Dear Money (9 page)

I did not tell Theodor that Win had called.

P
USSY JONES WAS
the first Jones. Yes, we all know the Joneses. They are the anti-Joads. Before marriage, as it happens, Edith Wharton was Pussy Jones, daughter of George Frederic Jones, a "gentleman," with inherited social position and wealth from shipping, banking and real estate adventures gone wildly well. He was a man of leisure who took his family to live in Europe, who owned property in Manhattan and Newport. It is said that his name and lifestyle (and the ensuing envy of others) gave rise to the expression "keeping up with the Joneses," which the cartoonist Arthur R. Momand, known as Pop, mined in his satirical column. In 1913 he created a cartoon series entitled
Keeping Up with the Joneses.
It ran for twenty-eight years and chronicled the comedy of American striving, which did not end, of course, with the closure of a comic strip.

Of my students I always asked, "What does your character want? Your character must want something. The desire will make us curious, make us want to follow the character on a quest, whether the outcome is successful or not." I had my students read a passage from
An American Tragedy
in which Clyde's girlfriend, Hortense, wants a coat. She will stop at nothing to get the coat that, simply by her owning it, will change her life. For twenty pages she schemes and manipulates and bribes, coming up with strategies until the coat is hers—twenty riveting pages that pursue a coat.

The thing about a writer is that want is part of the job description. Without want, a writer is nothing. A writer must want to sit alone at a desk for days on end. A writer must close out the world and wait. The reward is the chuckle, the quiet laugh that only the writer hears alone at her desk. She is laughing at her own work, her own imagination nailing a particular phrase because she knows, as one just knows some things, that the phrase, the scene, the story will make others laugh. Who among us, no matter her trade, has not made something bigger, at some point, simply by virtue of sticking with it? She must want this even while knowing that few others will care.

But want, as we say, has a problem with boundaries. It bleeds. What young writer, sitting at her desk, doesn't also crave to be in the world? The blue day, the summer heat, they pull her outside, toward shops and cafés, toward the land where life is real and filled with temptation and expensive desire: the cappuccino, the magazine, the taxi, the pretty dress. Want proliferates with age: she wants a baby, then another, then a babysitter to go with them, a house, a car, a good school for the kids, lessons, camps, more of those nice dresses, perhaps a better neighborhood to settle in. She'll become practical, money for retirement, stocks, perhaps some bonds. She'll want theater tickets, to dine with her friends, an office, books, a vacation, a new wedding band, another bedroom. On it will go from one thing to the next.

What did I want? I wanted to know what it felt like to be able to have whatever I pleased, to cast aside worry. I wanted to partake of the dessert tray. I wanted to invite people for dinner without worrying about how I'd pay for the wine. I even wanted to get a parking ticket—$115—and not have it feel catastrophic. I wanted an apartment that was mine. I wanted to be able to want the house in Maine, have it be within my means. I wanted to see Win again. I wanted to be desired again by someone new. I wanted to feel the gaze of someone's curiosity. I listened to Win's message several times and saved it.
Prose so sumptuous you live inside it.
(You could tell what that sentence wanted.) I wanted everything.

We had come home from Maine to discover a leak in the ceiling above our bed. Water from the storm that had draped Connecticut in a glistening beauty on our return had penetrated the roof of our apartment building and dripped through the ceiling and onto, and then into, our mattress. The plaster above the bed buckled, an enormous gray and sweating welt. Flakes of dried paint fell softly to the bed like snow. I will confess, I was delighted. This is what made our life affordable: our ceiling was constantly falling in. Hurray, I thought, but didn't say it. We lived on the top floor, and for fifteen years the various landlords who'd bought our building tried to have the roof repaired, but they did so on the cheap: when a big storm blew through, leaks sprouted. As a result, we had an abatement from the city, making our already inexpensive rent even cheaper. We lived practically for free. So, though I found the rain irritating, and though I feigned upset with the super—"When will this ever be fixed? Do you know what we live with? And we have young children"—I secretly prayed for storms. My ears perked up when the news forecasted the worst season for hurricanes in decades. "They're going to roll in like Frisbees, drenching the region. There will be potential for catastrophic flooding," said the weathermen. "Excellent!" Theodor would say, catching me before the TV screen.

