The Man Who Was Made of Money by Avram Davidson

I can't remember when I first read an Avram Davidson story, but I know it's been many years ago, and it may well have been an old Ballantine paperback collection of his named after his classic, "Or All The Seas With Oysters." I suspect that the latest generation of readers and fans doesn't know much of his work because he hasn't been writing much lately. In fact, Avram couldn't sign the limited edition of this book because his health simply wouldn't allow it. But that was a small price to pay for the honor of publishing a new Davidson story—a chilling satire of contemporary culture that is far too close to many a suburban reality.

Beth and Joe Braidel (accent on the last syllable) hadn't even moved into their new home when old Mr. Goodworth came to see it. She said, "And how do you like our ranch house?" And instead of a decent, "it's very nice", at the least or words of praise which any civilized person would feel were only proper, the old man had to ask, "And where are the cattle?" Oh, of course Beth smiled, but she really could have killed him; however, as she told herself, she didn't have to live with Harry Goodworth. Let him look around and make his remarks, in a few minutes he would go away and write up the policy, that was all he was there for, and there wouldn't be any nonsense about his calling every week to collect the money the way he was still doing for that piddling little life insurance that Joe's parents were still paying for. No thank you, none of that for Beth, the new place was far enough away from the old neighborhood and besides, with this kind of policy you only paid once a year. Twice?

It was a lovely house, a beautiful house—

Beth could have done without old Harry Goodworth altogether, not only in regard to the insurance on the new house, but the one on Joe's life, which had been taken out years ago. Who needs Goodworth, she had argued back then. Maybe the old man knew that and that was why...? No. That's just the way he always was. Well. One of these days. A yellow face like that, he wouldn't be around much longer. And the policy could be transferred, couldn't it? To someone who could really be of use to Joe in business... so. She wasn't having any more of old Goodworth or of Joe's parents, or, for that matter, of her own parents, than she could help. It was her house and it was going to be furnished her way. And this was where real loyalty came in. Never mind what it all cost. A woman has a right to have nice things in her house, isn't that right?

When we say that Beth Braidel didn't want too much to do with her own parents, that isn't to say that she didn't want anything to do with them. As soon as the house was ready to show people, one of the first she showed it to was her mother. Wall-to-wall carpeting in every room, every appliance the human heart could want, serving-for-ten of everything, original modern art on the walls—

"Well, did your little girl do all right for herself?" asked Beth, in her funny way.

And Beth's mother, nodding, and with that typical little dry smile that only Beth's mother can do so well if she wants to (and God help you if she doesn't!), said, "Not... bad. Not bad at all. See what you can do if you handle the husband right?"

Meanwhile, and far more important for the moment, were her two closest friends. Her two closest friends.

It was perhaps just a little bit unfortunate, their both having the same first name, thus requiring them to be referred to by their last ones as well, Joan Raisen and Joan Kaye. If everyone had gone along with the simple little idea which Beth had thought of, namely calling one "Joan" and the other one "Joanie," but some people for some reason seemed unable to grasp this concept, even their husbands, for example, so there was nothing to be done about that: And after Joe Braidel had said, I know... I know, very apologetically, he gave every indication of having learned his lesson...

Keeping up with the Joanses!

Some sense of humor.

After all, why does a woman want a nice home? For herself? Hardly worth the worry and aggravation. For her husband? Does the average man, left to himself and his own devices, even know? He doesn't know. Food, a comfortable old chair, a couch and a bed and a television set—enough for him. As for children, too ridiculous to consider that and that was a bridge she didn't even intend to come to, let alone cross, for a goodly period of time, if at all.

No.

A woman wants a nice home for the same reason she wants a nice husband, because what else is there to compensate her for everything she gives up when she gets married and everything she has to put up with after she gets married? She wants a home and a husband that she can show her friends and family without being ashamed. And to say that "a woman's place is in the home," to interpret that as meaning that her place is only in her home, is disgusting. But after all, where does the average woman have a better chance to display what she is really made of and what she really is, except in her own home? Beth's little cousin Kippy, now just take Beth's little cousin Kippy. Two children in two rooms and a filthy so-called artiste's studio, and in what a neighborhood! And when does she ever get out with her stupid artist husband, and then where do they go? A museum, a gallery! And yet she says she's happy!

