Dear Money (5 page)

Our plane landed at dusk, circling the city. The setting sun cast its spell on Manhattan. Pink clouds floated like scarves above the skyscrapers. Far below, the mad rush of work clogged the streets, the taxi horns, the sighing of buses, the hammering of so much development, cranes reaching to the skies, the voice of New York growing. I wanted to be down there, a part of it, hungry for everything that a life there implied, absorbing the love and intelligence, the urgency that New York exhaled. I was impatient for our life to begin, to take on New York like the immigrant who arrives with nothing and ends up the king of advertising. From the plane's window I could see all the landmark buildings, their tops dominating the sky like grand chateaus.

"I want New York to be ours," I said.

"It already is," Theodor answered.

"No it isn't," I said emphatically. "Not yet, but it will be."

N
OW WE WERE
in Maine, a dozen years later, Emma and I, reading in chairs on the beach in our dark glasses and swimsuits, our legs half hidden in the warm sand. A lazy afternoon, the newspaper flapped about in the gentle breeze and the remains of our picnic lunch dried up in the sun. Seagulls circled overhead, waiting to dart down for a snack. We had brought up the finest stinky French cheeses that Citarella had for sale—Cap Gris Nez and Pont l'Évêque and Époisses and Langres. It was my secret attempt to both impress and stump Will, but of course Perfect Boy knew each cheese and the region from which it came, could pronounce the names perfectly in his perfect French, had toured one of the farms.

Early that morning I'd baked Cuban bread, kneaded it up to the oohs and aahs of the Chapmans. Emma had set up a picnic on the beach, on a green checked tablecloth with wine and an ice bucket and stemmed glasses. She had made lobster salad, the lobsters steamed in a tarragon butter infusion from a
Gourmet
recipe. "But India is the real cook," she kept saying, as if in apology, perhaps in case the salad was not good. But it was just as delicious as she'd intended. Even her girls had devoured it. And I'll confess, I wished my girls had too. They were polite, of course. They poked at the salad but left it at the edge of their plates, and in the sun, the red lobster tail a bright reminder of the limitations of their palates. "Didn't they like it?" Emma had asked. "Can I get them something else? Something more kid friendly? Anything you need, don't hesitate. We can buy it at the store." I'd assured her they'd be fine and so did they, allowing me to pop runny cubes of Epoisses and Langres into their sweet mouths. I hoped they would not spit out the pungent cheese. They didn't. For the most part, they too played the game. They ate well, requested nothing simple—no chicken fingers, French fries or hot dogs. They savored and appreciated and tried, just as we grown-ups did, the delicacies of life, knowing, it seemed, that it was required of them, part of the job description of the New York City child.

The girls played dare with the cold Atlantic, chasing the waves, running away from them: my oldest, Gwyneth (we called her Gwen most of the time), my youngest, Ruby; Emma's oldest, Elisabeth, her youngest, Catherine. They giggled and shouted and carried on. Will and Theodor worked on sandcastles they had started with the girls. I studied them: tanned, fit, stooped over, deep inside their moats, intricate spires rising, bridges spanning towers, secret tunnels, flying buttresses. At some point, Theodor had gone back to the basement of the old house and brought out two shovels, assorted five-gallon buckets and trowels. The sandcastles that slowly emerged as the afternoon progressed attracted beach strollers, who paused to admire them.

I had watched the castles grow over the course of the day, but it was only now that I recognized the ambition in them. I noticed Emma's head rise from her pages to study our husbands too. "Look at the castle builders," she said. "Pretty soon we'll have a local TV crew stopping by for an interview." But we both admired our men. Sand flew from their shovels as they fashioned their towers and dug their moats, sand piling up rhythmically. We could see their backs, the curve of their spines, their hard-won muscles defining their arms.

"In castles, especially, size matters," I said.

"Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny," she said, lifting her right eyebrow.

"Huh?" I said and thought hard for a moment.

"Biology," she reminded, widening her eyes. I'd heard the phrase a thousand times but could never remember what it meant. "You know, the relationship between embryonic development and biological evolution. But really, all it boils down to is two guys in a hole trying to outdig each other."

