The Wrong Kind of Money (61 page)

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.

“Now run along home and tell Carol the good news,” she says.

James, the night doorman at River House, steps to the taxi with his big umbrella open—a light rain mixed with snow has begun to fall—and opens the door for Noah. “'Evening, Mr. Liebling,” he says, tipping his cap with his free hand.

“Good evening, James.” They each take a suitcase.

James escorts Noah up the front walk past the crack in the pavement where Caroline Taylor, on seventeen, claimed she caught her heel and nearly broke an ankle, and into the black marble entrance lobby. “Mr. Liebling, before you go up, could I have a word with you?” James says.

“Sure,” Noah says, putting down his suitcase.

“This is really none of my business, sir,” James says. “And I probably shouldn't be mentioning this at all. But then I thought perhaps I should.”

“What is it, James?”

“Mrs. Liebling had a little accident with her car this afternoon, sir.”

“Is she all right?”

“Oh, she's fine. It was just a fender bender, really. But I can tell she's pretty upset about it, sir. And I thought—you coming home from a long trip, and all—she might not want to tell you about it right away, for fear you'd be angry with her and all. You know how women are.”

“Yes,” he says. “I know how women are.”

“So, sir, if you find her in a kind of funny mood when you get home, kind of edgy and upset, that'll be the reason, sir.”

“I'll try to be understanding. I'm glad you told me, James.”

“But please don't tell her I told you about this, sir. That would seem like I'm telling tales on her and all, and that ain't my way, Mr. Liebling.”

“No. I won't mention we've had this conversation, James.”

“Thanks, sir. It's just that, man to man, I ought to tell you that if you find your wife in a funny mood, that's the reason. You know, there's times when I come home and find my wife in a funny mood, and it's days and days before I can get her to tell me what's buggin' her. Women can get that way, 'specially if they've done something they feel a little guilty for. Like crashing a car.”

“I know, James.”

“And you know how much Mrs. Liebling loves that little car!”

“I know.”

“Well, good night, sir.”

“Good night, James.”

He steps into the waiting elevator.

“Getting to be a nasty night out there, Mr. Liebling,” the elevator man says.

“Sure is,” he says. He has momentarily forgotten this night operator's name.

Somehow, at this late hour—it is well past midnight—he assumed that Carol would be in bed and asleep when he got home. But when he lets himself into the apartment, he sees that there is a light burning in the library. He calls out, “Hi, honey—I'm home!” But there is no reply.

He removes his overcoat and scarf, and hangs them in the hall closet. He places his two suitcases in the closet, to be unpacked in the morning, and closes the closet door. Then he starts down the hallway toward the library, and pauses at the door.

She is sitting, with her back to him, in one of the wing chairs. Only the top of her head, and her hands, are visible, and on her left wrist is her gold charm bracelet. He has added a gold charm to this bracelet on their wedding anniversaries for each of the twenty-one years they have been married: first a gold monkey, with moving arms and legs, and tiny emeralds for eyes; next a gold bell, with a sapphire clapper. And so on. In this hand he sees she is holding a drink.

This irritates him somehow. It has always irritated him when, on rare occasions, he has come home from the office to find that Carol has started their cocktail hour without him. His father, though he never professed to take the liquor business seriously, had some very old-fashioned, even puritanical, theories about drinking. “Watch out for the man who drinks alone,” he used to say. “The man who drinks alone has a problem, and is already probably in serious trouble. Drinking is meant to be a social pastime, and social means with other people, with one's friends or one's own sort. The person who drinks alone is dangerous, to himself and to other people.”

Then he notices that in her right hand Carol is holding a lighted cigarette. This surprises him. He can remember when Carol quit smoking, cold turkey, when she discovered she was pregnant with Anne. He remembers how proud of her he was for the ease with which she seemed to handle it. “It's harder for a smoker to give up tobacco than it is for an alcoholic to give up booze,” his father used to say. Noah quit smoking when Carol did. He decides not to comment on either of these unusual circumstances. She has, after all, smashed up her green Mercedes, the little car she was proud to say had never received a scratch or a nick in the five years she'd owned it. He steps into the room. “Hello, darling,” he says, and kisses her on the top of her head.

“Hello, Mr. Aesop,” she says. “Got any good fables to tell me?”

He moves to the bar, rattles some ice cubes in a glass, and pours himself a drink. “The Ballachulish presentation went very well, if I do say so myself,” he says. “The salesmen seemed to like it. That's always a good first sign.”

“Good,” she says.

He carries his drink across the room and sits down opposite her. “Well, cheers!” he says, and lifts his glass.

“Cheers,” she says, neither moving nor looking at him.

“Sorry to be so late,” he says. “But the cocktail party went on a little longer than I'd planned, and my mother wanted to see me before I came home.”

“I see,” she says, and takes another sip of her drink, and another drag on her cigarette.

“She had some rather remarkable things to tell me,” he says.

“Did she.” She says it as a statement, not a question.

“Want to hear what they were?”

“No,” she says. “Not particularly. Not now, anyway.”

“Okay,” he says pleasantly. “So—how was your week?”

“Routine,” she says.

“I see …” They sit in silence for a moment or two. Then, still trying to be cheerful, he says, “Say, I've been thinking, Carol. Now that sales conference is out of the way, maybe you and I should take a little trip. To the Caribbean perhaps. Or maybe Hawaii. Some place that's warm. Any place that's out of this rotten January New York weather. What do you think?”

“Feeling guilty?” she says.

“Guilty?”

“That sounds like a guilty person talking.”

