Shades of Fortune

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Really? How many of these calls have there been, Felix?”

  “As many as six or seven a day, madam. Usually in the evening, or on weekends, like today.”

  “I see.”

  “May I suggest,” he says, “that madam might consider having her private number changed?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Shall I call the telephone company business office on Monday morning and have that taken care of?”

  “Well, let me think about it,” she says. “It’s such a nuisance having to give out a new number to everyone you know.”

  “Yes,” he says. “But may I suggest that someone is becoming quite a nuisance to you?”

  “Yes. Well, I’ll think about it, Felix.”

  He hesitates beside the tea table, adjusting the tray so that it sits at a slightly more convenient angle for her. He clears his throat, fussing unnecessarily over the angle of the tray. “There’s one more thing,” he says. “If I may speak to you.”

  “Certainly,” she says. “What is it, Felix?”

  “When I was preparing Mr. Moore’s suits to go to the cleaner’s this morning, I found a letter in his jacket pocket. I thought perhaps that you should see it.”

  “Oh?” she says. “Why would I want to see it, Felix?”

  “I’m not suggesting that you would want to see it, madam. I’m suggesting that perhaps you should see it. There’s a difference between want and should.”

  “I take it,” she says, “that you have read this letter, Felix.”

  He says nothing, merely bows slightly.

  “I don’t really enjoy reading other people’s mail.”

  “It did occur to me,” he says, “that there might be a connection between this letter and these telephone calls.”

  “I see,” she says again.

  “Suppose,” he says, “that I just leave this letter with you, and madam can decide to do with it what she wishes.” He withdraws a blue envelope from his vest pocket and places it beside the tea tray, address side down.

  “Thank you, Felix.”

  He bows again and discreetly leaves the room.

  Mimi fills her teacup and, for a moment or two, gazes at the back of the envelope, which is blank, revealing no information. Then she slowly picks the envelope up and turns it over. It is addressed, in a rounded, rather schoolgirlish hand, to his Wall Street office and is marked “Personal—Confidential,” with the dots over the i’s in “Confidential” indicated by little circles. She sees that the envelope is postmarked “New York, N.Y. 10010,” revealing that the sender posted her letter somewhere in the Chelsea area.

  All Mimi’s principles are under assault as she balances the envelope between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. In the 1970s, when her son, Badger, was at boarding school and college, there were several friendships that appeared to be of a dubious nature, and the parents of his contemporaries traded horror stories of incriminating letters, publications, seeds, and powders uncovered in laundry sacks, at the bottom of closets and dresser drawers, stuffed into innocent-looking tennis shoes, and found in other hiding places during clandestine searches of children’s rooms: the copies of Playboy and Penthouse stuffed under mattresses and sofa cushions, the tubes of airplane glue in the desk drawers of boys who had no interest in model planes, the yellow, lozenge-shaped capsules in Benzedrine inhalers. It was her duty as a parent, her friends had told her, to ferret about among a teenager’s possessions looking for such objects: “You have to know what’s going on!”

  But Mimi had always resisted this. It had something to do with her son’s honor, and with her own honor, with her own sense of self-respect, and his. She had always congratulated herself on her refusal to invade Badger’s privacy, and, after all, he had turned out all right. But now she knows that the undertow of temptation is too powerful, and she feels herself sucked inexorably into the murky waters of duplicity—inexorably, and excitedly, too, for there is always a little thrill, an adrenaline rush, when one knows that one is about to do something that one knows is a little naughty.

  Here goes my image, Mimi thinks. Here go my pious principles. “Aloe-eyed, long-legged, alabaster-skinned Mimi Myerson,” Time magazine had written of her in a cover story a year or so ago, “is something of an anomaly in the beauty business—a straight-shooter and a square-dealer in an industry noted for its cutthroats and charlatans. Even her stiffest competitors acknowledge, begrudgingly, her track record of integrity. She applies the same rules of candor and scrupulous fairness when it comes to managing her household and family, which includes poised and polished lawyer husband Bradford Moore, and their son, Brad Moore III, known in the family as Badger. ‘Mom’s always on the level,’ says Redford look-alike Badger Moore.” At the same time, a famous astrologer had told her, “You are a woman with a sunny exterior that hides a dark side. Two forces do battle within you, Gemini: a desire to please the crowd, and a killer instinct. When you do not achieve what you want with honey, you are capable of employing vitriol.”

