Treasure Box (7 page)

"Oh, please," said Madeleine. "Let's just take it as a given that my family is weird. I'm simply the normal-looking one who can go around in public. But I'll tell you what. Quentin has been dying of curiosity and I think he's sort of hurt that I've never taken him, so this is it. Next week. After New Year's. We'll drive up the Hudson Valley and I'll take him into Château Cryer and when he comes back here he can tell you
all
the weird things he saw. Believe me, you can't stay there for three hours without having a dozen very bizarre tales to tell."

"Tell us some now," said Quentin.

"You see?" said Madeleine. "Now that I've actually agreed to take him, he's afraid and he wants me to prepare him in case he wants to back out. Well, I'm not going to tell him a thing. He'll just have to come with an open mind."

"I'm sure your family is perfectly wonderful," said Mom, "and that's what Quentin will tell us."

"Maybe," said Madeleine with a knowing smile. "And maybe not. But I'll tell you
this
. Nobody in my family makes a banana cream pie like yours, Mother Fears. And the half-pie in your fridge is moaning my name."

"The pie doesn't know your name," said Quentin. "That was me you were hearing. But we'll settle for the pie for now."

"Quentin," said Mom reprovingly. "You're not such a newlywed anymore that we should have to put up with your innuendos."

"Innuendo?" said Quentin. "Why, whatever do you mean, Mother dear?"

After the pie, as Mom cleaned up in the kitchen and Dad signed on to America Online to send after-Christmas e-mail to his brothers, Quentin gave Madeleine a chance to back out of her invitation.

"But I don't want to back out. I'd already decided it was time for you to meet them. I would have told you privately but then the conversation just went that way and—you don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all. In fact I'm relieved. That you trust me enough to take me home."

"It wasn't a matter of trusting
you
, Tin, my pet, my poo. I know
you
can handle it. They just have a way of getting under my skin. With you to hold on to as an island of sanity, I think I can get through a day with my family. Just a day, mind you."

"And then a night at the Holiday Inn?"

"Well, of course we have to stay overnight, but you know what I mean. Twenty-four hours and then we
go
, no matter how my family pleads with you to stay, do you understand me? Because even if I'm wearing a plastic smile on my face and saying, 'Oh, yes, Quentin, let's
do
stay,' trust me, I do
not
want to stay, I want you to get me out of there before we reach the witching hour."

"Which is?"

"If we arrive at noon, then by the next noon we must be gone or I will turn into a puddle of mucus on the floor."

"That's an attractive image. If I kiss it, does it turn back into a princess?"

"No, it just turns into a cold." She kissed him. "Your kiss has already turned me into a princess."

The limo met them at La Guardia in the late afternoon on New Year's Day and they started out on the drive up the Hudson. "Shame we won't be able to see the river," Quentin said. "It'll be dark before we get over the Triborough."

"You can't see the river anyway," said Madeleine. "Not the way you can from the bluffs. The great houses were all built to be seen from the water. That was the highway then, the steamboats up the Hudson."

"The house is that old?"

"A fireplace in every room. The kitchen is an add-on. The bathrooms are carved out of hallways and stuck under stairs. All afterthoughts."

"They built these huge gorgeous mansions and then went outside to the privy?"

"Don't be silly," said Madeleine. "They had fine porcelain chamberpots. Which were emptied by the servants."

"Let me guess about the toilet paper."

"Every room had a water basin and towels. What do you think they were for?"

"Oh, for the good old days," said Quentin.

"I suppose
your
people all had flush toilets from the fifteenth century."

"No. But they dug their own latrines and built privies and used the Sears catalogue. Nobody handled anybody else's sewage."

"The idea of money was different then," said Madeleine. "If there was a filthy job, other people did it, and you paid them."

"My people believed in independence. You did for yourself, beholden to no one."

"The snobbery of the poor."

"The helplessness of the rich."

"Only
you're
the one with money."

"What, your family's broke?"

"We have what we need, I guess. Nothing on
your
scale."

"My money's an accident, Mad. It fell on me while I was doing what I cared about. I was lucky to be in a company run by a marketing madman. And once I
had
money, I couldn't stop it from growing."

"That's what I love most about you, Tin. You have no ambition whatsoever."

"One ambition. To make a future with you."

She smiled at him.

He pulled the
Beatles Anthology
CD out of his carry-on bag and put it in the player in the limo. "I haven't had a chance to listen to this since you gave it to me."

"I thought you might want something from your childhood."

"It's not like I remember them. I was three years old when they did the Sullivan show."

"It's all ancient history to me."

"You're not
that
much younger than I am." On the marriage license she had put 1965 as her year of birth.

