Dear Money (19 page)

"Well, in short, to put it bluntly. Well, yes, yes, I'd like to know. I like to know those sorts of things. It makes the reading of the book more interesting, in a way."

"Since you put it that way," you respond, "let me ask you which sister you think I am?"

"The betrayer, of course," he says, stroking his chin.

"In the nonfiction version of the fiction, you nailed it," you say and begin clapping, and the three follow suit.

On the ride back to the airport, an elderly woman who has written a self-help book on her relationship with her cat tells of how she forgot to bring her book to her event, so she had to invent a reading on the spot. "It was just so hard. I'm just so tired. It's a performance. They want so much out of you. I'm destroyed."

Who, you wonder. Who wants so much out of her?

"I would have liked to talk about my cat," you say.

The first review of
Generation of Fire
appears six weeks after publication day. It appears in
Free Moment,
written by some poor, underpaid, overworked creature who uses the first three chapters of the book (which also seems to be where she stopped reading) as a launching pad for a tirade against her boyfriend. It is a performance of the sort I see every other week, it seems, in at least one or two of my undergraduate student papers, a kind of lofty opening that addresses something big: "the beginning of time," for instance, or in this case, "American letters," and then hauls in the hapless author as Exhibit A of All That Is Wrong. There is a classic, three-paragraph "middle" of willful misreading, followed by a paragraph in which the reviewer holds up sentences that are better than anything I've ever written—lines that kept coming back to me, haunting me, that were literally beyond me, beyond my natural powers, that had, nevertheless, by dint of my persistence, rewarded me by taking up residence here and there in my book. These same sentences, which knocked Theodor out of his chair, are given a pistol-whipping by the reviewer.

"Ponder the career of India Palmer if you want to know what's gone wrong with American fiction. Grade: D-minus."

I can take a D, but a D-minus?

A sweet, small bookstore in Chicago. All the books hand-selected, personally and thoughtfully read by the owner and her assistant. A jolly pair: one old, one young; one stout, the other thin; one a big laugher, the other sardonic. A book group of five attends the reading. They are deciding if they will read
Generation of Fire.
Their decision will be based on the passage I read. "Not to put pressure on you," one of them says with a giggly smile.

"Lily Starr was here last week," the owner says boisterously. "She mentioned she was a friend of yours. She was so delightful. So talented. The place was packed! If we get her back for the paperback, we're selling tickets."

Washington, D.C.: My parents are the audience. My mother, a flurry of positive comments about the bookstore, how important it is to be asked to read here. Too bad about the weather—such a beautiful evening keeps people outdoors.

New York City: The store is packed. Theodor brings out all our friends, cousins, parents from the girls' school. The Chapmans invite everyone over afterward for drinks.

At the girls' school, a mother asks, "Have I missed the reviews?" In the paper that same day: Lily Starr is the winner of this year's Washington Award. Three days later the paper will announce her nomination for the biggest prize, the Golden Fleece: the Eiseman.

Midnight. I am on a high-speed ferry home from a reading in Little Silver, New Jersey. Alone. All the commuters safely in bed. It is so black outside we could be high in the air above the Atlantic. It is raining, but I cannot see the rain for the dark. I can see nothing out the window. Inside the cabin the lights are bright. The reading was a good one. Thirty women in the audience. So many questions. This is the way it goes: a sudden high to give you that bit of hope. "Your masterpiece," one woman said. "I've read all your work and this is it. This is the hit. Trust me. I'm a reader. You've captured perfectly the personal disconnection one feels against the backdrop of the hedonism of the late twentieth century." Appreciated, understood and feted in Little Silver. Well, that was something, anyway.

I cross the black water of the Narrows. Somewhere the Verrazano Bridge looms. Other boats are out there, but I cannot see them. I'm alone on a high-speed ferry with my face pressed to the glass. I could vanish easily, without a trace. Would I attract attention then? In my lap Will Chapman's manuscript languishes. It is good, very good, if long. So fine it has been taking me a long time to read it—in part because I savor it, in part because I am jealous. He will sell the book, and well.

A young man appears. I can see him standing before me, reflected in the window glass. Out of nowhere, he tells me he's nineteen years old. He says it's raining outside and that I'll need an umbrella. He says, "Funny, on nights like these, how you can't see anything." Tells me he's working the ferry while in college, to see him through. "Can I talk to you?" he says eventually.

