The Wrong Kind of Money

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  But the trouble is, my father looks like a god—tall, and blond, and handsome, with the body of a Greek warrior. He has those long, smooth swimmer’s muscles, and he always has a golden year-round tan. The Japanese think he looks like Errol Flynn, and that’s what they call him—Ellor Frynn. My father knows he’s good-looking. He’s very vain.

  What my father is is a translator and interpreter. Well, it’s a little better than that. He’s assistant to the head of that department at the embassy in Tokyo. He spends his days translating documents back and forth between English and Japanese, which sounds kind of boring, translating all those boring, official documents. My father taught himself to speak and write fluent Japanese at the Fort Ord language school in Monterrey, and when I was growing up, I was led to believe that this was a great accomplishment. Maybe it was. Japanese is a difficult language, with all sorts of different vowel sounds that can completely change the meaning of a word. The word for wander, for instance, is very close to the word for shit. If you wanted to say, “I think I’ll go out and wander in the garden,” it could come out as “I think I’ll go out and shit in the garden” if you use the wrong vowel sound. I speak some Japanese. But I’ve never learned to read or write it.

  It was my father’s mastery of the Japanese language, I was always told, that led to his being posted to Tokyo. But later I became not so sure whether this was the whole reason. My mother is a very bitter woman. She was always very bitter about the State Department, and when she and my father quarreled, which they often did—though not so much anymore—she used to imply that my father had been sent to the other side of the world as a punishment for something. Punishment for what? I really don’t know, but sometimes I think I can guess. My mother has always hated Japan. She hates Tokyo. She hates the Japanese and has never learned to speak a word of the language, not even hello on the telephone. She absolutely loathes Japanese women, and she has no Japanese friends. Her only friends are the other American wives, who are just as boring and bitter as Mother is about how they hate living in Japan. Tokyo is an important post, but not to hear my mother talk about it. She’d much rather be in one of the more glamorous cities—London, Paris, Rome, or even Vienna or Budapest. If there’s one thing Tokyo isn’t, it’s glamorous. But the place she’d most like to be is Washington, D.C., right at the heart of things. She’s from Virginia, and has family there. She’s bitter because it doesn’t look as though my father will ever be assigned to Washington, and she blames my father for the fact that she’s stuck for the rest of her life on the other side of the world. It’s not a very happy household, my parents’.

  When I was thirteen or fourteen, I wanted to start to date. All the other girls my age were dating boys by then—at least all the American girls. But my father was very opposed to this. He said he preferred the Japanese system, where girls—girls of good family, that is—are very much sheltered and protected until they’re ready to get married, and by that time most of the marriages have been arranged for them. In Japan teenage girls are expected to stay home and help their mothers, and learn the tea ceremony and all that, and to do their fathers’ wishes. It’s still very much a male-dominated society in Japan, and it’s terribly strict and confining for women, particularly young women. As Japan gets more Westernized, it’s beginning to change, and women are starting to rebel, but my father was in favor of the old-fashioned ways. He wanted me—literally—to fetch him his pipe and slippers when he came home from the office at the end of the day, and to fix him a drink. Then he liked to have me sit on a footstool beside his chair, while he smoked, and sipped his drink, and stroked my hair while he read the evening papers. And I—well, I liked these quiet evenings with my father, up to a point, because I still thought my father was some sort of god. But I wanted more out of my life than that.

  There was one boy I began seeing secretly. His name was David, he was a few years older than me, and we—well, we were convinced that we were very much in love. He was my first sexual experience, and I—well, I liked it very much! He was very sweet, very gentle, a lot like you in many ways. My mother had told me nothing about the facts of life—absolutely nothing at all. She hadn’t even warned me about getting the curse. But fortunately I have an older sister, Cassie, who’d told me pretty much everything I needed to know. Cassie’s married now and lives in Australia. There must have been some romance between my parents, back in the days when Cassie and I were being born. They gave us these romantic names. Cassandra. Melody.

