(by Dave, 15-20 min)
Marissa Robinson smiled as she opened her front door. “Juliann, how nice to see you again. Let’s sit out back.”
Marissa escorted her friend to the back veranda where they could look out over the intracoastal waterway. The sun was bright, the air warm and water birds were making their usual cacophony of noise. It was a beautiful Florida day that comes so frequently during the winter months.
Juliann Masterson was a new friend for Marissa. The two met briefly several years ago at a business conference and ran into each other at one of the boutiques that speckled the wealthy neighborhood where both lived. They shared coffee a couple of times at the Starbucks and were meeting for the first time at Marissa’s house. After a few niceties and pouring coffee, the women settled into their chairs.
“I have to tell you Juliann, I had no idea what you would be like after hearing about you for so many years.”
“Well, what do you think?” responded the founder of Oversight Investing.
“I figured for sure you would be a conceited blowhard, but I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you.
“Maybe you like blowhards,” Juliann replied grinning. “I have lots of acquaintances, Marissa, but not so many friends,” she continued surprising Marissa with the admission. “Getting to know you has been a real pleasure, and I mean that.” Juliann smiled with the same disarming expression that made so many potential investors trust her.
Marissa got a mischievous look on her face and leaned forward. “Juliann, I am just so curious. Would you mind if I asked you how you did it?”
The billionaire paused before responding. When you were as rich as she was, there was always someone trying to run a number on you. She looked hard at Marissa and saw nothing but innocent curiosity. The same genuine feeling she perceived during their first few meetings. Oh well, time to build a real friendship, she thought to herself.
“No, I don’t mind. What are you curious about?”
“How did you do it? I remember thinking that the first time I saw that Time Magazine article on you.”
“I hated that stupid thing,” Juliann interjected. “Do you remember that ridiculous headline?” She waved her hand slowly across the air while dramatically recounting the magazine’s title “Queen of the Market: Juliann Masterson Rules Them All.” She smirked. “That article caused me a good bit of trouble, it really did.”
Marissa was chuckling at the dramatic depiction. “I bet it did, but it was true right?”
“I had a good run,” replied the Queen shrugging her shoulders.
“Okay, but I worked in investing for many years and did well, but never thought I could do what you did. So, how did you do it?” Marissa, still excited to hear about the magic, noticed the smile drop away from Juliann’s face.
“I made a lot of sacrifices,” she said flatly. Juliann rested her gaze idly on the intracoastal waterway.
Marissa paused taking in the change of countenance. “I’m sorry, maybe we should talk about something else.” Not for the first time she noticed a small stone appear in Juliann’s hand. Her thumb slid back and forth over it and Marissa noticed a small depression undoubtedly made by many similar passes. The stone made an appearance at each of their previous meetings.
Juliann looked back at her insightful new friend. She thought a bit while Marissa patiently waited.
“No, I think maybe we should talk about it. I get a sense I can trust you, Marissa.” Juliann’s expression changed from reflective to vulnerable, even pensive. “Can I?”
Marissa’s eyes teared up a bit as she sensed a deep pain inside one of the five richest, most powerful people in the country. For all her wealth and success, this woman carried a weight. She reached across the table and touched her forearm. “You can. I promise.”
Juliann nodded, took a deep breath and sighed. “It wasn’t as hard as it seems. It was just diligence and I’ll admit a certain gift for predicting and reading people. That’s all the stock market is really. It’s just people interacting, and I was good at predicting them. I could read the people who were investing with me too. Mostly they just wanted to trust you, so I never lied to them.”
Marissa nodded liking what she was hearing. It confirmed her sense of Juliann from their first few meetings. She seemed a good person even though experience taught her that most successful people were not.
“I would get to work early before everyone else,” Juliann continued. “Study the reports from all the prospective businesses being considered for investment. I’d investigate all the trends from the previous days and weeks in the stock market and by the time my staff arrived have recommendations. As the market came alive, I would track in real time the trends and alter or make new recommendations. When the staff left, I would analyze the market trading that day to determine how I would proceed the next day. I’d head home long after dark.” Juliann exhaled and leaned back in her chair. “I did that for 30 years.”
“Were you married?” Marissa asked. She couldn’t help but wonder how a spouse could put up with this schedule. Juliann’s thumb picked up in intensity.
“I was, but we divorced.”
“Children?”
Juliann nodded yes and once again looked to the intracoastal waterway her thumb sweeping back and forth. “One daughter.”
Marissa was also good at reading people and when Juliann returned to describing her business, Marissa knew that work was high ground where the swamp of suffering could be avoided.
