Love and Money

By Kitty Burns Florey

  On a hot August day in 1956 in Greenwich Village. Tessa Castle, a struggling jazz singer with a traumatic past, opens her mailbox one day to find an envelope containing a wad of fifty-dollar bills, sent by an anonymous benefactor. Henry Wood, who fell in love with Tessa at first sight when she sang at hi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raven
• Release date: Aug 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781087915913

Kitty Burns Florey

Kitty Burns Florey is the author of twelve novels, including Solos, Souvenir of Cold Springs, Vigil for a Stranger, and, most recently, the historical novels The Writing Master and its sequel, Amity Street. Her two nonfiction books, Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences, and Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, were best sellers. She has also published many short stories and essays. She has lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, since 2012.

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LOVE AND MONEY

Kitty Burns Florey

Raven’s Eye Publishing

Amherst

2021

Copyright © 2022 by Kitty Burns Florey

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Raven’s Eye Publishing

Amherst MA 01002

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, or institutions is entirely coincidental.

Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

Love and Money / Kitty Burns Florey -- 1st ed.

ISBN 978-1-087915678

ALSO BY KITTY BURNS FLOREY

FICTION

Amity Street

The Writing Master

Solos

Souvenir of Cold Springs

The Sleep Specialist

Five Questions

Vigil for a Stranger

Duet

Real Life

The Garden Path

Chez Cordelia

Family Matters

NONFICTION

Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting

Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and

Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences

With thanks to Katherine Florey, Jill Franks,

Sara Kane, Karen Kleinerman, Salvatore Macchia,

Diane Mintz, and Pat O’Donnell.

LOVE AND MONEY

CHAPTER ONE

Your eyes are like flowers. It was the most romantic thing anyone ever said to me."

Really.

Tessa was struggling to extract a thick brown envelope from her mailbox, along with Charm magazine and two smaller envelopes that, with a sinking heart, she knew contained overdue bills.

Robin fluffed up her hair in the vestibule mirror. Wasn’t that sweet? Don’t you think it means he’s serious about me?

I don’t get it. Damn, the third notice from Con Edison. Probably going to shut off her electricity. And where would she be without the Yankee games on the radio?

You don’t get what?

Tessa had run into Robin in the lobby, Robin returning from work, Tessa from another doomed audition. Lately none of her auditions had gone well. She was singing badly. It was all about the bills, the bloody bills piling up. And more: the rent due, the ten pounds she had gained, the ladders in every pair of stockings she owned, the rotten music she kept hearing on the radio. You ain’t nothing but a hound dog. Be-bop-a-lula, whatever that might mean. For every Canadian sunset there was a Heartbreak Hotel.

The world was passing her by. She was a nobody at age thirty-two. A failure, a has-been, surprised that she could sing at all, that when she opened her mouth a snarl wasn’t released, or a sob.

Flowers. She slammed her mailbox shut, opened the door and jabbed the elevator button. Jabbed it again, savagely. The misnamed Mr. Rush was probably taking a cigarette break on the roof. What kind of flowers? Your eyes are like poinsettias? Petunias? Dandelions? He could have been more specific.

Robin never laughed at Tessa’s wisecracks. Oh well, Tessa thought. Maybe they’re not funny. Obviously, he meant something like violets, Robin said. Or forget-me-nots. Because my eyes are blue.

Then he should have said so. I wouldn’t give him the time of day, personally.

The door to the elevator opened and they stepped in. Mr. Rush hunched on his stool, morose, nicotine-stained, dandruffy. An I LIKE IKE button was attached to his left suspender.

Robin said, Hi there, Mr. Rush. How are you today?

He raised his head a fraction of an inch, to about the level of her breasts. Can’t complain.

Well, that’s awfully good to hear.

Except for the arthritis. He held out a clawlike, hairy hand. Got the swelling and the pain, just like my father did.

Oh dear, Robin said. That must be unpleasant.

Sure is.