  David was the first person who ever told me I was pretty. He told me I was beautiful. He told me I was beautiful enough to be a movie star, and it was he who said I ought to study to be an actress. But when my father found out I was seeing David—he saw me getting out of David’s car one Saturday afternoon—he was furious. There was a terrible scene. He said David was too old for me. He said David wasn’t good enough for me. He said David’s family was trash. He said David’s father was a war profiteer. This was because David’s father, who’d been too young to be in the war, had come to Japan after the war and bought up a lot of military equipment, and sold it, and made a fortune in what I guess is called the scrap metal business. David was in business with his father at the time.

  My father told me I was never to see David again, but of course I did. David and I began making plans to run away together. I guess I’ve always been a runaway at heart. I ran away to be with you here, didn’t I? David’s family owned a cabin in the mountains north of Kyoto, which they never used, and that was where we planned to run away to. I’m sure it wouldn’t have worked. That cabin would have been the first place our families would have looked for us. Still, we made all these elaborate, secret plans.

  Meanwhile, my father began taking me on outings on the weekends, just the two of us, far outside the city. These outings were so David and I would have no chance to meet. Because David worked and I was in school, the weekends were the only times we were able to get together. My father would get me into the car on a Saturday morning, and we’d drive—I’d never know where we were going till we got there. “Surprise,” he’d say. “Surprise, surprise.” One afternoon that summer our destination turned out to be a tiny island in Toyana Bay, on the west coast, where he’d rented a speedboat and scuba-diving equipment for us both. My father knew I loved scuba diving, and he did, too. He was in a good mood. He’d had a meeting at the Imperial Palace the day before.

  Once or twice a year he’d have to attend a meeting at the Imperial Palace, and after each of these meetings he’d bring home a little souvenir. They were just trinkets, really—a whalebone letter opener, a silver pen, a crystal paperweight, things like that. He used to tell us these were gifts from the emperor himself. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe he ever met the emperor. The emperor and empress of Japan lead very secluded lives, and hardly ever meet with people outside their family and members of the imperial household. They don’t give audiences, like the pope, or hold press conferences, or make speeches. I think his meetings at the Palace were just with minor functionaries of the household. And the trinkets? I believe he stole them—just picked these things up when no one was looking and dropped them in his pocket. Members of the imperial household don’t give out little souvenir gifts to visitors. No way.

  The Japanese are funny about crime. They like to say that theirs is a crime-free society. They talk of America as the land of the criminals. There’s plenty of crime in Japan, of course, but it’s not considered polite to talk about it. And so, if a member of the Japanese imperial household noticed some small object missing after one of my father’s visits, it would be beneath his dignity to mention it to anyone, much less the American embassy. This was how my father was able to get away with pinching little things from the palace. At least this was David’s theory, and he understood the Japanese mentality and customs much better than I did. And I think David was right.

  Anyway, it was a lovely day, and we were diving in clear water, not very deep, no more than twenty feet, among the coral ree
fs, and I noticed my father gesturing at me, pointing at something. At first I thought he’d found an unusual shell, or coral piece, and I swam closer. I saw what he had in his hand was what looked like a child’s bracelet, or perhaps a napkin ring, of pink onyx. At first I wondered what a bracelet could be doing at the bottom of Toyana Bay, and then I guessed he’d got it from the palace. And then—and this is difficult for me to talk about—he unzipped the front of his wet suit to show me his erection. He placed the bracelet on it, smiling, gesturing to me, suggesting I could have it if I would reach out and take it off.

  I shot up to the surface of the water like a bullet, and climbed back on board the boat. I think if I’d known how to manage the boat, I’d have pulled up the anchor and driven off and left him there—escaped! He came to the surface a few minutes later. He’d pulled himself together, the pink onyx piece was nowhere to be seen, and he was acting as though nothing at all had happened. He was in a very jolly, almost carefree mood, and I began to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing. But I knew I hadn’t. Who could imagine a thing like that? “Don’t you want to dive some more?” he asked me. “I want to go home now, Daddy,” I said. “I have an earache.” I couldn’t look at him. And so he got out of his diving gear, and we headed for the shore and home. In the car, he talked a lot but about nothing in particular. I couldn’t think of what in the world to say to him. At one point he reached out and touched my knee. I pulled away from him. “I was only joking,” he said. I didn’t answer him. He didn’t frighten me. He disgusted me. I pitied him.