Theodor taped plastic over the damage. Calls from the landlord promised it would be mended. But it was the leak that offered me relief as I lay in bed. And there I thought of Win. I wanted him to make me blush. I wanted to see those brown eyes as he said magnificent things about my work. I couldn't sleep.

"What is it?" Theodor asked at last. It was 2
A.M.

In the dark of our bedroom, it was time for a little truth salvo. "My desire to write has been swallowed," I said.

The streets outside were quiet. I wanted to confess that I was so consumed I was imagining a life with a rich husband. I thought of Becky Sharp and Undine Sprague, the force of their wills to get exactly what they wanted. I thought of Scarlett O'Hara. Who else? Lily Bart? She decidedly did not get what she wanted in the end. Who would those women be today? The religious nut who wandered the streets every night chanting hallelujah; even he had gone to his bed. The ceiling fan rustled the plastic. "I have absolutely no ideas anymore. I'm consumed." Theodor turned in the bed. Outside, it was beginning to rain again. The city's light sneaked in at the edges of the shades.

"I'm tired, darling."

"But I'm consumed," I said.

"Sleep and you'll feel better."

"Please," I said. I wondered what Win was doing right now. Theodor shifted again, toward me. He stroked my hair. His fingers felt good against my scalp. "You don't understand," I said. "I've been blown off course." I thought of all the female writers I admired when I was starting out. Where were they now? How many had kept publishing? I could think of only a handful, and all of them had big-salaried husbands with big-paying jobs.

Was it motherhood? Did motherhood make me lose my drive? He was still stroking my hair. I'd had this conversation with him in many different forms. I wanted him to speak. It made me mad that he didn't speak. I sat up sharply. He was in this too. I wanted him to care. "I hate that I love our leaky ceiling. I don't want to pray for storms, especially if you can't be bothered to. Why should I be doing it all alone?"

"India," he said and sat up with me. He tried to pull me close to him, but I wouldn't let him.

"We're nearly forty."

"We're artists."

"I hate that excuse."

"Don't do this to yourself."

"Why do we like to keep our writers poor? Men, women alike, bankrupt, dying without a
farthing.
Women are just smarter. They give up earlier because they can turn their attention to their kids." I thought for a moment of Gwen and Ruby—all the magazine articles I had written over the years to pay for April, their nanny. "I want to become a full-time mother. I want to take care of the kids. I want you to make the money for a while and let me take care of the kids. I want to plan their days, help them with their homework, do their laundry, clip their nails, meet other mothers in the park and complain about things like bad child care and how long the renovations are taking, the slow contractors, the food served at school—too many sweets, not organic enough."

"Please, my love."

"Please what?"

"You don't want that."

"How do you know?"

"Because I married an artist."

"You're just saying that so you don't have to take responsibility. I do want that, and that's not all I want. I am consumed by want. It's eating me alive. I'm just one big mouth."

"It's a good thing you have a beautiful mouth."

"Don't make light of this," I said. "I'm serious."

"I'll be serious too. I am being serious," he said in a stern, serious tone. He pulled me into him again, and this time I surrendered. "Let's hear everything you want."

"Bad things," I said. "Things we don't need. Things I'm not supposed to want because I'm supposedly an intellectual. Intellectuals don't want things like I do."

He reminded me of Carlyle Smedes, nominated for the London Fucking Bridge Book Award for International Literary Fucking Greatness. "Prada glasses, Prada watch. What do you want?" he asked. "You can whisper," he whispered, "so that no one hears."

"A butler," I whispered.

He laughed. "And a chauffeur?"

"That too," I said. "What a wonderful idea."

"And what else?"

"No, seriously," I said.

"Okay, seriously," he said.

"I want to be able to pay April without worrying about where the money is coming from." A maid just for me, I thought. Someone who asks nothing but anticipates my needs before I can. The mother of a friend of Ruby's once said that to me, and I'd been horrified. She'd said, "I want my staff to anticipate every need so that I don't have to know what it is that I need." What a relief. I wanted to be free of wanting, rid of needing—have someone else do all of that for me. This woman, she'd carried on, "I pay my maid well. She wears a maid's uniform. I treat her nicely, give her extravagant gifts, but she knows the line. The boundaries are clear. She's my maid and I'm her boss."