Tessa guessed Mr. Rush was not even sixty, but for some reason acting the geezer seemed to gratify him. A toad, she thought. More than anything else, he resembled a toad. When she looked at him, Tessa remembered one toad in particular that she had seen when she was a kid: a brown one the size of a ham sandwich in her father’s garden, under a tomato plant. At first she had been afraid, she’d never seen a toad so big and so warty, but when she looked closely, the thing had begun to seem, in its way, attractive. Intricate markings, and a sort of serene contemplativeness about it. Nothing, in fact, like creepy old Mr. Rush.

I hope you’ve seen a doctor about it, Robin said solicitously—ever the nurse.

The arthritis is old news, my dear. Old news. Nothing to be done for it.

Could we just go?

Robin looked at Tessa and made her annoyed sound, a sort of gasp through her nose. Mr. Rush rested his gaze balefully on Tessa’s face. Then, with the usual ominous creaking of gears, the elevator lurched upward.

Tessa pushed her sunglasses up on her head and sneaked a look at the brown envelope: her name and address, printed neatly. No return address. She wanted to open it, but not in front of Robin and Mr. Rush. It would not be good news, that was a given. But she couldn’t suppress the idea that it would be something. In her life of nothingness, something had turned up, in a plain brown wrapper. She tucked it into Charm—world’s most annoying magazine, an annual subscription courtesy of her sister Joanne. On the cover a model in a low-cut dress was posed on a terrace gazing scornfully out at the view.

The elevator squealed to a stop—a raucous D-flat —and the door opened. Fourth floor, ladies.

So long, Mr. Rush. Hope you’ll be feeling better, Robin chirped, and when the door had closed again, she said to Tessa, You should be nicer to that poor man.

You shouldn’t suck up to everybody.

Don’t you feel sorry for him?

I don’t see why I should. He sits down all day. He gets to smoke on the job. He does substandard work but he never gets fired. A crummy building like this, he should be glad Baloney still pays to have an elevator operator.

Oh, Tessa, you’re so crabby. You need a boyfriend.

Definitely. Someone who’ll tell me my eyes are like flowers.

Well, your eyes are brown, so he probably wouldn’t tell you that. But somebody who’d say something else, just as nice.

Your eyes are like Hershey bars. The knobs on the radio. Dog poop.

Robin frowned. It was impossible to make her laugh. Why did she even try? Well, then, Robin said. What’s the most romantic thing a man ever said to you?

Oh, please.

No, I mean it. Come on, Tess, don’t be such a grouch.

Tessa turned to look at Robin: wistful, conciliatory, demure as a minuet. Blue eyes, blue uniform, blue plastic button earrings. Someone had once told Robin that women with blue eyes should wear a lot of blue. She could have bought a uniform in any color, but she chose sky-blue, of course. Tessa would have liked Robin better if she were less predictable, or if she traded in her blue eyes and tiny waist for a higher IQ. Then she immediately felt bad for being so petty and envious and mean. Why take things out on a sad little person like Robin? All she thought about was men—what kind of a life was that? And, despite her floral eyes and pink, hopeful prettiness, she couldn’t seem to snag one.

Tessa pulled her key out of her purse. I fell in love with you at my wedding.

What? Robin wrinkled her nose, which lifted her upper lip and exposed her front teeth.

I fell in love with you at my wedding.

Somebody said that to you? What kind of thing is that to say to somebody? It’s ridiculous.

Why had she told that to Robin? To get rid of her so she could get away—go inside, make herself a drink, flop in a chair, and open her strange envelope. She wished she hadn’t said it. Now it would be on her mind.

It might be ridiculous, but you can’t say it’s not romantic. Tessa unlocked her door. I gotta go, Robin. I really do. I’m dead.