There was something slightly awry in her explanation, but I laughed anyway, because I could tell she wanted to impress me, and that desire, and its near achievement, drew me closer to her.

Just then a plane swooped down from the sky, a bright yellow, old-fashioned biplane. Emma's girls started to shout, "Win. Win. It's Win coming to visit!" They chased after the plane, running down the beach as fast as they could as if they believed they might catch it. Sunlight spilled over them, bathing them in gold. As they ran, the plane lifted again into the sky, a fabulous yellow bird.

"What a surprise," Emma said. "It's Win." I had heard them talk about Win before, another one of their storied friends, the millionaire Casanova, always with a different bombshell on his arm, but Theodor and I had never met him, and I had paid only vague attention when they discussed him. He was from the side of their life that had nothing to do with us,
their
Tribeca, Wall Street life of big money and big players and big stakes. The girls raced up to their mother and collapsed into her with giggles and excitement.

"You didn't tell us Win was coming," Elisabeth and Catherine said in unison. Though two years separated them, they seemed like twins, extensions of each other, a pair of butterflies fluttering across life. My daughters were not like that. Gwen, strikingly beautiful, was an independent soul, and though she loved Ruby madly she did not need to be entertained by her. Gwen's beauty lay in the intensity of her eyes; they commanded respect and a desire to pay attention. As pretty as Ruby was, she did not have the same intensity, and I believe it made her need more the reassurance of companionship.

"He didn't say he was coming when he called," Emma responded, looking surprised—bewilderment arranged the features of her face into a vulnerable and refreshingly honest composition. With her children she was sincere. Nothing artificial stood between them, and I always admired the glimpses I'd catch into that side of her, which I wanted to pry open and step inside and become a part of, a hope that our friendship would be able to accommodate vulnerability. Then she relaxed, sank back into her chair, and to me said, "We have an unexpected guest."

"An unexpected guest," I repeated. "I love it in stories when the stranger comes to town."

"Yes, it's a good twist," Emma said, "for your new book about this weekend. Don't tell me you haven't been taking notes!"

"I have.
The House at Pond Point: The Emma Chapman Story,
" I said.

"God help us," Emma replied with a smile, pushing her feet farther into the sand in a nervous gesture, as if she liked the notion of becoming a character a little more than she would have wanted to let on. We watched the plane bank to the left and disappear. "He'll be here in about twenty minutes."

"What kind of name is Win?" Gwen asked in that direct way of hers, her hard intelligent eyes fixed on Elisabeth as if to make her prove something. Somehow Gwen had skipped naivete and gone straight to knowledge and logic. Ruby stood by me now, her arms hanging limply, trying to read her sister to ascertain if Win was a positive thing, or if Win might steal something from their lovely afternoon.

"It's Win's kind of name," Elisabeth answered, protectively. Hers was clearly a world in which everything was good and safe and bountiful, and the light that emanated from her eyes was a protected one. Gwen's question challenged something that was beyond Elisabeth's conscious ability to comprehend, but instinctively she got it. She held Gwen with her big eyes, which softly said,
Leave my world alone.

"Let me guess," I said. "Win wins a lot."

"Um-hmm."

"It's Win, darling," Will said, approaching from his sandcastle.

"You know that guy?" Theodor asked, approaching too. He was about to say
That jerkoff in the biplane,
I could tell, but had restrained himself. He held a shovel; sand clung to his legs and arms and cheeks, to his lips even, his hair. The sand had turned his black hair gray. Somehow the sand had not managed to make such a mess of Will. ("It's because I was working harder," he would say to me later. "Hah," I'd respond triumphantly, "so the rivalry does exist.")

"We should bring down some champagne," Will said.

"Absolutely," Emma said and stood up, took her girls in hand and ran off to the house, racing through the pea shoots and the dunes and the sea grass, returning a short while later with champagne flutes, a chilled bottle, the ice bucket refreshed, and Win trailing behind like her prize. He wore goggles around his neck and blue jeans and black combat boots and a leather jacket over a white T-shirt, an ersatz Howard Hughes. He was almost tall and definitely full (indeed a little thick), as if he had enjoyed a few good meals, the kind of person you wouldn't look at twice if he didn't own confidence—and money.