Whereas a successful woman, a woman who has a lovely home, a woman who has time and leisure and means to go where she pleases when she pleases, a woman who has the latest of everything, such a woman can, so to speak, open her home to the whole world in complete confidence that nobody can turn up a nose and nobody can look down on her and/or pity her. Such a woman need bear no resentment for the past regarding if she were perhaps treated unfairly by a parent or if an older or younger sibling had favorite status. Such a woman can look her aunt, let us say, in the eye and she doesn't have to say such words as, "your marvelous Vicki that you were always boasting off: Does she have two dishwashers? Three freezers? A floor-level wine-cellar? Stereo, with speakers and controls in every room? Ten complete servings of imported tableware? The very latest subscription copies of French and British magazines? Not just a few copies you bought six months ago and six months from now the same ones will still be there staring you in the face, but the latest!" Such a woman doesn't have to say things to her aunt. Her aunt has eyes. Her aunt is not a complete fool. Neither is her mother, and not her school friends and not their mothers, aunts, sisters, and so on and so on.

Such a woman is a success!

And success can only be matched against other successes.

It had always seemed that Joe Braidel had appreciated it. If you have a lovely home, if you have a lovely wife, if she has jewelry, if you have two decent cars and a station wagon, and if you have enough insurance, well, what more can a man ask for or expect?

Suppose he had a wife who insisted on going out to work and he could never be sure that she was really in her office and not in a little apartment with her so-called employer, instead of taking care of her lovely home or enjoying some well-earned leisure with a woman friend or two.

After all, Beth never for a moment forgot what her duties were. And neither did she demean herself by forgetting what her husband's duties were. And a lovely home and everything that it entails has to be kept up, doesn't it?

But a man feels he has to grumble. He has to? All right, let him grumble.

"Why do you need a new station wagon, now?", grumbles Joe.

"I need a new station wagon? All the groceries I buy for myself I could carry on a scooter. You want to do the shopping?" is how Beth puts it to him, pithily.

Of course the new wagon has more room in it than the old one, but that's not the point, the point is that it's a new one. What man wants his wife to drive around an old heap of junk already over two years old?

"And the insurance is due next month, too," Joe concludes. This is supposed to be Beth's fault. As though Beth had demanded that he arrange quarterly payments, let him pay it annually like the fire and burglary insurance, or semi-annually, whichever is the most convenient for him, as she points out. And he talks about her clothes! A man can wear a suit from one year's end to another, as long as he remembers to have it cleaned and pressed regularly, but that's just not the way women's clothes are. And that goes for every kind of clothes, from underwear to fur, as well as accessories, wouldn't you agree? Of course!

"No, I don't want you to make your panties out of flour bags" says Joe, "but what in the hell do all these bills have to do with wearing underwear made out of—?"

"I'm sorry about the bills, Joe," she says contritely, and points out that if he put more money in her account she could pay cash.

And sometimes it is necessary for her to tell him not to raise his voice to her. You just don't let them get away with it, that's all. If they say no you have to keep after them until they say yes, and if they try to get away then you stand in the doorway or you follow them into the bedroom. "Everybody in the neighborhood will hear you," says Joe.

"Everybody in the neighborhood will hear me? Then everybody in the neighborhood will hear me," says Beth, letting him know what his own words sound like. "If everybody in the neighborhood will hear me—"

Joe holds his head in his hands, because men love these little dramatic tricks, and pretends to groan and moan and then he says, "All right, all right, oh my God—Yes! Yes!" He opens his mouth again but is forestalled in his intended underhanded tricks by his long-suffering wife who quickly reminds him that everybody in the neighborhood will hear him, if he doesn't stop his shouting, and this never fails to shut him up.

