Dear Money (17 page)

I light candles and a stick of incense, sprinkle the bath water with oils and slip into the tub along with the first chapter of Will's manuscript. Title page:
Never Say Die by William Banes Chapman.
Dedication page:
To Emma Billings Chapman and our daughters, Elisabeth Chapman and Catherine Chapman, my trifecta.
My goodness, how many times does he need to print his last name!

The story is a family saga that opens on a train heading west from Ohio at the turn of the last century—two girls and their mother, impossibly poor, with a trunk filled with beautiful linen dresses. The mother carries a violin and charms their way from third class to first, where the cars are heated and the rich pioneers are plentiful. They are fleeing the girls' father, the mother determined to make it on her own as a schoolteacher in Montana. It is winter, and snowdrifts bring the train to a halt, and the older daughter, Thelma, named for the heroine of a Marie Corelli novel popular at that time, wonders what will become of them. Will paints the cold of the third-class coach, the coal stove in the center of the car. He paints the black trunk with the white linen dresses stiffly pressed, the iron packed in the trunk, the inappropriateness of the clothes for this time of year but the bounty of their promise. You can see the cold feet of the little girls, their shoes worn. Though in third person, the story is Thelma's, and you want to know what becomes of her, of them.

Before I realize it, I've read the thirty-page chapter, which ends with Thelma's mother in the arms of a stranger in first class, kissing him. The train is stuck in a drift, but in first class no one seems to mind. Thelma's mother plays the violin, and all the men's eyes are on her, on her thin dress, too light for this weather; her auburn hair is held in a twist by two carved ivory combs.

A bit overwritten as it is, too many adverbs and adjectives (nothing a good editor couldn't help fix), Will's story has engaged me. I want to read on. I read the pages fast. His style is big and generous and specific all at once. He can't sustain it, I think. He's a banker, I think. He can't be a good writer. It's not possible. Today is my day. I feel selfish. Terribly, cruelly selfish. I drop the pages aside, get out of the tub and call Darwin, hoping for my own good news.

"We've hit a bump in the road," he says.

"A what?" I snap, dripping from the bath.

"A bump," he says. "I made a very amateurish mistake."

"A what?"

"A mistake."

"How?" On a table in a little nook in our bedroom, next to the computer, sits a stack of unpaid bills, rising, like so much water, at the neck, the chin, etc. "How?" I ask again, softly.

"I failed to consider the impact of China. They are world-class producers of coffee now too." I think of all the children, three-year-olds even, at the Chapman girls' school learning Mandarin. They do not drink coffee in China. They drink tea. Calls and strikes and futures and I hadn't understood what we were getting into. I hadn't wanted to understand. The idea was too attractive. Take a thousand dollars and turn it into half a million by "riding the wave."

"What the hell does China have to do with the price of coffee?" I ask. He explains it all to me again, betting on the future price, which is supposed to soar. Various factors position the commodity to rise in value, meaning the supply was to be diminished in record quantities, in a way Deals hasn't seen since the last price explosion for coffee. I'll confess, hearing his calls, the thrill in his voice, the power of possibility, I'd been struck, not by all the money I could have made, but by how vital I had felt at being involved in stakes so entirely outside myself and my imagination. I understood enough to know that I was betting on a disaster that would create an imbalance in supply and demand, and that it was this that would allow us to win. Now I simply feel depleted.

"We can still make it," he offers. "We still have ten days before the option expires. This can turn around yet. Keep your head up."

"Does a turnaround mean a blight in China?" I ask.

"Well," he begins. But I don't want to hear it. He prattles on for a bit, but I don't hear him. I absorb the bills with my eyes. I'll deal with them tomorrow. More balance transfers, more speaking with the operators. "Are there any other balance transfers you'd like to make while you still have the promotional rate?" they'll ask. They're offering money to suckers at 0 percent, betting that they'll default eventually and then be forced to pay the astronomical fees, up to 30 percent, betting as I do on disaster, on unsuspected illness, the desire to keep up with one's neighbors, that irrefutable belief in our own selves to bring in better futures. "Yes," I will respond, joining the crowd.

