The Wrong Kind of Money (10 page)

“Make it now, I said. I want to watch you make it.” He hurls the heavy Manhattan phone book onto the bed beside her. “Look up their number and
make that call.”

She stifles one final sob, blows her nose into a Kleenex, wipes her eyes, and rolls over on her side and reaches for the telephone book.

4

A Telephone Call

“Your roast is perfect, dear,” Hannah Liebling is saying to Carol at the table. “Just the way I like it. Pink, but not bleeding. And yes,” she says to Mary, who is passing the lamb roast a second time, “I do think I will have a second slice.” She helps herself from Mary's outstretched platter.

“When I heard you were going to be late, I had Edna take it out of the oven,” Carol says. “So it wouldn't overdo.” And yes, she thinks, her table looks perfect, too—the Spode, the Baccarat wineglasses, the lighted candles in their heavy silver candlesticks, the flatware freshly polished by Mary just this afternoon, even though Ector has clearly had some trouble selecting which fork to use and left his dinner fork in the bowl in which the carrots were being passed. Mary quickly removed it, replaced it with a serving fork, and gave him another dinner fork. The yellow tulips in the centerpiece are drooping gracefully, just so, and Carol dares to hope that the rest of the evening will go well.

“I'm glad to see you using the Sachs family silver,” Hannah says. “You're taking such good care of it, too, just the way my mother used to do. My mother always said that good silver should be polished every day.”

Bill Luckman lifts a dessert fork and balances it between his thumb and forefinger. “This is German silver, isn't it, Mrs. Liebling?” he says.

“Indeed it is. In my mother's day, German silver was considered to be the best.”

“How'd you know that?” Ector asks him from across the table. “How'd you know it was German silver?” His tone is almost aggressive, and the two young men, who are roughly the same age, exchange cool looks. This is the first acknowledgment that Bill has made of Ector's presence at this gathering.

“A Yale education, I suppose,” Bill Luckman says, a bit drily.

“Huh!”

“Bill has written a book about Yale,” Melody says, trying to be helpful.

“The traffic was really terrible coming down Park Avenue,” Hannah says. “Bumper to bumper. I told my driver he would have done better to come down Third. There are more lanes, and the lights are synchronized.”

“Excuse me,” Bill says, “but isn't Third Avenue an uptown street?”

There is a little silence, and then Cyril says, “There is one thing you should know about our mother, Mr. Luckman. If she wants Third Avenue to run downtown, even for a few minutes and for just a few blocks, she will pay to have it done.”

There is polite laughter at this, and then Hannah says, “And there was the most awful-looking group of young Negroes, with the strangest hairdos, who came right out into the street, and were jumping over cars, including ours. Right on Park Avenue! This isn't the same city I knew when I was growing up.”

“But Mother has her pistol, and her can of Mace,” Cyril says. “Our mother is always armed to the teeth, ready to do battle in any contingency.”

There is more polite laughter. “New York just isn't the city it used to be,” his mother says. “It just isn't. It's all those Negroes who came up from the South after the war.”

Carol reaches out and touches her mother-in-law's wrist, and glances toward the kitchen door where Mary, who is black, is emerging to pass the vegetables a second time.

“It's true. That's what it is,” Hannah says.

“Of course Mother is referring to the
first
war,” Cyril says. “The Battle of Ardennes. Now, that was my idea of a battle. No, thank you, Mary,” he says to the vegetable plates, one in each hand.

Now there is a little lull in the conversation.

“Beautiful tulips,” Melody says.

“Tulips in midwinter.”

“They force them in hothouses.”

“Delicious roast. Be sure to tell Edna.”

Bill Luckman clears his throat. “You're all so kind to include me in this little family gathering,” he says.

“Of course,” says Cyril, “it would be more of a family gathering if Aunt Bathy were here.” He winks slyly at his brother, and Noah and Carol exchange glances down the length of the table.

“Aunt Bathy?” Bill says. “What a charming name. Who is Aunt Bathy?”

“My baby sister,” Hannah says. “Her name is Bathsheba, after my father's grandmother, but we've always called her Bathy.”

“Bathsheba? Wasn't Bathsheba an adulteress in the Bible?”

