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I told Jill that John and I hoped to start a family, but didn’t delve much deeper into my recent reproductive history. ‘My dream is to have a house full of kids, but in general I try to avoid becoming a cliché,’ I said.
‘Well, good luck. Because try as you might, you’re probably destined to end up in one of the seven categories of hedge fund wives.’
‘You make this place sound like Dante’s Inferno.’
Jill thought for a second. ‘You know, it’s actually an apt comparison,’ she said before lifting her glass and taking a long swallow from her own flute.
So much for pacing oneself.
TWO The Accidental, the Westminster, the Stephanie Seymour, the Former Secretary, the Socialite, the Workaholic, and the Breeder (#ulink_abf57d60-e6aa-513a-b504-a716fa580baa)
I was curious to hear more from Jill, but before I could get any more out of her, Dahlia stood up to give a speech about Caroline and we all had to be quiet. I didn’t have a chance to chat privately again with Jill until we were all shunted upstairs to eat cake in the second-floor sitting room, which itself resembled a petit four with its mint and cream décor and huge Venetian glass chandelier suspended from the center of the ceiling. I asked the woman cutting wedges of cake for a large piece and sat down next to Jill to watch Caroline tackle her mountain of presents—including the cashmere baby blanket I’d brought.
‘If there are seven kinds of hedge fund wife, which one are you?’ I asked Jill, digging into my chocolate-espresso-cream confection.
‘Oh, I’m an Accidental,’ she demurred. ‘When I met my husband I thought he’d end up in politics like the rest of his family. Glenn moved from being an equity analyst tracking tech stocks for Merrill to a fund called Conquer Capital when we were engaged, and unlike most of the other hedge fund brides, I actively opposed his transition into this world.’
‘But why?’
‘Because I knew it would mean that I’d spend the rest of my life at parties like these, listening to someone prattle on about their latest trip to a five-star, obscenely expensive resort where they lunched at the table next to Diane von Fürstenberg and Barry Diller’s and sunned in beach chairs next to Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.’ She rolled her dark eyes and slouched in her chair.
‘So how do I spot other Accidentals? They sound like my people.’
‘We’re usually the last to arrive and the first to go. We’re also the least likely to host a social gathering or send out holiday cards.’
I was enthralled as Jill broke down all the different types of hedge fund wives, or HFWs, as she sometimes referred to them. According to her the Westminster (as in pedigreed and pure bred) has a recognizable and respectable last name (which she’s kept, non-hyphenated), belongs to all the right clubs (Junior League, Harvard, and Doubles) and is more likely to subscribe to Emily Post than to the New York Post. While the Westminster always looks groomed, she isn’t gauche about it (no false eyelashes except for black tie functions, no breast implants, etc.) and strives above all to appear elegant and natural. She may have a job but it isn’t all-consuming, and thanks to her years of co-chairing this and that, she’s constructed a first-rate social network. If you need a letter for the co-op board of the building you are hoping to buy into, the Westminster’s your gal. Applying for membership in, say, Piping Rock, the most exclusive golf and beach club on Long Island’s North Shore, she’s the first call you make. Ditto for nursery school applications, benefit committee aspirations, etc., etc. But as likeable as the Westminster is, ‘her perfectionism can rub some the wrong way,’ Jill sniffed.
Later, I would learn that Jillian Lovern Tischman, in addition to being a mother of two, was a contributing editor for House & Home, a monthly glossy magazine that mainly featured the city, country, and vacation homes of socialites and B-list celebrities. She was also on the boards of numerous noteworthy charities and cultural institutions around town, and thus far more Westminster than Accidental.
Named for the famous supermodel who, by settling down with Peter Brant, a massively wealthy investor, art dealer, and racehorse breeder, inspired droves of models to secure their own hedge fund honey pots, the Stephanie Seymour is so used to getting away with being nasty and rude—even their husbands let them treat them like dirt—that they’ve actually forgotten how to be gracious. They also tend to only want to talk about shopping, their last session with the physical trainer (whom you get the sneaking suspicion they might be having an affair with), or their last trip to the dermatologist’s office (ditto). They have kids, but you never hear about them unless they’re referencing a plastic surgery procedure, as in, ‘I had the breast lift six months after I gave birth to fill-in-the-blank Junior.’ Stephanie Seymour wives take the whole yummy mummy thing to another level, make that universe.