Her apartment was dim, stuffy, peaceful. God, what a relief to be home. The place wasn’t so great, with its alligatored woodwork and grubby wallpaper, scuffed floors, windows unwashed for decades, the kitchen no bigger than a bathroom, the bathroom unspeakable. But walking in the door every day and locking it behind her was like entering a sanctuary, her own personal asylum—dusty, cluttered, but safe. Full of familiar objects: the enameled kitchen table, the green plates (Dish Night at the movies in 1934), the dog-and-cat salt-and-pepper shakers (Joanne’s house-warming gift), the decrepit piano (free from the music school down the street), the bookcase stuffed with nineteenth-century novels, the iron bed with its pink bedspread, her grandmother’s lace curtains, the five jars of Plochman’s Mustard lined up on the shelf, the maple desk she’d found on the street….

Safe safe safe. And was it getting just a little bit boring?

Tessa turned on the fan, kicked off her shoes, washed her face, brushed her hair, looked in the mirror: her eyes, now that she noticed, were indeed the color of a pile of fresh dog poop. Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes, I’ll never love blue eyes again. Rosemary Clooney had made a hit out of that a few years back. A decent singer with terrible taste in songs. Tessa ran her fingers over her scar, as she often did: she had come to like its silvery luster, the silky slash standing out against her cheek.

If you don’t like it, buddy, you can just buzz off. She said this, silently, to no one in particular. Then she made herself a whiskey and soda, popped in some ice cubes—how long, O Lord, how long before they turn off the electricity?—and found her pack of Pall Malls. The mail was spread out on the kitchen table. Charm, with its mystery bulge. The envelope from Con Ed, another from Macy’s.

She lit a cigarette and opened the bills. As expected. Third notice, final notice. Threats. Collection agency. Tar and feathers. Death by firing squad. She was also three months behind on the rent and owed her sister Marie a hundred dollars, two more things she didn’t want to think about. To pay Berta, her voice coach, last time, she’d eaten mostly rice and ketchup and canned peas for dinner all week, and then broke it to Berta that she could no longer afford her: hugs, tears. She’d hoped Berta would offer a reduced rate, because Tessa was so gifted, Tessa was her darling, Tessa was—but not. Then, at the audition (toothpaste) she knew she hadn’t sounded excited enough about the peppermint taste and the way it could make your choppers shine. Perkier, Miss Castle. More—what?—conviction, perhaps? We’ll call you.

Why didn’t she have a backup career? Something that didn’t involve auditions. A librarian in a big, clean, quiet room that smelled of books, telling people to hush, recommending Victorian novels, smiling at the old ladies with their Agatha Christies and the little tots with their Doctor Dolittles. Miss Castellino, efficient beyond belief, adored by all, and rewarded for her sterling work with a modest but reliable paycheck every single goddam week. What a thought.

She carried the drink to her favorite spot, by the window. The chair had been her father’s: Frank’s chair. In better days, she’d had it slip-covered in a subtle, soothing print Frank would have disliked but she loved, dark green vines on light gray. She put her feet up on the matching ottoman, which was getting threadbare. The whole apartment was threadbare, as was her dress—her good-luck plaid. The dress was also too tight.

She undid her belt, took a long swallow of her drink, and had a few drags on her cigarette while she studied the envelope: a buff manila one, gummed shut, then Scotch-taped. She studied the printing on the white label, looked at the eight cents’ worth of stamps, the New York City postmark. When she squeezed it, it felt like a book. A very small book. But also not like a book. It felt like—oh, hell, Tessa, just open the damn thing.

She ripped it open: something was wrapped in white tissue paper. When the paper fell away, she realized she was holding a stack of fifty-dollar bills with a rubber band around it. No note, no anything, just—she counted—twenty fifties. She counted them again. She closed her eyes and multiplied. A thousand dollars. She had received an envelope in the mail containing a thousand dollars wrapped in white tissue paper.

What?

Tessa stared out at the building across the way: windows, a scraggly plant, the hot white sky over MacDougal Street. Outside, the hard world. So many things she didn’t let herself think about. But this—this was just money. Wasn’t it? Money. Money has no strings. Money has no history. Money has no funny lines, no memory, no music, no rejection, no voice. No knife, no gun. Money is not dangerous.

