Breaking the News

When the looming insolvency of my company came to light in December 2015, the news traveled—like most bad news—slowly. Despite its sweeping impact on employees, investors, and, most of all, my family, I remained frozen in the trauma of its revelation by my partners, to whom I had purposefully not disclosed its status. I should have confronted it immediately. Instead, the fallout trickled out unevenly, first to staff, then to stakeholders, and, finally, to my family. It was only under pressure from my daughter, who worked at the company and had learned the truth from others, that I was forced to confront the moment. What follows is how that reckoning unfolded.

*****

My daughter, who had been working part time as a marketing consultant for my company, was in the office during the week that the pending bankruptcy of my company was revealed. Prior to that, I was the only one aware of the company’s dire financial status. She became aware of all the events that transpired that week, including a “come to Jesus” meeting with my partners, wherein I was forced to resign. She had a close relationship with our office manager, who confided to her the events of that week. She confronted me with a phone call when I was at lunch, alone in a new eatery on the outskirts of Stamford, trying to gather myself with two glasses of wine. It was a new, well-appointed bar, with marble and glass everywhere, and several large television screens, all tuned to the business channel. Halftime Report— in the middle of the morning’s stock report—was on, with three familiar analysts, dressed in their disparate individual styles, and were discussing the days stock market activity. Droning about the ups and downs of various stocks, it all seemed irrelevant and pointless drivel, which only reinforced my new reality that I had become totally disconnected to the daily narratives of the normal world. 

“Dad, we have to have a family meeting,” she said. “Mom has no idea what’s going on.”

“Yes,” I answered. “I know that. I just was waiting for some more information to come out before I told everyone.”

I wasn’t honest. I was just putting off the unpleasant discussion that was inevitable. I knew that any new information would only confirm that everyone’s capital would be wiped out, including the investors, vendors and even some of the lenders. But I didn’t fool her, she said that if I didn’t set up a meeting today, she would call her mother herself.

When I returned to the office, Meredith confronted me before I even sat down in my chair. An early winter storm was brewing. I hadn’t taken an overcoat to lunch. It was a long walk in a chilling wind from the restaurant. I was still cold when I sat down. Meredith had chosen to stand in front of me instead of being seated on one of the visitors’ chairs in front of my desk.

“Dad, I called Mom,” she said abruptly. “I told her everything.”

Having just turned forty, and a new mother the past summer, her singing career was on hold and she worked part time for us from home. But she was out of the loop on the business status until that week. 

“What did she say,” I said as calmly as possible. My go-to reaction in crisis was always to act like it wasn’t. I acted like she just told me what time it was. But my head was exploding. I had lost control. After so many years of managing and trying to control revelations with the company, I had lost all control. 

“I told her we’d have a family meeting this afternoon,” she said, without answering my question. Then continued. “I called the boys, too. They’re all coming,” she said, referring to her three brothers.

*****

When I arrived home, Lynn was in the Great Room—an open area of kitchen, dining and den altogether, overlooking the patio that was surrounded by high pines. Seated on a chair, she was looking straight ahead out to the patio. The pines were bare and blowing—an early winter storm was ramping up. She didn’t turn toward me, though I knew she heard me come in. I sat in the love seat next to her but looked away. There was a long pause. Like the meeting with my partners when they confronted me, I couldn’t retrieve something to say. Nothing was coming. I needed to say something reassuring, but there was nothing reassuring to say. What, ‘we’ll be all right…it’s not true…I have a plan.’ There was nothing. We were financially wiped out and I was going to jail, and I couldn’t do anything to protect her. Warren Buffett said it takes “twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” My five minutes had arrived, and I was at a loss for words.  

“I guess you finally heard,” I said, finally breaking the silence.

“Meredith makes me feel so stupid,” she said, while still looking straight ahead outside. It was starting to snow, and winds had picked up, blowing light flurries, the kind that presaged a big storm.  

“Is it true. Everything’s gone?” 

“Yes,” I said, so weakly, I wasn’t sure that she heard me. I looked at her for a moment. It was painful to face her. She just kept looking straight away. Sad, frightened, confused.

“Why does she have to make me feel so stupid. I mean, should I have known?” 

Then she looked at me for the first time before continuing. She wasn’t angry, she seemed to be still processing. “You’ve been keeping crazy hours, so I knew something was up. But you’ve always come out of these things.” 

“Not this time,” I said. 

She put her hands over her eyes, bending down and shaking her head. “I just can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. Everything gone,” she said.

Then, leaning back in her chair, she continued, looking directly at me to assess my real feelings. She knew that I tend to understate everything. “She said you could go to jail.”

“Yes.” I answered. I had become a passive participant. Just waiting for questions. I had nothing to offer.

