my finances. Having been burned twice, predictably, I’m nervous about entrusting my investments and the general accounting activities related to my day-to-day life to a so-called professional, but unless I want to do it all myself, I have to trust the people who work for me. Fidelity and Wells Fargo seem trustworthy, and unlike the two crooked business managers I’ve worked with, the first a second cousin (he was also a supposedly reputable CPA when I hired him), they are large corporations that aren’t likely to bilk their clients in an underhanded way. Like any Fortune 500 company, they bilk their clients in broad daylight.
Yet another worry is my son. For one, I’m pretty sure that he still has a crush on Elise, and even though I’m not about to hand her over to him if she even wanted to go to him, which I’m pretty sure she doesn’t, I can admit that a match between them, at least where their ages are concerned, makes more sense. Born only two years apart, they grew up listening to the same music, using the same slang, watching the same television shows, wearing the same brands. Billy would also be able to give her more attention than I can because he isn’t dealing with publicists, agents, producers, fans, ex-wives, charity spokespeople, investment advisers, personal assistants—the list goes on and on—close to twenty-four hours a day. Basically, he could devote his life to her if this were something that she required. But the truth is, I can show Elise things that Billy cannot. I know a lot more about the world than he does, and if I were Elise and were choosing between him and myself, I’m pretty sure that I’d choose the same way she has.
She did choose me. I don’t even have to pretend that any of this is a hypothetical situation. When Billy tried to seduce her in New Orleans last fall, when he wrote her such an earnest love poem that the paper practically dripped blood and tears, she apparently told him, “Thank you, you’re sweet, but I’m quite happy with your father.” I’m sure Elise was very tactful. I was not. When I finally boiled over, a day or two after I saw the poem in Elise’s hotel room, I was not as calm as I should have been. I might be an actor who has won a number of major awards, but in this case, I was not able to perform the way that I should have. No punches were thrown, and I didn’t call him any names either, but what I did say was, “If you ever pull a stunt like that again, you won’t be able to draw one more cent from your trust account. For the first time in your life, you’ll actually have to work for a living.”
Does this qualify as blackmail? I don’t think so. But it was a threat, and a serious one that I intended to follow up on if forced to do so. If he were to run off with Elise, why should I support him? The thing is, I realize that I can’t know what he or Elise are up to twenty-four hours a day, nor do I want to, but I’d like to believe that she does love me, and that Billy has gotten his head on straight and has stopped trying to woo her away. It makes it more difficult to see him, because when I see him, obviously I’m not with Elise, and when I’m with her, I can’t be with him too. He and I have never had an easy relationship, at least not since his mother and I divorced. He wasn’t openly hostile after I left Lucy, but he moped around a lot and lacked the enthusiasm for life that a twelve-year-old usually has—boys his age generally want to go out and do things, they want to see their friends and play sports and go to pool parties and the mall and school mixers and amusement parks. Billy did do those things sometimes, but he wasn’t a kid known for being the life of the party. His sister was quiet too, but she was so often smiling and sweet and thoughtful, making me cards with drawings of our cats and dog, or hiding cute little notes in places where I’d find them later:
Dear Dad,
Why did the window go to the doctor? Because it had panes!
Love, Anna
And:
Dear Dad,
Did you know that coffee is the most