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years, and this has upended her life. They met twenty-
two years ago, when Chevey had just formed The Argonaut Company
and advertised for an assistant. Not just any assistant but precisely the woman— lovely with pearly pale skin, competent and funny— who
walked through the door.
. 46 .
9780670025527_MyBrotherMyS_TX.indd 46
4/23/13 4:12 PM
22145
c h a p t e r f ou r
My Brother Advertises for
a Secretary and Reels in a Wife
Richmond Times- Dispatch , December 5, 1982:
s e c r e ta ry/r ec ep t ion i st
pa r t t i m e
For small West End business, 9 to 1 daily. I need someone
who is experienced in (or, with some tasks, willing to learn)
typing, carrying logs and laying a fire, light bookkeeping,
running errands, light housekeeping, taking occasional day
trips, light yard work, attending nighttime classes, swatting
flies, etc. If this job interests you, better see your psychia-
trist. If still interested, send your complete resume, along
with your explanation why you would ever want a job like
this one to CA 430 c/o this paper. Be sure to let me know
your needs and wants, too. Sorry, but if you smoke (to-
bacco), or have smoked within the last few months, save
your breath. We wouldn’t work well together.
U nderstandably (and no doubt by intention) the responses were few.
The interested party had to have not only a sense of humor, but a fairly peculiar one. Mother and I thought it extremely funny, though Mother
also shook her head in disbelief. Not just at the wording, but at the ad itself. We still didn’t know if he had any clients: could he afford a secretary? We didn’t quite understand that it was a coded casting call for a wife. (Now, looking over those qualifications, I wonder if it might
have been an even more deeply encrypted SOS for a husband.) Chevey
may have been to all appearances a conservative guy, but he did every-
. 47 .
9780670025527_MyBrotherMyS_TX.indd 47
4/23/13 4:12 PM
22145
My Brother My Sister
thing in his own idiosyncratic and oxymoronic way: that is, logical to
the point of fanaticism, applying rationalist precepts to areas where
sentiment and emotion rule. For example, when Mother was old, not
yet needing full- time help, but getting fragile, and worried about living alone, she wailed, “What’s going to happen if I die? I could lie
there for days and no one would know.”
“Well, it won’t matter,” said Chevey, “because you’ll be dead.”
True, but not very diplomatic. And when he saw the square footage
devoted to books and bookshelves in our New York apartment he was
shocked. “You could have a grandmother live here for the space they
occupy.” Although there were lovely scarves and clutch purses, promi-
nent among the gifts he gave me over the years were the practical ones: when I first moved to New York, a single girl with roommate in walk-up apartment, he gave me a fire extinguisher for Christmas; another
year, an adding machine; in later years (to Andrew and me), a smoke
detector (which sat on the shelf because we didn’t know how to install
the battery) and a scale that could be used for both postage and food.
Two computer programs he gave me, Quicken and Palm Desktop,
were expressions of his ultrarational philosophy of money managing,
his professional calling card, so to speak, laid out to every client: Keep a record of every expense. Try to forecast your expenditures for the
next six months, the next year, the distant future. We know now that
our expectations of the future, like our recollections of the past, are utterly irrational and miles off base, both being drawn from immediate experience, the here and now, since the future is unknowable, the
past selectively remembered. So his exhortations would have been an
exercise in futility, even if he hadn’t been waging a battle for rationality in that most unreceptive of terrains: the mind- set of investors who want to believe in the magic of the stock market.
I loved
two years ago, when Chevey had just formed The Argonaut Company
and advertised for an assistant. Not just any assistant but precisely the woman— lovely with pearly pale skin, competent and funny— who
walked through the door.
. 46 .
9780670025527_MyBrotherMyS_TX.indd 46
4/23/13 4:12 PM
22145
c h a p t e r f ou r
My Brother Advertises for
a Secretary and Reels in a Wife
Richmond Times- Dispatch , December 5, 1982:
s e c r e ta ry/r ec ep t ion i st
pa r t t i m e
For small West End business, 9 to 1 daily. I need someone
who is experienced in (or, with some tasks, willing to learn)
typing, carrying logs and laying a fire, light bookkeeping,
running errands, light housekeeping, taking occasional day
trips, light yard work, attending nighttime classes, swatting
flies, etc. If this job interests you, better see your psychia-
trist. If still interested, send your complete resume, along
with your explanation why you would ever want a job like
this one to CA 430 c/o this paper. Be sure to let me know
your needs and wants, too. Sorry, but if you smoke (to-
bacco), or have smoked within the last few months, save
your breath. We wouldn’t work well together.
U nderstandably (and no doubt by intention) the responses were few.
The interested party had to have not only a sense of humor, but a fairly peculiar one. Mother and I thought it extremely funny, though Mother
also shook her head in disbelief. Not just at the wording, but at the ad itself. We still didn’t know if he had any clients: could he afford a secretary? We didn’t quite understand that it was a coded casting call for a wife. (Now, looking over those qualifications, I wonder if it might
have been an even more deeply encrypted SOS for a husband.) Chevey
may have been to all appearances a conservative guy, but he did every-
. 47 .
9780670025527_MyBrotherMyS_TX.indd 47
4/23/13 4:12 PM
22145
My Brother My Sister
thing in his own idiosyncratic and oxymoronic way: that is, logical to
the point of fanaticism, applying rationalist precepts to areas where
sentiment and emotion rule. For example, when Mother was old, not
yet needing full- time help, but getting fragile, and worried about living alone, she wailed, “What’s going to happen if I die? I could lie
there for days and no one would know.”
“Well, it won’t matter,” said Chevey, “because you’ll be dead.”
True, but not very diplomatic. And when he saw the square footage
devoted to books and bookshelves in our New York apartment he was
shocked. “You could have a grandmother live here for the space they
occupy.” Although there were lovely scarves and clutch purses, promi-
nent among the gifts he gave me over the years were the practical ones: when I first moved to New York, a single girl with roommate in walk-up apartment, he gave me a fire extinguisher for Christmas; another
year, an adding machine; in later years (to Andrew and me), a smoke
detector (which sat on the shelf because we didn’t know how to install
the battery) and a scale that could be used for both postage and food.
Two computer programs he gave me, Quicken and Palm Desktop,
were expressions of his ultrarational philosophy of money managing,
his professional calling card, so to speak, laid out to every client: Keep a record of every expense. Try to forecast your expenditures for the
next six months, the next year, the distant future. We know now that
our expectations of the future, like our recollections of the past, are utterly irrational and miles off base, both being drawn from immediate experience, the here and now, since the future is unknowable, the
past selectively remembered. So his exhortations would have been an
exercise in futility, even if he hadn’t been waging a battle for rationality in that most unreceptive of terrains: the mind- set of investors who want to believe in the magic of the stock market.
I loved
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