Edgewater (6 page)

5

IT'S REALLY NOT THAT SIMPLE

THOUGHTS OF CHARLIE COPELAND PERSISTED IN
spite of the task at hand. I tried not to dwell on lingering impressions of his smile, his crinkly eyes, the perfect break of his broad shoulders . . .

Concentrate, Lorrie
, I admonished myself silently.
Think about your money.

The bulk of the Hollander estate was fairly depleted by the time my grandparents died. Grandpa's communities had long since been divided up and sold off. Even so, Mom and Aunt Gigi had each inherited a wad of money, in addition to joint ownership of the house, which they used on weekends. During the week, my mother worked as exhibits director at a museum in Manhattan. She lived off her salary and invested her inheritance wisely. But of course Gigi was foolish about her share; she'd wanted to be an artist, and she'd invested in a gallery that went
belly-up. She'd wanted to act, and she'd spent thousands on lessons of the craft but never earned back a dime. She didn't work a day in her life, and when she ran out of money, she moved into Edgewater full-time and relied on Mom to help keep up with her bills. Further evidence that Mom's trust should now be in my hands, not hers.

When I walked into Idlewild Fidelity, I made a beeline for the customer-service desk at the back, chin up and gaze unfixed so as not to make eye contact with any of the other customers. Idlewild was a small town, and there were a lot of people I wanted to avoid.

“What can I do for you?” the woman behind the counter asked pleasantly.

“Is there a manager I can speak to?”

“Take a seat,” she said, waving toward a row of chairs, her voice now a little sharper. I hadn't meant to offend her sense of competency, but I wanted to start at the top of the food chain. “I'll see if anyone's available.”

Twenty minutes later I was finally ushered into a small back office by a man whose name tag,
JIM TRAYLOR
, had me thinking about all the drives out to Idlewild we'd taken from the city in Mom's Volvo, her James Taylor CD the soundtrack to our ride. Our favorite was “How Sweet It Is to Be Loved by You” because Mom would put Susannah's and my names into the lyrics. I had no idea what had happened to that car. Had Mom shipped it across the ocean? Or driven it to the airport and left it there?

Jim Traylor listened as I recited my information—name, date of birth, social security number—and he punched keys on his keyboard as I explained my objective. “I'm not trying to be
spiteful or hurt my aunt or anything like that. I just want what's mine, and I'd like to get the ball rolling. So, if you could tell me exactly what needs to be done and how to do it . . .”

“It's really not that simple.”

“I know, I know. I'm under eighteen. But aren't there cases where minors can get control of their own money? Is that power of attorney? Is there a form for it?”

“That's not the problem,” he said.

“So, what is? Do I need to bring my aunt in? I can probably make that happen within a few days.”

Traylor tapped one last tap on his keyboard, then pushed the screen so that I could see it. “Miss Hollander, your checking account, your joint checking account with your sister, and your savings account are all at a negative balance.”

The screen was a spreadsheet, each column in the red. My chest tightened in fear.

Years before, Gigi had taken Susannah and me to a meditation class. The teacher taught us to close our eyes and repeat a mantra—a private, nonsense word he gave each of us—to calm down and become Zen. Predictably, Susannah was all into it, and I thought it was hokey and strange. But right then I closed my eyes for a couple beats longer than a blink and said my mantra in my head—
yim, yim
—while Jim Traylor waited for me to respond.

Finally, I did: “This is precisely why I need to have control of the trust,” I told him. “Because my aunt is not responsible enough to keep track of bills and bank balances on her own. Once I'm in control, I'll transfer money over, and Susannah and I can get out of the red.”

“I suppose that's what I'm trying to explain.” Jim Traylor's hands, skimming over his computer keyboard, were pale, as if they'd known only this windowless office, time unending. “There is no trust.”

“That's ridiculous,” I said. I laughed, and it sounded strange, as if I were making the sound from underwater. “Of course there is.”

I'd seen the letter from Mom, explaining it all. She needed her freedom, Mom had written to Susannah and me; in exchange, she was leaving us, her two daughters, all the money her father had given her, now augmented with the interest she'd earned over the years. She'd start fresh in England with Nigel. She'd included a bunch of syrupy, Hallmark-card assurances about what wonderful daughters we were, how she wanted only the best for us.
I love you forever and ever, my lovely Lorrie and my sweet Susannah. Love, Mom
. I had clung to that letter, along with the cards that came on Chanukah, our birthdays, and occasionally on random holidays like Valentine's Day or Halloween. She ended them the way she'd always ended the notes she'd stuck in my kindergarten lunchbox: a stick drawing of her, Susannah, and me. Mom in the middle with her arms around her two girls. “The Three Musketeers,” she'd called us. But we weren't a threesome anymore, at least not that one.

As time went by, notes from Mom arrived less and less frequently, and the ones I'd saved seemed to mock all she'd taken away. Up to the attic they went. Out of sight and out of mind.

Jim Traylor's voice broke me from my thoughts. “Is there anything else I can help you with?” he asked.

“But . . .” I began. “But the trust is there. I know it is—at least
I know it
was
. My mother set it up. It was supposed to last us . . . oh, I don't know how long it was supposed to last, but certainly at least until I finished high school.”

But sitting there, across from Jim Traylor, I realized how implausible that was. Gigi hadn't been able to make her own trust fund last; how could she have managed ours?

“According to our records, Miss Hollander,” he said, “there's no trust. And I have no record of you ever having one.”

“You're making a big mistake,” I told him.

