My biggest regret, however, is Cape. I look for him among the boys at Williams. Many of them resemble him, and I often catch my breath as they pass. I always tell myself that I stumbled on him once, so why not twice? But of course, he’s not there.
37. Adults, Past and Present
September 1991
I’M NOW TWENTY-SIX and still live in New York. The chocolate money is at last mine outright. I buy myself a two-bedroom prewar on East Seventy-second Street, with two fireplaces, built-in bookcases, and a walk-in closet. I have it professionally decorated. The colors I pick are muted, and despite the cost, the result is subdued, not ostentatious. I anonymously give $200,000 to Cardiss to endow a prize for a student who produces the most fearless writing. Despite the fact that I was kicked out, any anger I had has transformed itself into sentimentality and a reverence for the kind of things they teach there.
The truth is that spending the chocolate money scares me. I want to have a normal life, if such a thing exists. I don’t want to join the tribe of the smug few who do nothing but shop and party. Of course, in New York, unlike Chicago, fortunes don’t seem to be such a big deal. I see the last names of kids from Cardiss plastered on important monuments: Rockefeller Center, the Frick Collection, the Sackler Wing at the Met; even on such everyday products as Heinz ketchup. Somehow, I never noticed that there were other people at Cardiss besides me who had the same kind of money. I have the idea of starting a support group with them in order to figure out how these kids handle their money. But deep down, I know that being rich does not count as a real problem, just a neurosis some people have, and I abandon the project.
I work at a literary journal, Blue Sea Press, and make sixteen thousand dollars a year. I get this job based solely on my college GPA and major in English lit. I’ve never worked before and have no references. I want to “pass,” so I accept my meager paychecks, act like they are the only thing getting me through the month. The truth is that sometimes I leave them in pockets or at the bottom of my backpack and don’t even bother to look for them. I always wear ripped jeans or clothes from thrift stores. I also have Converse sneakers, like Lucas. These are perfect, as they seem to belie the possibility that I have ever had any exposure to real fashion.
One day on my lunch break, I’m walking down Madison Avenue, peering in the store windows. I never go in, but the dresses on the mannequins remind me of Babs. I take note of the dresses she would buy and the ones she would hate. This is my way to feel that she’s not gone for good, merely on an extended trip somewhere. I know she would tell me to Go the fuck inside and buy some real clothes. That my downtrodden outfits are a goddamn embarrassment. But I know no one would wait on me, the way I am dressed, and this protects me from any temptation I have to emulate her, and allows me to hold on to the idea that I am now my own person. Can dress however I want.
I’m absorbed in my activity when someone calls my name. I hesitate before turning around. Is it a writer who has been rejected from Blue Sea Press? A boy from Williams who would force me to make awkward conversation? I still have not really mastered small talk with people my age.
I do a slow about-face. Now that Babs is gone, things are almost never as bad as I fear. When I see who it is, I freeze. Color heats up my cheeks like a fever.
It’s Cape.
He catches up to me quickly, still tall, taking long strides.
“Hey, Bettina,” he says, leaning in for a hug.
I pull away. After all these years, I’m still mad at him. The cold way he returned the medallion. The fact that he got to stay. That we were never really in it together after all.
“How are you?” He’s not at all deterred by my backing away.
“Good, good,” I say, but I am still so shocked I can barely manage more than a whisper.
“I heard your mom died.” Cape says this so affably I start to wonder if he remembers what happened after all.
I nod.
“I’m really sorry, Bettina.” This time he modulates his tone, genuinely sorry or just feigning it, I can’t tell.
“Listen,” he continues, “do you have time for lunch?”
I do want to hear what he is doing, but I should be getting back to work. Although I know that I can call in with some lame excuse; that’s just the kind of place Blue Sea is.
“Sure,” I say. Just this side of friendly.
“We can go to Café Montalembert. It’s right around the corner.”
Montalembert is Mad Ave. fancy: starched white tablecloths, tiny glass vases with white roses, real silverware. I’m not especially bothered by my grubby clothes. In New York, only tourists and people who consider the menu expensive worry about dressing up. I order a Pellegrino and orange juice, and Cape gets a scotch. I think it’s too early in the day to be drinking, but unlike Babs, I never comment on what other people order. And after all, what do I care? This boy does not belong to me, and never has.
