“Despite the sweet title, this debut novel by “The Chocolate Money is the perfect page-turner, $15.

95
“The Chocolate Money is devastating, hilarious, and unforgettable.”
Ashley Prentice Norton is a dark tale of offering a window into the life of the richer-than-rich, complete
maternal sadism, twisted sex, and self- —— I s a b e l G i l l i e s, author of Happens Every Day
with scandalous sex, wild parties, a snobby prep school, and
destruction. Norton is a fearless writer.” As addictive, decadent, and
a tyrannical train-wreck of a mother.”
—— J a m e s F r e y, delicious as chocolate itself
author of A Million Little Pieces —— J i l l A . D a v i s,
author of Girls’ Poker Night and Ask Again Later
Set in 1980s Chicago and on the East Coast,
“Ashley Prentice Norton’s writing is so gripping, vivid, and this electric debut chronicles the relationship
moving — so realistically drawn — it leaves even the most between an impossibly rich chocolate heiress,
well-adjusted reader with the chilling knowledge of what it’s like Babs Ballentyne, and her sensitive and bookish
young daughter, Bettina. Babs plays by no one’s
to be raised by wolves.”
rules: naked Christmas cards, lavish theme
—— I s a b e l G i l l i e s,
author of Happens Every Day and A Year and Six Seconds
parties with lewd installations at her Lake Shore
Drive penthouse, nocturnal visits from her
married lover, who “admires her centerfold”
“This is the darkest comedy I’ve ever read, overflowing with
as his wife is asleep at home.
unflinching observations of the elite that are both laugh-out-loud
and heart-wrenchingly poignant, all woven with the
Bettina wants nothing more than to win her
searing wit of a truly gifted new voice in fiction.”
mother’s affection and approval, both of which
—— J i l l K a r g m a n, prove elusive. When she escapes to an elite New
coauthor of Wolves in Chic Clothing
Hampshire prep school, Bettina finds that her
unorthodox upbringing makes it difficult to fit
“I am not a reader easily shocked, and I was shocked . . . in with her peers, one of whom happens to be
Ashley Prentice Norton is a graduate of
This story of a girl coming of age in Chicago, heir to a chocolate the son of Babs’s lover. As she struggles to forge
Phillips Exeter Academy, Georgetown Univer-
fortune and all the spoils and hungers that fortune sparks, is an identity apart from her mother, Bettina
sity, and the New York University Creative Writ-
ing Program. She lives in New York City with fearless and utterly unputdownable.” walks a fine line between self-preservation and

As Pre No
her husband and three children. The Chocolate —— J e n n i f e r G i l m o r e, self-destruction.

hl nt rto
author of Something Red and Golden Country

ey ic n
Money is her first novel.
As funny as it is scandalous, The Chocolate

e
Visit www.ashleyprenticenorton.com. $15.95 Higher in
Canada FICTION Money is Mommie Dearest, Prep, and 50 Shades
isbn 978-0-547-84004-8
of Grey all rolled into one compulsively read-
cover design by mark r. robinson
cover photograph © antony nagelmann / getty images MARINER A able book.
author photograph © stephen simons www.marinerbooks.com 0912
1499192 novel
 The
Chocolate
Money
Ashley Prentice Norton

A Mariner Original • Mariner Books • Houghton Miffl in Harcourt

Boston N ew Yor k 2 01 2

Norton_CHOCOLATE MONEY_int_F.indd iii 7/2/12 10:09 AM

 To my parents, Jon and Abra,
who always told me to just keep writing

Copyright © 2012 by Ashley Prentice Norton

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

write to Permissions, Houghton Miffl in Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Norton, Ashley Prentice.
The chocolate money / Ashley Prentice Norton.
p. cm.
“A Mariner original.”
ISBN 978-0-547-84004-8
1. Mothers and daughters — Fiction. 2. Children of the rich — Fiction.
3. Bildungsromans. gsafd 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3614.O7823C47 2012
813'.6 — dc23 2012014223

Printed in the United States of America

DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

“Dance: Ten; Looks: Three,” from A Chorus Line. Music by Marvin Hamlisch, Lyric by
Edward Kleban. Copyright © 1975 (Renewed) EDWARD KLEBAN and SONY/ATV MUSIC
PUBLISHING LLC. All Rights for EDWARD KLEBAN Controlled by WREN MUSIC CO.
All Rights for SONY/ATV MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC Administered by SONY/ATV MUSIC
PUBLISHING LLC, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted
by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation. Copyright © 1975 Sony/ATV Harmony LLC
(ASCAP), Wren Music Co. Inc. All Rights by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 8 Music Sq.
W., Nashville, TN 37203. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission.

