The Wrong Kind of Money (2 page)

Cyril straightens up, just slightly. His slouch is deliberate because he knows it irritates his mother. Though, at six feet four, Cyril instinctively ducks his head before passing through most doorways, he affects a scholarly stoop when in his mother's presence. “And straighten your necktie, dear,” his mother says, reaching out to do this for him. Actually, Cyril is a fastidious dresser, but just before being picked up by his mother's car this evening, he had deliberately skewed his tie, confident that his mother would notice this and take him to task for it.

“And tie your left shoelace, dear.”

She caught this, too. In the dark backseat of the car, Cyril smiles to himself.

“Appearances are so important,” Hannah says. “We are judged by how we appear to other people. Actually, bad posture runs in my family. My father—your great-grandfather, Little Bird—had terrible posture. I actually think it shortened his life. When he died, the doctors said his internal organs were out of alignment. I also think bad posture may have killed my sister Settie. Settie had a tendency to slouch.”

“Why would a slouch have killed your sister, Nana Hannah?” Anne asks her.

“Haven't I told you the peculiar way your great-aunt Settie died? It was most peculiar.”

“No,” says Anne. “What was so peculiar about it?”

With the back of his hand Cyril suppresses a faint yawn. His mother catches this and gives him a sharp look. But, after all, he has often heard how his aunt Settie died. From the front seat, Mr. Nelson looks straight ahead as the traffic inches forward. He, too, knows how Settie Kahn died, just as he knows many other of this family's secrets, but his job is to drive and not listen, though he is perfectly capable of doing both things at the same time.

“Was there a scandal, Nana Hannah?” Anne asks her grandmother eagerly.

“No, there wasn't any scandal,” her grandmother says. “But it was a tragedy, a terrible tragedy, and I still believe that if it hadn't been for that slouch of hers, she'd be here with us today.”

Cyril Liebling, who has resumed his own slouch in the backseat, sniffs audibly, and his mother gives him another sharp look.

“Tell me about her, Nana.”

“You see, my sister Settie had everything—beauty, brains, a perfect husband, a perfect marriage, two beautiful homes, all the money in the world—”

“She was a vain, stupid, money-grubbing bitch,” Cyril says.

“Hush, Cyril. She was
not
! She was beautiful from her soul outward. She had a beautiful, swanlike grace, and it was like watching a dancer to watch her move.”

“When she walked into a room, she was like a star stepping out for a curtain call.”

Cyril's mother ignores this. “But Settie had one flaw, or imagined she did. She thought—imagined, really—that her, well, that her
fronts
were too big. She grew up, you see, in the flapper era, when it was fashionable for women to have very flat fronts. Women taped themselves to make their fronts appear flatter. There was an artist named John Held, who always drew women with very flat fronts, and every woman wanted to look like a John Held drawing. Fortunately, I was three years younger than Settie, and so I escaped all that. But Settie, who thought her fronts were too big, used to scrunch her shoulders together to make her—fronts—seem less prominent. That accounted for the slouch. Actually, her fronts were a perfectly normal size.” She touches her own ample bosom in demonstration.

“Anyway, her best feature was her long, swanlike neck, and, just by coincidence, there was a finial at the end of the stair rail in her apartment at fourteen East Seventieth that was in the shape of a swan's head, carved out of ivory. The staircase curved between the two floors of the apartment, and I always admired that lovely swan's head at the top of the banister—it had blue jade eyes and a rather wistful expression on its face. Settie's eyes were also blue, and she also had a kind of wistful expression sometimes—for which I can hardly blame her, considering what she had to put up with from Leo Kahn! Anyway, she had a lovely silver satin pelisse trimmed with chinchilla that she often wore at home in the afternoons. And one afternoon, in December of 1937, she was wearing that pelisse, and she started down the stairs.… I have a mental picture of her, her shoulders scrunched together, with that little slouch of hers. The sleeve of her pelisse must have caught in the ivory swan's head, and it pulled her off her balance. She fell, caught by the stair rail, and she was instantly killed. Instantly killed, the doctors said. The ivory swan's neck also broke off in the fall. So there was my beautiful, blue-eyed swan, destroyed by another beautiful, blue-eyed swan. Rabbi Magnus spoke of this in his eulogy at her services.” Hannah Liebling dabs her eyes.

