Shades of Fortune

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Ha! You don’t live with a man for twenty-nine years and not know when he’s fibbing. If he’s working on the Sturtevant case right now, I’m the Virgin Mary!”

  “Come to think of it,” Badger says, “there is a certain resemblance. But in letting off all this steam, your halo’s gotten a little crooked.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she says, only half-crossly. “It’s just … it’s just that I wanted everything to be so … perfect … with the whole family … just once … to celebrate …”

  He moves across the room now, sits beside her on the green sofa, and circles her shoulders with his left arm. “It wasn’t your fault, Mom,” he says. “Sometimes things just go wrong. The best-laid plans of mice and men …”

  “And my beautiful dinner—people just played with their food. And Mr. Greenway here from Fortune. I’d worked so hard.”

  “No more self-pity, Mimi Myerson. Nothing old Greenway writes about us can hurt us. The old farts who read Fortune don’t buy Mireille perfume. Besides, maybe you work too hard, Mom. Ever think of that?”

  She looks quickly at him. “Is that it, Badger? Have I been working so hard with this company that I’ve let the rest of my family fall apart all around me?”

  “Why not give me more to do? I’ll take a promotion any old day.”

  “Oh, Badger. You’re the best. You’re the best thing that’s happened to this family, and this company. Ever. I couldn’t run it without you.”

  “Well, I do have some interesting news for you,” he says, “if we can get back to business for a minute.”

  “Oh? What’s that?” The tears and the anger are gone now, and she sits up straight.

  “Naturally, I didn’t want to mention this at dinner. But I’ve found out who’s been buying up our Miray stock in big units, forcing the price up.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s not one of the funds, as we thought. It’s an individual.”

  “Who, Badger?”

  “Mr. Michael Horowitz. Himself.”

  She stiffens slightly. “You’re sure.”

  “Found out this afternoon. One of his partners plays squash at the Racquet Club. He just casually mentioned it—as though he assumed I knew. I don’t envy that partner’s future with Horowitz if Horowitz learns he let the cat out of the bag.”

  “No. Don’t tell anyone. I don’t even want to know your friend’s name.”

  “He’s got over four percent of us already.”

  “At five percent—”

  “Right. SEC regulations require that he make a public announcement. But what puzzles me is why? Why would a real estate guy who’s got hotels and co-ops and casinos in Atlantic City want to get into the cosmetics business? Is it the old green-mail, do you think? Driving the price of our stock up to the point where we’ll have to pay his price to get it back? Or do I detect a not-so-friendly takeover attempt in the making? Or what?”

  “Michael Horowitz,” she says. “Again. I should have guessed.”

  “What do you mean, ‘again’?”

  “First it was Grandpa’s Florida house he wanted. Now it’s this.”

  “The house was a perfectly friendly sale. This isn’t. This is back-door stuff. This is sneaky.”

  “He seems to want to buy up whatever belongs to the Myersons. Isn’t that pretty clear?”

  “But why, I wonder?”

  At first she doesn’t answer him. Then she says, “Personal reasons. Jealousy, perhaps.”

  “Jealousy?”

  “Maybe he sees us as old Jewish money. He’s new Jewish money. His father was a caterer in Queens. Something like that.” She laughs briefly. “Isn’t it silly? My Grandpa Adolph started out as a housepainter in the Bronx!”

  “How well do you know this guy, Mom?”

  “Know him? Well, I know him. Everybody knows Michael Horowitz if they’ve spent five minutes in New York.”

  “Then why not call him, Mom? Set up a meeting. See what’s on his mind. Confront the guy with what we know. You’re always at your best at a high-noon shoot-out.”

  She shudders. “Oh, please,” she says. “Haven’t we had enough talk tonight about shooting—about guns and killing?”

  “Sorry,” he says easily. “Unfortunate metaphor. But I do think this guy Horowitz is becoming a threat that our company is going to have to face.”

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I’ll call him.”

  “They say he’s tough.”

  “I’m tough,” she says.

  He laughs. “Good girl! Your halo’s back in place.”

