super_rich tender_square when his father met them at the train station he gave a basic wave from the pavement and pointed them towards his maserati to load their luggage. no hugs for either of them. even after more than two years of not being able to visit because of the pandemic. as they lurched through highway traffic, the_beatles played loudly over the sixties station while the father recounted proudly to his son that the son's nephew, a junior in high school, had just scored a 1590 on his SAT's. "he'll have his pick of schools; he only missed two questions on the language side. i asked if he wanted to go back and take it again and try for a perfect score, but he said no." the husband and wife nodded and smiled like they were supposed to. she noticed her father-in-law had new sun spots along his arms. the absence of biannual gatherings made his shift in age more marked. his father and stepmother lived in the hills, built a mansion that took them three years to construct, a compound that the wife cried in the first time she visited. "what *is* this place?" she had never seen such wealth; the hallways were wider than their bathroom back home. she'd been raised middle-class. all of it was foreign to her. "i didn't grow up this way," her husband reminded her. "i can't relate to it or understand it either." once, her husband remarked to an uber driver who picked them up for an early flight back, one who had mistaken the property for their own, that he was not like his father, he didn't need to live "high up on a hill" looking down at the world below. she looked through the window at the passing scenery of the affluent neighborhood, saw a doe nursing her fawn on the lawn of an ostentatious ranch home. the incongruence made her choke. they waited as the double-door security gate swung outward, her father-in-law gunning the gas to climb the steep, winding interlocked stone drive. after he pulled the car into the garage, and they exited the vehicle, the father gave a loose one-armed hug to each of them, like it was customary, as though he were remembering that this was what people expected after travelling long distances to spend quality time together. "you're free to use the kitchenette," the father said. his parents had a fully functional second kitchen (which of course was bigger than their kitchen back home) in the basement (if you could call it a basement, the windows went from ceiling to floor), down the hall from where they slept (a room with its own thermostat, and retractable blinds that rose and fell with a remote). "it'll be nice for it to finally get some use," he said. and they would live like this, for six days, the two couples each going about their routines and only convening at dinner in a house that was bigger than most businesses. their house like a vacation property on steroids with a rock-climbing wall, fully outfitted game and screening room, two outdoor kitchens, and a split-level pool with an infinity edge. she swam towards the lip in her old navy bathing suit from four seasons ago, suddenly paranoid her stroke wasn't strong enough to get her to a safe area where her feet made contact with what was beneath her. "it would be nice to go for a walk at some point," she said to her husband as she toweled off, the sun absorbing the flecks of water moments later. they'd spent days sitting on their long journey. she wanted to move before the fahrenheit made it impossible. "sure, we could walk around the property," he offered. the property. for all its panoramic views and careful landscaping, for all its amenities, she hated being locked inside this place, a prisoner so high in altitude she was sure she could touch clouds. 220506 ... tender_square all the outdoor furniture, the rocking chairs, the bench seats, the sofas and side tables, were cloaked in a thick layer of dust from disuse, staining the teak a lighter shade of pale. the cushions were marred with wavy water marks, soiled by the sky's spit. in their bedroom's bathroom, the toilet ran repeatedly, so they turned off the water and walked down the hall to a half-bath instead. the basement baseboards were lined with sticky traps the size of her foot and filled with spiders and small scorpions, creepy crawlies. her sister-in-law said that her dad found a tarantula in his woodshop last year, that he'd crushed it with a board. over dinner he complained of mice at their lake house. and she snickered to herself, that all this money couldn't keep the outside from getting in. she tried making a cup of coffee in their wall-mounted maker (they didn't use a percolator), and it reprimanded her to empty the grounds container before it would perform. the black bile of beans had grown moldy in the machine, a stench that made her gag. when was the last time it was touched? she apologized to her husband's stepmom for filling the garbage with it; she should've just left the contraption alone. "you know, i stopped using that coffee machine because it was always barking at me to do something," the stepmom said. "you'd think for the amount of money we paid for it, it'd come with its own technician." 