Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“I get it, if that’s what you mean.”

“But you don’t accept it?”

“It’s gone and done.”

“I want you to understand the right of it.”

“If you’re satisfied, then O.K.”

“It’s for your sake, not my own, that I did what I did. Don’t you understand that at your age you face a temptation to squander this money?”

“Sure.”

“I’m protecting you from that.”

“But if it’s my money?”

“You nevertheless should have the benefit of my guardianship, to save you from something which is not for your own good.”

“Everybody squanders money. You do.”

“That is true.”

“Why not me?”

“You assume no responsibility... As you say, the whole world squanders money, and indeed whole industries rest on the assumption that mankind will indulge any luxury it can pay for. But mankind assumes its own responsibility. You, as a minor, are unable to assume such responsibility. Who sees that you eat is not you, but I. And so long as I have responsibility, I demand authority.”

“Well, you’ve got it.”

“I want you to think this thing over.”

“Don’t worry, I have.”

“It’s all in the bank, Jack, I’d like you to know that, with every cent of interest, as compounded.”

“Well, I never thought you’d steal it.”

“Now what shall I do with it?”

“It’s your responsibility. Suppose you say.”

“Do you know what an investment is?”

“We had it in school. Six per cent? Like that?”

“Something like that.”

He went over it, one thing at a time, one word at a time, and explained the different kinds of investments. Then he showed me how he’d worked the thing out: We’d buy so and so much stock, so I’d get regular dividends; so and so much bonds, so I’d cut coupons the months I didn’t get checks from stock, and so and so much savings, so I’d always have cash. All in all, it meant I’d have about twenty dollars a month coming in, which seemed to make sense, I had to admit. “Well, Dad, I guess that’s all right.”

“Then it’s agreeable to you I go ahead?”

“Just what do you do?”

“First, I’ll see Sam Shreve, who handles my brokerage account, and have him buy in this list, at favorable times. For some time there’s been a bull market, but it goes off now and then, and you’ll have to give him time to buy on off days. Then, we’ll put the stock away, in my box. The dividend checks will come to you direct, and I’ll take off the court orders from your account so you can spend your income as you please. On a boy’s current expenditures I don’t believe parents should be too inquisitive. Your clothes, subsistence, school expenses, and so on, will be paid for by myself — a light burden, and I welcome it. Your dividends will be yours as spending money.”

“That sounds all right.”

“It’s the best I could work out—”

“I’ve got the idea, and from now on I’ll shut up.”

“Now I think we’re progressing.”

One of the main things in my life, from then on, was the new car I had. Up to then I’d been a guy, fourteen going on fifteen, overgrown maybe, with now and then a pal that I went around with like Denny, or a friend that really meant something like Miss Eleanor. But as soon as I got this thing I was the most popular guy on earth. Girls in school that I’d never paid any attention to, to say nothing of their brothers, all acted like they were my long-lost relations, and like I wanted nothing better than to haul them wherever they were going, and then turn around and haul them back. And they had the funniest idea it was their car too. They just took it for granted if they wanted to use it, maybe overnight, I’d just hand the key right over. I give you one guess how I fell for that. Then Nancy and Sheila, that had never taken any interest in where I was going, all of a sudden found a million things I ought to be doing with the car, and people I ought to be taking somewhere, specially them. On that, I’ve got to say for him, the Old Man put his foot down. He said if they wanted a taxi they could call one. And then, right there beside me so often I didn’t know how it happened, was Margaret.

I guess she was fairly good-looking, though her looks never did anything to me. She was dark-haired, with white skin, pink cheeks, and a stocky little shape, that got better as she got older and taller and slimmer. She had shiny black eyes that hardly ever looked right at you, though that wasn’t because she was shifty-eyed or anything like that. It was because she was always looking at something imaginary, like some new sofa she’d be telling you about, with a little set smile on her face, like she’d be nice about it till you got in a suitably admiring frame of mind. I guess that maybe was the key to her, and why I died around her so easy. Her people, I think I said, had the Cartaret Hotel, and it wasn’t enough for them they’d sign in a guest, quote him four dollars for a room with bath, and tell him the main dining room opened at six, until then tea in the Peggy Stewart Room. They had to let him know they were doing him up pretty nice to let him stay there at all, because Washington and Hamilton and Burr and God knows who-all had stayed there, and if he was good they’d let him look in the Dolly Madison Room, where all the old furniture was, and the Cartaret Gallery, with the portraits, and the Colonial Hearth, with its copper. And Margaret, she had that in her, too. She’d let you hear her play. I don’t think, up to the time she was booked out with me, that it had ever occurred to her that letting somebody hear her play wasn’t the biggest favor in the world she could do them, or that letting people look at the sofas and the paintings and the pots wasn’t the biggest favor the family could do. They were all born smug, her father, with the cutaway coat he always wore, and her mother, who was more of a manager type, awful cold. That is, all except little Helen. She was the cutest thing I had ever seen, and at Margaret’s parties, that seemed to come oftener than tests in school, I’d get off with her, and feed her ice cream.

Then, after Margaret started playing for me, an awful thing happened to her. Until then, as I’ve said, it hadn’t occurred to her that her playing wasn’t the most wonderful thing in the world. But then she’d look in the paper, and there I’d be with a picture of me in the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, and two thirds of the notice given to me, and there she’d be, down with the acrobats and the trained seals, with two lines about being “promising,” and no picture. From then on, I think she just had to show me. After my voice broke, of course that got my picture out of the paper, but it didn’t get hers in. She played, just the same. About every week and a half Sheila would tell me Margaret was “appearing” somewhere, and I really should go. So I’d take her. One time it would be a woman’s club in Towson, another time some Peabody thing, and each of those, so far as the papers went, would be let out with three lines. But the little smile was there. What we talked about, going and coming from those places, I don’t know, and I’ve racked my brains to remember, because after what happened it seemed to me I should. I can’t.

Her parties in the wintertime were given in what was called the Walnut Room, which was just off the lobby, and had been the bar before 1920. In the summer they were given out on the lawn, at the side of the hotel, under the maples. I’ve got to admit, whether it was the afternoon things they gave when we were younger, or the night parties they put on later, they were pretty nice. At first the Rocco Trio, then later the Woodberry Jazzbabies, made the music, and we all had a good time, even when Margaret consented to play. While she was banging out Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, I was feeding America’s Sweetheart No. 1.