Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss (12 page)

O
ne fog-draped night, I attended the Fulbright Coalition’s Christmas party, a semiformal affair in baroque quarters off Bond Street. With its arched, rooftop spires and two-story windows, the house resembled a Gothic cathedral. Inside, a butler took my coat and gestured toward a cavernous living room where, hovering above the crowd, the branches of a towering evergreen were decorated with tiny white lights and festive ornaments. Servants carried silver trays of hors d’oeuvres and glasses of red wine. I glimpsed only a few of my fellow Fulbrighters. In my patent leather boots and faux fur coat, I clearly stood out, in this room full of strangers, very conservatively dressed, very British, as “the artist.”

The majority of the Fulbright scholars, all of us having come to London to pursue a year of graduate study in the humanities, had attended Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. The standard scholarship funded nine months of coursework and living expenses, but my MA program at Chelsea ran a full twelve months. To cover the difference, I had applied for a three-month extension on my grant and was still waiting to hear if the supplement had been rewarded.

Across the room, I spotted James Rutherford, director of the Fulbright Coalition. Striking, with his dark, tailored suit and perfectly combed hair, Rutherford deftly maneuvered through the crowd, chatting up distinguished-looking guests, making swift introductions along the way. The Fulbright Program was just expanding its focus from the humanities into the realm of international business, and James was overseeing this transition. At our last Fulbright meeting, he had urged the scholars to make a point of getting to know the business crowd who would be present tonight.

“Good evening, Frances,” bellowed James as I moved to intercept him. “How’s the art coming?”

I told him I was having a very productive year and thanked him.

“This is Bruce Lakefield,” said James, introducing a bored-looking man who’d just materialized to his right with a deference that meant Bruce must be a major donor, or a potential one. “Bruce, this is our
artist
: Frances Stroh.”

I’d been told during the orientation in September that artists were only very rarely granted Fulbrights and searched James’s face for any sign that my additional grant might be in
jeopardy, but he had already turned toward another group.

“How do you do?” asked Bruce in a clipped American accent as he offered me his hand, his expression unmoved. He had removed his sport coat and wore a white-collared shirt with a silky-sheened necktie.

“You’re an American,” I said, for lack of anything else to say.

Bruce had lived in London less than a year, he told me. He asked me how I was enjoying living here. This would be my first Christmas not spent in Michigan, and I suddenly felt very grown up.

“Wonderful,” I said. “The Fulbright Program has made the experience of living abroad, you know, very comfortable. They treat us like royalty.” I didn’t tell him that when I returned from this swank Fulbright gathering, it would be to an unheated art studio at Chelsea College, where I did my work in a down coat, ski hat, and gloves.

Bruce asked me question after question about the program, and I talked it up as if my life depended on it, hoping he might tell James just how enthusiastic I’d been, how I had convinced him of the Fulbright Program’s inherent value. Finally, after listening intently to my gushing, he reached into his pocket and produced a white business card.

“Frances, I’d like you to come work for me,” he said with conviction, handing me the card. “You have a real talent for sales. I could
use
someone like you on my team.”

I took the card. “Bruce Lakefield, CEO, Lehman Brothers International,” it read. Although flattered, I laughed. Did he think I’d just ditch everything for an investment-banking
job? Hell, I’d been approached by two of the best galleries in London—Lisson Gallery and Interim Art. It wasn’t like I needed a job. What I
needed
was that last installment of grant money. I shook my head. “Apologies, Mr. Lakefield, but . . . I’m an artist.”

He looked at me with astonishment, and then he reached out to shake my hand. “Well, you’ll let me know if you change your mind.”

ELISA KEYS, 1996

(by Eric Stroh)

N
early a year later, on a soggy November night, I left my Fulham flat and made my way to the Ritz to meet my father and Elisa. The Tube was stale with unwashed commuters and the damp of the still night air. I came out of the station at New Bond Street wearing the only decent dress and jacket I had in London, feeling waiflike next to the chic coiffed mannequins lording it over every single shop’s window. The Ritz stood in the distance in all its cheesy extravagance. Would she be familiar, Elisa, I wondered? “I think you’ll like her,” my father had said several times over the phone. “You two have a lot in common.” I had no idea what to expect.

