable force. I have to admit, even though it defies rational thought, I’ve felt that force a few times in my life. Both Laura and I felt it last night right here in your house. Unfortunately, I felt an opposite force when I had to bail out Shannon.”
“Some call it God, others something else,” Mark said, touching Tom’s hand. “I felt it the time I met Tom at a random Harvard football game.”
“Cassie wrote a memoir that you’re welcome to read. I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have about her, but it’s an understatement to say that we weren’t close for most of our adult lives. That’s something I regret.”
“Could you give us a moment to talk about this privately?” Mark asked. “Please take a seat on the balcony. The morning sun’s reflection on the salt marsh is beautiful. I’ll get you another glass of water.”
Brendan went outside and watched the white egrets stepping cautiously through the thin layer of water surrounding the marsh at low tide. He hoped he hadn’t been rash. Fifteen minutes later, Tom and Mark came out to him, holding hands.
“Send us a copy of the fertility clinic’s custodial agreement, your sister’s memoir, and the doula’s contact information. We’ll do our due diligence. As you can imagine, with all these hedge funds struggling to secure bank financing, I don’t have much free time right now. It might take a month or two to respond.”
“I’ll mail both documents when I get back to Connecticut. Give me a pen and paper and I’ll write down Emily’s number.”
Brendan rode his bike to his cottage, eager to tell Laura all that had happened, except for the doula part. But when he arrived, his family was gone. On the kitchen table, he found a note: I’m sorry, Bren, but last night’s encounter with the police was too much to handle. Shannon and I are heading to Westport. Please close up the house and come home as soon as you can. Take the old Jeep; I hope it makes it back. We have work to do on this family.
* * *
The army surplus Jeep was ideal for a quick trip to the beach and a romp over the dunes, but it was a miserable ride on the highway. He couldn’t push it past fifty miles per hour without the wheels shimmying and the wind whistling through the canvas top. As he rattled down the highway, his thoughts lingered on Laura’s last line: We have work to do on this family. Why? Because Shannon had gotten into a bar fight? Big deal. When Brendan himself was a teenager, he’d been in plenty of fistfights. It was part of growing up in America. Why was Laura making it into a crisis? He was about to dial her number to try to talk her back from the edge of the cliff, but he realized it had to be a face-to-face conversation. Instead, he called Emily.
“Two phone calls in one day?” she asked. “You’re forming a habit.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Brendan asked, his voice wavering. Before she could reply, he added that he’d given her number to the guys. “Will you tell me if you find a surrogate for them?”
“I work under a confidentiality agreement,” she said. “But if those guys choose to take Cassie’s eggs, you can assume they’ve found a surrogate. And Bren, just try to relax. You sound hyper-stressed.”
“I thrive under stress,” he replied, his voice shaking.
“That’s not true, Bren. You thrive despite the stress, but it’s not healthy.”
“After thirty-plus years, you still know me pretty well,” he said.
“I know you better than you think.”
Brendan
September 2008
Brendan’s parental dream had finally arrived—taking Shannon to Painter, watching the college president greet his son at the convocation ceremony, and affixing a painter college parent sticker to the rear windows of his cars. Shannon loaded his Gladstone bags into the back of Laura’s Range Rover. This was a far cry from when Brendan brought his clothes and a clock radio to Painter in green trash bags in 1976.
As he backed out of the driveway, his phone rang.
“Brendan, it’s Sarah.”
She only called with bad news.
“John Smart just called me,” she said. “He wants me to meet him at the Fed ASAP. Things are getting serious—crisis shit, Brendan. The problem is I’m in Miami. Put on your suit and get to Lower Manhattan immediately and cover for me. It’s your area of expertise anyway, Brendan. Smart wants to know our firm’s funding position. No one understands that better than you. It’s your time to shine. But don’t speak out of turn with Smart. If you do, he’ll tear you apart. My pilot’s preparing my Gulfstream for takeoff in a few hours. I’ll call you when I land at LaGuardia.”
Brendan wondered why John Smart, the CEO of Global Investment Bank, was at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on a Sunday and what Sarah meant by his speaking out of turn. He had spent his career biting his tongue.
“How soon can you get there?” Sarah asked.
“Sarah, I’m dropping off my son for his first year of college.”
“Are you in New Hampshire?”
“His college is in Vermont.”
“Whatever. Are you in Vermont?”
If Brendan said no, Sarah would force him to head to Lower Manhattan. If he said yes, she’d find someone else to fill his shoes, rendering him irrelevant.
