Chapter 2

Mary: Girl Gets Boy

Hugo began as a tropical wave then became a tropical depression off the Cape Verde Islands becoming a rare category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic. It devastated the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico before hitting South Carolina, and it kept going all the way to Lake Erie. It was the most destructive hurricane to hit the United States until that time, which was September 1989, six months prior to my seventeenth birthday. I was a carefree underachieving junior in high school. I had no idea what Hugo would mean to me. I lived in Connecticut far from the wind, rain, storm surge, and inland floods.

I came home that afternoon after cheerleader practice to find my mother crying in the kitchen. My first thought was that she had finally discovered my father’s philandering, but she merely indicated the local paper’s headline.

“Hugo Worst Storm, 34 Dead in US --- 10 Billion in Damages.” Suntimes September 23, 1989

There are those who will tell you that I’m a girl born with a silver spoon in her mouth. If I was, it was plate silver. My mother was a De Voe. A rich old family, but she was born when my Grandmother was forty-five. By the time my mother was ten, Grand Mama De Voe had early-onset Alzheimer. Her father was an alcoholic which left her to the care of her thirty-year-old brother, Jackson Chamberlin De Voe, who was a financial genius of sorts. However, he was a socially deficient man who had difficulty with the simplest personal interactions. When she was 18, my father, Robert Singleton, appeared on the scene. I guess he was smitten at once. He was then no more than a glorified insurance salesman having started life as just another poor boy from East New York.

Dad was smart, ambitious, and doing pretty well. Being a man who will not take no for an answer, he was a great salesman. I guess for my mom, just having Dad come into her life, was like someone drew the curtains and let the sunlight in. It was a while before she learned my father had a few flaws. He was an inveterate gambler in additional to being a womanizer. I did not understand how bad things were until the day Hugo turned my world upside down.

My father was in his study the drapes drawn against the waning afternoon sun. The room was lit only by a single low watt desk lamp. Dad was nursing a whiskey an unusual drink in a house where hard liquor was frowned upon, a legacy of my mother’s upbringing or lack thereof.

“Dad, are we broke?” I asked

He just smiled and put his finger to his lips. And that was the way he played it. We weren’t broke unless people knew we were. That was when I learned the difference between insurance and reinsurance. Insurance companies are big powerful institutions selling to the public monitored by state agencies with cash and securities in reserve for the payment of claims. The laws and the system are slanted their way, and they rely on spreading the risk far and wide.

Reinsurance is how the insurers lay off the risks that are too big and can’t be completely spread around. The reinsurers don’t sell to the public. They are, therefore, less regulated. They sell to the insurers, and they don’t pay unless the loss is very large, but the risk is large too. They are small companies and often more profitable. However, whereas the insurer will only fail if it breaks the rules, cheats, gets stupid, or just grossly incompetent. The reverse is true for the reinsurer, which is at the mercy of every business risk and what are clearly the acts of a cruel god, called Disaster. Hugo was the minion of that god.

Big, powerful, and merciless Hugo swept inland and caused catastrophic damage to all manner of businesses, persons, and governments, which were insured by insurers who would come looking to reinsurers like my dad, Roger Singleton. How he got the money to cover his losses, I will never know, but a dark shadow had enveloped what had been until then my bright home. It left me very affected. Mom stopped crying and put a smile on her face, and my younger siblings John only ten and Susan just six never noticed that their world almost came undone. My mother was strong, far stronger than I had ever known. She lived on the edge of the smoking volcano and ignored the ash and heat. I am not that strong.

I took a serious look at my life. I realized I had been living in the illusion that my life would always be safe and comfortable. I was a poor student and up until then had no ambition. What I wanted now was that safe and protected feeling that I had lost. I had always been attracted to boys who like my father exuded confidence and bravado. I had lost my virginity to the school’s star basketball player just after I turned sixteen.

Tito Jefferson was a very tall and good-looking black boy. It lasted six weeks. I enjoyed the sex. I was on the pill. The next boy lasted a little longer before we broke up. I slept with him, as well. My current steady was a tennis player a bit older at nineteen. I had not gone to bed with him yet. I was no slut who just dropped her pants at the first opportunity. A guy needed to work for it and show the proper respect. The problem was that I saw none of them as a life partner or more important someone to turn to in time of need. I decided that I needed to learn to stand on my own and provide for myself.

I’m by nature a planner, so I worked out my plan. I would get into a good college. Ivy League was out for now because of my poor grades, but I would turn things around. I would go to a State U and then on the basis of my college grades a law school, Ivy League if possible. From then on, grades were everything. Once I made my mind up, I stuck judiciously to the plan. There were some glitches along the way.

