The Wrong Kind of Money

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Good advice,” Carol says. They both rise from the table.

  “And you know something?” Hannah says. “I’m beginning to think you could run this company as well as the next one.”

  Carol smiles. “The power behind the throne?” she says. “Isn’t that what you were for a long time, Nana?”

  “Yes, I suppose I was. And think of it—if Ingraham could take over Van Degan Glass! Wouldn’t Jules be pleased? A tit for a tat, he’d say. Moving out on the very day we moved in!” As she leaves the blue dining room, she touches the Ming Yellow urn with the tip of her index finger. Almost lovingly, Carol thinks.

  And now, back at River House to change quickly into a sweater and jeans for her drive to the country, Carol finds a message on her answering machine: “Mrs. Liebling,” a secretary’s voice says, “please call Mr. Corydon McCurdy at your earliest convenience. It’s quite urgent.”

  Still smiling, she places the call.

  “Mrs. Liebling,” he says, and she notices immediately that they are no longer on a first-name basis.

  “Yes, Mr. McCurdy.”

  “I’ve had a conversation with Mr. Van Degan.”

  “Yes, I thought you might have.”

  “And I’ve also spoken to the director of the museum. Quite frankly, he prefers the Van Degans’ first offer to the present one, Mrs. Liebling.”

  “But the Van Degans are now offering to give the museum everything in their collection with the exception of the pieces they have displayed in their Fifth Avenue apartment. That’s close to ninety percent of the collection, and it seemed greedy to ask them to denude their apartment.”

  “But this new proposal contains some unacceptable provisions.”

  “The trusteeship, you mean?”

  “Frankly, Mrs. Liebling, that provision was so completely outrageous—so totally out of the question, and so absurd—that I didn’t even mention it to the director. He would have laughed me out of his office.”

  “But, Mr. McCurdy,” she says carefully, “you seem to be forgetting how the museum operates. It’s not the director who tells the board of trustees what to do. It’s the other way around. The director is just a hired employee, selected by the board. The board selects its own membership.”

  “Mrs. Liebling, you’re not suggesting—”

  “That you go to the board of trustees? Of course I am. Who else would you go to? The director has no say whatever about who goes on the board. I would have thought you knew that.”

  “Mrs. Liebling, that is something I flatly refuse to do.”

  “But isn’t that your job? I’d have thought so, with a gift the size and importance of this one, and since it involves a trusteeship.”

  “This is simply too outrageous!”

  “Are you saying that you, a mere committee chairman, are taking it upon yourself to turn down this gift?”

  “I can’t, but—”

  “I should tell you,” she says, “that it is quite within my power to have Mr. Van Degan withdraw his gift offer altogether. In the meantime, the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City is eager to have those porcelains to add to their Oriental collection. The Kimball in Fort Worth is also eager. It’s a shame not to have the collection stay in New York. But you heard Mr. Van Degan’s offer. It’s this or nothing.”

  “You’re trying to blackmail the museum!”

  “So I suggest you go to the trustees. And I suggest you do so rather quickly. It would be unwise, and also rude, to let the Van Degan offer dangle in front of you for too long a time.”

  “So it’s just another Liebling deal,” he says. “Just another shady, crooked Liebling deal. Like father, like daughter-in-law.”

  “Why, thank you, Mr. McCurdy!” she says. “Coming from someone like you, I take that as quite a compliment.”

  “This is another Liebling swindle!”

  And Carol Dugan Liebling hangs up the telephone without saying good-bye.

  And Carol has no sooner replaced the receiver in its cradle than she hears a key turn in the front door, hears the door open, then close. Anne walks rapidly past the library door, in her blue parka, her shoulders hunched under her backpack. “Anne?” Carol calls out to her. “Annie?” But Anne does not answer her, and continues down the hall toward her room where, again, Carol hears the door open, then close. She stands up and goes down the hall to Anne’s room, and taps on the door. “Annie? May I come in?”

