Every Other Wednesday Page 16

  The two glasses of water and cup of coffee that Joan had chased her vodka with were making their presence known in her bladder. She’d have to use the restroom before returning to the garage for her car. Being familiar with the casino, Joan chose to wind slightly out of her way to use the slightly out of everyone’s way women’s room. It was a four-stall bathroom fashioned out of pink stone, porcelain, and tinted glass, located next to a florist shop that had been closed for a couple weeks for renovations. This particular bathroom was always clean and usually empty, like the lavish facilities in high-end hotel lobbies. And it was quiet, which was a refreshing change from the hum of the casino floor.

  Joan set her coat down on the long padded bench in the mirrored alcove and then locked herself into the third stall, hanging her purse by its strap on the door hook. Less than a minute later, she heard the door to the women’s room open. The sharp clap of leather boot soles on stone stopped after not more than a dozen steps. The person did not enter a stall, choosing instead, Joan guessed, to check herself out in the mirror. This was, after all, what many women did in the bathroom; they relieved their biological urges, washed their hands, and then gazed at their reflections. Some were shy about it, conscious of other women around them, and took no more than a half minute to comb their hair or reapply lipstick, making an effort to look at themselves only long enough to get the job done. Others, either more vain or not cognizant of the judgmental opinion of competitive women, spent multiple minutes checking themselves out. Did they not have bathroom mirrors at home? Joan had wondered, since she could walk into the restroom, urinate, wash her hands, rub cream into them, brush her hair, and walk out while these women, typically good looking enough that they had little if not nothing to correct at the mirror, contemplated their visages.

  And so this was the kind of woman Joan expected to see when she emerged from the stall, purse slung over her right shoulder. Instead, she was met by a young woman with greasy brown hair that fell to her biceps, jeans that had holes due to wear instead of by design, and an oversized pea coat, unbuttoned to reveal a stained and wrinkled T-shirt covering what looked like a belly that was six months into a pregnancy. Joan gave the woman a quick smile, as she had been taught, as she always did when she encountered another person, on her way to the sink. She turned on both faucets and put her hands underneath the stream of water. “You were pretty lucky out there today,” the woman said.

  A surge of adrenaline quickened Joan’s heart rate. Joan used the mirror to meet the woman’s eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

  “At the roulette table,” she said. “You’ve had a rough time lately—well, since I’ve been watching you. But today, I’d say you cleaned up.”

  Joan washed her hands and slowly dried them on a paper towel from the dispenser. She could leave her coat on the bench if she needed to leave in a hurry. “You’ve been watching me?”

  “I watch a lot of people on account that I spend a lot of time here. But I’m especially interested in well-dressed housewives on a winning streak.”

  “Oh?” asked Joan, trying to sound casual, even though she now knew there was something very wrong with this young woman. “Why is that?”

  The woman reached into her coat with her right hand and pulled what turned out to be a gun out of the waistband of her jeans. She pointed it at Joan, a wide smile creating clown-like circles of flesh under her glassy eyes. She laughed. “Why, it’s because you fancy, amateur gamblers sometimes get lucky—like you did today.” Joan raised her hands in the air, which made the woman laugh harder. “This ain’t the old west, lady. I just want your cash.” Joan closed her eyes. “And I got no time for a prayer session, sister. I want the money you won at the roulette table this morning. I want your credit cards. I want your rings and your diamond earrings. And I want them now.” She raised the gun, so it was level with Joan’s face.

  “Okay,” said Joan, “okay. I’ll give you what you want.” Joan unzipped her purse and looked inside. And for a moment, the woman with the gun faded out of focus. If Joan had subscribed to Alice’s gun-toting philosophy, she would be looking at a gun right now, nestled in between her package of travel tissues and her hairbrush. And she would simply reach into her purse as if going for the wad of hundred-dollar bills and come out with a gun instead of the cash.

  But what then?

  “If you can’t find what I’m looking for,” said the woman, who had moved two steps closer to Joan, “I can always search your purse after you are lying on the floor in a pool of your own blood.”

  Joan looked at the woman, who was clearly engaged in their conversation but seemed to be unaware of their surroundings, of the fact that someone else could walk into the restroom, as unlikely as that might be, or that Joan could, indeed, have a gun in her purse, which, of course, she didn’t. Joan wondered, again for a small fraction of a minute, what would happen if she charged the woman. Instead, Joan pulled the crisp bills out of the side pocket of her purse and handed them over. She frowned at the woman, who asked her again to remove her rings and diamond stud earrings. And then, when prompted again, Joan handed over her credit cards.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do next,” the woman said. “You’re going to head over there to the far wall and sit down underneath the hand dryers. You’re going to close your eyes and count to thirty—and I will know if you do not count to thirty—and then you are going to walk out of this lovely bathroom and directly to your car. If you even think about going to casino security, I will find you the next time you’re here, because I know you will be back, and I will shoot your rich head off. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Joan, walking slowly to the designated wall, holding her cashless purse with her naked fingers.

