Pineapple Street(70)

She had an email on her work account from Curtis McCoy.


Hi Georgiana, It was great seeing you at the event. Would you like to get together this weekend? I hear the Whitney has an exhibit of nudes we can go and feel awkward in front of? You can wear your sunglasses?



Georgiana wouldn’t let herself drag anyone else down with her. She tapped out a quick reply.


Hi Curtis, I have a lot on my plate at the moment so it’s not a great time. Thanks.



She pressed Send and heard the electronic whoosh of her note flying off into cyberspace. She stared out the window, trying to make sense of the night before. Why did she have such a bad feeling? What had happened at the party? When her phone buzzed with a text from Lena, the penny dropped.


Hey George why didn’t you tell me Brady had DIED? I am so sorry. I love you so much and I am here for you. Tell me how I can help.



Fuck. Lena knew about Brady? Georgiana didn’t reply. An hour later Darley sent a text.


Hey, Sasha told us about Brady. Why didn’t you say anything? We need to talk.



Sasha told them? She told everyone? Georgiana’s stomach roiled and she felt she might be sick. Her phone buzzed with a text from her mother.


I’ve booked us for tennis on Wednesday at 6. We can order from Jack the Horse Tavern after.



Humiliation coursed through Georgiana’s body. She had made a scene, something about the stupid binary theme. Her friends and family knew about Brady, they knew what she had done. Suddenly her stomach lurched. She was going to throw up. She stood from her desk and stumbled down the hall into the bathroom with the big map of Cambodia, locking the door behind her. She was spinning, and a darkness was spreading in from the sides, making it so that she could barely see the pinpricks of light before her. It was panic. She was falling, falling, falling, but the floor wasn’t rising up to meet her.

She leaned her body against the door and slid to the bathroom floor, the panic attack taking over. It was like she had been thrown by a powerful wave and her body was being tossed, forced further and further under. As she pressed her eyes closed, she remembered a time when she was in high school and the Henry Street School was scrimmaging a basketball team from the Bronx. As Henry Street scored, her classmates taunted the other team chanting, “Flip our burgers! Flip our burgers!” She was nine, and Berta took her to drop off a classmate who had missed the bus, and when Georgiana saw the girl’s peeling yellow house she said, “When are you going to get your house painted?” and the girl shrugged and got out. She was twelve at summer camp, and when a counselor told her to clear her dinner plate she sneered and told the older teenager that was someone else’s job. Georgiana had been horrible. She had been so horrible for so long, and she was trying so hard to stop and she couldn’t. Because it hadn’t just started with Brady. Sleeping with Brady wasn’t what made her a bad person—she had always been one, and she couldn’t even be good when she tried. She sat in the dark bathroom, shivering, Brady’s name pounding through her head.

It was the money that made her so horrible. It had made her coddled and spoiled and ruined, and she had no idea what to do about it. Then, with a jolt, she remembered something from the night before. She had taken off her shoes and crawled into her parents’ bed. She had been so upset. So mad at everyone. So frustrated and lost, and she felt there was just nothing she could do to stop being herself and start being someone else. But there, on the nightstand, she saw a newspaper clipping. It was the profile of Curtis, of course.

Georgiana opened her eyes and saw the map of Cambodia. The floor wasn’t moving, she wasn’t slipping sideways anymore. She stood, still slightly dizzy, and looked in the mirror. She was red and hot and she felt like she’d run up twelve flights of stairs, but she was okay.

She used a paper towel to blot her face and walked quietly back to her desk, unnoticed by anyone. She went into her Gmail and found the latest trust statement from the asset manager. She hadn’t opened an email, never mind looked at a statement, in years. She wasn’t sure she had a password, but she went ahead and tried the password she used for everything, from Neiman Marcus to Amazon: SerenaWilliams40-0. It worked. The page was confusing, there wasn’t just one account with a total. It was broken up into different sections, maybe two dozen separate blocks. She pulled a piece of scrap paper from her notebook and added the totals, sure she was missing something, but she just needed a rough idea. She added it together. It looked like she had about thirty-seven million dollars. And so she decided: She would rid herself of the entire inheritance. She would give all her money away just like Curtis, and it would be like ripping off a Band-Aid. She would change. She would change all at once and leave no room to ever go back.



* * *





She made an appointment with Bill Wallis, the investment manager. She knew Bill, he’d been a friend of the family since she was a small child. She’d seen him at Darley’s and Cord’s weddings, she remembered once joining him and his wife for lunch at a seaside restaurant in Ogunquit, Maine, when they were all there on vacation. He was soft-spoken and wore small round glasses; he gave the impression of someone who played bridge or studied architecture in his free time.

The morning of her appointment she dressed carefully, tucking a silk blouse into trousers as though she were a professional adult and not someone who routinely ate peanut butter out of the jar for dinner. She took the subway to Grand Central Station and walked up Park Avenue to the offices of Brotherton Asset Management, nestled in a tower so reflective it was nearly invisible against the sky. A secretary welcomed her and offered her a bottled water, which Georgiana politely refused—single-use plastic—and led her to Bill’s office, leaving her in a leather guest chair facing the window.