"Aren't you already?" I ask.

He chuckles, says "Funny." Then, "You're all alone."

"Observant," I say. He laughs again. We're in a bubble of light, just the two of us, in a vast darkness. He pops open a broken umbrella and tells me I can have it.

"Thank you," I say. "Where's the bridge?"

"Out there," he says.

"Oh, really?" Again I press my face to the window, and again I see nothing.

"I figured you might want some company." He wants to talk, so I let him. "This is the last shift of the night. Manhattan means quittin' time. I love this ferry. Do you ride it often?" He looks me in the eye. He's an adorable boy, not too tall, fit, filled with enthusiasm for life that seems to buck from his face, that cocksure innocence that seems to know already how the whole world works, as if on a formula, a recipe. "This boat teaches me everything I need to know. You know that? It does. Amazing how a boat can teach what you need to know. The people that ride this boat, they're the bosses of all those people who take the subways, the buses, the trains. The people here are the rich cats. It costs them seven hundred a month just to ride this boat to work. They come in here looking all tired and frazzled and worn out. And they're impatient and touchy and jumpy. I look at them and I feel sorry for them. And for all their money, they're still like lemmings." He stops and looks at me. "You mind?"

"Of course not."

"Why are you on this ferry, anyway?"

"I gave a reading in Little Silver tonight."

"A reading?"

"I'm a writer."

"You are, are you? Cool. Just like fate," he says with genuine astonishment. He is not an ironic boy. "I've got an idea for a novel, you know? You want to hear it?"

"Sure," I say politely.

"It's about an artist, an artist who's sick of all the posers, really sick of the fraud. You know, the guy who says he's an artist but isn't really, just wants to make a buck. The kind who makes the buck, many bucks, because people believe he's the real thing because as a fraud he has the routine down, knows how to sell himself? Well, the real artist can't stand this type. The real artist is a Pollock or a Johns or damn, a Picasso. The real McCoy. Well, he beats up the frauds, really messes them up—at bars and art parties, in galleries. Anywhere he can. And then he uses their blood to paint his pictures, really beautiful pictures made of fraudulent blood. What do you think?"

"Does he kill the frauds?" I ask.

"Oh, no. No, he definitely doesn't kill them. Not at all. Just their blood he wants. Rips them up a bit, but he doesn't kill them."

"So you're a writer," I say. "Write by day, work the boat by night?"

"No."

That makes me curious. "A painter?"

"I just work the ferry," he says, "to get me through college. I'm going to be a bridge builder someday. I want to build little bridges. Not the big ones. The little ones that get you over streams and such. I'm learning how in college. I want to really know how to make something, something with my hands. Not like all these people riding this ferry. Not like them. The people who ride this thing, they're like cattle at the gate, jostling to be let in. No dignity. Pushing up against the gate, rushing in to get their seats, waiting to do it all over in the morning. Day in, day out. They don't look happy. No smiles on their faces. You know who their bosses are? Their bosses are the ones who get to work in helicopters. That's the top of the crop. These cats think if only they could fly to work in a helicopter, then they'd have arrived. That's what they want. Imagine that." He brushes his hair back with his hand, using the window's reflection as his mirror. He unzips his fly and loosens his pants to tuck his shirt in. "Cattle," he says, and then asks again, "Do you like my idea?"

I
N THE OLDEN DAYS,
as my daughters like to say, fifty, sixty years ago, just after the Second World War, a mortgage was a relatively simple thing. People deposited money in their local banks and accrued a little interest. The banks in turn loaned that money at a higher rate, most commonly for home mortgages. The profit, of course, belonged to the bank. Before the war, mortgages were a bit more complicated. Panic-driven runs on banks caused the banks to create callable loans, meaning that if a bank needed to, it had the right to ask for the loan back for any reason, at any time. This made loans nearly impossible for the working-class family. After the war, all of this changed. The government stepped in with greater force and a housing policy that subsidized a vast portion of home mortgages, making them affordable for almost everyone (except African Americans, because it was believed they would bring down neighborhood property values, thus making loans riskier).