  She is silent for a moment. Then she says quietly, “This means it’s even more important for the perfume to be a success, doesn’t it.”

  “Of course. If we’re going to fight a takeover, we’ll need to fight from strength.”

  “Suddenly, the future of this company—your future, my future—and your future is even more important than mine—all depends on the success of a, a silly little fragrance!”

  “Not a silly little fragrance. A fifty-million-dollar fragrance. A very important fragrance.”

  “Well, it got off to a pretty rocky start tonight, didn’t it?”

  “Tonight was just family.”

  “Oh, Badger,” she says, “it will succeed, won’t it? It can’t fail, can it?”

  “Of course it can’t,” he says.

  But they both know that this is a business where there is never any guarantee of success, never any insurance against failure.

  The two sit quietly on the green sofa, sipping their brandies. Outside, the seagulls are slowly lifting from the lake and circling back to sea, a signal that the Atlantic storm has passed. Elsewhere in the apartment, Felix moves from room to room on silently slippered feet, turning out all unnecessary lights, leaving lighted only those that will guide his master and his mistress to their respective bedrooms at their respective hours. In the library, the portrait of Adolph Myerson scowls down upon his only granddaughter and his only great-grandson from under his museum lamp.

  Is the room talking?

  “Practice your curtsy, Mimi,” she hears her mother’s voice say. “Lower your body a little more, bend your right knee a little deeper, and the left foot a little further back. That’s better. Now hold out your right hand for balance, and say—”

  “Good afternoon, Grandpa, sir. Good afternoon, dear Granny Flo.”

  “Much better. Now try it again: back straight, with your chin a little lower, but with your eyes looking directly into Grandpa’s.”

  “Why is Papa unhappy, Mama?”

  “Your Papa is unhappy because your Grandpa is unhappy. But if you and I can make your Grandpa happy, and your Grandma happy, your Papa will be happy, and everyone will be happy—happy as happy can be. Now practice the curtsy, chin down, eyes up …”

  But from where he glares down at them from her library wall, her grandfather’s face fails to register even the slightest trace of happiness, or pleasure, or approval, at all.

  3

  At number 3 Sutton Square, Edwee Myerson opens the front door of his house using four different sets of keys—one for the main lock, one for the deadbolt, one for the chain, and one for the heavy Fox lock that braces the big door from within (New York is no longer the safe place it once was)—and lets the three of them in: himself, his wife, and his sister, Nonie. His servants have all retired for the night, and the house is very still. He leads the two women down the dimly lit entrance gallery with its Oriental rugs and its dark walnut-paneled walls from which his famous collection of Greek amphorae are suspended from wrought-iron brackets, turning on lamps as he goes, toward his office in the southeast corner of the house.

  Edwee’s office, like the other rooms in the house, is arranged more like a private museum than a workspace. The office overlooks the East River and the city skyline and bridges to the south, as well as a more intimate view of Edwee’s small city garden, with its fruit trees and boxwood hedges as well as its raised centerpiece, which is Edwee’s herb garde
n, where he grows the fresh herbs for his second career as a gourmet cook. Within the office itself are displayed more of Edwee’s collections. Bookcases along one wall contain his collection of over two thousand cookbooks, some of them quite old and rare. More cases contain his even larger collection of art books, and against the wall between the two French doors that lead out into the garden are displayed his collections of antique dolls and miniature doll-house furniture, including complete living room and dining room sets signed by the Master Thomas Chippendale himself—the only such sets the Master is known to have executed, and which the Smithsonian has been after for years. Illuminated cases display his collections of coin-silver spoons and early American pewter serving pieces. There is much, much more. One table displays his collection of silver and crystal inkwells; another, a collection of millefleur paperweights; still another, a collection of old snuffboxes. Tucked between the books on the bookshelves are specimen pieces of Chinese Export porcelain, and an almost-complete edition of Dorothy Doughty birds, risen incomparably in value since the artist’s death. A bronze umbrella stand holds a valuable assortment of antique gold- and silver-handled walking sticks. Another stand, fashioned from an elephant’s foot and lined with rosewood, holds swords, sabers, and fencing foils with variously carved and jeweled hafts, and above the door through which one enters the room hangs a collection of antique pistols. Flanking Edwee’s big partners’ desk, which is made of cherry and burled walnut, are six-foot-high floor lamps whose bases are an identical pair of twisted ivory narwhal tusks. One could go on and on describing the contents of this extraordinary room. Next door, for instance, is a fully-equipped kitchen, Edwee’s personal domain where he tests his recipes, which has nothing to do with the main kitchen of the house.