“You know what the hardest part was?” Juliann said. She didn’t wait for a reply. “I was investing for large retirement funds. If I blew it, a lot of people were going to be hurt. Frankly, now that it’s done, I’m glad to be out of it. But while I was in it, I loved it with a passion.” Her eyes shifted back from the water. She smiled at her new friend.
“Don’t you miss it? said Marissa. “I mean when you’re so good at something and you stop doing it, well…” She let her thought hang there.
“Yeah, sometimes I miss it. But it’s the past. I still sit on the BOD just to keep a toe in the water, but it’s just a thank you appointment from the board. I don’t contribute to the decision-making anymore.”
Marissa didn’t want to let the sacrifice line she heard earlier go unnoticed. “You mentioned sacrifices. Was your marriage one of them?” It was an audacious question given the short history of their friendship.
“Yes, Marissa, it was,” she said flatly. There was no hostility in the answer, and Marissa sensed it was not only safe to probe further, but maybe desired. Rather than the generic “do you want to talk about it” she was more direct.
“What’s the stone all about?”
Juliann first looked surprised and then started laughing. “Too bad I’m only meeting you now, Marissa. I jumped at hiring people who pay attention like that.“ The amusement on her face slowly morphed to sorrow. She looked at the stone. “It’s hard to talk about.”
“I suspect so,” Marissa acknowledged and waited. An awkward silence developed between them. Then with the same decisiveness that had made her Queen of the Market, Juliann shifted her chair directly toward Marissa, put the stone down in the middle of the table and began her tale.
“I was so hungry, Marissa. That business was everything. The bigger it got, the hungrier I became. I liked being wealthy, but it was the power and excitement I craved. I needed it like people need to eat. Even on the weekends I went to work. At first, David didn’t mind because he liked being wealthy too. The poor man worked his way through college and had a low-level position at a financial firm when we met. As you know, investment firms pay little for these folks. He took the job with the hope of rising up and didn’t know wealth until he met me. So, for a while we were okay.”
“When did it change?”
“It changed when I got the retirement account for the employees of the Florida University system. I knew they were big enough that if I did well with them, Oversight would just explode.”
“Did you do well for them?”
“Oh yes. We made them a 15% return, five years in a row.”
Marissa whistled the way people do when they’re impressed. “Five years in a row,” she said amazement lacing her voice.
Juliann nodded her head in agreement. “I know, it was amazing. I guessed right on every investment for them for five years. Didn’t miss one. Just before I got the account, I became pregnant with Rebecca. That didn’t stop me though. I needed that account for the firm. I pretty much disappeared from David’s life. About the only time we were together is when we were sleeping.”
“Was he happy about the baby?”
“Yes, delighted until I abandoned him with work.” Unconsciously she picked up the stone and started rubbing it. “Shortly after Rebecca was born, we had it out one night. He told me he was not going to be a single father and that I needed to decide if I wanted a family or not. I made excuses, short appearances, and delayed until Rebecca was six. That’s when David laid down his ultimatum.” Juliann was now struggling with her emotions as her eyes became red and watery.
Marissa once again reached over and touched her new friend’s hand. “If this is too upsetting….”
“You’re a sweetheart Marissa,” Juliann responded back in control. “He sat me down one night and said you need to choose. Tonight, Juliann. You either stop working so hard or Rebecca and I are leaving.”
Her emotions returned and she paused the way people do giving a eulogy waiting for the wave to pass. A few tears spilled down her face. Almost imperceptibly she started to rock back and forth in time with her thumb. With her voice trembling she said, “I left them.”
“You left them?” Marissa couldn’t hide the surprise from her voice.
“Yes, I gave him the house and left them both, without looking back.”
“You visited right?”
At this question Juliann shifted in her chair and resolve swept over her. She was not a person who gave into emotion or lived in the past. She pulled a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at her eyes. The tears stopped and she tossed the stone from her hand as if the talisman were no longer needed in the same way a person might turn a picture over when they were tired of crying about the person in it. She looked squarely at Marissa and slowly shook her head no.
“Oh my God,” was all Marissa could muster.
Juliann did not look away at her friend’s shock. She deserved the response from this normal person and wanted to endure it. She was well aware most people were incapable of harboring the cold heart her actions revealed.
“It was the biggest mistake I ever made. I didn’t know it then, but about 10 years down the road I began to mourn that decision. I grieved it so hard it affected my precious work, so I went to see a therapist. She suggested the stone and I’ve had that thing,” she pointed to the small rock almost with disdain, “since then.”
“Did you try to reconnect with them?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“David wouldn’t see me. He said the pain was too deep and he couldn’t open up old wounds, but Rebecca said yes. I was so hopeful maybe I could start over with her. Build a relationship from the ground floor. I was a different person, but she was 16 and loathed me. I didn’t know how much a teenager can hate.”
