Dear Money

by Martha McPhee

  "What is it he can't do?" we'd speculate. Perfect Boy, we began to call Will (privately). Perfect Boy, because he was perfect, loved Wall Street, loved the high, but would not be limited by it. More than anything, when he looked into the crystal ball that held his future he expected that someday he'd become a novelist. This did not mean that Perfect Boy was less perfect now. No, he was a bubble of perfection making its way, in the fullness of time, through time, as we all were, but somehow he had figured out the proper valence, the strength, the capacity, like a chemical element, the proper combining power, to join and be joined in life, by life, through life with a heightened equanimity. He woke early, went to bed late, using the time to write. I admired his tenacity but didn't have much faith in his ability, though I did not tell him that. Rather, I encouraged him just as I did the other wannabe writers I had met over the years. I never made it my job to herald the truth: Give it a break, buster You're never going to have what it takes. If I had a dollar for every person who wanted to be a writer ... I could have bought a house in Maine.

  The house on Pond Point, by the by, was part of their plan: they'd spend their summers there so that Will could write, full time, in the tool room in the damp dark basement, amid the wrenches and screws and nails and hammers and saws and twine of Mr. Hov's remarkable workshop (Hov had fixed the house from top to bottom himself), the great American novel. While his Wall Street colleagues busied themselves building mini-Versailles, temples to themselves, which, really, any knuck lehead with money could do, Will Chapman wanted to move beyond collecting, beyond connoisseurship, to the making of art itself. He wanted to be a novelist. He wanted to be what I was. He wanted to have the nerve, the confidence, the bravado and whatever else it would take (ego) to put Wall Street aside and write. He wanted to make the big-money guys, scooting about in their Jags and Gulfstream IVs, look like the foulmouthed Visigoths they were. He wanted to be authentic to the core. He was in love with me thus (and so was Emma) because I was doing that which he wanted most to do. By studying me they could peer into the life they wished to adopt, test-drive it, as it were; they could examine up close the sacrifices and adjustments they would have to make.

  And I, on the outside, wasn't doing so badly for myself. I, India Palmer—thirty-eight years old, four novels under my belt, a fifth, entitled Generation of Fire, on the threshold of publication, two daughters in private school, sprawling (albeit rent-stabilized) Upper West Side apartment, winner of the International Book Prize and a Monogram fellowship, nominated for the Washington Award for fiction (the only prize I hadn't touched was the Eiseman, the star of all U.S. literary prizes, but always I hoped)—was the object of Will Chapman's scrutiny and fascination. He wanted to be me. And I? How could I not help but be drawn to him, his wife, his daughters?

  What he and Emma did not know was all the rest, all the details of how our lives really were, which I kept neatly tucked away because I could not bear to let them see the shambles, the riotous mess that it was. They did not know, for example, that not one of my novels had sold more than five thousand copies, that the awards by this point had been received long ago. ("That and twenty-five cents will get you a Hershey bar—with almonds," a college professor used to say to anyone who inquired too pointedly about what it took to get an A, and I recalled that tidbit of wisdom when I thought of the awards.) They did not know that my advances had become increasingly smaller, that it was not a good sign that I had had a different publisher for each of the four previous books, that they were now slipping, fast, out of print.

  "This isn't unusual," my agent said when I inquired about his other authors, whether they too were slipping into oblivion. A young, driven, intelligent man who seemed, every time I saw him, to get younger. Indeed, he was moving in the opposite direction. He was forty going on twenty, with a wide curl of a smile that revealed imperfect teeth which somehow added to his appeal. He spoke slowly, deliberately and always with a bright intention. The Fox, he was known as, and proud of it; the moniker had previously belonged to Maxwell Perkins and had been earned by my agent for his editorial attention. Day in, day out, he'd labor on a manuscript to make it right, irresistible. And like a fox he was coy and tenacious, determined to become the best agent in New York. It did not matter what it took—poaching, dramatic escapades that put him in the media news. Authors wanted him on their side because he made the numbers add up in the writer's favor. They spoke of the high advances he secured for first novels. He did not shy away from the intent of his ambition, always attended with charm. "We're encountering this with Charles Hamilton, fighting to get the rights reverted," he continued, offering me an example of another out-of-print writer. His voice sang with the confidence of youth and time. I loved Hamilton's work. "But isn't he dead?" I asked. "Why, yes," the Fox said, looking up at me. "Yes, in fact, he is dead." But for the Fox that was a minor detail, did not need to be a hindrance. "In fact, being dead," the Fox averred, "could possibly play in one's favor." He offered a wink.