  “Now sit down—no, face the wall. Close your eyes and start counting.” Joan heard the door at three. She kept counting as she opened her eyes and spun on her bottom so she was facing out instead of in. At twenty, she stopped counting, leaned back against the wall she had just been facing, and took three deep breaths before she attempted to stand. When she was able to stand, she walked to the sink and splashed cold water on her face; she retrieved her coat from the bench; and she walked to her car and drove home, checking the entire time to see if anyone was following her. When she got home, she called the police, who took her information over the phone, and then she called Stephen. His administrative assistant told her he was not yet out of a meeting he had been in all morning.

  * * *

  When Stephen got home at three thirty in the afternoon, Joan knew something was wrong. Stephen, and the rest of his banking cohorts, routinely worked until six o’clock. Working ten-hour days was a badge of honor at First Federal, almost as important as their titles. Joan went along with this, even though she didn’t agree with it. She hid her skepticism from the Howard women, who stood by their financial industry men, picking out their conservative suits and power ties, telling one another how hard their husbands worked. And over the years, Joan had fallen into this pattern, perhaps to fit in with them or to please her mother-in-law. But, in truth, Joan had been resentful of Stephen’s prescribed hours—not so much now, but certainly when the girls were younger. Joan had lost track of the number of recitals, concerts, plays, and sporting events that Stephen and all the other banking dads had missed over the years. He had apologized for his absences, but Joan wasn’t convinced of his sincerity. As the breadwinner, Stephen thought what he did was more important than anything else. This included everything his daughters were involved with that took place in the afternoon, everything that happened before six thirty, when Stephen could rush in, wearing his work clothes, and show the rest of the working people who had taken time off to cheer on their children that what he did for a living was on a different level from their day jobs. His services were indispensable. Yet Joan knew that the banking industry would carry on—its ability to move money unhampered—if everyone left the office at five, if not earlier.

  Because Joan had continued her education
rather than sought a job after college, she couldn’t talk in absolutes about the working world, but she had her suppositions about what it was like—and it was not, she was sure, as arduous as those who were in it made it appear. Yes, there were long days and difficult projects and hard-to-please bosses and clients. But there were also catered lunches and weeklong training sessions that included inspirational speakers and afternoon golf. There were business trips and customer dinners, team meetings and group outings. There was more time in the day than many would admit, she thought, filled with industry chatter, shooting the business shit. And Joan received the greatest number of forwarded humorous e-mails from the few friends of hers who worked, and they were always sent during the business day. Joan had talked to Stephen about this one day when he had not only missed the girls’ soccer games, but had also electronically sent her a series of particularly good New Yorker cartoons. He had balked, and she had changed the subject of their conversation—but not because he said something to alter her point of view. Rather, she came to the realization that the captains of finance had more interest in their comradery, in themselves and their world, than they did in their families. And that nothing she could say would convince her husband that his long hours at the office were more habitual or ritualistic than necessary.

  In spite of this code of conduct, Stephen had been an attentive father in the evenings. After he’d changed out of his suit, he’d played with the girls while Joan got dinner on the table. And he’d played whatever they wanted to play—silly, childish board games, dolls, Beanie Babies. He had also introduced them to other things: Lego, K’NEX, Lincoln Logs. As they got older and more coordinated, one of their favorite things to do with their dad was to draw. Stephen would put an object in the middle of the family room floor, and the three of them would have to copy the image into their sketch pads. When Liz and Cassie were in high school, he had helped them with their homework after dinner. Joan, too, had helped, with the addition and subtraction in elementary school, and then with the algebra, geometry, and calculus. These sessions around the cleared table were when Joan felt very close to her daughters and her husband—more so than during the family meal, which everyone, including Joan, ate quickly. Sitting with Liz while she did her homework was one of the activities Joan missed the most, being bent over a particularly tricky problem with her daughter, their heads almost touching, their brains in sync.

  Stephen took off his overcoat and slung it over the nearest kitchen chair. Joan, who was standing on the other side of the table, near the wall phone that she refused to get rid of even though her sisters-in-law had told her several times that no one had a landline anymore, looked at him. He locked eyes with her. “They fired me,” he said. “They fired Darren, John, Roger, and me.”

  Joan stood still, knowing that Stephen thought sympathy was for the weak. “Darren’s group,” she said.

  “And that’s just the beginning. Sit down, Joan.” Joan sat, opposite her husband. “I’ve made bad decisions based on the advice of risk-taking colleagues and, as a consequence, I’ve lost a lot of money. I’ve lost a lot of our savings. I think when I go over everything with you, you will reach the same conclusion I have.”

  Joan swallowed. “What conclusion have you reached?”

  “I think we need to sell the house.”

  He was overreacting. Joan knew he was overreacting. He did this in a crisis. He jumped to the most dismal, but in the end least likely scenario. It was his way of processing bad news, which was not well tolerated in the Howard world. But if he threw himself into the darkest corner of the pit, there was only one way to go. Joan had long ago realized that Stephen, when adversity struck, needed, at first anyway, to wallow in it. He did not want to be told that everything would eventually work out for the best, or that they would certainly not have to sell the house. So, she simply said, “Okay.”

