The Wrong Kind of Money Page 4

  “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!”

  The traffic inches slowly forward, the rain continues to pour down, and the windshield wipers of the Lincoln thrash furiously back and forth. Manush, manush, the wipers say.

  Cyril thinks: Mr. Nelson knows which side his bread is buttered on.

  2

  An Intermezzo

  One spring morning when she was fifteen (Hannah is remembering) and when the gardenia in the upstairs formal parlor was just coming into bloom, she tossed a blossom from the open front window into the street below. It was intended to land at her father’s feet as he left the house on the way to teach his school. But she missed, and her father strode on in his purposeful way without seeing it. But a young sailor carrying a navy duffel bag happened to be passing the house on his way to a great adventure. He saw the flower fall to the sidewalk and stooped to pick it up. He looked up at the young girl in the window, and a breeze blew the parlor curtains aside. He smiled up at her, and she smiled back. Then he put the gardenia between his teeth, gypsy-style, and danced a little jig. Then he hoisted his duffel to his shoulder and walked on. But after a few steps he stopped and turned back. He removed his cap and hung it on one of the iron finials of her front gate posts. Then he walked away, whistling.

  Later she read about his great adventure. At least, when she saw his picture in the newspapers, Hannah was sure that this was a photograph of the same young man with the same, slightly off-center smile. His name was Radioman First Class George Noville, and he had just completed a historic mission—the first radio-equipped transatlantic flight, in a trimotored Fokker monoplane, under the famous U.S. Navy Commander Richard E. Byrd. The year was 1926. A few years earlier Commander Byrd had circled the North Pole.

  Two years later, her doorbell rang, and Hannah, who happened to be alone in the house at the time, went to the door. “I’ve come for my cap,” he said. She let him in.

  He brought with him a diary he had kept of his many travels since they had last seen each other. Pressed between its pages was her flower. “It brought me luck,” he said. “And it brought me back.”

  All we know of what happened next is contained in a slender packet of letters, tied with a faded pink hair ribbon, which Hannah keeps in a shoebox at the bottom of one of her dresser drawers. The stamps are mostly foreign—from Tunis, Gibraltar, Malta, Tripoli, and other mostly Mediterranean ports—and the postmarks are faded, and the letters are undated, so it is impossible to tell how long the relationship lasted, and Hannah seldom looks at the letters anymore.

  My darling—

  It is midnight, and all my other shipmates are asleep, and I am writing this to you by flashlight so as not to disturb the others. And because it is hard to write with a flashlight in one hand and a pen in the other in this cramped bunk (the bunks in this #%$&## old tub are particularly narrow), this will just be to tell you that you are in my thoughts all day long, and in my dreams at night. Even an ocean and a half away, you are with me always. Nothing can ever separate us, my darling, but meanwhile I am working hard to get a stateside assignment so we can truly be together again.

  The fellow in the bunk below me is snoring softly, making sounds that sound like manush, manush, so I guess I should try to get some sleep now, too, which will be easy because I plan to see you in my dreams. Good night, my love.

  George

  My darling Hannie—

  Something you say in your last letter worries me a little. You say you hope your father will like me. Well, I can promise you, my love, that I will do my #%&## best to make him like me! And your mother too! And your married sister, and her husband, and all the rest of your family, once I have a chance to meet them! Why would they not like me, my darling? I happen to think I’m a pretty nice guy, and so—thank God—do you, as the rest of your letter seems to indicate! You even use the word “love”—thank God!

  Genoa is a dirty city, with very little to offer, it seems to me, so I am not going ashore with the others tonight. I would rather stay on board and write to you and think of you. Meanwhile, I expect to hear about my request for stateside duty very soon.

  All my love,

  G.

  Darling Hannie—

  Good news—I think! There’s a rumor about that Cmdr. Byrd is planning another expedition—don’t know where as yet. But he’ll need a good radioman, and I know he was pleased with my work on that last flight of his, so I’m putting in a request for that assignment That would bring me back to Washington, at least for the planning stages, and Washington is not far from New York, and that means perhaps it won’t be long before you’re in my
arms again.

  Don’t worry that the expedition will be dangerous. Old Byrd knows what he’s doing, and every detail is planned perfectly ahead of time.

  I love and miss you so, my darling.

  Ever,

  G.

  My dearest darling—

  Please tell your father that I do have a future in the navy! In fact, I’m expecting a promotion any day now, and once I work my way up into the officer corps, there’s going to be no stopping me! Tell your father that.

  Yes, I know what you mean when you say our backgrounds, and our religions, are different, but what possible difference could that make to us as long as we love each other? Tell your father that, and I’m sure he will understand. And when he says he doesn’t think I’ll “fit in” with your New York friends, who says we have to live in New York? There is a whole world out there for us to live … and love in.

  And as for “backgrounds,” well maybe we Novilles aren’t high society. But we’ve always been ambitious, and hard workers. And maybe your father, the famous educator, doesn’t think too much of a fellow with only a high school diploma, but things like that shouldn’t come between us. When I meet your father, I’m sure I can make him understand. Trust me, my love.

  No word yet about stateside duty and/or Cmdr. Byrd, but I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.

  Your always loving

  George

  My darling—

  Please don’t listen to what people are telling you! When two people are in love as much as you and I are, the only people they need to listen to are each other.

  Meanwhile, every time I take out that flower from the pages of my diary, I see your sweet face and dream I am holding you in my arms and kissing your sweet lips.

  Love always,

  G.

  My darling—

  What is wrong? Reading between the lines of your last letter, I feel that something is terribly the matter! If something is happening that is troubling you, I’ll go AWOL and jump on the next ship to New York. I’ll be a stowaway!