Without a doubt, Caroline Reinhardt was a prime example.
The third kind of HFW, the Former Secretary, is self-explanatory. Their husbands were too lazy or busy (or both) to go look for a wife, so they simply married the first girl who did a decent enough job organizing their lives at the office. They also never talk back and give surprisingly good blow jobs. Former Secretaries are often the snobbiest of all HFWs because they feel so insecure about their lowly backgrounds, and tend to be the most protective of their territory (i.e., husbands) because they have the most to lose. Unlike the Stephanie Seymours, they don’t have good looks to fall back on, and since they aren’t terribly charming, they also don’t have many friends who would side with them in a big city divorce battle. After hearing this description, it shocked me when Jill said that none other than Dahlia Kemp was this cat-egory’s reigning queen.
‘That’s the point, you’re not supposed to be able to spot them. Their whole raison d’être is to blend in with the other HFWs,’ Jill said.
The fourth category of wife, the Socialite, cares about one thing and one thing only: social status. She’s as vain as the Stephanie Seymour, as connected as the Westminster, as cutthroat as the Former Secretary, but has a past as cloudy as the East River. Even the ones that come from upper-middle-class backgrounds, like Ainsley Partridge, have skeletons bursting out of their closets, which, it should be noted, are stuffed with borrowed dresses they just ‘happened’ to forget to return. The Socialite, Jill said, was a shameless cheapskate and never paid for anything—not her clothes, her hair, her makeup, her transportation, her gym membership, or her meals. The list goes on and on. In fact, if there is one way to tell a Socialite from the rest of the HFWs it’s that she will stick you with the bill for lunch while the other four won’t even let you see it.
The Workaholic, on the other hand, will inform you that you’ll be splitting the bill even before the waiter takes your drink order—and even though both of you know she’ll be expensing it, along with the black town car hovering outside the restaurant’s front door and the holiday gift—a crate of halfway decent California cabernet—she’ll be sending you in December. Like her husband, the Workaholic is married firstly to her high-powered, although not-quite-so-lucrative job as a magazine publisher/interior decorator/real-estate broker/corporate lawyer. She has no children and has talked herself into believing that she’ll be able to easily reproduce up until the age of fifty. But before you start feeling too sorry for the Workaholic, remember that she has a closet full of perfectly tailored Akris suits and Manolo Blahnik heels, takes pleasure in tearing her workplace underlings to shreds, and has a seven-figure bank account in the Cayman Islands that even her husband doesn’t know exists. ‘What’s his is mine and what’s mine is mine,’ is her motto. Welcome to the hedge fund wives’ version of women’s lib.
Of course, the Workaholic’s exact opposite, the Breeder, is hardly a poster child for the feminist movement either. Of all the hedge fund wives, the Breeder is the easiest to identify. She’s often sporting a big, pregnant belly and either carrying a new tot in a shearling-lined Louis Vuitton baby carrier or pushing one in a Bugaboo stroller. And in case you happen to catch her without one of her three, four, or five children, she wears their baubleequivalents—little enamel and gold shoes—on a chain around her neck.
By the time Jill had finished schooling me on the seven types of hedge fund wives, the cake plates had been cleared and Caroline had opened all of her gifts (I’d never seen so much Tiffany silver in my life). Jill walked me down to the entry foyer, where we were both given our gift bags and stood waiting for our coats when Ainsley sidled up to Jill to ask her if she was coming to her annual holiday party. ‘I can’t come. Glenn’s parents are expecting us in Oyster Bay that weekend,’ she said.
‘Oh really, that’s too bad,’ Ainsley pouted.
‘Why don’t you invite Marcy and her husband John?’ Jill suggested.
Ainsley protested, stammering through a half-cooked explanation that it was really just a small get-together and her husband Peter was already complaining about the number of people she’d invited. Jill pointed out that since she wasn’t coming, it wasn’t like John and I would be adding to the final number of guests. I felt stupid standing there as the girls argued about me, but I’d also visited the champagne fountain enough times over the course of the afternoon to dull my sense of shame and self-pity.
‘I suppose two more isn’t a big deal,’ Ainsley finally growled at Jill, tossing a handful of her long, pale blond hair behind her back. She turned to face me. ‘The party is in two weeks, Jill can fill you in on the rest,’ she said. Then she grabbed her fur from a patiently waiting maid and stomped outside.
