The Chocolate Money

by Ashley Prentice Norton

  No matter how much fun I have, I still miss Babs. Eagerly wait for her to come back.

  Lily comes into my room that night to tuck me in. As soon as she leaves, I sneak into Babs’s bedroom. I love to touch her things. Pretend I’m her.

  Babs is in her peach period. Her room is completely ripe with it. Peach doesn’t make sense as a Babs color. It is too muted. Evokes the offensive notion of fruit. But peach is more sophisticated than orange. It costs more money, and most women don’t think of it when they decorate.

  Babs’s bedspread is silk. My fingers glide quickly when I trace patterns into it, usually my name. Her pillows and sheets are from Léron. A single set costs as much as a wedding dress. The linens all have beautiful designs: flora and fauna, ribbons with Babs sewn across them. Delilah, our maid, changes and irons them twice a week, but they still smell like Babs. I lie down on her bed and fall asleep almost instantly.

  Someone wakes me up later that night. Before I can even orient myself, I am afraid. Instinct.

  But this time, it isn’t Babs. It’s Mack. He rubs my head softly. Waits patiently for me to emerge from my sleep. Completely unlike Babs, who always rips me from my dreams whenever she comes to my room for late-night chats. Mack. My first time ever alone with him.

  He comes to the aparthouse so often that the doormen just let him up. Without buzzing. I’m surprised I sleep through his arrival. Usually, I know immediately when he comes to see Babs. He focuses her energy. Directs it away from me and pulls it all into himself. Mack nights are the only ones when I’m able to fully relax. As long as Mack’s at the aparthouse, rolling about in her bed, Babs will not seek me out.

  My eyes open, blink slowly. Mack touches me gingerly on the shoulder. I sit up. The room is dim, but not completely black. The light from the hallway spills in over the bed, breaking the dark into shapes. Mack leans into me and our noses are so close they almost touch. His breath hits my face. My eyes smart. He must have been out drinking.

  Mack’s wearing a khaki trench coat. Carrying a briefcase. Blue suit, white dress shirt. His clothes look crisp and pressed despite the hour. Maybe this is a trick only people with money can do. Mack comes from the “old” kind. Anonymous. Unlike Babs’s, it has no title. Just old, as if it is sitting in an attic somewhere. Dusty but viable.

  I look up at him. He’s more handsome than anyone in the movies. He runs his hand through his hair, messing it up a bit. A tic Babs finds annoying. If he needs to occupy his hands, why not take up smoking, for fuck’s sake? I like to watch him do it. It’s as if he knows he’s better-looking that anyone has a right to be and is trying to handicap himself. Allow others a shot at the game.

  “Baby, where is Babs?” Mack begins.

  I already know his voice intimately. I hear him ask Babs to make him drinks, hear the strained chords he sings when he and Babs sleep together. The fact that when he talks to me he now calls her “Babs” and not “your mother” like he did when we first met makes me sad. Now even he knows that Babs is always and only Babs. She never alters herself, even for me. Also, I don’t care much for the nickname “baby.” Coming from him, it is not intimate. Just a lazy word he throws in when he talks to girls he doesn’t owe anything to.

  “She hasn’t returned my calls the past couple of days,” he continues. “I was worried.”

  I want to tell him that Babs isn’t someone you worry about. Instead I say, “She’s not here.” I’m afraid if I give him too much information up front, he will leave.

  “Where is she?” Mack asks.

  “She’s mad at you,” I say, hoping this will buy me some more time.

  “Why?”

  “The other night. When you brought the present.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  The necklace episode has gone over his head, but I still have his attention.

  “How do you know?” he asks.

  I roll off the bed, get Babs’s pearls from her vanity. Bring them to him.

  Babs left them behind when she went to Paris. I found the necklace coiled in the top drawer of her vanity, tossed among her eyelash curlers and lipsticks, like a forgotten string of Mardi Gras beads. I have visited it twice since she left. I want to try it on, but I’m afraid I might break the clasp. I touch the pearls carefully. They are smooth and cold, like frozen grapes.

