The Wrong Kind of Money (5 page)

Noah Liebling remains his mother's favorite son, just as he was his father's. To most people Noah seems like the ideal son—tall, athletic, affable, with the dark good looks of a
Gentleman's Quarterly
model. Once upon a time Cyril was the favorite son. But as a result of a series of differences and misunderstandings years ago, he no longer is.

In the winter of 1945, the telephone rang at 1000 Park Avenue. Jules and Hannah Liebling were at dinner, and Philip, their butler, conveyed the message to Jules Liebling at the dinner table. “Mr. George Litchfield of St. Anselm's School is on the phone, sir,” Philip said. St. Anselm's was the boys' school in northwestern Connecticut where Cyril Liebling was a first-year student, and George Litchfield was its headmaster.

“Tell him I'll call him back.”

“I told him you were at dinner, sir. But he insists it's urgent.”

A look passed between Jules and Hannah. “Very well,” Jules said. Looking pained, he placed his napkin on the dinner table, pushed his chair back, and went to take the call in the next room.

“I'm sorry to say that it has become necessary for us to expel Cyril, Mr. Liebling,” Mr. Litchfield said.

A pause. Then Jules said, “For what reason, may I ask?”

“For—for unnatural sexual activity, Mr. Liebling,” Mr. Litchfield said.

“What sort of activity?”

“They were—I believe it is called fellatio. He and another boy. They were discovered in the lavatory, by Mr. Smith, the dormitory master of Ward's Hall.”

“Who was doing what to whom?”

“I—it's my understanding from Mr. Smith—they were doing it to each other.”

“I see.” Now Jules attempted what was intended to be an understanding chuckle between two men of the world. “Well, surely, Mr. Litchfield,” he said. “Surely, in an all-male environment, at a school such as yours—two adolescent boys. I mean, certainly this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened at a school like yours. Two young boys, experimenting—”

“Well, perhaps not, Mr. Liebling,” the headmaster conceded, “but that sort of activity cannot be tolerated at St. Anselm's.”

“And the other boy involved in the—incident? I presume he is being expelled also.”

“No, in fact he is not,” the headmaster said.

“May I ask why not?”

“It seems the other boy was an unwilling—at least a reluctant participant, Mr. Liebling.”

“Hah! How do you know that? The boy could be lying!”

“It seems—well, it seems that your son was paying the other boy for this—activity.”

“Paying? How can you prove that?”

“When Mr. Smith walked into the lavatory and found them there, the other boy had your son's personal check in his pocket. Apparently this has been going on for some time. The other boy has been cashing your son's checks in the bursar's office, and our bursar had begun to wonder about this. You see, the other boy is a lower-former, a scholarship boy from an underprivileged family in Harlem. He was only doing this for the money.”

“The other boy is a Negro?”

“Yes. An honor student on a full scholarship.”

“And so a Negro honor student on a full scholarship gets the benefit of the doubt, and a Jewish boy from a privileged family gets expelled—is that the way you work? Is that what you call justice?”

“Mr. Liebling, that has nothing to do with it.”

“Give me the other boy's name.”

“I am not at liberty to give that to you, Mr. Liebling,” the headmaster said.

There was another pause. Then Jules said, “Look, Mr. Litchfield, there must be something your school needs. A new hockey rink perhaps? A new dormitory? An endowment of some sort? I'm sure you and I can work something out.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Liebling,” the headmaster said. “We do not operate St. Anselm's that way. I'm afraid our decision is final.”

“I see,” said Jules.

“Cyril is in his room now. Mr. Smith, his dormitory master, is helping him pack up his things. He is to be off the school's grounds by midnight. Will you arrange for his transportation home?”

“I'll send for him,” Jules said. “And you, Mr. Litchfield, can eat my shit.” He hung up the phone.

He returned to the dining room, his face a mask, and picked up his napkin. His small, polished fingernails caught the candlelight.

Hannah's fork was poised in midair, though there was nothing on it. “Well,” she said at last, “what did Mr. Litchfield want?”