  My trajectory was on the downward side of a parabola reserved for the still living. If Generation of Fire sold like the others, I would most likely be unable to sell a sixth book (this was my fear, anyway) and my life as a writer would, in effect, cease. I would enter the twilight, after-market realm of teaching at the university. Untenured, my job was not guaranteed. It depended on, at the very least, a splash of reviews upon publication that would draw attention to me and thus to the university. No, the Chapmans did not know the secret, abject heart of our lives—that it was fueled by hope of the sort barely distinguishable from the hopefuls lining up at the corner stationery store to buy state lottery tickets. We worked hard. There was no alternative. The winds of chance had to sail our way. Our lives rested on a fragile set of stilts, supported by money made long ago on a preposterously big, now all but diminished, advance, on Theodor's irregular commissions, on my salary, on revolving credit card debt, on indefatigable hope.

  Theodor made little on his art, small gold objects and figurines, a series of miniatures that he'd begun as a dark joke that had, instead, suddenly found a burgeoning cachet, and along with it the faintest glimmer of what appeared to be a market. Odd people began showing up at his studio to examine the figurines. People whose job it was to be on the phone at auctions making bids for anonymous buyers—Russian oligarchs, Indian industrialists, God knows who. Strange people with unpinpointable, transatlantic accents came by to "have a look." No serious money yet, but there was hope.

  The trouble was, the miniatures were exquisitely expensive to make and impossible for the ordinary person to afford, but this did not disturb Theodor. He was not a worrier. Actual commissions came in. He'd made a golden chalice for a famous archbishop (who later became infamous in one of those molestation scandals that riddled the Church). He'd crafted a porringer for Lady Amelia Start's firstborn, daughter of Sir Stewart Start and the heir to London's most notorious billionaire. The porringer was a gift from the Queen Mother's cousin. But these commissions, big as they were, never seemed to attract the wave of attention that would bring Theodor steady work. No matter. The idea of giving up (a constant for me) was not an option for him.

  He did not rush his work. Patiently he labored over the depth of the porringer's bowl, the shine of the gold, its ability to catch the light. Tirelessly he worked the fine web of the handle's filigree, studying it in natural light and artificial light to be sure the dance played in both. Even if he had the commissions, it would not make much difference for us, in a life-changing way, because each piece took so long to complete. He would not seek help, an apprentice. He would not cut corners. Creating art was a holy calling, a marriage to the mysterious. He would not put it that way exactly, though he did see the relationship as spiritual—a life lived inescapably in the present moment, no end, no beginning, a meditation, a communion with the dead, with Picasso, with Cellini, a destruction of clocks and time. In that moment something was made, emerged from nothing—a piece of scavenged metal now a porringer for the daughter of
a billionaire. Like Davy Crockett waking in the morning to step onto the sun.

  How did this nothing become something, the unknown known? When I met Theodor he was living on ramen noodles and tap water. I wanted to save him. Add to the broth Korean seaweed and jumbo shrimp bought cheaply from the fishmongers of Chinatown. The challenge drove me, elegance for pennies so that time could still be ours. We hoarded time like some hoard money. It was our currency. But no matter how clever we were, time passed as it always does, and here we were approaching forty, having to reckon with children and their needs and the choices made in our twenties. Theodor remained in the bubble, art's cocoon, indulging my interest in our new, well-heeled friends as a kind of temporary curiosity, one in which he could participate, with amusement and good cheer, for the time being. But he did not, would not, see it as I did. And though I admired that determination, the priest's vow, I had to acknowledge at last that something like a pivot point had moved within me and I now felt, when I watched him busily in his studio, like one of his strange visitors having a look, an outsider peering in.

