Hannah is thinking all these thoughts as she wanders through the empty rooms of the vast apartment—empty now, for her servants have the half day off. There is Orion on the ceiling, chasing the Pleiades endlessly across the heavens. There are the twin Steinways, the golden harp, the Stradivarius quartet, the Mozart manuscripts. But of all the treasures money can buy, the greatest is power, and power comes from need. “The secret of a successful business is making a product people need,” Jules used to say. “People need booze, and so I sell it to ’em.” She is in the entrance hallway now, where the curving staircase used to lead up to the floor above, where Cyril lives now, and where God only knows what goes on. Next door, in the library, hangs the Sargent portrait of her father. “Would you be proud of me, Papa, for what I did?” she asks him now. “Or would you be ashamed?” The answer is merely Papa’s steady gaze.
What I did, she thinks, was to create a perfect circle of dependency and need, with myself at the center of it. Bathy needed me to keep her secret for her, and to keep Jules, and to keep her job. Jules may have needed Bathy, but I made sure he needed me more. Noah needs me, and I’ve made sure he goes on needing me. Now Noah’s wife needs me, and so does their daughter. Ruth needs me to protect her from herself, and Cyril needed me to protect him from his father, and he still needs me because he wants to inherit this apartment. The need for me goes on and on, I’ve made sure of that. Oh, how we all need you, Nana Hannah! their angry faces seem to scream at her. Is there anything more rewarding to a woman than seeing she is needed by every life she touches? Nothing. And is there anything more shameful than knowing the heavy prices she has made them all pay for needing her so?
Jules’s portrait in the dining room frowns down on her now. She asks him, “Did you ever know how scheming I was? Did you ever know I was ready to blackmail you to keep you? Will you ever forgive me? At least I gave you Noah.” Naturally, there is no reply.
But I didn’t give you Noah as a gift to anyone but myself, did I? He was my insurance policy, my secret weapon, my hostage with a heavy ransom on his head. And there were worse injustices than that. As all these memories, trapped like hapless insects in the cobwebs of Hannah Liebling’s mind, struggle to free themselves, she sees the inequities and contradictions. Hannah, who forsook her marriage, still got to keep the husband she didn’t love. Bathy, who did love him, couldn’t marry him, and never fell in love again. By rights Noah should have been Bathy’s child, but Hannah got him. Hannah is rich, Bathy is poor. Bathy was told the biggest lie, and yet Bathy is the only one who really doesn’t need Hannah anymore. Is that why she wants to bring Bathy back into the company? To make Bathy need her again? Because right now Bathy is the one who is free, while Hannah, who wanted freedom, remains enslaved, chained to the lies of the past.
Nice going, old girl, she tells herself. You did it all. And what have you got to show for it? Mozart manuscripts. And a heavy heart.
The telephone rings, and Hannah answers it.
“Hannah,” he says, “it’s George.”
“George …”
“Your message was on my answering tape. I’d really like to see you again, Hannah.…”
In the apartment at River House, she lies sprawled across the bed, but even in this decidedly compromised position she looks up at him adoringly as he rebuttons himself into his shirt and trousers. “You’re so wonderful for me, Billy,” she is saying to him dreamily. “You’ve taught me so many different things.”
“Oh?” he says, suddenly interested again. “What sort of things?”
“You’ve taught me to rethink my whole life,” she says. “My needs, my priorities. My desires. I’ve decided to pay more attention to the me in me from now on. I’m not going to let other people walk all over me anymore. I’m tired of living my life for other people. I’ve decided to set out on a new course in life and discover my true self. And it’s all thanks to you, Billy darling.”
“Well, you’re quite welcome, I’m sure,” he says with a little bow.
“You’ve helped to unmask the real woman in me, Billy. I’m a whole woman now.”
He grins down at her. “If a little bondage has done all that,” he says, “maybe I’ll leave you like this. Maybe I won’t unlock the cuffs.”
