Dear Money

by Martha McPhee

  "Daisies?"

  "Congratulations," he said, and we slipped inside. A long bright corridor led to stairs, which we climbed for three flights. I had not been here in a while. On each floor there was only one studio. This was the kind of building that was fast being converted into condominiums. Paint chipped from the walls in big patches, bare bulbs dangled from the ceilings, Art School Redux. I could hear other people at work in the building. A hammer, a table saw, the shuffling of feet, furniture being moved. No windows graced the stairwell.

  "Your book is brilliant. You're brilliant. I read it again today."

  "Really?" My voice undisguised and a bit squeaky. Praise from this man, who was still slogging away on the margins, meant everything to me. As long as he believed in me I'd be able to keep going. I told him about the schoolteacher's compliment.

  "That's what it's all about," he said. "One person at a time."

  I told him about my day, seeing Kathy Park, the bikini-clad skin sanders. I wanted to tell him about Win.

  We were at the door now. It was slightly ajar, well lit inside. The light cast shadows on Theodor's face, making him look older and more worn than he actually was. "You're worried," he said, studying me.

  Theodor had no idea how intricate the web of bills and debts and desires and gambles really was. If I explained it to him, I'd exhaust him with the complexities. Often I wondered what he'd do if I died, how he'd reckon with the mess I left behind. He never knew when his checks came in, went out, and for what. I'd built a protective wall for him. We were in this together, yet I didn't want to trouble him with the mess because I didn't want to lose control. His solution would be to move. Like Kathy, he'd suggest we live somewhere we could afford. I didn't want to hear that the children had to be taken out of private school. I didn't want to hear that I couldn't buy that dress or these shoes, afford Gwyneth's doctors whom we'd come to love. And what neighborhood could we afford in this city—or beyond? Our rent-stabilized apartment made it impossible to move—not to mention my teaching job. A good teaching position was hard to replace, here or elsewhere. I was trapped. But if I told Theodor all this, he would not worry; he'd find a way to adjust so that we could afford our lives as artists. Never would I be able to engage him in the worry it seemed to take to maintain our lives as I wanted them to be.

  "What's wrong?" he asked. He held me at arm's length and looked at me closely. I wanted to confess to him, something. It felt urgent, about to spill out of me. "It isn't the unveiling you're worried about."

  "Is it finished?" I pushed open the door to his studio, half expecting to see the chalice right there, fully formed, transformative, on the steel table in the foyer. Instead, on the table was a vase filled with more daisies, two fluted glasses and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. I always loved going to Theodor's studio. It was like stepping inside his mind. The downstairs was tidy, a contrast to the upstairs workspace. Off the foyer was a tiny room with a bed in it, neatly made. In another room was his desk and books. There was also a bathroom (tidy too) and a small kitchen with a bathtub in it. On the other side of the kitchen a spiral staircase led to the studio itself and continued up to the roof.

  It was a delightful space, surprising. Pots boiled and bubbled on the stove. He poured us champagne and toasted me, took my hand and led me through the kitchen and up the stairs to the studio, a big room, at the far end a wall of arched, lead-mullioned windows. Beneath the windows stood a set of antique brass scales we had bought years before in Nuwara Eliya, in Sri Lanka's hill country. It had cost far more to have them shipped home than it had to buy them, but they were beautiful and still perfectly weighted. Even then he'd had a vision of the studio he wanted someday to create. In the center of the room stood the long wooden workbench covered with tools and parts of chalices and goblets, a child's spoon with an elephant on the handle; little wooden drawers were filled with sheets of gold leaf and blown glass beads, and some had colored jewels. Sheets of copper and rolled gold and fragments of silver, a hacksaw, welders big and small. An overhead lamp shed a bright light on it all. The brick wall was covered with tools that dangled from hooks Theodor had drilled into the bricks. Amid the hanging tools was the Étienne Delaune engraving we'd bought of a goldsmith's workshop dating from 1576. We'd bought it in London when I was there on tour for my first novel, in a print gallery in South Kensington. Theodor's dream was to re-create the workshop in the print. He had. The tools hadn't changed much, nor had the needs of the goldsmith—the fire, the gold, the big windows for natural light, the placement of the table to avoid shadow. All I could think of was our debts could be repaid with the sale of some of the metals, the jewels—little amethyst beads, jade balls, turquoise, jet, emerald, sapphire. All the smallest suggestion of the gem, but gem all the same. Eighteen hundred per month, too, for the space—that would free us up (though it was being paid for right now by the patron). I chastised myself for thinking like this. I should love being here. I did love being here. Where was the commission? My eyes shot to the Delaune. We could sell the Delaune.