"Okay," said Theodor. "What else?"

"A room, an empty room," I said. Another mother I knew had an empty room in her Park Avenue apartment (Ruby's preschool had been on the East Side). The room was completely bare and she had no intention to furnish it. Her apartment was enormous, with an internal intercom system installed so she could find her kids. Ten windows faced Park Avenue and ten windows faced the cross street. In all of them hung the same drapes so it would be clear from the street that all twenty windows belonged to the same owner. She wanted the room to remain empty simply because many people in New York wanted to have just one more room. She wanted to have the room that everyone wanted.

"Interesting," he said.

"I want to hoard space," I said.

"And?"

"A house in Southampton."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"You mean all the other stuff is all right but not a house in Southampton?"

"The traffic," he said.

"We'll take a helicopter."

"All right, then."

Another mother had had a tea party and invited me to come as the entertainment. I was to discuss what it was like to be a writer and a mother, because the mothers were curious about that; they really wanted to know. How did I
keep it all together and still find time to express my creative side?
On her white plush couches in her enormous living room I spoke to her East Side friends—all the lovely ladies, their faces had been rearranged so they all looked the same.

"What is it you'd like to discuss?" I asked the hostess as we sipped our tea after the lunch (a small piece of chicken on a bed of frisée with a spritz of lemon—"They won't eat it anyway," the hostess had said, "they're all on diets"). Her name was Janice and she was not as thin as the others and she had not rearranged her face. She was wholesome and full-figured, and I found her beautiful. Janice brought silence to the din with a clink of her glass and announced that I'd be happy to speak about anything.

"Well, not anything," I said and smiled, trying to interest them in me with my humor. They all stared at me politely with their lips pursed, and the silence remained for a spell. "At our children's school a teacher was just fired for using details of his teaching experience as fodder for his fiction," one woman said. "Most of the students were incensed by the firing. Freedom of expression, you know. Artistic prerogative."

"I haven't read the book," said another lady, "but Balinka Smith gave it a terrible review in the paper."

"Balinka Smith hates everything. She certainly helps you weed out the possibilities," said another lady.

"She's usually right."

"What's your position, Ms. Palmer?"

"On Smith or the book?" I said, chastened by these women. "I don't know the book."

"It's about spoiled New York City prep school kids who spend wildly, consume everything and are indulged by their overworked, high-strung, competitive parents, who are also all busy having affairs."

"Sounds delightful," I said. I thought of the chocolate Jesus from so many years ago. "If it is good," I said, "isn't that what matters?" And then they were speaking among themselves again, about the teacher, the school, the students' campaign to get the teacher rehired. Art and its creation, as a subject, was over. I made my way to Janice to say goodbye, coming in on, "He must get it for you. Stake your ground. Do not back down. You deserve it."

"What?" I asked, curious. What was it that this woman deserved?

"A house in Southampton" was the reply. "She's earned it." I pictured a big man alone at a big desk, writing checks. I pictured Theodor in his studio, carefully soldering gold to silver, placing a jewel between prongs. Deserve? What is it we all deserve? Long before, Theodor and I had traveled to Sri Lanka. A tout on a beach there had tried to sell me marijuana. I'd declined the offer, and he'd been mad that I rebuffed him. He looked at me with his harsh, liquid eyes (they seemed to want to spill from his face with fury) and said, "You deserve to be a Sri Lankan. In your next life you will be. Wait and see." And then he'd lumbered off down the beach.

Back in our bed on that rainy night, with the rain quickening its pace:

"And?" Theodor asked.

And we played this game for a while. I knew why he was doing it. He wanted to push me back to the other side, to the artist's hunger for the next trick up her sleeve, the next flash of language on the page. This was how he dealt with the unpredictability of our lives, to keep pushing forward and to use everything as a means, as he did with the scraps of metal he'd scavenged off the street. Beauty was everywhere, even in things that were ugly, and the alchemical desire to transform things was indeed a respectable fuel.