Ugly Money

The doorbell rang. ‘Nick. I’ll get it.’ I thought she’d reacted a little too quickly, but put it down to her taut nerves; so I wasn’t prepared for her to step outside and close the door on me. I could hear the murmur of voices from the hall and wondered just what they were up to.

Suddenly I was feeling very sorry for my brother Jack. Sorry for Ruth too, of course, but somehow it seemed worse for him. We’re not close, we never have been: not even when we first came to the US together some twenty years ago, aged twenty-six and twenty-three respectively: the Adams brothers. It sounds like a singing duo or an ancient vaudeville act; actually we were a British director/writer team; we’d done pretty well in Europe but, like most young men, had our eyes fixed on the big time, i.e. Hollywood …

The front door opened again, the conference was over. Ushering him in she said, ‘This is Nick Deering. Nick, my … my not-uncle, Will Adams.’ And, quickly: ‘He says we can stay here.’

We all grew out of the stereotyped image long ago; well, not all now I come to think of it; there are still a lot of brutish old dinosaurs clumping around. Her best, and gay, friend was a big burly boy, your Sixth Grade, high-school football boy, with a dry, strong handshake. He wasn’t handsome, but there’s a clean young American look which does almost as well: benign brown eyes, neatly cut brown hair falling over the wide forehead in a fringe. And when he smiled the eyes smiled too, and that’s rare. But, I realized at once, he too was in a state of extreme nervous tension. Trying to rise above it he said, ‘Hi. Get the story?’

‘Some of it.’

‘Ballbreaker, ain’t it? You’re not going to call your brother?’

‘Not yet anyway.’ Carefully, I added, ‘Look, it may be none of my business, in which case you’ll tell me so – but why are you both jumping like junkies in need of a fix?’

They glanced at each other. Marisa said, ‘No reason really. I mean … it’s no big deal.’

Her best friend shook his head. ‘For Pete’s sake, we need help, why mess around? And what do you mean, no big deal? Someone tried to run us off the road, could’ve killed us.’

‘He was just smashed, he was nothing to do with it.’

Nick sighed. ‘Like I know I’m seventeen and you don’t, that’s the problem.’

She gave him a sweet smile. I could see she’d been telling the exact truth – her best friend; she could certainly have done worse. ‘You’re probably right, you usually are.’

‘So,’ I said, ‘is this where I ask, “What do you mean, ran you off the road, could have killed you?” Or do I just wait?’

Nick spread large hands. ‘We goofed.’

‘No,’ said Marisa, ‘I goofed.’ And to me, ‘It’s a long story, and it won’t make sense unless you hear it from the beginning.’

‘Then tell it from the beginning.’

‘Really?’

‘The night is young. When did you two last eat?’

‘Around noon.’

‘Right. You can talk while I cook. Fettucini OK?’

‘Marinara?’ Sophisticated Hollywood brat!

‘Sure. Clams, mussels, squid.’

‘Super!’

‘So come in the kitchen. Fix drinks. Mine’s a gin and French, and I don’t mean a Martini – half gin, half Noilly Prat, on the rocks.’

Why am I writing this story instead of going back to chapter nine as I ought? Because I resent people who try to kill me, and because it’s there – same for writers as it is for mountaineers.

Chance, the same implacable joker that motivated the bulldozer, led me by the nose off the highway and into the American wilderness. And for the benefit of my fellow-Europeans, let me add that leaving the highway in this neck of the woods doesn’t mean a stroll through the bluebells; the underbrush is full of nasty surprises like poison oak and poison ivy, a person can get hurt. Semi-human creatures also dwell there; they can cause you irreparable harm and won’t hesitate to do so if your interests, or those of your beautiful niece, conflict with theirs. They have no moral sense, money is their only morality, and you don’t beat them because they’re ten thousand times richer than you are. The law doesn’t beat them because it doesn’t want to – they can afford the best attorneys, and they give so generously to the policemen’s ball and the President’s ball and all the balls in between.

2

So while I cooked, my favorite pastime after writing and messing around in boats, and while Nick chopped garlic – an irritating job, it always sticks to the knife – Marisa perched herself on a stool at the counter and began to tell me from the beginning.

When her mind began to operate again after the initial shock and the anger that went with it, certainty swept over her like a cold Pacific wave, and she was amazed it had taken so long to come rolling in. Of course she wouldn’t be able to rest until she knew who her father was; met him, if he was still alive; rearranged her life along the guidelines which, trustingly, she felt he would show her, perhaps without knowing he was doing so. Only then, only with the peace of mind and the knowledge such a meeting would give, could she turn back to the two people she loved best in the world. It seems to me very wise of her, at seventeen, to realize that this was the way to finding and trusting them again; and she seems to have known it from the beginning: almost from the beginning, certainly from the moment the Drano had been poured into her mind, unblocking it.

As soon as she knew her mother was alone she went and asked her point-blank who her father really was. I can imagine the exact look in Ruth’s gentle greenish eyes, almost a jade green: a cool and considering look; it was turned on me often enough at the time of my divorce. Marisa has inherited her beauty from her mother and her blue eyes from her maternal grandmother, Corinne: also some of her more sassy characteristics. It’s a funny thing – this difference in eye color makes the two of them quite dissimilar; yet when you look carefully you can see Ruth’s bone structure in her daughter; and these fine bones have enabled her to keep her looks past the witching age of forty: good news for Marisa. There are lines of course, but because there’s been no surgical snipping and stretching they’re virtually unnoticeable; and a touch of gray in fair hair is always attractive; some women pay the earth to have it put there.

She said, ‘Marisa, I’m not telling you who he is.’

‘Then he’s alive.’

‘Yes. And he’s a nice person, a good person. I didn’t fall for a ski bum or a beach boy.’

‘Can’t they be nice good people too?’

‘Of course. You know what I mean.’ Was she touched by the glint of social conscience, a glint of rebellion in her child who had never given her any of the fashionable headaches, who thought drugs were strictly for dimwitted dropouts?

‘So you fell for him and you had his baby, where did … where did Jack come in?’

‘I already knew Jack. He … saved me from a very awkward situation, but that’s the kind of person he is. As you know.’

‘Why didn’t the man marry you?’

‘He was already married.’

‘You could have got rid of me.’

When Ruth gives you her straightest look you don’t doubt her word: ‘I never, never for one moment thought of abortion, I promise you that. I wanted a child.’

‘His child.’

‘My child.’

‘Darn lucky you had Dad around.’

Ruth was relieved to hear the ‘Dad’ and ignored the puerile sarcasm. Marisa knew better than to say outright, ‘I want to see him.’ In that respect, only apparent indifference could protect her, but she didn’t find indifference easy to fake. She tried, ‘Haven’t you got a picture of him?’

‘No. How would your father like that?’

‘He isn’t my father; I wish he was. I wish you hadn’t told me.’

Ruth sighed and shook her head. ‘If you knew how we’ve argued. Argued, discussed, agreed, disagreed – around and around, never-ending.’

‘But you’re glad you did it.’

‘It’s a weight off my mind; I can’t pretend it isn’t.’