ON THE MORNING OF DECEMBER 5, I nestled Lexie in a fresh box and dressed myself in a writerly black skirt and turtleneck. I debated whether the sterling silver earrings shaped like two tiny Everyman editions my parents had sent for my birthday blared presumption or suggested whimsy, and put them back in the drawer. Real authors probably wouldn’t wear tiny books on their ears. I let my hair curl to create the impression of unkempt artistic seriousness, but added a necklace of pink beads to announce that I was not a memoirist, about to put my head in the oven. I limited myself to a single cup of coffee, in case Heather Mendelson Blake offered me more.
The Hope Perdue Agency offices, on the third floor of a town-house on Charles, were encouragingly literary. The stairway was dark, possibly even sooty, and the treads, under a worn Oriental runner, each creaked a distinctive, individual note. Upstairs, books and manuscripts were stacked in front of shelves crammed with the same, so that the hallway was reduced to a narrow, zigzagging path, along a floor that tilted charmingly, if disconcertingly, toward the back of the building.
A girl was on the phone in the front office. The ends of her long brown hair swept the top of her desk as she nodded. “OK,” she was saying, “OK. Well, don’t worry, Alice, we’ll take care of it.”
Alice? Alice Walker or Alice Munro? Or maybe McDermott or Hoffman. It was exhilarating just to be standing in that atmosphere. I wrapped my arms around my manuscript and pulled it to my chest. It was the key to this world, the secret handshake that would secure me a place beside the Alices.
“Can I help you?” the girl asked.
“My name’s Margaret Snyder,” I began.
The girl said nothing.
“Sally Sternforth suggested I come,” I continued. “She said I should ask for Heather Mendelson Blake. That she would be interested in my novel.”
“Oh,” she said. “How nice of Sally.” She tossed her hair over her shoulders and held out both hands for my manuscript. “OK, well, I’ll make sure Heather gets it.”
I transferred Lexie to her ink-smudged fingers, and that was it. It was over. I had no more business there. I lingered at the office door for a moment looking back at the block of pages that now would have to speak for themselves. And then I was back down the atmospheric stairs and out onto the gray sidewalk with nothing to do but clean the apartment and devise this year’s Christmas gifts while I waited.
I assumed I would have to give Heather Mendelson Blake at least until Wednesday to finish reading it, and then maybe another day or two to decide which publishers to send it to, to make copies of it, and perhaps to get it copyrighted or whatever agents did. Realistically, it would be well into December by the time an editor saw my novel. I worried that editors didn’t buy much over the holidays, what with book parties, Christmas parties, and ski weekends. “I don’t think we can count on a check until January,” I told Letty cautiously that afternoon. “Can you hold out until then?”
“Margaret,” she said, “I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe you’re doing this for us.”
“You’d do the same for me,” I assured her. I was certain that she would, but I was happy to know that things would never work that way when it came to Letty and me.
Margaret likes to think that what happened was her fault. She wants to be the one with the story, the one who says how it goes, as if the rest of us couldn’t rub two sticks together without her. This part, however, she can’t tell, because this part, unfortunately, is mine.
On the night of December 4, I had to pay for the rushes. Once Michael had fallen asleep watching A Charlie Brown Christmas and the children were in bed, I sat on a step stool at the newly constructed, mosaic-tiled breakfast bar and sorted paperwork for Jeanette. It was an especially busy time for J. Peabody and Associates, and there were various invoices to reconcile with canceled checks and several final payments on venues and to caterers due. The Otis event was not until February, but nevertheless deposits had to be made. One of these was for rushes.
Jeanette had discovered that authentic rushes of the very kind once used to provide warmth and softness underfoot and to hide all manner of refuse, such as chicken bone’s and saliva, on the floors of the great rooms of medieval castles could be purchased from a small, family-owned business in France and shipped to Los Angeles via a Chinese import/export firm based in the City of Industry. To secure the quantity we required, I had to send a check for thirty-five hundred dollars to Wang Ho Company.
