Shades of Fortune

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Try this,” he continued, producing more samples from the endless collection in his drawer and dropping them into the red bag, “and this: a bee-pollen eye gel …” Then, in the same cajoling tone, he said, “Mireille, you’re my only granddaughter. Naturally, I have a special place in my heart for you. Please consider carefully what you are proposing to do. Do you want to become a Mrs. Horowitz, a name that will associate you with that Jewish element? I suppose you’ve often wondered why your grandmother and I no longer go to services at Temple Emanu-El.”

  She hadn’t wondered, but she nodded.

  “It’s because that element has completely taken over there. If you let one in, others follow. They bring in their friends and all their relatives, the cousins, their aunts and uncles, their sons-in-law, and before you know it the place is overrun with them. The same thing has happened at the Harmonie Club, which is why I no longer am a member there—which I miss, because I used to enjoy the pool. The place is overrun. The only place that’s left is Century, the only place that’s been able to uphold the standard. But the Orientals are already pounding on our doors out there, trying to get in. There’s some publisher named Kopf or Kupf or something, who’s been put up. Your Mr. Horowitz could never become a member of Century, Mireille.”

  “I’m sure Michael has no interest in joining Century, Grandpa.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” he said. “They all want to get into Century, these people. They regard it as a status symbol. They fail to realize that a club is a place where people of similar tastes and interests like to gather, nothing more than that.”

  “Michael isn’t a golfer, Grandpa.”

  “Then look at it another way. Won’t it look a little peculiar that Adolph Myerson’s granddaughter’s husband is not a member of Century? What will people say to that?”

  She looked around the room helplessly, looking for some way to counter the illogic of her grandfather’s logic.

  “Is he interested in any sports, this Horowitz? Football or baseball?”

  “Well, he’s a Yankees fan.”

  “Yes. These Orientals often are, though they don’t play sports well.”

  “A very moderate Yankees fan.”

  “But the point is to find someone whose name will do your family proud, someone whose family and position are in keeping with our own position in New York society. As I say, you don’t look Jewish. Why marry someone whose name and background will stigmatize you unnecessarily and associate you in people’s minds with everything that is deplored about the Jewish race? Of course, if the man you marry has to be Jewish, there are plenty of nice—”

  “You sound like an anti-Semite, Grandpa!”

  “I? On the boards of the United Jewish Appeal and the World Jewish Congress, not to mention a dozen other Jewish philanthropic organizations across the United States? Surely you cannot be serious, Mireille. And I have no time for jokes.” Then he had spread his hands out flat on the leather desktop in front of him, in his best professional manner, and the expression on his face now was similar to the one he wore when he posed for the portrait that hung on the wall behind him: that of a weary but patient teacher who is forced to explain, all over again, a very simple problem to a particularly dull-witted pupil. “Let me tell you something about the Jews, Mireille,” he said, “something that you seem not to understand. Not all Jews are alike, just as not all Christians are alike. There are essentially two types. There are people like us who, through hard work and a reputation for integrity, have earned themselves prominent positions in the business community, and who have many Christian friends from the highest social and government echelons in the country—like my dear friends Ike and Mamie Eisenhower. We are welcomed in the finest Christian homes and are guests in the finest Christian clubs. We are assimilated Jews, in other words. We recognize that we are a small minority, living in an essentially Christian country, and we realize that we must abide by the majority rule. That is the American way. Then there is another type, which refuses to adapt. I call them Old World Jews. They haven’t changed their ways since the Middle Ages. They abide by archaic dietary laws. They practice their religion in a language no one can understand. They live in ghettos—middle-class ghettos, to be sure, in places like Kew Gardens and Woodmere and Fort Lee and the Green Haven section of Mamaroneck. They’re tight-knit, distrustful of outsiders, still actually afraid of Christians. They tend to be entrepreneurial types. You’ll find many in the entertainment business—catering, for instance. In my business, I’ve had to deal with many of these types—Revson, for example. Because they don’t trust me, I’ve learned that you can’t trust them. They’re the type who, as they say, will try to ‘jew you down’ in a business deal. I don’t personally find them attractive, but I’ve had to do business with this type so often that I know it well.”

  “You’re talking about stereotypes, Grandpa.”

  “I am indeed! Because the stereotype exists. We used to call them kikeys. I realize that that is not a flattering expression to use, but I still think of them that way. I do not wish to see the only granddaughter of Adolph Myerson marry into a kikey family. Surely the only granddaughter of Adolph Myerson deserves something better than that. Surely Adolph Myerson himself deserves better treatment that that.”

  It was, Mimi knew, another danger signal when her grandfather began speaking of himself in the third person.

  “Let me tell you something else about these people,” he said. “Typically, they will have three sons. One they make become a doctor, another they make a lawyer, and the third they will make an accountant. Do you know why this is? So that one son can give them free health care, the next will give them free legal advice, and the accountant will prepare their taxes for them—free. If I’ve seen this happen once, I’ve seen it a thousand times.”

  “But Michael is a builder!”

