The Wrong Kind of Money Page 5
What do you mean when you say something could “stop” us? This is America. We were born free. We are free to marry anyone we wish, aren’t we? This isn’t the Dark Ages. My darling, your last letter worries me terribly. Please write to me immediately and answer all my questions. I know this: I can’t live without you, my love.
(unsigned)
My darling—
It has been a week since I’ve heard from you, and I am sick with worry. I can’t think of anything else but what you may be going through. Please, please write. If only I could be at your side to help you …
But don’t give in to them, my love. I know you’re strong. Fight back! Fight hard! Our love is stronger and bigger and better than any of them—that is what you said yourself.
Write to me, my love. Write to me!
The correspondence breaks off at this point.
“Hannah needs a tour of Europe, Marcus,” her mother said to her father. “All the other girls her age are having them, and I will accompany her as her chaperone.”
“Can we afford it, Sadie?”
“I can, yes. I’m going to dip into my inheritance if need be.”
“I won’t have you doing that, Sadie. I can afford it.”
“Very good. I’ve booked passage for us on the Berengaria. We sail for Hamburg Thursday week. The trip should be a broadening experience for her, I should think.”
A few letters survive from that memorable European trip which, as it turned out, would last for the better part of a year.
Dearest Papa,
Today we visited the Cologne Cathedral, which is very beautiful and contains much beautiful stained glass above the chancel, depicting 48 queens and the Milan Madonna. The Shrine of the Three Kings on the High Altar was also beautiful and interesting. Tomorrow we visit three more museums, and will hear a performance of Parsifal at the Offenbachplatz.…
I hope Bridget is remembering to feed Pussy, and to see that her water dish does not go empty.
Mama joins me in best love.
Your loving daughter,
Hannah
My dear Marcus,
All has been going well for Hannah and myself until today when, after feeling unwell for several days, I consulted a physician, Dr. Ebert with the American Hospital in Berlin, who advises me that I am in the third month of a pregnancy. It all comes as something of a surprise to me, at my age, but Dr. Ebert assures me that this is a not uncommon occurrence for a woman of my age.
As you know, I have always had difficult pregnancies, and in light of this, Dr. Ebert strongly recommends that I not attempt an Atlantic crossing at this point, but rather that I remain here in Germany for my full term. Here, of course, are some of the finest physicians and medical facilities in the world.…
Please do not consider coming abroad to join me, dear Marcus. Such a trip would serve no good purpose, and I would not wish to see you interrupt your academic year on my account. I assure you that I am in the best of hands with Dr. Ebert and his staff.
Hannah will remain with me here, and I have enrolled her in some classes at the university, where she will be able to improve her German language skills.
Your loving wife,
Sadie
My dear Marcus,
Your beautiful baby daughter, weighing 6 lbs 11 oz, was born yesterday at 5:30 p.m., or 11:30 a.m. New York time. She is healthy and nursing lustily, and though I know you were hoping for a boy this time, I know you will fall in love with this little darling when you see her. She has your blue eyes and, it seems to me, your ears. What shall we name her? I am thinking of naming her after your grandmother Sachs.
As for me, I am doing well, though feeling somewhat tired and weak. Because of this, and because we are approaching the winter stormy season, and because I have never been a “good sailor,” Dr. Ebert recommends that I remain in Berlin for at least another four weeks before attempting an ocean crossing. So I have advised Frau Stockelman that we will keep our little flat for that additional period.
Hannah joins me in warm greetings.
Your loving wife,
Sadie
3
Placement
In another part of the city—on upper Fifth Avenue, to be exact—Mr. and Mrs. Truxton Van Degan IV are sitting in their living room overlooking the Metropolitan Museum. The Van Degans make it a point never to go out on New Year’s Eve—it’s such a cliché—though if you read the social columns you know that these two go out many other evenings, either here, or in Palm Beach, or in Southampton, whichever place they happen to be. Their butler has just brought them a bottle of chilled champagne, and the atmosphere in the room is equally icy. As often happens when Truck and Georgette Van Degan are alone together, they find that they have very little to say to one another. Perhaps the champagne will lift their mood. It hasn’t yet, though Georgette is doing her level best.
“Well, darling,” she says brightly, “are we happy to see 1993 come to an end?” She lifts her glass and tries to smile her most radiant smile. It’s the smile she does for Women’s Wear.
“Damn right,” he says. “It’s been a shitty year. I told you Bill Clinton would be bad for business. He sure the hell has been.”
“Well, here’s to a better 1994,” she says.
“Yeah.” He sits hunched forward in his chair, his glass cradled between two hands, not raising it in response.
She pretends to ignore this. “Patsy Collingwood called this morning,” she says. “She’s having a little dinner Thursday for William Luckman.”
“Who’s he?”
“The young man who’s written that new book about all the nasty things that go on at Yale. Or it’s supposed to be Yale. Desire Under the Elms, I think it’s called.”
“No, that’s not it. That’s the title of some other book.”
“It’s something like that. Anyway, I told her we had the thing at the Pierre on Thursday.”
“Oh, yeah. That thing at the Pierre.”