I didn’t mean to pick up the pen filled with erasable purple ink. However, given that it was the only writing implement the children were not allowed to use and hence were discouraged from depositing in an undiscoverable location, among the roots of the fig tree, for instance, it is not surprising nor even entirely random that it was the first pen that came to hand after I’d emptied two drawers, checked the pocket of Michael’s jacket, run my fingers under the club chair cushions, and dumped my purse. An erasable pen writes like any other inexpensive, medium-nib ballpoint, and I filled out the check without thinking of anything beyond the exorbitant price of an outdated floor covering.
The next day, Jeanette signed the check, and I would certainly have deposited it on my way to collect Noah from a playdate that evening had Ofelia not been summoned to her own daughters school to discuss a biting incident with the principal at two forty-five, which meant I had to cancel my afternoon appointments and return home after a lunch meeting with the Otis planning committee. It was during my twenty minutes at home, while I was forcing Ivy into an outfit appropriate for her three o’clock session at Toning for Tots, that I happened to pick up a call from Steve Carlson, who’d installed our plantation shutters. “Listen, Letty,” he said, “I like you and all, but I’m going to have to take you to court if you don’t pay me.” “How much do I owe you?” I asked, distracted by the difficulty of working Ivy’s resisting arm into a fresh T-shirt, but also being disingenuous. In fact, I knew the precise figure, having been informed of the amount four times by letter, three times by phone message, and twice by means of “casual” drop-by visits when Steve was working on other neighborhood window treatments. This time, however, Steve refused to play along: “For Christ’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you?” “OK. OK. I know,” I confessed. “Three thousand, four hundred and fifty dollars.” “And Letty, if I don’t get it by next week, I seriously am going to take legal action. I hate to do it to you, but my wife—” I interrupted. I couldn’t stand to hear him make excuses for demanding his own money. “I’ll pay you! Please, Steve, don’t tell me these things!” He didn’t need excuses. He was right; I owed him. I had, in effect, stolen from him.
The envelope was already in my purse, sealed and stamped, ready to mail. My fingers pushed it back and forth as I rummaged for the car keys. It was strange that the amount was so nearly the same as that on the check I’d written for the rushes. It was not such a large amount either. Enough, it seemed, to provoke legal action, but still not more than I could easily send to Wang Ho on my own the next week, after Michael and I got our paychecks. While Ivy wormed her way back out of her T-shirt, I took the envelope out of my purse and pried the flap open.
The pen, with its own eraser conveniently attached, lay on the counter next to the coffeemaker where I’d left it the night before. At the time what I did seemed reasonable. The money needed to go to two people; but the one who’d been in my house, who’d drunk my iced tea and used my bathroom, was demanding it right away, while the other, the anonymous Wang Ho, could easily wait a week. It seemed sensible to pay the one that needed paying now, even if the money I was using was not quite mine yet.
The actual “embezzling”—it still seems wrong to think of it that way, although I see now that that is precisely what I was doing—took less than ten seconds. I erased “Wang Ho and Company” after “Pay to the Order of” and wrote in “Steve Carlson,” and I put my name in the memo, so he would know whose shutters it was for. I addressed and stamped a new envelope. I sent Steve thirty-five hundred dollars, fifty more than he’d asked for as a sort of good-faith apology, from the account of J. Peabody and Associates.
Although I’d told Letty not to expect any word until the middle of January, I spent the next two weeks picking up the phone to check for the telltale beeps of a waiting voice mail message and leaving the apartment to give the phone a chance to ring.
“Do you think I should call?” I asked Ted.
“What for? When she’s read it, she’ll call you.”
“But can it hurt to call? Just remind her that it’s there? See how it’s coming along? Maybe she has questions.”
“Did you put your number on the title page?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then, she’ll call you.”
“What if she misplaced the title page? I think I should call. Do you think I should call?”
“All right. Go ahead and call.”
“But they say not to call. That and the SASE. They’re like the rules of agents.”
“You think if she loves it, she’s going to throw it out because you called?”