With that sentence came a horrible sense of déjà vu. I'd said those words before, just about twenty-four hours ago, when I sat in front of Pamela Bunn and her battered desk.

But Pamela hadn't made a mistake, and it was entirely possible that Jim Traylor hadn't, either. The common denominator in all of it was Aunt Gigi. What had she done with our money? And how had she managed to erase all record of its existence?

Was this all just a game to her?

I didn't know. What I knew for sure was this: I had no money to my name, a horse stranded five hundred miles away, and a tank of gas bought on credit from a stranger, and I had to get to the bottom of it.

6

WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU

MY HANDS WERE SHAKING AS I FUMBLED WITH MY
cell phone to call Lennox. It took me three tries to press the right buttons, but then instead of ringing, a mechanical voice informed me that my phone bill was past due. It went on to recite a phone number for AT&T. “Press one to be connected now, or call back at your earliest convenience.” Digits were recited, but I hung up before the recording was done. The cell-phone issue would have to take a backseat to all the others.

I went straight home to confront Gigi, storming into the house and not even noticing the smell. Maybe because I hadn't bothered to inhale; I just screamed, “Gigi! Gigi!” BP or not, she was going to have to give me some answers. Right now.

“GIGI!”

“Lorrie?” came a call from the kitchen.

Gigi was standing by the counter when I walked in, all
dressed up in a flapper dress, low-waisted, with fringe on the bottom. Behind her, the radio was plugged back in, and I could just make out her favorite oldies station coming in through the static.

“Darling girl!” she exclaimed, and she swooped toward me, arms wide open.

I ducked out of her embrace. “I just came from Idlewild Fidelity. They said all our accounts are in the red.”

“Mmm-hmm.” A L'Eggo My Eggo waffle popped up in the toaster, and Gigi turned back to grab it with her bare hands. “Ouch, ouch.” She dropped it straight onto the counter—no plate.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“How am I supposed to know the ins and outs of how they conduct business at that bank—if they keep accounts in the red or in the green or in the mauve? That's their business.”

“According to them, it means we don't have any money.”

“It's nothing for you to worry about,” she said, bending down to adjust the strap on one of her shoes. “Worrying is pointless. Worrying is negative goal setting.”

“Give me a break,” I said. Gigi barely lifted her head. “Look at me,” I demanded.

When she looked up, she lifted a foot to show off a five-inch heel, as delicate as a Cinderella slipper, crystal-detailed, with a black patent-leather strap. “What do you think?” she asked.

“I don't care about your goddamn shoe,” I told her.

“This isn't a shoe,” she said. “It's a Louboutin.” She drawled the word out as only Gigi could:
Lou-bouuuu-tahhhhn.

But I knew the brand from its trademark red sole, and I knew that a pair of them cost upward of a thousand dollars.

“I got them for my party,” she said.

“What party?”

“My birthday party, of course.” She shook her head, as if she couldn't believe I was so dense. “You only turn forty-two once, and I'm planning a big celebration. It'd be a shame to limp around my own party because I didn't have the forethought to break in my new shoes. Though sometimes shoes don't break in no matter how hard you try. I could write a book about it—
When Bad Shoes Happen to Good People.
I have a feeling this strap will be a problem. A design flaw I'd never—”

I cut her off. “Do you even hear yourself when you speak?”

“I'm an excellent designer,” Gigi said with a bit of indignation. “I used to design all my own clothes. You were just too young to remember.”

“Jim Traylor at Idlewild Fidelity said there isn't a trust at all,” I told her. “Design your way out of that.”

“The trust isn't at Idlewild Fidelity anymore,” Gigi said. “I moved it.”

“You
moved
it? Why?”

“It's not good to stay in one place,” said the woman who barely left the house anymore.

“So, where is it?”

“Enough of the twenty questions,” Gigi said. “What I do with the money is not your concern.”

“It's the very definition of my concern,” I said. “Susannah's, too. Mom set up the trust for us.”

“I had plans of my own, you know. I put everything on hold to raise you girls, and you just keep hitting me up with your demands.”

“My demands?”

“Boarding school, a horse,” she said.

“That's what Mom's money was for. I'd like to use some of it to at least get my horse home.”

My voice cracked at the last bit, but Gigi didn't take notice. “And I was never good enough for you,” she went on. “And the house was never clean enough.”

It was a choice between screaming and crying, and I picked screaming. “Because the house is filled with junk and filth! How can you stand it?”

I reached out and yanked the radio cord from the wall again, so hard that the radio shook and sent an avalanche of yellow-stained mail onto the floor. A picture flashed in my head: Beth-Ann Bracelee showing up here for a “surprise visit.” It was a horrible game I played with myself sometimes, when I imagined people from my outside life coming into my inside one, and I could almost hear myself, shrill in my effort to be lighthearted:
What, you've never seen envelopes stained with cat urine before?

“Lorrie,” Gigi said stubbornly, “you know I like my radio in the mornings.”

“It doesn't even work right!” I picked it up and stuffed it into an already stuffed garbage can, pushing it down with the force of all my weight—I'd make it fit. Then I went for the soiled mail on the floor. Three Pottery Barn catalogs—because just one wouldn't be enough. Those catalogs always made me so damn jealous. Sure, Edgewater's rooms had once been grander, but I'd kill to live within those pages, where everything looked so neat and orderly. Beds were made, tables were set, floors were
swept clean, and not a shit stain or a hairball in sight. I stuffed them in on top of the radio.

“Don't get rid of things I need,” Gigi said.

“One day we'll all be dead, and it'll be someone's job to come in here and clean this place out. I'm just getting a head start.”