Shades of Fortune

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  It was early afternoon before all arrangements had been made and Mimi and Alice were able to enter the hired limousine that was to drive them over the mountains to Palm Springs.

  Beside her, in the back seat, Mimi’s mother was a huddled, disheveled, red-eyed figure.

  “It was all your fault, you know,” she said once. “You got me started thinking about all those things long ago. You started it.”

  But Mimi, who had had no sleep the night before either, said nothing as the big car made its way down out of the mountains toward the desert valley floor below.

  Finally, her mother said, “I’m sorry,” and began to cry.

  23

  “You’ve got to do something about your mother’s drinking,” Brad said to her. This was in the summer of 1960, during her father’s first year as the company’s new president. “She called me at the office this afternoon, and I couldn’t make head nor tail out of what she wanted. When she’s drunk, she gets belligerent. The first thing I knew, she was shouting at me and calling me foul names. I finally had to hang up on her and tell my secretary not to put through any more calls from her.”

  “Everybody’s tried everything,” she said. “I used to pour her liquor down the drain, but she just found cleverer places to hide her whiskey. I tried to close her charge account at Sherry-Lehmann, and she just went to another liquor store. We had a doctor prescribe something called Antabuse; it’s supposed to make you deathly ill when you take a drink. But she wouldn’t take the pills. I’ve tried to get her to join Alcoholics Anonymous, but she won’t attend the meetings. I’ve tried calling her early in the morning, and have had friends call her, to catch her during the hangover period, to give her pep talks. It doesn’t help. I even went to a group called Al-Anon, which is supposed to be for the families of alcoholics. But all those people seem to do is sit around and hold each other’s hands—and pray.”

  “Well, somebody ought to do something.”

  “What else is there to do, Brad? Tell me.”

  “What she’s doing is ruining her reputation.”

  “But she just doesn’t care about her reputation, don’t you see?”

  “They’re even talking about it at my office. Those girls at the switchboard—they know what’s going on.”

  “Or is it your reputation you’re worried about? Is that it, Brad?”

  “I just wish you’d do something about it.”

  “You wish I’d do something?” she said, suddenly angry. “Why must it be me? Why is she suddenly all my responsibility?”

  “She’s not my mother,” he said. “My mother doesn’t behave that way. My mother’s not a drunk.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, letting her voice fill with sarcasm. “Of course not. Because your mother’s a real New England lady. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? Your mother’s a proper Boston Brahmin, and my mother’s a drunken slut. Is that what you’re trying to say to me?”

  “Skip it,” he said. “Let’s see what’s on TV.”

  “No, I won’t skip it, Brad. I want to know what it is exactly that you’re trying to say to me.”

  “All I’m saying,” he said, “is that I can’t understand what it is about you people that makes you feel you don’t have any control over your lives.”

  “Now wait a minute,” she said. “Just what do you mean by ‘you people’? Do I detect a faintly anti-Semitic slur here?”

  “Of course not. But I was brought up to believe that if there was a problem in a family, there was usually a solution to it, and someone in the family took charge. And I’m saying that if you don’t do something about your mother’s drinking, nobody will. Your father doesn’t seem able to control her. He doesn’t even seem to try.”

  “My father happens to have more important things on his mind right now!”

  “Then that leaves you, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “That leaves me. But what about you? Have you offered to do anything to help? Of course not.”

  “As I said before, she’s not my mother.”

  “Have you offered to help in any other ways? Everybody else in this family has been making sacrifices. Look what poor old Granny’s doing! Even Edwee’s loaned Daddy money, but what have you done?”

  “Edwee didn’t loan him any money. All he did was purchase a few more shares of Miray stock.”

  “It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? Cash? That’s what the company needs now, isn’t it? Even Nonie’s been making sacrifices. She’s fired her servants, she’s looking for a smaller apartment. But we haven’t done one damn thing!”

  “We?”

  “You, then. I don’t have any money. But you seem to be doing all right. But I haven’t seen you offering to write out any checks!”