“If she hasn’t started it, maybe she’ll send it back. Maybe she’ll think I’m too much trouble.”
“Don’t call then.”
On December 23, I sat down at my desk with a cup of coffee and a square of crumb cake. I would be brief and nonchalant. I would not be a bother. I would merely inquire in a businesslike fashion as to the status of my manuscript.
“This is Margaret Snyder,” I said, presumably to the girl with the long brown hair. “I left my manuscript for Heather Mendelson Blake earlier this month?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said. It was impossible to tell by this whether she remembered me or whether she was just politely marking time until I committed myself to some specific piece of business.
“I don’t want to bother her, but I was just wondering if someone, maybe you, or … someone, could tell me if she’s had a chance to read it.”
“Hang on a minute.”
I hung on for more than a minute, allowing me ample time to drop several chunks of sugar and butter from my crumb cake into my lap. As I began to ease my napkin out from under my coffee cup without setting the receiver down, a voice I didn’t recognize came on the line. “Hello?”
“Hello?”
“This is Heather.”
“Oh, hello!” I sat up straighter, and in doing so, dislodged the napkin too abruptly. The cup overturned. “This is Margaret Snyder,” I said, snapping to my feet and clamping the tail of my shirt against the edge of the desk to stanch the rushing spill.
“Yes?”
“I’m calling … well, I know I’m not supposed to call, but I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind. I mean, I just wanted to make sure you got my manuscript.” The coffee was headed now in two general directions, west toward my laptop and south toward the household ledger. I released the dam I’d constructed of my shirt and dragged my computer to safety. “I could easily get you another copy,” I said. “It would just take me a couple of hours to print and then I could run it right over. I live very near. Of course, I don’t know how long you’re planning to be in your office with the holidays and all.”
“What did you say your name was?”
I repeated this information and slid my legal pad under the stream of coffee that was now running onto the carpet. “Sally Sternforth told me you might be interested,” I added helpfully.
“Oh, yes, I have to thank Sally for the referral,” she said. “I’ll tell you, I’ve only gotten through the first few pages. You know, with the holidays and all.”
“Yes, I know you must be busy,” I managed.
“But it looks first-rate. That opening scene,” I heard paper rustling, “with the grass. Just lovely.”
“Thank you,” I said. “First-rate. Just lovely,” I scribbled on a blank page of the ledger. I wanted to be able to report her precise words to Ted. “I’m hoping,” I continued aloud, “that the allusion to Gatsby works sort of as an undercurrent, almost at a subconscious level, because I don’t think Lexie is really …”
“Right, right,” she interrupted. “Exactly. Anyway, I have to go to London just after New Year’s, so I won’t be able to get to it until after that.”
“After New Year’s is fine,” I assured her. “After New Year’s is wonderful. Just wonderful.”
My hand was shaking as I replaced the receiver and I’d forgotten to wish Heather Mendelson Blake a happy holiday and a good trip. It was happening. My novel was on its way to being published. I’d dreamed and despaired of it; I’d worked around and toward it; I’d strained my marriage, tarnished my relationship with Simon, given up a good job and lost a bad one for it. Worst of all, I’d nearly—it still made my breath shallow to think of it—done irrevocable damage to my dearest friend for its sake. But all of that was over now. This post-New Year’s business was a nuisance: I would have to tell Letty to push back a bit the date on which we could expect to see money. But only by a couple of weeks. We were saved.
Immediately, I called Ted and was forced to leave a breathless message on his machine. “She says its first-rate!” I announced. “Ted, isn’t this unbelievable? It’s really happening! Heather Mendelson Blake likes my book! She likes the grass!”
While I sponged the coffee off the carpet, I called Letty and left a similar message on her cell phone. I called Simon, my parents, Warren, Sally, Neil, and several teacher friends, leaving versions of this message all over Los Angeles, D.C., and New York. I e-mailed Brooke in London. The faint brown stain that remained after my efforts to clean up the spilled coffee would function as a souvenir. When we had people over, I could point to it and say, “That happened the day the process of publishing my novel began.”
