Before the Fall(33)
He told her he had boundary issues and drank too much. She said, Hey, me too. And they laughed about it, but the truth was she didn’t drink that much, but he did, and the great American paperweight called to him at odd hours, inspiring in him fits of self-pity and rage. She’d wake sweating under his flannel top sheet and find him tearing his desk (an old door laid across two sawhorses) apart.
But during daylight hours he was sweet, and he had a lot of friends who dropped by throughout the day and night, which meant Eleanor never had the chance to be alone. Doug welcomed the distraction, and he’d drop everything to go on a culinary adventure—tracking down a cherry pitter on Orchard Street, or riding the subway to Queens to buy goat meat from some Haitians. He was such a big presence that Eleanor never felt alone, even when he stayed out late. She moved into his apartment after a month, and if she ever felt lonely she put on one of his shirts and ate leftovers sitting on the kitchen floor.
She got her masseuse license and started working at a high-end boutique in Tribeca. Her clients were movie stars and bankers. They were friendly and tipped well. Doug, meanwhile, did odd jobs—random carpentry and the like. He had a friend who remodeled restaurants and would pay Doug to track down and refurbish vintage stoves. In Eleanor’s mind they were happy and doing what young couples should be doing in the modern age.
She introduced him to David, Maggie, and the kids, but she could tell that Doug didn’t enjoy being around a man as accomplished and moneyed as David. They ate in the dining room at the town house (it was easier for the kids than going out) at a table for twelve, and she watched Doug drink a bottle of French wine and inspect the top-of-the-line kitchen appliances (an eight-burner Wolf range, a Sub-Zero fridge) with envy and disdain (“you can buy the tools, but you can’t buy the talent to use them”). On the subway home, Doug railed against her sister’s “Republican sugar daddy” and acted as if David had rubbed their faces in their inadequacy. Eleanor didn’t understand. Her sister was happy. David was nice, and the kids were angels. And no, she didn’t agree with her brother-in-law’s politics, but he wasn’t a bad person.
But Doug had the same clichéd overreaction to wealth that defined most bearded men his age. They defamed it, even as they coveted it. He launched into a monologue that ran from the 6 train, through the change at Union Square, and all the way to their bedroom on Wythe Avenue. How David was peddling hate to white people with guns. How the world was worse off now than it had ever been, because David trafficked in extremism and hate porn.
Eleanor told him she didn’t want to talk about it anymore and went to sleep on the sofa.
They moved to Westchester in May. Doug had gone in on a restaurant in Croton-on-Hudson with some friends, more of an empty space really, and the idea was that they would move up there and he and his friends would build the place out from scratch. But money was tight, and one of the friends pulled out at the last minute. The other put in six months of half time, then knocked up a local high school girl and fled back to the city. And now the space sat half built—mostly just a kitchen and some boxes of white tile rotting in a spray of standing water.
Doug drives over there in an old pickup truck most days, but just to drink. He’s set up a computer in the corner and will work on his paperweight if the mood strikes him, which it usually doesn’t. The lease on the space expires at the end of the year, and if Doug hasn’t managed to turn it into a functional restaurant (which feels impossible at this point), they will lose the space and all the money they’ve invested.
At one point, Eleanor suggested (just suggested) that David could maybe lend them ten grand to finish the space. Doug spit at her feet and went on a two-day rant about how she should have married a rich * like her f*cking sister. That night he didn’t come home, and she lay there feeling the old bugs crawling back inside her bones.
For a time it seemed their marriage would be just another houseplant that had failed to thrive, choked to death by the lack of money and the death of dreams.
And then David and Maggie and beautiful little Rachel died, and they found themselves with more money than they could ever spend.
*
Three days after the crash they sit in a conference room on the top floor of 432 Park Avenue. Doug, under protest, has put on a tie and brushed his hair, but his beard is still shaggy and Eleanor thinks he may have gone a day or two without a shower. She is wearing a black dress and low heels, and sits clutching her purse. Being here, in this office tower, facing a phalanx of lawyers makes her teeth itch—the import of it. To unseal their last will and testament, to be read the provisions of a document meant to be read in the event of death, signifies with irrefutable evidence that someone you love is dead.
Eleanor’s mother is watching the boy upstate. Eleanor felt a twist in her stomach as they were leaving. He looked so vacant and sad as she hugged him good-bye, but her mother assured her they’d be fine. He was her grandson, after all, and Eleanor forced herself to get in the car.
On the ride in, Doug kept asking how much money she thought they were going to get, and she explained to him that it wasn’t their money. It was JJ’s and there would be a trust and as the boy’s guardian she would be able to spend the money to care for him, but not for their own personal gain. And Doug said, Sure, sure, and nodded and acted like Of course I know that, but she could tell from the way he drove and the fact that he smoked half a pack of cigarettes in ninety minutes that he felt like he’d won the lottery and was expecting to be handed an oversize novelty check.