In 1887 Havemeyer officially created the Sugar Trust. The Sugar Trust was a monopoly. It bought most of the sugar companies in the United States; it increased profits and consolidated production. It erased the names of some of the companies. It kept others. The sugar was the same.

  Are you looking to change fields? Heather asked. To do something new?

  The drive of money is toward sameness. Growth begets sameness? That can’t be right. Growth begets change.

  I didn’t answer and a server approached. Heather ran her finger down the menu. The avocado with sprouts is excellent. I’ve read that anything sprouted is much more nutrient-rich. I said that made sense.

  But what about you? I said when our orders were in. Where are you working?

  When Hugh Weatherfield died he split his money between his two sons. Ennis was the younger. It was money from the Sugar Trust that gave Ennis a worth of six million dollars. It was money from the Sugar Trust that created the Weatherfield Foundation. It was money from the Sugar Trust that paid Heather and me. And Mark and the others. Or rather, it was money that money made. Money does not care where it came from.

  It’s been an eventful few years.

  Do you ever think about being adopted? I asked Heather once. It was when we were talking about having kids. We were talking in general terms. I suppose I think about medical information, Heather said. But other than that? I asked. No. I don’t think it has had much effect on my life. Other than the big effect, I said. Heather was silent. I said, I don’t meant to pry. Oh, you didn’t.

  To start with, Heather explained, Empowerance is no more. Empowerance is the start-up? I asked. Was, Heather said. I told her I was sorry. Oh, don’t be. The moment wasn’t right. Success and failure are often about timing. Yes. It was a positive experience. It really clarified my goals. That sounds good, I said. Clarity.

  In the winter of 2007 when Heather told me about her new job we stood in the dark on the roof of her apartment building. It was a cold night. Heather was wearing a deep red sweater that looked soft and earnest against her dark hair. We were meant to be at an all-women’s Valentine’s Day party thrown by one of her work colleagues. We all thought it would be healthy, Heather told me in her invitation, to counterprogram the holiday. Heather then pointed out that the counterprogramming was scheduled for three days before Valentine’s so everyone could spend the actual holiday with their husbands and boyfriends. So there’s that. But you should come down and join us. I think you would really appreciate this group of people. When I arrived in New York, though, with my backpack and resolve, Heather said she had an honest question for me. Please feel free to say no. Would I mind if she cancelled? Oh my God that would be great, I said. I’m not exactly feeling well enough for a social gathering at the moment, she explained. Yes, wonderful, I said. I mean, not wonderful that you feel—She smiled at me. You could have just told me if you didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to stop you from going. Well I thought it would be a nice opportunity for you. We bring out each other’s worst instincts, I said. She shook her head. No, our best. Have you eaten?

  I put down my bag in her office. I had been working on the same dissertation chapter for over five months now. Renata was ignoring my emails. She often ignored my emails. It’s such a clear night, Heather said. Let’s go up on the roof and look at the city.

  We took a bottle of red wine and two glasses. I looked out at rows of windows of indifferent light. Each one was some other life. Wind cut across the tops of the buildings and sirens rose and fell somewhere in a canyon of avenue. I felt what I always felt about New York: a sensation of deep exhaustion and enormous force that would always feed on each other.

  The real origin of money, of course, the furthest ancestral progenitor, is work.

  Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t beauty.

  I’ve decided to leave Putnam Marsh, Heather told me. She explained the new company. It’s the next step. The right step for me. Congratulations, I said. I raised my glass. She clinked. Thanks. She didn’t drink. What is the job, exactly? I asked. She didn’t answer. I said, Would it mean more math?

  More math was a joke. Sort of. The joke began at Oxford, one spring evening when we were drinking tall gin and tonics outdoors. That far north, spring evenings don’t seem to end. The light fades only in a long aristocratic exhalation. Heather and I had just finished our degrees and we were celebrating by sitting mostly quietly together. I felt daringly content. I said, Tell me what you like about math. Heather laughed. What I like about math. What a question. I didn’t mean it to be funny. Let me think. Do you want my real answer? I definitely wanted her real answer. She said, What I like about math is that numbers are beautiful. Numbers are beautiful?