Between completing a series of installations, finishing my MA program, and signing a lease for a shared art studio with a group from Chelsea College, I’d been too busy to engage much with family matters. I’d managed to keep my promise to myself, mostly steering clear of romantic relationships, although the difficulties I’d experienced with British men had
certainly aided me in this goal. From what I could tell, no one actually dated in London; they just got drunk at a pub, stumbled home, and “shagged.”

The Brits’ romantic side, such as it was, expressed itself through a cultural phenomenon that seemed unique to them: unrequited love. In England, everyone pined for someone—a lost love, a married love, or some other form of the impossible, and I was no exception. While at Chelsea I’d become infatuated first with Trevor and then with an artist who taught in the MA program: John Hilliard. And yet we were only friends. We often met at gallery openings and afterward would occasionally go to his house for a drink, where I’d put one of my favorite Bob Dylan albums on the record player—
The Times They Are A-Changin’
. John was the last person I knew with a cherished (and unironic) vinyl collection, all alphabetized. Substantially older than I, and with a successful international career as an artist, John seemed a role model, though, in truth, I found him at least as hip as any of my actual contemporaries. We’d sit on his Italian sofa and talk about art, films, bands, about all the people we knew who were doing noteworthy things.

And yet, as with so many men I’d met in London, John maintained a flirtatious remove that was unsettling, and I began to suspect that my unrequited feelings might simply be part of the cultural soup in which I found myself. I was learning to speak a new language—the language of calibrated distance—with the hope that our carefully monitored exchanges would somehow lead to more closeness.

In spite of how lonely this was, my life would undoubtedly
have appeared, to the outside observer, rather glamorous—full of parties, dinners, gallery openings, and interesting friends. Life moved quickly in London, and with all the distraction, I’d found one could easily spend a year or two—or five—and still be alone.

And so a part of me felt relieved that my father wasn’t alone. Though I spoke with him less frequently since Elisa had entered the picture, I realized his preoccupation was a recognizable sign of happiness. My grandmother, whom I badly missed, was the only family member with whom I spoke regularly. The rest had gradually stopped calling to report on my father’s comings and goings. But when my father called in October to say he was bringing Elisa all the way to London just to meet me, I knew things must be serious.

S
tepping into the hotel, I recognized Elisa immediately. She and my father were sitting on a round silk sofa beneath an enormous crystal chandelier at the center of the lobby. “Christ,” I said to myself. “It’s Eat the Rich.” In high school, I had never known her actual name. I remembered standing outside a heavy glass door by the school’s parking lot with the smokers, cracking jokes between drags and getting laughs from the crowd gathered there, Elisa among them. She wore the same clothes every day—a moth-eaten army fatigue jacket with the words
Eat the Rich
embroidered on the back in fiery sweeps of red and blue. Her suede lace-up moccasins just reached the knees you could see exposed through shredded
holes in her jeans. Her deep voice and towering height would have deemed her an important member of the crowd, though I rarely heard her speak. She seemed always to be lurking in the hallways or striding angrily across the school’s lawn as if chased by tiny devils with blazing pitchforks. And that emblazoned message . . .

My father waved me over, and I felt my legs propel me forward with involuntary momentum. This girl’s style had certainly changed, I thought to myself, taking in her fitted tweed suit, nude stockings, and brown tasseled loafers, a single strand of pearls around her rather thick neck. My lips strained into a smile. I watched her eyes. They were, I saw, the eyes of a cornered animal. Was she hoping I wouldn’t remember her? Though both of us were nervous, clearly, I felt worse for Elisa somehow.

My father stood up, smiling, and leaned toward me for a hug, his pipe clenched between his teeth. “Hello, Franny,” he said with determined cheer. “I like your
hair
!”

As Elisa stood up and shook my hand, I did my best to put her at ease with friendly chatter, and I continued with this as we made our way toward the dining room.