A young couple visits the local savings and loan and presents their financial picture to the loan officer. The husband works in the city, a commuter. The wife stays at home. Yes, they want a family. Oh, they'll be in the house for a while. Three bedrooms, plenty big. The local school district, excellent. Tree-lined street, house after house, mailbox after mailbox, driveway after driveway—the great American suburb. Hedges and emerald lawns, fanning sprinklers, perhaps a basketball hoop in the blacktop driveway, a pool, white clapboard Cape or ranch, picket fence, a pink dogwood, certainly the dream. They are a handsome couple, they will have beautiful children, they'll grow into the house, then out of the house. They'll upgrade—use the equity to get a four-bedroom, perhaps a five-. Then one day the children will be gone. The house in that little suburb, on that dandy street, is too big and worth so much more than they bought it for. Husband and wife smile at each other as if thirty years hadn't just passed—all of those memories and then all of that profit.

Go back thirty years. In front of the loan officer, a little nervous, a little scared (she with her kidskin gloves, he in his fedora), the couple is given the 10.8 percent fixed-rate for thirty years on their $30,000 loan. Husband and loan officer discuss the particulars. Wife quietly feels that she, they, have just made one giant leap up the social ladder. She has always believed in the best.

The best: social and economic capital, generous tax deductions that would allow them to amass wealth, have access to a better education for their children, accrue equity so that they could send their kids to private colleges, allow them to save for retirement, and pass some of the wealth on to their kids. The best: this house would allow them to better their lot in life, thus their children's and their children's children's. And so the cycle went. No wonder the wife perspired as the loan officer studied the documents, asked questions about her husband's salary. Thirty thousand was a stretch. Nervously, she flapped her gloves against her thigh, caught herself, stopped and then caught herself again. This was freedom, their right to own land—a little tract of America. Approved!

The savings and loan held the mortgage. The couple paid their monthly bill to them. They accrued interest, reaped government subsidies, grew wealth—an acceptable form of lending and financial growth. The couple built equity, had a voice in the community, a say in the direction of the local schools. On Saturdays they all converged at the country club—husband and loan officer playing a round of golf. If the husband got in trouble, lost his job, say, he knew where to go, knew the flaws in the loan officer's angle of attack, knew his frustrations with repeated fat shots. Always the husband encouraged and praised the loan officer, because this was the way it worked: someday the husband might need help, and if he and the banker were friends ... On Sundays they congregated at church. They prayed together, week in week out, and so it went. They both grew older, the late seventies arrived, and then everything changed.

Let's be more personal. Remember the Hovs? "Chekhov without the
chek,
" the elderly couple who owned the Victorian cottage in Maine, the one Emma Chapman coveted in order to complete her dreams? In 1951 the Hovs bought a three-bedroom ranch in Realville, New Jersey. Mr. Hov had a tenure-track job at Rutgers—a renowned Swift scholar. They were hoping to start a family. The house cost $24,000. With 20 percent down, they got a thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage of $19,200.

By 1958, the value of the house had risen, giving them considerable equity. So when the cottage in Maine became available that year (Mrs. Hov had been vacationing at Pond Point since childhood) for $20,000, they easily qualified for a second mortgage. By the time Mr. Hov retired, both houses had been paid off in full, owned outright. His Rutgers salary would never have made him rich, but in essence his real estate decisions did. In the fall of 2003, Mrs. and Mr. Hov, together on the phone, called Emma and Will, not long after Will let go of his job to become a full-time novelist, and not long before I saw them again at the fundraiser at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Make us an offer we can't refuse," the Hovs said in unison, the pitch of Mr. Hov's voice a bit deeper than his wife's.

"You're selling!" Emma nearly screeched. Standing in her Tribeca kitchen, with its view of the sailboats on the Hudson, everything chrome and Sub-Zero, she covered the receiver with her hand and screamed with joy and surprise and did a little dance and mouthed to Will, who was also on a phone, their unbelievable good fortune. How was it that everything,
everything,
always worked out so well for them? The house would be hers. Will loved seeing her like this, electricity lighting her up with joy. And now he too would have the time. They could spend entire summers at Pond Point, do a few renovations, make the house more comfortable, sand the floors, change the windows, upgrade the kitchen.