It is a story of a husband who tried on a “rich man’s costume” and his wife who tried out the “poor man’s costume”. An affair made both of them decide to finally take their clothes off.
The fancy homes, hosting and dinners, tennis playing, flying here and there in private planes was the rich man’s costume. Emptying out all the savings, spending money on married life expenditure for love, having the husband work late nights and weekend hours in investment banking was the poor man’s costume. Wearing this costume, she devoted selflessly into the caring of kids while waiting for the husband to make it big. Why? 三辈子都花不完的钱还逃不了老鼠赛跑？
While play acting, they spent money with reckless abandon. She emptied her coffers to buy two homes and put that on joint ownership. It was the poor but happy fairytale.
Pretending to be rich meant no purchases huge enough to have anything more than a version of a brief conversation at breakfast ie buying a home by viewing it only online. Looking through the monthly spend on the card means financial abuse and nickel and dime-ing rather than having a better understanding of where the money went.
Honestly, reading the bits of their life, it sounded that they couldn’t finance a SAHM wife with + full time baby sitter + kids tuition and others on a single income. She came up with her share of family expenditure herself (I assume trust income since she does only charity work). Their 3 kids went to private schools and her step mom paid for the 3 kids. If they were really not that wealthy, they really over-spent on that “looking rich” lifestyle.
In this pretending to be rich world, it seems that being rich meant you didn’t have to look at the spend at all. After that massive panic attack realising she was poor at their divorce, she had kids friends over to lounge about. Her son spent weeks away at a friend’s. Doing this while poor would be totally stressful but she was feeling great having the kids’ friends around without worrying about the spend.
There is a little bad attitude in this world. She came off a tad bitchy about the husband who “got himself invited” to wealthy friends’ home. If you were friends, you enjoyed each other’s company, does it matter who was wealthy or not? She was also pissed off that the residents of the Martha’s Vineyard thought both of them were equals. The undercurrent for me was that she felt she had more right to belong in that community than her husband because she was from that wealth. He wasn’t and plus he abandoned her. How would a mere acquaintance know about this inequality? From their perspective, they came together to that island at the same time. There was a show called First Wives Club. Perhaps that was common too from what she talked about in her family.
She was in shock, after that lifetime of assumption that he was poor, to discover his income totalled millions during their marriage. Is that considered wealthy in their trust fund space? I imagined that is a decent and reasonable income for a good hedge fund manager who had heaps of experience in investment banking. It wasn’t shocking, at least to me. Investment banking is gruelling and paid well.
She seemed enraged about him being rich and and wanting to split the 2 homes she bought. She changed her lawyer to fight the divorce settlement, making the whole thing about the money.
Divorce is traumatic and her reaction to it was to tell acquaintances and strangers she met on her walks. She came across like she sincerely believed that she should be coddled, babied and people should always surround her in clucking sympathy. She reacts with shocked when exposed to the real world where strangers could be taking sides with her husband.
She believed in that polite conversations of wealthy strangers. She was keen to return to the community of wealthy and to have dinners and to host dinners.
Before the divorce went to trial, her husband made it totally not about the money. She keeps everything – the home, his investment in their family vehicle, he pays for the kids plus school fees and other kids related expenses. Yay! Not poor anymore!
At the end of the affair, she took of her costume. She was returned to riches with the homes and the key to the private beach. She was coddled and babied by supportive fans who thought it didn’t matter her actual wealth when New Yorker published it. The husband took off his rich person’s costume, sold all the Rolexes and lived in a two bedroom apartment and continued working endlessly, trying forever to be rich.
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