Dear Money

by Martha McPhee

  The girls jump all over me. April, the babysitter, is sitting on her duff, reading the discounts offered at the pharmacy this week. She's always trying to get a deal for us on toilet paper and paper towels and cleaning supplies. She tells me about the specials and hands me rebate forms I need to fill out and send to a rebate center somewhere in South Dakota. In a month or two a check for a dollar will arrive in the mail. I do the task faithfully and as instructed by April. You do not cross April. "Did you read in the paper?" she says to me. She reads the paper from cover to cover, is up on world politics and the presidency and interest rates and the housing market and the wars. Today it's worms in someone's apartment. Some man and his family are going green in New York City. "They've given up toilet paper," she declares in her lilting Caribbean accent. She's a tall woman with bulk. She's from "the islands," as she puts it, where she has a husband and two grown children.

  April condemns the practice of going without toilet paper as grotesque, taking the gimmick "just too far." I hear the rumors, other mothers complaining about her because she "reads so much, almost as much as she disciplines the kids." Discipline is passé, alas. Kids rule. Not mine. Not with April. Sun streams through the windows. The girls are all over me with hugs and kisses. Gwen has made a card for me: CONGRATULATIONS. "I helped make it," says the little one, Ruby. "You did not," says Gwen. "Did too." "Did not."

  "It's beautiful," I say.

  "We're proud of you, Mom," they say together. "My teacher saw your book in the store."

  I'm still in my coat and quite hot with the girls hanging from me. I kiss them on their heads and April scoops them away so I can complete my day of work. She knows my rhythms. The girls march off in their dresses, ironed and selected by April. She is proud of their appearance, as if they are an extension of her, a queen bee with her own elegant wardrobe. They sometimes seem to me to be her children as much as they are my own, a bond we first learned to accept and then came to cherish. The girls' hair is neatly brushed and pulled back, fingernails and toenails manicured. Their little heads are held high. They have no idea what I'm thinking: that April needs notice too. And April, striding out, poor thing, has no idea how much I need to give her notice. Has no idea that we here on the thirteenth floor (it's called the fourteenth, but let's call a spade a spade) are perched on a house of cards. Dear me. Tomorrow I'll take care of all that; today is my publication day!

  Gwen catches me with her eyes and holds on for a moment, going inside me, reading me—my quizzical girl. She knows; she knows everything—that there is a large difference between her and her friends.

  I disappear into our bedroom to check the phone messages, hoping for one from Darwin. I need to hear his enthusiasm, need to hear how we're going to surf coffee to the top. My troubled student comes to mind, the way she looked at me, as if shocked by my revelation, as if I had revealed something atrocious about myself. They are so young, I think. I forget how young they are. No messages. Turn on the computer. Throw coat on bed. Take off shoes. Look in closet. Pull out pretty dress, a pair of tall black leather boots. Draw a bath. The phone rings.

  "Congratulations." It's Win. I know the voice. It's a singular voice. I shiver, feel guilty everywhere. I've not seen him since Maine.

  "Win?" I ask.

  "You know it's me."

  "I do?"

  "Don't pretend you don't."

  "When are we having that champagne you promised?"

  "Tonight."

  "Tonight? But—"

  "No buts. There's this little bar on top of the..."

  The girls bound into the room, stumbling over themselves, clamoring, fighting over something or other. April is close on their heels. Win is talking but I don't hear him. I hear the girls and April's reprimands. The room is sparkling, bed freshly made with ironed sheets. All the surfaces dusted. In the corner is a chair I had re-covered recently, elegant and decadent, in Scal-amandre chenille, picturing prancing tigers—the fancy fabric bought deeply discounted on the Internet (to upgrade the hauled-off-the-street aesthetic). The cushions are fluffed and a throw drapes the arm, as if the chair is a refined lady, languishing. Janine can never be given notice. Money, all of this was made by money. Out the window: New York City, buildings rising, shooting into the sky, money's creation. Theodor refused to care about money; for him money was a cancer, eating the individual alive. It seemed life offered little apart from the care of money. Are we all money's prisoners? I'll call Theodor and explain that something's come up. How far would I go for it?