When I could think of no one else to tell, I burst from the apartment and ran down the stairs. I had no purpose other than to feel the cold, fresh air on my face, and to walk the city streets, full of other people—a woman pulling a wire handcart; a man in a camouflage-patterned parka; a cab driver, peeing into a bottle; a man in a cashmere coat, the skirt flipping back in the wind; a girl applying lipstick; a mother with a little boy on each hand, one hanging back to examine the cab driver and his bottle—who belonged there, as I finally felt I did. I nodded to people as I passed them. I was worth their notice now.
Giddy, I wandered down Sixth Avenue, feeling as if a cocoon that had grayed and muffled my days had fallen away, leaving my vision clear and my skin tender and new. I plunged through the gourmet groceries, Balducci’s and Jefferson Market, and bought a pomegranate, three limes, and a wedge of Parmesan for their colors alone. I stood on the corner of Eighth Street and breathed in the incense. In the drugstore, I spread a ginger-scented lotion on my hands. I wanted to exult in all of it, to dunk myself in these few blocks, to claim them. My fancy foodstores, my overpriced pharmacy, my quaint hardware store, my city. I may even have hummed a few bars of “New York, New York.” After gulping an achingly sweet hot chocolate at a window table in a corner restaurant, I skipped across the street to the library, just to sit again at the table where I’d worked the summer before. I stroked the woodgrained Formica gently with my fingertips. I was a different person now.
Michael and I were both paid the week after I diverted the funds for the rushes to Steve Carlson and, as I’d promised myself, I sent Wang Ho a check from our own account. It was difficult to part with that money, however. The next semester’s tuition installment was due January 1 along with another house payment. Housing and education were obviously more important than medieval floor covering. Also, Ofelia clearly deserved a Christmas bonus. I told Jeanette that I was troubled by the idea of the museum crowd stuffing its collective faces with special fungi, while my nanny had had to borrow from loan sharks when her daughter fell off a slide and broke her arm.
“But, Letty,” Jeanette said, “you’re not seeing the bigger picture. This is a benefit, a charity event. With the money it’ll raise, the museum will be able to display pieces that people otherwise would never see and enjoy. This event is going to enrich the city in a way that’s almost incalculable. I mean, how do you measure the effect of a work of art on a child? Yes, access to medical care is important, but if your nanny’s daughter spends an afternoon with a Delacroix or a Frank Stella, who knows how it’ll inspire her, how it will change her very way of looking at the world around her?” She took a sip of her macchiato and shook her head. “That’s what I love about this job. We’re helping to make the world a better place.”
That afternoon, with the erasable pen, I changed a payment for cocktail napkins printed with scenes from the unicorn tapestry to cash and presented the bills to Ofelia in an envelope I helped the kids decorate by cutting designs in raw potatoes and inking them on stamp pads purchased for event consultant purposes by J. Peabody and Associates.
Then, for a period of several days around Christmas, I was granted a respite from what had become relentless calls and letters from contractors who hinted at Mafia connections, credit card companies who helpfully suggested that I borrow from other credit card companies, and Hazel Green, the landscape architect, who wept.
We bought the children Christmas gifts. It seemed too cruel and strange, too much an admission that nothing was as we had expected, to ask them to do without. Whatever ground I’d gained with my economies—withdrawing Ivy from Toning for Tots, filling Jeanette’s tank with regular gas, using baking soda to brush our teeth—was sucked away in the vacuum of the holidays.
The Christmas reprieve ended on January 2, when the world seemed resolved to collect what was owed. The banks foreclosure notice arrived that day, as did a request for “outstanding payment” from Marlo’s school. “Perhaps,” they diplomatically suggested, we’d “misplaced” the most recent balance statement in the “holiday chaos.” They were “happy” to enclose a duplicate. They were also willing, they said, to “work with us to meet this obligation.” I asked to meet with the headmistress.
