Some years ago, found myself in New York City’s Upper East Side, where I visited my sister Michelle and her husband Bernard, an abundantly successful divorce lawyer. It was a difficult trip, but an enlightening one.
The Upper East Side is like a little village where nothing much ever happens, the atmosphere is sterile, and most of the human interaction is between the very rich and their servants. It was also the last time I ever spoke to my sister or likely will again in this life.
Michelle is the eldest of us six sisters and was raised until her early teens in Shreveport LA where I was born. My family were all hard core New Yorkers, but my grandfather was building a business in oil and gas, so to Shreveport they did go and in Shreveport they stayed from the mid-30s to the early 60s. I was born in 1956, and Michelle was born a decade earlier.
The propensity of both my parents towards non-conformity, in fact towards the bohemian, was softened to the point of being unobservable by the culture of Shreveport and the presence of my paternal grandparents. In time things would fall apart and the center would not hold, but that time was far off.
My sister grew up the apple of my grandmother's eye and profited greatly by it. By the time of this visit, in 2011, she was on husband number 3 and had a face worth at least $100 K. But she would tell you it is just soap and water.
I met her at a pretentious lunch spot that catered to dogs if one were to sit on the patio. She had her oversized pure bred something or other with her. She was wearing an electric blue Dior day dress. Her 100 pounds was spread so tightly over her 5.5 frame that her hip bones stuck out like knives. She ordered for me—a $30 egg salad.
By the early teens of the 21st century, she and Bernard were solid members of the one half of one percent. But they had class problems. They were merely very rich. Not members of the uber-rich, and certainly not billionaires. Envy abounds.
She started in on me right away about my weight. As we got lunch that first day she held forth in stentorian tones regarding my resemblance to a hippopotamus. She insisted that I eat only protein and green vegetables, lest I gain another ounce.
At first, I tried to explain what untreated hypothyroid does to a person, but quickly gave up. But, beyond being fat and sick, my greatest crime was being a communist. That was her interpretation of my politics at any rate, and she would have no other.
In real life I am not a communist. It has never been tried in earnest. I am for a world with a sane economic system that respects nature and humans. And I live a simple frugal life centered on living beings, not on material wealth. I did not expect her to understand and she did not disappoint me in that matter.
Michelle and Bernard live on the thirty-fourth floor of a building that overlooks the east river. Because many diplomats live in the building all residents must be vetted before they move in. Dry-cleaning is picked up and delivered. The building has its own water system and security force. In case of “civil unrest” it will become a fortress. I dared not ask why they should be so frightened of civil unrest in such a great democracy as ours. The answer may be obvious but must never be spoken.
As we entered the building, I was introduced to a man, Bobby, smiling and sixtyish. sitting behind the desk in the lobby. I later found out he was ex-black ops and armed to the teeth. The denizens of this rarified place are terrified. They pretend it is not so, and deny they have reason to fear, but they are, in fact, aware of the truth.
In due course it was time for dinner. We sat at one of the many small, luxurious, and entirely predictable little bistros that dot the neighborhood.
Over a lovely salmon and a glass of Pinot my sister and her husband confessed their dismay at the thought that I advocate wealth and income redistribution, an economic policy usually associated with the communist revolution.
What I wanted to say, but didn’t, is that I too am against the redistribution of wealth as it has actually occurred. Since the “Reagan Revolution” of the 1980s the redistribution of wealth UPWARDS has been extreme and unrelenting, and we (the middle class) would like our money back.
The conversation turned to taxes, particularly the theory behind taxing or failing to tax the uber-rich at an appropriate rate. Bernard brushed back an unruly lock of salt and pepper hair and looked at me. At nearly 60 he is a fit and handsome man, well-cared for by the society he inhabits.
“So, Annabel, what income level do you think of as being “rich”. As in, rich enough to pay more?”
I replied: “most people in this country, all of the millions that make around twenty thousand a year, if they are ‘lucky’ enough to be working three jobs, would like to say that $250,000 a year is the cut.”
“But”, I said, “I understand that a person of this income feels themselves to be only comfortably middle class. I understand that people in this demographic have big expenses, that they feel inferior to the “truly rich” whose shadow they live under. So, could we agree that a person making ONE MILLION a year was rich enough to pay a larger share in a system of progressive taxation?”
I got no real answer as the conversation trailed off in the stifling early summer air.
The evening went on. Even in the somnambulant upper east side there was a slight buzz of activity. Signs of life.
I then tackled share holder primacy. “Wall Street doesn’t actually produce any wealth after the first offering of stock, but is rather a large liquid pool of wealth that allows the ‘owners’ to skim the cream from the top in the form of profits, profits gained by stepping on the backs of all other people, other species, and the health of the earth itself.”
Husband and wife both looked at me as if I had shown up for dinner with a homeless person on my arm.
I stayed another 3 days, in Michelle's "office", a fully furnished flat on 72nd between Park and Lexington.
On the 3rd evening, at dinner, Bernard offered me a bite of his pasta. Michelle was still going on about my weight, and still attempting to control what I ate.
He put a spoonful of fettucine alfredo on my plate. My head spun with cognitive dissonance. But before I could take one bite, much less process the whole scene, her eyes flashed with malice. She dumped my wine on my plate, rose, and stormed out.
An hour later, back at her flat, she showed up and nabbed my keys. In the morning I was able to leave but not get back in. Which meant taking EVERYTHING with me the first time out the door. I started to pack.
At 10 AM she appeared, only to criticize my efforts. At 55 years old I was clearly not able to pack my own suitcase. There was considerably more to pack than I had arrived with. During my stay, because all my clothes were defective, she had dragged me around to buy new ones. I would not call these new items gifts, but rather a rebuke of me as a human being. I had started to prepare a box, on the off chance that she would be kind enough to mail my things.
She left for a few minutes and came back with a suitcase so large I could not lift it. I stand at 4' 11". The suitcase was 5 feet tall when stood on end. She insisted I RE-PACK into the leviathan. When I was done there was still my old carry on to consider, filled with my old clothes. She said she would send it along, but I never saw her or the small suitcase again. The giant suitcase is in my garage, full of hangers.
I went up to the hostel on Amsterdam Ave on the west side. After I was safely in my shared room I breathed a great sigh of relief. My first breath of free air since getting off the train in the city.
Jesus. And I thought my sister was bad. She's just a greedy and pathological liar who thinks she's actually Emily Post. Yours on the other hand is actually an evil b**** and somewhat crazy in my professional opinion.
Wow! How heartbreaking. I can’t begin to imagine a remotely similar interaction between my sister and me. Or between my cousin (we were raised sister-fashion) and me. Even though our lives are very different. I hope you’re close with at least one of your other sisters.