  "You need to take a break," he said. "Fill up again."

  "How could I do that?" I said.

  "So you are worried."

  "Was that a trap?"

  "I can't stop you from this," he said.

  "I've been gambling," I said dramatically.

  He laughed but gave me an inquisitive look.

  "A thousand dollars blown to the wind," I said and swept my hand out to indicate wind, blew a little zephyr.

  "What have you been gambling on?"

  "On coffee."

  He laughed some more.

  "I'm being serious," I said loudly. "Won't you listen for once? Please." And then I spilled all: Deals and coffee options and calls and futures and tells and terms I did not understand. A blight in Brazil, excess in China, 37,500 pounds of coffee beans aswirl in my head.

  "Thank God you didn't win a quarter million dollars' worth of coffee," Theodor said. "Where would we have put it all?"

  "It all boils down to a joke. Everything's a joke."

  "You don't have to do this. We don't have to get into a fight."

  "Why are you always so calm?"

  "Because I knew what I was getting into. Sometimes it'll be good, sometimes bad. End of story. You need to remember."

  I picked up the spoon with the elephant on the handle. It was made of silver. The trunk lifting, curling upward with joy. A child's spoon. I imagined he'd made it for one of the girls as a birthday present. He was always making them whimsical objects, mobiles when they were babies, rattles. He loved the elephant, that the shape of its mouth made it appear to be happy. Why couldn't he sell objects, fancy work like this at a reasonable price, in the trendy Williamsburg stores that sprouted up like wild flowers?

  Every piece in this room had been created by his hand. I remembered Theodor's tiny studio, the one he'd had when I'd first met him. I'd found it intoxicating—the smell of the hot metal, the heavy leather apron, his burned fingers, fragments of gold in his hair. Terms and names came spilling back to me: bosses and frieze-like and bacchant-erotic and maskarons and bucrania and vitreous enamel and granulation in the manner of the Castellani goldsmiths who worked in the manner of Etruscan goldsmiths, chryselephantine. I had cared. Styles and aesthetics descended from Magna Graecia. It had seemed that a life could be made entirely of art. It had been for centuries. It still could be. He was right: I was afraid to see the commission. I saw it now at the end of the table, covered in a velvet cloth.

  "Here now. Let's not get grim tonight. I promise. All day tomorrow we can do that." He poured more champagne and I swallowed it fast. "That's right. Now let me show you what I've been up to."

  He covered my eyes and led me down the table. "Open," he said. I lifted the velvet cloth and there it was—commanding in the overhead light, golden with pools of the vitreous enamel and mother of pearl used to render the illusion of water. It stood a foot and a half high. A pedestal worked to look like a tree trunk, unpolished,
striations in the metal—alloyed with copper. At the foot of the pedestal roamed an assortment of animals, familiar, North American: a bear, a rabbit, a moose, a wolf, a horse, birds on branches stemming from the trunk, a squirrel. Where the cup met the trunk, the trunk appeared to be cut ever so slightly, as if it could break or were about to break, as if too much liquid in the cup might cause it to topple. A question of balance, perhaps of fate. The inside of the cup was engraved with fish. On the lid roamed exotic animals: an elephant, a tiger, a giraffe, a zebra, all delicately chiseled. Inlaid jet created the zebra's stripes. The zebra wasn't yet finished, but the intent was clear. The animals fed on garnet pomegranates and lapis blueberries. The eyes of the animals were holes waiting to be filled. The cup with its lid on was an orb. Upon closer inspection, it was the world—the continents, the seas, delineated with the finest hint of filigree. It was spectacular. Unfinished, but spectacular.