220507 ... tender_square the house wasn't opulent so much as classic. an oversized craftsman with understated furnishings, lots of wood and floral carpets, cozy couches with thick pillows. and the grand room did feel inviting and warm, even though she and her husband could stand at opposite ends and she'd have to squint to make out his expression, would struggle to hear him. the rooms were peppered with his father's various woodworking projects and his mother-in-law's shaky attempts at pottery, but neither were artists; their lives and the choices therein defined solely by functionality and purpose. over lunch, she spoke to her husband in a hush at the table for eight in the kitchenette. "i'm sorry that i kept insisting that you needed to drop your walls with your family. now that i'm back here, i realize of course they wouldn't understand." she reached across the table for his hand. they would never understand. 220507 ... tender_square [correction: it should read "his stepmother's shaky attempts at pottery."] 220508 ... tender_square the younger stepbrother complained, “this place is so big, i lose my kids in it.” he and his wife had been running around breathlessly with their two young ones all day. their family took the wing that had been built for the grandkids, who were all teenagers now, save for these last two munchkins, with each member—father, mother, son, daughter—taking their own bunk bed. earlier that morning, the wife had crept around that space in her stocking feet; a mausoleum of childhood with sleepy eyed dolls, dormant carriages and cribs, completed lego sets displayed along a long desk of empty chairs, rumpled beds that hadn’t held the dreams of children in years. sadness and loss permeated the house. her husband’s parents had lost the last moments that there grandkids were kids, all because of the pandemic. they had built the estate hoping that it would be a gathering place for their kids and their kid’s kids, abounding with generations of love. but nearly all the families lived in the city and had their own schedules and routines. very rarely did everyone stop by for large gatherings outside of holidays. when the older stepbrother arrived, he kept repeating the same anecdote to each group he mingled with: “i resigned from my job. well—i still have two months left, and i can’t believe they’re expecting me to work!” she could never tell when his family was joking and when they were genuine. the company the older stepbrother had worked for recently changed greased hands with another company; his resigning was much more than that—he was retiring from the workforce in his late forties. he and his wife and their thirteen-year-old son were planning a two month trip to “the last continent” on their “checklist,” africa, with scuba-diving in the maldives, capped with a cruise through the greek isles. the stepsister’s family posed for their group shot, their first without their father, whom the sister had divorced from the previous fall. after the whole family portrait had been snapped in one location but not other that had been desired, the stepsister jetted off with her daughter to bring her to a birthday party. they never returned. the older stepbrother and his family were restless waiting for the sun to set for a photo op that would be staged in front of the property’s waterfall. and so, they left without explanation, without staying for the group dinner that had been loosely planned. “have a safe trip!” the wife called to them. “oh, we’re not going for two months yet,” the stepbrother’s wife explained. “i know; we just won’t see you before you go.” she knew the hour she’d spent with them was the only times their paths would cross during her and her husband’s week-long stay. 220508 ... nr no one should be 220508 ... nr i'm referring to super super wealthy, to be clear. i would never trust a billionaire. 220508 ... tender_square on her third morning, she put on her tennis shoes to walk the property, alone. if she couldn’t leave its confines, at least she could hideaway in its hills for a time before the rest of the household woke, before the sun beat her pale skin into a reddened pulp. at first, she thought she’d have to hop a fence to get anywhere. much of the yard was gated to keep the dogs in, to prevent them from wandering off and becoming coyote chow. she tried to hoist herself up to the ledge of a wall that came mid-chest, but her upper back slammed into the lip; she lacked the upper-body strength of her youth to launch her. it was then that she noticed there was a hidden gate latch in that part of the fence. and so she went out the intended way, instead of feeling like a fugitive being witnessed by the security cameras for her failed attempt at wall jumping. the morning was overcast and she ambled to a break in the stone driveway that gave way to grass, her shoes grazing tracts of browning blades. soon, she reached a series of boulders that descended down a fifty-foot slope. it was the top of the waterfall; she hadn’t realized it reached the apex of the hill. the water only ran through the last quarter of the design, it had otherwise pooled anemically in the plateaued areas. she wondered if the source was natural or if it was artificially circulated