But Win did. You felt it immediately. His I-don't-care attitude lent an aura of self-assurance to each step he made toward us—a swagger, actually, more than a step. His paunch pushed against the white T-shirt; the jeans were too tight. He was not handsome. Not one bit. But it did not matter. He oozed bravado, and that was what got you interested in him—he was a puffed-up little man accustomed to getting just what he wanted, I imagined. Asshole, I thought. His sandy hair was thin and windblown; his face and nose were soft, round, as were his eyes. A platinum watch wrapped his wrist. He reeked of money, new money, recently made and thoroughly enjoyed in the sloppy sort of way that was as much about waste as it was about the possession of some fine
objet.
Aside from the goggles, which themselves were preposterous, he had succeeded in affecting the high-rolling winner I had envisioned when his plane swooped down upon us.

The Chapman girls, dizzy with excitement, tugged at him, competing with each other for his ear. They wanted him to know certain recent accomplishments: Catherine's blue ribbon in the riding show; Elisabeth's first place in the fencing match; Catherine's prize in the summer spelling bee; Elisabeth's plan to take Hindi lessons. "We're getting an Indian au pair," she declared. My, what a lot these girls have accomplished, I thought. But I was more fascinated by their idolatry. Idolatry is born of influence and suggestion. I could intuit that their fascination was Emma's. Win flirted with the girls, scooping them up and heaving them into the air to catch them. I imagined he had tossed them many times when they were tiny and had forgotten that they were now too old and heavy for this. But he did not let on when he caught them. He ruffled their hair and then pulled from the pocket of his leather jacket the small, unmistakable green boxes of Teuscher's truffles. He had brought four boxes, two of them for my girls, which he gave to Elisabeth and Catherine, instructing them to take the chocolates to their friends. A thoughtful asshole, I thought.

As he approached us, he absorbed us: Theodor at work on his castle with our daughters once again, legitimizing the effort; Will, who had been talking about
Generation of Fire
and its publication, about tour plans and anxieties I might be feeling (he was a genuine, warm and caring person, attentive in a way that made me admire him for taking such good care of Emma and their girls, suppressing his own literary ambitions because it would cost his family too much. I almost felt I could be honest around Will, reveal all, money concerns and woes, and that if I did open up, he might try to fix them for me); and me with my legs stretched out,
The Mayor of Casterbridge
resting on them. And then Win was above me, his shadow pressing over me.

"He sells his wife," Win said and offered a smile. It was a bold smile yet warm, and that sent a thrilling rush through me, one of possibility that surprised and appalled me and that I immediately dismissed, embarrassed, almost as if the rush had been visible. I did not like this man.

"What is it with you Wall Street types? You all read. I hadn't thought you read," I responded, trying mightily to conceal that he had knocked me off balance. Will and Emma laughed. They were familiar with my wonderment at the literary intelligence of the Wall Street type.

"How do you know I'm a Wall Street
type?
" he asked, emphasizing the word in order to draw attention to my reduction of him. He stared hard at me, scrutinizing me as if reading me, as if it were that easy for him, as if deciding for himself that he would buy me, should I be offered up for sale.

"I don't know. Arriving in a biplane, the boots," I said. Everyone rose suddenly, sensing tension, and shook hands. Win was not as tall as I had first thought. It was the confidence that lent him height. I, tall for a woman, was almost his height. I looked him in the eye, brown, like a deep dark expensive Swiss chocolate, like the chocolates he had brought for the girls.

"You're a bond trader," I said.

"Mortgages," he replied. "You're a writer."

"Novelist," I said.

"She's publishing a novel in the fall," Emma fairly sang. "We're going to have a huge party for her at the loft and invite hundreds of our friends and they're going to be required to buy dozens of copies of her book and to spread the word to all their friends."

But it was clear from Win's face that he didn't need Emma's help deciding if I was legitimate or not. In an instant he sized me up, formed an opinion, and though I would never reveal that I wanted to know what that opinion was, I did. I had never before been summed up so fast and so blatantly, so audaciously. Emma carried on with her exuberant plans, which seemed to have more to do with Win than with me—as if I were some sort of commodity being traded, though I didn't understand for whom and for what gain. Or perhaps it was just the excitement of the moment.