  Mimi almost giggles, recalling these two analyses. Well, she thinks, here goes Miss Perfect Parent and Miss Perfect Wife, and welcome to the dark side. But, after all, turnabout is fair play. Didn’t Brad humiliate me by showing up at Le Cirque with that woman, causing the captain to phone and apologize for seating us in the same room, forcing me to tell a lie in order to explain the situation? He sho-nuff did. Yassuh. And am I any more unprincipled than any other woman who has reason to believe her husband is cheating on her? I sho-nuff ain’t. And, finally, is there any reason why a woman who employs a butler shouldn’t be entitled to know as much about her life as her butler knows? As Diana Vreeland once said, “Husbands are replaceable. A good butler is to be treasured above jewels.”

  She removes the letter from its envelope, unfolds it carefully on her lap, and reaches for her teacup, feeling quite justified, even happy.

  The letter is written on rather florid blue stationery, embossed with the single initial “R,” the curling serifs of the monogram entwined among a scattering of blue and yellow daisies. Piss-elegant, Mimi thinks. The R, of course, could represent either a last initial or a first. Ruth. Rowena. Rachel. Rebecca. Roberta, or something cutesy-pie like Rusty. “My dear Bradford,” she begins.

  Bradford. No one, to Mimi’s knowledge, has ever called Brad Bradford except his mother, and then only when she was angry with him. There is something about the letter’s opening that is vaguely challenging. She reads on:

  You told me before you left that you intended to use some of your time during your trip to Minneapolis to do some serious thinking about what you see as the future for you and I.…

  A mistress, Mimi thinks, should not, after all, be expected to have full command of the King’s English.

  But this statement of yours has left me wondering why you feel that it is up to you to decide what our future is to be. Am I not entitled to be a part of any decision that involves our future jointly? Where do I stand in this decision-making process? Don’t I count, too?

  You’ve told me many times that you loved me, and that your marriage was an unhappy one …

  Oh, God, Mimi thinks.

  … but where does that leave me? It leaves me waiting for you to decide what our future is going to be, which does not strike me as very fair. Bradford, I am not the sort of woman whom you can just toss her out like some used toy or plaything when you decide you’ve had enough of her. I am not the sort of woman whom will be just sitting here and waiting for you to tell her what your decision is going to be!!!! I have rights in this situation too, remember, since we both went into this together with our eyes wide open, and both knew that there would be risks involved on both sides. This is why I want you to have this letter before you leave for M’pl’s to do your deciding, because while you are gone I intend to do some deciding too.

  You did not—on purpose?—tell me how long you would be staying in the Land of 1,000 Lakes, or when you would be back, or even which hotel it was that you w
ould be registered at. Are you planning to hide out on me? That is not fair, either, because while you are deciding everything there is no way I can be a part of the decision-making process. In case you have forgotten it, I am a human being too. I have feelings too. I have pride too. I have self-respect, and I have the same right to demand the self-respect of the man I love, or thought I did.

  So let me just tell you what I will be deciding while you are off deciding what is going to happen to you and I. I am going to be deciding, if your decision isn’t the one you have led me to expect, whether to go to that wife of yours and tell her exactly what has been going on!!!! I know who she is and how to get in touch with her, and if you plan to throw me out like one of your used condoms, and flush me down the commode, you will be very sorry that you did not treat me with the same self-respect which I treated you with.

  Sorry to be so blunt, but “decisions” are not a one-way street when it comes to you and I.

  Sincerely yours,

  R.

  P.S. Don’t tell me that you are a lawyer and these things take time. How much time does it take to say, “I want a divorce?”