Marissa shook her head in commiseration having raised two daughters. Those teenage years were rough for mothers even when there was no family discord.
“She berated me for leaving her alone and said she only had one parent who cared anything about her. She hoped I would rot with the company I built and said that I ruined David’s life. That stupid Time Magazine article had enraged her. The invectives she hurled at me about that were…. very unpleasant. I think mostly because what she was saying was true even if you took all the anger out of it.”
“How did you leave it?”
“I was desperate. I told her about the stone which as you can imagine was in my hand while the two of us talked. I said the depression in the middle was born of my grief. Would she at least take it to know that I was sorry? I pleaded for her to take it even if she didn’t want to see me again so that her memory of me could at least include my remorse.” Juliann again had to pause to restrain her emotions.
“She said, she could care less about my grief and wanted to forget me. If she couldn’t do that, then remembering what I did was far better than some halfhearted expression of grief. She said I didn’t care anything about her when I marched out of the house and that’s when it mattered. Her parting words were that she hoped I’d choke on my stupid rock.”
Marissa thought furiously of something she could say to ease this poor woman’s pain, but an internal alarm told her that is not what Juliann wanted. It seemed her story was not told to unburden herself to a friend. Rather, it was a request for more suffering. Like she wanted Marissa’s condemnation. The way she wouldn’t look away when Marissa expressed shock. No, this woman was not ready to let go of her pain, and in fact wanted more of it. Anything that could help her pay for her sins.
“After a number of years,” Juliann continued, “I sold the business and moved on to my perfunctory BOD position. My heart just wasn’t in it anymore.” She leaned back in her chair and looked hard at Marissa. “You still interested in being friends?”
There it was. The invitation to condemn. No dice, Juliann, Marissa thought. “Yes,” she said without hesitating. “I think we’re going to be good friends.”
Juliann’s face flashed surprise. She looked at the rock in the middle of the table. “Will you take it?”
Marissa was no fool and knew what that was all about. Take it and reflect was the suggestion. Soon enough, you won’t want to see me again.
“No,” Marissa said. “I don’t want the emblem of your mistakes. I want your friendship.”
The former Queen inhaled in broken gasps as her eyes filled. She quickly wiped them away with her handkerchief obviously angry at herself for losing control again.
Good Lord, this poor woman won’t even let herself grieve, thought Marissa. What must it be like. Juliann stood. “I thank you for that, Marissa. Thanks so much for having me over and listening to that story. I really dumped a lot on someone I barely know.”
“But I know you now,” said Marissa. “And I’m glad you talked about it. If it made you feel even a little better, then that’s a good thing. How about we do this again next week. Same time? “
“I’d like that,” Juliann responded. “Next time I want to hear about your life.”
“Okay”, Marissa replied. “Then we’ll both know each other.” She smiled broadly.
“I’ll show myself out. You stay put and enjoy an amazing day out here.” Juliann strolled from the lanai leaving Marissa to look out at the beautiful intracoastal waterway. Remembering she looked at the middle of the table. The stone was there.
I’m not surprised, she thought to herself. All those billions and fame and none of it is what she wants. Well, I won’t give you what you want, Juliann Masterson, even if you leave your stupid stone here to poison the well. I’m going to give you what you need, and we’ll see how that works for you.
Marissa picked the stone up, bent sharply to the right and whipped it low and fast at the intracoastal waterway. She was pleased to still have her old shortstop skills even after so many years. The stone skipped five or six times before plunging under the surface.
Author’s note:
So much of our counsel to each other as followers of Christ concerns how to walk as Christians. How we are to think and act in response to the gift of grace. These are good topics and warrant our attention. However, there is more to the Christian journey than becoming better people for the glory of God. Here is a story of mercy lost. Juliann believes she chose wrongly and exacts justice against herself in perpetuity. For her, the only source of forgiveness is from the wronged. If mercy is denied there, the moral have only unending self judgement and punishment to right the wrong.
Despite our knowledge of divine forgiveness, the faithful are not immune to the misfortune Juliann represents. For we too may try to right a wrong and find no mercy from the aggrieved. Sometimes, words or actions can’t be taken back. During a night when inexplicably we cannot sleep, a memory returns and we mourn our old action anew.
In these moments Jesus speaks: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28). In a sermon to follow I will write about this blessing from God and hope you will return to read it. But if this story is all you can read, remember Jesus will forgive. He longs to forgive all who come to him. On those nights of mourning, turn to Jesus, receive the mercy you so need, and rest easy. For if God will forgive you, then you are forgiven indeed.
As always, may God be with you this and every day of your faith journey.
Acknowledgment: The idea of having a stone represent grief for sin was from my good friend Harley.
Dave
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