  I’m not that surprised to find them there. Babs will probably never even wear them. Whatever satisfaction they gave her died the moment the salesclerk returned her credit card and went to help the next customer. In Babs’s mind, pearls are not sexy. No matter how pumped up hers are, they do not have the power to cut like other gems. After all, they are round. Too female. Too passive. Vulnerable to perfume, scratches, chlorine. Babs thinks pearls are stupid.

  “See?”

  Mack sits down and takes the necklace in his hands, holds it by one end to assess the weight. As if it were an animal she has killed.

  “This is some necklace. Why do you think she’s mad if she went out and got this for herself? I’d say she must’ve been having a pretty good day.”

  I want to change the subject, but what else would interest him? If I were old enough, I might lean in for a kiss. But he is only sitting with me because he wants to understand Babs.

  Mack is so busy trying to figure out why Babs has gone and left an eleven-year-old girl in her place that he does nothing to break the silence either. He touches his watch. It has a round face, black Roman numerals, and a black croc strap. There is a groove cut into it, slicing the band where Mack fastens it.

  Finally something to talk about.

  “Can I see your watch?”

  He takes it off and hands it to me. I put it on. It is heavy and big on my wrist and twists around like a bracelet. I feel nicely weighted down wearing Mack’s watch and want more than anything hold on to it forever. But somehow I know he will never leave the aparthouse without it.

  I take the watch off, flip it over. There is an inscription on the back: April 11, 1966. MHM & MTM.

  “I got this as a gift,” Mack says, seeing me mull over the words.

  “For your birthday?” I ask, knowing that Mack’s birthday is in August. The day after Babs’s.

  “When I got married.”

  “From your mom?” I pretend to be eleven now, even though I really am.

  “From my wife.” He almost winces when he says this.

  For just a tiny moment, I think he might actually take his shoes off. Lie down on the bed and go to sleep with me. Let me hold his hand. Maybe he will even hold my hand back. His chest is so broad, his pressed white-collared shirt so fresh, I just know it smells like fall. I want to bury my head in it and nod off, if only for an hour.

  But he stands up. Buttons his coat and picks up his briefcase. Bends down and kisses the top of my head.

  “Good night, babe. If Babs calls, tell her I miss her.”

  I whisper, “Good night, Mack,” and he walks out the door.

  After he leaves, I find a quarter on the bed. The coin is shiny, like it was just minted. It isn’t the watch, but it’s something. Mack hasn’t given it to me, but I haven’t stolen it. It’s an exchange born of the moment.

  I have that quarter for almost six months before I lose it.

  3. The Daddies’ Breakfast

  December 1979

  EVERY YEAR AT THE beginning of December, the sixth grade at Chicago Day hosts the Daddies’ Breakfast. The fathers are invited to come to the cafeteria before school starts and feast on pancakes, waffles, bacon, and cinnamon rolls. Students decorate the dining hall with red and green paper neckties, hand-drawn portraits of their dads. The day we’re supposed to begin working on these, I wonder how I’m going to get out of it.

  My homeroom teacher, Wendolyn Henderson, goes around the room handing out white doilies for the daddy heads to go on. She gives me one, not knowing what my deal is. All the other girls and boys around me pick up markers, start working. Wendolyn comes back my way.

  “Bettina, you better
get going,” she says to me. Authoritative.

  Where am I supposed to go? I want to say. Instead, I reply, “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  “What do you mean?” she asks. “It doesn’t matter if your family has an unconventional situation.”

  “Huh?” I say, then realize she probably thinks my parents are divorced. I decide to just smack her with the true situation.

  “I don’t have a dad.”

  Wendolyn is now frustrated because she believes I’m holding out on her.

  “Is he dead?” she asks without emotion. Just trying to get the facts.

  “I’m not sure,” I say truthfully. Wendolyn looks down at me, annoyed. She thinks I’m just looking for attention. Have roped her into a game of twenty questions.

  “Are you adopted?” she ventures.

  “No,” I reply.

  “Well, then you must have a dad,” Wendolyn says, as if this is the only solution.

  “I do, I guess,” I admit, “but I don’t know who he is. My mother has never told me anything about him.”