She stood up, walked to the glass doors leading to the patio, placed her hands on the glass, but pulled them off quickly. The glass was ice cold. A nasty wind had strewn branches on the empty planters with dead plants from the summer that she hadn’t removed. She was unlucky in the garden. It was one of her sore points. She was so artistically centered on her music, her portraits, even her cooking, but she had no success in the garden. All efforts to create the garden she envisioned disappointed. After a long pause, she answered without looking at me. 

“I could live in a hut with you. I could care less. We’ve had everything. But you in jail? I don’t think I could take that.” 

Another pause. I didn’t think she wanted to press me. She never really pushed me.

“How could you get to this?” she asked, turning to look at me finally, but still standing in front of the patio door. “I can’t imagine you would risk everything after all we’ve been through.” 

The travails of the past—countless failures—had become anecdotes and interesting stories we enjoyed telling, even hyping them, like other successful people who’d overcome previous failures and wear them like a badge of honor.  I had three previous careers: a family construction business that failed, a real estate start up that cratered and eleven relocations since we were married. This venture, Seaboard Properties, had changed everything, twenty years of success and prosperity, a fantasy comeback story, all the failures seemingly behind us.

“It was a slow creeping conundrum. Not a big deal at first. Then more serious. There was a tipping point. I crossed it without recognizing it or ignoring it or rationalizing it. And then it was too late.”

She walked back to her chair. She turned towards me and started to say something but paused two or three times before she finally spoke, and then, only after a long pause. “What are we going to do now?”

I was leaning over, staring at the floor but I briefly turned toward the patio. The wind was picking up and shook the glass door. It was like the meeting with my partners, I was searching for something reassuring to say. But nothing came.

“We’ll sell the house here,” I said. I hadn’t even thought about moving; it just came out,  and because she didn’t respond, I kept going. 

“We’ll move to our place in Florida until I know what the outcome of my legal situation will be.”

“Aye, Yaye Yaye. Just like that?”

“There’s really no other option.”

We had moved eleven times since we married. We thought this house was the last move. I kept telling everyone: “They’ll carry me out of this one.”

She didn’t say anything else. She just kept staring out at the patio. I sat back in my chair, staring ahead. The light in the room created a sharp reflection of us in the patio’s glass door. Staring at it, I was sure she didn’t like the reflection. She wasn’t happy with her weight, her hair. A substitute hairdresser ruined her hair earlier in the week. She often asked if she should let her hair go gray. Her weight was only a marginal issue. She didn’t look overweight, just not her weight from ten years ago. Overall, she didn’t look her age, and she was still a beautiful woman. I looked younger than my age growing up. As I got older, it became a positive. Even now, I had hardly any gray hair for a man in his seventies. But my reflection told the story, my eyes were drawn and puffy, and I looked my age. I had put on weight, skipping my morning work outs, overeating, drinking more, and losing some height. Once I was six toot two, but now, I was barely six feet. I turned away from the glass. There was so much more to discuss. But I was spent, and neither of us could break the silence. 

She kept looking down. I wondered if she was thinking of all the other men she could have married. She told me once that she was happy she never married any of them. I was so different from them, and the other husbands of our friends. 

“All those hyper-competitive men with their flashing egos and little boy insecurities. You are not like that,” she said. “You never come home from work slamming doors or bringing a long face or a tantrum from the day’s battles.” She said she was so sure of me. 

Then my daughter arrived. She came in the back door which opens directly into the Great Room. The door was always open, we never locked it, even when we went on vacation. We lived on a quiet dead-end lane surrounded by woods. There was something so safe about it. A cold chill came into the room when she opened the door, and it seemed to follow her in. She walked past us and sat down in the last chair in the room and didn’t say anything at first.

“I told the boys,” she said, very matter-of-factly.

I can’t remember the conversation, but everything Meredith said, she spoke with anger and annoyance at both of us. Something like we both were to blame. Something she should have been aware of and her mother as well. Like she’d been duped or screwed. 

A few minutes later, my middle son Tom arrived. He’d been working on a career in stand-up comedy with a one-man, off-Broadway show, struggling to find its audience. He entered softly, unlike his sister, but also let in another cold stream of air. The room was still chilled from Meredith’s entrance. He didn’t sit down. He just stood behind his mother and waited for someone to say something. I saw how uncomfortable he was, so I got up and hugged him. I could feel his discomfort. Like he wasn’t sure to hug me back, so he didn’t.

I don’t remember if the other boys came or didn’t, or any other conversation. Probably because it’s just too painful to hold all those memories. I just remember the snow piling up on the patio, long painful pauses and silences, Meredith’s anger, Tom’s confusion and Lynn’s sadness.