Sitting across the table, I finally am able to take all of him in. He looks mostly the same: tousled brown hair, blue eyes, perfectly straight nose, the kind Jewish girls break their own for. He is wearing chinos, a pink-checked shirt, blue blazer. I look to see if he still bites his nails and I notice he’s wearing Mack’s watch, and, more surprising, a wedding ring. Now I don’t want to talk about where we have gone to college, where we work. I just want to get to the story of the present.
“So, you’re married,” I begin.
“Yes,” he answers, reaching to twist the ring, seemingly needing to touch it to remind himself this is true.
“Who?” I say, not adding is the lucky girl.
“No one you know.”
Why is he withholding this? Isn’t this the lunch where he reiterates that I’m not worthy of him?
“Oh,” I say lamely.
“Listen, Bettina, I owe you an apology.”
At last. “For what?” There are so many things he could say he was sorry for, I wonder which one he will pick.
“For blaming my father’s affair on you.”
So that’s what he wanted to tell me. Absolve me for something I didn’t even do.
“Thanks, Cape,” I say drily. “But I don’t really see how a ten-year-old could have orchestrated an affair between two consenting adults. I might have been wrong to tell you about it, but some kid from Grass Woods might have shown up at Cardiss and filled you in anyway. And that kid wouldn’t have loved you like I did.”
Cape says nothing, but looks uncomfortable. I know the word love has thrown him. He is probably still drawn to women who belittle him, like Meredith.
“Anyway, Cape, why did you decide to apologize now? I don’t get it.”
He leans forward, eager to speak.
“Six months ago, I went to a party at the Yale Club.”
The Ivy League. So Cape must have made good on the promises of the Cardiss trial: tutored kids, upped his grades, played superlative lacrosse.
“It was two months before my wedding to Lolly.” As in lollipop? I want to say, the way Holly might have. But I know it is probably short for Lucille, Isolde, or something equally pretentious. But in the end, I don’t really care.
“Anyway,” Cape continues, “that night at the YC, I ran into Anna. A girl I dated for two years who ultimately dumped me because she said I wasn’t intellectual enough. I tried reading Virginia Woolf and Faulkner, but she still wouldn’t take me back. When she graduated, she took off for Tibet and did whatever Yale graduates do there.
“That night at the party when I saw her, she looked fresh as ever: no makeup, simple blue dress. I figured she was there to approach potential donors for whatever cause she was currently interested in. I walked up to her and asked her to dinner that night. I wasn’t hungry, just wanted a chance to spend more time with her.
“We were two of the last ones to leave the party. I had had too much to drink and had to grab her elbow to steady myself. I hailed a cab for us, and our legs touched as we crawled in.”
I’m getting bored with t
his story and can’t figure out why he wants to tell it to me, of all people. Was this run-in today an accident or did he call my job and some stupid intern told him where I might be? I want to say Speed the fuck up, but he seems determined to include all the details.
“When we were in the cab, I tried to put my arms around her, give her a hug, just like I did when we were twenty. I was still buzzed, so I missed and kissed her on the lips. She kissed me back and we started making out in the cab.”
“And . . . ?” I ask as he reaches into the bread basket for a roll and starts to butter it.
“That’s it. I took her to her place and got out of the cab so I could walk a bit and clear my head on the way home. When I got there, Lolly was sitting on the couch in my Brooks Brothers pajamas and finalizing the guest list for the wedding. I almost took her wrists and told her what had just happened, but instead I went to take a shower.”
“So what do you want me to do? It was only a kiss and technically, you were still single.” I want to laugh at his earnestness, at what he perceived as the gravity of the situation.
“I want your advice, Bettina. You have always been one of the smartest girls I know. You also know about my father’s affair. I want your opinion: Am I like him?”
Slowly I say, “If you were like Mack, you never would have told me. You don’t bring third parties into affairs—which you did not have—by the way, unless you want to get caught. Don’t tell Lolly. One mistake is not worth ruining a marriage for.”
“But what if I have more slips?”
“If you’re so worried about it, do the right thing and divorce her before you have kids. But I know you won’t do it again. I just do.”