  Edwee hardly ever sets foot in this other kitchen, which he calls “the service kitchen.” And, conversely, no servant is permitted in Edwee’s personal kitchen except, of course, for cleanup. Every imaginable cooking vessel and utensil is stored here: the zinc-lined copper roasting pans, the silver chafing dishes, the crockery serving dishes, the pots and pans of glass and stainless steel, the wooden spoons. Because, as any fool would know (and as Edwee will explain), certain foods demand certain materials for proper preparation. Who would dream of preparing a bouillabaisse in anything but copper, for example, or of stirring it with anything but a wooden spoon? What sort of idiot would plank a turbot on anything but a board of bleached ash? (Pine or maple “rapes” the flavor, Edwee points out.) Is there another way to serve wild asparagus than on bone china so thin that you could see a finch’s foot through it, and with ivory tongs? (Yes, you could use ivory chopsticks.) Also, with the exception of the twelve-burner range and the four ovens, nothing in this kitchen is electric. Edwee makes his butter in a wooden churn, the only way. Edwee even has a candling device for candling his eggs, which come from upstate, where they are laid by free-range chickens. His servants complain about his refusal to buy a dishwasher, but that is their problem.

  One could go on and on, and then add that all the other rooms in Edwee’s house are furnished in a similar artfully eccentric fashion. From time to time, if the cause is sufficiently worthy, which is to say sufficiently fashionable, Edwee Myerson will allow his house to be toured for charity, but this is a nuisance since a brace of security guards must be positioned in each room to keep an eye on their costly contents.

  At the door to his office now, Edwee says to his wife, “Don’t you need to powder your nose or something, pussyface? My sister and I have important family m-m-m-matters to discuss.”

  Gloria pouts. “Well, don’t be too long,” she says. “Your little baby’s toesies get cold in bed if she doesn’t have her daddy to snuggle up to.”

  “I won’t,” he says, and kisses her on the forehead. She leaves, and he closes the door behind her and stands for a moment with a dreamy smile on his face. He sighs softly and says, “Isn’t she simply … wonderful?”

  “You seem so domesticated, Edwee, dear. Given up your old ways?”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” He moves to his chair behind the partners’ desk, and his sister arranges herself in the Queen Anne armchair opposite him. “You see, she introduced me to oral sex. She sits on my face, and I sit on hers. All those years of impotence are suddenly over! No more problems with getting an erection, no more p.e.—premature ejaculation—no more miserable masturbation, no more using the vacuum cleaner—”

  “The vacuum cleaner!” Nonie cries. “What are you talking about, Edwee?”

  “I used to use the rubber end of the vacuum cleaner hose to try to arouse myself. All at once, with Gloria, those days are gone forever.”

  “Really, Edwee,” Nonie says. “Really. It must be that female Jungian you’ve been going to.”

  “I’ll say this, Nonie: forty-two years of analysis have finally begun to pay off. You see, I’ve finally learned to be honest with myself, and to act out my fantasies. Thanks to Dr. Ida Katz—and Gloria.”

  “Well,” she says, tapping the tips of her fingernails on his desktop, “I’m sure you didn’t drag me back here to talk about your sex life, which I’m really not interested in—”

  “And we videotape each other,” he says. “That was Dr. Katz’s idea. We videotape each other while we’re having sex, and then, while we’re having sex the next time, we play the videotapes back. We even have videotapes of ourselves making videotapes. Oh, it’s quite wild and, as you say, quite wonderful.”

  Nonie says nothing, looking up at the ceiling, once more as though balancing something small and invisible on the tip of her nose.