  "I'll have to call you back," I say.

  "I'll see you there," Win says and clicks off.

  I would find it unattractive if a friend described a man to me in this way, his presumption, his hubris, but all I want to do is meet him. I want to be a poor girl in a Dreiser novel, hear the rich man claim me: "You're my girl now. Come with me. You're mine." I want the decisions to be made for me.

  I shut the bath faucet. April takes the girls to the store. Peace for a moment. I notice Will's manuscript on my bedside table. It's been there for a month, uncracked. I've been giving him excuses, but he always tells me not to worry, when I'm ready for it that will be the time to read it. To the kitchen for water. Pass through the dining room. A gigantic bouquet of lilies—twenty different kinds and colors of lilies, shooting from a vase every which way like fireworks, calla and tiger and trumpet and Easter and Nile and kinds I can't name—casual yet clearly carefully designed. A crushing sensation pushes into my chest. Theodor just doesn't get it, that we're nearly ruined. Their scent fills the room. I open the card: Nirvana at 8. No signature.

  I light candles and a stick of incense, sprinkle the bath water with oils and slip into the tub along with the first chapter of Will's manuscript. Title page: Never Say Die by William Banes Chapman. Dedication page: To Emma Billings Chapman and our daughters, Elisabeth Chapman and Catherine Chapman, my trifecta. My goodness, how many times does he need to print his last name!

  The story is a family saga that opens on a train heading west from Ohio at the turn of the last century—two girls and their mother, impossibly poor, with a trunk filled with beautiful linen dresses. The mother carries a violin and charms their way from third class to first, where the cars are heated and the rich pioneers are plentiful. They are fleeing the girls' father, the mother determined to make it on her own as a schoolteacher in Montana. It is winter, and snowdrifts bring the train to a halt, and the older daughter, Thelma, named for the heroine of a Marie Corelli novel popular at that time, wonders what will become of them. Will paints the cold of the third-class coach, the coal stove in the center of the car. He paints the black trunk with the white linen dresses stiffly pressed, the iron packed in the trunk, the inappropriateness of the clothes for this time of year but the bounty of their promise. You can see the cold feet of the little girls, their shoes worn. Though in third person, the story is Thelma's, and you want to know what becomes of her, of them.

  Before I realize it, I've read the thirty-page chapter, which ends with Thelma's mother in the arms of a stranger in first class, kissing him. The train is stuck in a drift, but in first class no one seems to mind. Thelma's mother plays the violin, and all the men's eyes are on her, on her thin dress, too light for this weather; her auburn hair is held in a twist by two carved ivory combs.

  A bit overwritten as it is, too many adverbs and adjectives (nothing a good editor couldn't help fix), Will's story has engaged me. I want to read on. I read the pages fast. His style is big and generous and specific all at once. He can't sustain it, I think. He's a banker, I think. He can't be a good writer. It's not possible. Today is my day. I feel selfish. Terribly, cruelly selfish. I drop the pages aside, get out of the tub and call Darwin, hoping for my own good news.

  "We've hit a bump in the road," he says.

  "A what?" I snap, dripping from the bath.

  "A bump," he says. "I made a very amateurish mistake."

  "A what?"

  "A mistake."

  "How?" On a ta
ble in a little nook in our bedroom, next to the computer, sits a stack of unpaid bills, rising, like so much water, at the neck, the chin, etc. "How?" I ask again, softly.

  "I failed to consider the impact of China. They are world-class producers of coffee now too." I think of all the children, three-year-olds even, at the Chapman girls' school learning Mandarin. They do not drink coffee in China. They drink tea. Calls and strikes and futures and I hadn't understood what we were getting into. I hadn't wanted to understand. The idea was too attractive. Take a thousand dollars and turn it into half a million by "riding the wave."

