The Perfect Marriage(18)
Shortly after her marriage ended, Haley was assigned to a deal in which Maeve Grant was advising the acquirer in a huge merger between two aerospace conglomerates. The transaction involved the usual complex structure of share swaps, leverage, and cash. It was the largest deal in Maeve Grant history, and no fewer than seventy people had spent time on it during its various phases.
The closing was scheduled for year-end, tax considerations requiring that it be finalized before January 1. Haley worked through the Thanksgiving holiday—which suited her fine, given that she had no one to spend it with now that James was with Jessica. Afterward, however, she often thought that if James hadn’t dumped her for Jessica, she would have been eating turkey with him instead of discovering the problem that would ultimately end with her being unemployed and unemployable.
Amid the millions of pages of due diligence documents that she had pored over, Haley saw that some of the target’s defense contracts would be invalidated after the merger for some arcane regulatory reasons having to do with joint ownership. The loss would be in the $300 million range, which even on a deal this size was meaningful for Maeve Grant’s client.
Haley brought the problem to the attention of her direct supervisor, Lawrence Chittik. He told her that she was wrong, that she didn’t understand the regulations like he did. That he’d actually worked on the Senate subcommittee that had drafted them.
But she knew she was right. So she put her analysis down on paper and sent it to Chittik, copying the partner in charge of their team, Sean Keener, and pretending that this was the first time she’d raised the issue so as to not make Chittik look bad with his boss. She even claimed that Chittik had asked her to look at the question, so he could share credit in her discovery.
Keener called Haley and Chittik into his office a minute after the email hit his in-box. “What the fuck?” was literally how he started the meeting.
“I didn’t know she was sending it to you,” Chittik said, immediately throwing Haley under the bus.
“I’m sorry,” Haley said, unsure why she was apologizing for doing her job well.
“Get out,” Keener said to Chittik.
Chittik didn’t need to be asked twice and scurried away like a frightened bunny. Once they were alone, Keener asked Haley, “Who else have you told?”
“No one.”
“If you’re lying to me, I’m going to fire you and make sure that no one ever hires you. Understand?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what I did wrong. The analysis is right. I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t fucking care. What I do fucking care about is the $100 million fee Maeve Grant gets at closing. Every penny of that vanishes if this deal craters. Do you have any idea what that would mean to our bonus pool?”
The deal closed on time, without the client ever becoming the wiser of the land mine that awaited them with the regulators. At the closing dinner, the client’s CEO toasted Maeve Grant’s dedication to the cause and thanked them profusely for their hard work. Champagne flowed. Caviar was consumed. In February, bonuses were paid. Instead of a bonus, Haley was fired. “Restructuring,” they told her. But if she signed a release promising never to sue, they’d pay her a bonus.
After her sacking, Haley dutifully did all the things the recently unemployed are supposed to do. She reached out to her contacts, asking for leads. When that ran dry, she sent out résumés. First to the blue-chip firms, then broadening her circle, until there was hardly a financial institution she hadn’t contacted. She made it to the final interview stage twice, but in each instance, after contacting Haley’s references, the head of HR called back to say that they couldn’t extend an offer. When Haley asked why, she was told both times that they were not at liberty to say. Haley knew that was corporate-speak meaning that Maeve Grant was blackballing her.
Within twelve months, she’d lost her husband and her career. That’s when she started seeing Dr. Rubenstein. She’d been having self-harm fantasies, she admitted to the shrink straightaway, and worse.
“I think about how happy I’d be if someone flew a plane into the Maeve Grant tower and killed them all,” she told him once. “Or I construct these elaborate scenarios to kill James or Jessica. Sometimes I even fantasize about killing Jessica’s ex-husband, which makes absolutely no sense because he’s a victim like me in all this.”
Rubenstein said that type of misplaced rage was perfectly normal, although he was quick to point out that it was important for her not to act on the feelings but instead to rechannel them.
“They’re telling you something important, Haley,” he said.
“And what’s that?” Haley asked.
“The anger you feel to the people who wronged you—your bosses, James, even Jessica—that’s straightforward enough and understandable at face value. You want to hurt them the way that they hurt you. It’s your rage toward Jessica’s ex-husband, however, that, as you acknowledge, doesn’t fit that pattern. What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I come here,” Haley said.
Of course, she did know. On some level, at least, she knew. Still, she waited for Dr. Rubenstein to say it aloud.
“It suggests that you think that Jessica’s ex-husband also bears some blame in all of this. That if he had been a better husband, perhaps Jessica wouldn’t have started an affair with your husband. So what it’s really telling you is that you think you bear some blame for James being unfaithful to you too.”