“Yes, but she and David repented, and the Lord forgave them. She gave birth to Solomon, whom the Lord loved.”

“Of course, you're absolutely right,” he says.

“Bathy is what my mother called her change-of-life baby. She's seventeen years younger than I am.”

“With that much difference in your ages, she must have seemed more like your daughter than your baby sister, Mrs. Liebling.”

“Well, perhaps. More like a little doll I could play with. My father used to call us his three graces—my big sister Settie, my baby sister Bathy, and me.”

“And why isn't she here tonight?” he asks.

There is a little silence around the table, and then Cyril says, “Let's just say that some people in the family see Aunt Bathy, and some people don't.”

“I see her all the time,” Hannah says. “She lives in Brooklyn Heights. Bathy's tragedy was that she never married. And she was the prettiest of all of us. But she just never seemed able to find Mr. Right.”

“Or perhaps Mr. Right turned out to be Mr. Wrong,” Cyril says.

“She just never found her one true love,” she says.

“Granny's one true love wasn't Grandpa,” Anne says with a giggle. “Right, Nana Hannah?”

“Anne, whatever are you talking about?”

“You said so in the car.”

“I said no such thing!”

“No, but I could tell it was true when you changed the subject, Nana Hannah.”

“Anne, don't tease your grandmother,” Carol says.

“What's this?” Ector asks as Mary places a finger bowl on the silver service plate hi front of him.

“It's called a finger bowl,” Bill Luckman says. “Remove the spoon and fork from the plate. Place the fork on your left and the spoon on your right. Now lift the bowl,
and
the doily, and place them both at eleven o'clock above your service plate.”

“Why's there a flower floating in it?”

“Ignore the flower.”

“What's this? More Yale shit?” He takes a gulp of his wine.

“Tell me more about your sister Bathy, Mrs. Liebling,” Bill Luckman says, turning back to her.

“My father adored Bathy. She was the apple of his eye. My father was a famous educator, Mr. Luckman, but I suppose you knew that, since I gather you're interested in education.”

“No, I didn't know that,” he says.

“My father was Dr. Marcus Sachs.”

“Should that name ring a bell, Mrs. Liebling?”

“Well, it would to a lot of people. He ran the Sachs Collegiate Institute. Of course, it died when he died. But he educated the sons of some of the finest families in New York City.”

“She means some of the finest
Jewish
families, Mr. Luckman,” Cyril says.

Ector looks across at Ruth. “You Jewish?” he says. “You didn't tell me that. I thought you said you was a countess.”

Ruth merely smiles faintly and lowers her eyes. The key light now comes from the flickering flames of the candelabra.

“My father believed in discipline,” Hannah says. “He did not believe in sparing the rod.”

“Like some other fathers I could mention,” Cyril says.

“And yet he turned out young men who went on to become some of the greatest business leaders in this city, including Bernie Baruch. My father taught that sort. Not someone like my husband.”

“And you didn't even love him!” Anne says.

“That's not true, Anne. It's not true that I didn't love your grandfather.”

“Then why—”

“This is Edna's famous chocolate mousse,” Carol says brightly, picking up her spoon. “It's made with Demerara rum.”

“The great Bernard Baruch,” Bill Luckman says. “That really is impressive, Mrs. Liebling.”

“He went on to become a family friend. Whatever money Papa left to my sisters and me, we have to thank Bernie for his advice to Papa on investments.”

Bill turns to Carol. “This is all so interesting,” he says. “Tell me about your family, Carol.”

She laughs. “Not as distinguished as my husband's, I'm afraid.”

“On the Sachs side, at least,” Hannah says. “The Lieblings weren't anybody.”

“My parents were quite ordinary, small-town people,” Carol says. “My father died”—though this is not quite the truth—“and my mother is in a nursing home in Connecticut.”

“So you're able to visit her fairly often?”

“Not as often as I should, I'm afraid,” she says. “On her birthday, and at Christmastime, and whenever I feel particularly guilty about it. Those visits aren't easy—”

Anne giggles again. “Mom tries to think about Granny Dugan as little as possible,” she says. “She even forgets where Granny Dugan is, and has to look the place up in her address book every time she goes up there!”

“Anne, will you pass that little plate of cookies?” Carol says, to change the subject.