She put her hand over her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream. Money! Money! Her lap was full of money! Well, be-bop-a-lula! She took her hand away and began to laugh.

ba

All day long, at odd moments at Mrs. Potter’s, Robin had thought about her painting. She had worked on it the night before until she was too tired to see the numbers. She planned to sit down with it as soon as she got home. The prospect made her happy.

But running into Tessa had put a dent in her mood. Your eyes are like flowers, Marty had said Saturday night when he dropped her off at the door. She’d hoped he would come upstairs, but he said he had to get to bed at a decent hour so he could be up early. She knew he kept irregular hours, that his profession called on him to do all kinds of things—not that he ever told her what, really. I’ve got to be on the road at six-thirty. And then he kissed her gently and held her face between his hands and said, Your eyes are like flowers.

Except for Good night, Robin, it was the last thing he had said to her. That was Saturday. It was now Thursday, and he hadn’t called. Maybe he’d never call. Maybe he’d always be nothing but a memory, a dream lover, someone Tessa Castellino could make wisecracks about.

Well. Just forget it, Robin. Think of all the nice things. Think about your painting. The red roofs, the way they graduated in color, lighter at the top, then darker, as if the sun was low in the sky, shining its last rays on them.

She was a sweaty mess. Before she did anything, she needed a bath. Another nice thing. She turned on the water, poured in a capful of gardenia oil, pulled off her garter belt and her white stockings, tossed her uniform and underwear into the hamper. She could no longer take a bath without thinking about Mrs. Potter: when Robin slid the sponge over her drooping breasts, Mrs. Potter always leaned back, smiled, closed her eyes in contentment. Mmmm, she would say, as if she was hearing music in her head.

Robin knew how the old lady felt. A bath always made her feel better too. She let the water rise to the top of her bent knees, then switched off the faucets with her big toe. She needed a pedicure. Tomorrow after work in case he called and asked her out for Saturday night? Or could it go another week? Better wait. She could use the two dollars to buy a new lipstick instead. A clear, shell-like pink, or maybe a coral. She would wear her blue-gray silk. They would have dinner, perhaps go dancing afterward or see a movie, he’d drive her home, they would kiss, she’d ask him up….

She looked down at her clean naked self stretched out in the water. This was the body Marty would see: slim, white, long-legged, pink-nippled. She tried to picture the scene, but the mechanics got in the way—the removal of underclothing, the smell of alien skin, the awkwardness of what goes where. That and a kind of disgust. She had to turn her thoughts away.

But she had been saving her virginity for too long. She was twenty-seven and the only virgin she knew, if her girlfriends were telling the truth. Sometimes she was tempted to just be done with it, say yes to the next groping, gasping man who asked for it. But her dream always got in the way: it was supposed to be romantic. After all, you couldn’t help but remember it all your life. Did you want to remember some anonymous guy whose only motive was lust? Or did you want to look back on a scene that was the beginning of a real love affair, something that could last for at least a respectable couple of months? Maybe even the love of your life, if there was such a thing. She didn’t think Marty Abelson would be the love of her life. For one thing, he was Jewish. She didn’t know if she could cope with having a Jewish husband—all those rituals and ceremonies and forbidden foods. And why would he want an Irish Catholic wife? But a romance—that was different, and she did like his wavy hair, his full lower lip, his long shadowy eyelashes.

How lovely it would be with the right person: that was what she liked to imagine. The more dreamy and beautiful the thoughts, the more they crowded out the petty and the ugly and the mean, and the memories too. As if beauty was bigger and took up more space. Green hills and a vast sky and the swooping flight of birds…

She woke with a start. The water was tepid, the light catching the film of soap over the surface. She stepped out, dried off, put on her daisy-patterned bathrobe and pink slippers. Okay! Enough! Get to work! Finish the painting! Put it in a frame and hang it on the wall! Yes, I paint one of these every once in a while. So relaxing, and I do think they’re beautiful, don’t you? She’d make him a drink, a strong one. I keep this on hand for my gentleman friends.

Oh, so you have a lot of them, do you?

Well…. She practiced it in the mirror, tipping her head to one side and looking at him with just the tiniest smile. Well….