“Quite a town, London,” she said, surprising me with her ability to make small talk. “How’d you like living here?” Her voice was that same mannish deep tenor I remembered from a decade or so earlier. Her clothes, really, were the only remarkable change, and the fact she had aged the way drinkers do—red face, lined eyes, a little big around the middle. “Don’t much like big cities myself.”

“Really?” I said. “
I
love it.”

“But that’s great,” she grinned. “What do you do here, anyway?”

Hadn’t my father told her? “I’m an installation artist,” I said.

“Really! Sounds like fun.”

I cringed at what sounded like a somewhat condescending tone. Did she even have any idea what an installation artist was? My father stopped and fumbled in his breast pocket for a lighter. Elisa reached into her handbag and smoothly produced a purple Bic to relight his pipe. “Goddamn limey tobacco,” my father mumbled as we came into the fancy dining room. “Whole
country’s
damp.”

“We spent the day at Dunhill’s,” Elisa told me with a proprietary indulgence. “He’s trying out a new tobacco.”

“Just like old times,” I said. “Dad and I used to spend the whole day at Dunhill sometimes when I was a child.” Unsure how to continue, I looked over to my father, just then busy with the maître d’. His spending the day with Elisa at one of our old haunts felt like a betrayal, and I sensed this would be the first of many times I’d feel this way.

Back in high school, I remembered hearing once that Elisa had been in a car wreck with her mother and that her mother had died, a fact that had elicited my respect and some deference in matters of suffering, though I couldn’t have imagined then that our separate longings for a parent would one day collide.

Soon we were seated at a round table at the center of the dining room. Our French waiter was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen, and his flirtatious attention helped
distract me. Still, I caught myself realizing, as the drinks were served, that Elisa, who’d been something of a wallflower back in high school, seemed determined to assert her new authority with assurance.

“So, do you get paid for that?” she said. “The installation stuff?”

My father sat smiling complacently as he nursed his vodka and ginger ale—a drink I hadn’t seen in his hand in ten years—seemingly happy that Elisa and I were “getting along,” probably telling himself that all his worries about the introduction had been for naught. I wasn’t sure which I found more disturbing—the fact my father was drinking again or that he’d brought that girl from the smoking exit all the way to London. The two events seemed fundamentally connected.

“In a sense, yes, I
do
get paid,” I told Elisa. “I came here on a grant, see.” I sipped my wine and hoped she wouldn’t ask me what, precisely, “installation” meant.

She took a mini baguette from her plate and tore off a bite with her teeth. “So, what
is
‘installation,’ anyway?”

“Can they make me a hamburger?” I heard my father asking our waiter as he gestured toward the kitchen. “
Well done
, please.”

Elisa poured herself a glass of wine before the waiter had time to come around to our side of the table. The waiter took the bottle from her hand and finished pouring. She smiled at my father, who wheezed through the smoke as he lit his cigarette. He looked tired.

“Installation art,” I told her, “well, it defies boundaries or strict definition, really.”

“So it could be . . . anything.”

“I suppose it
could
. . .”

“Frances is a damn good photographer,” my father said. “I wish you’d get the old camera out more often.”

I smiled and lifted my glass of wine. “Cheers,” I said, and we all toasted, to what exactly I was not sure.

My father and Elisa had come over on the
Queen Elizabeth 2
and would return on the Concorde. My father was rolling out the red carpet for Eat the Rich, and all I could do was drink my wine and act as if this were all perfectly normal. Elisa and I shared a bottle of cabernet while my father sipped his vodka.

After dinner, my father retired to bed, and Elisa and I went out to a nearby nightclub for a drink—her idea. My father chuckled, waving us off through the closing elevator door. “Don’t make it too late, girls.”

The club was very West London posh—low lit, ritzy, and full of sexy, well-dressed people out to be seen. “Cool place,” Elisa said, not without a certain discomfort in her voice.