“Why should I feel guilty?”

“For not paying enough attention to me?”

“Yes, perhaps that's it,” he says. “I've spent so damn much time on this Ballachulish business these last few months. So how about it? Just a week, perhaps. Ten days. Maybe a cruise.”

“Perhaps,” she says. “Perhaps not. I don't care.” She stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray on the table beside her, and immediately lights another. The ashtray, he sees, contains the remnants, the filter tips, of many other cigarettes.

“Started to smoke again, I see,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Well!” There is another silence. Then he says, “I understand Anne wants to have a coming-out party with the Van Degan girl. That should be fun for her.”

“I don't know,” she says. “I don't think Anne wants to do that anymore.”

“I see,” he says. “Well, that's too bad. It sounded like a fun idea.” He sets his drink on the coffee table. “Hey,” he says, “what's this?” He touches the bone handle of the automatic pistol lying on the table. “Where'd this come from?”

“It's your mother's. She sent it over. She thought I might be nervous here alone.”

“Alone? Where's Mary?”

“She quit this morning.”

“Quit? Why?”

“For reasons too numerous to mention,” she says. “For reasons I don't wish to go into here.”

“I see,” he says. He stands up to refill his drink. “Can I touch you up?”

“No, thanks. I'm fine.” She stares into her half-filled glass.

From the bar he says, “I don't like the idea of guns lying around the house.”

“Don't you? I do,” she says.

He returns with his fresh drink and sits down again. “Look,” he says, “you seem a little preoccupied tonight. A little uncommunicative. Is something on your mind?”

“A lot of things are on my mind. I do have a mind, you know. And if a person has a mind, there's usually something on it. I'm not as stupid as you think I am.”

“Now, Carol. I don't think you're stupid.”

“You think I'm as stupid as Beryl Stokes?”

“Carol. What a thing to say.”

“I'm not stupid.”

“I've got some real good news to tell you, honey,” he says. “If you'd like to hear it.”

“No,” she says, and blows out a thin stream of smoke,

“Don't want to hear my good news?”

“No!” she says again. “I'd rather hear a fable. Mr. Aesop's fables always had a moral at the end. What's yours?”

“That's the second time you've mentioned Aesop,” he says, “What are you talking about, Carol?”

“More of your lies maybe?”

He is growing impatient with her. “Listen,” he says, “if this is because you smashed up your car, forget about it. If it can be fixed, we'll have it fixed. If it can't be fixed, I'll buy you a new one. I know you love that car, but it's only a
car,
for chrissakes, and—”

“Shut up!” she says. “It's not because I smashed up my car. It's because you smashed up my life!”

“What are you talking about?” But, with a sense of dread, he feels he is beginning to know what she is talking about.

“Carol—” he begins.

“Is your moral ‘Don't screw teenage girls'? Or is it don't screw teenage girls unless you're pretty sure you won't get caught?”

“Carol—”

“You see, I'm getting more and more like your mother. I want to get everything out on the table. All the facts. From the horse's mouth. So there's only one thing I want to hear from you! Have you been having an affair with Melody?”

He takes a quick swallow of his drink, looks briefly at the floor, then up at her. “Yes,” he says. “I'm glad you found out about it, Carol, because I would have had to tell you about it sooner or later.”

“Sooner or later!
” She jumps to her feet.

“I don't know how it happened, Carol, but it did. I'm sorry, Carol.”

“Sorry!” she cries. “Is that all you can say—you're sorry? Are you in love with her, Noah?”

“No, I don't think so!”

“You don't
think
so!”

“I love you, Carol!”

She turns away from him, tears in her eyes, and her voice is bitter. “I don't understand you, Noah,” she says. “I don't understand you at all. I won't even ask you how you could do such a thing to me—to me, after all the things I've tried to do for you and your family, you repay me with this! I won't even ask how you could do such a thing to Anne. I want to know how you could do such a thing to
yourself
! Or are you just like your father—a philandering bum who always had to have another woman on the side?”

“Now, wait a minute, Carol—”

“How long has this been going on? Under my roof!”

“It just happened this week, Carol. She followed me to Atlantic City, and—”

“And one thing just led to another? Liar! Then what was her underwear doing in the bottom of your closet?”

“What?
Carol, I swear to God—”

“With blood on it! What did you do—rape her first?”

“My God, Carol! I swear to you. It was she who—”

“The other night the toilet seat was up in my bathroom! You never use my bathroom! Did you have to use my bathroom because she was using yours?”

“Carol—”

“My sleeping pills were stolen! Did she take them? Or did you have to knock her out with pills in order to fuck her?”

“Carol, Carol—”

“I've heard you jacking off in the next bed! Was that who you've been thinking about?
Her?”

“Carol, Carol—please listen to me. I love you, Carol,”

“Love
! And after everything I've been working on, everything I've been trying to do for you this week. Everything I've done—and it's come to this!” She flings herself into a chair with a sob.

“Listen, Carol. My mother told me you've been working on some sort of plan. Tell me what it is—”

“It doesn't matter now. Nothing matters now. I wish I'd driven off the bridge this afternoon.”

“Please listen to me, Carol. It's late. You're tired. We're both tired. You've had a few drinks. Let's go to bed and talk this all over in the morning, when we're—”

“No! I'm never going to sleep in the same room—under the same roof—with you again! Mother was right. Father Timmons was right. I never should have married you, you bastard!”

“Carol, it was just this week. I swear I don't know how it happened. I know it shouldn't have happened, but it did, and it's over. I swear to you it's over.” He reaches out for her.