“Unless you’d rather go to Patsy’s, darling. It might be amusing, and I could get us out of the thing at the Pierre, though I hate to do that to Marcella, who has her placement all worked out.”
“Yeah.”
“I do think the thing at the Pierre is really more important, darling. It will get more media coverage. And if we back out, Marcella will have to seat the entire party all over again.”
“Yeah.”
“And she has us très bien placé, at her most important table. With the Shugrues, the Dominican ambassador, and that divine new hairdresser everybody is insisting I’ve got to try.”
“Yeah.”
“So I won’t call Patsy back.”
Following this exchange, there is a long silence.
“And I’m going to try him, too,” she says at last.
“Try who?”
“The new hairdresser. Philippe. They say it takes weeks and weeks to get an appointment with him, but if I’m seated next to him on Thursday, I’ll work on him.”
There is no immediate response to this, and another silence follows. Georgette extends one foot and studies her ankle critically.
Then she says, “He charges two hundred dollars just for a comb-out, but I’m sure he’d do me for less, considering.”
“Who’re you talking about?”
“Philippe! The hairdresser! Really, Truck, what’s the matter with you tonight? I don’t think you’ve listened to a word I’ve said.”
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t,” he says.
“And you haven’t touched your champagne.”
He sticks his index finger in his glass. “There,” he says. “I just touched it.” He licks his finger.
“Really, darling, what’s the matter? Something’s on your mind, I can tell. What is it?”
“New Year’s,” he says. “Resolutions.”
“Oh?” she says brightly. “What fun! I love New Year’s resolutions. Mine’s to get an appointment with Philippe as soon as I possibly can once these wretched holid
ays are over, before we go to P.B. What’s yours?”
“I’ve made a resolution for you, Georgette.”
“Oh?” She eyes him narrowly. “You made a resolution for me?”
“That’s right, sweet tits.”
“Oh, my, how romantic! You haven’t called me sweet tits in years. Now tell me: Just what is this resolution that you seem to’ve made for me.”
“I want you to do something for the Lieblings.”
“For the who?”
“Noah Liebling and his wife.”
“Oh. You mean the liquor people?”
“That’s right.”
“You mean you want us to entertain them?”
“That’s right.”
“Oh, Truckie—puh-lease! No, never. No way. Are you quite mad? The Lieblings have just come down out of the trees!”
“Why not? I want you to do something for them, Georgette.”
“All our friends would think we’d lost our minds. They’re so N.O.C.D., those Lieblings.”
“What’s N.O.C.D. mean?”
“Not Our Class, Darling. They’re definitely N.O.C.D. There’s absolutely nothing they could do for people like us.”
“Nevertheless, it’s what I want you to do.”
“But, darling. Don’t you remember? Your parents moved out of one thousand Park when the Lieblings moved in. And they made a point of having their moving people come at exactly the same time as the Lieblings’ moving people, so everybody in town knew what was happening. Roxy even put it in her column.”
“My dad had some sort of business disagreement with old J. B. Liebling. But that was years ago. This is another generation.”
“But that story is too well known. People still laugh about it. What would our friends say if we appeared to be taking up with people like that? One son is a faggot.”
“So is that hairdresser you’re so eager to sit next to Thursday night.”
“Darling, that’s quite different. Philippe is a great artist.”
“Anyway, I’m not interested in that son. I’m interested in Noah Liebling.”
“The son still lives at one thousand. With his mother. They say the Lieblings have ruined that wonderful old building. Nobody lives there anymore.”
“Funny, but I walked past the building the other day. It looked fully occupied.”
“I mean nobody we know. Park between Seventy-sixth and Ninety-sixth has gone way, way downhill. And the sister who calls herself a countess. Everybody says the title is bogus.”
“I’m not interested in the sister, either.”
“And the father was a bootlegger. He had people killed.”
“The old man got his start in Canada, during Prohibition. But there was no Prohibition up there. So you can’t call him a bootlegger. Everything he did was perfectly legal. Meanwhile, his son Noah—”
“Oh, Noah Liebling is all right, I suppose. He’s almost attractive. But it’s her, his wife, that nobody can stand.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Oh, it’s so hard to explain,” she says. “She’s so pushy, so climby, so enthusiastic. She smiles too much. She’s too friendly. She doesn’t talk about the things people like us talk about. She bubbles. She bounces. She doesn’t wear black at night. She doesn’t even frost her hair.”
“What’s wrong with a bubbly, bouncy woman?”
“New York women don’t bubble and bounce. They just don’t, which is why she’s never fitted in. She’s from somewhere like Kansas, and she has a Kansas sort of face. People do imitations of Carol Liebling, and that sort of thing. When she first came to New York, she thought Porthault was only sheets. She’d never heard of the towels. Someone had to explain to her what Rigaud candles were.”
“Of course, you, growing up in Cicero, Illinois, knew all about things like that,” he says with more than a trace of sarcasm in his voice.
“Maybe not! But when I knew I was going to marry you, I learned—and I learned fast! And I learned to do party talk. She’s never learned that. She’ll get on a subject and just stick to it.”
