Dear Money (16 page)

After class, the girl and I sit on a bench outside in the sun, wrapped in our coats. She explains that her piece is about her boyfriend doing something very unpleasant to her. She apologizes, says she
had
to write the story. "It
had
to come out," she says. "But I just couldn't bear to read it in front of the class."

It's very short. I skim it. Today's my publication day. Yippee. The story is not clear, skates by on allusive images. Apparently the couple is having sex. He's entering from behind, his front to her back. The story is not very good. The woman is hostile afterward, not sure how to talk to the man. I don't understand the predicament or why this would trouble her so, and I explain myself. She says this approach to intercourse was new for her. I think, How naive, how young. She seems, with all her curly hair and her lovely face with sharp planes, to have a bit more experience than she is revealing. She lights a cigarette. I hate the fact that part of my job entails reading about the sex lives of my students—worse, having to critique them. A helicopter flies low overhead. Today is my publication day and I'm talking to a student about sex.

"I just couldn't read this out loud," she says, her hands trembling as they hold on to the story and the cigarette. "Do you understand?"

Do I understand what? Having a man come in from behind? Doggy style, as they say? And this is so troubling to her that she finds it worthy of fiction? I study her for a minute, the intensity of her face, filled with concern. None of this matters, I want to say to her. Just breathe. A colleague passes and congratulates me because he's seen my book in a bookstore. Yippee. I'm glad the student now knows I have a book out. Her face remains fractured with her own concerns. "It's not that unusual," I say to her, regarding the position—that is, wanting to snap her into a more perceptive self-awareness. Then I get down to other points of artistry and characterization, and she, hanging on to my last comment, stares at me dumbly, blankly, holding me with her eyes for a moment as if in disbelief. She turns away. I quickly finish commenting and am off to the next class.

In the afternoon, I take the subway downtown to the West Village to meet a college friend, Kathy Park, who is taking me to Queen's Spa Sauna for a jjimjilbang treatment. This is Kathy's surprise, and surprise it is—a way to celebrate the publication of
Generation of Fire.

Kathy, tall, with a dark bob and large, arching, humorous eyes, kisses me at the golden dragon front gates. Inside, the décor is bright red with more gold. Sculptures of lions stand guard, and a flurry of women in black bras and panties speak among themselves as naked women saunter by on their way to the sauna or steam room or the heated mugwort room. Kathy says something to the receptionist in Korean. She came to America when she was fifteen and retains a slight accent. She's tough and strong-willed and always the boss. It's one of the many things I love about her: she takes charge and gets her way with a firm and commanding pursing of the lips. She's an attorney, a litigation partner specializing in white-collar-criminal matters (like Sally), an avid reader, a fabulous dresser, a divine cook, a mother of three. Her husband is a thoracic surgeon. As a friend, she never had sympathy for any stories of my financial woes. And she certainly had no answers, or not the kind I wanted to hear. She yearned to be a pianist but gave that up when she had children, because that is the way things are done. "When you have children you have got to be responsible, and that means doing things you don't want to do."

Now Kathy's carrying on with the Korean ladies, fluently in her mother tongue. When she came from Korea, her father had been here six years, working nights so that he could bring his wife, Kathy, and her two older sisters to New York. He'd lived in Central Harlem and started a well-respected business creating wigs in all styles and shapes for African-American women. Kathy spent her high school years forking wig hair into afros, combing it, teasing it, until it was wiry and firm and perfectly oiled. The time I shared my money concerns with her—the only friend with whom I would ever do so—she said impatiently, "You have to sit down with someone who can show you the numbers." She gave the phrase the special emphasis it has in the business world, a cult-like Pythagorean regard for
the numbers,
and for the doing of them, the way that the numbers, once done, can crack through fortresses of rhetoric and blarney to reveal the truth of a given situation, like a scrawny, wet dog. "The numbers," she continued, "will show you what you need to put away each year. You'll be frightened. It's scary. But if you don't, then I don't want to hear any complaints about your lives. Look at how you live. We are all working and you are running off to Europe for extended vacations." "We" included the entire rest of the world.