“Mrs. MacMillan,” Mrs. Drake said, coming around her desk with her hand outstretched. I was ashamed of the vanity of clear nail polish—even though it was only a brand available in drugstores and I’d applied it myself—when I took that large competent hand. Its masculine nails were clipped, not even filed.
“I wanted to talk to you,” I said, when I was seated in the visitor’s chair, “about this.” I took the letter from my purse and held it out to her.
She didn’t bother to read it. She knew our case. “We’re so pleased,” she said, “to have Marlo as a student. She’s just the sort of girl, I believe,” she looked at me significantly here, knowing that what she thought mattered to me, “will truly benefit from the creative vision we offer here at Wheatley.”
They did not like to lose students once the year was under way. They counted on our tuition.
“I believe so, too,” I said fervently “We’ve been very happy so far.”
“We were not made aware of any financial difficulty when you applied to us.”
“No, you wouldn’t have been. I mean, there wasn’t any then. It’s just …” I paused. As had been the case so many times in the past few months, I had no explanation for why we could not pay a bill that we seemed obviously able to afford. Was it because we’d purchased the more mature fruit trees? Or was it because we’d installed a retro showerhead and a pedestal sink? Or was it because we’d given too many bottles of wine with attractive labels and recognizable names to those who’d vouched for Michael’s expertise to the museum’s hiring committee? Yes, all of these expenditures were extravagant, but none seemed particularly over-the-top. We had not, for instance, given Dom Pérignon, wired an outdoor sound system, or lined the shower with slate. Michael drove a Saab, not a Mercedes. We’d not even bought jewelry, aside from my engagement ring, which, honestly, was embarrassingly overdue and sported only a very modest sapphire. Unless the light was right, you could barely see it.
“Your husband is still at the Otis?” Mrs. Drake asked.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. I hoped we could address this,” I gestured subtly toward the folded letter that now lay on the desk between us, “creatively.”
“Certainly.” Mrs. Drake nodded and opened her palms upward, expansively, as if inviting me to lay my idea in them. “You know, we always encourage our students to think outside the box.”
“Let’s hope it rubs off on the parents.” My response wasn’t particularly amusing but I may have giggled. The headmistress merely waited, a technique she must have found useful in working with preadolescents. I continued, soberly, “I have, actually, recently become an events consultant. I work with J. Peabody and Associates. I’m one of the associates.”
Margaret had laughed at this, but Mrs. Drake did not. Perhaps I’d mistimed my delivery. “Anyway, I thought we could do some kind of event for Wheatley at cost. I’m sure the Otis would donate their plaza. I’ve told the new director quite a bit about you—although, of course, he knows Wheatley by reputation. He has a daughter in sixth grade. In D.C. So they’d be looking for an appropriate school.” I had done no such thing. I didn’t even know if the director had children of any age.
The headmistress nodded. “Well, thank you. We’d be quite interested in a project like that. We do expect our parents to help out around here to the best of their abilities. Tuition doesn’t cover nearly as much of the cost of running a school as people think.”
“Oh, I know. I know,” I said sympathetically. “And I know we’d have to work out the details, but, in principle, you would consider something like that in lieu of, say, a semester’s tuition?”
“In lieu of tuition? No.” Mrs. Drake sat back in her chair and laced her fingers together so that her hands formed a meaty ball on the desk. “No, I’m afraid we couldn’t do that.” She rose, signaling the end of our meeting. “We can only accept a donation such as the type you’re suggesting if it comes strictly from the heart,” she said, placing a hand on her chest, “with no strings attached. Otherwise, you know, it wouldn’t be fair to the others who can’t afford to be so generous.”
I stood on cue. I’d been out of the box long enough for one day.
“We would certainly be interested in an event like the one you proposed, however,” she said brightly, opening the door. She handed me the dunning letter I’d left on her desk. “You need to keep a copy of this,” she said. “Perhaps a payment plan would be helpful. Shall I ask Christie to set up a meeting for you with our business office?”