A brief look of fear crosses her face. “Now, Billy, don’t tease me,” she says. “Please don’t tease me, darling. Unlock me now. I’m getting a cramp in my shoulder.”
He has actually considered doing this, leaving her like that. It is an amusing picture: Beryl Stokes left naked in her bedroom, shackled, with her hands pinned behind her back in police-issue handcuffs. Could she dial 911 with her nose or with her toes? And how would she explain her unusual situation to the rescue squad when it arrived? With her hands pinned behind her, would she even be able to lift a telephone receiver from its cradle? With her teeth perhaps? She would probably be able to operate a doorknob, by backing into it. And he has the uproarious mental vision of Beryl creeping, naked, in the handcuffs, out into the elevator lobby, pushing a button and confronting one of River House’s notoriously haughty elevator men. Or making her way to a next-door apartment and kicking—or knocking with her head—on a neighbor’s door to be let in. And then trying to explain what had been going on. She certainly wouldn’t dare tell the truth. And then a locksmith being called. The picture of all this is so hilarious that he laughs out loud.
“Now, darling, no more teasing. Unlock me now.”
“Get down on your knees and beg,” he says.
She slides sideways off the bed and kneels in front of him. “Please, darling,” she says.
“Now give me a nice lick, and promise to be a good puppy dog.”
She licks his trouser leg. “I promise to be a good puppy dog,” she says.
He pats her head. “Nice doggie,” he says. “Nice doggie. Say bow-wow-wow.”
“Bow-wow-wow,” Beryl says.
He fishes for the key in his trouser pocket and unlocks the handcuffs. After all, she could still be of some use to him.
She stands up, rubbing her wrists. “Oh, look,” she says, “you’ve hurt your hand. Did that happen when we were—fooling around just now? I know we both got—a little rough.”
“That happened several days ago. Slammed a car door on my hand.”
“Ooh, poor baby. Look, it’s still swollen.” She reaches out and touches his hand. “Does it still hurt?”
“Hey, cut it out!” he says sharply, pulling his hand away from her. “Now look what you’ve done! You’ve made it start bleeding again, bitch!”
“Ooh, I’m so sorry, darling,” she says.
He licks the blood from his palm. “I’ve gotta go,” he says.
“Will you—will you be back, my darling?”
“I dunno.”
“Oh, please, Billy.”
“Well, maybe. When’s your husband get home?”
“Tomorrow night. But not till quite late. Nine, ten o’clock, at the earliest.”
“Well, we’ll see.”
“I’ll be here alone all day, Billy.”
“I said we’ll see.”
“Where do you stay in New York?”
“Yale Club.”
“You could—spend the night here,” she says hesitantly.
“Can’t do that. Things to do.”
“I’ll call you in the morning, then,” she says.
“No, don’t call me. I’ll call you. Or write me a letter.”
She reaches for her robe. “I’ll see you to the door,” she says.
“No, I’ll let myself out,” he says, and he is gone.
But when he reaches the elevator lobby, he does not push the elevator call button. Instead he heads quickly down the hallway toward a lighted EXIT sign and the service stairway. He is counting on two things. It is Thursday afternoon, and Thursday afternoons in Manhattan are usually the maids’ afternoons off. Also, he knows that Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are when Carol Liebling works as a volunteer for the museum. So the first
thing he is counting on is that the apartment will be empty. He is also counting on the good possibility that the service entrance, which opens into the kitchen—the Lieblings’ apartment has the same floor plan as the Stokeses’—will be unlocked. He leaps up the metal staircase two steps at a time. With luck, good use will also be found for his bleeding hand!
He tries the door. Unlocked. He opens it, and steps quickly inside, and pauses, listening. Silence. There is a penciled note to Carol on the kitchen table, a good sign. The maid is out. The first room he checks is the maid’s room, just off the kitchen. He opens the door cautiously. Empty. Then, moving fast and on tiptoe, he checks all the other rooms, and is satisfied that he is alone in the apartment. Now, still moving swiftly, he goes about his other work.