  Mimi puts down the letter with a little sigh. If there is any consolation here, she thinks, this “R” sounds like a perfectly dreadful woman. If, after all these years of marriage, she knows Brad Moore at all, this woman could not possibly make him happy. There are a few unanswered questions in this letter, of course, other than the identity of the sender. “Risks involved on both sides,” for instance—what does that mean? She can see how there would be risks involved for Brad, but what risks were there for “R”? “Like one of your used condoms.” If they have been practicing birth control, this indicates a younger woman, who must be the woman she saw him lunching with at Le Cirque. Or else he is worried about AIDS, and which is worse? “You’ve told me many times that you loved me.” Well, she thinks, another man just told me that he loved me—just yesterday, in fact.

  At first, her impulse is to tear the letter into little scraps, toss them into the fireplace, and light a match. But, on second thought, she decides against this. She refolds the letter, replaces it in its envelope, and places it in the pocket of her silk caftan.

  In the distance, the telephone rings again, and Mimi feels the muscles of her throat grow tense. Presently Felix appears at the doorway and says, “Mr. Moore calling from Minneapolis, madam.”

  She rises and moves into the library to get the phone. “Hello, darling,” she says brightly, trying to keep her tone easy and light. “How’s the Sturtevant business going?”

  “I think we’re finally about to hammer out a settlement,” he says. “Thank God.”

  “Oh, good!”

  “If we settle before ten o’clock tonight, you’ll be reading about it in tomorrow’s Times. What’ve you been up to?”

  “Oh, the same old thing: working on the launch party for Mireille at the Pierre, getting the invitations out. Facing the same damn nuisance of who wants to be seated where, and with whom, and who refuses to sit at the same table with whomever—all that nonsense. Doing the advance publicity for the mystery man-with-a-scar. We’re going to air the first three commercials at the party, and the mystery man will mysteriously not be there.”

  “Everything fine at home?”

  “Oh, yes. Except …” She hesitates. “Except we’ve been getting a lot of funny hang-up calls. No heavy breathing, or anything like that. The phone rings, Felix answers, and then—click! Whoever’s calling just hangs up. It’s been driving poor Felix crazy. If this keeps up, do you think we ought to have this number changed?”

  He is silent for a moment. Then he says, “Well, perhaps—if it keeps up.” Then, “It looks as though I’m going to be able to make the five o’clock home tomorrow night. I’m booked on it, anyway, and I’ve got my fingers crossed.”

  “Good,” she says. “Wonderful. Because I’ve missed you, darling.” Then she says suddenly, “Have we had a happy marriage, darling? Have we?”

  “What?”

  “Have we? Have we had a happy marriage?”

  “That’s a hell of a question to ask me out here in the Gopher State!”

  “I don’t mean a perfect marriage, because I suppose no marriage is that. I just mean a happy, reasonably happy marriage. I was sitting here alone this afternoon, missing you, and just sort of started asking myself that. Has it been a reasonably happy marriage? Has it been happy for you, darling?”

  “Of course it has.”

  “I thought so,” she says. And then, “I love you, Brad.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Almost immediately, the phone rings again, and Mimi picks up the receiver in the middle of the first ring, before Felix can answer on his extension. “This is Mrs. Moore,” she says pleasantly. There is a little sound at the other end of the connection, a small gasp or gurgle. “Yes?” Mimi says. “May I help you?” Then there is the click, and the line goes dead, followed by the hum of the dial tone.

  20

  The last will and testament of Adolph Myerson was read on December 9, 1959, in the East 42nd Street offices of George Wardell, Sr., whose law firm, Wardell & Wardell, had represented Mimi’s grandfather for the last twenty-five years of his long life. He had died five days earlier, at the age of eighty-nine, in his suite at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, where he had gone to preside over the opening of a new Miray boutique at Saks Fifth Avenue, just off Union Square. There was every indication that his end had been peaceful. He was found, clad in his pajamas, in his bed by the hotel’s morning maid. The maid reported that there was a trace of a smile on his lips. She wanted the family to know this.

