The Chocolate Money (30 page)

“Let’s go back, sweetheart. It’s getting cold.” We are bundled in sweaters and jeans, but they are no longer adequate against the chill. I start to cry again when he calls me sweetheart. It seems deliberate, directed specifically at me, not a generic moniker that’s less intimate than my name.

“You can tell me everything back at the aparthouse. I’m not going anywhere. Actually, I’m taking you with me.”

I will. Tell him everything. It’s about time somebody, some other person besides Babs and me, knew.

We go back to the aparthouse and Lucas says he’ll cook dinner.

“I’m not much in the kitchen, but I can always manage pasta.”

I’m not really hungry, still really spent from the day, but go along with him anyway, showing him where the pots are and setting the table. When all is ready, we sit across from each other. Given the circumstances, the air in the aparthouse is not light enough to carry small talk, and we eat for a while in silence, as if we’re on an awkward date.

I use the time to look at him closely. With his blond curly hair and brown eyes, he looks nothing like Babs, or even Mack. His hands are large and he doesn’t have delicate fingers. I can easily imagine him holding big paintbrushes, pulling swaths of color across his canvases. When he reaches for his glass, I notice he is left-handed, like me. He’s handsome, but not in an obvious way. You would have to get to know him to see this. But because I, too, am understated, easily overlooked, I understand his looks at once.

We continue to eat, and as nice as it is in many ways to not be alone, to have a grownup on my side for once, I start to feel angry. Why do I get his help only at the end? He might think this is when I most need it, but of course it really isn’t. Why didn’t he come more than that one time and stand up more forcefully to Babs over the years? If she told him not to, couldn’t he at least have come up to Cardiss with Poppy and taken me out to lunch? Is that too much to ask? It would have promised nothing but given me so much.

Finally, emboldened by these thoughts, I decide to talk to him about the One Big Thing. I don’t know if Babs told him or not, but I have to know the specifics. All of them. I pick up my wineglass and take a sip before proceeding. Lucas seems lost in his pasta, but fuck it, I think. Why should I give him time to check his fly, smooth down his hair, and get ready?

“Lucas.” I look at him intently and say in a low voice, “I know.”

He stops chewing and meets my eye. Stares. At least he doesn’t insult my intelligence and respond,
Know what?

Instead, he says, “Did Babs tell you?”

“No, not really. She gave me your Latin medallion from Ryder and I didn’t follow through on the information on it until I was leaving Cardiss. I was afraid to know. I also didn’t want to piss Babs off. I always thought she gave it to me as a dare.”

Lucas’s face is slack, taking it all in. At last he says, “We always promised we would keep it a secret. Of course, the whole thing was an accident. I had had too much to drink, and you know Babs liked to push the envelope. When she told me, I never thought she would have you. The whole thing was just so indecent. In addition to our being cousins, I was married to Poppy with JoJo on the way.

“I thought she would take care of it, figured she did not want children yet. But she was furious at me and not only had you but had her tubes tied, so you would be the only one. We would always be linked by this, and her lack of fertility would be all my fault. Not that I thought she especially wanted more kids.”

“So you wanted Babs to get rid of me?” I want to hear him say it again, not sure he realizes the implications for me sitting across the table for him.

“Well . . . at first, of course. But once you were born . . .”

“You loved me as your own and were upset Babs wouldn’t let you see me.”

“Well . . . no, not exactly, but I did think about you a lot and wonder how you were doing with Babs.”

“Gee, thanks. Did you tell Poppy? Does she know? Especially since I will be coming to live with you?”

“No. Look, Bettina, it’s complicated.”

“Oh, right. For me or you? Look, I don’t expect some kind of weepy reunion between us. I don’t really even want an apology. Babs certainly never told me to expect those. I’m not sure what the fuck I want. Don’t worry, I’m not going to call you Daddy. I’m not going to tell anyone. Just don’t feel sorry for me. Maybe someday you will get to know me and regret it, but if not, I don’t really care.”

Lucas tries to reach out and take my hand. I pull away and stand up. I throw my napkin down on the table and tell Lucas, “Maybe you could do the dishes. That would be just great.”