  And also I’m good at it. Math. But don’t tell anyone I said that.

  Why shouldn’t I tell anyone you said that? I asked. Because it’s true? She looked at me. Okay, I won’t tell anyone you said that. Thank you, Heather said. She stirred her gin and tonic. Have you seen the cartoon? I’ll show it to you. The biologists want to be chemists and chemists want to be physicists and physicists want to be mathematicians and mathematicians don’t want to be anybody.

  Wow, I said. Exactly, she said. I knew that Heather was starting with Putnam Marsh in a few weeks. That was the first time I wondered about ambition, about women’s ambition, about Heather’s. We settled into quiet again.

  But after that I would ask whenever she mentioned a work project. The feasibility study for restructuring a regional bank in the Midwest. The possible merger of two pharmaceutical firms. I have just one question, I would say. Does this mean more math? She would laugh. Sometimes she would answer. Yes, I suppose this one has a lot of math.

  On the roof she did not laugh. No, Heather told me.

  Heather’s father was a financial consultant before he was indicted for securities fraud. He was never convicted. Of course he was innocent. It’s just a risk of the business, Heather told me. This is why every doctor has malpractice insurance. The truth is what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Heather’s father found a new job at an insurance agency, which was only too happy to hire someone so overqualified. And her father loved the work. It’s all for the best, she said. Our family really bonded.

  The wind was coming up colder. I took a sip of wine. I tried to think of something light or scandalous I could say. Well then, I asked her, would it mean more money?

  Heather pushed back her hair with one hand. In the other, she held her wineglass by its rim. Yes, more money, she said. She looked thinner than ever, more beautiful. Soft blue veins were visible through the skin of her temples. I felt a rush of love that left in its wake a terrifying film of loneliness.

  Are you all right? I asked her. Are you okay?

  When Hugh Weatherfield sold his company to Havemeyer he was issued shares in the Sugar Trust. He was therefore bound to hope for its success. The success of the trust was his enrichment. The word trust means a measure of confidence in something, a measure of care for anything, and a legal combination of profit-seeking entities designed to reduce competition.

  Heather and I never talked about Mark. Why would we. She looked at me through her blowing hair. Neil and I broke up. I waited for more. I’m sorry, I said finally. That did not seem to be right. Was it your decision? She didn’t answer that, either. Have you ever terminated a pregnancy? she asked.

  Heather and I did sometimes talk about children. I told her I didn’t want them. I’d be a terrible mother, I said. You’d be a wonderful mother, Heather replied. I’d be a poor mother, I said, correcting myself. And poor is terrible. Trust me. Heather said, Money? That can change.

  I moved over to her on the roof. Oh, Heather. She said, Ten days ago. Just after my final interview for the new job. I’m so sorry. It just wouldn’t work, with the timing—She stopped. I’m fine. I’m a very healthy person. I said, You’re the healthiest person I know.

  Prejudice would tell you women are not good with numbers. But a person with a uterus is always counting. How long it has been since your last period and how long till your next and how many days till it stops. I remember reading Freud’s analysis of money. Money as shit, Freud says, moneygrubbing as anality, moneygrubbing perverting the healthy practice of a little boy who should give away his excrement to the father. I remember wondering about menstruation. All the dense material women give away every month. To no one. To the world. All the matted dark value that goes under the name of blood.

  I thought I would be a mother by now, Heather said. I honestly thought I would be married by now. I put one arm around her. I could feel her bones in the red sweater.

  It was my decision, she said. To break up. It was my decision and I’m the one who feels awful.

  I waited. I do want children, she said. I said I knew she did. I wasn’t sure that was true. I said of course she did. She said, Thank you. I wonder if she meant I’m sorry.