  When there is no immediate reply, Carol opens the door. Anne is sprawled face forward on her bed, still in her parka. “Anne? Are you all right?” she asks her.

  Speaking into the bedclothes, Anne says, “I’m okay.”

  “I thought you were going to spend the weekend at Susie Carpenter’s.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “You’re home from work awfully early, aren’t you?”

  “I quit the job.”

  “Anne—you didn’t! I got that job for you.”

  “I know.”

  “But what about your winter work program? What about Bennington?”

  “I’m not going back to Bennington.”

  “Oh, Anne. Of course you are.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  She sits on the corner of Anne’s bed and rubs her daughter’s shoulders. “Anne—what’s the matter?”

  Anne turns her face to the wall. “I told you, Mother. Nothing. I just don’t want to talk right now.”

  She strokes her daughter’s fine blond hair. “Listen, darling,” she says. “I’ve got to drive up to Connecticut and see Granny Dugan. They’re having some sort of problem with her, and I’ve got to see if I can straighten it out. I’ve really got to leave right now. But I’ll be back by dinnertime, and we can talk then—okay?”

  “Okay,” Anne says to the wall.

  “Good-bye, darling,” she says.

  In the front hall, she puts on her shearling driving coat, collects her purse and gloves, checks to make sure she has her keys, and starts toward the front door. Now the telephone rings again, and Carol hesitates, thinking she will let the machine pick it up.

  The telephone rings three times. Then she hears a woman’s voice say, “Yes, this is Mr. Truxton Van Degan’s office calling for Mrs. Liebling. Will you please give Mr. Van Degan a call at your earliest opportunity? The number is—”

  Carol rushes for the phone and picks it up. “This is Mrs. Liebling,” she says.

  “Please hold for Mr. Van Degan,” the woman says.

  “Carol? Truck Van Degan.”

  “Yes, Truck,” she says easily, noticing how quickly they are using first names, though they have never actually met.

  “Have you heard from Cory McCurdy?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” she says. “And I think Mr. McCurdy is going to be a bit of a problem.”

  “Cory McCurdy is an asshole. I’ve known him since he was a kid. His old man, Dick McCurdy, was a faggot, and I think Cory’s one, too. Don’t worry. I can handle Cory McCurdy.”

  “Well, that’s good to know,” Carol says.

  “Barbara McCurdy was in the middle of divorcing Dick McCurdy when Dick McCurdy died. Fishy death. Supposed to be suicide, but they never found the weapon. Afterward, Barbara insisted on getting the divorce anyway. Posthumously. Cory McCurdy’s original name was Richard McCurdy, Junior. After the old man died, his mother had his name changed to Corydon, after her father. I could tell you a few other things about the McCurdys, but I won’t bore you.”

  “Well!” Carol says, unable to think of anything else to say.

  “So leave little Dickie boy to me. That’s what we used to call him, Dickie boy. But anyway, that’s not why I called you, Carol. I was thinking about our conversation earlier this afternoon. And I was thinking, Carol—if there’s one thing that’d make me happier than selling my bottles to Ingraham, it’d be selling Ingraham my whole damn company.”

  “Really?”

  “I mean it. The plastics bastards are killing us. Everything is plastics nowadays. But you guys will
always bottle your product in glass—right?”

  “Plastics have been tried,” she says. “But spirits bottled in plastic just can’t retain the same flavor.”

  “That’s what I hear. Like Coke in cans. Doesn’t taste the same. So what do you think? Do you think a deal like that could be in the cards? It could be a sweetheart of a deal for both of us, Carol.”

  “Yes,” she says. “I think a deal like that could definitely be in the cards.”

  “Hell, I’m thinking of retiring, anyway. The only thing is—what about the old lady? Will old lady Liebling go along with it?”

  “Yes,” she says again. “I think the old lady will definitely go along with it.”

  “When your husband gets back, we should all have a meeting. But remember, Carol—not a word to the press about this. If the press got word that my company’s for sale, the whole deal could come unstuck.”

  “Not a word. I promise.”