If I had dared to explain myself, dared to say "But I don't have a choice in the matter," or "I'm not trained to do anything else," or simply "But I'm an artist," Kathy, with love, would have scoffed: "Artist? Don't hide behind that excuse. If you're an artist, live like an artist. Don't live like a rich woman. Move to a town you can afford. Put your daughters in public school." She'd worked sixteen-hour days since she came to this country. She'd left behind a dozen servants, a maid who followed her everywhere, a baby-grand piano. If the sinew of her life in Korea had been whimsical musical dreams, in America, land of dreams, she'd evolved into a person of solid, practical ambition—defending, for instance, major pharmaceutical companies in criminal investigations into fraudulent marketing and pricing practices. I stopped sharing my financial predicament with her a while back and always pretended that everything was wonderful. And today we were celebrating. Yippee!

"I'm proud of you," she says. "Congratulations. And I adored the book." I don't realize until she says it how much her opinion means to me.

She smiles at the ladies and then at me and says, "The works." We take off our clothes and enter a big room with cushioned tables and are asked to lie down. In all our years of friendship, I believe this is the first time I've seen Kathy naked. Slender and tall, even naked she walks with that determination. I can imagine her in the buff, running into a client and holding forth without a second thought.

The works: a Korean woman in her black bra and panties rubs me down for a good forty-five minutes with a Brillo-like scrub pad. This is supposed to rejuvenate the skin, remove the dead so the new can shine. At some point I wonder what the gritty substance is that she is using with the Brillo, then realize it is my own dead skin. I am covered in fine balls, like sweater pills, of my own sloughed gray skin. After a while she heaves a bucket of water on me and the dead skin floats off to the floor and drains away. When I've been thoroughly sanded, the massage begins. The woman gets on top of me, knees pressed into and along my spine, thumbs up under my ribs as if she could penetrate all the way to my lungs and heart. She does not speak a word of English, flips me over as if I'm a fish, all five feet nine inches of me, all 145 pounds of me. She pummels my calves, stretches my arms, bends the joints in awkward ways. I've been sanded and kneaded and washed down, flushed and flexed, reborn. Today is my publication day!

Kisses goodbye on either cheek. Thanks and love and good luck and congratulations and "When will I see it reviewed in the paper?" I say, "Soon, soon," though I have no idea. Nothing is scheduled. I'm not sure if the book has been assigned. But I don't share my woe with Kathy. "Soon." I hail a cab. Jump in. Blow more kisses and zip off uptown. Hop out at the next traffic light because I realize I have no cash. Check to make sure Kathy's vanished. Descend into the subway. Zip up to Citarella to food-shop. Steak and ravioli and baby bok choy and mâche and bread and macaroons and olive oil and Humboldt Fog. Flowers (because they look so pretty). Total: $113.87. Today's my publication day. Cash from an ATM, am overdrawn (thank God for Checking Plus), a taxi the rest of the way home. Lug the bags into the building, up to the apartment.

Where it's bright and sunny and sparkling. The cleaning lady, Janine, is there. Janine never says a word. But she is loyal to us and we to her. She insists on wearing a white apron. I give her cash, $120 (note, as I have of late, that she's paid more for her time than I am for mine; note, as I have of late, that I really must tell her I can't afford her anymore). She has long hair that she wears in braids. Her white apron is pulled taut over blue jeans and a T-shirt as she irons the children's shirts and our sheets and napkins from a dinner party we had last week. She smiles when I hand her the cash, as she always does. Her two front teeth, encircled with gold, shine. I must give her notice, I think, one more month. I hear the children in their room. "See you next week, Janine," I say and disappear into the children's room.

The girls jump all over me. April, the babysitter, is sitting on her duff, reading the discounts offered at the pharmacy this week. She's always trying to get a deal for us on toilet paper and paper towels and cleaning supplies. She tells me about the specials and hands me rebate forms I need to fill out and send to a rebate center somewhere in South Dakota. In a month or two a check for a dollar will arrive in the mail. I do the task faithfully and as instructed by April. You do not cross April. "Did you read in the paper?" she says to me. She reads the paper from cover to cover, is up on world politics and the presidency and interest rates and the housing market and the wars. Today it's worms in someone's apartment. Some man and his family are going green in New York City. "They've given up toilet paper," she declares in her lilting Caribbean accent. She's a tall woman with bulk. She's from "the islands," as she puts it, where she has a husband and two grown children.