  The Sugar Trust’s real name was the Sugar Refineries Company. After the Sherman Antitrust Act, it was reorganized as a corporation, the American Sugar Refining Company. A Supreme Court case ruled that the company’s domination of the refining industry could not be dismantled by the federal government. Havemeyer next extended his control to the National Sugar Refining Company. Monopoly became oligopoly.

  I said, You have to do what is right for you.

  She looked down at her glass. The first was in college. I was dating a boy I didn’t care about and neither he nor I was at the right stage of life to be a parent. Of course, I said. She pulled her hair out of her mouth again. And then, at Oxford—She stopped again. Please don’t tell anyone this.

  Who would I tell?

  The Sugar Trust had been organized as a trust rather than a corporation in part because of the secrecy afforded by a trust arrangement.

  Do you ever think about the other Weatherfield fellows? she said.

  The Golden Bowl is set up so a series of lies is good policy. So a series of lies is the right thing to do.

  Not really, I said. That’s probably for the best, she said. Do you remember that weird weekend we all went to? Putnam Marsh? That terrible weekend. You thought it was terrible? I was just bad at it. I’m sure you weren’t. You were very good at it. Yes I was. She paused. I guess we all didn’t go. Only some. You and me, a few others. I said, Mark. Heather didn’t answer.

  The 2008 crash was possible because a series of deregulations allowed massive fraud in the financial industry. Institutions certified something as secure that was not.

  I always felt that the others looked down on Putnam Marsh a little, Heather said after a pause. Like why would you go into this field that’s about business? They all thought it was just making money. Right, I said. Certainly I didn’t think I would take the job when I went to that weekend. But then things changed. Right, I said again. I thought, you know, you only ever take care of yourself. That’s it. You only ever can take care of yourself. She looked at me. Do you know what I mean?

  In 2007, the words for growth and forgiveness and change and optimization did not yet include self-care. Not often. Heather wasn’t talking about self-care anyway.

  I said I knew what she meant.

  Heather continued. None of the others would have gotten the job. Maybe Caroline. Maybe Zac. I agreed: He was good at math. Yes. But the others? They wouldn’t. I wouldn’t, I said. Heather shook her head. That’s not what I meant. With you, it was more that you wanted something else. I said, Who knows what I wanted.

  My dissertation focused on characters in Henry James at the periphery of the narrative. The most important example is a character in The Golden Bowl called Fanny Assingham. She is not part of the central quartet, the rich American father and the rich American daughter and the impoverished Italian prince and the beautiful American friend. Fanny Assingham has little money and no children. She therefore can do nothing herself. She stands on the sidelines and talks about what other people are doing.

  Heather folded her arms. She put down her wine. Mark would not have gotten it, she repeated. No, I said.

  Actually Freud did talk a bit about blood. It was at the very start of his career. Before he had settled on the key theories of psychoanalysis. He was treating a patient who had terrible nosebleeds and heavy periods. This patient was active in the women’s movement. Freud thought her symptoms were caused by sexual abuse from her father when she was a girl.

  Are you cold? Heather asked me up on the roof. I’m okay, I said. But you? You look cold. We should go down. I’m cold, she said. But I don’t want to go down yet. Don’t repeat any of this, she said. I said, Of course I won’t. Heather said, I trust you.

  I said, I trust you too.

  After Heather’s father was fired for financial malpractice and before he was hired as an insurance agent, he spent several months holding Bible Study for friends and family in his wall-to-wall-carpeted living room. I have seen pictures of these meetings. Heather showed me. Her father stood in front of the beige stone fireplace and preached on the week’s text. Then one Sunday he stood up in his pew and explained to the congregation that he had been called to tell them how the pastor was leading all of them away from the true and verifiable teaching of Christ. He asked those who wished to follow the path of righteousness and walk humbly with their God to come with him out of this unholy space and into a new church with himself as its head. Then he turned and walked slowly down the central aisle, holding his Bible aloft. Heather and her mother and her brother were the only ones who followed. The next week her father started his insurance job.

