The Wrong Kind of Money (33 page)

“I'm afraid it's too late to try.”

“Most of the girls I've known have been city girls. You're not like one of them. My mother would probably like me to marry some blond debutante type. Or one of our own skinny, lacquered Jewish princesses, with no hips and no rear ends. But you—you look—well, just natural. Just like yourself. Just like Carol Dugan ought to look.”

“Thank you, Noah …”

“I've known some bike girls, too. Thank God you're not like one of them, either. Not tough.”

“Not tough enough, maybe.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I think a man could hurt you, Carol. But I promise I'll never hurt you. But look—I've made you cry.” He touched her eyelids with the tip of his tongue. “I love the taste of your tears,” he said.

She sobbed and flung her arms around him again. “Oh, I really am your girl now, aren't I, Noah?” she said. “I really am your girl. Oh, Noah, I love you so!”

He looked deep into her eyes in the half-darkened room, and said, “And I you.”

Later, she wondered if it was callous of them to have made love so soon—and so often—after his father's death. And yet, in some way, his father's death seemed to have released him, and in releasing him, it had managed to release her as well. She decided she'd been in love with him all along.

She decided she was going to make him marry her. As it turned out, that wasn't necessary.

“Do you find solace in the Catholic Church?” he asked her as they walked west on Fifty-ninth Street the next afternoon after seeing
The Godfather,
with Marlon Brando.

“Solace? Funny word. But no.”

“Did you ever?”

“No, I don't think so. That's why I'm a lapsed Catholic. I haven't been to mass in nearly ten years.”

“I'm not a very good Jew, either. But you still
are
a Catholic, aren't you? I mean technically. Officially. Baptised, and all that.”

“Well, I guess so,” she said with a shrug. “But it doesn't mean anything to me anymore. My mother, of course, is another story. One reason I'm studying psychology is to try to understand my mother.”

“That's the only thing,” he said.

“What only thing?”

“The only thing to stop us from getting married.”

“It wouldn't stop me!” Carol said.

They had reached the park. “Sit down a minute,” he said, gesturing to a bench.

They sat, and he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small blue box from Tiffany. “Open it,” he said.

She opened it, and inside was a square-cut diamond solitaire, two and a half carats in weight.

“I'm putting my money where my mouth is,” he said. “I'm asking you to marry me.”

“Oh, Noah!” she gasped. He slipped it on her finger. “How did you know my ring size?”

“Last night, when you were asleep, I looped a piece of string around your finger.”

She burst into tears. “Oh, Noah,” she said, “it's just the most beautiful ring! It's just the most beautiful ring I've ever seen!”

“Better not wear it in front of your mother until you've explained a few things to her,” he said.

But she decided to ignore that piece of advice. The next day she flew back to Portsmouth and drove directly to Rumney Depot, with his ring on her finger.

Her mother noticed it immediately. “Where did you get
that?”
she demanded.

“It's my engagement ring,” she said. “I'm engaged to be married.”

Her mother looked at her narrowly. “To
whom?”

“His name is Noah Liebling.”

“Liebling? What kind of a name is that—Liebling?”

“It's a Jewish name, Mama.”

Of course, Father Timmons was immediately summoned. “You cannot marry a Jew in my parish church,” he told her. “I cannot say a nuptial mass for you. I flatly refuse to solemnize this union.”

“I haven't asked you to, Father,” she said. “I don't
want
you.”

“But Father Timmons is our family priest,” her mother wailed. “If my daughter marries, Father Timmons must perform the mass!”

“Don't worry. We'll find someone. Someone with some sense.”

“I have great influence with the bishop. This union will not be recognized in the eyes of God. In the eyes of God you will be living in mortal sin. In the eyes of God you will have renounced your faith. As an apostate you will be excommunicated. You will never be able to go to Confession. You will not be permitted to receive Holy Communion. You will be denied the Blessed Sacraments. When you die, your soul will be doomed to wander in eternal purgatory, Sheol, Gehenna, Tophet, the abode of the damned. Are you prepared to face all this, my child, in order to marry some—Jew?” As he spoke, he fingered his beads. “Have you had impure thoughts about this Jew?” he asked her. “Have you—
sinned
with the Jew? If you wish, I will hear your confession now.”