  School is the only place where I refer to Babs as “my mother.” My calling her Babs would not go over well with Wendolyn. Like my dad situation.

  “Hmm,” Wendolyn says, still not quite believing what I have told her. But she has twenty other kids to manage and can’t waste any more time on me. She takes a moment and then comes up with a solution I can tell she is proud of.

  “You can always invite your mother,” she says.

  I don’t want to tell her that Babs doesn’t get up before noon. Certainly not for breakfast in a school cafeteria. I pretend inviting Babs is a good idea. I pick up my marker and get to work on my invite.

  Wendolyn returns to check on me. She sees my picture of Babs and nods her head in approval. Babs would laugh in my face if I brought this home. When Wendolyn isn’t looking, I crumple it up and throw it away.

  School over, I arrive home and find Babs in the living room, smoking her Duchess Golden Lights. Doing nothing else. This is enough of an activity.

  I am loath to interrupt her. I hang back, let her continue.

  When Babs smokes, it is a gorgeous gesture. Babs is not athletic, but the way she handles a cigarette reminds me of the way players at Wimbledon work their racquets. Every June, she and I sit inside and watch it on TV.

  When Björn Borg stretches up to meet the ball on a serve, he throws his whole weight behind it, hits the sweet spot, and sends it across the net to the precise patch of grass where he wants it to go. When Babs picks up a cigarette, she doesn’t hunch into herself as if it were a private activity. She opens up every inch of her body to the action, and anyone watching can experience it with her. She takes the cigarette between her lips, draws a long inhale, and sucks the smoke deep, deep into her lungs. There is a flinch of pleasure when the nicotine hits her bloodstream, but she is always in complete control when she exhales. Steady. Unrushed. Even. When she blows out the sweet mix of smoke and air she has alchemized inside her, it is completely intoxicating.

  I approach. She sees me and says, “Bettina! School?” Cheery voice. An invite to talk to her. I revel in it and join her on the couch.

  Maybe Wendolyn Henderson’s dumbfounded reaction to my dad situation will make Babs laugh. Babs hates Wendolyn. Says she is a simpleton who cannot possibly comprehend our universe. Wendolyn is also fat. Two strikes against her.

  “We had to make invitations to the Daddies’ Breakfast, and Miss Henderson doesn’t believe I don’t have a dad.”

  “Wendolyn’s complete lack of imagination aside, of course you have a dad, Bettina. You just don’t know who he is.”

  “Why won’t you tell me? Please.” I risk asking, even though I have gotten nowhere with this subject in the past. Today I can’t help it. Seeing all my classmates make invites really got to me.

  “I can’t, Bettina. We promised we would keep it a secret.”

  This is more information than I have ever gotten from her. He knows I exist. I wonder if he’s a dad of someone at Chicago Day and doesn’t want to risk his marriage.

  “But I won’t tell anyone. I promise. I just want to know,” I say.

  “I told you. It is one of those things that is just none of your business.”

  If it’s anyone’s business, it is surely mine. I feel tears coming. I am one sentence from knowing, but Babs will not budge. And I can’t think of anything that will force her to. I really do want to have a dad with me for the breakfast.

  Babs sees that I am upset and inexplicably does not mock me for this. She takes my hand and we walk upstairs to her room.

  “This should make you feel better,” she says.

  She reaches into a drawer in her room and pulls out what looks like a silver coin. She hands it to me.

  “Your father gave this to me. You can have it.”

  It’s a medal; on the face is a relief of two griffins ringed by Latin words. The back reads Latin Composition I, 1958. It is heavy in my hand, and I trace my fingers over the griffins.

  I don’t dare ask any questions, afraid that Babs will think better of this gift and snatch it back. Instead she says, “He won the Latin prize when he was a senior in high school.”

  This coin is potent currency for me. It’s the first thing I’ve ever had that belonged to my father and perhaps a clue to finding him later. At eleven, I don’t yet have the resources to go looking. Maybe that’s why Babs gave it to me.

  I say, “Thank you,” as if this coin is enough. As if it could come to the Daddies’ Breakfast with me and count as a person.