Deals is mentioning another trick. Corn comes up, $5.545 a bushel. Record high. We're cruising there. (Note: cruising replaces surfing.) "I'll make it up to you. Don't you worry." Bills swamp my mind, surrounded by bushels of corn and a world paved with coffee beans. Novel? Where are all the novels in this picture? I haven't written a word since I put the last to
Generation of Fire.
Don't think about it. Don't think about it. We'll pay off the bills with the money from Theodor's commission, like a ship come in after years at sea. Believe like Theodor. Perhaps I could ask my father for a loan to tide us over. I'll ask Theodor what to do. I walk to the dining room with the phone pressed to my ear, admire the flowers, the callas like great trumpets in so many colors, how gorgeous they look on my table. How will I explain them to Theodor? I'll think of something. "I promise, India," Deals says. "If this doesn't work out, another one will. Corn, darling, ethanol! I'll win for you yet. Don't despair."

"Ethanol, the big joke," I say.

"Jokes don't matter if there's money to be made," he says before ringing off.

Today, October 16. My publication day. My book with its rough-cut pages, stacked one on top of the other in a crate sent from the publisher, gleaming and glossy and new, repeating the title and my name—
Generation of Fire, India Palmer
—heralding and offering as support the unassailable fact of themselves, with their heft and their sheen and their substance. But the fact is, as I've known all along, none of this works. None of it will suffice. This was a shipment, a ship of sorts, that had returned too late to a city that had burned to the ground. No survivors. The books, with their perky blurbs and advance praise, were the unredeemable currency of a country gone bust, an enterprise that had packed up and moved in the night. Sorry. Wrong address.

In the elevator, headed for the street, a woman from the tenth floor enters, laden with bags—in her hands, on her back, on her shoulder, under her eyes. She's a schoolteacher, divorced, her children grown. She looks depleted. "India Palmer," she declares, and I smile as if all is well, couldn't be better. "I cannot put it down. A magnificent read. Thank you."

I thought about it. I thought about picking up the phone, dialing the number that has not changed since I was a girl, my mother responding. The veins of her hand bulging as they do, grasping the receiver, her graying hair in a net, her prim dress neatly arranged. "Oh, India," she'd say, as she always does, as if I am a surprise. "How are the children? I miss my little granddaughters. When are you coming for a visit?" She'd be in the kitchen, a pot of something on the stove. She is always making a stew or a soup. My father, retired now, would be in the living room, in his chair, compounding interest—the same chair where he has always read the paper. The furnishings just as they were when I was a girl—delicate antiques that had no need to be replaced. Never would they waste money on a renovation. My mother prided herself on her timeless style.

"Is Dad there?" I knew better than to go through her. When it came to doling out money, he was the ruler of that household.

"Why certainly, sweetheart. Is everything all right? He's reading the paper and having an afternoon tea." Her voice quavered a bit, knowing that something was wrong. She always knew.

"Everything's fine, Mom."

"Daddy," I'd hear her call. "It's India, for you."

"What does she want?" he'd respond, not in a mean way, rather with curiosity.

"It's her publication day." And then all the words would become muffled as Mom covered the receiver with her hand.

"Hello, India," he'd say in that way of his that had the singular ability to conjure the entire subcontinent and then, too, to conquer it.

Be bold: "I have to pay the tuition for the girls," I'd say directly, without camouflage. "We'll have the money soon, as soon as Theodor is paid for his commission. This is just a loan. I'll pay you interest." A pause. The inevitable and enormous pause into which would fall all of my father's concern for me, the fear of what it meant to be an artist, the inevitable reckoning that he always knew would come.

"I warned you about this," he would respond. I could see that temple vein of his, flaring as it does. His receding hairline making his face appear much bigger and more imposing.

"Daddy," Mom would call. She always called him Daddy. I'd hear her in the background, her feeble attempt to interject herself.

"You got yourself into this mess, you can get yourself out. If there is one thing I know about my daughter, it is that she is smart. And I know I'd be doing you no favors if I came and scooped you out of a mess. You're smart. Smart. S.M.A.R.T. And I paid for you to attend one of the country's finest universities. You can do it." Pause. "I do believe in you, India." Thrown in with a warmth, particular to him, that always managed to soften the blow. He'd never tire of his lessons. Yes, I knew the answer, and so there was no need to call.