"I lived on another planet then," she said. "We didn't even have a radio in our house."

"Chamberpots, no radio."

"I did love to crank the Victrola."

"Seriously?"

"No. I suppose there was a radio somewhere, but it's not as if anyone would dream of letting
me
choose the station. We didn't get out much."

"Why not? Didn't you go to school?"

"Tutors. Family tradition."

"Were they
trying
to isolate you?"

"I think perhaps so," said Madeleine. "Grandmother ruled with an iron fist. She never liked me."

"Grandmother? Will I meet her?"

"I don't know. She
ought
to be in a rest home, with tubes sticking out of her."

Quentin had never heard such venom from her.

"Alzheimer's?" he asked.

"Advanced bitchiness," she answered.

"Give me a little preparation. Who is it I should try hardest not to offend?"

"Tin, don't you get it? I don't care who you offend. I've been free of their control for years now. I'm bringing you here to show them that there are good people in this world and I found one of them and if they don't like you, screw 'em."

Quentin digested this for a while, listening to the music, then looking at the booklet that came with the CD. "It's funny how all their early stuff sounds so much like Elvis. Only not as good."

"What?" She looked baffled.

"The Beatles."

"Oh, sorry, I wasn't listening."

"Listen to it now. That's Paul singing, only listen to what he's doing to his voice. Distorting it like crazy. They don't even sound like the Beatles."

"He can't hold his pitch very well, can he."

"That's what I mean. It's like they haven't found their own sound yet. Not one of these cuts before their first studio singles even sounds like the Beatles. It's like they walked into the studio as a club band that did Elvis and Ink Spots imitations, and came out as the Beatles."

"I thought you said you were only three when the Beatles came along."

"Yeah, well, when I was old enough to listen to music, what was there? England Dan and John Ford Coley. 'I Put My Blue Jeans On.' 'She's Gone.' And who can forget Fleetwood Mac?"

"I guess they must be forgotten because I never heard of any of those groups. 'I Put My Blue Jeans On' sounds like a commercial."

"It was a song, by this squiggy little guy from England I think. And they
did
make it into an ad jingle. Or maybe it started that way, what do I know? And 'The Year of the Cat.' Man it was bad. Lizzy and I went back and listened to the old stuff. My parents were Elvis nuts but they also liked the Beatles. It was in their closet."

"Well, if the Beatles were Elvis clones at first, that's understandable."

"The recorded stuff wasn't. What did
you
listen to?"

"I told you, nothing."

"Had to be disco. Let's see, you'd've been fifteen in 1980. Oh, I know. Michael Jackson! 'Billy Jean'! 'We Are the World.' Or maybe Springsteen."

"What is this, a test? A final exam or something?" She looked really annoyed.

"Look, I'm just talking about music, that's all."

"Well I don't know any of it! And there's no reason that I should, so stop it!"

She looked furious and frightened as she turned to look out the window into the deepening night. Lights and signs whipped by on the freeway.

"It wasn't a test," said Quentin quietly. "Why would I be testing you?"

"I don't know," she murmured.

"Well I wasn't. I love you whether you care about music or not. I was just trying to think what would have been current when you came of age. People usually know the music that was hot when they were about fifteen or so, and then for a few years till they get married. I got into it early because Lizzy took me with her when
she
was that age. And I never stopped because I didn't get married till now. You have friends in DC, didn't
they
play any music?"

"It never sounded like music to me. Nine Inch Nails." She shuddered.

"But they didn't play you any Counting Crows? Martin Page? Natalie Merchant?"

"We were bureaucrats. And what I cared about was government." She turned back to face him. "The Beatles. They were rich, weren't they? Famous, right?"

"More popular than Jesus Christ, I think the saying was."

"Yeah, well, what did they do with it?"

"Do?"

"With their money and fame. What was it for?"

"Music, I guess. Songs."

"No, that's what it was
from
. What was it for?"

"For itself." He studied her face, wondering if someone he loved so much could be so blind to something as simple as this. "They did music because they loved the songs. Writing them and singing them."

"Like you loved the programming, is that it?"

"Sure. You do what you love, and sometimes money happens or fame happens, but mostly it doesn't happen but that's OK because you were doing what you loved."

She shook her head. "Like a kid who's given this big wonderful present, only when he unwraps it, all he can think to do is play with the box it came in. With the wrapping paper and ribbon."

"OK, so what's the present?"

She leaned toward him and spoke with such intensity that her words scoured his heart. "Running things."

He remembered what she had said in the garden. About power.

"But that's just the box, too," he said. "Power, I mean."

"No it isn't."

"Sure it is. What's
power
for?"

"I don't get what you're asking me."

