The Chocolate Money (28 page)

She reaches in the back of the closet and pulls out three shopping bags full of matchbooks. There must be at least two thousand matchbooks total. She hands them to me.

“This should keep you busy. I know it’s a lot of work, but you have nothing else to do. Nothing cures boredom like a good challenge. And I so appreciate it, my darling girl.”

I float on her praise as I lug the bags back to my room. Then reality hits.

This project could take me until January. Despite what Babs has said about us working on this together, it won’t be true. Just me alone in my room trying to make sense of this mess. Another room thrash, just not as messy and more prolonged. I will have to stay up late, make order from chaos. No mother-daughter bonding after all.

I put the matchbooks on the floor by my desk. I pull one out, Maxim’s, and open the cover.
September 1976
in Babs’s handwriting, just as she said. None of the matches inside are missing, since she uses lighters for her cigarettes. She always says that only tacky people use matches to light cigarettes; they make cigarettes taste bitter and remind her of gas stations. Matches are only good as souvenirs.

The bars and restaurants on the matches might be different, but the story is always the same. Babs absent from the aparthouse, wearing fancy clothes, drinking fancy water, talking in her invented vocabulary. Absent from me.

I have no clue how to start this project. Should I dump them all out on the floor? Pull them individually from the bags and sort them as I go? I finally decide I will sort them by years and then continue from there. This plan seems clever to me, and I work until I can no longer keep my eyes open. Fall asleep, four
A.M.

I wake up at noon the next day. I have made a lot of progress and can’t wait to tell Babs. I go down to the kitchen. She is up, wearing a waffle robe from Raffles in Singapore and talking on the phone. Tally? Some friend I don’t know? I pause in the doorway before she can see me, and listen.

“Yes, the kid is home and will be until after Christmas. Porter’s is taking her, no surprise there. It will probably cost me another building.”

Pause.

“Of course she’s bright, but getting caught having sex at her age is just fucking stupid. Whole thing probably took three minutes. Cost three years at Cardiss.”

Pause.

“Yep. You heard right. Mack’s son.”

Pause.

“Best part for me: Mags was beside herself. Can you believe that bitch still won’t let it go? But I did the ladylike thing and said nothing. Or almost nothing. I even played the good mother and offered them some dough to let her stay. I knew Cardiss was too fucking earnest to take that bait, and it probably forced them to kick her out. They couldn’t be seen taking a bribe. But I know it horrified Mags.”

Pause.

“No, the last thing Bettina needs is therapy. You have to be interesting to go a shrink, otherwise you’ll bore the shit out of him.”

Pause.

“Just organizing stuff for me. But I’m sure she is going to fuck that up too. I already hired an assistant to start after Christmas. I just needed to get her out of my hair.”

Pause.

“Sorry to bore you with all this. No, I’m not going to talk to her about it. I feel how I feel and that’s it. I will just do my best nicey-nicey and soon she’ll be off to Porter’s. Slim chance of her getting busted for sex, unless she tries the whole lesbo thing. Even then, not sure this is against the rules.”

Pause.

“Bye. I’ll be in touch, darling.” She hangs up.

I back out of the doorway before Babs can see me. Walk upstairs to my room, reeling. Two scenarios about the project. One: Babs has played me. She’s punishing me for getting kicked out. For proving that, for once, the chocolate money can’t buy her whatever she wants. She doesn’t really expect me to do anything useful with the matches, just waste my time. She’s already planning on hiring an assistant to do it all over, erase all traces of me. Babs will be nice because she likes watching me trust her and enjoy what I think she’s giving me.

Two: She really is happy to have me home. Wants to work on the project together. What she says on the phone is just how she talks to people. She can’t admit to anyone, even herself, that I have finally won her over.

I want scenario two, of course. But her conversation went on so long. Needs to get me out of her hair. Do the whole lesbo thing. Offering Cardiss money not to save my ass, but to piss off Mags.

The real question is, why I am giving myself options? Why am I still bothering with this fucking book?

I gather up all the matches that are strewn about my bedroom floor. Put them back in the shopping bags. I change out of my pajamas and leave the aparthouse. Go see a movie at Water Tower Place. Sit in the dark and eat a bucket of popcorn and drink a large Diet Coke. I don’t really watch the movie, just think until I have a plan. One that will test which is more important to Babs, the matches or me. I think I know the answer. I imagine my father’s reaction to all this. If Babs tells me to leave once and for all, at least I will have somewhere else to go.