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell my mother what had happened. I couldn’t bear to look at my father. And I couldn’t even bear the thought of ever seeing David again. I was too ashamed. Ashamed of my father, and ashamed of myself for having a part in it. I felt as though I’d been a part of a terrible crime that he’d blame me for, that he’d hold me accountable for in some way, and so I just stopped seeing him. When he’d call, I’d hang up on him. He wrote me letters. I tore them up. It wasn’t that I hated him. I hated myself, and felt I wasn’t worthy of him anymore. I suppose he must have wondered what had happened, but I didn’t care. All I knew was that whatever we’d had between us was over. Not long ago I heard that he married a Japanese girl. I hope they’re happy.

  But I did tell Cassie about Toyana Bay. Somehow, I had to tell somebody. She sat very still for a long time, looking worried and scared, and then she said, “That was how he started with me, too—exposing himself.” Started? Started what? She wouldn’t say. All she would say was that there had been other things. She’d been younger than me, too young to really understand what was going on. She hadn’t known there was anything wrong with it, that it wasn’t normal to have these secret things go on between fathers and their daughters. She thought all fathers and daughters did these things, and she said she was glad to see that I knew better. I asked her, “Does Mama know?” She just bit her lip and said she didn’t think so. That was when she told me she was going to marry this boy who had a cattle ranch in Australia, a boy she really didn’t love at all, just to get as far away from home as possible.

  That was when I decided that I was going to leave home—run away, if necessary. I began to make my second runaway plans. I told my parents I wanted to go to boarding school in the States. My father said he couldn’t afford such a thing. I would have to settle for the American School in Tokyo, where the children of American government employees could go for free. So, on my own, I wrote to Ethel Walker in Connecticut. I applied and got accepted on a full academic scholarship.

  “Look at this, Daddy,” I said to him, showing him the letter.

  “Where are you getting the money to travel to the States?” he said. “Not from me.”

  And so, faced with that, I began scheming of ways to get enough money for my ticket. It became a crazy time for me. I thought of forging his name on a check. I thought of trying to steal one of his credit cards. I thought of trying to blackmail him, threatening to tell my mother what had happened that afternoon. I knew he’d just deny it. “But what about Cassie?” I’d say to him. “Is Cassie lying, too?” But I knew I couldn’t drag Cassie back into it. She was already making her escape. I even thought of going back to David and his family, and asking to borrow the money from them. But, as I say, I just never wanted to see David’s face again.

  Then one day my mother came to me and handed me a check. It was only enough for a one-way ticket to New York, but it was all the money she’d been able to scrape together. “I know why you want to go,” she said. “And I know why Cassie wants to go.” There were tears in her eyes.

  “Mama—you know?” I said to her.

  She looked away from me and just nodded.

  “Mama, how could you?” I cried. “How could you stay with a man who would do things like that to Cassie and me?”

  “Don’t you dare blame me!” she screamed. “You two can both escape from here. I can’t.”

  “Why not?” I asked her. “Why can’t you?”

  “It’s the only life I have,” she said. “It may not be perfect. It may not even be any good at all. But this is the only life I have.” Of course, that was a crock, and I told her so.

  And so that’s how I got away from them. That’s why I go back to Japan only when I absolutely have to. That’s why I mooch on people like you and Carol. Once I graduate from college and I’m on my own, I’m never going to go back at all. That’s why I’m never going to let myself fall in love again. Love only leads to disillusion. But it’s funny. You’re the only other person I’ve ever told about all of this, besides Cassie. I’ve never even told Anne, my best friend.

