Dear Money (2 page)

Will made loads of money at one of those big Wall Street jobs, and he came from old money, though there was not very much of it left anymore. But he looked like money, with his smooth white skin, his strong jaw that he proudly stroked (though he was not an arrogant man), his soft black hair and those charming green eyes that twinkled with optimism as he spoke: the former created the latter, the way winning breeds winning. Yet he was discreet about his wealth in the way that New Englanders of note have been taught to be. And this house in Maine, falling to pieces as it was, represented for me that discretion and my own inability to comprehend it.

With the Chapmans, our shift away from the companionship of the starving-artist set began. It was something one sees only after the fact: we'd left behind our struggling friends, living in old spice warehouses in Williamsburg—those who proudly spoke of waking in the morning to step into a world described not by quaint cafés offering croissants that rivaled the best of Paris, but instead by forgotten industry and telephone poles, low-slung electric wires canopying lonely Brooklyn streets, the wasteland that fueled imagination. Friends with whom in the early days we spent long hours late into the night conversing about art and the struggle until, tired, drawn, burdened by the pursuit of the masterpiece, we all went around like shades of our former selves, relying on hope as a retirement plan.

For the most part, the world of the Chapmans, by contrast, was so much more beautiful to look upon, more fully realized, a familiar beauty recognizable from magazines and movies. And when they enrolled their firstborn in a private school, so did we, scraping the money together from commissions and advances. And from that point on we entered an almost entirely artist-free zone. Now there were doctors and lawyers and bankers galore, admen and -women and publishers of magazines—a whole roster of fascinating, hard-working people who seemed to occupy positions that made the world go round. They were Oversized People with an outsized capacity to welcome artists into their world. Becoming friends with them intrigued me; they were portals into a whole different manner of living: grown-ups with grown-up concerns, real estate primarily—the acquisition and renovation of. So the struggle and meaning of art was, gradually, imperceptibly, left behind on the shores of the industrial zone. I'd had that conversation. It seemed there was not much else to say.

Will Chapman was not what I had imagined a Wall Street type to be. He could speak about any subject with intelligence and knowledge. He knew art, antiques, literature. He was a reader, a rare thing these days. He knew inside and out the history of the novel, had read
Clarissa
and
Pamela
even, for God's sake, soldiering through them without the prompting of a college class. He dreamed big, and Emma along with him, assisting him in his will and his desire. He wanted his girls to ride camels in the Rajasthani desert, taught them to collect, instructing them on the beauty and precision of Mogul miniatures, encouraged them to draw copies, introduced them to music, signed them up for Mandarin, offered at their private school, because China was the future center of the world and he would do nothing less than prepare them for the shift in the course of empires eastward. (Soon I began to worry, in a way that seems particular to New York City, about the fate of our hapless, Mandarin-less children.) He played the piano beautifully. For him life was a novel, to be lived fully in every regard, with adventures and stories.

"He's a Renaissance man," Theodor would say with a hint of envy. Theodor's father, son of a Swedish immigrant to the farms of the American breadbasket, had been a salesman of industrial paints, had moved his family a dozen times across America in pursuit of better jobs before retiring to a glorified trailer park in Tucson with my mother-in-law, Gina, where they died young, in their sixties. Theodor's talents were born of determination, self-taught. He suspected the assets of privilege, because veneer and authenticity had too similar a sheen.

"What is it he
can't
do?" we'd speculate. Perfect Boy, we began to call Will (privately). Perfect Boy, because he was perfect, loved Wall Street, loved the high, but would not be limited by it. More than anything, when he looked into the crystal ball that held his future he expected that someday he'd become a novelist. This did not mean that Perfect Boy was less perfect now. No, he was a bubble of perfection making its way, in the fullness of time, through time, as we all were, but somehow he had figured out the proper
valence,
the strength, the capacity, like a chemical element, the proper combining power, to join and be joined in life, by life, through life with a heightened equanimity. He woke early, went to bed late, using the time to write. I admired his tenacity but didn't have much faith in his ability, though I did not tell him that. Rather, I encouraged him just as I did the other wannabe writers I had met over the years. I never made it my job to herald the truth:
Give it a break, buster You're never going to have what it takes.
If I had a dollar for every person who wanted to be a writer ... I could have bought a house in Maine.