  "No wonder it's taken so long," I said. "They are going to love it. The break, it's wicked."

  "It's just a little thing I've been working on." He wrapped his arms around me from behind, the real deal. It would work out. I understood that this was how it was and would always be. The animals just needed their little eyes. My student came to me, her doe-like crying eyes looking at me, all that curly hair and seriousness, and I began to laugh—far more than the revelation I was having warranted. But that's what was happening: I was having a revelation. Theodor kissed my neck, pulling my back against him, my butt to his pelvis.

  "I didn't intend for the chalice to be funny," he said. "But keep laughing." He was laughing too, at the sheer fact that I was laughing. He had no idea what was making me laugh. He asked me to let him in on it. It was a relief, a release, the laughter pouring out of me as if rendering the day as just that, a day, and irrelevant—one of many stacked up against all the others to create a life, inconsequential, made consequential by me, my silliness, my propensity to worry. I told the student that the position she had her character engaged in was not that unusual. The shock of her dark eyes, holding me, staring at me as if I were there before her in the compromised position. I laughed some more.

  "Oh, Theodor," I said and told him about my student and her story. "I said to her in my most professorial voice that it's not that unusual. She gave me the queerest look, as if she were staring at me naked. But Theodor, I just get it now: the boyfriend in the story was having anal sex with her."

  Theodor said in his most professorial voice, "It's not that unusual." Then we were both laughing before the chalice of the toppling world, caught, snapshot-like, just before it falls—or not. The big question, raised. But for now the world was ours and the worries of a day were lifted. It would be all right, and it was my husband, my husband, who was going to save the day.

  Nine

  THE BOOK TOUR. We've all heard about them: the author reading for an audience of three, two, one, none. You fly across the country to San Francisco, feeling important. You are chauffeured to the bookstore, attended by a literary escort. Signs all over the store announce your event at 7 P.M. A voice comes over the intercom: You'll find India Palmer in the children's section. She'll be reading from her new book, Generation of Fire, and signing copies. Five minutes till show time. There, squeezed into the children's section, between rows of Mazy and Olivia and Lilo and Stitch and Goodnight Moon, are a couple of dozen chairs in front of which stands a microphone and a table with your books neatly stacked, several standing prominently on display.

  In the back row sits one old lady. It took six years to write Generation of Fire! Oh well, you think gamely, the show must go on. You notice the old lady is unwrapping something from a paper bag. She takes out a small tin and rests it in her gnarled, arthritic hand, and with her other hand she pries off the lid. Her hair is long and white and unbrushed. The can she has opened, you realize, though she is a good many rows removed from you, is tuna fish. The oily smell wafts toward you. She proceeds to eat it with a plastic fork pulled from the folds of her dress.

  Onward! You read for her. With all the emotion you can muster. There is someone else in the audience: a young girl, who arrives late. When you're finished, she raises her hand earnestly. "Yes?" you ask. Her eyes are bright and her skin is aglow with teenage youth. She has an athletic build and an innocence that makes you ache for her. "I have an assignment I need to do for my English class," she says. "I'm supposed to interview an author. Can I interview you?"

  Next stop, Memphis! Festival of the Book. Writers, so very many writers, marching around with their chins held high. Writers from everywhere, in all sizes and shapes. The famous ones are hidden away at the invitation-only events, in special ballroom-sized auditoriums, escorted in through back doors like rock stars. Except for the It Girl of the literary world. A fifty-year-old woman (there's still hope for us) dressed entirely in green—tights, dress, necklace, sweater, reading glasses, barrette—she escapes to waltz and shine among the masses. She wants to be admired. Fame has not yet had its way with her. The rest are ordinary, everyday writers, dazed, frumpy, dressed up with a chic flair, long hair, a proud mane, coiffed, uncoiffed, ponytails on aging men, artists looking like shit, or about to look like shit, others clean-shaven, or that alluring five o'clock shadow on the young buck from Dallas, goatees, sideburns, hipster skinny-legged pants, the drunken swagger, the tart with the overexposed cleavage (it's working!). They are for the most part enthusiastic, grateful to have been invited. The writers are legion, too many to have never been heard of. Writers everywhere, carrying copies of their books, marked with notes and Post-its indicating how to read passages effectively.