  If Babs were another type of mother, at this point we would hug. But I know her limits. However, maybe I can ask for just one more thing.

  “Babs, will you come to the breakfast?”

  “You know I don’t do breakfast, Bettina.” Her tone is now cross, verging on offended.

  I really don’t want to be alone at the breakfast. I come up with an outlandish idea, but it just might work.

  “Can I ask Mack?”

  “What?” she says, as if I have asked to eat her cigarettes.

  “Mack, you know . . .”

  “I fucking know who Mack is. Of course you can’t ask him. Mack has his own stupid kid to deal with, and this is not Fantasy Island. He is not your dad, and the sooner you forget this crap, the happier you will be.”

  “I wouldn’t tell anyone he was my dad. Just a friend of the family.” I can’t get this scenario out of my head.

  “Bettina, Mack is not a family friend. He’s not even my friend. We are fucking. That’s all. Even we don’t do breakfast. And he barely knows who you are. Point finale.”

  I don’t tell Babs about our night together. As much as I want the actual Mack to come, it’s more about having a grownup with me. I will look like a complete loser if I show up alone.

  As if she can read my thoughts, Babs says, “The parents at Chicago Day don’t matter. They’re a middle-class clusterfuck. You could just go by yourself. But you aren’t gutsy enough.”

  She’s right about that.

  Then Babs offers up a solution. It’s depressing, at best, but it will save me from total humiliation.

  “Why don’t you ask Stacey? I fucking pay her way above her skill set, and while you’re at school, she does nothing but watch soaps and practice smoking in front of the mirror.”

  As much as I really don’t like Stacey, she’s better than nothing. But she’ll be hard to explain to Wendolyn. Almost none of my classmates have nannies. A few have them, but only because both parents work, and even then they are called babysitters. Not permanent; just filling in until Mommy and Daddy get home. And in any case, the father would still make time to come to the breakfast. Even if it meant missing a couple of meetings. Bringing Stacey is like showing up with the doorman.

  But of course I take Stacey to the breakfast. She seems thrilled to get out of the aparthouse and fill in for Babs. She trades her tight jeans and Dr. Scholl’s for an old red silk dress, a hand-me-down from Babs. I
am almost touched that Stacey thinks to dress up.

  The cafeteria smells sweetly of syrup and sugar. The seventh-graders serve us as we go through the buffet. Despite my worries, the students are so excited to be with their fathers they hardly notice I have brought my twenty-one-year-old nanny. And unlike the mothers at Chicago Day, the dads will not tuck this fact into their brains somewhere, eager to gossip it about later. No, the daddies are thinking about their children, then getting back to work. But Wendolyn notices, and this time she seems to actually feel sorry for me.

  4. Sex at Our House

  January 1980

  THAT WINTER, BABS sleeps with Mack all the time. He’s over at the aparthouse constantly. It is late at night when he comes, and early in the morning when he leaves. I’m supposed to be sleeping, but on Mack nights, I sit by the door of my bedroom. Listen.

  They no longer confine themselves to her bedroom. Just start on the back stairs. Sisal with the steepest incline. As Babs and Mack crawl up them to her bedroom, I can hear Mack’s steady humming and Babs’s puncturing expletives: Jesus! Fuck! Finger my cunt! When Babs’s door clicks shut, I take their place on the staircase. Mack usually leaves a shirt behind. Babs tells me later she likes to suck on his nipples.

  I run my hands over the shirt’s cuffs and finger the buttons one by one. Sometimes I give them tiny kisses, being careful not to get spit on the edges and leave marks where there should not be.

  Mack’s shirts smell so good. Nothing overwhelming and obvious, like Babs’s perfume. Just clean and woodsy like moss. I know I don’t smell like anything yet. I’m always tempted to take off my nightgown and wrap my naked body in the shirt. I just want to feel like some part of this man sleeping with my mother belongs to me.

  But I never dare. If Babs ever caught me touching Mack’s stuff, she would just laugh and say, Oh, dear, in a pseudo-pitying way. As if she had caught me trying to eat the oranges off the chinoiserie wallpaper in the powder room.