When I carefully plotted out fulfilling my college math requirement, I studied the syllabus. You could take Math 1, a very hard course. You could take Statistics, not as hard but a challenge, or Math Principles, known to the well-informed as math for dummies, a simple choice but one with a trap. Math for dummies was not going to look impressive on a transcript, and the instructor was a very low-grader. So the trap was an easy course, but a hard A. On the other hand, one of the instructors of Math 1, dear old lecherous Professor Hoffman, was a notoriously easy grader. He was particularly good to pretty girls with nice legs and short skirts. My goal was not to avoid work. I was out to achieve. My choice was Math 1 hard work in a short skirt and a solid A.

As Bobby Burns said, “the best-laid plans oftentimes go astray.” In this case, my planning was undone by an ill Professor Hoffman, and an egotistical bitch of a female replacement named Laura Parker. She was absolutely the last instructor I would choose for any course. She was not just a poor grader; she was a notoriously bad instructor — Smart yes, talented no.

As I sat plotting what to do now, Laura proceeded to attempt to humiliate her students by demanding a solution to an apparently impossible problem. What were my choices, drop Math 1 and take dummies math being doubly dammed with a drop on my record and a possible B in the replacement or try to get past Laura? As I contemplated this, she called on the handsome boy slouching in the back row.

I had noticed him when he came in. He had the devil’s own blond good looks on his tall, athletic frame, but he was painfully shy and just not the dark alpha male type I favored. I had seen him around campus the last few days and figured rightly that he was a frosh straight out of high school without a clue. He walked up to the board at the front of the classroom with that awkward but graceful movement he had. I know this is a contradiction, but he was so shy he was awkward. Yet his body had this natural grace of movement. When he started to speak out came this lovely clear, tenor voice. We sat there mesmerized while he quietly explained how he was solving the problem. He put Laura back on her heels figuratively and literally as she leaned away from him as if he was on fire.

The bitch was about five-five, but she was in five-inch platforms at least three years out of style. He was still tall enough to look down on her, and the more she talked in that high squeaky voice of hers, the more stupid she was making herself look. It was obviously not his intention, but the subject clearly came just so much easier to him. You didn’t need to be told that you were in the presence of a true math prodigy. He had the added knack of being able to explain clearly his thinking.

I made up my mind to stay close to this guy, anyway I could, until the end of the semester. Our second class saw me sitting next to him so close I was all, but in his lap, that’s when I discovered three things. First, what happened in the last class was no fluke. He was the smartest person you would ever know, but two he was obtuse no other word fit. He was uncomprehending of the world around him. He was baffled by the opposite sex. And finally, he had the most beautiful blue eyes.

I thought of the Carlyle Simon lyric “the sky is the color of blue you never even seen in the eyes of your lover” and knew she was wrong. I saw that blue in his eyes. Of course, he was not my lover and could never be. He was just not my type, but still, those eyes went right to the center of my soul.

Long story short, I got my A and found a dear friend. Jason Sweeney was his name, and he was everything you could ask for in a friend, loyal, caring, and there if you needed something like several hours a week of math tutoring and help to prepare for the final exam. We remained friends for the next almost two years. We shared coffee in the student union and sandwiches on the quad. I knew he would be hungry because usually, he forgot to bring lunch and completely missed breakfast. I tried to repay a favor with a favor because I did not like to just take and give nothing back, but it was not always easy.

Jason attracted a certain type of female. I could go into detail but surface it to say the word geek is fully descriptive. He was as I said painfully shy and awkward around my gender. This had to be frustrating since getting him to ask for a date was clearly impossible. He would never have the courage to ask a girl out, and a girl could never succeed in conveying the appropriate message of availability to that obtuse mind of his. The geeky girls were his just for the asking, but he never saw it. So you could usually see them circle him like vultures waiting their chance.

They were not all bad looking, but they were girls in overlong, unfashionable skirts, or loose jeans— wearing out of style frames on bottle thick glasses. To them, poor shy Jason was the equivalent of a rock star with his keen mind and handsome face. They did not always take kindly to the A-lister sorority sister chatting intimately with their intended prey. I received my share of stares that promised payback on some future dark night.

One actually accosted me and told me, in no uncertain terms, to keep to my own kind. In my heart, I could not blame them. No girl like me would ever chase Jason, and they could certainly never attract the boys I dated. I hate to admit that I let those boys regularity take me to their beds. I was no slut, but still far too sophisticated and experienced for sweet innocents such as Jason. So I backed off and only intervened if I thought my friend could use a hand.