  APRIL

  CHAPTER 28

  The Well Protected Women were not meeting because the Hartford school system was on spring break, so Alice was available for lunch. After they ordered their meals, Alice updated Ellie and Joan about her increasing accuracy at the shooting range. All the instructors called her a natural. And Ellie told Joan and Alice that she had secured the business of Seashore Ice Cream, the most popular of the three parlors in the downtown area. It was Diana, Ellie told them, who introduced her to the owner. They were about halfway through their Southwestern chicken salads, the special that day, when Joan told Alice and Ellie that Stephen had lost his job.

  “What the hell happened?” asked Alice, her fork and its attached lettuce leaves stopped on its way from the plate to her mouth.

  “It’s one of those bullshit reorganizations,” said Joan. “And they decided to cut from the top instead of from the bottom.”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Ellie. “How long has Stephen been working there?”

  “At First Federal? Almost twenty years,” said Joan. “He started there right after leaving Morgan Stanley in the late nineties.”

  Alice used her front teeth to remove the lettuce from her fork. She chewed several times and then said, “I know you must be worried, Joan. But, from what you’ve told us, Stephen is really well connected. I don’t think he will have trouble finding another job. His record shows that he is loyal. He has a ton of experience. Two months, maybe three tops, and he will be sitting behind a bigger desk at a better bank.” Ellie was nodding her head as Alice was talking.

  “I don’t know,” said Joan, taking a sip of her water. “He’s fifty-three years old. He makes a very good salary. And he was planning on working only another four or five years.”

  “He’s the perfect hire,” said Ellie. “He can walk confidently into any number of financial jobs due to his vast experience, which means he can hit the ground running, no tedious training required. He can probably lead whatever training needs to be done and run several departments while he’s doing it. Stephen’s resume is worth something.”

  Joan shrugged. “What you say sounds good, Ellie. And it makes sense. But whether or not it will actually happen is another matter. Stephen doesn’t want to move—all his family is here. His choices are limited.”

  “How far is he willing to commute?” asked Alice.

  “We’ve talked about that,” said Joan. “It’s hard to do much more than an hour each way and have any kind of quality of life. The super-commute is an option, but that brings its own challenges. I think he could easily get a job in New York—but he’d have to find a place to stay three or four nights a week. And that’s financially prohibitive unless his new employer wants to include that in the deal.”

  Alice shoveled a forkful of black beans into her mouth. “Does this make you think more about working?” she asked, chewing. Since they had decided to meet over lunch, the three friends had long ago abandoned the good manners rule of not talking with one’s mouth full of food.

  “Alice,” said Joan, “what kind of job am I going to find where I could make even one twentieth of Stephen’s salary?”

  Alice shook her head. “I’m not talking about being the breadwinner here. I’m talking about contributing. And I’m talking about having some independence.”

  Joan poured more dressing onto her salad. “Go on,” she said.

  “It’s something I have been thinking about,” said Alice. “It’s past time for me to get out of the house. And I’m still not sure I want to work at one of our stores. Lately, I’ve been thinking that maybe I could be a security guard—find some kind of job in which I could use my newfound skills and interest in guns.”

  “And you have talked about teaching,” said Ellie, moving the focus back to Joan. “Maybe you could get certified this spring and summer and start in the fall.”

  Joan offered a slight smile. “You two are crazy.”

  “We’re not,” said Ellie. “I work because it would be hard to live on Chris’s salary alone. But I also work because I really like earning money.”

  Joan frowned. “I’m not s
ure I know how to work.”

  “That’s only because you don’t work,” said Alice. “I’m dying to work again, once I find whatever it is I want to do. It’s so nice to earn an income, to have a little bit of financial independence.”

  “I love it for that reason alone,” said Ellie. “I help with our utility bills and groceries, but I have money left over for myself.”

  “Which you never spend on yourself, I might add,” said Joan.

  “Sure I do,” said Ellie. “I’m wearing new pants even as we speak.”

  Joan bent down and looked under the table. “They’re very nice pants,” she said, after she had lifted her head.

  Ellie lifted the corners of her lips. “I know you think I’m being silly, but it really is true. There is something to be said about earning your own money, whether you need it or not. If I didn’t have a job, I’d feel guilty about buying stuff for myself, about going out to lunch every other Wednesday.”

  “The Howard women have absolutely no trouble spending money on themselves.”

  “But maybe you do,” said Alice. “And now you have the perfect excuse.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Joan. “I think Stephen would be humiliated if I wanted to work, especially now.”

  “Yeah? When’s the last time you talked about it?” asked Alice.

  The server came to the table to clear their plates. Joan and Ellie ordered coffee, and Alice asked for green tea. As soon as the server left, Joan said, “I’m not sure we ever have.”