April condemns the practice of going without toilet paper as grotesque, taking the gimmick "just too far." I hear the rumors, other mothers complaining about her because she "reads so much, almost as much as she disciplines the kids." Discipline is passé, alas. Kids rule. Not mine. Not with April. Sun streams through the windows. The girls are all over me with hugs and kisses. Gwen has made a card for me:
CONGRATULATIONS.
"I helped make it," says the little one, Ruby. "You did not," says Gwen. "Did too." "Did not."

"It's beautiful," I say.

"We're proud of you, Mom," they say together. "My teacher saw your book in the store."

I'm still in my coat and quite hot with the girls hanging from me. I kiss them on their heads and April scoops them away so I can complete my day of work. She knows my rhythms. The girls march off in their dresses, ironed and selected by April. She is proud of their appearance, as if they are an extension of her, a queen bee with her own elegant wardrobe. They sometimes seem to me to be her children as much as they are my own, a bond we first learned to accept and then came to cherish. The girls' hair is neatly brushed and pulled back, fingernails and toenails manicured. Their little heads are held high. They have no idea what I'm thinking: that April needs notice too. And April, striding out, poor thing, has no idea how much I need to give her notice. Has no idea that we here on the thirteenth floor (it's called the fourteenth, but let's call a spade a spade) are perched on a house of cards. Dear me. Tomorrow I'll take care of all that; today is my publication day!

Gwen catches me with her eyes and holds on for a moment, going inside me, reading me—my quizzical girl. She knows; she knows everything—that there is a large difference between her and her friends.

I disappear into our bedroom to check the phone messages, hoping for one from Darwin. I need to hear his enthusiasm, need to hear how we're going to surf coffee to the top. My troubled student comes to mind, the way she looked at me, as if shocked by my revelation, as if I had revealed something atrocious about myself. They are so young, I think. I forget how young they are. No messages. Turn on the computer. Throw coat on bed. Take off shoes. Look in closet. Pull out pretty dress, a pair of tall black leather boots. Draw a bath. The phone rings.

"Congratulations." It's Win. I know the voice. It's a singular voice. I shiver, feel guilty everywhere. I've not seen him since Maine.

"Win?" I ask.

"You know it's me."

"I do?"

"Don't pretend you don't."

"When are we having that champagne you promised?"

"Tonight."

"Tonight? But—"

"No buts. There's this little bar on top of the..."

The girls bound into the room, stumbling over themselves, clamoring, fighting over something or other. April is close on their heels. Win is talking but I don't hear him. I hear the girls and April's reprimands. The room is sparkling, bed freshly made with ironed sheets. All the surfaces dusted. In the corner is a chair I had re-covered recently, elegant and decadent, in Scal-amandre chenille, picturing prancing tigers—the fancy fabric bought deeply discounted on the Internet (to upgrade the hauled-off-the-street aesthetic). The cushions are fluffed and a throw drapes the arm, as if the chair is a refined lady, languishing. Janine can never be given notice. Money, all of this was made by money. Out the window: New York City, buildings rising, shooting into the sky, money's creation. Theodor refused to care about money; for him money was a cancer, eating the individual alive. It seemed life offered little apart from the care of money. Are we all money's prisoners? I'll call Theodor and explain that something's come up. How far would I go for it?

"I'll have to call you back," I say.

"I'll see you there," Win says and clicks off.

I would find it unattractive if a friend described a man to me in this way, his presumption, his hubris, but all I want to do is meet him. I want to be a poor girl in a Dreiser novel, hear the rich man claim me: "You're my girl now. Come with me. You're mine." I want the decisions to be made for me.

I shut the bath faucet. April takes the girls to the store. Peace for a moment. I notice Will's manuscript on my bedside table. It's been there for a month, uncracked. I've been giving him excuses, but he always tells me not to worry, when I'm ready for it that will be the time to read it. To the kitchen for water. Pass through the dining room. A gigantic bouquet of lilies—twenty different kinds and colors of lilies, shooting from a vase every which way like fireworks, calla and tiger and trumpet and Easter and Nile and kinds I can't name—casual yet clearly carefully designed. A crushing sensation pushes into my chest. Theodor just doesn't get it, that we're nearly ruined. Their scent fills the room. I open the card:
Nirvana at 8.
No signature.