Dear Money

by Martha McPhee

  "You'd have your own room," I said, imagining the picture along with her. I meant it, in a way.

  "I had thought Pond Point would never change," Emma said contemplatively. I noticed a few strands of gray in her dark hair, caught by the sun, a revelation of another sort. "Each summer we'd return, and the place was just as it had been the year before, nothing changed." Emma was staring out at the horizon, her voice like a guitar tuned up an octave. "The arms of sand would stretch to the islands at low tide; the dunes would always rise as dunes are meant to do; the beach would be wide and the rivers would run their course; the tides would always be low in the afternoon. The moon red in the evenings above the little island there." She pointed to the island where ornithologists had erected tents from which to study the piping plover. White-capped waves rolled toward us from the island, rhythmically, calmly.

  "But of course it wasn't that way," Emma continued. "Every summer there would be a new surprise, something different—less sand here, more sand there; the spit to Wood Island completely submerged at low tide so you had to wade out to it, pulling the girls, when they were young, on rafts; the small river cutting across the other spit to Fox. The place was alive, growing, changing, dying, regenerating. My girls changed. The only thing that seemed to remain the same was the house. It had been there forever in the same spot, through storms and coastal blizzards, nothing shaking it. Other houses had come and gone, but not our house. There were dramatic stories of houses being swept out to sea. But not our house. Several generations had summered here. Where are they? They're all gone. Even we'll be gone. But not the house."

  I thought then she might break. But she didn't. She never broke. We agreed to buy the house and she did not break. What did I want? Did I want to watch, from the comfortable perspective of the person I'd become, Emma making the kind of sacrifices that I'd once had to make? Perhaps a part of me did, but I pretended that wasn't so. I held her by the shoulders in an attempt to comfort her as we sat in silence, looking out onto the waters, but she didn't need the comfort. She'd accepted the loss, moved on.

  Quietly, in the house, Emma packed up the belongings she wanted and shipped them to New York, eventually transferring the title of her dream to me. Her dream was for the simplicity of the eternal summer, preserving her children, keeping them forever small. It was sentimental and quaint, and when they had money the ramshackle house seemed to provide (I understood now) a counterpoint to the luxury of their lives. I understood, too, what I couldn't have then—that I didn't need or want a counterpoint to luxury. I wanted money to do exactly what money could do. For that reason I'd been carried aloft by Sims and all his blueprints. Through local gossip, Will had learned my plans, and when his e-mails and phone calls with his inevitable pleas began, I couldn't return them. But events propelled me to the final act, a day I was mildly dreading, when Will would see firsthand all that I was about to do, or undo. It was hard to miss; it had made the Sagadahoc Bugle.

  The girls were back in school, caught up in their busy lives, and Theodor was in Italy for an exhibition of his work. I came to Maine alone to handle the closing with Will and then to prepare the house for demolition. It was Friday, September 21, 2007, the first day of fall, though it still felt like summer, with a strong offshore breeze. A few people played on the beach, hanging on to summer, here for the weekend. Kites dipped and dived. Our small driveway was cluttered with machinery: a bulldozer, a hydraulic excavator, a crew milling about, hammering enormous bolts to the legs of the old Victorian house. (I hadn't realized that a house could have legs; pilings, I guess.) The bolts had hooks that would hold cables that, once bound around the house, would, with some heavy pulling, take the house down.

  Will Chapman stood there, dressed in khaki shorts and a pink polo shirt, sunglasses resting on his head. "It's not for me to say, India. But I wish you wouldn't," he said simply, respectfully. The ocean slapped against the shore. A sudden freshet of rain sprinkled us. In minutes the sun would shine, sending up columns of steam on the beach. Then, perhaps, a downpour.

  "I promise you'll love it," I said, smiling, believing he would when he saw the finished house. "Sims is first rate. His houses are becoming important. Everyone's tearing down houses, replacing them."

  "Oh, come..." He was going to say something more, but didn't. He looked at the house and then to the long dumpster hauled in to receive the wreckage.

  I didn't want him to be mad at me. I didn't want people to be mad at me. I wanted them to love me and think I was good, though under Win I'd become much more accustomed to disregarding the opinions of others.

  "It's not about the house," he said, turning back to me. He brushed the hair from his eyes, rustled by the breeze. "I guess"—he paused for a moment—"I guess you've never understood that." All around was the view, the spectacular view. The workmen were waiting for me to give them the go-ahead. I had stopped them out of respect for Will. I wanted Will to say his piece. I missed Theodor suddenly. I wished he were here. Some of the workers banged away at the piles supporting the house. "You know, we envied you, India. You had drive. You had commitment, determination. The life you made for yourself, Theodor, the girls."