▼

"Just like a child," says Joan Raisen.

"They are just like children," agrees Joan Kaye.

And they caution one another.

"Never make a man jealous," they say, "there are better ways."

It is agreed that if there are no children, and there are as yet no children, then mention of more insurance should always be made casually. It is agreed that insurance is very important. And they squabble politely over the tab, and whose turn to pay it.

Beth is feeling so much better. Such afternoons are, after all, a form of therapy, wouldn't you agree? And how would Joe like to have to pay those kind of bills? So, Beth is sorry to deny her friends the pleasure, but insists that it is her treat. "My Aunt Simma," she just remarks in passing, before they part, "who is in many ways really an awful old woman, always used to say, 'Better insurance without a husband than a husband without insurance.'"

Her friends, nodding solemnly with raised eyebrows and lower lips tucked under, digest this... and then assure her, that, Yes, well, it is an awful thing to say, but... still... you know...

Beth has almost forgiven Joe by the time she gets home.

However, Beth is not the morbid type, and rather than let her mind dwell on such subjects, decides that Joe deserves a good break, something nice: something really, really nice. So she trades in her old car and buys an imported sportscar for him. Since the day she had her friends over for the special viewing on the then new house, Beth has never felt so happy. She anticipates the look on Joe's face...

But the look on Joe's face is not at all what she anticipated. Joe, in short, proves to be a real bastard and a son of a bitch about her lovely present for him. And he insists on holding some kind of senate hearing about it. How he can't use it for his work. How they already have two cars. How even if they sell one, what will it bring? As though Beth is supposed to be a goddamn blue book; how is she supposed to know how much it will bring? And how this and how that, and so all the pleasure she anticipated in driving the lovely little sports car is gone, it is just gone, and she breaks into tears. And he is still a son of a bitch! Not until Beth has completely lost control of herself and sprawls on the ground weeping in anguish does Joe decide that this time he has gone too far.

Joe looks at her and evidently he reads her mind through her face. She raises her head and touches her hair. "Oh, now, don't bring up that bull about sewing your underwear out of flour sacks," he says, with sadly misplaced humor. "Just try to remember that I'm not made of money—" Beth says nothing, she just looks at him. "Well, am I?" he asks.

No one could stand it, and Beth's iron control breaks down and she all but screams at him, "Yes! Yes! Yes, you are—you have to be! Somebody has to be! Who else should be? Me? Me?" And she clenches her fists and her jaws clench, and she says, beside herself, "You have to be made of money!"

Well, for a wonder! Joe does not carry on anymore: now that the facts of life have been laid before him, so to speak, all he says is, "So I have to be made of money..." And then he goes and takes some pill or capsules with milk and goes off to bed. And Beth—

And here comes the funny part. You have never heard anything as weird as this in all you life. Because after he drops off to sleep, or maybe before, it doesn't make any difference, Beth has this absolutely fantastic and incredible dream! She dreams that suddenly she is wide awake and some sort of little glow of light is in the room, not electricity and not moonlight, but enough to see by very clearly, and she goes and looks at Joe's bed and he is there, yes, but very, very different. In fact, in this dream there is this huge and enormous mass of money in the bed and it is shaped just like Joe! Joe is actually made of money. So in this dream Beth immediately gets up and tiptoes over and slips several bills off the pile where his stomach was, so to speak, thinking to herself, "Well... he weighs too much anyway." She giggles and opens a drawer in her dressing-table and slips two bills clearly identified as $500 each and one $1000 bill into a little purse she had there and closes it up and giggles to herself again and gets back into bed and goes to sleep.

Have you ever heard of such a thing? No, of course not, and neither has anyone else.

