The Wrong Kind of Money

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “And yet when he died, he left her without a penny.”

  “He was always so obsessed with—appearances. Probity. Respectability. The things he was hoping to get, but didn’t, by marrying me. ‘Ingraham—the label you can trust.’ The Leaning Tower of Pisa. ‘You can trust the Leaning Tower of Pisa never to fall down.’ Bathy and I always tried to help him project that image, for whatever it was worth, to try to make the public forget what everybody knew—that he was an ex-bartender with no education, who took over a Canadian gin mill when its owner couldn’t pay his own bar bill, a man who helped Al Capone get his start and whom Mr. Capone wanted to reward by being Cyril’s godfather. There was so much in your father’s life that he wanted to hide, and Bathy was just part of it. To your father, leaving Bathy money in his will would have been like admitting publicly that he had another woman, and that the other woman was his own wife’s—baby sister. When he was dying, at Grandmont, Dr. Arnstein was with him, and I was waiting in the music room, and Dr. Arnstein came downstairs and said to me, ‘I don’t think he has much longer, Hannah,’ and so I went up to be with him. And when I saw him, I said to the nurse, ‘Please send for Miss Sachs.’

  “And when Bathy got there from the Tarrytown Inn, where she was staying, we both gestured to the nurse that we’d like to be alone with him for a little while. And we both sat, on either side of his bed, Bathy holding his left hand and I holding his right. I think we both felt that invisible cord of love I mentioned. And then, suddenly, in one of those lucid moments that often occur to a person just before he dies—and I know this because I’ve seen more people die than you have, Noah—he opened his eyes, and looked at me, and said, ‘I want you to go out and buy something pretty for yourself, Hannah. Something really pretty.’ And then he turned to Bathy and said the same thing.

  “‘We will,’ we said.

  “Then he said, ‘It wasn’t all that bad, was it?’

  “And we said, ‘No, Jules, it wasn’t all that bad at all.’

  “And then he turned to me and said, ‘Hannah, will you be sure to fix everything?’

  “I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I said, ‘I will.’

  “And then he closed his eyes, and the rales began, and then he died. We sat with him for another half hour or so, still holding his hands, feeling them grow cold, and then I got up and went to fetch Dr. Arnstein and the nurse.

  “And later, after we’d had the will read to us—which came as something of a shock to us—I decided I knew what he meant by ‘fixing everything.’ He meant fixing everything with Bathy and with you. Between the two of you.”

  She clears her throat. “Anyway, you asked about my press release,” she says. “I’ve got it all written, and I’ll have Jonesy type it up and fax it out to the financial media on Monday morning. I’ve kept it quite short and sweet. It simply announces that, effective immediately, I am resigning as president and CEO of Ingraham and appointing you as my successor. I am also turning over to you my voting shares of Ingraham stock, according to the provisions of your father’s will. You see why I wanted you to stop by here no matter how late it was. I wanted you to have the weekend to prepare to move into my old office. The company’s all yours now.”

  “Yes,” he says quietly, not moving in his chair. But why, after waiting for this to come about for all these years, does he suddenly feel let down now that it has finally happened? Is it that thing about answered prayers? Or is it because he sees his vision of Aesop receding before his eyes? So much time has gone by. That vision has already begun to seem flimsy and elusive. Even when he explained it to Melody, he wondered if his heart was really any longer in it. And even Melody—with all the rosy idealism that supposedly goes with youth—did not seem enormously impressed with it. Perhaps it was always, as his mother said when he first described it to her years ago, “just a cockamamie notion, another harebrained save-the-world scheme.” Perhaps he said good-bye to it, saw it evaporate in smoke, in their hotel room in Atlantic City. Now reality looms. Now he is wedded to Ingraham forever. The future is at last secure. Carol will be very happy. We will have to celebrate this. This, he thinks, is the first day of the rest of my life. Still, there was once a bright bird there. But it had flown away.

  “I just have a couple of favors to ask you,” his mother says.

  “Ah. Conditions,” he says, still sitting there in her visitor’s chair.

  “Not conditions!” she says sharply. “Favors. Not even favors. Suggestions. My press release will stay the same whether you decide to follow my suggestions or not.”

  “Okay, shoot,” he says. “What are they, Ma?”

  “I’d like to suggest that you invite Bathy to be on Ingraham’s board. I’m not asking you to find her a position in the company. She wouldn’t go back to work for Ingraham if you had one for her. But to be invited to join the board—I think she’d be touched, Noah. It would show her—”

  “That I forgive her?”

  “No! Not that you forgive her! You have nothing to forgive her for. If you want to forgive someone, forgive me. But it would let Bathy know that at last you understand everything.”

  “Okay, Ma. What else?”

  “When you’re ready to market Ballachulish, give the contract for producing the bottles to Van Degan Glass.”

  “What?” he says. “I thought there was a blood feud between us and the Van Degans. I thought there was an ironclad rule that we never did business with Van Degan.”

