Isaac walked in, his face contorted with worry. “Who’s going to war?” From the hall, he’d heard both women screaming. The young girl was sobbing and looked a lot worse than when he’d opened the door for her. He smiled at her genially, but Casey just looked at her hands.
“My love, have we offered our guest a drink?” Isaac said to Sabine, raising his eyebrows sternly, all the while smiling at her.
Sabine sighed, softening a little. Casey made her feel crazy sometimes, and she had not, in fact, offered her a drink.
“I better go,” Casey said, but Sabine took hold of her hand.
“My darling Casey and I were having a quarrel, but it is all right now. Isn’t it?”
Casey said nothing. She imagined John Pringle toadying behind his father, clutching Dad’s briefcase, and Sonny Villa boasting about owning a shiny truck one day to anyone who’d be dumb enough to listen. And she recalled Virginia’s slurry question to John, “And what are you going to do with your life?”
What had she accomplished, anyway, Casey wondered, with all of her stupid pride?
“Baby girl, if you stay for dinner, I’ll even come downstairs,” Sabine said, feeling bad for not having thought about the drink.
Isaac chuckled. “Are we trying to make her stay or leave?”
Sabine threw a small pillow at him and clocked him on the head.
“Oh, my head.” Isaac acted as if he were stumbling back from the blow.
Sabine still held on to Casey’s hand. She would have to stay, Casey realized. If she left now, the damage would be even harder to repair.
The cook had made a delicious dinner with all of Casey’s favorites. At the table, the two women tried not to disagree about anything at all. Isaac told stories about indulging his grandchildren, and Casey laughed while Sabine pretended not to find the anecdotes funny. Isaac, who was semiretired, occasionally picked up his grandchildren after school in his chauffeured car and took them to eat French fries, chocolate egg creams, and half-sour pickles at his favorite diners in Brooklyn and Newark. His adult children were not crazy about this, especially all the greasy snacks, but they didn’t prohibit him from doing so.
Dessert was served, and Isaac poured tea for the women.
“Casey has an internship with the Kearn Davis banking program,” Sabine said confidently.
Casey smiled at Isaac, not knowing what to expect next.
“Congratulations!” Isaac said.
“Thank you.” Casey took a tiny sip of her tea.
Isaac knew full well that Sabine wanted Casey to take over the store one day. He liked the girl very much, and in many ways, Sabine’s wish made sense to him. She was smart, young, and could do possibly anything. But it was clear that Casey couldn’t be pushed. Isaac understood the young girl’s wish to work as an analyst at Kearn Davis. She must’ve wanted to know what it was like to be a banker, even a junior one, at a white shoe firm. As poor immigrants, her parents had to manage a dry-cleaning store. People like Sabine and him had been forced to start from nowhere to earn their living. Straight out of Hunter College, he wouldn’t have dreamed of getting an interview at a single Wall Street firm. As he’d ascended the moneyed heights of New York, there were plenty of folks who believed that real estate was a dirty field, and as successful as Sabine was, she was still a merchant, and that meant she got her paws dirty. Isaac could imagine Princeton as having enough of these line-drawing types, and no doubt they’d done a head scramble to this girl who was never getting a trust fund. He felt sorry for her, because one thing he knew for sure was that you could never wash yourself clean.
His own first job had been to show rentals in the Bronx owned by Mr. and Mrs. Schwartz, formerly of Co-op City. And Sabine had started out selling her handmade handbags and gloves in a two-hundred-square-foot store. Casey could’ve made a pile of money if she’d paid her dues with Sabine for a dozen years or so, but Isaac understood that she might have wanted to be legitimate right away.
Casey swallowed the last bite of her creamy dessert. She scraped her silver spoon across the wide Bernardaud dessert plate to get at the last bits of chocolate sauce. The handle of the spoon was engraved with the interlocking initials of Sabine and Isaac.
“This is beautiful. I always mean to tell you that,” Casey said, holding up the silver spoon.
Sabine winked at her.
Isaac picked up his spoon and looked it over. He and his wife had gone to an antiques and silver shop on Park Avenue to order these. Each piece was hand-forged by some ancient English maker. Sabine had ordered flatware service for sixty people, and each eight-piece setting had cost two thousand dollars. They had used the marrow spoons maybe twice when the cook served osso buco.