Next morning Joe seemed kind of tired and, not grouchy, just sort of, oh, slumpy. Hardly gave her a civil word! Maybe he hadn't slept well, if so, that's his problem, she didn't write those prescriptions. And yet Beth had this crazy sort of idea in her mind that Joe actually had been awake and had seen her take the money and put it in her purse and that after she went to sleep he got up and took it out and—oh, she couldn't imagine the rest of it. It was a crazy idea, but the more she thought of it the more she resented it: after all, it was her money. So what right did he have? And the more she thought about it, the more she resented it. Which is what effect a selfish husband can have upon even the most unselfish of wives.

Finally, as Joe was getting ready to leave, she simply informed him, "Joe, you won't forget to make a deposit in the bank, in my account?"

Give him credit, he didn't complain, he didn't raise his eyes, he just said, "How much?" and she said the first figure which popped into her mind, which was "two thousand" and he nodded. Which was very nice so she went over and gave him a kiss and a hug and of course he at once started getting ideas and of course Beth knew how to handle him and gave him a little pat and sent him off to work. So that was that and that was alright.

Well, two thousand dollars, to a child that is all the money in the world, but, after all, to an adult used to a moderate but respectable standard of living, what is two thousand dollars? Two thousand dollars is nothing. It would have been a perfect day if Beth hadn't taken pains to add up the cost of the few absolutely essential little accessories which it had been necessary to purchase for the sports car, and thus observed that the two thousand dollars was barely adequate to cover her expenditures. This is what is meant by maturity, a child imagines that two thousand dollars will last forever and is angry if it doesn't, but to a mature person the matter is otherwise.

Nevertheless this matter must have rested on Beth's mind because she had exactly the same sort of dream again; but whereas before in the funny dream Joe had been lying on his side, now he was lying on his back. His pajamas seemed made out of paper money and his legs and arms sticking out seemed made out of checks and it seemed as though his hands and feet were made out of gold coins, and his head too, except that his hair was money orders and his nails were silver coins. It sounds crazy but it was really the most realistic thing imaginable! Like—here's a tiny little detail which stuck in Beth's mind, just for an example—as she tiptoed over and in her dream stood looking down at Joe it seemed as though one of his eyes was just a little bit open the way it sometimes is with a person, even though he's asleep, and it seemed as though the eyeball was gleaming under the eye-lid. Actually, of course it was only an edge of a silver coin shining underneath a gold coin—but so real!

Well, it was all so silly that Beth, in her dream, could hardly help laughing but, thinking to herself that "business is business", she helped herself quickly to some money, only this time she observed what she was doing in greater particulars and this time she took $5,000. She wondered, where should she put it this time, and the thought occurred to her, why not put it in the toes of one of the new shoes in her closet? And she glanced at Joe while she was crouching by the closet, but his pajama-top just kept on rising and falling just as if it was really a man breathing and not a pile of money in the shape of a man. Then she went back to bed and fell asleep.

Sure enough, next morning the shoes weren't in their usual neat lines but do you think that any money was in them? Not on your life! Beth had this idea again, just seemed to feel it; he'd been awake the entire time and looking at her and after she had fallen asleep he'd gotten up and taken the money! Oh, she was burned up! But... after all... what could she do? Face him with the facts? He'd deny it, of course he would; who was it who said, "If you find an honest man, breed him"? Some joke. So she took the only sensible action, she thought, Well, Beth, so you have a $5000 line of credit with your husband, so to speak, and she restricted her next credit purchases to that amount, and not for any inducement could she have been persuaded to exceed that sum.

And despite Joe's sneaky behavior in taking her money, let it be said to his credit that Joe did not complain about these bills, he merely paid them all in full for the new things, the envy of all her friends and family; not only because it was no more than right, but because it was his duty. The wife keeps the house and the husband pays for it. That is what is meant by equality.