The house on Pond Point, by the by, was part of their plan: they'd spend their summers there so that Will could write, full time, in the tool room in the damp dark basement, amid the wrenches and screws and nails and hammers and saws and twine of Mr. Hov's remarkable workshop (Hov had fixed the house from top to bottom himself), the great American novel. While his Wall Street colleagues busied themselves building mini-Versailles, temples to themselves, which, really, any knuck lehead with money could do, Will Chapman wanted to move beyond collecting, beyond connoisseurship, to the making of art itself. He wanted to be a novelist. He wanted to be what I was. He wanted to have the nerve, the confidence, the bravado and whatever else it would take (ego) to put Wall Street aside and write. He wanted to make the big-money guys, scooting about in their Jags and Gulfstream IVs, look like the foulmouthed Visigoths they were. He wanted to be authentic to the core. He was in love with me thus (and so was Emma) because I was doing that which he wanted most to do. By studying me they could peer into the life they wished to adopt, test-drive it, as it were; they could examine up close the sacrifices and adjustments they would have to make.

And I, on the outside, wasn't doing so badly for myself. I, India Palmer—thirty-eight years old, four novels under my belt, a fifth, entitled
Generation of Fire,
on the threshold of publication, two daughters in private school, sprawling (albeit rent-stabilized) Upper West Side apartment, winner of the International Book Prize and a Monogram fellowship, nominated for the Washington Award for fiction (the only prize I hadn't touched was the Eiseman, the star of all U.S. literary prizes, but always I hoped)—was the object of Will Chapman's scrutiny and fascination. He wanted to be me. And I? How could I not help but be drawn to him, his wife, his daughters?

What he and Emma did not know was all the rest, all the details of how our lives really were, which I kept neatly tucked away because I could not bear to let them see the shambles, the riotous mess that it was. They did not know, for example, that not one of my novels had sold more than five thousand copies, that the awards by this point had been received long ago. ("That and twenty-five cents will get you a Hershey bar—with almonds," a college professor used to say to anyone who inquired too pointedly about what it took to get an A, and I recalled that tidbit of wisdom when I thought of the awards.) They did not know that my advances had become increasingly smaller, that it was not a good sign that I had had a different publisher for each of the four previous books, that they were now slipping, fast, out of print.

"This isn't unusual," my agent said when I inquired about his other authors, whether they too were slipping into oblivion. A young, driven, intelligent man who seemed, every time I saw him, to get younger. Indeed, he was moving in the opposite direction. He was forty going on twenty, with a wide curl of a smile that revealed imperfect teeth which somehow added to his appeal. He spoke slowly, deliberately and always with a bright intention. The Fox, he was known as, and proud of it; the moniker had previously belonged to Maxwell Perkins and had been earned by my agent for his editorial attention. Day in, day out, he'd labor on a manuscript to make it right, irresistible. And like a fox he was coy and tenacious, determined to become the best agent in New York. It did not matter what it took—poaching, dramatic escapades that put him in the media news. Authors wanted him on their side because he made the numbers add up in the writer's favor. They spoke of the high advances he secured for first novels. He did not shy away from the intent of his ambition, always attended with charm. "We're encountering this with Charles Hamilton, fighting to get the rights reverted," he continued, offering me an example of another out-of-print writer. His voice sang with the confidence of youth and time. I loved Hamilton's work. "But isn't he dead?" I asked. "Why, yes," the Fox said, looking up at me. "Yes, in fact, he is dead." But for the Fox that was a minor detail, did not need to be a hindrance. "In fact, being dead," the Fox averred, "could possibly play in one's favor." He offered a wink.

