The Light of Hidden Flowers Read Free Page B

“The bulk of my money is in New York at Goldman. I’m getting ready to retire and, thusly, there will be more money, from a buyout. My wife has recently come into some money, too, following the settling of her mother’s estate.”
    Dad trained his eyes on Mrs. Longworth. “I’m sorry to hear of your mother’s passing.”
    “Oh,” Mrs. Longworth said, disarmed. “Well, thank you. I do miss her.”
    “I’m sure you do,” Dad said. “It’s never easy.”
    “In any event,” Mr. Longworth piped back in. “I’m looking around for—”
    “And what is your goal?” Dad asked, turning to Mr. Longworth.
    “My goal?”
    “All this money,” Dad went on. “What’s it for?”
    Mr. Longworth twisted his face into a knot. “My goal is for the money to perform! Goldman has been a huge disappointment. When the market crashed in ’08, my portfolio dropped 20 percent.”
    “Not bad,” Dad said, shrugging his shoulders.
    “Not bad?” Mr. Longworth sputtered. “Do I need to tell you how much 20 percent is on a multimillion-dollar portfolio?”
    “The S&P crashed 40 percent,” Dad said. “So yes, I’d say 20 percent isn’t bad.”
    “And the more the market went down, the more Goldman wanted to buy,” Mr. Longworth said.
    “Liz,” my father said. “Do you shop at Nordstrom?”
    “I do,” she said.
    “Twice a year, they have a sale, correct?”
    “A lovely sale,” she agreed.
    “If you went into Nordstrom during the half-yearly sale and picked out four or five outfits, would you tell the clerk to hold them for you until the sale was over?”
    “Why would she do that?” Mr. Longworth bellowed, his fist coming down onto the table.
    “I wouldn’t,” Mrs. Longworth said evenly, “because they were on sale. Just like stocks were on sale when the market was going down.”
    “Exactly!” my father boomed.
    Meanwhile, Mr. Longworth harrumphed, not pleased at all by being one-upped by his wife.
    To my “think first, act second” brain, the financial crash of 2008 was a predictable snowball of a disaster that gathered speed thanks to too much power put in the hands of reckless risk takers. For many years, “more leverage” paid off, making heroes of the rainmakers of these Wall Street firms. Caution gave way to the wind. Anyone who cried foul—who tried to alert their top management to the impending danger of selling these highly leveraged goods—was turned away. For our firm’s portfolio, I began reducing equity exposure early, near the end of ’06, while the market was still flying high. I had no idea how bad it was going to get, and we still got hammered plenty, but I knew the stocks were overvalued, so scaling back helped. Dad never once flinched. “We have reason to believe it’s time to pull back.” When the market fell off the cliff and we only dangled from it, I was relieved beyond measure, and so was Dad, as if the statute of limitations on him believing in me was about to run out.
    Mr. Longworth went on. “Morgan Stanley has assured me that their portfolios—”
    “Charlie,” my dad said. “ Charles , my apologies. You’re a smart, successful guy and I hate to keep harping on this, but what’s your goal? When all’s said and done, what’s the value of your money? Do you want to travel with your wife, spend time with your grandchildren, give back to the community? Let’s forget returns for now. Let’s talk about you and your wife. What do you enjoy?”
    Mrs. Longworth’s plaintive face brightened to a rosy pink. It looked to me like Dad was asking the question that she herself had wanted to ask, probably for years. She leaned closer to her husband, awaiting his response.
    “Mr. Fletcher, I need to be clear,” Mr. Longworth boomed. “You’re not the only firm we’re interviewing. We have a list of five firms; the four others are much larger than yours, but I agreed to meet with you because Jack Murphy recommended you so highly.”
    “I love that guy,” Dad said,