In the backseat, Cyril Liebling draws an imaginary bow across his crooked arm as though stroking a violin.

“What a sad story, Nana Hannah,” Anne says softly. “I wish I could have known her.”

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, it was. Very sad.”

“What happened to Uncle Leo?”

“He married again. Much too soon, of course. I never saw him after Settie's funeral. Later, I read he died. If Leo hadn't been in Seattle when it happened, I would have sworn he had something to do with it. He was a dreadful man. But the only person in the house with her when she died was Celestine, her French maid.”

“Actually, I suppose he did have something to do with it,” Cyril says, slumping deeper in his seat. “He was always making remarks about her big boobs. And he bought her that dressing gown—or pelisse, as you call it. With those big, dangerous sleeves.”

“But I thought you said she had a perfect marriage, Nana,” Anne says. “I thought you said he was a perfect husband.”

“Well, he was the right
kind
of husband, was what I meant. After all, he was a Kahn. Otto Kahn was a cousin. But he wasn't very nice to poor Settie.”

“Screwed every showgirl in New York,” Cyril says matter-of-factly. “Other than that, I found him quite a jolly old chap.”

“Now, Cyril, we don't have any proof of that,” his mother says. “And don't use vulgar language in front of the child.”

“Otto did the same. All the Kahn men did. It was a Kahn family trait.”

“And I'm not a child, Nana,” Anne says.

“My point is, it's important to choose a husband from one's own world,” Hannah says. “Settie did that. In fact, Settie married up. Of course, I had to be the rebel. I married down.”

“But I thought Grandpa had pots and pots of money, Nana.”

“Oh, it has nothing to do with
money,”
Hannah says. “It has to do with one's being of the right
sort.
I was a Sachs, you see. We were of the right sort. Sachs, Saks, Seixas, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha—we're all connected. You have royal relatives, Little Bird, on my side of the family. They say the best Jews come from Frankfurt, where the Sachses came from—not from Odessa, or wherever my husband's people came from.”

“Daddy says we're only secular Jews, so it doesn't matter,” Anne says.

“Well, my husband used to say that once a man has ten million dollars he's no longer thought of as being Jewish. He's merely thought of as being rich.”

“Of course, they were both wrong,” Cyril says. “Both my brother and my father. If it's the wrong kind of money, and you're the wrong kind of Jew, it makes all the difference in the world.”

Hannah says nothing, merely stares straight ahead. She knows the sort of thing to which Cyril is alluding. There have been episodes, episodes from the past, that would be better off forgotten. There was the time, for instance, when Jules and Hannah Liebling were buying the apartment at 1000 Park Avenue, on the northwest corner of Eighty-fourth Street. One thousand Park is a massive brown brick box, one of the great Park Avenue buildings put up before the First World War. Flanking the entrance are two Gothic figures, one a medieval warrior and the other a builder, replete with Masonic symbolism. More terra cotta figures, executed in a baroque manner, depict the builders of medieval cathedrals and Greek temples. The apartment itself was large—fourteen rooms and seven baths. The front rooms had views of the East River and, in the back, even the servants' rooms had views of Central Park and the reservoir. The apartment was being sold by Richard McCurdy, the pharmaceuticals tycoon. The price was $200,000, which was a lot of money in the 1940s. Today, apartments like Hannah's are priced in the millions.

In those days there were certain New York buildings that were known not to want Jewish tenants. But, it was thought, north of Seventy-sixth Street, attitudes were more forbearing.

Mr. Truxton Van Degan III, of the building's board, contacted Jules Liebling. “I'm sorry, Mr. Liebling,” he said, “but your application has been rejected by the board.”

“May I ask why?” Jules Liebling asked him.

“The board of a cooperative may reject any applicant without stating any reason,” Mr. Van Degan said.

“Surely it's not financial,” Jules said. He had submitted documents to the board indicating a net financial worth of at least $10,000,000, which he assumed would be quite sufficient. “If necessary, I can produce evidence of additional assets,” he said.