He finds the thing he wants, in Carol’s desk in the library, almost immediately, but there is still much more to do. He goes through the apartment, room by room, starting from the back of the apartment and moving toward the front, doing his work thoroughly, systematically. Order is of the essence here. Ah, Melody’s room!
It takes him no more than fifteen minutes to complete what he has to do. He then takes one last look around to assure himself that his work is complete. Suddenly the telephone rings, and he stops dead in his tracks. The phone rings twice, a third time, and a fourth. Then he hears a click as the answering machine picks up, and he listens as a woman’s voice says, “Carol, darling, it’s Georgette. Give me a tinkle, sweetie, as soon as you can. It’s desperately important. Bye-eeee.”
The sound of another human voice in the apartment has managed to spook him, and he rushes back through the rooms to the kitchen, lets himself out, remembering to push the button on the spring lock so the door will lock behind him, and runs down the stairs again to Beryl’s floor. He presses the elevator call button, and is still out of breath when the car arrives.
“Taxi, sir?” the elevator man asks him.
He has regained his composure. “Yes, please,” he says.
Riding back to River House in her own taxi, Carol is thinking: Is it really such a far-fetched idea—me, Carol Dugan Liebling, being invited to serve on the board of trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Me, Carol Dugan Liebling of Rumney Depot, New Hampshire, who always wanted to know, but never actually did meet, the glamorous McClaren sisters? Yes, it is farfetched. It is utterly outrageous. And yet it is not impossible. Nothing is really impossible if you have a plan. And energy.
To serve on the board of trustees of the Met. There are only thirty-five members, and of course Carol knows who all of them are. Two have announced their plans to retire in June. They will need to be replaced. A third member, Brooke Astor, though still going strong, is already well past her ninetieth birthday.
To serve on the Met’s board of trustees is nothing short of gaining the absolute apex of social, intellectual, and artistic position in the United States of America. Talk about cachet! There is absolutely nothing to equal it. To serve on the Met’s board is to help preside over a combination of the Vatican, Versailles, the Sultan’s Court, and the Cave of Ali Baba. It is to follow in the footsteps of people like Frederick W. Rhinelander, Henry Gordon Marquand, J. P. Morgan, Horace Havemeyer, and any number of Rockefellers. The public impression of the Met trustee is of a person of high and privileged rank, moving in a serene and elegant world of impeccable manners, one devoted to the encouragement of beauty and taste and the public weal. What would having a Liebling on the board do for the public’s perception of Ingraham brands? Hannah had been quick to see it.
But it is an impossible notion. Carol had known this when she threw it out to Hannah, almost in desperation, as a bargaining chip. But now, as her taxi waits for a light on the street of dreams, Park Avenue, she thinks: Is it?
Being on the Met’s board has always been about money, but it has been about Old Money, about money that has been aged and refined by time, like good whiskey, with all the rough, raw edges worn off the fortunes that were made by those early robber barons, who were never accused—what is Hannah’s word?—of probity. The Lieblings’ money is barely one generation old. Still, it is money, and there is quite a lot of it.
The taxi moves forward, and Carol asks herself: Do I want the cachet of trusteeship for myself? Oh, yes, she thinks. I’d be a liar if I tried to deny it. But I want it also for other reasons. I want it for Noah, and for Noah’s family. And I want it because I want to see the Van Degan porcelains at the Met.
Georgette Van Degan has been trying to manipulate me, and I am not a woman who enjoys feeling herself being manipulated, particularly by another woman. She has come up with this notion of a party for the girls, which nobody else particularly wants, because her husband wants the contract to manufacture the bottles for Ingraham’s new label. How much would that contract be worth to Truxton Van Degan? She has no idea, but she supposes it would be worth quite a bit—particularly if the label is a hit, since Ingraham purchases its bottles on a royalty based on sales—the greater the sales, the higher the royalty percentage. And what if Ingraham were to offer to purchase bottles for all its labels from Van Degan Glass? How much would that be worth to Mr. Truxton Van Degan? She will have to discuss all this with Hannah, of course.
