“And on a personal level, look how I have lived my life.”
I thought he must have been talking about his affairs. But he was not. He said, pointing out the window, “Look at that tower, Lucy. My father’s father—that horrible old man we met when we went to Germany so many years ago—my grandfather was making money on World War II.” He looked over at me. “He was making money on these submarines that were coming right into this harbor. He was a huge industrialist, and all he cared about was making money, and he did—during the war. And he stuck it all in Switzerland.” He hesitated for a long time, looking out the window.
Then he looked at me again. “And I took that money, Lucy. Don’t tell me how much I’ve given away, I know I’ve given away a lot of money, but no one ever gives away enough to actually change their lifestyle, and so I took that money, and I still have that money.” He looked away, then back at me. “And it makes me absolutely sick.”
* * *
—
I said nothing. Out of respect, I stayed quiet.
* * *
—
William stood up and said softly, “Even my mother told me I shouldn’t take the money, but I did.” He walked to the window and looked out, and then he turned back to me and said, “Did you know that my father—right before he died—he was supposed to come into that money, and he didn’t take it.”
I was really surprised to hear that, and I said so.
William sighed, and sat down again on the couch, and said, “That’s why my mother didn’t think I should take it, because my father was decent enough not to. And I rationalized it for years. It was mine, I told myself, no different from any rich kid who gets money from his CEO father. But it is different. My grandfather made it on a war that was unbelievably horrifying. My father didn’t want it, and I did.”
William stood up again, and he kept walking around as he spoke. He said, “My grandfather was greedy and he was smart. And what’s happening in this country right now is mostly because of greed as well.” He turned back to face me. He said, “And you can say, Well, just give it away, William, what’s the big deal? But if I gave it all away today, and I’m not going to, what difference would it make? None. But it’s money that was the result of huge damage in this world, and the world can be damaged all over again. And I have just lived here with that money all these years.” He turned and sat back down on the couch and pushed his hand through his hair, which made his hair stand up in different ways.
* * *
—
I waited quite a while to see if he had anything more to say, but he seemed not to. Finally I said, “Well, you know, William. I’ve always had a theory about people who have losses and then think they are owed something.” I gave him examples: of people who had lost a child and then embezzled from the church they had been a secretary at for years, or people who shoplifted after finding out their husband was going to die…. And then I said, “You lost your father when you were fourteen, William. And so I think you thought you were owed.” I added, “I mean, I think it’s just human.”
William answered, with no affect to his voice, that he was fourteen when his father died and he was in his mid-thirties when the money came to him through the trust he had never known was there, and I said, “That doesn’t matter.”
But I could tell he was not listening, he was not going to be convinced.
* * *
—
But this is what had been eating away at William. That he had taken money from that man—his horrible grandfather with his glittering eyes—and that William had increasingly hated himself for doing this, more so as he saw the state of the world unfolding. I saw that it must have made him feel aligned with his grandfather and at odds with his father, who had not taken the money.
And it seemed that my ping-pong ball could not touch his right now. We are alone in these things that we suffer.
* * *
—
But then William’s face brightened considerably and he said to me, “So my plan is this: I am going to give a ton of it to the University of Maine at Presque Isle and really help develop a place to get those potato parasites studied. Because it’s not just parasites, Lucy.” And he went on to tell me how climate change had made the season longer for potatoes, but that was not a good thing, they had more pests as a result, and they were trying to develop a new kind of potato. He sat back and nodded. “That’s what I’m going to do,” he said.
ii
One warm afternoon in August, Bob Burgess showed up, and I had the sense later that William was expecting him. “Here he is,” William said, or something like that, and he went out to meet him on the lawn. When I came out of the house Bob gave me a big wave and said to William, “Ready?” And William said, “Let’s do it.”
So Bob got back into his car, and William opened the passenger-side door of our car for me, and I said, “What are you doing?” And he just said, “Let’s see.”
We followed Bob back to town. It was a glorious day, the water was beautiful as we drove over the small bridge, on both sides the water seemed green and sweetly friendly to me; it still had the white waves that hit the rocks all the time. As we got into town we followed Bob’s car down Main Street, and then Bob pulled into a parking spot near the shops—there is a bookstore (which was only doing pickup), and a furnishings store that was closed, and a tea shop that was open and sold a variety of things—and we pulled in next to him. Then we followed Bob around to the back of the building that the bookstore was in—there was a parking lot filled with potholes, and you could see the fire station from there—and Bob brought out a key and opened a door: You would not even have noticed the door if you didn’t know it was there, I mean it was just a plain steel painted pale green thing—and inside was a steep wooden staircase, and we followed him single file up the staircase, and then at the top of the staircase was a door off to the right, and Bob found a different key, and we walked through that door into a little tiny hallway and there was another door to the right, and Bob unlocked that and stood back and held his hand out toward the doorway.
Bob said, “Here you go, Lucy. Your own studio.”
I did not understand what was happening at first. But in the room, and it was not a small room, were a table and a big upholstered chair, and a couch and also two bookcases and two lamps on small tables. “What is this?” I asked.
And William said, “We found a studio for you, Lucy.” His face was filled with emotion, he was really worked up. He said, “For you to work in.”
And they stood there, those two men, with such looks of suppressed excitement on both of their faces—
* * *
—
I could not believe it.
I have never had a room to work in. Of my own. Never.
iii
My apartment in New York bothered me more and more, and each time I thought about it, I thought: No. That is what I thought. One night—it was toward the end of August and I had spent the day at my studio—when I came home I told William again, as I had that night of my panic attack, about how I felt about my apartment in New York, and I could see that he was hearing me. He asked me when the lease got renewed.
I said, “The end of September.”
He leaned forward, his arms on his knees. “Then give it up, Lucy.”
And I said, “I can’t give it up!”
And he sat back and said, “Why not?”
“Because I can’t go to New York with this virus—how could I move anything out?”
William sat with his arms on the chair arms and said, “Bob will get some guys here from town and they’ll go get what you want. It’s a tiny place, Lucy. Think about what’s in it that you want, and Bob will have some guys bring it up here. For now. We can figure the rest out later.”
I sat and said nothing as I absorbed this.