  “Good. And I suppose we should have some kind of earnest money up front, just between you and me.”

  “Earnest money?”

  “Yes, because I see you as pivotal to any deal we make, Carol. I think we’re going to need your help with any deal we make, in terms of what you want—uh—in terms of the museum, and all that. You know what I mean.”

  “I’m not sure I quite under—”

  “I’m not thinking money, exactly. I’m thinking of just a little something, just between you and me, that would just ensure that you and I are on the same team, and after the same thing. I think you receive my meaning, Carol. Now, I happen to have a couple of old Chinese vases—”

  “Vases?”

  “Yeah, they’re called Young Louie, or some damn thing.”

  “Lang Yao. Sang-de-boeuf.”

  “Something like that. They’re supposed to be pretty good. I’m going to give them to you, just to clinch this part of the deal, at this particular preliminary stage. It’ll just be between you and me.”

  “You’d give those to me?”

  “Whaddya think? It’ll help me know I’ve got your full support in this, Carol. I need you. You need me.”

  A tit for a tat. “But what about—”

  “What about what?”

  “Georgette.”

  “Don’t worry about Georgette. I can handle her. Don’t worry your pretty head about her. I’ll get those red vases over to you. But just remember that this is all totally, strictly between you and me.…”

  And now—at last! feeling light-headed from the crowded events of the day—she is off, speeding up the Merritt Parkway into Connecticut behind the wheel of her little bottle-green Mercedes 450 SEL sports coupe. She loves her little bottle-green car. She loves its gleaming French walnut dashboard, with all its little dials and buttons and knobs and switches, some of which she has never fathomed the meaning of, nor does she care. They wink and blink at her, registering miles per hour, oil pressure, revolutions per minute. She loves her little car’s sweet-smelling beigey leather interior and bucket seats, her seat that cuddles her fanny like a catcher’s mitt. In her car she is completely cushioned from the outside world, isolated, protected, and safe. She is glad she resisted Noah’s suggestion that she have a telephone installed in it. If she had, it would probably be ringing now. If she had, this would no longer be her little car—five years old, 40,000 miles, oil changed every 2,500, and not a scratch or nick or even the tiniest pit mark on its shiny, bottle-green finish. A telephone would mean she would have to share her car with other people. In her car she is the Green Hornet, the Masked Avenger.

  She has always enjoyed exceeding the speed limit by a bit—five, six, even ten miles faster than the posted signs decreed. And she has always loved the Merritt Parkway, its gentle, hilly curves, its wide, landscaped center strip, the sudden vistas, the graceful bridges that arch across the highway, no two alike, the side roads with their quaint, Revolutionary names. She presses the Search button on her car’s radio, hoping to find some pretty Broadway show tunes, or something from the fifties, when she was young. Something soothing and sweet.

  “… Shelling today of thousands by Serbian nationalists … President Clinton insisted he had nothing to hide … The jury in the trial of Lorena Bobbitt for severing her husband’s … The unidentified teenager who has accused Michael Jackson of … ‘Bad, bad Leroy Brown’ … And when Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy … ‘Hey, Poppa, I’m a be-boppa’—” She switches off the radio.

  “Your mother’s in a very bad way today, Mrs. Liebling,” Sister Margaret Mary said to her on the telephone this morning. “We’re thinking it may be time to move her to another level of care.”

  “What’s she been doing, Sister?”

  “Talking constantly of sin and redemption.”

  “But isn’t that what she always talks about?”

  “Yes, but shouting, Mrs. Liebling. Screaming, really. Waving her hands in the air.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “And you know she doesn’t sedate well, Mrs. Liebling. In the dining room this morning she had to be restrained.”

  “But she’s had these episodes before.”

  “Not quite with such force. There was a fax message for her this morning.”

  “A fax?”

  “Naturally, we didn’t read it. But it’s possible its contents may have been what set her off.”

  “Who would be sending her a fax, Sister?”

  “We have no idea, but we do think you should come up to see her. Your visits always seem to have a calming effect on her.”