“I'm withdrawing Cyril from St. Anselm's,” he said.

“Oh, no! But why?”

“Other boys have been forging Cyril's name on his checks.”

“But that's the other boys' fault! That's no reason to punish Cyril.”

“He should be taught to keep his checkbook in a safer place,” he said. “I knew we should never have given him that checking account. That was your idea.”

With a little sob she dropped her fork, got up from the table, and quickly left the room.

When Mr. Nelson, Jules's young chauffeur, arrived at the school that night to collect Cyril and his belongings, George Litchfield was a little surprised to see that Mr. Nelson was not accompanied by either of Cyril's parents. He found himself somewhat at a loss for what final words he might say to the Lieblings' driver. “Get some nice classical music on the radio,” he said to Mr. Nelson. “In these circumstances I find that often helps.”

That was the night, Cyril often thinks, that his parents threw him away.

That night, after Hannah Liebling had cried her tears and was about to turn off her bedside lamp, her bedroom door opened and her husband, in his dressing gown, stepped into her room. He closed her door behind him. He moved toward her bed and sat on the edge of it. At first Hannah was startled. It had been a long time since her husband had entered her bedroom. He reached out and began gently rubbing the back of her neck, her shoulder blades, and the soft flesh of her upper back. “I want us to make another son,” he whispered.

There will be a seventh Liebling family member coming to Noah and Carol's house tonight. She is Rebecca Hower, Ruth's daughter by her third marriage or, if you count the two di Pascanelli marriages, her fourth. Rebecca, who likes to be called Becka, is twenty-five, and though she has been around all these years, she is something of a newcomer to the family, having only recently rejoined her mother after a long estrangement. This will be Becka's first appearance at a Liebling New Year's Eve. We will see how it goes, for Hannah Liebling barely knows this granddaughter.

In addition to Ruth's beau, there will be two other non-family members at tonight's dinner party. One is Melody Richards, who was Anne's best friend at boarding school and is now her roommate at college. Anne and Melody strike many people as an unlikely duo. It used to be said, with some truth, that two extremely pretty girls could never be best friends at that age. But here you have Melody and Anne, acknowledged to be the two prettiest young women at Bennington, and over the years they have become inseparable. The two girls' looks are like the opposite faces of the moon. Anne is blond and blue-eyed. Melody is dark, almost Latin-looking, with large, dark, wide-set eyes like an Andalusian girl's. In terms of personality, they are also opposites. Anne Liebling is as light and bubbly, and often as silly-making, as a glass of champagne. Melody is sober, quiet, thoughtful, often given to long silences. Anne is majoring in art. Melody, rather in keeping with her name, is majoring in drama. At school the two have been given the nicknames Toots and Caspar. We'll leave it to you to guess which name belongs to which.

Melody is also nearly a full year younger than Anne, making Melody one of the few seventeen-year-olds in their class. She has always been an intellectually gifted child. At the age of four it was discovered that Melody had taught herself to read. In grammar school, because she was so much more gifted than the others in her class, she was allowed to skip the entire third grade so she could be placed in a group where she would find the work more challenging. She has been challenging her classmates, and her teachers, ever since.

Melody, in further contrast to her best friend, is from a relatively poor family, and attends Bennington on a special scholarship. Her father, a career diplomat, holds a minor post in the U.S. State Department, and is presently stationed in Japan. Because her parents can ill afford to send their daughter halfway around the world for the winter break, for the past four years she has been spending these weeks with Anne and her family in New York. Noah and Carol have become very fond of Melody, and have begun to think of themselves almost as her foster parents.

There will be one other guest at the little family dinner party tonight, thanks to Melody. His name is William Luckman. You may have heard of him. Only twenty-one, he is the prodigal young Yale senior who has just published his first book,
Blighted Elms,
that has been climbing best-seller lists all over the country. His book's title is ironic. Taking as his central image the Dutch elm disease that has devastated Yale's once leafy campus, he wrote a book that is a startling exposé of the degree of sexual promiscuity that has afflicted, and diseased, a prestigious Eastern university. Names, of course, have been changed, but just barely. Yale, for instance, is called “Eli University” in the book, and several members of Yale's faculty and student body are said to be able to recognize themselves in Mr. Luckman's pages. There has been some sword-rattling talk of lawsuits.