  "What the hell does China have to do with the price of coffee?" I ask. He explains it all to me again, betting on the future price, which is supposed to soar. Various factors position the commodity to rise in value, meaning the supply was to be diminished in record quantities, in a way Deals hasn't seen since the last price explosion for coffee. I'll confess, hearing his calls, the thrill in his voice, the power of possibility, I'd been struck, not by all the money I could have made, but by how vital I had felt at being involved in stakes so entirely outside myself and my imagination. I understood enough to know that I was betting on a disaster that would create an imbalance in supply and demand, and that it was this that would allow us to win. Now I simply feel depleted.

  "We can still make it," he offers. "We still have ten days before the option expires. This can turn around yet. Keep your head up."

  "Does a turnaround mean a blight in China?" I ask.

  "Well," he begins. But I don't want to hear it. He prattles on for a bit, but I don't hear him. I absorb the bills with my eyes. I'll deal with them tomorrow. More balance transfers, more speaking with the operators. "Are there any other balance transfers you'd like to make while you still have the promotional rate?" they'll ask. They're offering money to suckers at 0 percent, betting that they'll default eventually and then be forced to pay the astronomical fees, up to 30 percent, betting as I do on disaster, on unsuspected illness, the desire to keep up with one's neighbors, that irrefutable belief in our own selves to bring in better futures. "Yes," I will respond, joining the crowd.

  Deals is mentioning another trick. Corn comes up, $5.545 a bushel. Record high. We're cruising there. (Note: cruising replaces surfing.) "I'll make it up to you. Don't you worry." Bills swamp my mind, surrounded by bushels of corn and a world paved with coffee beans. Novel? Where are all the novels in this picture? I haven't written a word since I put the last to Generation of Fire. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. We'll pay off the bills with the money from Theodor's commission, like a ship come in after years at sea. Believe like Theodor. Perhaps I could ask my father for a loan to tide us over. I'll ask Theodor what to do. I walk to the dining room with the phone pressed to my ear, admire the flowers, the callas like great trumpets in so many colors, how gorgeous they look on my table. How will I explain them to Theodor? I'll think of something. "I promise, India," Deals says. "If this doesn't work out, another one will. Corn, darling, ethanol! I'll win for you yet. Don't despair."

  "Ethanol, the big joke," I say.

  "Jokes don't matter if there's money to be made," he says before ringing off.

  Today, October 16. My publication day. My book with its rough-cut pages, stacked one on top of the other in a crate sent from the publisher, gleaming and glossy and new, repeating the title and my name— Generation of Fire, India Palmer—heralding and offering as support the unassailable fact of themselves, with their heft and their sheen and their substance. But the fact is, as I've known all along, none of this works. None of it will suffice. This was a shipment, a ship of sorts, that had returned too late to a city that had burned to the ground. No survivors. The books, with their perky blurbs and advance praise, were the unredeemable currency of a country gone bust, an enterprise that had packed up and moved in the night. Sorry. Wrong address.

  In the elevator, headed for the street, a woman from the tenth floor enters, laden with bags—in her hands, on her back, on her shoulder, under her eyes. She's a schoolteacher, divorced, her children grown. She looks depleted. "India Palmer," she declares, and I smile as if all is well, couldn't be better. "I cannot put it down. A magnificent read. Thank you."

  I thought about it. I thought about picking up the phone, dialing the number that has not changed since I was a girl, my mother responding. The veins of her hand bulging as they do, grasping the receiver, her graying hair in a net, her prim dress neatly arranged. "Oh, India," she'd say, as she always does, as if I am a surprise. "How are the children? I miss my little granddaughters. When are you coming for a visit?" She'd be in the kitchen, a pot of something on the stove. She is always making a stew or a soup. My father, retired now, would be in the living room, in his chair, compounding interest—the same chair where he has always read the paper. The furnishings just as they were when I was a girl—delicate antiques that had no need to be replaced. Never would they waste money on a renovation. My mother prided herself on her timeless style.

  "Is Dad there?" I knew better than to go through her. When it came to doling out money, he was the ruler of that household.

  "Why certainly, sweetheart. Is everything all right? He's reading the paper and having an afternoon tea." Her voice quavered a bit, knowing that something was wrong. She always knew.

  "Everything's fine, Mom."

  "Daddy," I'd hear her call. "It's India, for you."