‘Now you get to see Ainsley’s apartment and meet some of the other wives who weren’t here today,’ Jill said. She was quite pleased with herself, having exercised her considerable social power for seemingly good use.
‘I know. I can’t wait, I just wish that you were going to be there.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ she said before wafting outdoors into the brilliant sunshine, ‘as long as you don’t wear that coat.’
THREE Missing Spanx and Other Morning-after Anxieties (#ulink_fc83337a-8516-5e9a-bf58-8e3908569e5e)
Two weeks later, on the morning after the Partridge’s annual Christmas party, I woke up with a lethal case of cottonmouth, throbbing head, and little memory of what had happened after half-past one the night before. Plus I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d done something really life-altering embarrassing, like maybe-I-need-to-move-to-Dubai-now embarrassing. Then the phone rang, punctuating the merciful silence of my darkened, cool bedroom with a sound so shrill, so loud, it made my brain feel like it was imploding on itself, and I lunged for the bedside table to snap it up, if only to prevent it from ringing again.
‘Hello?’ I croaked.
‘Good morning.’ It was John, my husband, who was predictably at work even though it was a Sunday, and according to the clock on my bedside table, not even nine o’clock.
‘Oh, I get it—you’re being ironic,’ I said.
I quickly calculated: The man had had at most four hours’ sleep the previous night. How and for God’s sake why he had made it into work when his appearance wasn’t required was beyond me. Was he in a bad mood because he felt just as hung over as I did or because of something else? Something involving me and the bottle of tequila with which I had spent the better portion of last night familiarizing myself ?
‘How are you feeling?’ John asked humorlessly.
‘About as bad as I sound, maybe worse,’ I said. ‘What happened last night anyway? I don’t remember anything after we ordered that second bottle of Patron.’
‘So you don’t remember the incident?’ he asked.
‘Incident? What incident?’ I didn’t like the sound of that word. It sounded like something that required the involvement of the police and lawyers, documents and affidavits, judges and juries. This couldn’t be good.
‘There was an altercation at the bar,’ John continued.
‘With who?’
‘With whom,’ he corrected me.
My husband, the grammar nut. I blamed his pedantry on his mother, a former middle school English teacher turned real estate broker, with whom (thank you, John) I had what I called a ‘civil’ relationship. Let’s just say that after almost seven years of marriage I’d learned to put up with the things I couldn’t change.
‘Okay…whom?’ I asked again.
‘A girl. She meant to throw her drink at Ainsley, but Ainsley ducked and it hit you instead.’
‘It did?’ I couldn’t believe that I didn’t remember having a drink thrown in my face. The only other time I’d blacked out was during my sophomore year of college, when I drank one (okay, six) too many beers while tailgating a Northwestern football game. ‘So then what happened?’ I asked.
‘You threw your drink right back at her.’
‘I did?’
‘Then she said something and you shoved her and then she socked you in the face.’
Feeling the tender spot around my eye, I uttered, ‘Are you serious?’
‘Yeah. I would have tried to protect you, but it happened too fast.’
‘Do you know why I shoved her? I mean it’s not exactly like me to engage in bar brawls.’
I heard John shuffling some papers, the sound of a drawer opening, and I knew there was something he wasn’t telling me. He always went into organizational mode when he was holding something back. It was his tell.
‘Spill,’ I said.
‘The girl who hit you…’ He paused, weighing his options.
‘Yes?’
‘She told you to put your girdle back on.’
‘Spanx. Girdles are for grandmothers. There’s a difference.’
‘I’m just repeating what the girl said. Can we not get lost in semantics, please?’
‘Alright, why were my Spanx off ?’
‘You tell me. You’re the one who took them off.’
‘Did I take them off…in public, in front of other people?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Oh fuck.
‘You took off your stockings, too,’ he added, unbidden.
Doublefuck.
‘But I wasn’t wearing any underwear!’ The dress I’d worn was a little (okay, a lot) on the short side. Everyone in that club must have gotten an eyeful of my Britney Spears. For a moment everything went dark, and I had to move a pillow under my head.
‘Everyone must think I’m a lunatic. Why didn’t you stop me?’