“I have nothing to confess,” she said. “Your threats mean nothing.”

“Abaddon, Naraka, jahannan, avichi,” he intoned, reciting the circles of damnation.

“All my life I've slaved for you,” her mother sobbed. “Slaved, night and day, slaved like a dog to raise you in a Christian home, to teach you the eternal verities, to guide you in the paths of righteousness in His name's sake … slaved, and this—
this
is the thanks I get!”

“Amen,” said Father Timmons.

“A dirty Jew!”

“Don't use that expression, Mother!”

“Never to be reunited with my only child at the gates of Heaven!”

“Let us pray,” Father Timmons said. “Let us pray for the immortal soul of this lost child. Heavenly Father …”

“A Jew—who killed our Christ!”

“That's not true! Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Jews killed Christ. Christ was killed by the Roman soldiers.”

“My child, you are speaking of Canon Law. Canon
Law
!”

“In their secret rituals they slaughter little children and drink their blood!”

“That's another stupid lie. Nothing you've said is true!”

“In the
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
it says—”

“That's a proven fake. Noah and I have discussed all this. Judaism is a religion just like ours, except the Jews don't accept the divinity of Christ, who was a Jew himself. The Jews simply believe that the true Messiah is still to come.”

“You see? What did I just tell you? The Jew has poisoned her soul!”

“Noah also says that when someone has more than ten million dollars, he's no longer considered Jewish. He's merely rich.”

Her mother looked up from her sodden handkerchief. “He has ten million dollars?” she said.

“Not him perhaps, but his family does. Maybe even more. Someday Noah is going to be very rich.”

There was a short silence.

“Is that a real diamond?” her mother asked.

“Of course it is. From Tiffany.”

“He could always convert, Anna,” Father Timmons suggested helpfully. “I could give him his instructions. We'd be bringing another soul into our Mother Church.”

“He isn't going to convert,” Carol said. “He's proud of what he is.”

“And if Carol were to agree to raise any children in the Roman faith, then perhaps the bishop might—”

“I won't agree to that, either,” Carol said.

“Of course they're all rich,” her mother said. “All the Jews are rich. They have an international conspiracy to control—”

Carol rose to her feet. “I'm not going to listen to any more of this garbage,” she said. “I'm going to marry Noah Liebling.”

“She has forsaken God for Mammon,” Father Timmons said.

“Ten million dollars,” her mother said. “How did they get all this money? What kind of business is his family in, anyway?”

“They own distilleries,” Carol said.

“Liquor! The devil's brew! I might have known it. Typical, typical. The Jews are always in the liquor business. They do it to try to befuddle the minds of honest Christians, so they can take over the world—”

“Has he tried to urge liquor on you, child?” Father Timmons asked her. “Has he tried to instill in you a taste for spirits?”

“Slaved … all my life … like a dog … slaved … for a Christ killer …”

Carol reached for her car keys. “I'm going now,” she said. “Good night.”

“My child, you are flying in the face of Holy Writ!”

“To hell with Holy Writ,” she said.

“Carol!” her mother cried. “You know the Blessed Virgin weeps when she hears you talk like that!”

“Screw the Blessed Virgin,” Carol said, and turned on her heel and walked out of the room, and out of the house. Behind her she heard Father Timmons chanting in Latin some arcane ritual of exorcism, and her mother sobbing, “It's no use, no use.… The Jewish devil has got her soul.…”

She half expected a bolt of lightning and a clap of thunder to halt her as she ran down the drive to her car, but there was none. She drove back to New York that night. It was nearly midnight when she got to Noah's apartment. There were blood tests to be taken, and there was a license to obtain. They were married on a Friday morning in City Hall, and then went uptown to meet Noah's mother in the scene you already know about.

Somehow the Laconia
News-Leader
got word of the marriage.
RUMNEY DEPOT DEB WEDS LIQUOR HEIR
, the front-page headline read.