  She sighs. “It was all so long ago,” she says. “And another generation. Everyone connected with it is dead now—except for me. And fifty years seems too long a time to bear a grudge.”

  “Well, now you’re finally talking some sense,” he says. “I never had any quarrel with Van Degan Glass. As far as I’m concerned, they’re a fine old company.”

  “Then lift the boycott.”

  “With pleasure! The damn boycott never made any sense to me, anyway.”

  “And,” she says, “if we—or, I should say, you—lift the boycott for Ballachulish, what would you think of giving Van Degan a contract to manufacture all our labels?”

  “All?”

  “All.”

  “Wow,” he says with a soft whistle. “What would Pop say to that one?”

  “Pop is deader than a mackerel. Pop is in that yellow jar in the dining room. Pop isn’t going to say boo.”

  “Well, I’d certainly have no objection to that,” he says.

  “You see,” she says, “I’ve been thinking. It may have been just a coincidence that the Van Degans moved out of the building the same day we moved in. Perhaps your father was being too sensitive to take it so personally.”

  “Could be. I wasn’t even born when it happened.”

  “Their company’s bottom line doesn’t look at all good at the moment. Our business will help them a lot, of course. And I noticed at this afternoon’s closing their stock hit a new low. So I was also thinking, maybe before we ink in any deal with them, it might be a good idea if we snapped up some of their stock—on the q.t, naturally. What do you think?”

  “Ah,” he says with a smile, “I’m beginning to get the picture, Ma.”

  “And if we had some Van Degan stock, it would give us a toe in the door in case we decided to take over the company.”

  “So. You have a plan. A takeover.”

  “Actually, it’s Carol’s plan.”

  “Carol?”

  “Carol’s working on a plan which—if it works out—would do wonders for us, Noah.”

  “Tell me about Carol’s plan.”

  “I’ll let Carol tell you about it. But wouldn’t it be nice if we had our own glass-manufacturing division? It would save us a bundle.”

  “Yes, it surely would.”

  “And there’s another reason why I want us to make nice to the Van Degans. Mrs. Van Degan wants to have a joint coming-out party for her daughter and Anne. The girls were apparently good friends at Brearley. At first, as you know, I was very much against the
idea. Carol thinks it’s a little silly, too, and she’s worried that it’s going to be terribly expensive. But I’ve changed my mind. And I’ve also decided I’d like to pay for this party—Anne’s share of it, that is. I want to do this for two reasons. First, I want to do it for Anne, since it’s something she wants. But I also want to do it for public-relations reasons. A party this size is bound to get a lot of publicity. If the brand-new CEO of Ingraham were tossing this sort of bash for his daughter, it might look—well, a little bit extravagant and show-offy. But if it were being given by her dear old octogenarian granny—old granny who’s retired from the company and hasn’t much else to do—it would look, well, rather sweet, wouldn’t it?” She gives him her sweetest smile.

  “I see your point,” he says. “And sweet thou ever wert, Ma.”

  “Don’t get smart,” she says. “I’m just trying to be practical. So what do you think of the idea?”

  He is smiling, too. “I think it’s very—sweet,” he says.

  “Of course, I’m really doing it for Anne. But being nice to the Van Degans wouldn’t hurt when you and Mr. Van Degan sit down at the bargaining table and start hammering out a contract, would it?”

  “Sweet,” he says again. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. Including even offering to pay for a little more than half of the party if that would sweeten the deal for them. Like providing free liquor. In any deal, every little bargaining chip helps, I find.”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Carol doesn’t like Mrs. Van Degan much. But I think I can deal with her, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Ma,” he says. “I think you can.”

  “I’ve even picked out the dress I’m going to wear. Amy Vanderbilt says the grandmother of a debutante should wear blue.”

  “Sweet,” he says again.

  “But of course, if I’m going to be one of the hostesses of this party, there are certain people I’m going to want to invite.”

  “Of course.”

  “One of them is Bathy.”

  “Bathy, Bathy, Bathy,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “Whenever we talk, Ma, we always somehow manage to circle back to Bathy.”

  “There’s a reason,” she says.

  “What is it?”

  She sits forward in her chair. “Noah, there’s something important you ought to know about Bathy.”

  “Oh?”

  “Years ago there was a young man in my life who went on to become briefly rather a celebrity. His name was Radioman First Class George Noville.…”

  In the apartment at River House, the telephone rings, and Carol picks it up. “Hello?”

  “Mrs., uh, Liebling?” a woman’s voice says, in what used to be called a boarding-school stammer. “It’s, uh, Brooke Astor. I apologize for calling you so late in the evening, but I’ve just come from a long trustees’ meeting at the museum, and I have some, uh, important news for you.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Astor,” Carol says.

  “To begin with, we’re thrilled with the way you’ve negotiated with Mr. and Mrs. Van Degan to persuade them to offer their porcelain collection to the museum. This will be one of the most important collections the museum has been offered in years—not since the, uh, Lehman collection, in fact.”