Norton_CHOCOLATE MONEY_int_F.indd iv 7/2/12 10:09 AM

 1

Haircut
A U G U S T 19 7 8

T h e day i c u t my hair and completely fuck up the Christmas

Card, I am merely bored, not a defiant brat like Babs tells all
her friends.
It is late August. I am ten. Babs is in the kitchen talking to
Andie, who comes Saturday afternoons for Bloody Marys and
eggs Benedict. Babs doesn’t drink alcohol. She always nurses
a Baccarat champagne fl ute of freshly squeezed juice (grape-
fruit, plum, raspberry) cut with a heavy pour of Perrier. Fruit
has way too many calories. I’m not even sure she likes the
taste, but it looks pretty.
“So, Andie,” Babs says, “we are doing the Card tomorrow. I
can’t decide if I should go summer or for more of a holiday feel.
No matchy-matchy reindeer sweaters, of course, but maybe a
tad less controversial than last year’s. I know the nudity was
tastefully done, but I don’t want that bitch Nona Cardill writ-
ing nasty things about me in her column. That biddy probably
never takes off her underwear. And all the calls from school.
No sense of humor at all; no points for creativity.”

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 4 ASHLEY PRENTICE NORTON

All the kids in my grade at Chicago Day were really mean

when our Christmas Card arrived last year. Yes, we were naked,
but I was sitting on Babs’s lap and covered her privates. That
didn’t make things any better. They said I was totally weird to
have my picture taken without my clothes on. The best I could
come up with was that it wasn’t my idea.
“It was very avant-garde, Babs. I still have it up on my
fridge,” Andie says.
I think this is kind of creepy. Babs just laughs.
I’m sitting on the floor by the kitchen table, almost out of
view, reading Tiger Beat, which has my idol Brooke Shields on
the cover. Babs got me a subscription to it for my tenth birth-
day and it’s one of the best presents she ever gave me. I watch
them smoke and ash into their Villeroy & Boch plates — Babs’s
“weekend” china. It doesn’t matter that we eat off these plates;
Babs can turn anything into an ashtray. She and Andie lean into
the white marble island as if they need help remaining upright.
Babs wears white short-shorts and a white Playboy bunny tank
top, a silver bunny head outlined on it in rhinestones.
Andie wears a brown wrap dress that is so wrinkled it looks
like she dug it out from under her bed. She has Birkenstocks
on her feet. When she came in, I could see the hair on her toes.
Babs is beautiful, and I wish I looked like her. She has blond
hair, which she wears up in a messy French twist, and blue
eyes. You might think Babs was Grace Kelly’s twin if GK said
words like cock and pussy and hit little kids. Babs always said
she would much rather look like Brigitte Bardot, sexy, fl uid,
and open-ended like an unmade bed, but she doesn’t have the
curves to pull it off. She is very tall, five foot ten, and cut like a
boy: slender hips, no butt, no boobs.
Babs’s legs are right in front me, and like she says, they are
so fucking fabulous. Her calves are shea-butter rich and smell of
South African lemons, thanks to her Veritas lotion. She almost

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 THE CHOCOL ATE MONEY 5

never wears pants or pantyhose. She uses their bareness to

take advantage of the elements: they goose-bump in the cold,
glisten in the sun, go slick in the rain. Since I am her daughter,
I think she might let me touch them some time. I hope I will
even grow into my own pair one day. But her body is off-limits
to me. It is almost as if she were afraid my small hands would
leave fingerprints and ruin them forever.
Andie isn’t even remotely attractive, and this is exactly why
Babs is friends with her. She has curly hair with gray in it, and
big horse teeth. She always agrees with Babs, no matter what.
“That’s the difference between our Card and other people’s.
As you know. Don’t just snap something and send it to your
friends. Spend some time on it. Surprise people when they
open the envelope. I was thinking about a Turning Point theme,
both of us with buns and matching leotards. But with a holi-
day twist. I’m afraid most people won’t get it. It’s just too bad
we don’t know Misha. Those fabulous tights.”
I don’t get it. Buns and leotards? Who is Misha? Since when
does Babs like ballet?
“Anyone who doesn’t get that movie doesn’t deserve your
Card, Babs.”
Today, Andie is surprisingly authoritative, making up stan-
dards for Babs’s friends. I think she hopes this Card will narrow
the pool of people Babs likes and give Andie more of a shot. As
it stands, Andie is just a daytime friend. She’s never invited for
dinner when other people come. But Andie thinks if she just
keeps showing up, Babs will bump her up on the roster, make
space for her at the table. This will never happen. Babs makes
up her mind about people and doesn’t allow for upgrades. Like
me, Andie is taking the standby approach, but it just doesn’t
work. There are always better people available to take the
good seats.
Babs spots me listening in on their discussion and says, “Bet-