“When I first met you, Georgette, all you knew how to say was, ‘Please raise your seat backs, place your tray tables in a fully locked and upright position, make sure that all carry-on luggage is securely stowed beneath the seat in front of you, and pass all plastic cups and glasses—’”
“So what! So I was a flight attendant! I wanted to better myself, and I did! Look where I am today—le plus bien placé! Patsy Collingwood probably isn’t even going to have her dinner party if you and I can’t be there. She as much as said so.”
“You bettered yourself, all right. Thanks to me.”
“Okay—thanks to you!”
“And my money.”
“Okay—and your goddamned money. You got what you married me for, too! The best blow job you ever had!”
“One of the things I married you for,” he says evenly, “was to do as you’re told. And I’m telling you I want you to do something about Noah Liebling and his wife.”
“Why? Tell me why you want me to entertain them?”
“Because I want his business, that’s why. Old lady Liebling is getting up there in years. The old battle-ax can’t live forever. She’s either going to die or retire, and when she does one of those two things, the son is going to take over the company, and when that happens I want his business. Do you realize that for all the years the old battle-ax has been running Ingrahams, the biggest distiller in the world, she’s never placed a single order from my bottling plant?”
“Probably because your father made a point of moving out of one thousand Park at the same moment the Lieblings moved in. Talk about royal snubs!”
“That’s water over the dam. I want you to do something for Noah Liebling and his wife.”
“Truck, I will simply not have those people in my house.”
“Then invite them to dinner at a restaurant.”
“And be seen with them? In public? What if Roxy, or Liz, or Cindy, or Billy should see us? They’d think we were friends.”
“Then they’d invite us to their place. They live at River House.”
“How that board passed them I’ll never know. She knows nothing about placement. She has a needlepoint pillow in her living room that has ‘Thank you for not smoking’ on it.”
“Maybe she’s allergic.”
“No. She says the smoke would damage her paintings. Paintings! She hasn’t got any, at least none that you or I would hang. Oh, she has a couple of Warhols. But nobody hangs Warhol anymore. After that disastrous sale at Christie’s, I took our Warhol down. I was too embarrassed. Warhol is one of yesterday’s painters.”
“I wondered where the Warhol went. Where is it?”
“Stacked behind the dryer in the laundry room. Where he belongs. But Carol Liebling—she still hangs him. So you see what I mean.” With her hand she gives her frosted hair a flip from behind.
He takes a sip of his champagne. “For someone you dislike so much, you seem to know an awful lot about her,” he says.
“She has a daughter the same age as Linda. They were at Brearley together. I used to see Carol at parent-teacher meetings. And speaking of that, do you know what that woman had the nerve to say to me?”
“What?”
“She said, ‘Have you thought about doing anything with your Chinese porcelains?’”
“What the hell did she mean by that?”
“Oh, she does some volunteer work for the museum.” She gestures vaguely in the direction of the building across the street, which is invisible behind the drawn drapes. “She’s on a couple of committees. I’m sure she’s hoping to get on the board, which’ll never happen, of course. She asked me if I’d consider giving our collection to the museum.”
“Oh,” he says.
“She even said—and this is the worst part—she even said, ‘Just think, if you gave your porcelains to the Met, you could run across the street and visit the collection whenever you’d like.’ Can
you imagine a more gauche remark?”
“Actually,” he says thoughtfully, “it’s not such a bad idea.”
“What’s not a bad idea?”
“Giving that stuff to the museum. We’d get a nice tax deduction. My grandfather collected it. I’ve never given a shit about all that stuff.”
“Truck Van Degan, are you out of your mind? That pair of Lang Yao sang-de-boeuf vases alone is worth a fortune! I had an appraiser in. He said you almost never find a pair. No way do you give any of it away. That collection is my insurance!”
“What do you mean—your insurance?”
“You won’t buy life insurance. When you die, that collection is one thing I’ll have to fall back on.”
“I don’t buy life insurance because I don’t believe in it.”
“Don’t give me that, Truck. I know you too well. You won’t buy life insurance because you’re scared to take the physical.”
“So,” he says carefully, “you’re getting ready for me to die. Is that it, sweet tits?”
“Well, after all, you are twenty-two years older than I am, darling. A girl has to think about her future, after all.”
“Okay,” he says, leaning forward in his chair, “let’s talk about the future. Let’s talk about the immediate future. I’ve asked you to do something about Noah Liebling and his wife. I haven’t asked you. I’ve told you. I don’t give a shit what you think about his wife. I don’t give a shit what she knows about placement, or whether she hangs Andy Warhol or not. I happen to own a glass-manufacturing business. I make bottles. It used to be that we could do okay selling to the pharmaceutical companies. But the pharmaceuticals are all switching to plastics. It’s killing us.”
“Maybe you should get into the plastics business, darling.”
“Shut up. Listen to me. There’s a rumor on the street that Ingraham is about to launch an important new label. A new label means new bottles. I want the contract for those bottles, and you’re going to help me get it. Is that clear? Can you get that through that thick skull of yours? The girls are the way to do it.”
“What girls?”
“Linda and their daughter. They went to school together. That’s your reason for inviting Noah and his wife to dinner.”