I succeed in avoiding Babs the rest of the day. That night she goes out to dinner. I eat meat loaf with Lily in the kitchen. Excuse myself early, saying I am still tired from the night before.

I go to sleep. Set my alarm for three; Babs will be home and asleep by then. She’s not fucking anyone at the moment. When the buzzer goes off, I gather up the bags of matches and go downstairs. I stop in the living room. I like the darkness: it enables me to see the cars speeding down Lake Shore Drive, with their bright headlights and their definite places to go. I also like the dark waves of Lake Michigan that crash on Oak Street Beach. A machine working overtime, since there are no people sitting in the sand watching me.

I walk around to the terrace of the aparthouse. Babs once told me she fucked lots of men there, but unlike Mack, they were not bed-worthy, and she never invited them to stay over, sully her sheets. Across the way, the John Hancock Building is dark. People have left their offices, and in the apartments on the upper floors, everyone has gone to sleep.

I walk to the railing and stand there. I think about the medallion she gave me, the tutorials about sex, the package she sent to Cardiss. Gestures that seem to me like Trying. Maybe she just doesn’t know any better. But at this moment, this is no longer enough. I know I have to act quickly or I will lose my resolve, get swept up in the fantasy of a Babs who is doing the best she can. I love her, after all. But, finally, I realize I want to be loved back.

I slowly reach for the first bag and dump it out into the nighttime air. My pouring is tentative and slow. With the next two bags, I gain momentum, throwing the matches over the railing like they are heavy buckets of water. I watch as the wind catches them, and they slowly float down, making patterns in the sky before landing in the street. Like the Splushes I discarded when I was a child, the matches are gone forever. Unlike the solid pebbles of chocolate, they will have a more graceful landing, float to the sidewalk like butterflies.

But no matter. I have taken what Babs probably sees as her life’s work and scattered it about the street. Thrown it away forever. There will always be more Splushes, but the matchbooks are irreplaceable.

I leave the empty shopping bags on the terrace and go upstairs to bed. I don’t bother to tiptoe up the steps; I let them creak under my weight. At that moment, I feel no remorse. I don’t need to get in my bathtub and chase the smash to alleviate my anxiety. I get into my PJs, crawl under my covers, and sleep soundly.

I
WAKE UP AROUND NINE
and go downstairs for breakfast still wearing my PJs. I see the three shopping bags that once contained the matches sitting in the back hall. Lily must have found them outside and decided to keep them since Babs likes to save such sturdy bags to pack odds and ends for the country.

I greet Lily in the kitchen and eat the omelet, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and black coffee she has made for me. Normally, I just push the eggs around on my plate since they have so many calories, but now I don’t care. I know Babs won’t be up for a couple of hours, so I get dressed and go for a walk on Oak Street Beach. Given how cold it is, there’s no one else there.

I take off my shoes, stand in the lake. It feels like liquid ice, but I make myself stay there. I begin to think about how Babs will react to the matchbooks that I have jettisoned from the perch of the aparthouse. It’s a very different equation during the day. Part of me doesn’t care. Part of me is incredulous that I have betrayed her in such a way. I know our relationship will forever be altered. But I feel liberated, standing in the cold water, knowing how much I’ve changed.

Babs is in the kitchen when I get back.

“Hey, Bettina,” she says cheerily. “How’s the project coming?”

“It’s not,” I say flatly, not really wanting to give up the friendly greeting she has given me with a curt reply, but there’s no turning back.

“What do you mean, ‘It’s not’? Is it too fucking difficult for you to sort matches? I guess I can hire someone who’s more competent than you.” Once again, there will be no sustained kindness. Babs is always right. Doesn’t do conflict.

“Haven’t you already got someone else lined up to work on this project?” I challenge.

“Actually, yes. I had a feeling this would happen so I have an assistant starting in January. But I wanted to give you a chance.”

So she was telling the truth during the phone call after all.

“Well, Babs, you needn’t have bothered.” For the first time, I’m not afraid of what she’s going to say. I’ve had enough.

“What do you mean?” she asks. I’m surprised to have caught her off-guard for once.