  Let’s go downstairs, I said, and I’ll make dinner. You don’t have to cook. It will be easy. Oh, there’s nothing in the kitchen. I’ll find something. No, let me order us dinner at least. We went downstairs and Heather phoned for salads from a Mexican restaurant. We drank more wine. I left the next morning.

  So tell me about the clarity, I said at La Maison.

  Havemeyer, the Sugar King, was especially friendly with the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who was persuaded to eliminate the sugar tariff in 1890. This vastly enriched the trust; also it led to the annexation of Hawaii and the Panic of 1893. Unemployment rose to over 25 percent in New York, over 40 percent in Detroit. Havemeyer refused to answer questions from Congress about his political donations. He was accused of contempt of court and found not guilty.

  I’m back at Putnam Marsh, Heather told me. But I’m spearheading a new initiative.

  What’s the initiative? I asked. Women’s empowerment, Heather told me. I watched her sip her sparkling water across the table. I wondered what would happen if I asked, Does this mean more math? I didn’t risk it.

  At the height of his power, Havemeyer himself decided, every day by ten o’clock, the national price of refined sugar. At the height of its operations, the American Sugar Refining Company controlled 98 percent of the country’s sugar production.

  And my work on the Weatherfield board, Heather said, which is especially rewarding. I’m learning as much as I can there.

  In 2008 the United States government decided a few financial institutions that had issued fraudulent securities were “too big to fail” and spent hundreds of billions of dollars to make sure they did not. At the time, the total cost of this action was over two thousand dollars for every resident of the United States.

  Heather said, One of the things I’ve clarified is that I’d like to move permanently into the nonprofit sector.

  I’ve never really understood the nonprofit sector, I said. I was eating the last of my sandwich. I used a bit of crust to sop up the sauce. Heather had most of her lunch left. It’s fairly complicated, Heather told me. She tore in half the piece of popover still on her plate. Tax code, regulatory apparatus. I mean I never understood the basic premise. Isn’t there also profit? I mean, don’t you need money before you give it away?

  Among those “too-big-to-fail” institutions in 2008 was Citibank, which opened in 1812 as the City Bank of New York and later counted Havemeyer as one of its directors. By then it was the National City Bank of New York. The National City Bank of New York was perhaps the most important of the financial institutions that around the turn of the twentieth century consolidated New York’s position as a center of finance by ensuring U.S. control over Caribbean sugar production. Its president resigned after an investigation of the bank’s role in the 1929 stock market crash. In 2008, Citibank got $45 billion from the U.S. government.

  Heather said, Nonprofits can be mission-driven in a way that other corporations can’t afford to be. I nodded. Can’t afford to be. I said, So you would work for the Weatherfield Foundation?

  After the 2008 financial crisis I briefly wondered if I should ever put my money in any bank again.

  Right now it’s volunteer, Heather said carefully. But the board is thinking about a capital campaign. We will eventually need a new financial officer. That could be you, I said. Heather smiled. Well …

  The American Sugar Refining Company was one of the twelve corporations that made up the original Dow Jones Industrial Average. In the financial crisis of 2008, the Dow Jones lost over seven hundred points in a single day.

  I decided to risk it. I said, Would that mean more math?

  Viewed another way, Fanny Assingham is not peripheral to The Golden Bowl. It is she who introduces the impoverished Italian prince and the rich American daughter. It is she who sets the whole narrative in motion. At some point, Renata wrote at the end of one of my dissertation chapter drafts, you may wish to consider whether your description implies a stronger indictment of narrative structure. But I didn’t want to indict anything. Certainly nothing I was working on.

  More math. Heather laughed. I don’t know. It’s so good to see you, Laura. I’ve missed talking to you.

  Me too. Talking to you.

  I’m so glad you can be part of all this.

  In 1909, the American Sugar Refining Company paid two million dollars to settle a civil suit over unpaid customs duties after the company was convicted of fraud. A spring concealed in the scale at the Brooklyn docks had for years been reducing the recorded weight of raw sugar.

 

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