‘Marcy,’ he sighed. ‘Of course I tried to stop you. But you wouldn’t listen.’
‘Did I slur?’ It was a masochistic question, but I needed to know everything.
‘There was slurring, drooling, stumbling, spilling, nudity, and fighting. Shall I continue or was that enough?’
‘John, help me out. I’m mortified!’
‘Well then that makes two of us,’ he said, and I realized that as stupid as I felt, John must have felt ten times more embarrassed. After all, I didn’t ever have to face these people again if I didn’t want to, but John had no choice; he worked with them every day.
I cleared my throat. ‘I’m sorry, honey. I know what a big deal it was to you that I make a good impression,’ I said.
‘Actually you sort of did,’ he grumbled. ‘Peter thought you were hilarious and Ainsley felt so bad after that girl decked you. They want us to all have dinner after New Year’s. Go figure.’
I’d rather let John control the TV remote for the next five years than have to go to dinner with the socialite and her husband.
I groaned dramatically.
‘Marcy, we aren’t in Chicago anymore. New York works differently. Deals aren’t made in conference rooms, but over cocktails and dinner tables. Zenith rewards rainmakers, the guys who are good at reeling in potential new investors. If I could do that, I could be pulling in much bigger bucks.’
‘But, John, we have plenty of money.’
‘My portfolio has outperformed all the partners’ expectations, and I’ve been rewarded for that, but I’m never going to move up the ladder if I don’t start bringing in new capital. And to bring in new money, we need to be out there meeting the people who have it.’
‘You want to rub shoulders with rich people. I don’t understand how this requires my involvement.’
‘I’d like for you to get us invited to more parties like the Partridge’s. Last night I met a Venezuelan banking scion and an Ecuadorian flower exporter. They want to set up a dinner and talk about Zenith’s investment returns. And why? Because they saw us with the Partridges and figure we’re connected. Marcy, despite, or maybe because of the crap you pulled last night, people here love you. You had tons of friends in Chicago. I know that if you set your mind to it you could get us invited to the right parties and fundraisers.’
‘John, you know I’m not big on schmooze fests. Can’t you just go out without me?’ I gulped down the glass of water on his bedside table since mine was already empty. My headache was getting worse by the second.
‘It looks bad for a guy to be at parties on his own. People will think I’m trolling for chicks.’
I spit my water back into the glass. ‘Say what?’
‘My point is that I want you with me. All you have to do is be your normal, charming, and hopefully not inebriated self, and I’ll do all the real work. We might have to throw a few dinner parties when our apartment is ready, but otherwise your actual input is minimal.’
‘I don’t know, John. I thought we agreed that we were going to focus on getting pregnant again. What I want is a baby, for us to be on diaper-duty, not schmooze-control every night of the week. That’s not at all how I pictured our lives here.’
‘So you’re telling me that you have no interest in making friends and having fun? Because basically that’s what I’m asking you to do. And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get pregnant again before you have a chance to form a social network. God forbid if anything happens next time, you’ll at least have some friends to lean upon for support.’
‘I’d rather lean on barbed wire than any of the wives I’ve met.’ I snorted.
He sighed with exasperation.
‘John, one woman wouldn’t shake my hand, another snubbed me because I don’t have an interior decorator, and just last night someone sneered at me because she didn’t like my dress.’
‘They can’t all be that bad.’
‘There are two nice ones,’ I confessed.
‘I know you miss Chicago, but it’s time you start trying a little harder to settle in.’
‘Umm, need I remind you of what happens when I attempt to settle in? I get blind drunk and moon people.’
‘How about you try skipping the tequila next time?’
‘Sober socializing? No, thanks. My couch is way too comfy,’ I joked.
‘You owe me after last night,’ he said, in a tone that suggested I not attempt to breathe any more levity into the conversation.
In the spirit of moving forward, I decided to make a concession. Also because I felt really guilty about having made such a total idiot of myself in, of all places, the Rose Bar in the Gramercy Park Hotel. It was the hot spot in New York; on any given night it was filled to capacity with the city’s most influential editors, wealthiest power brokers, and hottest model-actress-socialite-whatevers (the new ubiquitous hyphenate). If it were up to me I’d never set foot in there again, but if I ever wanted to get the baby I’d dreamed of having, it sounded like I had to.
