cello, on Wednesday, I don’t even know. I wasn’t hiding it.” She stammered a little, then recovered.
“Did it slip your mind?”
“Yes. It slipped my mind. What’s the big deal?”
“Larissa, what’s the big deal? It’s only been the sole topic of conversation between you and Ezra the past two months.”
“Come on, not the sole topic …”
“Ezra didn’t tell it to me like it was news,” Jared said. “He mentioned it to me, as in, isn’t it great that Larissa is doing this. Why would you not tell me?”
“I forgot!”
“You forgot? Like you forgot to tell me about the nav system?”
“Oh, cut it out! Just stop it. I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d be upset, okay? We had decided I wouldn’t take the position, and then I did.”
“So which is it, Larissa? Did it slip your mind, or did you deliberately not tell me? Let’s not mix up the lamest of your excuses.”
She breathed in and out deeply, like she was training for a scene. “You’re upset.”
“You’re so observant. Why didn’t you talk to me about it first?”
“You told me to take the play if I wanted to! Remember? Those were your words. Take it if you want, Lar. Now suddenly I have to call you on Monday morning about it!”
“You could’ve told me Monday night, no?”
“No! Leroy was about to cast auditions for Godot! It was an emergency.”
“What does that have to do with Monday night?”
“Immediate action was required.”
“Immediate action, yes. But immediate secrecy?”
“Oh, for God’s sake! What are you more upset by, Jared? That I agreed to do it, or that I didn’t tell you?”
“So many things I can’t name them all.”
“Which one would you like to deal with first?”
“None of them, Larissa. Not a single fucking one.” And then a second later: “How about this one? Why would you keep these things a secret from me?”
“How can it be a secret? I was the one who told you!”
“Not about the play.”
“No,” she conceded. “But about the nav.”
“Oh, so now we’re parsing our secrecy, are we?”
“Oh God!”
“And you could hardly keep the nav hidden, could you?”
“I had no intention of keeping it hidden!”
“Your car,” Jared continued, “was not in the garage when I came home. You had to ’splain that one somehow. And now you’re going to be spending all your time at Pingry. What do you intend to do with our children?”
“Do not be so melodramatic. I have Sheila, I have Leroy. Fred, Ezra. I have my line reader. We’ll be fine.”
“Fine and dandy. You’ll know how to get to Pingry. You’ll have your navigation system, won’t you?”
Without resolution Jared was confounded all Sunday. He felt as if there was a piece of the puzzle he was missing, but he didn’t know what the piece was. He didn’t even know there had been a puzzle! Now suddenly there were missing pieces in it. What was the thing that grated on him, in the scheme of things, in the whole tapestry? He didn’t care if Larissa decided to direct a play. If it worked out, great. And he didn’t really care about the nav system, though he certainly didn’t think it was money well spent. But if she wanted it, then she should have it. No, there was something else niggling him, feeling not right to him. Was it something about Larissa, something about her boots? No. Her jeans? No. Her made-up face, her styled hair? Her smile, the details of the hastily prepared dinner, of Michelangelo’s drawing lying on the floor in the mud room instead of being hung up on the fridge? Something wasn’t quite right … like a razor blade in Jell-O.
But then on Monday, Prudential’s second quarter results showed a drop in revenue of twelve percent, and Jared spent the day going over every department’s budget after a directive to cut costs by a commensurate twelve percent; the conservation of assets required his direct participation in every facet of revenues, expenditures, and payroll and took his every available brain molecule. To implement the short-range goal of resolving the unknowable mystery that was his complicated yet complete marriage to Larissa required strategy and planning, but all week he developed projects and programs that lowered the operating costs of a multi-billion-dollar business. Analyzing cash flow and pinpointing weak investment product lines took all his time and his mental resources. A week passed.
The second week was all about the auditing safeguards. With the personal tax liability deadline looming, he stayed at work till seven or eight at night to enact guidelines that would make an audit by the Treasury Department not frightening but welcome. He welcomed the transparency of a more streamlined organization, the diversification of the company’s assets into other ventures around New Jersey that masked some of the heavy tax burden the company was carrying. This was no small undertaking. And no one knew New Jersey’s financial regulatory statutes better than Jared. The company depended on him and he would not let them down. By the time the crisis at work was averted—by him—and costs were brought under control, he tried once again to reach for the bug that had niggled him, but it was gone. And at home, Larissa was her old smiling, cooking, pleasant self, the kids were dressed, homework was done, chores, TV, everything ticked along smoothly. It was just an aberration, Jared said to himself, after she had apologized yet again for forgetting to tell him about the play, about the stupid navigation. He had been anxious about other things and took it out on her. Filled with remorse, he had bought her something extra beautiful for her birthday on April 4, a white gold necklace with her name etched in diamonds. “Does this mean we have to give the car back?” she said. “Because technically you already gave me a birthday present.”
Three weeks later on a glittering Saturday night in late April he drove her in her Jag to a belated celebration dinner in New York. Maggie, Ezra, Evelyn, Malcolm, Bo and Jonny met up with them. They reserved a round table in the middle of Union Square Café like knights of the Algonquin. It was a raucous, loud evening, and it wouldn’t be a get-together between old friends if there weren’t a passionate altercation about one thing or another. This time it was about altruism. But before altruism, Ezra proclaimed that Larissa was doing a bang-up job with Much Ado; once again, another tinge of remorse for Jared. There he was yelling at her, while the kids at home and at school adored her. He made a mental note to be nicer to her, to cut her some slack. Look how beautiful she was, with the diamond necklace, her face young and gleaming, laughing at some stupid thing Ezra said, or Malcolm, quoting verbatim from Shakespeare, her long hair shiny, silky, all of her shiny, silky. She didn’t look forty, that was for sure, as her melodious soft alto sang counterpoint to the tune of Ezra’s argumentative reasoned tenor.
“Is that what you want to be?” Ezra was saying. “An altruist? You don’t believe you have any right to exist for your own sake, for the sake of existing? Must you only find value in your own existence by becoming a slave to someone else’s? Why is everything about self-sacrifice? You are not an animal, Larissa, why are you acting like a burnt offering? And why do I suspect you’re just being a devil’s advocate? Don’t smile. I know I’m right. What about you? Have you got no intrinsic value of your own? No worth inherent to you simply by the virtue of your own existence?”
Malcolm intervened. Malcolm loved to intervene. He had a mustache that he twirled, a disagreeable gesture that was very good for intervening. “But, Ezra,” said Malcolm, twirling the fervent brown ’stache, making Larissa