  “I’m glad I was able to help,” Carol says.

  “Help? It seems to me you did it all. We’ve been sending out polite feelers to the Van Degans since the nineteen eighties, and you’ve pulled it off in a matter of days. You’re quite an, uh, amazing woman, Mrs. Liebling.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “And we’d like to do something to—uh—express our tremendous gratitude to you, Mrs. Liebling. There’s a vacancy coming up on our board of trustees in June, and we’d like to invite you to fill it.”

  “Why, thank you, Mrs. Astor,” she says quietly. “That’s a very—a very great honor.”

  Now the other woman’s voice becomes more intimate and conversational. “Of course we were all made aware of the terms you laid out in order for us to receive this gift. And I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that there was a certain amount of opposition to those terms.”

  “I’m not surprised, no,” Carol says.

  “Didn’t think you would be. A certain amount of opposition is—uh—putting it mildly. There was a hell of a lot of opposition. That’s why our meeting ran so late. I’m sure you can understand.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “There was actual shouting. For a while, I actually thought a fistfight might break out in our lovely boardroom between two of the—uh—so-called gentlemen on our little board. This is not particularly unusual, I should add. Our meetings can get pretty down and dirty, and I’ve learned to shout with the best of them. But, in the end, the board was split down the middle on the matter. And, as a member of the—uh—female minority, I’m happy to say I had the swing vote. I had the last shout. I voted to accept your terms. Do you want to know why?”

  “Yes. I’d love to know why.”

  “There’s a certain mystique about being a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum. We’re supposed to be these rarified human beings, with these glittering social veneers. We cultivate that image, of course. But we’re just like anybody else—capable of greed, jealousy, ambition, and rage when somebody else seems to be stepping on our toes or trying to push us around. It can be like a jungle, serving on our board—man on man, and man against woman. You need the nerves of a gunslinger and the muscle of a ward boss. You need the heart of a gambler, and the, uh, cojones of a drug czar. You need to be tough, and you need to know how to fight. Most of all, you need to be a wheeler-dealer. I’ve thought of myself as a wheeler-dealer all my life, fighting my way in what’s still essentially a man’s world. I admired the way you set out your terms. My hat is off to you, Mrs. Liebling. Congratulations on being an even tougher wheeler-dealer than I am.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Astor,” Carol says.

  “I like your style. Perhaps one day soon you and your husband can come to my house for lunch. I’d like to meet you both.”

  “Thank you. I’d love that.”

  “And I should also tell you that at our next meeting, I’m going to propose that we find someone a bit more, uh, uh, diplomatic to head our Acquisitions Committee than Mr. Corydon McCurdy.…”

  Carol moves slowly to the bar and, after a moment’s hesitation, carefully fixes herself a tall drink. She thinks: I am dreaming, and this is a dream. But I’m not dreaming. This is no dream.

  In the mirror above the bar, she studies her reflection. She lifts her glass in a little toast.

  Well, now what do you think of that? she asks him. Just what do you think of that? Twenty years ago I sat in your mother’s blue silk dining room and listened to her tell me that the Lieblings would always be pariahs in this town. And I told her that I was going to change all that. And I just did it. So what do you think of that, you bastard? What do you think of that?

  “So you’ve used Bathy very well, haven’t you, Ma?” he is saying to her now. “You’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of her over the years.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she says.

  “You knew all along why I felt the way I did about her. But you pretended you had no idea.”

  Her lips are pressed together in a pout. “I wanted to hear it from you,” she says. “I wanted to hear your explanation. In your own words.”

  “And because you knew I wouldn’t—”

  “I like things out in the open. No beating around the bush. That’s the way I like to do business.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s quite it, Ma. Because you knew I wouldn’t give you any explanation, in my own words, you kept me feeling I owed you one. As long as I owed you one, you had an excuse to keep trying to push Bathy down my throat—insisting that I offer her a job that you knew all along she wouldn’t take. And because you knew I wouldn’t have Bathy pushed down my throat, you had an excuse to keep me where you wanted me. You cou
ld have told me all this ten, fifteen years ago. But you preferred to keep me standing on my tiptoes, waiting to be kissed—waiting till you were damned good and ready to give trie the old smackeroo.”

  She looks briefly away from him. “Well, perhaps you’re right,” she says. “Nobody’s perfect.” Then she rises to her feet and faces him, smiling brightly. “But now you’ve got your smackeroo,” she says. “So it doesn’t matter, does it? It was worth the wait. All good things are worth waiting for.”

  “Are they?”

  “It was worth it for me,” she says. “For the pleasure it’s been for me to work with you for all these years. And now you may kiss me good night. It’s been a long time since you’ve kissed your poor old mother good night, Noah. It’s been years and years. Now I’d like you to do it. Kiss me good night.”

  He rises from the visitor’s chair and steps to her. He bends and starts to kiss her on the cheek, but she offers him her lips instead. “Ma, you are a bitch to end all bitches,” Noah says.