I drove by the bank on my way home, but bankers, I knew, would not accept a party in place of a house payment.
The school and the house were not the only things that did not truly belong to us. On January 12, the contractor threatened to pull our kitchen cupboards out. “I’d sooner use ’em in my own place,” he said, “than let you keep ‘em. Even though that glass is for idiots. Ever heard of earthquakes, lady?” “It’s Letty,” I said. Although I understood his frustration, I did not appreciate that tone from a man for whom I’d squeezed blood oranges for midmorning refreshment. “And take the damn cupboards,” I said. He did not want the cupboards. He wanted cash.
The demands came incessantly now, from all directions. “Don’t answer it!” Michael shouted and clamped a pillow over his head whenever the phone rang. I’d started to grind my teeth in my sleep and woke every morning with a headache. We ate only puffed rice now for breakfast, purchased from a wholesale company in plastic bags so large they had to be stored in the garage. When Noah complained that he missed his Tom and Jerry bowl, I made him eat his cereal dry
The calls grew more angry, the weeping, both Hazel’s and mine, more hysterical. With Margaret’s advance in mind, I assured everyone that by the end of the month I could pay them all, but they all said, “Too late,” even Ramon, who stood outside our kitchen window one morning cursing us in Spanish. That was the day Jeanette called to announce triumphantly that she’d secured the Commedia della Luna to entertain at the museum party. “A private party is not something they normally do, which is the best part,” she said. “They’re only doing it for us because my college roommates husband is their business manager. And the other best part is that it’s not going to be formal or on a stage or anything. I mean, they’ll have their tent with the trapeze and all that, but they’ll also mingle with the guests, while they’re eating fire and doing those great contortionist tricks and standing on each other’s heads. It’ll be fantastic! Very Brueghel.”
“Is that medieval?” I asked.
“Oh, those dates are fluid—late Middle Ages, Renaissance, early Modern, who’s to say when one period ends and another begins? Listen, though. We’ve got to pay them everything up front, and this is going to be a little more than the museum wanted to spend on entertainment. I want you to talk them into it.”
“Jeanette, I can’t—” She cut me off.
“Listen, Letty, they really like you over there and they trust your judgment. If you approach them, they’ll understand that we’re suggesting this to help them, to give them an event everyone’ll be gushing over for years. Right now, their image is a little stodgy. You can remind them of that, but they know it. People feel they have money, but they don’t know how to spend it. You know what I mean? Tell them that something like this could really change that impression.”
I quailed at the responsibility. I was an errand runner, a check writer, an occasional mushroom-taster. I had no experience in sales. “But why don’t you tell them? Listen to yourself—you’re very convincing.”
“If I go to them about this, they’ll just think I’m after publicity for my company, and, whoa, guilty as charged over here. I mean, think how this is going to sound in L.A. Magazine. Think of the pictures! The masks! The saturated colors! Maybe we could get Vanity Fair to cover it. Anyway, they’re much more likely to believe you’re looking out for them, because of your connection to Michael. It’s not going to be difficult, Letty. People are dying to be told that it’s in their interest to spend money.”
As Jeanette had predicted, it wasn’t difficult to convince the Otis’s event planning committee that this was the best use of even more money than they’d originally intended to pay. Especially when I mentioned the Brueghelness of it all. They wired forty thousand dollars to J. Peabody and Associates’ entertainment account the following day.
It was indeed a large sum. Enough to make one question one’s choice of career, no matter what one was doing, as long as it wasn’t swallowing swords. Not enough, of course, to pay everything we owed, but more than enough to pay all those who were clamoring for signs of good faith.
I called the Commedia contact to arrange to transfer the funds to them. Jeanette, it turned out, had been misinformed. For an entity as trustworthy as the Otis, the group would accept a small deposit and collect the remainder on the night of the party.
I was dialing Jeanette to clear up the confusion and ask whether we should return the Otis’s money until it was needed, when the call-waiting blips sounded on the line.