  Gathered at the reading of the will, in addition to the senior Mr. Wardell, were the immediate heirs of the deceased: his widow, Fleurette Guggenheim Myerson; his two sons, Henry and Edwin; his daughter, Naomi Myerson; his daughter-in-law, Alice; his granddaughter, Mimi; and Mimi’s new husband, Bradford Moore, Jr. All, including the widow, were doing their best to appear composed and businesslike.

  The first matters to be disposed of were the deceased’s shareholdings in the Miray Corporation. “To my beloved wife, Fleurette, thirty percent of all shares owned by me … to my beloved sons, Henry and Edwin, each twenty-five percent … to my beloved granddaughter, Mireille Moore, fifteen percent …”

  “Where am I?” Nonie had suddenly cried out. “What happened to me?”

  “And to my beloved daughter, Naomi, five percent.…”

  The response to this had been a shriek. “Five percent!” Nonie had cried. “Is that all?”

  “Please, Naomi,” George Wardell had said. “A paragraph in the will deals with your special situation. It is the next paragraph. Let me read it to you. ‘For reasons that will be well understood by my daughter, and having to do with her mercurial nature and temperament and record of marital instability, this unequal distribution of shares is made. It in no way reflects any diminished love or affection on my part for my daughter.”

  “That’s a lie!” Nonie sobbed. “He always hated me! It was always the boys … the boys … the boys.… He didn’t have their heads shaved!”

  George Wardell then continued with the details of the trust in which Nonie’s shares were to be held, how this trust was to be administered, the appointment of trustees, the eventual dissolution of the trust in the year 2000, and the distribution of the trust’s shares at that time, when, as nearly everyone in the room knew, Nonie Myerson would be eighty years old. Throughout all this, Nonie sobbed uncontrollably, while the others in the family made soft clucking noises, intended to comfort her.

  “Punishing … punishing …,” Nonie sobbed.

  “You brought this on yourself!” her brother Edwee hissed.

  George Wardell then went on to read the list of specific cash bequests to various charitable and cultural institutions: “To Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, the sum of ten million dollars to be used to create and endow the Adolph H. Myerson Memorial Pavilion for Dermatology Care an
d Research; to Harvard College School of Business, the sum of ten million dollars to establish and endow the Adolph H. Myerson Memorial Chair of Industrial Cosmetology; to the New York Animal Hospital, the sum of five million dollars—”

  “Animals!” Nonie cried. “He never gave a damn about animals!”

  “He loved Itty-Bitty!” Granny Flo snapped. (The present Itty-Bitty is one of a series of Itty-Bittys who have shared the Myerson household over the years.)

  “To the Boy Scouts of America, the sum of five million dollars; to the American Red Cross, the sum of five million dollars; to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the sum of five million dollars.…”

  There followed a list of smaller bequests to longtime employees and servants, the last of which was a gift to Miss Iris Jones—the loyal Jonesy, who had been his private secretary for forty years—of a thousand dollars.

  When he had completed his reading, George Wardell placed the document flat on his desk, removed his glasses, cleared his throat, and frowned. “I think I should tell all of you,” he said, “that there appears to be a problem involving the distribution of some of these cash bequests.”

  “What sort of a problem?” Edwee wanted to know.

  “Upon reviewing your father’s estate over the past few days, it appears that there are insufficient funds with which to carry out these bequests of his. This is unfortunate, because—”

  “Insufficient? How insufficient?”

  “Your father kept his books in a somewhat unorthodox fashion,” Wardell said. “It has been very difficult for us to determine exactly how much cash is in the estate. But from what we have determined thus far, it would appear that your father had somewhat grandiose notions as to how large his estate would be at the time of his death. Yes, I’m afraid, somewhat grandiose.”

  “How much is there?” Edwee wanted to know.

  George Wardell paused, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, and looked down at a slip of paper on his desk. “From what we can determine thus far,” he said, “from examining the statements of banks and brokerage houses where your father had accounts, it would seem that the cash value of the estate is exactly fourteen thousand, three hundred and eighty-seven dollars and twenty-six cents.”