When the live auction began, Darley’s parents put down their cocktails and prepared their paddles. As the auctioneer introduced the Henry Street teddy bear and opened the bidding at a thousand, Darley felt a small thrill. Was it weird to get excited watching people spend money? She supposed it was no different from watching people who threw dollar bills in the air at a nightclub. Everyone liked watching cash splash about.
The NBA player and his wife raised their paddle over and over and ended up buying the teddy bear for eight thousand dollars, and the evening was off and running. They quickly sold a walk-on part on a soap opera, a guitar played by Bruce Springsteen, a 1959 Masters flag signed by Arnold Palmer, box seats to a Billie Eilish concert, and a kid’s Spider-Man costume signed by Stan Lee.
“Damn it, we should have bid on that for Hatcher,” Tilda whispered to Darley.
“You bought him one three years ago.” Darley rolled her eyes. “We have it in a box so he won’t try to wear it.”
When the auctioneer announced the private dinner cooked by Tom Stork, Tilda grabbed her paddle and stood up straight. Tom himself was stationed at a nearby table, and Tilda smiled broadly in his direction. Darley cringed as Tom downed the rest of his drink and left the room, ostensibly to go to the bar but clearly to avoid the awkwardness of everyone staring at him.
“What’s the point of bidding if he can’t see it?” Tilda lamented. She raised her paddle up to five thousand dollars and then dropped out, letting it go to a couple on the other side of the room. “I do hope his wife tells him we bid.” Tilda pouted and pulled her phone out of her handbag. “God, Darley, I can’t see a thing on this app. How much is the Nashaun house up to on the silent auction?”
“Do you have your reading glasses?” Darley asked, looking over her mother’s shoulder.
“No, they don’t fit in my handbag.” She held the phone as far away from her face as she could and lifted her chin, tapping away.
The rest of the party passed in a blur of cheek kisses and slightly sloppy conversations with the teachers and heads of school. Darley felt sorry for them, resigned to sipping single glasses of warm white wine so they could stay sober enough to remember all the parents’ names. As the nine o’clock bell for the final auction bids approached, the Stocktons made their way over to the class donations to see the quilt and chair in person. A few familiar parents were hanging out by the kindergarten auction items, and an enormously pregnant woman was sitting in the canvas chair with the signatures on it.
“I’ve claimed this!” the woman laughed as they approached. “It is literally the only thing that has made my back stop hurting in nine months, so I have my husband obsessively bidding!”
“You deserve it!” Darley said, privately thrilled they wouldn’t have to end up with it. She hoped someone would grow similarly attached to the quilt. As the minutes ticked ever closer to the bell, the guests became increasingly attuned to their phones, wanting to make sure nobody swooped in to steal their auction items at the buzzer.
“I think we’re going to get Nashaun,” Tilda whispered excitedly in Darley’s ear.
“Someone is coming after me on this chair,” the pregnant women’s husband muttered.
“Who would do that when you’re sitting right here?” Darley asked, looking around. She half expected to see another pregnant lady glowering at them.
The clock struck nine and the room erupted in cheers and groans. “We got Nashaun!” Tilda waved her phone happily in the air, teetering on her heels.
“Nooooo, I lost the chair!” the man lamented.
“What?” The pregnant woman looked like she was about to cry. “I have to get up?”
Chip helped her husband gently pull her from the soft canvas sling. She was wearing flats, and Darley could see that her pregnant ankles were swollen. Darley checked the app and clocked that her mother’s party at the Hotel Bossert had sold for forty-four hundred dollars, a terrific price. Tilda went to collect her certificate for the Nashaun vacation from the desk but came back five minutes later biting her lip. “We should go,” she whispered to Chip.
“Why? Did you get the certificate for the house? Did you give them the credit card?” Chip frowned.
“Yes, but we also won the chair.”
“What? How?”
“I had ticked off the box to automatically outbid. We paid thirty-two hundred dollars.”
“For a canvas chair with writing all over it?” Chip asked, turning red.
“We can give it to Cord and Sasha.” Tilda shrugged. Darley looked at her dad sympathetically, but Tilda cut her off. “Don’t be like that, Chip. It’s all for a good cause.” Done feeling remorseful, Tilda clicked ahead of them, out the door and home, followed by Darley and Chip carrying the flimsy, graffiti-covered chair.
* * *
When Darley read that Bill Gates was giving his children less than 1 percent of his fortune, a mere ten million dollars each, her first thought was That’s still too much. Inheritance had a way of ruining people. Obviously being born into poverty was incomparably worse, but since both Darley’s mother and father had come from great wealth, she had scads of first and second cousins who demonstrated just how badly money could fuck you up. She had cousins who had gone into law, politics, and medicine, sure, but she also had cousins who did absolutely nothing. Cousins who traveled and partied, cousins who pretended to work, masking their interest in shopping with careers as “collectors,” day-trading their money nine to five while gambling it away at night playing online poker. One cousin married an artist and spent her days watching him work, referring to herself unironically as “his muse.” Another cousin had used all his money to fund a start-up making trampolines for yachts.
Darley’s nuclear family had dealt with their great privilege in mostly respectable ways, Cord joining her at Yale and then Stanford business school, Georgiana attending Brown and studying Russian literature at Columbia, for a master’s. Darley hated to think of her own expensive education being squandered, hated to think she was using her exceptional advantages to while away days in the apartment arranging pediatric dentist appointments and looking after her husband’s dry cleaning. But the problem was, having kids so close together was career killing.
The first pregnancy and return from maternity leave were brutal. Darley had debilitating morning sickness. She was an associate at Goldman Sachs and was expected to be at her desk by seven each morning. Like Malcolm, she was in the Investment Banking division. She was working like a dog in the associates pool, logging long hours, begging to be assigned as many projects as she could, desperate to differentiate herself from the pack and find her way into the Sector Coverage Group to focus on airlines. Her pregnancy with Poppy was a surprise and she was determined not to let it derail her. She got too carsick to ride in a taxi, so she took the subway to the office each morning, but the long stretch from High Street on the A train made her feel so woozy she had to get off at Canal Street and throw up in a platform trash can. She would arrive at work pale and sweaty, her mouth tasting of vomit and gum. The only way she could quell her nausea was to suck on little sour candies, which she carried in the leather pocket of her phone case, quietly slipping them into her mouth when none of the analysts or associates were looking. Once she started showing, her male colleagues seemed visibly alarmed and disgusted. “Are you sure you’re not having twins?” Or worse, “Isn’t stress bad for the baby? I would never let my wife pull all-nighters if she were pregnant.” She was so afraid her water would break at work that she kept spare towels and underwear in a gym bag under her desk.