Anyway to avoid repetition, this same scene or variations on this or similar scenes, continued. Why Joe Braidel had to play this silly little game, Beth could not imagine; why he didn't simply say, I understand that there is an inflation, that I am married to a polished and sophisticated woman used to a certain standard of living which must on no account and under no circumstances be diminished. So therefore I am raising your allowance and increasing the household money, I am doubling and tripling both of them—why Joe did not simply say and do this, who indeed can tell? He didn't have the money? He did have the money, if he didn't have the money could Beth have spent it? But there you are, men are just like children, so immature, they have to play these games all the time in order to bolster their infantile egos. So Beth simply shrugged. If Joe wanted to play these foolish games in the world of dreams, well, go ahead. Some wives would have made scenes, but that is not Beth's way, another reason why she is so widely admired and envied.

Which is more than can be said for some people.

After Beth realized that her pent-up talents for creativity were now to have freer play and that Joe wasn't going to make silly fusses, well, for one thing, she had the entire house redecorated. To show how inconsiderate some people are, who showed up then but Joe's parents, sneaking and peeping nosily asking how much it was all going to cost and other matters none of their damned business. And then had the nerve to ask if she didn't think that Joe wasn't spending too much money.

"No, I certainly do not," was Beth's crisp answer.

And she let them know that she was not the kind of wife who interfered with her husband's desires.

However, the matter preyed upon her mind to such an extent that as soon as the redecorating was finished and completed, she simply had to yield to her fatigue, and went to the Bahamas for a month.

Upon her return, of course, needless to say that Joe was overjoyed having her back, he was really very sweet. But once the novelty had worn off, who could say where things would be? In fact, so little had Joe gained in maturity, no sooner had he fallen asleep and was dead to the world, when Beth observed that once again he was indulging herself in the selfsame dream fantasy as before, once again he was imagining that he had turned into a big pile of money. Though one or two signs indicated that things were not quite as before. Although the outlines of this so called "body" in the bed were Joe's outlines, and the "body", in fact the corpus delectus, was composed of such things as treasury notes, government bonds, federal reserve notes, checks, money orders, and silver and gold coins; yet the pile was of lesser bulk. So Beth merely extracted the money needed to cover accumulated bills and perhaps an equal amount, or maybe even just a bit more to stay on the safe-side, as a contingency. And she put it all in the upper left-hand drawer of her vanity.

Feeling much, much better after this, and feeling fully able to cope with the problems of every day existence, she had now to face the fact that one reason why her husband seemed so restless and at the same time listless at home was that it still contained almost of all the same old junk which had come with them when they'd moved, more or less. So regardless of the toll which such exertions had always taken, Beth fearlessly began to tackle this next problem. Who could deny, therefore, that many of the obsolete items anyway, did not fit in with the houses brave new decor. The old order must change, or something like that.

But Joe's new attitude struck her like a thunderbolt, to wit; he informed her that he'd been advised on medical grounds to stop work, leave home and to enter a small private hospital for what was obliquely termed "observation"! He added, as though it mattered, that his parents agreed. His parents! His mother, he meant! No wonder Joe was showing the strain.

But Beth had to steel herself on these points, though her heart ached, because it would not only have been unfair to her, it would have been unfair to him. Imagine what a thing it would be if she had allowed a man of his age to begin yielding to his mother, for heaven's sake! A man's duty wasn't to his mother, was it? Of course not, ask any psychologist; a man's duty, first, last and foremost, is to his wife. After all, was it for herself that Beth wanted new furniture and so on? Don't be ridiculous. But the fact is that she wanted it and so it was his duty to provide the wherewithal. When a wife wants something she has a right to have it, a man assumes this responsibility at marriage. It is his duty to care for his wife in all things and, if not, then that's his fault, and if it's his fault, than obviously it's not her fault.

And another thing, suppose Joe were to play this game of his about turning into a pile of money at night, right there in the hospital. How would it look to the doctors and the nurses? How? To have his ego destroyed in this manner by strangers? And therefore she couldn't consent. Why should strangers be plucking and pulling at him while he was in that condition? It would be simple robbery, because who could check up on them?

No!