  “But, back to less pleasant matters,” he says. “We really have a pretty kettle of fish on our hands, don’t we?”

  “You mean Brad and his alleged lady friend? I thought he and Mimi seemed perfectly relaxed and normal tonight. I don’t think we should get involved in it, Edwee. If they’re having any problems, that’s their business. After all, all she is to us is our niece.”

  “Oh, I’m not talking about that,” he says. “I agree that’s a very minor matter. Interesting, but m-m-m-minor.” He fumbles in the pocket of his dinner jacket for his pipe, finds it, extracts it, and lights it carefully. “I’m talking about our mother, Nonie. I’m talking about Maman. It’s perfectly clear to me that she’s finally gone around the bend. She’s going to have to be put away, and it’s going to have to be our unhappy task—yours and mine—to do it.”

  “You mean her outburst at Alice tonight? I agree that was … unfortunate. But it was Alice’s fault. Alice shouldn’t have contradicted her. Mother doesn’t like to be contradicted. She’s always been like that.”

  “No, no, no,” Edwee says, gesturing in the air with his pipe. “I’m not even talking about that, though that was more of her craziness—saying that Alice had killed a man, for God’s sake, when we all know that poor Henry’s death was a tragic accident, and Alice was hundreds of miles away in Saratoga when it happened. And saying that our father kept some sort of diary, which we know he didn’t, and getting that young reporter all excited. I’m not talking about any of that. Besides, poor tragic Alicia was drunk as a lord.”

  “I don’t think she was, Edwee. I saw her refuse wine at the dinner table, and I heard her ask Felix for ginger ale during cocktails.”

  “Anyway, I’m not talking about any of that. I’m talking about Maman. You may call it Alzheimer’s disease, but I call it senility—senility in its most advanced, irreversible stage.”

  “I only mentioned Alzheimer’s because I didn’t want that reporter to take that outburst of hers too seriously. She’s not—”

  He rises slowly from his chair, carrying his pipe, and moves toward the French doors. “A poor old woman, nearly ninety,” he says, “now completely incompetent to handle her own affairs. Probably incontinent, too. Did you notice the many trips to the bathroom?”

  “I only noticed one.”

  “Living alone, totally blind—”

  “I’m not even sure about that, Edwee. I
think she sees better than she lets on. She noticed yellow tulips. She said she could smell they were yellow. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I never have!”

  “No,” he says, “the real point is that she can no longer manage her own affairs. She needs special care. I hate to say this, Nonie, but she must be placed in a nursing home. And not a moment too soon. We should probably start making arrangements the first thing in the morning.”

  “A nursing home! But she’s perfectly happy at the Carlyle. She has room service, maid service, her linens changed every day. They love her there, and treat her like a—”

  “I’ve already located a place in Great Barrington that sounds quite ideal for her. She’d have her own little room. People her own age for company—”

  “But she has plenty of company, Edwee. People drop in on her all the time, she spends half her day on the telephone talking to people like Mrs. Perlman. The hotel staff is in and out—”

  “And Great Barrington’s far enough away so that she’ll understand why you and I won’t be able to come and see her as often as we might like. No pets, of course.”

  “You’d make her give up Itty-Bitty? That would kill her, Edwee!”

  “Well, it’s got to be done,” he says. “I know it’s sad, but it’s got to be done.”

  “But why, Edwee? Mother is … Mother. She’s always been the way she is. After all, I’m a few—well, a couple of years older than you, and Mother has been the way she is for as long as I can remember. What we saw tonight was just … Mother!”

  He hesitates. “I’ll tell you something, Nonie,” he says. “Something you may not know. Before our Papa died, he said to me, ‘Edwee, I want you to take care of your mother. And if ever the time comes, I want you to see that she is given the proper care. I want you to promise me that, if the time should come when you feel that she needs to be institutionalized, you will see that it’s done. P-p-p-promise me that.’ I promised him. It was a deathbed promise, Nonie.”

  “But Edwee, Papa died in his sleep in a San Francisco hotel. You were in Paris, remember?”