The Wrong Kind of Money (54 page)

“A Liebling on the Met's board!”

“It's a deal from which everyone will profit.”

“What about the museum? Will they accept that condition?”

“We'll have to wait and see, won't we? But considering the importance of the gift, I rather think they will.”

Hannah studies her daughter-in-law appraisingly across the table, her eyelids half closed. “You know,” she says at last, “I'm seeing a side of you today, Carol, that I've never seen before. It's a side I never knew existed. You really like to
hondel,
don't you.”

Carol smiles. “I've enjoyed planning this one,” she says. “And I've even carried my thoughts a little further. If Ingraham can get its toe as firmly into Van Degan's door as this deal would do, is there any reason why, at some point, we wouldn't be in a nice position to take over Van Degan Glass?”

“That was something my husband often talked about—owning his own glassworks. Not having to rely on outside suppliers and gambling on price fluctuations in the marketplace.”

“It would seem to make good business sense, Nana.”

Now it is Hannah who is smiling. “That would show those Van Degans, wouldn't it?” she says. “If we took over their company. Moving out the day we moved in!”

“Well, yes,” Carol says. “I did think of that, too.”

“And so,” Hannah says, “what's the next step? Are you prepared to follow through on all this?”

“Absolutely,” Carol says. “All I need is your approval.”

“I think it's better if you handle the Van Degans. You know them. I've never met them. If I called them, they'd think I was trying to pull some sort of fast one. They know I hate 'em. In fact, don't mention my name at all. Tell them this is Noah's idea.”

“All I need is a green light from you, Nana.”

Hannah nods. “You just got it,” she says.

Carol pushes aside her plate, realizing that in her excitement she has hardly touched her cheese soufflé. “If you'd like, I can telephone Truck Van Degan at his office right now,” she says.

“Go for it!” Hannah says.

Carol jumps from the table and walks quickly out through the hall to the telephone room, leaving Hannah alone at the table, toying absently with her food.

Carol is not gone long. “Well, the ball is now in play,” she says a little breathlessly. “I talked to Mr. Van Degan. He said, ‘I understand the terms of your proposal completely.' He's going to call the chairman of the Acquisitions Committee.”

“And that person is—?”

“A man named Corydon McCurdy. A man who, for personal reasons, I'd very much like to see put in his place.”

“We bought this apartment from some people named McCurdy.”

“Yes, I know. This is their son.”

“Snobs. Like the Van Degans.”

“I think I know how to handle him. I've got a few cards up my sleeve that I haven't told you about.”

A footman appears at the door.
“Pêche flambée au Cognac,”
he announces.

“Skip it,” Hannah says with a wave of her hand. “We don't want dessert. So,” she says as the footman departs, “what happens next?”

“Next?” Carol says. “Well, having just set in motion what I'm trying to do for you and your company, I'm going to ask you to do something for me, Nana.”

“Oh?” she says suspiciously. “What's that?”

“Give Noah his stock. Turn over the company to him, and without insisting that Bathy has to be part of the deal. Bathy doesn't want to go back to work for Ingraham anyway.”

“Perhaps not. But there might be ways I'd have of forcing her to.”

“Somehow,” Carol says, “Bathy doesn't strike me as the kind of woman who can be forced to do anything she doesn't want to do.”

“You've talked to Bathy?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Well, I still have a little problem with Noah. I told you he used vulgar language—”

“Your problem with Noah is that you've waited too long to give him the top job. I can promise you something else, Nana, if you give it to him now.”

“What's that? What can you promise me?”

“I can promise you that if you give him the job, you'll never hear another word about Aesop.”

“Oh? Is he still talking about that?”

“Very much so. More than ever before. You see, Nana, Noah's Aesop idea is an idea that was born out of frustration. Frustration has nourished the idea in his mind. And his frustration is frustration with
you,
Nana. He feels he's just spinning his wheels with the company now. He feels as though he's treading water, getting nowhere. And as each day goes by, he gets more and more frustrated. And the more frustrated he gets, the more he thinks about some sort of escape hatch—like Aesop. But if you give him the job, Nana, I can promise you he'll never give another serious thought to Aesop.”