like a fountain, requiring utilities to run it. the first day into their stay, she had accidentally left a tap on full blast in one of the bathrooms, though she didn’t remember doing it. it was the middle of the night and she had earplugs in, unable to register the rush of water as it moved through the pipes and down the drain. when she heard it later, she felt sick. her husband told her not to worry; he knew his parents water bill was in the four figures, her inattention wouldn’t make much difference to the bottom line. at the top of the dry waterfall, there was a seating area that she was sure was never used. she lingered for a moment but didn’t rest. she followed the grassy path north to where it ended, and was met with a neck-high wire fence that was erected to keep the property secure, to keep trespassers out. she turned back the way she had come, photographed a pair of common crapemyrtle that had romantically bent their trunks in a head-over-heels contortion, their bodies like slender ropes of muscle. she descended part of the sloped driveway, stopped at the potting shed and eyed the bounty of the raised beds her husband’s stepmom had planted: yellow squash and unripe tomatoes and leafy greens galore. as she peered into the shed, she noted a camera filming. she made her way further down the driveway towards a long plateaued area that was once where the construction materials and machines had been housed while the compound had been built. years later it was grassy knoll. there was a familiar rumble in her stomach she was used to for that parcel of morning. she knew she should turn around, to give herself enough time to climb back to the house, but she pushed on, hiking to the southernmost edge of the property, entirely obscured by trees and brush. a curved road was not far from where she stood; she could see it running along the fence in the dark beyond, rolling her eyes as expensive cars accelerated around the corners. there were no cameras here. she was alone and isolated. and suddenly she had desire to leave her mark. there. not in a territorial fashion—no, it wasn’t anything like that. how could she possibly articulate this need? she knew it was wrong. if she was caught, she’d be humiliated, and her act would be interpreted by his loved ones as contemptuous. but she didn’t hate her husband’s family. the longer she spent in that gargantuan house, the more it became normalized. she missed her sense of hunger and her instinctual drive when all her needs were satiated, when she wanted no more. she was weak in this state. life with her husband had become a version of this feeling on a smaller scale. here, with the backdrop of this ridiculous mansion built for two, her fears were amplified. she idled until she could no longer hold it, then pulled down her leggings in one swift motion and squatted at the edge of the property, emptying herself of all that traveled through her digestive tract the day before. and she laughed as she turned around to see what she had done, both horrified and exhilarated. she pulled her pants up and combed some loose leaves over with her dropping with her hands, smiling to herself. she would be forever feral. 220508 ... tender_square his sister and brother-in-law owned a brand-new house in a brand-new subdivision by the old airport, an area of austin that had nearly doubled in property values during the pandemic. “this place looks like pleasantville,” her husband snickered as they drove through the neighborhood. “we’d hate it here.” the houses were uniform, and if spit from your porch you’d hit either your neighbor’s porch or the sidewalk. the scrawny saplings were made more miniscule standing in the shadows of the two-story subdivisional sprawl. his sister and brother in-law had lived in the house for two years, and still, there were boxes galore in the 2,000 square-foot floorplan, clothes and papers and the ephemera of their lives strewn through the open concept rooms and behind the closed doors. and the wife tried not to judge as she walked through the couple’s chaotic space, tried not to be left with the impression that they didn’t seem to appreciate what they had. when you valued something, you took care of it, didn’t you? she wasn’t the best housekeeper, true, but she kept their space organized and tidy for her own sake and for his. and her husband had been learning to uphold these values in their living spaces, too. the three of them sorted through rubbermaid bins of paperwork and photos from their deceased mother, determining what to keep and what to throw away. the wife found a leather-bound journal with the tree of life on the cover, opened it and saw the mother’s handwriting. she had made it her gratitude journal but never continued past the first few pages. it was a gift she and her husband had given his mom for mother’s day in 2019. the daughter-in-law read an entry aloud to her husband and his sister which closed with “i am grateful for my healthy body and mind” and she immediately regretted it, because lung cancer had ravaged her body and mind a year later. in another notebook, the wife found a list of people her mother-in-law wished she could have conversations