Installing ourselves at the long lacquered bar, trying hard to be heard over the Portishead blaring in surreal, hypnotic waves, we ordered scotches on the rocks. The bartender scrutinized us as he poured. Was he trying to make out our relationship? Elisa took a long draw from her drink, emptying half the glass. We talked about people we’d both known in high school and what had become of them, although in truth there wasn’t a lot of overlap, beyond the smoking exit.

“You knew Caitlin Jaspers,” asked Elisa. “Right?”

The bar was filling up, and I knew it had to be around
midnight. “Of course.” My mind flashed to the pale, impossibly beautiful girl in Hobey’s backseat, her thick black hair blowing around as we headed to the Uniroyal plant.

“She’s really been through hell,” said Elisa. A while back, she told me, Caitlin had gotten out of the car one night at the side of the freeway after a fight with her boyfriend, then was badly beaten by someone who came out of nowhere. By the time her boyfriend came back to get her she was being loaded into an ambulance. Her face had to be totally reconstructed.

I found the story so upsetting I felt physically ill. “Oh, my
God
,” was all I could say.

“Yeah, it was really bad,” continued Elisa. “You might not recognize her now. But she got married, you know . . . now she’s teaching photography or something at a high school in Maine.”

I found even this happy ending depressing. I’d imagined so much more for Caitlin—a glitzy career as a
Rolling Stone
magazine staff photographer, rock-star boyfriends she’d stub out like cigarettes as soon as she grew bored, a wardrobe that would put Kate Moss to shame. “
Damn
,” I said. “I’m just . . . floored, I guess. Caitlin deserved . . . so much better.”

“I know.” Elisa nodded toward the back of the club. “Hold on. I’ll be right back.”

I had thought about Caitlin often since high school. I’d last seen her ten years before, at a Beastie Boys concert at St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit. She was photographing the band for a magazine spread. The glamorous life I’d envisaged seemed well under way. And then, apparently, it had all come apart. Or had she just realized she didn’t need all the lights? Didn’t I myself have some of the same doubts?

As flamboyant a partygoer as I could be, the truth was, I liked the quiet life of making art, talking about art, and enjoying close friends at dinner parties—the kind of life I’d been having in London for the most part. Those evenings I spent out among the “art stars” at private views and parties, they weren’t the most memorable, the ones I truly cherished.

Elisa weaved through the dancers on her way back from the restroom, making a goofy show of using her handbag as a front fender to ward off collisions.

“I’m still speechless,” I said as she sat down.

“Yeah.” She studied me, her eyes widening in the dim light. “Not to change the subject or anything, but . . .”

“Go ahead,” I told her.

“I’ve been feeling really sorry for your dad. He’s a good man, but . . . you know, he never got any
love
.” Her voice cracked on the word
love
.

“You’re right . . .” I said guardedly. I wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but I had the distinct feeling I was being rather purposefully led. “He got shortchanged, I guess, as a kid.”

“See, so did I,” she said, downing the rest of her drink. “I know what it means to basically be an orphan. I’m going to make up all those lost years to your dad, though, you know? Give him everything he never got. You’ll see.”

My stomach tightened into a thorny little ball. She was going to parent
him
? As much as I wanted to believe this, the age difference between them had already spelled things out pretty clearly: Elisa would be the pampered child. My father had already told me they slept in separate bedrooms and that he gave her a large monthly allowance.

Besides, I had my doubts that anyone could make up the losses of childhood with another person’s affection. I’d been my own lab rat, and the data was not encouraging. “Do you really think it works that way?”

Elisa nodded slowly, considering her next move. “He’s like a lost little kid. He
needs
someone.”

“He should have been a photographer,” I said.

“It’s funny,” she said, resting her elbows on the bar. “That’s exactly what he always says about you . . .”

Gorgeous people swayed all around us to the heroin beat of Massive Attack. A couple fell against the bar in a cinematic embrace, one of her long earrings coming unhooked as she swatted flirtatiously at his drunk, groping hands. Elisa lit a cigarette and I saw her, eleven years before, huddled in the corner of the smoking exit, laughing at my jokes but perhaps afraid to speak, the snow blowing around us in subzero gusts.