  "And I don't have drive now?" I asked. I was teasing. I knew what he meant, but it was easier to make a joke of it.

  A group of college-age kids came piling out of a house down the beach, a little ranch that had replaced a Victorian that had long ago washed out to sea. "The fun people," Emma had called them, because they were always engaged in some active sport. They carried sailboards and kayaks, a half-dozen young men, raring to go, in wetsuits. I was becoming a bit impatient with Will.

  "It won't always be like this, India. This isn't the end, either, you know. Markets change."

  He stood before me in that rarest of moments in life, a true reckoning, the moment before the firing squad, the chained-to-the-bulldozer moment when no matter whether you're right or wrong, it was time to say what you had to say and to hell with the consequences. But he couldn't say it all, because who among us really can? I could see myself as if from above, standing in the drizzle. My hair was pulled back with a clip, and I wore gray yoga pants and a white T-shirt and flip-flops, my toenails red. Behind me the bulldozer and hydraulic excavator stood poised for demolition.

  "We wanted to be you, India. Maybe we hadn't spoken about it or said it directly. But we understood each other. You made it look possible. You gave us courage." Then he was silent, letting the last words sink in. We were at the breach point. After this, all would be "after." I would exist in the past, in the third person. There had been an instant when he first met her— I could almost see it as the opening of a longer work—in the Tribeca park with her little girl and Theodor, and he knew he wanted to save her. He sensed in her something fragile, the story might continue, something he wanted to set free.

  "You don't understand," I said. I thought of my meeting with Cavelli and realized it had been Will who had put Cavelli up to it, to calling me. A flash of revelation, evaporating just as fast, for what really did it matter? I let the strength of my will absorb the prickling sensation in my nose and eyes. I had proven I could do it. I had what I wanted. I wasn't lying anymore. I would not let him steal that from me.

  "You want to know something ridiculous, India? Emma and I used to laugh about this. For us, you and Theodor were always..." Will broke off, looking at the house again, and laughing suddenly. "The Joneses," he said. "You were the goddamned Joneses."

  And then Will was gone and I was alone.

  It started raining harder. The workers called it a day. The contractor told me to let him know in the morning, told me it was worth it for me to think hard. His thick Maine accent swallowed multiple letters and sounds. Told me, warned me, that once the house came down, it couldn't be put back. He was a big man with streaked rosaceous cheeks. He turned his baseball cap around, beak to the back, as if for emphasis.

  I brought out a beach umbrella and opened it in the rain and propped up a chair beneath it and cov
ered myself with a blanket. The fun people in their kayaks had poked around intrepidly but were now gone, had taken shelter. The rain became heavier, the day grayer, the wave crests snow white. A renegade gull flew happily in the downpour. Water leaked through the umbrella, splashing on the blanket, reminding me of the leaky roof of what soon would become my old apartment. We were buying a loft in Tribeca. I listened to the soothing patter as the rain slowed. The afternoon was still in front of me, and when it came the sun would cut through the clouds and the tide would pull back into the ocean, revealing the full wide swath of the beach, and the fun people would again spill from their house with footballs and Frisbees.

  My house rose regally from the dunes. It was a striking house. Perhaps, if I squinted, I could see why Emma had adored it so. A loft in Tribeca, a summer house in Maine, made my new career, my new life, seem less dreamy. I'd taken a risk and would again. It so often felt like jumping off the high board at night, a sensation you become accustomed to, a thrill you develop a taste for, especially when you end here in the sand with the horizon before you and a house you can tear down or build up as you choose because you've made the leap. Real estate, sweet real estate. The September afternoon, the clouds now white, billowy cushions against the cornflower-blue sky. Everything was aligned.

  Perhaps the story begins with a house. And the rain passed as it always did, and out came the fun people again, to collect wood for a bonfire, which I knew meant a display of fireworks as soon as it was dark, little bonfires dotting the arc of the beach for as far as you could see, everyone gathered around a bright, crackling light in the sand, while satellites streaked across the darkness and the markets turned. I would sit back and watch the show, note with pleasure what fun the fun people made for themselves, and I would have some fun of my own. I would direct the new regime to begin. Would it be cables tightening around the legs of the house, or something else? Either way, it would be mine. And tomorrow I would do exactly as I pleased.

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  The author of three previous novels, a finalist for the National Book Award, and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, Martha McPhee lives in New York City with her children and husband, the poet and writer Mark Svenvold. A few years ago, when a legendary bond trader claimed he could transform her into a booming Wall Street success, she toyed with the notion but wrote Dear Money instead.

  JACKET DESIGN BY KIMBERLY GLYDER

  AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH © PRYDE BROWN PHOTOGRAPHS

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT

  www.hmhbooks.com

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