  “Well, they certainly don’t have a calming effect on me,” Carol said.

  Now there was a genuine note of reproach in Sister Margaret Mary’s voice. “We’ve noticed it’s been a long time since you’ve visited your mother, Mrs. Liebling,” she said.

  “Very well. I’ve got an important museum meeting this morning, and then a lunch I can’t get out of. But I’ll drive up this afternoon. Can you give me your address again, Sister? I seem to have lost my address book.…”

  And, right now, Noah would be finishing his lunch and getting ready to make his presentation in Atlantic City. And tonight, when he is home again and they are sitting in their cozy library at River House, having perhaps a nightcap together before going to bed, where they will perhaps make love, and perhaps with a nice fire going in the fireplace, he will tell her how it all went this afternoon, and she is sure it will have gone well. And then he will ask her, “And how was your week, darling?”

  “Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. Mother had another violent spell today. Mary quit. Joanne Satterthwaite in 29-A is organizing a committee to have you thrown out as president of the building. Anne’s quit her job, and announced she isn’t going back to Bennington, even though her tuition’s paid for the full year. Cory McCurdy was insulting to me at a museum meeting because of something your father did to his father years ago. Roxy Rhinelander called, and she’ll probably have an item in her column in the News tomorrow morning about a feud that’s supposedly going on in our building, and that seems to have you and me at the center of it. Your sister’s drinking again and threatening suicide. I got into a bit of a mano a mano with your mother over lunch, and then into another mano a mano with Cory McCurdy after that. Told a few lies, a few exaggerations, made up some stuff, tried to throw my weight around. Got called kike and swindler all in the same day. Met your notorious Aunt Bathy, who actually seems rather nice. Nearly suffocated in a stalled elevator. Oh, and I almost forgot—our apartment was broken into, though nothing was taken except my address book. But when I was cleaning up afterward, I found some pieces of what looked like Melody’s underwear in the bottom of your closet, which perhaps we need to talk about? There was blood on it. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation! And, let’s see, what else? Oh, yes. Edna says the dishwasher’s acting up again. She says we need a new one. And the good news is? Well, there really isn’t any, except for some vague promises and a lot of things left up in the air. Welcome
home, my darling!”

  She turns off the parkway at the exit marked Bullethole Road, and for the next three miles the little bottle-green sports coupe is forced to proceed more slowly, along winding country roads, and Carol has a sudden, wild craving for a cigarette.

  It has been nearly twenty years since she smoked her last cigarette. She gave up cigarettes, on her doctor’s advice, when she discovered she was pregnant with Anne. Before that she smoked rather a lot. She has experienced these nicotine cravings before. They come at odd, irrational moments, without warning, and for no apparent reason at all. In her dreams she will often discover herself enjoying a Kent. It is an addiction, she supposes, that will always be with her. This time the craving is almost overpowering. Her heart pounds, and her vision blurs. She even furiously slaps the pockets of her shearling coat to see whether, by some crazy chance, a half-filled packet of Kents has been left there from her smoking days, which is absurd, she knows, because she did not even own this coat then.

  Now the little car turns off the road into a gravel lane lined high with rhododendrons, their dark leaves curled tightly in cigar shapes against the winter cold. This lane continues for a half a mile or so, until it reaches a high stone wall that can be entered only through a pair of heavy, wrought-iron gates. Beside the gates, a discreet bronze plaque reads: GREENSPRING HILLS, PRIVATE.

  She stops the car outside the gates, lowers her window, presses the enunciator button, and announces herself.

  Slowly the gates swing open, the way they used to do for her at Grandmont.

  19

  Afternoon

  At first she didn’t recognize him at all. It was a totally unfamiliar face—an old man, slightly bent, rather formally dressed in a dark suit, white shirt with a starched collar, and a blue-and-white-striped necktie with a wide knot, a black pearl stickpin in the knot, leaning on a cane. What pleased her most was his full head of white hair. She thinks she would not have been able to bear it if he had lost his hair.