“No,” Brendan said, “I’m still in my driveway in Connecticut.”
“Have Laurie take him,” Sarah said.
“You mean Laura,” Brendan said. Sarah had met Laura countless times over the years.
“Yes, yes, of course. Laura. I’m sorry, Brendan. I’m just stressed. Can you have Laura take Shannon . . . That’s his name, right? How soon can you get to the Fed?”
“At most, two hours,” Brendan said, unable to glance in the rearview mirror, too ashamed to meet his son’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, Shannon, but this situation is out of my control. The world’s on fire.”
“No need to explain, Dad. You’re an important guy. Go save the financial system,” Shannon said, tugging his black and red Wu-Tang Clan baseball cap down over his eyes. “Mom and I have been handling things without you. We can handle this one, too.”
He turned to Laura. “It’s out of my control, honey. It sounds like the world is about to implode. Why else would our bank’s CEO summon Sarah and me to the Fed on a Sunday?”
“I understand, Bren,” she said, “but that doesn’t make me happy, and it doesn’t make it right, nor does it mean I have to pretend it’s okay.” Brendan stepped out of the car as Laura crawled over the center console to take the driver’s seat. Shannon jumped into the passenger seat. Brendan stood by the driveway while Laura threw the car in reverse and pulled away with tires screeching. He couldn’t blame them for their anger, but what choice did he have?
He rushed into the house and donned a dark gray suit, a white shirt, and a blue striped tie. He had been to the Fed hundreds of times to meet with government officials responsible for open market operations, an arcane function used to adjust the money supply and daily liquidity in the financial system. He had also served as the Chairperson of the Funding Division executive committee of the Bond Market Association, an industry trade group aimed at influencing government policy. Additionally, he had visited the Fed during emergencies, most recently following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that disrupted funding systems in the global financial market. But even during that tragic event, he had never been to the Fed on a Sunday, nor had he been summoned there as Sarah’s surrogate to talk to John Smart. For the past few Fridays, rumors had circulated that a major investment bank was on the verge of collapsing, yet the subsequent Mondays revealed that the financial system remained intact. It felt as though the day of reckoning had finally arrived.
He contemplated his work-life dilemma as he navigated the dreadful traffic on FDR Drive. He had busted his ass his entire adult life to be in a position to afford private school to prepare his son for Painter and to pay full tuition once he was accepted. Now the career that made it possible denied him the satisfaction of taking Shannon there. A cabbie cut him off, jolting him from his thoughts. He exited the chaotic highway into the cavernous, empty streets of Lower Manhattan, parked the car, and jogged past two fat gray rats gnawing a loaf of raisin bread over a sewer drain. Breathing heavily, he reached the Fed and emptied his pockets into a plastic basket before walking through the metal detector. A large security guard with a holstered gun and nightstick escorted him to the three-story mahogany and marble banquet hall.
The CEOs of every major Wall Street firm gathered with the heads of their government bond trading and funding departments—men and women from rival banks Brendan recognized from his years on committees in the trade association. He marveled at their power; these CEOs collectively controlled more assets than the combined economies of Japan, China, and Germany. They appeared deadly serious, as if on the verge of losing their mansions, vacation homes, Maseratis, country club memberships, and eight-figure sums in their personal investment accounts. He spotted John Smart leaning against a massive marble pillar, chatting intensely with a suave colleague. Brendan hurried over to him.
“Brendan, I’m glad you’re here,” Smart said. “You won’t believe this. The Treasury secretary just announced Lehman’s insolvency. Normally I’d be thrilled to see Lehman fail, but this could be disastrous for every bank. Brendan, from a funding perspective, are we safe?”
“Yes,” Brendan said emphatically. “Our funding plan is invulnerable. We can weather a perfect storm.”
“Can we weather a massively overvalued mortgage portfolio?” Smart retorted. “That’s what brought down Lehman. Their mortgage traders overlooked the liquidity premium.”
His June argument with Gus popped into his head. He should have disclosed his suspicions to Sarah, and it was time to confess to Smart.
“You’re hesitating,” Smart remarked. “Why are you hesitating?”
“Last June, I asked Gus Marchetti about the value of the mortgage book, but he reassured me everything was fine and told me to mind my own business.”
“He told you to mind your business? That’s the reddest of red flags. Did you inform Sarah?”
Brendan shook his head no.
“Call Sarah. Right now. Get her on it!” Smart slammed his hand against the marble column he was leaning on.
