Preparation

“We have to do something about him,” Nadine Moreau insisted. “He’s endangering our retirement.” Her chin jutted out more than usual as she looked up. Surrounded by light-brown wavy hair drooping down to just above her shoulders, her body was buttressed by a cheerful printed dress that optimistically promised lightness and ease. She was, she told herself, thinking of her two children.

Her husband, Jack, had been a hard one to tame at first – but she had patiently gone to work. When she had first met him, he had been a heavy smoker. Her initial efforts to get him to quit hadn’t been of much use, until public pressure elicited by guiding laws had come to her aid. Once he could no longer smoke at work, he gave up and started relying upon nicotine gum. Her regaling had turned into encouragement. Eventually, he got off the nicotine habit entirely.

After that, it was easy. Relying on the media, she adjusted the diet of her flock according to what the press recommended as healthy. The shifts in the wind, she forgot.

Aided by the Internet, she had asked around about her father-in-law’s distressing habit of buying gold. They had no worries on the real-estate front now, although they got the frights when the recession bit and some time after. Jack had settled into accountancy, and had had good reason to fear for his job when the economy had crashed down. They weren’t sparing management like they used to. Through harder work, and toughening up, he had stayed employed and now enjoyed a measure of security. The house they now had, a so-called McMansion, he considered a bargain so he splurged. The decision proved to be one they both could handle, although it had been a squeeze at first. Two years had brought no disaster, despite Jack’s occasional nerves about the purchase: everything had worked out well on the real-estate front.

But not on the retirement front. Nadine trusted that their house would make up a substantial chunk of their retirement, but Jack wasn’t completely convinced. He kept his opinion to himself, as his wife needed to believe. Also, they had more pressing worries on the equities front. Their portfolio had been decimated a few years ago; many of the stocks they had jointly agreed to buy were slaughtered to the tune of 70, 80, even 90%. Nadine, after getting through the anguish with Jack, had turned to her favourite mode of redress. After reluctantly concluding she had no legal or arbitrative recourse, she had discovered asset allocation. Although the ride was less bumpy, they were nowhere near getting back to the peak of net worth they had enjoyed five years prior to now.

It was sad in its own way. She had come from a blue collar neighbourhood, but had never fit in. The boys cut each other too much slack, she found, and their destinies were often tragic. She being what she was, her now-passed-away parents had encouraged her to go into teaching. Thanks to good grades and a life lived according to plans, she had won an appointment to a charter school for bright kids. They were largely a pleasure to teach, their attitudes being a lot like hers.

Both she and Jack were in the living room of their house, with their two children away for the moment. The curtains were luxurious purple, gathered into folds by an extended ribbon in the same fabric. The house itself was more than four thousand square feet, with a 55 by 130 foot lot surrounding it. Granite tabletops were in the kitchen. Nadine had no qualms at all about them and the other luxuries to be enjoyed: she and Jack deserved every one of them. So did their kids, John and Helen.

The entire family fit the image of an upwardly mobile, upper middle class success unit. Their worldly gains reinforced her steadfastedness and self-regard. The difference between her and her old high school peers was easy to spot: she planned, she followed through, she took expert advice as received through the media, and she did not allow herself to deviate from her plans. In her own word, she showed self-discipline.

But her and Jack’s retirement was hampered by his father. Frank Moreau had a distressing similarity to the boys she had escaped from in her old neighbourhood. She had at first been relieved to see him, as he was a successful businessman who had the knack of encouraging people into his convenience stores. Despite his opinionated and somewhat anarchic nature, he must have been organized. There was no other way to run a business, so she believed. His take-life-as-it-comes orientation, she had dismissed as self-advertisement.

Until, well into her marriage to his son, she had finally seen that Frank was his persona. Ever since then, she had been watching him for irregularities. His success, she now chalked up to luck.

Granted that he had been right a few times. Retiring and selling out ten years ago, he had been cantankerous enough to insist that things would fall apart six years later. He sold his stocks and sat on his money for a while. Then, he began buying gold bullion.

Frank’s gold hadn’t escaped unscathed, but he wasn’t fazed. Jack had just shrugged it off with a smile, trusting his dad, but Nadine had insisted that there was something wrong. Not having been close to Frank in the way Jack had been, she believed she possessed the higher vista of disinterestedness. Nadine had looked at what the goldbugs had said; yes, she did. What she read - a combination of doomsaying, blaming the central bank, gloating over the collapse, anarchistic fantasies – had made her wonder about her father-in-law’s sanity. After being reassured by her husband that it was just his father being his father, she kept her doubts to herself. Until now.

“Don’t be an apologist again, Jack. You know very well that he’s fallen in with a bunch of very creepy people. Do you know what they write?”

Jack was now middle-aged, with a little insulation in his face and more in his stomach, but he still showed the fine-featured handsomeness he had as a young man. And also, a hint of his happy-go-lucky youthfulness, which his dad had been glad to subsidize. Although he was long resigned to growing up, a small part of him missed the good old days. He and his friends had had their own personal answer to the “Highway to Hell” back in ’80 or so. They had all grown up, fit in to the acquisitive lifestyle, and had made the sacrifices that came with it.

“Nadine, he tends to know what he’s doing.” She saw her husband’s face struggle between sadness and a grin. “Don’t you remember him telling us to get out of those stocks we were in? I should have been that crazy.”

“This is different,” Nadine pressed on. “He was lucky. He’s now fallen in with a bunch of doomsayers who think the world is going to end.” Spreading her hands out, she made it personal. “They think my job is illegitimate!

“And they’re taking advantage of an old man. Just think of it: he goes every week and buys an ounce of that yellow metal. He’s done it for four years! What kind of balance is that? He made it clear: he buys nothing else. That’s a bad sign; we both know that.

“If he were so clever, why didn’t he buy stocks two or three years ago? He could have.”

Her husband shifted in his plush black leather seat, in a manner that would suggest discomfort had he not been inured to it. He was worn down to fidgeting, like Nadine’ students fidgeted. For the inveterate fidgeters, she recommended Ritalin.

Guessing at her motive, Jack replied, “It’s still his money. We can’t take it from him.”

Oh yes we can, she thought, but the time wasn’t right to say it. The safety of her brood was part of her motive, but only part. The other part was a mild outrage. Her father-in-law had flouted rules meant for everyone’s safety. An attempt by her to blame the tobacco companies, he dismissed. He had paid for his habit with a case of lung cancer. Surely, that should have made him change his ways. He still acting in odd ways – didn’t it suggest mental illness? Non compos mentis?

“We can ask him. We can make him listen to reason, just the two of us. The kids, they’re busy. We won’t look as if we’re trying to charm him. Instead, it will be a sensible adult conversation.”