  “Love doesn’t have to lead to disillusion,” he says into the darkness.

  “Oh, yes. It does. It always will. For me, at least. When I was growing up, I thought my father was some kind of god.”

  “And here’s another funny thing,” he says. “My own father let me down—betrayed me—in much the same way. And I was just about your age. No, a little older.”

  “And it doesn’t go away, does it?”

  “No. Mellie, I—”

  She covers his lips with her fingertips. “Hush,” she says. “Don’t say another word. This is just a brief encounter—remember? Remember we only have three more nights together.”

  “And then what’s going to happen?”

  She switches on the lamp beside the bed. “Now I want you to take a look at the script I’ve written for you,” she says.

  But much later, in the darkened bedroom, Noah Liebling cannot sleep. Through the narrow slit in the window curtains, neon lights from the sign outside flash perpetually from white, to yellow, to blue, to white again in a changeless rhythm, while the red numerals on the digital clock mark the sleepless minutes as they pass. For me, it all began in the tiny Scottish village of Ballachulish, population something-or-other. No, for me it all began in an overdecorated hotel suite in Atlantic City, with a girl whose name was a tune, a girl who is even younger than my own daughter, but who somehow seems much more worldly. Statutory rape. That is the legal term for what has happened here, for she is a minor, still a child, and there are laws, terrible laws, designed to punish men like me for what I have done. Her father is a child molester, but who can blame him? So am I. Curled here on the pillow beside me, her dark hair—the scent of her hair—across her face, breathing quietly and evenly, she looks, in the dimly flashing colored lights, even younger than she is.

  I should have sent her home right away. She would have been safe from that asshole at River House, the most secure building in New York. He would have not got beyond the broad shoulders of Peter, the doorman, in his heavy greatcoat with epaulets of gold braid, the uniform of a Ruritanian hussar. I should have sent her home, but I didn’t, and I didn’t because I didn’t want to. I wanted her here, with me, like right now, and right now it is too late. The deed is done. The crime has been committed. Like her own father. He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone, or however the hell it go
es.

  This will last only a week, that was her promise. But this will be a week that will change my life forever, Noah thinks, and what will happen when it is time for us both to go home again? Nothing? How can it be nothing? How can she and I continue to live in the same house with Carol and Anne after this? It cannot happen. That simply will not work. No, but I could give her some money, help her find her own place to stay, turn her into a kept woman. Could I really do that to her, to Carol, and to Anne, or have I already done it? What is wrong with me? For me, it all began … and I’m offering a thousand dollars to any man or woman in this organization who can give me the name of what is wrong with me.

  It is a feeling at the base of my skull and at the pit of my stomach, an aching. Is there something the matter with me, Doctor? Am I going crazy, or have I already slipped past that thin barrier between sanity and lunacy? When I was a little boy, I used to worship my older brother, Cyril. He seemed so elegant, so wise, the man of the world. I used to follow him around, and he hated that, and his favorite word for me was crazy. “Are you crazy, Noah? Stop acting crazy!” At night, before going to sleep, I used to break into cold sweats with fears that I was losing my mind. “That’s where they ought to put you, Noah,” Cyril said as they drove past the place. “Bloomingdale’s.” Not the store, but the hospital for the criminally insane outside White Plains. Criminal, and crazy. The doctor will say, “Yes, Noah, you are criminally insane.” Should I see someone? Yeah.

  Is this what being in love is like? It is certainly unlike any feeling I ever had for Carol, and yet the strange thing is that the feeling I have now seems to draw me to Carol more powerfully than ever, and makes me appreciate how much I have, or had, in Carol, and how lucky I am, or was, to have her. No, Carol is not as young as she once was, but she is kind, and gentle, and thoughtful, and giving, and loving, too. If love is sacrifice, as Melody says it is, Carol has sacrificed a great deal. And yet, if I love Carol so much, how can I have let myself do this terrible thing to her and to the child we had together? There is no sane answer.