7. McCarthy
MCCARTHY
J enna’s crying in the driver’s seat. Fortunately, we’re inching along in traffic. Otherwise she’d probably drive us off the road. Now she’s messing with her phone.
“Can you keep your eyes on the road?”
Jenna tenses when I snap.
I harden my heart.
I tried to be sympathetic. I really did. Uncharacteristically so. I even offered to hire her a driver.
She refused my help, so fuck her. Her life is as disorganized and over-the-top as she is.
She can drown in her dysfunction. You know what it is?
Jenna is just like my mother. A woman who could never leave my father no matter what abuse he dished out, how he mistreated her and her kids, or how much my brothers and I begged for her to save us and save herself .
Some women will let a man drag them down to a hell of their own making.
And that’s not my problem.
You can’t help them. The most humane thing is to just let them drown.
McCarthy: I need you to help me get my license back.
Salinger: Fuck you.
Salinger: Don’t ask me for a goddamn thing after the shit you pulled today.
Fuck my family, and fuck Jenna.
Jenna, who is sobbing hysterically in the front seat—big heaving sobs.
“Is it always like this with you?” I ask.
That just makes her cry harder.
“You’re going to wreck.”
“Sorry, it’s just—” Her breath hitches.
“Let me guess: You loved him, you gave him everything, but he rightfully assumed you weren’t worth the effort?”
“I don’t need you to tell me I’m stupid for giving Brock that much money.”
“ Of course you gave him money.” I’m derisive. “How much money have you spent on this man? No, no, let me guess—your entire life’s savings plus a few maxed-out credit cards?”
“It was eighty thousand dollars.” She crumples over the steering wheel.
“I thought I was helping him fulfill his dreams. He was so moody and withdrawn and said he wanted to be a filmmaker. I naively thought he was some sort of tortured artist who just needed a good woman to support him. I planned trips to popular places, bought him film equipment, and rented him an editing studio. I paid for us to move to L.A. so he could follow his dreams. Even then, I had to prod him to get him to actually work. All he wanted to do was sit inside and smoke. He took out a bunch of loans and credit cards in my name, and I started paying them because I didn’t want to ruin my credit. ”
“Stupid thing to do.”
“Yeah, my bad for believing my fiancé when he said he loved me.” She wipes at her eyes, smearing her makeup. “After I left him, when I went to the police, they took down my statement but told me if I filed a formal report then it would be counted as fraud since I paid.”
“And she tells me I need to get my life together.”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” More sniffling from Jenna.
“Yeah, me neither, Cupcake. I do not give a shit about you or your terrible decisions.”
“I’ll take you back to RDC. We’re done for the day. I need to go to the office and…” She makes a helpless gesture.
“Pack up your things and say goodbye to your coworkers? That sympathetic tone in my voice? It’s false, by the way.”
The tears well up in Jenna’s eyes.
“You cry like a comic book character. Now, don’t feel bad, Cupcake. You weren’t going to last the week. Failure was inevitable.”
I pick up her phone to type in an address.
“What the… Hey!” She snatches it from me.
Nathan is calling. On the screen, his profile picture shows a pale man—young, beer gut, thinning hair. His shoes and off-the-rack suit scream finance start-up bro .
The ring is delayed, but then it blares through the car speakers.
Jenna answers the call, her voice catching on her fiancé’s name.
“He wasn’t dead.” She lets out a sob then slaps her hand over her mouth.
“You know I don’t like it when you get so emotional, Jelly Bean.”
The man’s voice is nasally. Probably snorts Adderall.
“Sorry, Nathan.”
Something in me hates the way she makes herself smaller for him, shrinking in on herself in the driver’s seat.
“I’m glad I didn’t waste my time on the funeral, then.” He sounds uninterested that his fiancée is a wreck in front of him.
“Did you want to grab dinner?”
It kills me how hopeful she sounds.
“Nah, can’t, Jelly Bean. Just wanted to see when you were planning on being home.”
Jenna gives me a wide-eyed look.
I point at the map on the screen telling her to turn right.
“I’ll be late. Are you picking up dinner?”
“Uh…” Nathan seems offended that someone would dare suggest he bring a meal to his fiancée, who works late. “Why can’t you get dinner at your office?”
“It’s fine, never mind,” Jenna says, quickly backtracking.
It’s decided. I hate Nathan. Nathan has to go.
“He’s not calling you Jelly Bean because of your clit, is he?” I ask her when the call ends.
“You are the worst human being I have ever met.”
“Please. You have a menagerie of exes that are worse than me.”
“Just order whatever you want,” I tell Jenna when she follows me into the restaurant. I hand her Salinger’s credit card, which I stole from his study a few days ago.
“I thought we were working.”
“No, you are working. This is a PR disaster. I’m going to be in a video with your recently reanimated ex-fiancé.”