I go back up to Babs’s room, where I decide to spend my last night at the aparthouse before leaving for New York the next morning. My whole body is shaking. I didn’t really mean most of what I said to Lucas, but his opening gave me no choice. I am through with begging, trying to prove to someone that I am worthy of love. I will just go to live with him in New York, put that idea away, and pretend I am an orphan with a dead mother and a lot of money.

I change into one of Babs’s nightgowns, put on her Raffles robe, crawl into bed, and fall asleep quickly. All the emotions of the evening have drained me, left me spent.

Later that night, I feel a soft touch on my shoulder. I slowly open my eyes: Lucas. He leans down and kisses my cheek. I can’t help it; I start to cry. Hard. He tries to catch my tears with his hands. We say nothing, and after about ten minutes, he leaves.

Poppy fusses over me when I get to New York. She’s constantly hugging me and always gets up to make breakfast for JoJo and me. She takes me to Saks to round out my wardrobe and never once comments on my body.

I find her gestures somewhat earnest and naive, as if she thinks I cannot do such things on my own. But I know she is trying to accommodate my arrival in her life. Thankfully, she says nothing about my smoking. She must think it is my way of grieving, my way of staying connected to Babs. I don’t disabuse her of this idea, even though my smoking is not symbolic; it no longer has anything to do with anyone but me.

I go to Brearley, then Williams. I make friends, but they are always the quiet, bookish type that Meredith would have made fun of. Despite her ebullience when I got kicked out, I still miss her. Even though I have a clean slate to reinvent myself at these prestigious schools, I never manage to transform myself into the bitchy blond girl who people fight to be friends with, who makes her own rules, no matter how mutable they are. I ask myself
What would Meredith do?
when confronted with difficult situations, but I can never bring myself to execute the solutions I come up with. Meredith’s is a petty form of power, I know, but I still aspire to have it. I even have the absurd notion that someday she will seek me out. Maybe she even included a tiny picture of me on her senior yearbook page. I know this is an idea I have made up, so I never allow myself to check.

My biggest regret, however, is Cape. I look for him among the boys at Williams. Many of them resemble him, and I often catch my breath as they pass. I always tell myself that I stumbled on him once, so why not twice? But of course, he’s not there.

I’
M NOW TWENTY-SIX
and still live in New York. The chocolate money is at last mine outright. I buy myself a two-bedroom prewar on East Seventy-second Street, with two fireplaces, built-in bookcases, and a walk-in closet. I have it professionally decorated. The colors I pick are muted, and despite the cost, the result is subdued, not ostentatious. I anonymously give $200,000 to Cardiss to endow a prize for a student who produces the most fearless writing. Despite the fact that I was kicked out, any anger I had has transformed itself into sentimentality and a reverence for the kind of things they teach there.

The truth is that spending the chocolate money scares me. I want to have a normal life, if such a thing exists. I don’t want to join the tribe of the smug few who do nothing but shop and party. Of course, in New York, unlike Chicago, fortunes don’t seem to be such a big deal. I see the last names of kids from Cardiss plastered on important monuments: Rockefeller Center, the Frick Collection, the Sackler Wing at the Met; even on such everyday products as Heinz ketchup. Somehow, I never noticed that there were other people at Cardiss besides me who had the same kind of money. I have the idea of starting a support group with them in order to figure out how these kids handle their money. But deep down, I know that being rich does not count as a real problem, just a neurosis some people have, and I abandon the project.

I work at a literary journal,
Blue Sea Press,
and make sixteen thousand dollars a year. I get this job based solely on my college GPA and major in English lit. I’ve never worked before and have no references. I want to “pass,” so I accept my meager paychecks, act like they are the only thing getting me through the month. The truth is that sometimes I leave them in pockets or at the bottom of my backpack and don’t even bother to look for them. I always wear ripped jeans or clothes from thrift stores. I also have Converse sneakers, like Lucas. These are perfect, as they seem to belie the possibility that I have ever had any exposure to real fashion.