with: oprah took the top spot and bill gates and reese witherspoon appeared not long thereafter. a few pages later, her mother-in-law had written wishes for various aspects of her life. under “money” she wrote that she wanted “millions of dollars.” and the daughter-in-law’s face reddened reading a desire so personal. the admission struck her as superficial given how much depth and poise she felt her mother-in-law had possessed. maybe it was because the daughter-in-law had been millionaire-adjacent that she saw firsthand what money could do to people—the way it eroded ambition and created complacency; the spiritual bankruptcy made manifest when it didn’t miraculously solve life’s thorniest problems; the simultaneous swings of guilt for having it and irrational fears of losing it. back when his mother and father were still married, his father didn’t have the kind of money he had now. both had been engineers working in oil and gas after college. the mother had left the industry before leaving her husband, moving away from the structure of large energy firms and towards small-town government work and self-employment: she’d been a therapist, she’d been a nurse, and later, a healthcare consultant. the father had made his millions when the company he worked for was bought by another company; he’d been given a small equity stake before the new conglomerate became publicly traded on the stock market. overnight, his life changed; two months later, he retired in his early fifties. the father’s sudden financial gains weren’t a matter of hard work so much as it was luck. his ex-wife had gone on to earn several degrees, including a phd post-divorce, but never made anywhere close to the sum the market had inflated for his work. the son and daughter-in-law often felt that was the problem with the world; it financially incentivized the people who worked with things rather those who worked with people. and instead of closing the wage gap between those two categories, to give teachers and healthcare workers and daycare employees the earnings they deserved, women, who often worked in such fields in greater numbers than men, were being urged to join stem in an attempt to make the disparity in lifetime earnings more equitable. later that night, over dinner, the daughter-in-law willed herself to pay attention when his father and stepmother spoke again about their upcoming trip to the uk for a whole month. when you had this kind of money, it seemed to her, it became an exhausting job coming up with new ways to spend it. she felt bad for harboring these impressions. his parents were not ungenerous people. in fact, the stepmother had come into a handsome sum she had not anticipated from investments her father had made on her behalf when she was a young woman, and she had donated it all to organizations she’d thoroughly researched that were directly helping families in the ukraine. yes, sometimes having money allowed you to help others in ways you would not be able to otherwise. did it really matter if it was given out of guilt, in an attempt to balance the scales when the universe gave you more than what was necessary? it reminded her of her father-in-law’s mention of larry ellison, calling him “an invisible benefactor,” an odd choice of words to describe his highly-publicized ownership of the island of lanai. yes, ellison was investing in lanai’s infrastructure, but she couldn’t ask her father-in-law, “did the residents really have a voice for what they wanted? or, did they have to go along with ellison’s vision because he was footing the bill?” 220510 ... tender_square on her fourth morning, she tiptoed around much of the property again, inside and out, filming videos for her mother who asked what the home looked like. the daughter whispered as she walked through the corridors, explaining what each room was, and how the levels and indoor and outdoor spaces corresponded to one another. it took her close to ten minutes to film, traversing back and forth. again, the cameras followed her. and she wondered if her father-in-law spent time watching the footage, if he would be upset if he saw her prowling around and documenting every square inch. she was uncomfortable, responsible for violating some secret pact she entered into wordlessly when marrying her husband. she texted her mother, “not that i think you would, but do not tell him that i took videos like this, that you’ve seen this house. i think he would be upset that i have.” and her mother responded back “wow” and included an embarrassed emoji. the daughter thought the comment was in response to the size of the house, that her mother understood for the first time what her daughter’s experience was like. it wasn’t. her mother continued: “the most disturbing is your last comment…i don’t even know what to say” and she added a teary eyed emoji. “there’s so much secrecy that you live with.” it was true. she kept secrets about her husband from his family. she kept secrets about herself from her husband. she kept secrets about her husband’s financial standing from anyone that wasn’t a member of his family. her whole life was full of secrets. 220511 what's it to you? who go blather from