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 6 ASHLEY PRENTICE NORTON

tina, stop hovering. Go find your own fun.” Hovering is fucking

annoying, so I stand up and leave.
Babs says things like this all the time and I am used to it.
But still, I don’t want to find something else to do. I’m an only
child but completely lack the mythical powers of only-child
imagination. Unlike Eloise, I cannot make a day out of fixing a
doll’s broken head or spend hours feeding raisins to a turtle.
I do have a nanny, but not the doting or fancy kind. Stacey is
twenty and isn’t from England, but Lyons, Wisconsin. Before
coming to work for Babs, she lived in a small ranch house with
her family. The average tenure of my nannies is about nine
months, and Stacey has been with us for two years now. A real
achievement.
Stacey’s favorite parts of the job are smoking Virginia Slims
menthols (Babs would never hire a nanny who didn’t smoke)
and speeding down Lake Shore Drive in the Pacer Babs has
given her to use. She reads Cosmo and highlights all the pas-
sages on how to drive a man to ecstasy. She really has no inter-
est in me.
I don’t completely blame her. I am a little girl who offers no
easy conversation and doesn’t do tricks. I don’t like stickers,
don’t play with Barbies, and think cartoons are stupid. What
matters to me is someday being friends with Brooke Shields.
Babs met her once at Studio 54 and had Brooke autograph a
cocktail napkin for me. I was so happy I put it in a Dax frame
along with a cut-out picture of her. This is the best thing I
have.
Unlike Brooke, I am not gorgeous, or even a tiny bit pretty. I
am four-three with flat brown hair that won’t hold curls. Once,
Babs tried to give it volume by attacking it with a curling iron,
but the only thing she accomplished was burning my scalp.
Babs promises that when I turn eleven, she will get me profes-
sional streaks for my birthday.

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 THE CHOCOL ATE MONEY 7

The one thing I seem to have going for me is that I’m thin,
and Babs loves buying clothes for me. She spends lots of
money on them: suede or leather pants she picks up in Paris,
silk-screened T-shirts with Warhol prints on them, gray crin-
kled-silk pinafores with black velvet ballet flats. But none of
this really matters. I’m a match that just won’t strike.
When I leave Babs and Andie, I decide to hit the playroom
in the aparthouse. Babs calls our apartment this because it’s as
big as a real house. Two stories, four fireplaces, six bedrooms,
and eight potties. The problem is that there is really nothing
I like to play with in the playroom. It’s just a large space with
wall-to-wall sand-colored carpeting and big toys; Babs’s ver-
sion of an indoor playground. There is a red wooden jungle
gym with a metal slide, a sandbox filled with sand from some
beach in France, and a life-size glossy black horse with a mane
and tail that are made of real horsehair. Boring.
Besides the toys, there’s a wooden glossy green bench that
looks like it has been stolen from an actual park. The bench
legitimately belongs to Babs, but it’s disturbing in another way.
It sports a gold plaque that says montgomery and eudora
ballentyne. hit the deck may 26, 1967. may they rip.
Montgomery and Eudora Ballentyne were Babs’s parents.
They died in a boat accident the year before I was born. There’s
a glass ashtray built into an armrest of the bench. In the acci-
dent, her father was decapitated on impact. Her mother, still
alive, was pulled into the motor of the boat. It was still run-
ning, and it sliced her body into bloody pieces.
Above the bench are Lucas’s paintings. Lucas is Babs’s first
cousin. He lives in New York City, like Brooke Shields. Lucas
has some kind of free pass in Babs’s life. I can tell by the way
Babs talks to him on the phone that she likes him in a way that
has nothing to do with sex. She talks to him like she might
a brother, and she once even apologized to him about some-