“You visited her this Christmas, then?”

“Unfortunately, no, I—do try one of Edna's delicious almond macaroons.”

Bill Luckman turns to Anne, on his left, ignoring the cookies. “What a rich mixture of genes you've inherited!” he says. “See how much I've managed to learn already about the secret rich?”

“The secret rich?” Anne says.

“It's a book he's writing,” Becka says. “About little-known rich families in America. The Lieblings are going to be one of them.”

Anne giggles. “This family has plenty of secrets, that's for sure,” she says, and Bill Luckman gives Becka a look that says: I told you so.

“We most certainly do not,” Hannah says sharply. “I assure you, Mr. Luckman, that my family will take no part in any such enterprise.”

Now Mary enters from the living room and goes to Carol. “A telephone call for you, Mrs. Liebling,” she whispers.

“Find out who it is, and tell them I'll call them back after I finish dinner.”

“It's Mrs. Truxton Van Degan, ma'am.”

Carol frowns. “Georgette Van Degan,” she says. “I wonder what she wants. I guess I'd better take it. I'll take it in the other room. Excuse me.” She rises and steps into the next room.

“The famous Georgette Van Degan,” Bill Luckman says.

“A typical New York story,” Cyril says. “One day she's pushing a cart down the aisle of a plane over Salt Lake City. The next day she's living in a penthouse over Central Park, the toast of New York society. Instant old money.”

Hannah sniffs. “There used to be some Van Degans in our building,” she says. “We didn't know them.”

Ector takes another swallow of his wine. “Hell, I don't mind if you're all Jewish,” he says. “I got nothing against the Jews. But it's just that the way you was all quotin' the Bible a while back, I thought you was the other way around.”

“The Bible contains an Old Testament and a New Testament,” Bill Luckman says.

Ector scowls. “I gotta take a leak,” he says, and pushes back his chair.

But before he has completely left the room, or is fully out of earshot, Hannah says in a loud voice, “Ruth, where in the world did you ever dig up such a thoroughly unsuitable young man?”

And Ruth, who has said very little all evening, suddenly bursts into tears. She flings her napkin on the table, jumps out of her chair, tipping it over as she does, and runs after Ector, screaming, “Ector! Ector!
Take me home
!”

Noah reaches out and sets his sister's chair upright again, and her daughter Becka, red-faced with embarrassment, says, “Should I go with her? What do you think?”

“I'll see that you get home okay, Becka,” Noah says quietly.

And in the long silence that follows Ruth's outburst, Melody Richards says, “I heard a cute joke the other day. It's about the nervous usher at the wedding. He's an usher at this big wedding, you see, and he's very nervous about getting all these people seated in the right seats. So when he sees a woman seated in the wrong place, he says, ‘Mardon me, padam, but you are occupewing the wrong pie. Please allow me to sew you to another sheet.'”

Noah chuckles at the joke and thinks: Dear Melody! She must sometimes wonder how she got involved with this crazy family.

“That,” says Bill Luckman, “in case you didn't know it, is called a Spoonerism, after William Archibald Spooner, 1844 to 1930, who for many years was warden of New College, Oxford. He was famous for his word transpositions, a form of metathesis. He once proposed a toast to Queen Victoria as ‘our queer old dean.'”

There is more polite laughter among the seven remaining at the table, but Noah Liebling throws Bill Luckman a hard look. He has decided that Ector is just a stupid clod, but Bill Luckman is a wise-ass little prick.

“Ruth is so
touchy,”
Hannah says.

Now Carol returns to the dining room, looking flushed and excited. “That was Georgette Van Degan,” she says. “She wants to take me to lunch next week. I can't imagine why, I hardly know her. Unless—and this is a really wild guess—unless she's thinking of giving her Chinese porcelains to the Met. They really have a fabulous collection, including a pair of Lang Yao
sang-de-boeuf
vases that the museum would practically kill to have. Do you suppose that's it? I suggested that to her a couple of years ago, and maybe I planted a little seed in her mind. That must be it. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Wouldn't that be a feather in my cap—if I were the one who helped get the Van Degan porcelains for the Met?” Then she notices the two empty chairs. “What became of Ruth and Ector?” she asks.