Oh, Robin, I don’t think I can resist you.

She had had some bad moments—men who called her names, one who smacked her across the face. So many angry men. She sensed that Marty was different. He had not been insistent, he was satisfied with a kiss at the door. Maybe the moment was as important for him as it was for her.

She turned on the radio. The news was just getting over, and the weather would continue hot and humid. Then the music. Love Is Strange by Mickey and Sylvia, a dirty-sounding song she did not like, followed by The Great Pretender by the Platters, which she did.

The paints were already set up on the table. The kitchen window looked out on the back of the building behind hers: gray brick that rose high enough to block most of the light, and a web of fire escapes crawling up out of sight. She opened the window anyway. Sometimes she could get a breeze, and, off to one side, a stretch of sky above green treetops. It wasn’t much, but that sliver of blue was why she had taken this apartment. Beauty! She needed a little beauty in her life!

Too real is this feeling of make-believe,

Too real when I feel what my heart can’t conceal….

Robin turned her gaze from the substandard view to her painting. Provence, it was called. A place she’d never been. But hoped to go one day. She could imagine going to Europe with someone as suave as Marty. The Grand Tour! Not only Paris, London, Rome, but the small country places that she loved to paint. She had done an English one of a harbor town in Cornwall, with seagulls and blue-trimmed houses. Another of a thatched-roof cottage on a country lane. In the new one, the red roofs were clay tiles, the insert said, typical of the region. And the mountain in the distance was Mont Ventoux (pronounced Von-TOO). She could see herself in that town with Marty, sitting at a café, the two of them talking softly the way couples at tiny tables in French cafés do. The way they’d done when they first met, in the donut shop next door, of all places, on a Sunday morning. They’d got talking when they both ordered exactly the same thing—a cinnamon donut and coffee light, no sugar—and ended up eating together at the counter.

He picked you up! her friend Maureen had said when Robin told her, and Robin had been indignant, but, when she thought about it, she realized it was true: Marty Abelson had picked her up in Archie’s Donut Shop!

He was thirty-five years old, he said, from Detroit. He had been an MP in the war, and when it was over he landed in New York, where he worked for a private investigator who, a couple of years later, was shot dead in the line of duty. (Here Robin gave a shriek, and Marty patted her arm.) Marty had set up in the business for himself—ABDA, he called it: Abelson Better Detective Agency, with an office on West 67th, near where he lived. When she asked him why he was in a donut shop down in the Village when he lived and worked on the Upper West Side, he winked and said, On a job. That’s all he would tell her. A private eye is private, he said when she pressed him. That means you can’t tell anyone anything. Subject closed.

They had walked up Sixth Avenue after their coffee and donuts. Marty talked about politics—as a veteran, he idolized General Eisenhower, couldn’t wait to vote for him again. Robin supposed she would vote for him, too, but aside from that she didn’t have anything to say on the subject. She didn’t talk much about her own job; like everyone else, he probably wouldn’t want to hear about Mrs. Potter. I work for a woman who’s ninety-four and not always in touch with things, but she still likes listening to the soaps on the radio, and she still likes her coddled eggs, Mrs. Potter has eaten a coddled egg for breakfast every morning of her life. How to explain to anyone how she loved walking from the subway to the quiet, elegant duplex, greeting the doorman, chatting in the kitchen with Nettie the housekeeper and Jenny the night nurse on her way out, the old lady in bed snoring softly, and the morning light pouring through the tall windows? And how she enjoyed taking care of old people, loved the sense of an enormous life stretching behind them, the look in their eyes that seemed to see both the long road they had traveled and, at the same time, the sad shortness of the future—and yet they got up every morning, they embarked on the day, they had their pleasures and frustrations, as if they were young people. How the brain adjusted, and the heart.

When Robin started on Mrs. Potter, she could see people’s eyes glaze over.

Nor did she talk much about her own life. She’d never forgotten that guy Dexter, from the hospital, who said on their second (and last) date, when after two whiskey sours she had told him how she had to tie her shoes on with twine, Enough about your Dickensian childhood, Robin!