"You asked the same question about money and fame—what are they for? Well, what about power? Running things? Running them for what? To accomplish what?"

"Whatever you want." The answer was so obvious to her that she clearly didn't understand a word he was saying.

"That's the point? What do you want?"

"To run things," she said.

"But all these candidates we've been encouraging, Mad, didn't we pick them out because they had purposes? Causes?"

"
They
had causes," she said. "That doesn't mean
I
have to."

This attitude was so baffling and unpleasant that Quentin wished he hadn't got into the conversation. "I thought you chose these people for their causes."

"I did," she said. "Nobody's easier to control than a politician with a cause."

He shuddered. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Sure it does," she said. "I assumed you understood that. As long as he's accomplishing his cause, he'll do everything
else
you tell him to. Like you do with the people you got into partnerships with."

"What is it you think I'm doing with them?"

"They have their dream—as long as they get to accomplish that, then you get everything else your way."

He could certainly see how it might seem like that to someone with her perspective. His partners brought their dream, their drive, their expertise—but everything else was done Quentin's way, which is why he never lost much money with even the worst failures. He had control. And as soon as they weren't accomplishing his purpose, he cut them off and set them adrift. Uninjured, but they were no longer useful to him and so he had nothing more to do with them.

That's how it looked, yes, if you chose to see it that way. But that wasn't what he meant, or who he was. He wasn't using these people, he was helping them.

"Get real," said Madeleine. "Nobody ever helps anybody except in order to help themselves. Not even you. Not even when you do your best lying to yourself about it."

"I don't like this conversation," said Quentin.

"It's your conversation, Tin. But I thought we both understood this. I haven't lied to you. I told you from the start it was power that I wanted most. You knew that's what you were signing on to when we went into partnership."

"Partnership?" The word was sour in his mouth.

"I don't mean our marriage. I mean our partnership. The candidates. We're building up a network of people we can control without their even guessing we're controlling them. Maybe only two or three times in their career will we have to make them do something, and when we do, it won't violate any of their principles because it'll have nothing to do with their pet cause. We'll just ask them to help us out on this or that, whatever it is, and they'll know that they owe us everything and so they'll do it. And never think twice, because it'll be so small, so
nothing
. An appointment. A single vote. Locking something up in a committee. Confirming an appointee their party opposes, or opposing one they're supposed to support. As a favor to us, the ones who got them started on their wonderful career that's been so
good
for their cause."

"So we're the fat cats after all," said Quentin.

"No, not at all!" She laughed at the idea. "Tin, you've seen the fat cats, they strut around getting in petty catfights about stupid local matters that amount to nothing. They show off their jewelry and their tans at local fundraisers. They pride themselves on mingling with the common people and then pride themselves on being more 'inside' than the common people. We're not like that."

Quentin shook his head. It was as if he hadn't really known her. And yet she was the woman he loved. He had to think about this. It wasn't anything like what Wayne Read had warned him about. After all, he'd known her for months now. And maybe she was right, maybe he should have understood this attitude of hers from the start. What did it matter, anyway? So she was more open about wanting power than most people, what of that? It was honesty, of a sort. Integrity.

Or else it was cynical manipulation, so deeply evil that few politicians could bring themselves to conceive of it.

He shook off that dark thought. This sweet, naïve, childlike woman beside him simply had a childlike, naïve view of the romance of political power. It was an outsider's vision, that's all. Just as he had found with money, she would soon find with power—that it got boring once you had enough of it, and then you had to rethink everything in order to find something worth doing with it.

Evil indeed. What dark thing dwelt in his heart, to make him think of such a word in relation to his Mad? He would say nothing to her to imply criticism. Better to treat it lightly, as a game, and then help her gain a wiser view later, as she gained more experience in the political world.

He leaned over and kissed her. "When you rule the world, Mad, do I get to be prince consort?"

She laughed. "Why do you think I married you?"

He laughed with her. He was relieved to see that she could mock herself. As long as she could see the humor in her own desires, they would never get the better of her.

The Beatles sang about how they wanted money. The other stuff, you can give it to the birds and bees. You really got a hold on me. Roll over, Beethoven. And the CD ended.

Silence filled the car for a while. Except that he could hear his own heartbeat, pounding like Ringo's relentless drum. With her head on his shoulder, could she hear it, too? His heart? Now that it belonged to her, did she hear it?

They never would have noticed the entrance to the estate if she hadn't been there to point it out. Even as it was, with her saying, "Right here, turn here, right now!" the driver overshot it and had to back up.

"Sorry," he said. "I couldn't see it till we passed it."

"No sweat," said Quentin.

"I can see how it's easy to miss in the darkness," said Madeleine.