The Wrong Kind of Money (32 page)

Aside from her daughter, her no-gum-chewing job, and her paid-for house, the only other comfort in Carol's mother's life was Father Timmons, who called nearly every evening after work. Father Timmons and Anna Dugan sat on the sofa, evening after evening, sipping perhaps a little cream sherry that Father Timmons often brought with him. Cream sherry was not
drink,
Father Timmons explained. It was no different from sacramental wine, which was Our Lord's blood, and therefore holy. And so the two of them sipped their holy wine, and sometimes got a little giggly while they discussed the affairs of the human mind and soul. Discussing the Immaculate Conception, Anna Dugan sometimes became a little shrill. “I'm having a vision!” she would suddenly cry out.

Anna Dugan always had an urge to do a particular religious watercolor—her interpretation of the Ecstasy of St. Teresa, she had had a vision of it—and the two of them often discussed that project. “I'm still not quite ready for it, Father,” she would say, “though I feel I'm getting closer to it.” And closer to it she always got, though never, finally, close enough. It was her conscience that bothered her most. After all, who was she to think she could express on paper what poets and mystics and princes of the Church had been trying to get straight in their minds for centuries? And Father Timmons, wisely, did not encourage her to begin, but always advised her to wait until she was sure, absolutely sure, that she had her vision as clear as crystal in her mind's eye before attempting anything. And so, instead, they would perhaps discuss one of Anna's completed watercolors, and Father Timmons would comment on the use of color and chiaroscuro, or the effect of sunlight she had managed to achieve across the waves or on a barn roof. “I just dabbed a little yellow right
there
—and there it was, just like
that
!” she would explain. “A complete accident.”

But nothing was ever an accident, no, Father Timmons would insist, for everything was part of a plan, and the plan Anna's picture had was merely an expression, on a smaller scale, of a larger one. And sometimes their talk would turn to Carol, and how well she was doing at St. Catherine's School, and how much the sisters liked her, and how bright she was (which was true), “though a bit too independent-minded for her own good” (also true, Carol supposes). And perhaps Carol would be brought into the room then, and the three of them might sit, quietly talking, and then perhaps Father Timmons would put some of his old 78 r.p.m. records on the old windup Victrola that Anna had bought at a yard sale, and they would listen to old songs. If cream sherry had been served, Carol's mother and Father Timmons might dance the fox-trot. During these times Carol would be able to see, and believe clearly, that there was indeed, somewhere, a shady nook by a babbling brook.

And then, at the end of these musical interludes, unless Father Timmons had brought along his multiband shortwave radio (in which case they would listen to music playing from such far-off places as Chicago, Minneapolis, or Atlanta, depending on the reception, which depended on the weather), they would kneel and thank the angels and all the saints and the Blessed Virgin for all the bounties that life bestowed, and for all the heartaches, too, that teach us lessons. And Anna Dugan would rise to her feet first with tears glistening in her eyes and, with a wide gesture of her arms that took in both her loved ones, say to Carol, “You know that God the Father and Father Timmons are the only real fathers you'll ever have.”

And this was true enough. And as an adult Carol has occasionally wondered whether Father Timmons might actually have been more of a father to her than that, more than a foolish and doting old family friend in a reversed collar who also happened to be the parish priest. It is a notion, she has decided, that does not bear much thinking about. In the little town of Rumney Depot, she heard it said that her mother was “peculiar.” She set her jaw and said nothing when she overheard comments like that.

One incident stands out particularly in Carol's mind from those growing-up years. It was a summer Saturday, when she was nine or ten, and her mother had planned a picnic at Stinson Lake. Father Timmons was to go with them, of course, but at the last minute he had been called to say Mass at a funeral, and so her mother announced that the picnic would be called off, even though the picnic lunch was already packed. In her bitter disappointment Carol had staged a regular temper tantrum. Though Stinson Lake was only a dozen miles north of town, it seemed to Carol as though they never went anywhere, while, from the
News-Leader
it was clear that the McClarens were always on the go. She screamed and sobbed and stamped her feet and pounded her fists on the kitchen table, and in the end her mother relented, and they drove off for the lake in her mother's blue Plymouth coupe, though her mother was not in the best of moods.

