Present value, p.44
Present Value, page 44
“How . . . odd. Did you guys get this from a catalog?” Turning it over in their hands, not getting it at first. A bolster? No, a pillow. A four-foot pillow. Then the penny drops and they understand. Kristin folds her arms firmly. “And no,” she snaps, “there isn’t another one.”
She says one more thing that makes them all laugh. How they laugh—even Michael joins in. How the heart wells in Fritz Brubaker, for his son and daughter, his daughter like him, and his son—like him, too. How Linda cries and cries—and cries. The thing about Paradise is this: it can kill you, but if it happens not to kill you, then it ends. If you don’t die, you will get to the bottom eventually. Gravity is infinite, but Paradise isn’t. And as you emerge from the birches on the last pitch, and look back up that impossible slope, the trail seems to vanish within the trees so you can barely tell where you’ve been. You can barely tell there’s a trail there at all, or that you were on it. You’ve made it. God, you looked like hell up there, and you had a few close calls, but maybe you even skied Paradise. Survived it, anyway.
You stand on a midmountain boulevard, an easy avenue that meanders to the lodge at the bottom along groomers with names like Periwinkle and Bunny. Anyone can ski them. Linda’s done it herself, lots of times.
ALONG THE DARK STREETS they go, where the sidewalks are lacquered with dangerous black ice. Careful where you walk. No one is out except for them. Only a few minutes of the Nativity remain. Close under the faint streetlights they pass, huddling together, stepping gingerly so as not to fall. When it’s this slippery and cold, you can’t tell whether it helps to walk with someone, or you are better off alone.
They are talking a little, not much. Mainly there is the sound of their footsteps and breath. Linda, in particular, is feeling an emotional exhaustion. She knows, as he does, that Christmas Day, with its packages and wrapping paper and Christmas dinner, comes but once a year. The rest of the time you are staggering around on familiar streets where something treacherous may lurk. You are clinging to a companion but secretly thinking the footing might be better if you walked alone.
“I’m glad you came. I almost lost it today.”
“Me, too.”
“You?”
“Sitting in Feeney’s barn. Never felt sorrier for myself.”
On a night like tonight, judgment is clouded, and it’s easy to be sentimental. Each of them knows this. That’s why it’s better not to talk too much. They walk up into Wellesley Hills, along the dark winding streets, past the big Victorians and Tudors and rambling Queen Annes, along the rows of colonials, into the darkened lanes and the quiet circles. Slowly they begin to loop back toward town.
“Fritz, tonight . . . We have to be honest. Tonight didn’t solve anything.”
They are both thinking the same thing. It was a wonderful gesture the kids made, but let’s be honest. This is no time to make decisions. They turn back toward town, the railroad trestle downhill from them. Below, the road glistens black in the pale yellow light. Their breath makes clouds. She leans against him and puts her right hand out on his forearm.
“Gotta hand it to Kristin,” Fritz says. “It’s what we said to them all their lives, right?”
“I didn’t think they’d ever heard us, to judge by the way they fight.”
Kristin had stood before the pathetic leaning Christmas tree with her arms folded. “Learn to SHARE,” she’d said.
Their steps are quickening as they come back into town: the cold is penetrating. They have reached Route 16 and the row of shops across from the train station. It was funny the way Kristin said it. As they hurry along past the shopwindows, they are both smiling to think of the children conspiring on this gift.
Linda’s fingers are freezing, and she jams her hands into her pockets. An idea begins to germinate.
Face it, sharing isn’t easy. Learning—relearning—to share gets harder when you’re old. And the gift is not the kind of thing one usually shares. Still, as Kristin said, there’s only one. Maybe they can learn to share it after all. Time will tell.
They’re past the shops now, almost home. One turn off of Route 16, a block and a half from the McHouse. Fritz has made the turn, when Linda stops at the corner, hesitating by a trash basket underneath the streetlamp, her hands still in her pockets.
“You know,” she says, “that gift—it’s the only thing I’ve ever seen them share.”
And that is the point upon which there can be no argument. That those two kids should agree on anything—it must be significant. Linda cannot get past that idea. One gift to their parents; to both of us, she thinks, looking over at him. At his curly hair, poking out from beneath a ski hat, his blue fleece jacket, the old zippered one, the fleece all matted down and the cuff torn, an old familiar thing like all such things: something gone ratty with wear but that you love too much to get rid of. He’s hunching over, eager to go home. That look in his eyes, so familiar. To both of us.
Still she lingers at the corner. The house is only fifty yards away. She has the oddest look on her face. “Fritz, I have a present for you, too.”
She fishes it out of her pocket. In the pale light, he can’t tell what she’s holding. He takes a step toward her, then recognizes it, and it puzzles him. Another gag?
That smile, it’s one he’s never seen on her before. Reckless. Not herself at all. A little unscrewed, like she might laugh out loud. God, she’s beautiful. She slam-dunks the gift into the trash basket.
“I can’t believe you did that,” he says.
“I can’t believe I did that either.”
After midnight now. They hurry the last few yards to the house. He takes her by the hand and promptly slips on the ice but doesn’t fall. She lets go but quickly takes his hand again. They reach the door.
“This was maybe the worst Christmas ever.”