  "What does she want?" he'd respond, not in a mean way, rather with curiosity.

  "It's her publication day." And then all the words would become muffled as Mom covered the receiver with her hand.

  "Hello, India," he'd say in that way of his that had the singular ability to conjure the entire subcontinent and then, too, to conquer it.

  Be bold: "I have to pay the tuition for the girls," I'd say directly, without camouflage. "We'll have the money soon, as soon as Theodor is paid for his commission. This is just a loan. I'll pay you interest." A pause. The inevitable and enormous pause into which would fall all of my father's concern for me, the fear of what it meant to be an artist, the inevitable reckoning that he always knew would come.

  "I warned you about this," he would respond. I could see that temple vein of his, flaring as it does. His receding hairline making his face appear much bigger and more imposing.

  "Daddy," Mom would call. She always called him Daddy. I'd hear her in the background, her feeble attempt to interject herself.

  "You got yourself into this mess, you can get yourself out. If there is one thing I know about my daughter, it is that she is smart. And I know I'd be doing you no favors if I came and scooped you out of a mess. You're smart. Smart. S.M.A.R.T. And I paid for you to attend one of the country's finest universities. You can do it." Pause. "I do believe in you, India." Thrown in with a warmth, particular to him, that always managed to soften the blow. He'd never tire of his lessons. Yes, I knew the answer, and so there was no need to call.

  I fell in love with Theodor because he was a dreamer, and a dreamer, it almost goes without saying, was one who believed. He believed in himself, in his art, in me, my art. He believed in the artistic life, the sacrifices that choice entailed. He believed in them still. It was I, of course, who had changed. I had moved and left no forwarding address. I was the one who had fallen and left Theodor behind. As I rode the subway downtown toward 59th Street, I was eager to get off and meet a man I hardly knew. I wondered what would happen if I did get off; if I walked along Central Park South, dark now at 7:30 P.M.; if I rode the elevator up to the restaurant perched above the park like an aerie. At night the restaurant wasn't nearly as romantic as at dusk, the park a black void fringed by the lights of so many buildings. But romance was unequivocally in the invitation, in the flowers: bold, treacherous, daring romance. Would he be sitting there waiting for me? Would he kiss my hand, my cheek, my lips? What would he do with me if I were to come? Would he marry me?

  Yes, I did think that, like a schoolgirl I thought that, the natural consequence of a date with
a boy. If I got off the subway, we'd have a first date. We'd ask all those questions you ask when getting to know each other, about college and books and food and trips around the world. The stories making people of us. He'd be the kind to take me on a carriage ride through the park, slipping the driver extra money, lots and lots of it, so the driver would go off course, deeper into the dark park, farther away from ordinary souls. I wanted to get off the subway. I wanted to feel what it was like to have worry lifted, stripped away like so much old varnish. It would be so easy. One foot in front of the other. 79th Street, 72nd Street, 66th Street, 59th Street. The intoxication of the new, the blank slate, the tabula rasa that I love so well. The new dress, the new page, 50th Street, 42nd, there was still time to change my mind, 34th. At 14th Street I switched to the Canarsie Line for Williamsburg, aching at my lack of daring, knowing that if Win was there he'd have enough ego to handle my standing him up.

  Walking from the subway to Theodor's studio, I passed a few young hipsters in their skinny dark jeans, a young woman carrying a guitar case, still somehow pioneers, though I knew the real estate had skyrocketed here too. Otherwise it was quiet and cold. Leaves swirled about with plastic bags, catching in the branches of trees. Telephone and electrical wires webbed a canopy overhead. At the end of the street the East River lapped at the pavement. A boat, lit up, floated by. The darkened Domino sugar factory hogged the sky.

  Theodor, his hair flying this way and that, dressed in a T-shirt, black jeans and black boots, wearing a leather apron, held daisies at the door of his building: industrial, red brick. How did he find daisies in October? Our wedding bouquet. We'd been married thirteen years. Suddenly I wanted to tell him everything about the day. He scooped me into his arms, and even though he was in short sleeves I felt warm.