“I have some people who want to look at your house,” Peri said. “Can I show it tomorrow? They’re not expecting any of the work to be finished,” she added, “but you might want to pick up a little.”
“Tomorrow?” Children’s books were strewn like colorful paving stone’s across the living room floor. I collected them as I listened to Peri.
“It’s a young couple from Chicago,” she was saying. “She’s very up-and-coming with Huebner—you know, ‘Get Drunk on Life.’ ” She hummed a few notes of the jingle. Huebner had created a stylish, edgy ad campaign for bottled water, famous for featuring real homeless people from Santa Monica. “They want her out here yesterday, so they’re prepared to move fast. You’re not going to get your price, though. Don’t expect it.”
I felt dizzy, as if I were hyperventilating, though my breathing was slow. I walked around the room with a fistful of Madelines and Curious Georges. There were no bookcases on which to shelve them. “Tomorrow?” I said again. The humiliation of admitting that we didn’t belong in this house made my tongue thick. Others were up-and-coming. We were down-and-going. Why hadn’t Michael or I turned out to be the sort of people Huebner wanted here yesterday?
Although, obviously, selling the house, slipping out of the onerous monthly payments and the improvements suspended at stages that made daily life miserable, would be a relief, it was, I recognized now that it seemed possible, the last thing I wanted to do. This house, its neighborhood, even the renovations we’d begun, the paint colors we’d chosen, and the bathroom fixtures we’d installed, made us the people I wanted us to be. With these accoutrements, we had clearly succeeded in life. Without them, we had failed. It was as simple as that. When we sold this house, everyone—Brad and Zoe, Duncan and Hollis, my parents, Jeanette, Lottie, even Ofelia—would know that we were not the sort of people we were supposed to be.
“I’m sorry, Peri,” I said. “I should have called you. I’ve changed my mind.”
“You mean you don’t want to sell?” She sounded slightly exasperated.
“No. I mean, yes, we don’t want to. Not just now.”
Peri blew her breath out loudly to make clear to me that her work was hard and I was not making it any easier. “Well, I wish you’d called,” she said. “But I have to say, I think you’re doing the right thing. I’d hate to see you lose money.”
I have never been a gambler. Michael and I once spent a weekend in Las Vegas; we won three hundred dollars and I hated it, hated the actual winning. It felt wrong, like cheating. The very sensation that delighted everyone else—getting away with something—appalled me. Honestly, before we desperately needed the money, were I to have won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, I would have wanted to give it back. Why should I have what others did not? Why should I get lucky?
But I didn’t believe our being in this house was a matter of luck at all. We were smart; we were sophisticated; we were tolerant of other cultures; and, especially now that the Explorer had been repossessed, we trod lightly on the earth. Michael, it was true, had smoked, but only for a couple of years in college. I wasn’t flashy. I didn’t demand or even desire luxury. But I did want what was appropriate for our station in life. We didn’t belong in a two-bedroom apartment in Palms, with lipstick ground into the carpeting and hollow closet doors that fell off their tracks and freeway noise through the aluminum frame windows. We didn’t belong in a split-level way off in the Valley with do-it-yourself kitchen cupboards from a building supply warehouse chain store. And we didn’t belong in a ranch in Glendale with a cement patio. I didn’t look down on people who lived in those places. I was sure they were perfectly nice, decent human beings. I had been one of them for years. But I wanted more. I believed, sincerely believed, we deserved more.
And that is the only way I can explain why I did not call Jeanette nor the museum to inform them that a large amount of money would in fact not be required until February 14. Instead, I took that money, as easily as I’d taken the previous sums. I wrote a check to the Commedia della Luna in erasable ink, and once Jeanette had signed it, I paid it to the order of me. Of course, I knew it was dishonest. The interest on that money belonged to the museum, or perhaps to Jeanette, if she could convince the museum to see it that way. That interest, however, was all I ever intended to deprive them of. I believed I had arranged for the museum to grant me only a short-term loan. Long before February 14, Margaret would have sent me her advance and I would replace the money as secretly as I’d taken it.