Anna Dugan brought her paints and brushes and easel, and set up her easel on the strip of beach, and began painting the mountains on the far side of the lake. Carol sprawled on a beach towel in the sand. Out on the water, a speedboat pulled a girl on water skis, her blond hair streaming behind her, and Carol imagined that this might be Monique McClaren. On the beach, some teenage boys in swimsuits were engaged in a game of volleyball.

At noon her mother opened the picnic basket, and began laying out their lunch on a blanket on the beach—tuna salad sandwiches, deviled eggs, pickles, olives, potato chips, and a chocolate cake. Carol had been watching the volleyball game. “Mom,” she asked almost idly, “what's that funny bunched-up business boys have between their legs?” Her mother seized her by the armpits and jerked her to her feet. “Impure thoughts!” she cried. “You've been having impure thoughts!” Then she struck her across the face with a slap so hard it sent Carol flying backward into the picnic lunch, into the sandwiches, into the deviled eggs and chocolate cake. “You are an evil, evil little girl!” her mother screamed at her. “You will rot in hell for your impure thoughts, and your eyes and tongue will be eaten by the devil!” The volleyball players paused in their game to watch this scene, and from nearby on the beach, other heads turned, though of course no one said or did anything.

Anna Dugan gathered up their ruined lunch, which was now little more than garbage, into the folds of the blanket. “You'll get no lunch,” she said. “And you'll get no dinner, either. And you'll never, ever come to this beach again!” Then she marched Carol, sobbing, back to the car.

Her mother kept those promises.

A year or so later, an older schoolmate explained and described to Carol what the funny bunched-up business was, and its function—in perhaps more vivid detail, and in somewhat more colorful language—than was actually required. And somehow, after those basic anatomical facts, and their implications, had been revealed to her, Carol became even more unforgiving of her mother than before.

She met Noah Liebling on a blind date when she was twenty and a senior at the University of New Hampshire. “A nice young businessman up here on business from New York,” her friend had described him. At first she hadn't been particularly impressed with him, though she was pleased with his dark good looks and amused by his habit, when ordering drinks, of always asking for an Ingraham brand, and in rather too loud a voice. “I work for Ingraham,” he said with a shrug. “Company policy,” and he let it go at that. He did not mention that his family owned the company. This was in the winter of 1972. The name Liebling meant nothing to her.

They began exchanging letters, nothing particularly personal, certainly nothing passionate. Presently, though, he was flying up to Portsmouth on weekends to see her. He would rent a car, and they would drive to one of the nearby ski mountains. There he would rent skis and poles and boots for them both, and give her skiing lessons. “A New Hampshire girl ought to know how to ski,” he said.

This was true. The McClaren girls, she remembered from the days when she had followed their activities so closely in the
News-Leader
—though they were all off and married now, with children of their own—had often been pictured on one ski slope or another. She mentioned the socially prominent McClarens. He had never heard of them. She decided they had nothing in common.

He liked to ski fast. As a beginner she was more cautious. Still, he slowed down to keep pace with her own slowness, and that was nice of him.

Meanwhile, she was working for her M.A. in psychology at the university. She decided that he must have a very good job indeed to be able to afford all this flying back between Portsmouth and New York, all these rentals of cars and ski equipment and lift tickets. But he wasn't show-offy about his money, and that was nice of him, too.

She noticed he didn't talk much about his job, beyond saying he was “in sales.” And he talked even less about his family. He hardly ever mentioned his father, and she gathered he was somewhat intimidated by his mother. “My family is peculiar,” he said once.

“My family is even
more
peculiar,” she said. “I'm sure, when it comes to peculiar, my family has your family beat.”

“We have a lot in common, then,” he said with a smile. This struck her as the opposite of the truth.