I fell in love with Theodor because he was a dreamer, and a dreamer, it almost goes without saying, was one who believed. He believed in himself, in his art, in me, my art. He believed in the artistic life, the sacrifices that choice entailed. He believed in them still. It was I, of course, who had changed. I had moved and left no forwarding address. I was the one who had fallen and left Theodor behind. As I rode the subway downtown toward 59th Street, I was eager to get off and meet a man I hardly knew. I wondered what would happen if I did get off; if I walked along Central Park South, dark now at 7:30
P.M.;
if I rode the elevator up to the restaurant perched above the park like an aerie. At night the restaurant wasn't nearly as romantic as at dusk, the park a black void fringed by the lights of so many buildings. But romance was unequivocally in the invitation, in the flowers: bold, treacherous, daring romance. Would he be sitting there waiting for me? Would he kiss my hand, my cheek, my lips? What would he do with me if I were to come? Would he marry me?

Yes, I did think that, like a schoolgirl I thought that, the natural consequence of a date with a boy. If I got off the subway, we'd have a first date. We'd ask all those questions you ask when getting to know each other, about college and books and food and trips around the world. The stories making people of us. He'd be the kind to take me on a carriage ride through the park, slipping the driver extra money, lots and lots of it, so the driver would go off course, deeper into the dark park, farther away from ordinary souls. I wanted to get off the subway. I wanted to feel what it was like to have worry lifted, stripped away like so much old varnish. It would be so easy. One foot in front of the other. 79th Street, 72nd Street, 66th Street, 59th Street. The intoxication of the new, the blank slate, the tabula rasa that I love so well. The new dress, the new page, 50th Street, 42nd, there was still time to change my mind, 34th. At 14th Street I switched to the Canarsie Line for Williamsburg, aching at my lack of daring, knowing that if Win was there he'd have enough ego to handle my standing him up.

Walking from the subway to Theodor's studio, I passed a few young hipsters in their skinny dark jeans, a young woman carrying a guitar case, still somehow pioneers, though I knew the real estate had skyrocketed here too. Otherwise it was quiet and cold. Leaves swirled about with plastic bags, catching in the branches of trees. Telephone and electrical wires webbed a canopy overhead. At the end of the street the East River lapped at the pavement. A boat, lit up, floated by. The darkened Domino sugar factory hogged the sky.

Theodor, his hair flying this way and that, dressed in a T-shirt, black jeans and black boots, wearing a leather apron, held daisies at the door of his building: industrial, red brick. How did he find daisies in October? Our wedding bouquet. We'd been married thirteen years. Suddenly I wanted to tell him everything about the day. He scooped me into his arms, and even though he was in short sleeves I felt warm.

"Daisies?"

"Congratulations," he said, and we slipped inside. A long bright corridor led to stairs, which we climbed for three flights. I had not been here in a while. On each floor there was only one studio. This was the kind of building that was fast being converted into condominiums. Paint chipped from the walls in big patches, bare bulbs dangled from the ceilings, Art School Redux. I could hear other people at work in the building. A hammer, a table saw, the shuffling of feet, furniture being moved. No windows graced the stairwell.

"Your book is brilliant. You're brilliant. I read it again today."

"Really?" My voice undisguised and a bit squeaky. Praise from this man, who was still slogging away on the margins, meant everything to me. As long as he believed in me I'd be able to keep going. I told him about the schoolteacher's compliment.

"That's what it's all about," he said. "One person at a time."

I told him about my day, seeing Kathy Park, the bikini-clad skin sanders. I wanted to tell him about Win.

We were at the door now. It was slightly ajar, well lit inside. The light cast shadows on Theodor's face, making him look older and more worn than he actually was. "You're worried," he said, studying me.

Theodor had no idea how intricate the web of bills and debts and desires and gambles really was. If I explained it to him, I'd exhaust him with the complexities. Often I wondered what he'd do if I died, how he'd reckon with the mess I left behind. He never knew when his checks came in, went out, and for what. I'd built a protective wall for him. We were in this together, yet I didn't want to trouble him with the mess because I didn't want to lose control. His solution would be to move. Like Kathy, he'd suggest we live somewhere we could afford. I didn't want to hear that the children had to be taken out of private school. I didn't want to hear that I couldn't buy that dress or these shoes, afford Gwyneth's doctors whom we'd come to love. And what neighborhood could we afford in this city—or beyond? Our rent-stabilized apartment made it impossible to move—not to mention my teaching job. A good teaching position was hard to replace, here or elsewhere. I was trapped. But if I told Theodor all this, he would not worry; he'd find a way to adjust so that we could afford our lives as artists. Never would I be able to engage him in the worry it seemed to take to maintain our lives as I wanted them to be.