Homosexuality and lesbianism account for only some of the tamer revelations. The amount of faculty-student sex is prodigious, according to the author. Incidents of sexual blackmail within the college community are rampant, as are cases of physical and sexual abuse and harassment of minors. A child pornography ring operates openly, while drug and alcohol abuse abounds. Male and female students in need of money sell themselves as prostitutes, while a prominent dean earns handsome sums as a pimp and a procurer. Orgies involving students, professors, and administrators are described in vivid detail, while the top administrators—from the president on down—and even the college's trustees provide an elaborate and cynical cover-up. In
Blighted Elms
Eli University emerges as a cesspool of degeneracy and depravity, crime and vice.

The book has become a succès de scandale. And, needless to say, Mr. Luckman's scorching depiction of this college and its sexual mores—and the book's sudden huge popularity and the publicity surrounding it—have left Mr. Luckman's future at Yale somewhat problematic. He has not yet been expelled—and has in fact almost arrogantly dared the college to expel him. “The only reason they haven't done it is because they know that will only generate more publicity for my book,” he has stated. “I hope there are lawsuits, because lawsuits sell books, and whoever sues me will have to prove that what I say isn't true. They're scared to expel me. They're caught between a rock and a hard place. If they don't kick me out, they're admitting my details are accurate. If they do, I'll be crying all the way to the bank. The book's already been sold as a miniseries.”

Melody Richards met the young literary lion in October, when she happened to be in Bloomingdale's White Plains store while he was autographing copies of
Blighted Elms.
Curious to see what the notorious young author was like, she stepped over to his signing table during a lull in sales and fell into conversation with him. She found him witty, charming, and handsome. They exchanged telephone numbers. For the past month he has been on tour, promoting his book, and he called her several times from various cities. When Melody learned that he would be in New York for the Christmas holidays, she asked Noah Liebling if she could invite Bill Luckman to the family's New Year's Eve party.

At first Noah was dubious. “I haven't read his book,” he said, “and I'm not planning to. From what I gather, it's nothing but a piece of smut in an academic setting.”

“I think he's actually a very moral person,” Melody said. “He was outraged by the things he saw going on there, and thought the public should know about them.”

“Isn't he a little old to be dating you?”

She laughed. “He isn't a date, Mr. Liebling,” she said. “I met him only once, in a roomful of people.”

Carol Liebling was more sanguine about the idea. “I haven't read the book, either,” she said. “But it's certainly causing quite a stir, and everybody's talking about it, and he's been on all the talk shows. He's very attractive. I think it would be fun for the girls to have him, Noah. And he'd help balance out the sexes at the table.” Bill is the sexpot Anne was referring to.

And so Carol Liebling's dinner table tonight is set for ten, though only nine of these people are principal characters in our story: Hannah, Cyril, and Anne, Carol and Noah and sister Ruth, Ruth's daughter Becka, Melody Richards and William Luckman. Those are our ennead. Others—such as Ruth's new beau and Noah's and Carol's friends, Frank and Beryl Stokes, who also live at River House—will drift in and out of the proceedings, of course. But those nine are the ones to keep your eye on.

In the stalled traffic on Park Avenue, the horns continue to blow and the police whistles continue to shriek to no avail. Hannah Liebling leans across the back of the front seat of the Lincoln again and says, “Mr. Nelson, perhaps you'd better phone my son and daughterin-law and tell them about this pickle we're in with this traffic. I know she's serving a lamb roast tonight, and she knows I like it pink, but not bleeding.”

“Certainly, Mrs. Liebling.” He picks up the car phone by his side and begins pressing buttons.

“And incidentally, Mr. Nelson. Which way does Third Avenue run—uptown or down?”

“Downtown, Mrs. Liebling.”

“Ha!” she says to Cyril. “I told you so!”