“You can promise me that?”

“Yes, I can. Another tit for another tat.”

“He's told you that?”

“He's as much as told me,” she says quickly.

“As much as told you isn't quite the same as told,” she says. “But it's always been such a totally im
prac
tical idea—Aesop.”

“Yes, and in his heart of hearts I know he knows that. And yet, as things stand now—”

“Well, let me think about this,” Hannah says.

“Don't think about it too long, Nana. If you think about it too long, I can promise you something else—something neither of us wants at all. You'll see him walk out of his office at the Ingraham Building and never come back. He'll devote the rest of his life to the Aesop project, and there won't be anything you or I can do about it. You know how stubborn Noah is. I'm warning you, Nana—things have reached that crucial a stage. He's about to explode with frustration, and when that happens any usefulness he might have for you or the company, now or in the future, will come to a screeching halt. It will end with a loud and resounding bang. You say he used vulgar language? That's just the beginning, the tip of the iceberg!”

“Goodness, you almost make it sound as though he might—well, never mind.”

“I'm saying there's no telling what he might do. Remember—you may be his mother, but I'm his wife. I hear the voice on the pillow at night. I watch him tossing and turning in the next bed, fighting to get some sleep—”

Hannah shivers. “Well, I told you I'd think about it. I promise you I'll think hard. That's all I'll promise you for now.”

“Thank you, Nana.”

“Meanwhile, you haven't said boo about the party for Anne and the Van Degan girl. Just where does that stand?”

Carol shrugs. “That's neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned,” she says. “You disapproved of the idea. I was never really in favor of it. Noah and I haven't discussed it, and I'm not even sure Mr. Van Degan knows about it. Georgette implied that he didn't. I'm tabling any party plans for the time being. Don't forget, we're calling the shots with the Van Degans now.”

“Yes, but if my Little Bird really wants this party so badly, then perhaps—”

“But I really think what we've just been talking about is more important than any coming-out party. Don't you agree? More important to you as well as to me?”

“Yes. Yes, I agree.”

Carol glances at her watch. “I've really got to run,” she says. “I've got to drive up to Connecticut and see my mother. They're having some sort of problem with her there.”

“Just one more thing,” Hannah says. “That Mr. Luckman has been calling me at my office.”

“Oh? What's he want?”

“I don't know. I've refused to take his calls. I didn't like that young man. I didn't like all that talk about money and scandal at your dinner table. Talk about controlling people. He may have written a book about education, but he didn't seem to know much about the subject. He'd never heard of my father, the famous Dr. Marcus Sachs. That young man spells trouble, if you ask me.”

“You think so, Nana?”

“It's a feeling in my bones. I'm not going to talk to him, and I suggest that you not talk to him, either. We don't need any more trouble in this family. Lord knows, we've had enough trouble. But remember, if there's trouble, what my father used to say. He'd say, ‘If there's trouble, rise above it. Let it wash around your ankles. Stand tall, young woman. Stand tall.' That's what he used to say to Settie and me.”

“Good advice,” Carol says. They both rise from the table.

“And you know something?” Hannah says. “I'm beginning to think you could run this company as well as the next one.”

Carol smiles. “The power behind the throne?” she says. “Isn't that what you were for a long time, Nana?”

“Yes, I suppose I was. And think of it—if Ingraham could take over Van Degan Glass! Wouldn't Jules be pleased? A tit for a tat, he'd say. Moving out on the very day we moved in!” As she leaves the blue dining room, she touches the Ming Yellow urn with the tip of her index finger. Almost lovingly, Carol thinks.

And now, back at River House to change quickly into a sweater and jeans for her drive to the country, Carol finds a message on her answering machine: “Mrs. Liebling,” a secretary's voice says, “please call Mr. Corydon McCurdy at your earliest convenience. It's quite urgent.”

