Nutcracker by Shana Alexander

Author:Shana Alexander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media

In the real world outside the theater, Frances’s strange association with Richard Behrens continued. On April 18, 1979, the two old friends appeared at the East End Avenue branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., and opened joint checking account #030-1-050738. Their initial deposit was $4,100. Of this, Frances contributed $400 and Behrens $3,700, all that remained of his $5,000 loan. He wished to conceal his assets in a joint account, he later explained, because he had by then accumulated $6,000 in scofflaw parking tickets and feared the city might seek a judgment against him. In April, Frances withdrew $1,200 from their account, in May another $1,500, and another $1,200 in June. By October, the balance on hand was $14.70.

Frances was moving into a new world of culture and beauty. Expenses were rising. By June her request to her father’s estate to raise her monthly allowance to $5,000 was granted. But her most important and creative financial stroke that spring was to persuade her mother to transfer all of her assets out of Salt Lake City and put them into New York’s Morgan Guaranty bank. It probably was not difficult for Frances to convince Berenice that her wealth was in better, even safer financial hands in New York than in Bradshaw-dominated Salt Lake City. Here in the East it would receive sophisticated management from Morgan Guaranty’s elegant Mr. Goodfellow, “a Jew not a Mormon,” Frances pointed out, and it would be watched over by the bank’s lawyers, Rogers & Wells, headed by former Secretary of State William Rogers. Once the money moved East, Berenice’s and Frances’s affairs would be looked after by the same institutions. And, if the Ballet wanted to check on whether Frances was good for the increasingly large donations she was pledging, likely a discreet peek could be arranged.

Marc was now a senior at Kent School, and his fortunes too had begun to vacillate. William Hart Perry, the muscular, gray-haired new dean of students, formerly the crew coach, thought Marc Schreuder was “brilliant,” particularly at any academic subject or sport or pastime which required a sense of strategy and tactics. His history teacher, Theodore F. Morse, thought Marc was “possibly the brightest history student Kent has ever had.” Another teacher called him “frighteningly smart,” and admired his ability and willingness to challenge teachers in their own fields. He took many Advanced Placement courses and won high marks in Latin, Constitutional Law, Math, Asian Studies, and Chemistry. His only real problem was with a class called “Theology and Ethics.” He could never score higher than a D. He did not really seem to grasp what the class was about.

But Marc’s personal habits were atrocious. He stank, he didn’t bathe, he never had his shirttail tucked in for more than ten minutes, and his table manners were nonexistent. He never went to bed on time. He liked to study past curfew, until 3 or 4 A.M., which repeatedly made him sleep through breakfast and morning classes and earned him a great many demerits.

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