He answers: “But maybe the best Christmas ever.”
“Yes. Maybe that, too.”
So the worst Christmas ever comes to a close. The kids are where they were at dawn: behind the bedroom doors, listening. The CD with its Christmas horrors has finished, and the McHouse is quiet. The living room is dark except for the Christmas lights on the pathetic leaning tree. The ski parka is on the couch, and the fishing rod stands in the corner. The kitchen is dark, the sink piled high with dishes. Linda’s shoes are upstairs, tucked into the back of the bedroom closet. The four-foot pillow lies on the bed. The best Christmas ever, too—maybe. Time will tell.
Two blocks away, underneath the streetlight on the corner of Route 16, Linda’s gift to her husband will lie in the basket for thirty-three hours, until the next trash pickup. In the cold December air, the plastic lozenge will even vibrate a few times before the batteries fail—vibrating with urgent messages that nobody will answer.
Photo © Anthony Loew
SABIN WILLETT is a partner with the law firm of Bingham McCutchen LLP. He is the author of two previous novels, The Deal and The Betrayal. He graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law School and lives near Boston.
ALSO BY SABIN WILLETT
The Deal
The Betrayal
Praise for PRESENT VALUE
“Ambitious, energetic . . . [This] densely plotted, often hilarious attempt at the Great American Post-Enron Novel . . . is a bold departure for thriller writer Willett.” —Entertainment Weekly
“A sharply drawn satire of life in post-9/11, pre-Enron America . . . The locations, lifestyle, the rarified ambience, will be familiar to many readers, which may make this novel all the more hilarious to some and especially biting to others. . . . It’s also instructive, laced with information about the stock market and the law.” —The Boston Globe
“This Beantown Bonfire of the Vanities tracks Tom Wolfe closely . . . but in his breakthrough third novel, Willett . . . is nearly as hilarious as the master. And he adds something Bonfire lacks: someone to root for.” —People
“Willett’s most engaging tale is slightly reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, with more heart and sentiment than Wolfe could ever suggest. . . . Willett’s exploration of fiscal manipulators is, at once, hilarious and harrowing. . . . Because of his rich sense of humor and a touch of social outrage, Sabin Willett is able to give us a first-rate novel, one that should please folks from Wall Street to Main Street.” —David Rothenberg, WBAI Radio
“Remarkable: hilariously nasty, morally driven, sweetly romantic. . . . In an ambitious satire of post-9/11 America, the author of two previous legal thrillers manages to skewer our financial, political, and social institutions with vicious glee while offering a nuanced portrait of his tragicomic hero (and supporting heroines).” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“This ambitious novel is reminiscent of Tom Wolfe and Jonathan Franzen’s recent works . . . and is every bit as entertaining. One can hope that Willett will produce a sequel so readers can revisit these mostly likable characters.” —Tampa Tribune
“Comic . . . reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities . . . a well-written, well-plotted morality tale for the Enron era.” —Yankee magazine
“A witty morality tale . . . Willett’s new style has bite.” —The Deal
PRESENT
VALUE
SABIN WILLETT
A Reader’s Guide
To print out copies of this or other Random House Reader’s Guides, visit us at www.atrandom.com/rgg
Questions for Discussion
1. Present Value takes a swipe at the “eensy button” devices upon which so many of us have come to rely. Is the criticism fair? Do these devices improve communication? Do they simplify work and life, or supplant them? Why?
2. The stress of the “have-it-all” lifestyle is hardest on Linda. After all, Fritz has no Shrill Small Voice to bedevil him. Is the portrayal accurate? Why?
3. What has changed about the way we raise children? Do we do the job better than did our parents?
4. Is there hope for the Brubaker/LeBrecque marriage once the book ends? Should there be?
5. At work, Fritz is not a team player. Does that absolve him from responsibility for what happens to Playtime, or to his marriage? Or does it make him more responsible?
6. In the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Fritz falls. On a moral scale, how does his fall compare with Linda's? If we make a distinction between them, should we?
7. Senator Oldcastle is a pale imitation of a famous comic character. Can you spot three places where the text pays homage?
8. Ultimately, what sacrifice should a parent make for a child? Did Fritz make the right one? Was Linda right about Michael? Shouldn’t they just have gotten him a little counseling?
9. Consider the viewpoint of Chapter 16 (“Did You See It? Were You There?”), where the account emerges only from anonymous rumor. How effective is this as an approach to storytelling? (If you find it effective, read the master, Joyce Carol Oates, in Broke Heart Blues. If you do not, consider why not.)
10. Lay up your treasure in heaven, says the Gospel, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Why does Professor Vorblen quote this passage in his farewell lecture? Can a system of ethical values operate simultaneously with a system of economic values?
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2004 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2003 by Sabin Willett
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random
House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House
of Canada Limited, Toronto.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This work was originally published in hardcover by Villard Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Willett, Sabin.
Present value : a novel / Sabin Willett.
p. cm.
1. Insider trading in securities—Fiction. 2. Boston (Mass.)—
Fiction. 3. Toy industry—Fiction. 4. Executives—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3573.I4454P74 2003
813′.54—dc21 2003041103
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-411-1
v3.0
Sabin Willett, Present Value