My trajectory was on the downward side of a parabola reserved for the still living. If
Generation of Fire
sold like the others, I would most likely be unable to sell a sixth book (this was my fear, anyway) and my life as a writer would, in effect, cease. I would enter the twilight, after-market realm of teaching at the university. Untenured, my job was not guaranteed. It depended on, at the very least, a splash of reviews upon publication that would draw attention to me and thus to the university. No, the Chapmans did not know the secret, abject heart of our lives—that it was fueled by hope of the sort barely distinguishable from the hopefuls lining up at the corner stationery store to buy state lottery tickets. We worked hard. There was no alternative. The winds of chance had to sail our way. Our lives rested on a fragile set of stilts, supported by money made long ago on a preposterously big, now all but diminished, advance, on Theodor's irregular commissions, on my salary, on revolving credit card debt, on indefatigable hope.

Theodor made little on his art, small gold objects and figurines, a series of miniatures that he'd begun as a dark joke that had, instead, suddenly found a burgeoning cachet, and along with it the faintest glimmer of what appeared to be a market. Odd people began showing up at his studio to examine the figurines. People whose job it was to be on the phone at auctions making bids for anonymous buyers—Russian oligarchs, Indian industrialists, God knows who. Strange people with unpinpointable, transatlantic accents came by to "have a look." No serious money yet, but there was hope.

The trouble was, the miniatures were exquisitely expensive to make and impossible for the ordinary person to afford, but this did not disturb Theodor. He was not a worrier. Actual commissions came in. He'd made a golden chalice for a famous archbishop (who later became infamous in one of those molestation scandals that riddled the Church). He'd crafted a porringer for Lady Amelia Start's firstborn, daughter of Sir Stewart Start and the heir to London's most notorious billionaire. The porringer was a gift from the Queen Mother's cousin. But these commissions, big as they were, never seemed to attract the wave of attention that would bring Theodor steady work. No matter. The idea of giving up (a constant for me) was not an option for him.

He did not rush his work. Patiently he labored over the depth of the porringer's bowl, the shine of the gold, its ability to catch the light. Tirelessly he worked the fine web of the handle's filigree, studying it in natural light and artificial light to be sure the dance played in both. Even if he had the commissions, it would not make much difference for us, in a life-changing way, because each piece took so long to complete. He would not seek help, an apprentice. He would not cut corners. Creating art was a holy calling, a marriage to the mysterious. He would not put it that way exactly, though he did see the relationship as spiritual—a life lived inescapably in the present moment, no end, no beginning, a meditation, a communion with the dead, with Picasso, with Cellini, a destruction of clocks and time. In that moment something was made, emerged from nothing—a piece of scavenged metal now a porringer for the daughter of a billionaire. Like Davy Crockett waking in the morning to step onto the sun.

How did this nothing become something, the unknown known? When I met Theodor he was living on ramen noodles and tap water. I wanted to save him. Add to the broth Korean seaweed and jumbo shrimp bought cheaply from the fishmongers of Chinatown. The challenge drove me, elegance for pennies so that time could still be ours. We hoarded time like some hoard money. It was our currency. But no matter how clever we were, time passed as it always does, and here we were approaching forty, having to reckon with children and their needs and the choices made in our twenties. Theodor remained in the bubble, art's cocoon, indulging my interest in our new, well-heeled friends as a kind of temporary curiosity, one in which he could participate, with amusement and good cheer, for the time being. But he did not, would not, see it as I did. And though I admired that determination, the priest's vow, I had to acknowledge at last that something like a pivot point had moved within me and I now felt, when I watched him busily in his studio, like one of his strange visitors having a look, an outsider peering in.

"I married an artist," he'd say to me. "You don't have a choice."

Is that true, I'd wonder. Is that true? If I was not an artist, then it was not true. And so here I was in this mess, a quandary of my own inelegant design. To make matters worse, I had not shared much of our money woes with Theodor. Rather, I kept assuming the tides would turn for him, for me. But I had published enough books by now to know what to expect, to know better than to trust in all that. Thus the systems that made our life possible and easier all lined up in front of me like those overused domino tiles waiting to topple even if only one should fall.