Still smiling, she places the call.

“Mrs. Liebling,” he says, and she notices immediately that they are no longer on a first-name basis.

“Yes, Mr. McCurdy.”

“I've had a conversation with Mr. Van Degan.”

“Yes, I thought you might have.”

“And I've also spoken to the director of the museum. Quite frankly, he prefers the Van Degans' first offer to the present one, Mrs. Liebling.”

“But the Van Degans are now offering to give the museum everything in their collection with the exception of the pieces they have displayed in their Fifth Avenue apartment. That's close to ninety percent of the collection, and it seemed greedy to ask them to denude their apartment.”

“But this new proposal contains some unacceptable provisions.”

“The trusteeship, you mean?”

“Frankly, Mrs. Liebling, that provision was so completely outrageous—so totally out of the question, and so absurd—that I didn't even mention it to the director. He would have laughed me out of his office.”

“But, Mr. McCurdy,” she says carefully, “you seem to be forgetting how the museum operates. It's not the director who tells the board of trustees what to do. It's the other way around. The director is just a hired employee, selected by the board. The board selects its own membership.”

“Mrs. Liebling, you're not suggesting—”

“That you go to the board of trustees? Of course I am. Who else would you go to? The director has no say whatever about who goes on the board. I would have thought you knew that.”

“Mrs. Liebling, that is something I flatly refuse to do.”

“But isn't that your job? I'd have thought so, with a gift the size and importance of this one, and since it involves a trusteeship.”

“This is simply too outrageous!”

“Are you saying that you, a mere committee chairman, are taking it upon yourself to turn down this gift?”

“I can't, but—”

“I should tell you,” she says, “that it is quite within my power to have Mr. Van Degan withdraw his gift offer altogether. In the meantime, the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City is eager to have those porcelains to add to their Oriental collection. The Kimball in Fort Worth is also eager. It's a shame not to have the collection stay in New York. But you heard Mr. Van Degan's offer. It's this or nothing.”

“You're trying to blackmail the museum!”

“So I suggest you go to the trustees. And I suggest you do so rather quickly. It would be unwise, and also rude, to let the Van Degan offer dangle in front of you for too long a time.”

“So it's just another Liebling deal,” he says. “Just another shady, crooked Liebling deal. Like father, like daughter-in-law.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. McCurdy!” she says. “Coming from someone like you, I take that as quite a compliment.”

“This is another Liebling swindle!”

And Carol Dugan Liebling hangs up the telephone without saying good-bye.

And Carol has no sooner replaced the receiver in its cradle than she hears a key turn in the front door, hears the door open, then close. Anne walks rapidly past the library door, in her blue parka, her shoulders hunched under her backpack. “Anne?” Carol calls out to her. “Annie?” But Anne does not answer her, and continues down the hall toward her room where, again, Carol hears the door open, then close. She stands up and goes down the hall to Anne's room, and taps on the door. “Annie? May I come in?”

When there is no immediate reply, Carol opens the door. Anne is sprawled face forward on her bed, still in her parka. “Anne? Are you all right?” she asks her.

Speaking into the bedclothes, Anne says, “I'm okay.”

“I thought you were going to spend the weekend at Susie Carpenter's.”

“I changed my mind.”

“You're home from work awfully early, aren't you?”

“I quit the job.”

“Anne—you didn't! I got that job for you.”

“I know.”

“But what about your winter work program? What about Bennington?”

“I'm not going back to Bennington.”

“Oh, Anne. Of course you are.”

“Uh-uh.”

She sits on the corner of Anne's bed and rubs her daughter's shoulders. “Anne—what's the matter?”

Anne turns her face to the wall. “I told you, Mother. Nothing. I just don't want to talk right now.”

She strokes her daughter's fine blond hair. “Listen, darling,” she says. “I've got to drive up to Connecticut and see Granny Dugan. They're having some sort of problem with her, and I've got to see if I can straighten it out. I've really got to leave right now. But I'll be back by dinnertime, and we can talk then—okay?”