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 8 ASHLEY PRENTICE NORTON

thing. Maybe since Lucas has the chocolate money too, he and
Babs belong to the same tribe. Lucas is married to someone
named Poppy and they have a son named JoJo, but I have never
met any of them. Babs says Lucas hates to fly.
Lucas’s paintings are abstract, mostly gray and black lines
on big white boards. Even though I don’t understand them, I
really like them. He sends a fresh batch every two months, and
Babs mails back the old ones, which he displays at a gallery and
hopefully sells.
The paintings may not be that interesting to look at, but
they make me feel less lonely. My family is bigger than just me
and Babs. If Babs ever says she has had it with me once and for
all, maybe Lucas could be my backup plan. I don’t really know
how I would get from Chicago to New York, but it’s a start.
Babs’s imagination may call the shots on the twenty-ninth
floor, but I’m only an elevator ride from the real world.
Babs believes she’s as accomplished as Lucas. There are three
things she’s really good at: giving parties, making scrapbooks,
and, of course, doing the Card. Her scrapbooks are original in
that they have almost no pictures in them. Just receipts from
restaurants she has gone to and for shoes she has bought, cock-
tail napkins from parties she has been to. She keeps the scrap-
books in the back of her fur closet, organized by year. She has
told me never to look at them; they are none of my business.
But I can’t help myself. I look for parts of her she does not
share with me. They are the closest thing she has to a diary.
But the Card, I know all about. I look forward to it all year
since it means we will spend the whole day together, posing
in various outfits, trying different locations for shots. Since we
have the Card tomorrow, part of me relaxes. I decide to do as
I’m told and force myself to make the most of the playroom. I
hang upside down on the jungle gym for five minutes, fall off

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 THE CHOCOL ATE MONEY 9

the death horse twice and hurt my arm, and look at Lucas’s
paintings for as long as I can.
I venture into the living room. I’m not supposed to go in
there by myself, but it’s the best room in the aparthouse, with
the most to do. It is two stories high and takes up one whole
half of the aparthouse. Standing in it is like being in a Lucite
box that’s suspended in the sky. Instead of a solid wall, there
is a huge pane of glass that goes floor to ceiling and allows for
an amazing view of Lake Michigan. You can watch the cars on
Lake Shore Drive go right up to North Avenue. In the summer,
you can even see those women who don’t have country-club
memberships sitting on Oak Street Beach, slathering them-
selves with cheap suntan lotion and probably reading Danielle
Steel.
Babs bought the aparthouse after her parents died. Before,
she lived in Grass Woods, a suburb of Chicago, on a big estate
called Tea House. I’m glad Babs moved to the city and bought
the aparthouse. Besides being really big, it has cool things, like
the spiral staircase that winds up to her bedroom. The steps
are big chunks of creamy veined marble, and the railing is a
long silver tube that curves like a Krazy Straw. Straight silver
bars connect the railing to the steps, and I love to stick my head
through them.
I decide to risk a trip to the top of the stairs so I can saun-
ter back down them just like Babs does when she makes an
entrance into her parties. But my beginning is clumsy. I’m
so busy looking up that I almost knock over a majolica cup
filled with Babs’s cigarettes and nearly step on her scrapbook
scissors.
I love these scissors; the blades are long and silver like
swords. The handles are gold and encrusted with diamonds,
rubies, and emeralds. They are bumpy and smooth at the same

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 10 ASHLEY PRENTICE NORTON

time, like a seashell sticky with sand. Sometimes I put them in

my mouth and suck on them. They have a metallic taste that is
surprisingly sweet.
I pick them up and press them against my cheek. The lon-
ger I hold on to them, the harder it is to let them go. I spread
the blades wide like legs and position them on my right cheek.
They slide a little deeper into their splits, and I press them
down slightly.
A piece of hair falls to my mouth and sticks to my lips. I
blow it back, still holding the scissors. I pause and imagine
Babs whispering in my ear, You are such a fucking chicken.
The words sound so real I fl inch. When Babs insults me, I
never answer back. I just sit there and take it, with wet eyes and
trembly lips. Like someone spilled my Shirley Temple.
But since Babs is not in the room with me, I have the cour-
age to defy her. I give a large fistful of my hair a good yank.
The pain makes me feel alert. Exhilarated. I open the scissors
as wide as they will go, and then bring them together with all
my force. Cut. My hair is baby-fine so there is no resistance. A
butcher knife slicing a birthday cake.
After about one short moment of triumph, I spiral into a
complete panic. My hair’s all over the blades, which are sup-
posed to be used only to cut paper for scrapbooks. Nothing
else. I bundle the amputated strands into something like a
bird’s nest and stuff them under the corner of the rug. This is
the moment where, were I old enough, I would pause, reach
for a cigarette, and have a good, deep smoke. But I am only
ten, and there is no time to waste.
I wipe the scissors carefully on the hem of my dress, hold
them up to the bright sunlight coming through the living room
window. They look clean. I return them to the steps. I want to
prove things are back to normal, so I go back to the kitchen to
find Babs.

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