Robin had once asked Tessa if she knew what a Dickensian childhood was. Tessa said, You know—like something out of Dickens. The writer, Robin! Orphans, hardship, poverty. Wonderful books!

So where are you from? Marty had asked her. A small town in Pennsylvania, she told him. Near what? Not near anything—that was what she always told people, thinking of the endless flat meadows behind the house in East Stroudsburg, where Uncle Bayard used to sit on the back step watching for rabbits and chuckling at nothing, waiting for it to get so dark Robin would have to go inside. And the freight train that chugged past every afternoon on the track beyond the field and disappeared into the woods, with the faded-red caboose at the end. And how the men on the platform of the caboose would wave at her. Oh, if she could just run down to the tracks, run and meet the train when it came by, they would stop and scoop her up, she could live in that red caboose, make a little home there.…

When she saw that Marty was waiting for more she said, All perfectly ordinary. Normal family, normal childhood. Not much to tell. She had learned that the best way to circumvent questions was to ask them. What about your parents? What does your father do?

A plumber, Marty told her. The only Jewish plumber in Detroit, which is how she found out Marty was Jewish. And his mother was a seamstress who made slipcovers and drapes. Robin kept him talking (brother who lost a leg in the war, sister married with two kids, brother-in-law a phone repairman). Men loved to talk. Robin liked to listen more than she liked to talk. When they parted, he had asked her out.

The rest is history, she thought, and said, Ha! out loud, and then sang along with Elvis to Don’t Be Cruel. She knew she probably wasn’t supposed to like Elvis, but she did. She opened the pot of number seven, carmine red, and was just about to apply it to a portion of clay roof when there was a sharp rap at the door. Robin? Robin! Are you in there?

Tessa?

Yes. May I come in?

It was hard to pause when you were painting, the paint dried up so fast, and you didn’t want to waste any, they seemed to give you exactly enough, not a drop to spare. She sighed, got some of number 8 back into the pot, capped it, and wiped her brush with turpentine—another thing they could spare just a bit more of, please. Then she washed her hands at the sink.

Robin?

She flipped off the radio—Tessa always pretended to throw up when she heard Elvis Presley—and opened the door. Tessa stood there, flushed and giddy-looking. Her dress was undone at the waist, her belt hanging loose, Robin could see a roll of flab and thought, not for the first time, that Tessa really should get herself a girdle. What’s wrong? Are you okay?

Tessa laughed. Am I okay. Am I okay? I am very okay. Here. She held out a bill. Take it.

It was a fifty. What?

Take it! I’m serious. Take it, Robin. Don’t say you can’t use it. It’s a present. I’m sorry I was nasty about Mr. Rush. What the hell, I’ll give him fifty, too. Come on. Just take it.

Tessa, what’s going on? She took the fifty. What’s the matter with you?

Wait a minute—you’ll see. Tessa’s giggle became wild, soprano. Robin had never seen her like this—hysterical. She’d lived across the hall from her for nearly three years. A nice person, a good neighbor, once in a while they had coffee or a drink together. Tessa’s apartment was always a cluttered mess, and maybe she was a little aloof. Tessa’s strongest emotion seemed to be sarcasm. Robin wondered if she was drunk.

See what? It couldn’t be right to take this much money. But—fifty dollars! A pedicure and a lipstick and the dress she’d tried on at Macy’s, and the rest in the bank. Money in the bank!

That sometimes, Robin, life is just so amazing! Tessa pushed her way inside and plopped herself on a chair. She took a pile of bills out of a brown envelope and set them on the table: Provence, the paint pots in their holder, and a stack of money. Robin! Look! It’s a thousand dollars! It came in the mail today!

Robin was bewildered. You got a thousand dollars in the mail? From who?

From whom! Whom indeed? I haven’t got the faintest tiny clue! Tessa pressed both hands to her heart, saw that her dress gaped open, did up a button, but didn’t bother to fasten her belt. Her hair