  “And let me tell you one more thing. Builder starts with the same letter as borrower. These people never put up anything with their own money. They borrow from the government, they borrow from banks, they borrow from their relatives. They are always in debt. They actually measure wealth by how much they owe. I assume that the Kew Gardens caterers are aware that we are a family of means?”

  “I don’t know that!”

  “I’m sure they are. I’m sure that the Kew Gardens caterers hope that if their son marries a rich woman she will help him extend his line of credit. Why else would they support such a … such an obvious mismatch.”

  “But I love him, Grandpa!” she had cried. “You’re making him sound just terrible.”

  “I’m saying he’s marrying you for your money, Mireille. And the caterers are aiding him and abetting him in this pursuit.”

  “It’s not true,” she said desperately. “He didn’t even know who you were until after he’d asked me to marry him. And besides, I’m not rich.”

  “That’s true,” he said quietly. “You’re not rich yet. But you could be one day. Very rich. You are an heiress, Mireille.”

  “Michael doesn’t care about any of that! He loves me!”

  His gaze at her through the pince-nez was even. “Have you met this young man’s family?” he asked her.

  “Not yet.” She felt herself close to tears. She felt her mouth going suddenly dry and could also feel perspiration streaming down her sides, under her blouse.

  “Well, let me tell you what you will find when you do,” he said, and he withdrew his large gold watch from a vest pocket and consulted it. “Let me just tell you this, young lady, and then I must send you on your way. You will find a short, swarthy, bald Jewish man with a Bronx accent who chews on a cigar. You’ll find his peroxide-blond wife who has a floor-length mink coat, wears diamonds from head to toe, who goes to the Fontainebleau for Christmas and plays mah-jongg. You’ll find a couple who want a wedding at the Plaza with two rabbis, and the kind of barbaric ceremony where the bridegroom smashes a wineglass with his heel. Naturally, they’ll want to cater the reception, and I’ll be expected to p
ay for everything. I’m not saying you’ll find this in every exact detail, but this is the element you will be dragging yourself into, and dragging your family, and your family’s good name into, if you persist in pursuing this unfortunate, this totally inappropriate, relationship to the point of marrying this David Horowitz.”

  “His name is Michael,” she sobbed. “How can you sit there and say such things about people you’ve never met?”

  “Mark my words, young lady—”

  “Oh, stop! Just stop this!” she cried, and she reached blindly beside her chair for her gloves and her mother’s Chanel bag to go. Then she said, “I don’t care. I don’t care what you say. I love him, and I’m going to marry him, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me—nothing! You can go to hell!”

  He looked momentarily so startled—the pince-nez seeming to teeter on his nose—that she realized that it had probably been years since anyone, within the family or out of it, had challenged him or defied him or even questioned him, and she saw that the experience was so new and so strange to him that he was, at least briefly, caught quite off his guard and was, quite literally, speechless. He removed the pince-nez completely and placed them on his desktop, lenses down, in a gesture of fatigue. Then he said evenly, “That may be true. There may be nothing I can do to stop you, but there are other things that I can do. If you were expecting to receive any inheritance under my will, that instrument can be redrawn so that you receive nothing. I will, in the process, find it quite within my power to forget that I ever had a granddaughter.”

  “I don’t care! I don’t need your money! I don’t even want it!”

  “And that’s not all that I can do to prevent you from doing what you say you mean to do. If you persist in this, you will see that there are other things that I can do. Now, I have nothing more to say to you. I will, I assume, be apprised of your decision when you have had a chance to think this over.” He looked down at his desk and began quickly moving pieces of paper about with his hands. “Right now I have people—important people—waiting to see me. I have a company to run. Good day.” With one hand, he gave her a quick gesture of dismissal. “Don’t forget your shopping bag.”

  “Good!” he said when she was able to reach him on the phone to tell him of her meeting with her grandfather. “Good for you! You told the old bastard off. To hell with him. We don’t need his money, and now we won’t have to go around kissing his ass the way your parents have always had to do.”

  “But what about what he said, that there were other things that he could do?”

  “Bluffing. Just bluffing. After all, what else could he do?”

  But, for the first time, she thought she heard a note of uncertainty in his voice.

  Henry Myerson stood in front of his father’s desk while his father affixed his signature to a thick sheaf of documents. Finally, after several minutes, without looking up from his paperwork, Adolf Myerson said, “What time is it?”

  “Ten after four, Father.”

  “Good. This won’t take long.” Then, still signing papers, his father said, “I understand that you borrowed a certain sum of money from your mother the other day.”

  “A small sum, yes.”

  “I am aware of the amount. Please let me be the judge of whether the amount is small or not.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Your mother has funds of her own, which she is free to dispense as she pleases,” he said. “But the trouble with your mother is that, though she is not soft-headed, she is soft-hearted. She is generous to a fault, and she has no money sense. I have to go over her accounts periodically and sort things out for her. She is particularly soft-hearted where you are concerned. I am sure that it will not come as news to you that she favors you among the three children. This is natural, and understandable. You are her firstborn, her oldest son, her pet. That you are your mother’s favorite is human nature. In fact, as you were growing up, there were times when I felt that, if I had not applied strict discipline in the household, you might have turned into a mama’s boy, or like your brother.”