Heads were about to roll. Brendan knew he had messed up. Sarah had warned him not to speak out of turn to Smart. Yet he had. And Smart was tearing into him. His confidence crumbled to the floor. He slinked to the corner of the banquet hall and called Sarah.
“I’m about to land,” Sarah said. “What’s wrong?”
He fessed up.
“Oh, Brendan,” Sarah said, “this is a total disaster. First I asked you to keep me informed, so you should have shared your concerns about Gus’s book in June. Second, I researched the mortgage book myself, and it’s flawless. Gus used derivatives to short the market. He’s going to make billions for us when this mess is over. Why you told Smart something different is beyond me. What were you thinking?”
“The world is on fire, Sarah. He asked me a direct question and I told him what I knew.”
“You’re losing it, Brendan,” Sarah said. “You should have called me first. I’ll call Smart and straighten him out. You head back to the office and update our funding plan. I’ll let Smart know you’re out the door.”
“Out the door?” Brendan said.
“Leaving the Fed for the office,” Sarah said, exasperated.
As he raced to his Midtown office building, he passed groups of parents dropping their children off at NYU, couples strolling hand in hand through Washington Square Park licking ice cream cones, and street musicians entertaining the crowd. They were blissfully unaware that every retirement plan, home, and stock portfolio in America was about to lose half its value the next day. He wondered if Laura and Shannon were attending the parent-student orientation lunch on the campus lawn. He remembered how his dad had dropped him off at college before turning around to get back to work the next day. At least his dad had gotten the chance to take him to college. Brendan wondered, despite the money he earned, how much real progress he had actually made.
When he reached his desk, Gus Marchetti was strutting around the trading floor, barking orders at his traders. They looked like frat boys, sitting at their desks in cargo shorts, ripped T-shirts, and flip-flops, watching the New York Giants crush the St. Louis Rams on the television sets mounted to the ceiling, but they were working hard positioning the bank to withstand the financial Armageddon that was about to unfold. Gus spotted Brendan across the floor and charged at him like a mad bull.
“You fucker,” Gus shouted. “I just spoke to Whetstone. I told you to mind your own business. I should body-slam you right now!”
“Gus, I meant to protect the firm.”
“You’d better protect yourself. Whetstone’s going to shoot you for this fuckup.”
“She’ll fire her funding manager during the biggest financial liquidity crisis since the Great Depression? I doubt it, Gus.”
“Death by a thousand cuts. You’ll bleed out within a year.”
“That gives me plenty of time for redemption,” Brendan said.
“Redemption?” Gus chuckled. “Redemption? This is Wall Street, dude. There’s no redemption here. You’re either in a state of grace, or you’re disgraced. Consider yourself the latter.” Gus flipped him off and swaggered away.
Brendan’s hands trembled as he operated his computer, running worst-case scenarios through the advanced funding system he had developed, which Sarah had ridiculed for costing too much. He focused intensely on his work, determined to prove his worth to her. Moments later, she burst onto the trading floor and headed straight for his desk. “The firm is safe,” he said, handing her his spreadsheet.
She snatched it from his hands. “I don’t need you anymore,” she said. “You can go.”
As he exited the building, he bumped his thigh against a concrete pylon designed to protect against truck bomb attacks and limped to his car, unable to shake Gus’s and Sarah’s words. He would redeem himself. They would be grateful to him one day.
Laura
October and November 2008
“Shannon’s in college. Bren works day and night, and hot yoga isn’t cutting it for me anymore, especially after this morning’s class,” Laura complained to her friend Dianne. “The guy next to me was shirtless, dripping his gross sweat on my mat.” Laura cradled her latte. “I need to do something meaningful.”
Dianne had been an empty nester for five years. She understood Laura’s struggle with adjusting to a home life without a child to care for. “Laura, you once mentioned that the Columbia School of Journalism accepted you before you had Shannon. Columbia might readmit you, and Yale is just down the road if you don’t want to commute to Morningside Heights. You have so much to offer the world.”
“At fifty?” Laura asked, gazing at her reflection in the mirror that lined the walls of the French bistro. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes seemed to have deepened overnight.
“If that feels overwhelming, maybe you’d be open to a less daunting reentry into the workforce. We’re looking for a copywriter for our development materials at FirstStep, especially in light of the financial crisis. This has been our worst fundraising year since the Latin American and Asian debt crisis triggered a huge sell-off in the US stock market ten years ago.”