One day on my lunch break, I’m walking down Madison Avenue, peering in the store windows. I never go in, but the dresses on the mannequins remind me of Babs. I take note of the dresses she would buy and the ones she would hate. This is my way to feel that she’s not gone for good, merely on an extended trip somewhere. I know she would tell me to
Go the fuck inside
and buy some real clothes. That my downtrodden outfits are
a goddamn embarrassment.
But I know no one would wait on me, the way I am dressed, and this protects me from any temptation I have to emulate her, and allows me to hold on to the idea that I am now my own person. Can dress however I want.

I’m absorbed in my activity when someone calls my name. I hesitate before turning around. Is it a writer who has been rejected from
Blue Sea Press
? A boy from Williams who would force me to make awkward conversation? I still have not really mastered small talk with people my age.

I do a slow about-face. Now that Babs is gone, things are almost never as bad as I fear. When I see who it is, I freeze. Color heats up my cheeks like a fever.

It’s Cape.

He catches up to me quickly, still tall, taking long strides.

“Hey, Bettina,” he says, leaning in for a hug.

I pull away. After all these years, I’m still mad at him. The cold way he returned the medallion. The fact that he got to stay. That we were never really in it together after all.

“How are you?” He’s not at all deterred by my backing away.

“Good, good,” I say, but I am still so shocked I can barely manage more than a whisper.

“I heard your mom died.” Cape says this so affably I start to wonder if he remembers what happened after all.

I nod.

“I’m really sorry, Bettina.” This time he modulates his tone, genuinely sorry or just feigning it, I can’t tell.

“Listen,” he continues, “do you have time for lunch?”

I do want to hear what he is doing, but I should be getting back to work. Although I know that I can call in with some lame excuse; that’s just the kind of place Blue Sea is.

“Sure,” I say. Just this side of friendly.

“We can go to Café Montalembert. It’s right around the corner.”

Montalembert is Mad Ave. fancy: starched white tablecloths, tiny glass vases with white roses, real silverware. I’m not especially bothered by my grubby clothes. In New York, only tourists and people who consider the menu expensive worry about dressing up. I order a Pellegrino and orange juice, and Cape gets a scotch. I think it’s too early in the day to be drinking, but unlike Babs, I never comment on what other people order. And after all, what do I care? This boy does not belong to me, and never has.

Sitting across the table, I finally am able to take all of him in. He looks mostly the same: tousled brown hair, blue eyes, perfectly straight nose, the kind Jewish girls break their own for. He is wearing chinos, a pink-checked shirt, blue blazer. I look to see if he still bites his nails and I notice he’s wearing Mack’s watch, and, more surprising, a wedding ring. Now I don’t want to talk about where we have gone to college, where we work. I just want to get to the story of the present.

“So, you’re married,” I begin.

“Yes,” he answers, reaching to twist the ring, seemingly needing to touch it to remind himself this is true.

“Who?” I say, not adding
is the lucky girl.

“No one you know.”

Why is he withholding this? Isn’t this the lunch where he reiterates that I’m not worthy of him?

“Oh,” I say lamely.

“Listen, Bettina, I owe you an apology.”

At last. “For what?” There are so many things he could say he was sorry for, I wonder which one he will pick.

“For blaming my father’s affair on you.”

So that’s what he wanted to tell me. Absolve me for something I didn’t even do.

“Thanks, Cape,” I say drily. “But I don’t really see how a ten-year-old could have orchestrated an affair between two consenting adults. I might have been wrong to tell you about it, but some kid from Grass Woods might have shown up at Cardiss and filled you in anyway. And that kid wouldn’t have loved you like I did.”

Cape says nothing, but looks uncomfortable. I know the word
love
has thrown him. He is probably still drawn to women who belittle him, like Meredith.

“Anyway, Cape, why did you decide to apologize now? I don’t get it.”

He leans forward, eager to speak.

“Six months ago, I went to a party at the Yale Club.”

The Ivy League. So Cape must have made good on the promises of the Cardiss trial: tutored kids, upped his grades, played superlative lacrosse.

“It was two months before my wedding to Lolly.”
As in lollipop?
I want to say, the way Holly might have. But I know it is probably short for Lucille, Isolde, or something equally pretentious. But in the end, I don’t really care.