I can be a manipulator, too, she thinks with a smile, as her taxi turns left into Fifty-second Street and her plan forms in her mind. After all, as old Jules Liebling used to say, doing business is just a tit for a tat.
I’ll tit if you’ll tat, Georgette, she thinks.
15
Piss-assed Drunk
“… And so now,” he is saying, “before we all adjourn to the social room next door, to sample Mr. Angus Kelso’s whiskey—and his fresh springwater—I just have one more announcement to make. Our company will award a prize of ten thousand dollars to the individual who can come up with the perfect name for this whiskey and this water. Obviously, we can’t call it Ballachulish—nobody would know how to spell it, much less pronounce it. So we need the perfect name. This contest, incidentally, is open to anyone connected with our company, from the boys in the mail room on up, and husbands, wives, and even children over the age of eighteen can submit entries. All entries should be submitted by the first of March. Then, to keep on schedule, we’ll need three months to work up an advertising and promotion campaign. Three more months to test-market, and then the plan is to introduce the label nationally right after Labor Day, in time for the holiday season. Thank you all … and now let’s go next door and try some Ballachulish. I think you’re going to like it.”
Seated cross-legged on the sofa with the script in her lap, Melody claps her hands. “Perfect!” she cries. “Absolutely word perfect. You won’t need the script. It’ll go over so much better if it seems extemporaneous.”
He winks at her. “I don’t have your theatrical training,” he says. “What if I get stage fright? Forget my lines?”
“You won’t,” she says. “But let’s go through it one more time, from the top. Remember—look straight out at the audience.”
“Okay. ‘For me, it all began in the tiny Scottish …’” He presses the remote control for the slide projector, but just then there is a knock on the door. The two exchange quick looks, and Noah looks at his watch. It is nearly ten o’clock. “Who is it?” he calls out.
“It’s me. Frank. Can I come in a minute?”
Melody whispers, “I’ll hide in the bedroom. If he needs to use the bathroom, have him use the one off the kitchen.”
“Hold on a sec,” Noah calls back, and Melody tiptoes out of the room and silently closes the bedroom door behind her.
Noah goes to the door, which is on the chain, and opens it.
“I know you had your sign up, Do Not Disturb,” Frank says. “But I gotta talk to you, Noah. Jeez, I gotta talk to somebody, Noah. Can I come in?”
“Sure, Frank.” He turns off the slide projector. “Just going through my Ballachulish pitch for tomorrow afternoon.”
“I need a drink,” Frank says.
Noah studies his friend, who looks a little windblown. “My old man used to say that there’s a difference between a man who says, ‘I’d like a drink,’ and a guy who says, ‘I need a drink.’ It looks like you might have had a few already, Frank.”
“Okay, cut the sermons, buddy. I still need a drink.”
“Ballachulish okay? I’ve got quite a lot on hand, as it happens.”
“Whatever you got,” Frank says.
“I’ll join you,” Noah says. He steps into the kitchen and fixes drinks for them both. When he returns to the sitting room, a glass in each hand, Frank is slumped on the sofa, staring at the opposite wall.
Noah hands him his drink. “Well, what’s up, Frank?” he says. “You look a little—well, not quite in the pink.”
“Lousy,” he says. “Fuckin’ lousy.” He takes a deep swallow of his drink. “Yeah, this is good stuff. This is really good stuff. Be a hit, I can guarantee, buddy.”
Noah sits in one of the club chairs across from him. “So? What’s wrong, Frank?”
Frank Stokes stares at his shoes. “Jeez,” he says, “you’re not gonna believe this. I can hardly believe it myself. It’s Beryl.”
“Beryl? What’s the matter with Beryl?”
“She called a coupla hours ago. She wants a divorce.”
“Well!” Noah says, and for a moment that is all he can think of to say. Then he says, “That’s a hell of a note. I mean, I thought you two were—well, pretty happy.”
The Wrong Kind of Money Page 34