  "I married an artist," he'd say to me. "You don't have a choice."

  Is that true, I'd wonder. Is that true? If I was not an artist, then it was not true. And so here I was in this mess, a quandary of my own inelegant design. To make matters worse, I had not shared much of our money woes with Theodor. Rather, I kept assuming the tides would turn for him, for me. But I had published enough books by now to know what to expect, to know better than to trust in all that. Thus the systems that made our life possible and easier all lined up in front of me like those overused domino tiles waiting to topple even if only one should fall.

  The Chapmans knew none of this: that I could not afford the babysitter (with us eight years), the private school, the out-of-network doctors (my older daughter suffered from asthma and we didn't have dental insurance), Theodor's studio, my office, the dinner parties I liked to have, the lessons for the girls—piano and skating and swimming and tennis and soccer and lacrosse. ("Mommy, can I take gymnastics too?") I couldn't afford the expensive notions of the other mothers who'd catch you up in their whims, assuming you had as much money as they—private yoga instruction for the kiddies in their private gyms. The girls needed none of it, I knew that, but how could I tell them we could not afford it? Because I had failed? Failed by introducing them to a life that actually did not belong to them, that was a lie?

  The problem of the artist who collects millionaires is that after a while you forget you can't live like them. The Chapmans didn't know that catastrophe loomed before me. If a change in our financial circumstances didn't happen fast, our daughters would be yanked from their nurturing school and placed in the terrible school in our catchment (the word alone sounded like some sort of horrid Dickensian workhouse for children), the one that I passed every day on the way to my office and that reminded me of a prison, riddled with the horror stories of New York public schools—drugs, guns, sex in the stairwells, overcrowding. "Oh, but it's getting better," the private school mothers declared in the park, with a nod of affirmation to the idea of public school. They espoused other progressive, open-minded, liberal ideas. They voted for Democrats and against school vouchers, and in most other things embraced a charming, witty, ironic sense of their own exceptionalism—a condition, perhaps, of their residency on an island of exceptions, subclauses and sneaky provisos double-parked off the midatlantic coast.

  What the Chapmans didn't know, above all else, was that if things didn't change, and soon, I would have to give up on myself, on the dream of believing that I had made it or could make it, the artistic life so lauded by those who do not live it. In Wall Street terms I had chosen risk for Theodor and me; we'd gone long on ourselves, invested all we had in ourselves, and the investment was not paying off. We had not hedged. We were driving fast, one hundred miles per hour in our seemingly fancy life, but we were heading toward a brick wall.

  Even so, I hoped, pumping and puffing and stretching the borders of reality, a kind of insanity. I hoped. Generation of Fire was a big book for my small publisher, the new and rising Leader Inc. Books—five bestsellers in the past three years. A "breakout book," they called my novel. They bought it when it seemed no one else would have it. And Hollywood had expressed interest in the dramatic rights. Streamline Productions and Atomic Pictures and Boss Brothers, names cast about like so many diamonds spraying light. Foreign sales were lining up nicely, nibbles on the line. The publisher was hoping for an excerpt in The Literary Review.

  It was all but a slam dunk. I was high. The editor and the head of publicity called me regularly, checking my whereabouts, making certain I'd be around, telling me about tour date possibilities and magazines that might do profiles, off-the-book-page opportunities. They even considered hosting a book party, a huge deal these days, an extreme vote of confidence. This time it would happen. It had to. It equaled success, and success, of course, equaled money. "Don't think about all this," Theodor told me. "Write." Now if only the reviews would be excellent, if only they'd roll in on time, on their wings the book would lift to the stratosphere. The if only's really could align just so this time to unlock the sea of elusive readership. In every part of me I felt that desperate hope.