Long before meeting him, Carol had decided it was time she lost her virginity, though she hadn't decided how, or when, or where, or with whom she was going to do it. All her friends, if they were to be believed, had already lost theirs. All the lurid admonitions of the sisters at St. Catherine's School—fingers falling off if you touched yourself, tongues falling out if you kissed a boy too deeply—she now knew were nonsense. She had even encountered two of the sisters—Sister Margaret Mary and Sister Barnabas—in an embrace that was far from sisterly. But she decided that if she was going to lose hers, it was not going to be with Noah Liebling. Their relationship was more of an outdoor, not an indoor, thing. After kissing him good night outside her dormitory door, she would step quickly inside, and that would be that.

It was not until she saw his father's obituary in the
New York Times
in 1974 that she realized who Noah Liebling was, that his sister was the one she'd read about, several years before, when she eloped with a Brazilian copper heir nearly three times her age and, later, when she became involved in a messy marriage to an Italian count. At first Carol couldn't believe that this could be the same family. And yet there it was, in black and white, in the nation's newspaper of record. Jules Liebling
was
Ingraham's. He'd started it from scratch, a Horatio Alger success story. Rags to riches. There was Noah's name, listed as one of Jules Liebling's two sons. She decided not to telephone him. Let him call her.

But then, a couple of days later, she did call him. She's not sure why she did, but she did. He'd just come, it seemed, from his father's funeral, and he told her about encountering his older brother, whom he hadn't seen in years, outside the funeral home, and not recognizing him. She'd also read that this banished brother had been left, in trust, a sizable inheritance, while Noah, who had worked for the company, had been left nothing at all. All this sounded to Carol too strange and sad, and she decided immediately that she'd never see him again, that she wanted nothing to do with this strange, sad family.

But then he said, “Look, I could use a little company right now. Why don't you hop on a plane? Fly down here. We'll have dinner.”

“All right,” she said.

“I'll meet your plane,” he said.

And so he took her out to dinner. To this day, she can't really remember where they went, but during dinner he said to her, “Carol, I don't quite know how to say this, but I like you very much.”

“And I you,” she said.

“And I you,” he repeated with a faint smile on his lips. “And I you,” and their eyes met, and locked, and suddenly the air between them was charged, electric, and Carol felt a sudden ringing in her ears, a tightness in her throat, a yawning feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she knew that what was going to happen was going to happen, and that he knew it, too, and that there was nothing either of them could do to stop it from happening, try as they might. For the rest of the meal, toying with their food, they said little and ate almost nothing, preparing for the inevitable. The time had come, the time was right, the time was then. The taxi ride from the restaurant to his handsome bachelor apartment on Seventy-second Street seemed to take an eternity.

Later, when it was over—and it was sweeter, gentler, and far less violent and painful than anything her friends had ever described to her—he lifted himself on one elbow in the bed and studied her face. “I love the way you look,” he said. “Your looks don't match.”

“Don't match?”

“Your hair—what color do you call it?”

“Sort of a chestnut color, I guess.”

“And your eyes?”

“Hazel. I've always hated the color of my eyes.”

“More like amber. But you see? Chestnut and amber—that's an unusual combination. They don't match.” He touched the tip of her nose. “And look—a freckle. And here's another.”

“I've had those since I was a kid and got sunburned at the lake.” She giggled. “You've kissed all my makeup off.”

“Dark-haired girls don't usually freckle. That's what I love about your looks. Nothing really matches, but it all comes together beautifully.”

“Oh, I'm not beautiful—not beautiful like my friend Monique McClaren.”

“That's another thing I like about your looks. You don't know you're beautiful, do you?”

“No!”

“You know who you look a little like? A little like Audrey Hepburn before she started playing princesses.”

“Thank goodness it's dark in here!”

“Audrey Hepburn, when she still had a little baby fat.” He touched her again. “Here. And here. Don't ever change your looks, Carol.”