“I can’t make a big stink about this video. Brock was trying to prank me. He’s not going to put you in it. You make him look bad,” she says.
“Like I trust your judgment.”
She huffs out a sad laugh. “I’ve worked with Brock. I know what sells on his channel. He’s not going to show someone who looks like a reformed Viking prince in a suit, throwing his weight around and being all heroic.”
“Heroic, huh?” I stroke my chin.
“From a cinematic standpoint,” she says quickly. “IRL, you’re an asshole.”
“And here I was going to offer that you could put dessert on the tab as well.”
“I’m doing that anyway!” she yells after me as I head to the private dining room upstairs.
When I reach the room where my brothers are eating, I say, “Since when do they allow children here?” I mess up the hair of Faulkner, the youngest, earning a swipe from his oyster fork.
I steal an oyster from the plate of Whitman, the next oldest, and toss it back with ease.
“Don’t let him eat that.” Fitz, the oldest after me, drags the platter away .
“Yeah, you’re supposed to be on punishment,” Hawthorne, the second oldest, says mildly.
We’re all byproducts of our father’s polygamist cult. In an irony of ironies, he seemed to be able to create sons only. Not what you want when you’re running a patriarchal doomsday cult. Boys are a liability for obvious reasons.
Our meager handful of sisters lives in Manhattan, our roach tank of younger half brothers upstate.
The little ones aren’t my problem, though. Except when they randomly wash up like decaying seaweed for various holidays. I’m a CEO, not a babysitter.
Salinger, my oldest brother, is staring me down from the head of the table.
I reach for the bottle of scotch.
Hawthorne’s hand shoots out to grab the bottle.
“Honestly, McCarthy—”
“Here it comes…”
“It’s the fact that you lost that fight today that makes this so infuriating.”
“Lost the—are you fucking kidding me? I won that fight.”
“You would have had your ribs kicked in if you didn’t get saved by the dog…” The words linger in the air, then Fitz hastily changes the subject.
“So, did you sleep with her yet?” Whitman smirks.
That really sets our eldest brother off.
“You better fucking not have. What the hell is wrong with you? Whitman, stop that.”
Whitman is dissecting his crab cake and assembling a makeshift sandwich with the free bread. Hawthorne throws a fork at him .
“I don’t complain when you drink those disgusting old-fashioneds with a whole dripping slice of lemon in it.” I grab a clean glass from the table.
“I offered. She refused. Not because she’s not attracted to me, obviously…”
Hawthorne won’t release the bottle of scotch.
Faulkner sneers, “Some women go for older men.”
I finally wrestle the bottle from Hawthorne, who mutters, “ Whatever. ”
“…Or because she’s engaged,” I say.
“Christ help me.”
Fitz pours Salinger more scotch.
“It’s because she’ll get fired if she fucks a client.
However, I bet,” I say, taking a sip of the burning scotch—neat.
No ice. Just brown liquor in a cup—“that she does end up caving. I’m kind of irresistible like that.
Also, she makes terrible decisions when it comes to men. ” I peer into the glass.
“Did you get the cheap stuff, Sally?” I’m pushing him, itching for a fight.
I should have just beaten the shit out of Brock when I had the chance. Blown off some steam.
Jenna is not your girlfriend, I remind myself. Don’t fight her battles.
Salinger doesn’t take the bait.
“Yes, I did, because I’m not staying long. I left Isaac with Mandy.”
“Who died and made you a responsible father?”
“I’m not doing this,” Salinger says in a clipped tone, “because I’m trying to father you. You are fucking with billions of my dollars because you are spiraling out of control. And someone take that glass away from him.”
I drain it before Hawthorne slaps it out of my hand .
“Clean up your act, McCarthy. I can and will have you ousted from your own company if you don’t grow up.”
“And he’ll put me in charge.” Faulkner smirks.
“Turd.”
Faulkner curses as I launch myself across the table at him.
“The oysters!” Fitz grabs the platter as I slug Faulkner in the ribs.
Salinger grabs me in a headlock.
“That’s my company !” I struggle, but he wrestles me down.
“Then act like you’re a CEO.” Salinger thumps me against the wall. “You’ve been fired by four therapists, three life coaches, two PR firms—”
“And a partridge in a pear tree.”
My brother’s palm slams close to my head.
Hawthorne makes a concerned noise.
“He’s fucking with your money too,” Salinger snaps as he shoves me down in an empty chair. “Eat your dinner, then go home.”
I stand up just to spite him and go to the window.
Just in time to see Jenna walk out loaded down with enough food to feed a family of ten. As she’s waiting for the valet, she hands a container to a rough-looking older man pushing a shopping cart, who gives her a little bow of thanks.
“Well, you’ll have to give me a ride, then. My driver just left without me. And,” I say, “I need to stop at a bookstore first.”