  But then a bill would arrive: tuition, life insurance, American Express thick with its charges to out-of-network doctors (I refused to believe I couldn't accept the best medical care), gourmet food stores, lessons for my girls—their endless lessons. Late at night before the blue light of my computer I would check my dwindling Vanguard balances to see if a stock had taken off, if there was a bank error in my favor. Want, want, want. Need. The wish for a piece of America, our own home, was a noble desire, like a good education or the ability to pay a bill without it stabbing you in the heart. For what was the sacrifice? For art? I hid behind my confident smile, my hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, jeans and a shirt from Agnès B., strolling to school with the girls on either side of me, holding their hands, the stroll of a mother who has few cares, the stroll of ease and success. I am a tall woman and I do not slouch. "We're spending a part of the summer in Europe. My next novel is set there," I say to another mother whose days are defined by gutting and renovating her little $5 million piece of America, a Manhattan townhouse. She has asked about our plans for the summer. The words glide from me with ease, not a lie exactly, perhaps wishful thinking. Who is the authentic one? My grandmother used to say, "If I don't like it the way it happened, I just say it the way it should have happened."

  A writer is above all this. A writer has the urge, the irrepressible, antiquated instinct to put one word down after another, to create real houses, real cities, real worlds of real people in imaginary gardens. A writer writes because it is necessary—is, dare I say, spiritually sustained by that necessity and not a need for profit. A writer does not care about profit. A writer writes, and because a writer writes, it seems, a writer goes without, and the list is long of the things forgone, all of it on display as Theodor and I happened from one grand summer vacation home to another, refuseniks camping out in the beds of our children's friends' homes. "Socioanthropology," Theodor called it, spinning gamely. This is all that one gives up for art. But the artist does not care.

  Will and Emma Chapman knew none of the weight, the slow, steady pressure, crushing with humiliating might. No, no. They did not, would not ever know all of this. They would not see me on the high wire. My life was beautiful! I was a great literary success! Renowned, as Mr. Hov had said. I was at the top of my career or my game or both, and Will Chapman, the endearing fool, wanted to be me. And so I said to Emma, standing there in that crumbling house that would complete their dreams, on that first afternoon in Maine, the light pouring through the fractured windowpanes, casting rainbows of color on our faces, "We will help you kill them too."

  "The plot thickens," Will said, raising his eyebrows.

  "India is good at that sort of thing," Theodor added. He shot a knowing look at Emma and Will, one that said he kne
w his wife inside and out, everything that she was capable of, and with that look he knit them into his intimate knowledge of me. I wasn't sure what he meant, nor do I believe did they, but we all smiled anyway. I caught myself up in their dream, pretending to understand it, wanting it too, I'm afraid, because it seemed to my mind, with its desperate questions, that the Chapmans, with this house, their desire for and appreciation of it, were gently pointing me to a kind of answer.

  Two

  ON A CLEAR MAY DAY my life began, lilacs blooming, their scent flooding the hospital room, a bouquet on the bedside table. In my mother's tired and happy arms I wailed, her gorgeous girl, everything long about me. She admired each toe, each finger, my rosebud mouth, my long dark eyelashes and my bright blue eyes that held an intelligence, she could tell, that almost scared her with its ferocity. She loved to tell me that, the haunting power of my newborn eyes. They became mythic even for me. It was the responsibility that terrified her and fascinated her and which culminated in my eyes.

  I am seduced by beginnings. I yearn for beginnings. I love to start fresh. A new book. A new day. A new dress, slipping into it to become a new person. Before things become messy, before the predicate traps you.

  I was the predicate for my father. He sat in an armchair in the corner of my mother's hospital room, a bit stunned by the wreckage of birth—his wife's dark eyes, drawn and tired cheeks. Looking at me there, a newborn baby girl, he did not think I was beautiful. Rather, he thought I looked like him, with my thin hair and round face, the intensity of my big eyes which held a defiance that declared that I would do as I pleased. He knew this defiance. It was his own, had served him well.