  Did you know that in the United States one in eight adults claims to be a professional writer, and that it has been estimated that the average annual income of this group is $800 per year? Here they converge, on display in Memphis, walking the halls of the stucco-walled convention center, the Marriott hotel, writers riding glass elevators to the rooftop lounge to sip another vodka martini while awaiting their allotted times to perform. There in the corner is the Latvian performance poet whose subject is standup misery. The drunk from Kentucky is carrying on with the pretty young thing from Manhattan who has just written her first novel. He bends in close to her, telling her she's going to be a smashing success; he saw the reviews in The Month and Punch. She gives a sweet, flirtatious chirp and looks earnestly at him. He's glutted the market with his books, one a year, the same story, the same low sales. Onward! Here the writer is king, here the writer rules, here the writer will be heard, here book lovers come by the hundreds from all over the state. They volunteer, they sell books, they buy books, they introduce authors, ferry authors from airport to hotel to airport.

  Your big event is a panel discussion, "Crafting Betrayal in the American Dreamscape of Fiction." The other panelists do not show. The host does not show. There are three people in the "audience." They are resting, using the chairs to take a load off between events. You read, of course. A passage that addresses betrayal, of course. Your voice bounces off the walls, echoes in the chamber of the empty room. The audience seems to be listening attentively. They are a good audience. A man in the corner takes notes.

  The Q&A: "Any questions?" you hear your voice say, as if from across a canyon. And for a moment you think you should raise your own hand.

  The man taking notes in the corner (the three people are each in different rows) raises his hand.

  "Is this 'fiction nonfiction'?" he asks, gray eyes, hair, face with its sharp provocative features—features designed to irritate, you realize. "Did your husband marry you and then your sister, or did he marry your sister and then you?"

  Taken aback, but you keep your literary cool. "Do you mean, is the book autobiographical?" you ask.

  "Well, in short, to put it bluntly. Well, yes, yes, I'd like to know. I like to know those sorts of things. It makes the reading of the book more interesting, in a way."

  "Since you put it that way," you respond, "let me ask you which sister you think I am?"
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br />   "The betrayer, of course," he says, stroking his chin.

  "In the nonfiction version of the fiction, you nailed it," you say and begin clapping, and the three follow suit.

  On the ride back to the airport, an elderly woman who has written a self-help book on her relationship with her cat tells of how she forgot to bring her book to her event, so she had to invent a reading on the spot. "It was just so hard. I'm just so tired. It's a performance. They want so much out of you. I'm destroyed."

  Who, you wonder. Who wants so much out of her?

  "I would have liked to talk about my cat," you say.

  The first review of Generation of Fire appears six weeks after publication day. It appears in Free Moment, written by some poor, underpaid, overworked creature who uses the first three chapters of the book (which also seems to be where she stopped reading) as a launching pad for a tirade against her boyfriend. It is a performance of the sort I see every other week, it seems, in at least one or two of my undergraduate student papers, a kind of lofty opening that addresses something big: "the beginning of time," for instance, or in this case, "American letters," and then hauls in the hapless author as Exhibit A of All That Is Wrong. There is a classic, three-paragraph "middle" of willful misreading, followed by a paragraph in which the reviewer holds up sentences that are better than anything I've ever written—lines that kept coming back to me, haunting me, that were literally beyond me, beyond my natural powers, that had, nevertheless, by dint of my persistence, rewarded me by taking up residence here and there in my book. These same sentences, which knocked Theodor out of his chair, are given a pistol-whipping by the reviewer.

  "Ponder the career of India Palmer if you want to know what's gone wrong with American fiction. Grade: D-minus."