"I didn't marry a man who's in the hospital," she reminds him. "I want a husband who's here at home when I need him," she says. "All the doctors want is your money; who owns that small private hospital? The doctors," she says, no longer able to control her emotions and, unlike her usual self, talking in a somewhat loud voice. "I'm the one who should be in the hospital, I'm the one who has the worry and the concern and aggravation. Sickness is for old men and I didn't marry an old man!" Sometimes it's necessary to be blunt. Sometimes you just have to tell them about it and hammer it home. "You'd better wake up before it's too late," Beth reminds him, aghast to realize that she is practically shouting—

—but, after all, it's not her fault—

And what does Joe do then? Sit there with tears crawling down his face! How weak he is, she thinks, how weak he is. Beth is obliged to take control and for his own good make him admit she is right and he is wrong. "Yes," he says. "Yes, yes... yes..." And she gets him up to bed and brings him his medicine and brings him warm milk and she tucks him in and sits on the edge of the bed until she is ready to drop and finally he falls asleep. After all, what is a wife for?

However, Beth was gaining in maturity and ceasing to engage in projecting infantile fantasies. She was still dreaming that when asleep Joe turned to a pile of money, only with her decreased interest in the game, it was really not a pile any longer, it was just an outline on the bed. One layer of paper money and underneath were make-believe bones of gold coins. Beth stood there very thoughtfully. Just suppose that Joe did something unwise, such as spending the night somewhere else at a time when he was still under this delusion? This far-out possibility continued to prey upon her awareness, and it seemed that her entire life was just one worry after another. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair.

So Beth, with a sigh she was unable to conceal, gathered all the money from the bed, every single bit of it, and she put it in her safety-box. However, at the last minute, with a shrug and a slight smile, because no one has a keener sense of humor than Beth, she withheld the tiniest coin, a two-dollar gold piece no bigger than a fingernail, and put it back on the bed. And then, unable to keep her eyes open any longer, she yawned and stretched... but no one was there to appreciate her exhaustion.

And so there you are. People talk so easily about tragedy and heartache, but do they even know what the words mean? Joan Raisen can tell you that people don't even know what they are talking about, and so can Joan Kaye. Between themselves they speak in whispers, they think that Beth can't hear them, but she hears them all right, even though she is under very heavy sedation, because it is a thing of the past that a woman should be expected to go through an ordeal of this sort without the protecting miracles of modern scientific medicine. Although she hears what they are whispering, nevertheless she doesn't mind, it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that she get through this very difficult period without breaking down. They are protecting her, she doesn't need to see other people at a time like this; what good would it do Beth? —old Mrs. Braidel, with her screaming and carrying on, as though she didn't have other children, and even grandchildren, and what is so much more important, she still has her own husband.

And not only her, the mother-in-law, but this horrible old man, Harry Goodworth, and an insurance-man is supposed to be a comfort to you at a time like this. But do you call this a comfort, the way he kept sneering and intimidating as though it was in some way Beth's fault that her husband was a mere shadow of himself, mere skin and bones so to speak, when he passed away?—as though it were Beth's fault somehow that it turned out that Joe had been milking his business and taking everything out of it and putting nothing back into it and how he had borrowed, borrowed, borrowed on the business and on the house and on the insurance policies and who knows for what? Who knows for what? Whether he was gambling or whether he was keeping a woman or whether he was taking drugs—until who knows what would be left for Beth if she hadn't been able to put aside a little something, and if she didn't have her jewelry and her this and that and a few other things? No.

No. Nobody needs old Goodworth hanging around and slandering the living and the dead. However, Beth is after all a young woman, she still has her good looks and her good friends, and they will look out for her. They will see to it that she has a good lawyer, and if Joe's family thinks for one moment—

—but her friends don't want to raise their voices—Beth will find someone else. There are lots of good men who go along thinking that they will never get married but you would be surprised, a young widow with no children hanging around her neck—well, well, time enough to discuss that afterwards. As for Joe, who would have thought of it, so deceitful, so irresponsible and after everything she did for him... well, no doubt he had his purpose to fulfill in the world before he left it; that's what the greatest philosophers all say and we have to believe them.