Things would probably have gone no further, but once again, my father intervened. In the summer following my junior year, he called in a favor and secured me an unpaid but highly prized summer internship at a prestigious Wall Street law firm. I say Wall Street, but actually, they were on Madison Ave just north of the empire state building in a glass box of a skyscraper on the fifty-first, second, and third floors. The place was impressive. The people were high powered and sharp as tacks but fun to work with.

I fell in love with the place and the profession, and I just knew this was the life for me. I was only fetching coffee and the occasional lunch. I spent more time at the copy machine than anywhere else, but I was rubbing shoulders with men and women who regularly practiced before the highest Courts and some who had argued in the Supreme Court. I could only imagine how this would look on my law school application and, as always, I made friends. The men were no challenge a little flirting was all I needed. The women I expected more trouble with, but I was wrong. They embraced me like a sister.

It was very much still a man’s profession back then, and the women, never to be referred to as girls, let me know they had all been where I was. They were there to lend a hand and offer advice. None more so than Claire Solo the only female senior partner, although there were several women, who were junior partners. She left me in no doubt that she was there to be my mentor in chief and would stand for no one else to fill that role.

Claire was in her fifties but still retained her awesome good looks, and she had great style. I looked up to her and soon was dressing in the conservative but sexy skirt suits she favored. She always wore some bling, A string of brilliant pearls or a pair of teardrop diamond earrings. She always had a bit of flair in evidence whether it was the Prada shoes or the Gucci bag.

Claire was never short of good advice.

“You got the looks, and the sensuality don’t be afraid to use them, but make sure the boys’ club knows you got a mind they need to fear.”

“Never give anything away, but don’t be afraid to take anything they offer except their randy selves.”

“Be a lady, but keep a stiletto in your bag of tricks for when it is needed.”

She was full of advice, but it was good advice, and she had climbed to the top of the greasy pole that is the only career ladder in a major national law firm.

Outside the office, I was sharing an apartment in a Brooklyn brownstone. It was on Henry Street just north of Atlantic Avenue with its middle-east markets and trendy restaurants. This was a discovery of my mother’s, whose DeVoe cousins had two daughters renting there while they pretended to be volunteers with some charity. They were actually idling their summer away chasing men. There were lots of men that summer, but none worth more than one night and most didn’t last through the night. I loved New York, and I loved working in a high-powered law firm. What people complain about was, in fact, the attraction, the long hours and the big egos. You had a sense that important things were happening. I was hooked, and things were perfect. I had stars in my eyes and didn’t see the mud beneath my shoes until my last day as an intern.

On my last day, the women left early to take me out for drinks. It was a Friday, and I would be traveling home to Connecticut the following day on the train. We left at four o’clock and hit a small intimate bar called the Ivanhoe. It had a dark interior and was relatively quiet on a late-summer Friday. We had drinks and talked girl-talk and exchanged promises to keep in touch. By seven, only Claire and I were left. I had nowhere I needed to be, and no man whom I wanted to say goodbye to or ever see again. I was feeling pretty down on men after a summer of brazen uncaring studs. They had been fun, but truly worthless.

Claire was drinking a little too heavily. She became morose and began telling me about her two failed marriages, and the children she never had. By eight, she was crying into a martini glass and explaining how lonely life inevitably was unless you were willing to play second fiddle to some man. I saw the other side of Claire’s life. I had been looking up to her all summer, and now I was feeling sorry for her. At nine, I poured her into a cab and took the subway to Brooklyn, a very disturbed young woman.

On the AMTRAC the next day, I pondered my fate. There was it seemed only a choice between unattractive options. Entrust your fate to some man or go it alone and lonely. How unfair. What was needed was a different kind of man, one fun to be with, who was without an ego that sucked the air out of life. I needed someone who never would see my career as a threat to him because he was a true friend. Someone you could count on for help and assistance. Someone who was loyal, caring, and there when you needed them. Someone who was good like Jason!

When the thought of Jason hit me, my heart began to race. I had never seen Jason as someone I could marry, but when I thought about it, I realized there could be no one better. I also realized that I had been in a relationship with Jason longer than any other male. Seeing this for the first time, I realized that life without Jason in it would be poor indeed. Then I realized, I had left him surrounded by girls just aching to get into his pants. It was like putting your diamond ring on the washroom sink. You were just asking to lose it. I had to get back to school fast and capture my man, a feat more easily said than done.