“I decided the whole project was stupid. I threw out the matches.” I try to emulate a Babs voice, dismissive and authoritative, but I can’t quite pull it off.

“Well, you can just get them back,” she says, probably thinking they are in a garbage can somewhere. She is getting impatient and annoyed.

“No, I can’t.”

“Fuck, Bettina, where are they?” She acts like she is simply trying to get an answer from me and is indifferent to the ultimate outcome, since she knows she has the power to fix anything. But the tremor in her right hand gives her away. Things are not going as she expected, and she is pissed.

“I threw them over the balcony. They’re scattered about the Gold Coast.”

“That was stupid, Bettina. Stupid.” As if this is some kind of preamble. Her hand is still shaking. I am waiting for her to smack me, resume combat. But she does nothing.

“Just go away,” she says, quietly but evenly. “I don’t want to look at you.”

She turns on her heel and leaves it at that. This is much worse than her yelling or hitting me. That would mean I count in her life. But somehow I know she has abandoned the mother role once and for all and will never come back.

“I’m going up for a bit of a nap,” she says over her shoulder to Lily and leaves the kitchen without another word.

This is not typical for Babs. She may sleep late, but she eschews naps. She thinks they are for people who are Letting Themselves Go.

I now understand that what I did is devastating to her, because she seems to be so emptied out by it. But I would do it again, just the same.

One week after I throw the matchbooks away, Babs is crossing Michigan Avenue. She has her head down, lighting a cigarette, and isn’t paying attention when the light changes. She is mowed down by a brown Toyota with dents in the sides. I know this would have horrified her—she would have preferred to be hit by a car that rich people drive: perhaps a British racing green Jaguar with biscuit interiors. In any case, the Toyota is just as powerful and sends her flying. When she lands, her beautiful legs are broken, and her head smashes on the pavement like a carton of eggs. It was Franklin’s day off, and she was walking to Zodiac for a blow dry.

There’s no need for an ambulance, since she is so obviously dead, but the police come to make the final report. The driver of the Toyota is a young girl with bad acne. She is crying, trying to explain.

The police search the body that a few hours ago was Babs and find her wallet in her pocket. This is unusual because she rarely carried one, but perhaps without the matches, she felt insecure, as if she needed ID to prove who she was. The police show up at the aparthouse about an hour after the accident. Babs is moved to a morgue and they want me to go identify the body.

I am absolutely undone that I am asked to go see my mother’s dismembered body, but I don’t cry. Yet. I just sit with the horrifying thought that maybe she ignored the light change on purpose.

Lily’s still there when I get home. She hugs me, crying. “Sugar,” she says, “you know your mama loved you.” I hug her back but am still too numb to cry. I can’t figure out if Babs’s dying is the best or worst thing that has ever happened to me.

I sit with Lily a bit and then tell her to go home. I want to spend the night in the aparthouse by myself. I am fifteen, but it will be the first time I have ever done so.

I go to my room, and the air feels light, like all the times Babs left the aparthouse on trips. But the whole space now seems different. The bunny-fur rug and canopy bed seem decadent, yet wonderful. Babs did have real imagination, I think, unlike me, who relies on books for alternative realities. I lie down on my rug, rub my cheeks against its softness.

I get up, walk down the hall to Babs’s room. There will be no more staircase sex, no yells from behind her closed door, no more blowjob tutorials. I suddenly feel grateful to Babs for giving me all this information, sorry for all the kids, like Cape, who had to figure things out on their own.

I go into her shoe closet. Up above the shoes, on a high shelf, are boxes that contain artifacts from Babs’s parties. I spot the one labeled
HANGOVER-BRUNCH CRUISE PARTY
and open the stepladder that is folded in the back of the closet. I sit on the floor and open the box, pulling out all the highlights of the evening. There is the
DRINK UP, THROW UP, SHOW UP
shot glass, the Lucite wave cube with the drowning swimmers, the tiny bottles of rum and vodka, and the luggage tags. I line them up carefully on the rug. Then there is my costume. My bikini with the blue sequined
B
s looks so small I can’t believe I ever wore it. Next, I find my
A Chorus Line
cassette. No matter that it caused such a disaster; Babs kept everything that had to do with her parties, the way other mothers might hoard report cards and letters from camp.