Remembering this, Carol often smiles, wondering what the McClaren girls, if they still got the paper, made of that one: “Rumney Depot Deb.”

11

The Mill

Now, in his hotel suite in Atlantic City, Noah Liebling has unpacked his suitcase—discovering in the process that he must have left the swimming trunks behind, after passing, as he came through the lobby, the hotel's indoor pool looking sparkling, inviting, and mercifully free of small children—and now he has set up the carousel of color slides and is going over, once again, his notes for Friday afternoon's presentation. Why, as he does this, does he experience a sudden sinking feeling, a feeling of dread and apprehension? It is just that so much time and money have already gone into this, and so much is at stake? What if the product fails to take off, as they say in the business? What if it fails to fly?

It all began—and has been proceeding with some secrecy ever since—nearly two years ago, when Noah was in London. A distributor told him of a private distiller in the tiny Scottish village of Ballachulish who was producing a single-malt whiskey of remarkable lightness and color and “nose,” and Noah had made the trip north to Ballachulish to investigate.

He had found the owner of the distillery, Mr. Angus Kelso, to be a jolly, rosy-cheeked, redheaded Scot who insisted that the best use of his whiskey was to pour it over pancakes for breakfast. It was equally delicious, he added, over mashed potatoes and haggis at dinnertime, and over ice cream for dessert. Indeed, his whiskey was the pale amber color of the finest maple syrup, and its flavor was equally light and buoyant, with just a touch of sweetness and none of the heavy, peaty taste of many single malts. “The ladies love it,” Mr. Kelso said with a wink. “It doesn't have the mannish airs of a lot of the scotches around here.” Though American tastes preferred an 86-proof scotch, Mr. Kelso bottled some of his stock at a heady 105 proof.
“That
makes the ladies sit up and take notice!” he said.

His whiskey, he explained, was aged a full fifteen years in charcoal-charred oak barrels, but the secret of his whiskey was neither in the aging nor in the malt. “The secret is me water,” he said. His hillside farm was situated above deep limestone caverns filled with springwater, but the limestone was only part of it. He pointed at the tall stands of Scotch pine that lined his hillsides and descended into the valley below. Rainwater entering the limestone caves was filtered through a thick layer of pine needles that covered the valley floor. That unusual combination, the limestone caves and the filtering blanket of needles above them, gave his water its extraordinary quality. “Sweetest water you'll ever taste on God's green earth,” he said, and offered Noah a glass. Noah had to agree.

Mr. Kelso's caverns contained, he estimated, roughly two million cubic feet of this water, constantly replenished by natural springs and Scottish rainfall. “And in this part of the country it rains every day but Sunday,” he said, “which is so I can play the golf to the sounds of church bells ringin'.”

And suddenly Noah had an idea. What if he could arrange to market both Mr. Kelso's whiskey
and
his water? A lot of American drinkers called for “Seven and Seven.” Could the marketplace be persuaded, instead of Scotch and water, to call for “Kelso and Kelso”—or whatever name might finally be given to the kindred labels? It was an exceedingly long shot. But with the proper marketing and promotion, it might be possible to pull it off—giving Ingraham's a new prestige whiskey as well as a new designer-label bottled water.

Mr. Kelso made a number of extravagant claims about the restorative powers of his whiskey—claims which could never be made in advertising, to be sure, but which were interesting nonetheless. He had mixed small quantities of his whiskey into the feed for his herd of Guernsey cattle, and the butterfat content of his dairy's milk had increased thirty percent. He had added whiskey, mixed with clover honey, to the mash he fed his chickens, and his hens had doubled their laying capacity. Women who had been barren for years would, under a regimen of Kelso's whiskey, soon find themselves pregnant, no matter what their age. Men who suffered from impotence became as randy as young stallions. A neighbor who had been bedridden with terminal cancer was prescribed a tot of Kelso's whiskey once an hour, and now the man was up and about, doing his chores and feeling fine. Mr. Kelso introduced Noah to this fellow, who did indeed seem to be the picture of health, and Noah listened to the man's stirring testimony. But it was the taste and color of Kelso's whiskey—and the tingle of his water—that excited Noah the most.