Cape looks relieved. Like he really believes I have all the right answers.
“What about you, Bettina? Aren’t you worried you will turn into Babs?”
Even though this is my biggest fear, I say confidently, “You can’t turn into people, Cape. Even if I make all the same mistakes she did, I will still be me.”
He takes this in, says nothing at first. Then:
“What about the pennies? Do you still have them?”
So after all these years, he hasn’t forgotten about the two fucking cents he gave me.
I don’t want to tell him how angry I was that day, what I did with them.
“I’ll look into it. They must be around somewhere.”
“You promised me you wouldn’t lose them, remember? And I gave you your medallion back. By the way, did you ever track your dad down?”
“Um, yes. He was dead after all.” It’s not worth going into with Cape, I decide. If he has married someone called Lolly, I somehow know we will never be close friends. That this lunch is probably it: the last time I will see him.
“I’m sorry, Bettina.”
We eat spaghetti with clams and talk about his honeymoon. They went to Bali. The bill comes and Cape pays for both of us. I say thank you and lean in for a kiss. Some part of me hopes he will kiss me back, just like he did with Anna. I too am a girl he once slept with. But then I remember we never dated.
We get up from our table and walk outside.
“Goodbye, Bettina,” he says. And once again, he’s walking away. “Call me if you ever find my pennies.”
“Sure,” I say, not adding Drag the Cardiss river.
I hesitate before turning and watch as Cape disappears up Madison Avenue. As I stand there, I imagine the sidewalk turning from concrete into grass, extending itself into a huge lawn. Cape is no longer a man in a blazer but an eleven-year-old boy wearing white shorts, a white polo shirt, and the plaid hat I saw in the foyer of Tea House so many years ago. He turns toward me, standing there in my pink-and-white sundress, and then breaks into a run. He knocks me over when he reaches me, and we roll about the lawn, wrestling like puppies. We don’t look but can feel the presence of our mothers sitting on the porch talking and laughing, drinking iced tea, perhaps. Finally, we’re done with our roughhousing, and he takes my hand and pulls me up, wiping the dirt off his knees, then draping his arm casually about my shoulders.
But quickly, I snap back to the present. I can still see Cape walking up the sidewalk, getting smaller and smaller as he goes. He does not take notice of the stores, just dodges people as if he were navigating traffic in a car. Not once does he look back at me. See a girl just standing there, alone.
But Cape is just another one of those things that Babs took away from me, something I might have had.
Acknowledgments
My husband, Alex, and our three chickens, Alexander, Vanessa, and Camilla. Our nanny, Katie Nicolas, who holds it all together in our nest.
My immediate family: Abra, Jeremy, Peter, and Madison; Anthony, Eve, and Lucille Mia; Jonny, who will always be missed. Christina. Jim Wilkin and Pamela Sherrod Anderson. The Norton clan (I apologize for all the profanity).
The best friends I am so lucky to have: Lola Vautrin, Betty Wang, Jean McMahon, Rebecca Stedman, Brooks Brown, Kristen Smyth, Elizabeth Cutler, Meredith Rollins, Kathleen Seward, Carrie Karasyov, Kate Hope, Christine Frissora, Scott McCormack, and Rick Fiscina.
Phillips Exeter Academy, for providing much of the inspiration for this book as well as the first writing coach I ever had, David R. Weber. Andrew McKinnon, for loaning me his middle name and his superlative looks (perhaps unwittingly).
Dr. Barbara Gerson, Dr. Michael Teitelman, and Dr. Lee Cohen, who pulled me from the abyss, and all those who carried me and my family during that dark time. Lisa Brown, who understands and is perhaps the coolest person I know.
Adrienne Brodeur, my amazing editor, who believed in The Chocolate Money enough to buy it and never lost enthusiasm for the project. Her gentle touch on the page and attentiveness carried me gracefully over the finish line. Stephen Simons, Tracy Roe, who worked miracles with my face and my prose, respectively.
Bill Clegg, Bill Clegg, Bill Clegg. Without him, there would be no book. Thanks as well to his assistant Shaun Dolan, who answered all of my rookie questions with thoroughness and care.
The Blécon family, who taught me much of what I needed to know.
Finally, to the rooms.
The Chocolate Money Page 24