“The building is not required to tell you why you were rejected,” Mr. Van Degan said again.

“Mr. Solomon Brinckmann, the investment banker, owns an apartment in your building. He is a Jew. So I assume that the reason is not because I am Jewish,” Jules said.

“I'm sorry, but I can tell you nothing more,” Mr. Van Degan said.

“In fact, Mr. Brinckmann is on your board, is he not?”

“That is correct, Mr. Liebling.”

“May I ask how Mr. Brinckmann voted?”

“I am not required to tell you how any board member voted,” Mr. Van Degan said. “But I can tell you that Mr. Brinckmann voted with the majority.”

“I see,” said Jules.

“I believe there was a general feeling that one family of your sort in the building was enough,” Mr. Van Degan said. “That another family might start a trend. Of the wrong sort, as Mr. Brinckmann put it.”

“I see,” Jules said again.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Liebling.”

“Let me ask you one question,” Jules said. “I understand the building badly needs a new roof. Your board wants to assess the tenants twenty-five dollars per square foot of floor space to pay for this. The tenants on the lower floors, who are not affected by the leaks, feel this is unfair. They feel the costs should be borne by the upper-floor tenants only. There have been many angry tenants' meetings about this. Am I correct?”

“That is correct, Mr. Liebling.”

“And of course the longer the tenants fight about this, the worse the roof will get, and the more expensive it's going to be to repair it. Correct?”

“Sadly, sir. Yes.”

“Suppose you were to tell your board that if they will reconsider my application, I will be personally willing to pay for the new roof?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Mr. Van Degan said, “I'm sorry, but you cannot bribe your way into a building like ours. It's been tried before, Mr. Liebling.”

“Bribe? An act of generosity is a bribe? Let me ask you one more question. Mr. Stuyvesant Miller, of Miller Publications, is president of your board. Correct?”

“Yes. Correct.”

“That magazine he just bought—
City Lights,
I believe it's called. It's not doing as well as Mr. Miller hoped. That new editor he brought in from England. She hasn't been able to turn the magazine around the way he hoped she would. Advertising revenues are down. The bottom line looks very bad. You might mention to Mr. Miller that I may be forced to cancel my advertising because of this situation.”

“What situation, Mr. Liebling?”

“The situation I have just outlined to you.”

“You would cancel your advertising in
City Lights?”

“No. I would cancel in all Miller publications. There are seven of these, actually, in which my company advertises.”

“I see,” Mr. Van Degan said carefully.

“Mention that to Mr. Miller, won't you?”

There was another, longer pause. Then he said, “Very well.”

“You do that,” Jules said.

A few days later, there was another call from Truxton Van Degan. “The board has accepted your application,” he said in a pained voice.

“I see,” Jules said.

“And your generous offer to pay for the new roof.”

“Sorry, but that offer has been withdrawn,” Jules said. “But I will be happy to purchase the McCurdy apartment for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“Sir! The price of the McCurdy unit is two hundred thousand!”

“It just went down,” Jules said. “I happen to know that Richard McCurdy is seven months delinquent in his maintenance payments. He's scrambling for money to pay off his wife in what could become a very messy divorce suit. He's also a vice president of Miller Publications, and Stuyvie Miller won't be very pleased to see some of McCurdy's wife's accusations if they hit the newspapers. I also know that your fancy building isn't very happy with the—shall I say, caliber?—of the young men Mr. McCurdy has been—shall I say, entertaining? shall I say shacking up with?—since his wife moved out on him. I happen to know that your building would do anything to be rid of McCurdy and his friends. Am I correct?”

“What—?” Truxton Van Degan sputtered. “What—what do you call this, Mr. Liebling? What do you call what you're trying to do to us?”

“What do I call it?” Jules said. “It's called doing business.”

As it happened, the Lieblings' new apartment and the Solomon Brinckmanns' were on the same elevator stem at 1000 Park. Solomon Brinckmann died in 1976, and his wife sold the apartment and moved to Arizona a year later. Through the years when they shared the elevator, the Brinckmanns and the Lieblings did not encounter each other much. But whenever they did, they nodded and smiled at each other politely.