  For the past several years, due to certain occurrences that had come to light, it had been noticed that Adolph Myerson no longer referred to his younger son by name. He was no longer “Edwee” or “Edwin” but was “your brother” or “my other son” or sometimes just “the other one.”

  “These borrowings of yours,” he continued, “these small loans, as you call them, have gone on for some years. I am afraid that you are taking advantage of your mother’s generous nature, that you regard her as a soft touch, an easy mark, that you are using her, bleeding her, because her resources, though considerable, are not limitless. I am not pleased with this situation, Henry.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  His father put his signature on the last of the stack of documents, and a small smile crossed his lips. “There,” he said. “A four-million exclusivity agreement for our boutique at Magnin’s. All the California stores. We’ve beat that shit Revson.” He looked up at his son for the first time. “I’m not pleased, Henry,” he said, “and I’m also puzzled. You are paid an excellent salary. Next to my own, it is the highest salary in the company. You are paid enough to live well, even luxuriously. Why is it that you find it necessary to run to your mother for these handouts? Why is it that you seem unable to live on what you earn?”

  “There are taxes, Father, doctors’ bills, tuition—”

  His father waved his hand. “Everybody pays taxes. Everybody has doctors’ bills. Frankly, Henry, your chronic inability to live on what you earn worries me. It is one of the reasons I have been hesitant to turn over the reins of the company to you, which some people think I should have done several years ago. Your seemingly improvident nature makes me wonder whether perhaps you have inherited your mother’s lack of money sense. Is that it, Henry?”

  “I’m sorry, Father,” he began. “I’ll try—”

  “Or is it your wife, Henry? Is it her inability to control her spending that gets you into these financial embarrassments?”

  He lowered his eyes. “No, it’s not that.”

  “You’re not a child, Henry. You’re forty-two years old. We can speak man to man. Frankly, it is undignified for a grown man of your age to be running to his mother for handouts.”

  “It won’t happen again, Father.”

  “You call them loans. Your mother calls them loans. But I see no evidence of interest having been paid on any of them, nor are there signs that any of these loans have been repaid. I suspect that you have begun to think of these advances of hers as outright gifts, with no strings attached. I am considering calling all of these loans of yours in, Henry. Calling them in, with interest. It might teach you a much-needed lesson.”

  “But, Father, I can’t—”

  “I’m considering it,” his father said. And then, “Your daughter was in to see me yesterday.”

  “I know that, Father.”

  “She wants me to approve her plans to marry some inappropriate young man. A totally inappropriate young man.”

  “I haven’t met him yet, Father.”

  “I told her that I thoroughly disapproved. I expect you to exert whatever parental pressure you possibly can against this plan of hers, Henry. I expect you—and Alice—to exert as much parental pressure as you can against this proposed marriage. Do you understand, Henry?”

  He nodded.

  “Good,” he said. He gathered up the stack of documents on his desk, aligning their edges between his palms. “Drop the Magnin contracts on my secretary’s desk on your way out, will you?”

  A little later, Adolph Myerson placed a telephone call on his private line. “Mireille?” he said when she answered. “This is your grandfather calling.”

  “Yes, Grandpa,” she said, thinking that perhaps he had had a change of heart.

  “I have been doing a little checking on the housing project your friend Horowitz is putting up in Newark, Mireille. This is a million-square-foot project for the low
-income and the elderly, most of whom, it seems, will be Negro. It seems that these buildings are being put up with many gross violations of the New Jersey Building Code. There are inadequate fire escapes, for one thing. There are no fire doors between the floors or between the two buildings, as called for in the contract. The list of Code violations is quite long, I’m afraid, and quite shocking, considering the sort of people he plans to have occupy these units. Shoddy work, all around. The New Jersey State Building Inspector is a friend of mine. I would hate to have to notify him of these shortcomings. Or to call this to the attention of my friends at the New York Times.…”

  She had never seen Michael so angry. His lips were white, and his eyes blazed. “That bastard!” he said. “That shit bastard! He’s trying to blackmail me! None of that is true! I’ll sue him—that’s what I’ll do. I’ll sue him!”

  “Wait,” she begged him. “My mother has a plan. She wants us for dinner tonight. It will be just the four of us—my parents, and you and me. She has an idea, some sort of plan.”

  It was a dinner party that never actually took place, where no one ever sat down for dinner.

  Michael stood in the center of her parents’ living room, his fists clenched. “He’s bluffing. I know he’s bluffing,” he said.

  Looking pale, her father said, “He isn’t bluffing, Michael. I’ve known him, worked with him, for a long time. He’s a man who’s used to getting his own way.”

  “He’ll do anything to get his way,” Mimi’s mother sobbed. “Anything!”

  “And you’re telling me that your father would actually financially ruin his own son—throw you out on the street, as you put it—for letting me marry your daughter? His own son?”

  “Please try to understand, Michael,” her father said. “There’s a portrait in my father’s office that serves as a reminder to me of where I stand with him. It used to be a portrait of two men: my father, and my uncle Leo. When my father decided that it was time for Leo to leave the company, he had Leo’s part of the portrait painted out. He can make people disappear.”