  “I don’t know anything about the beauty business. I don’t want to get involved in it. I have my own career to worry about.”

  “Oh, of course!”

  “And our livelihood, yours and mine.”

  “Of course. Why don’t you come right out and admit it, Brad? You find the beauty business a little common, don’t you. Not quite tuned to your fine New England taste. You—you’re down at Sixty-seven Wall Street with all your Social Register snobs!”

  “Well, if you’re so hot on helping out your father, why don’t you do something?”

  “What could I do, besides offer to take over the company and run it for him? Which I could probably do, by the way. I know a few things about the business. But I hardly think he’d take kindly to that suggestion. Do you?”

  “You could do something.”

  “Like be a saleslady at Macy’s, you mean. Something—while you do nothing! No, I’ll tell you why you won’t do anything to help, Brad Moore. It’s because you’re a cold-blooded, cold-hearted New Englander—a cold-fish Yankee, long on pedigree but short on feelings. At least we Jews have feelings. At least we Jews pitch in and pull together and help each other out when the chips are down! You and your Puritan stoicism! Puritan selfishness is all it is!”

  “Look,” he said, “we shouldn’t quarrel like this. Let’s stop.”

  “I think I know what this is all about,” she said. “When you married me, you thought I was going to inherit a lot of money. Now that it turns out I didn’t inherit a lot of money, you turn on my family and start criticizing them.”

  “That’s hogwash, Mimi, and you know it’s hogwash.”

  “Is it? I’m not so sure, I think you thought it was okay to marry a Jewish girl as long as she was a rich Jewish girl. But now that it turns out she’s not a rich Jewish girl, but a poor Jewish girl, it makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Then you start criticizing, finding fault. Well, I apologize for the fact that the money you married me for failed to materialize!”

  “Hogwash,” he said again.

  “Listen,” she said, “speaking of ‘you people,’ I know how you people talk. A poor person who’s an alcoholic is called a drunken bum. But if you’re talking about a rich person who’s an alcoholic, you say, ‘Old So-and-So’s been hitting the bottle a bit lately.’”

  “Please, let’s stop this, Mimi. You’re getting into things that have nothing to do with—”

  “You started this!” she said. “All I did was ask you how your day went, and your started in on my mother—whom I happen to love.”

  “Your mother pretty much managed to ruin my day!”

  “See? There you go again!”

  “Look, we’re all under a strain,” he said. “I know that, and fighting with each other won’t help. And, you know, I was thinking. Maybe if we were able to make a baby … maybe that would help. What do you think? Shall we try again tonight? Without your … you-know-what.”

  “A baby?” she cried. “Are you out of your mind? You’d drag an innocent baby into this mess?”

  “Maybe it would make us feel more like a family, you and me. Maybe it would help take our minds off … all the other business.”

  “You see? That’s all you want. You wa
nt to put all of Daddy’s problems out of your mind. You just want to forget about what’s happening to my family. You want to get everything out of your sight, and out of your mind.”

  “Think about it, Mimi,” he said, reaching out to take her hand. “Let’s try—”

  “No,” she said, pulling away from him. “Don’t touch me. I want nothing to do with a man as cold as you are.”

  He rose from the sofa and headed toward the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to spend the night at the Harvard Club.”

  “Good!” she called after him. “Perfect. That’s the perfect address for you! Go to the Harvard Club. Go—and stay. Stay as long as you want. You can stay there forever as far as I’m concerned! Cold-blooded Yankee WASP bastard!”

  The next morning, he returned and packed a suitcase, while she watched him wordlessly.

  “You told me to call you if I needed you,” she said. “I think I need you, but I’m not sure what I need you for.” They were sitting in his huge, high-ceilinged living room on Riverside Drive. “I’m frightened, Michael. I don’t know what to do.”

  He gave her a long, sideways look, saying nothing.

  “They sent me away to school,” she said. “To learn. I don’t think I learned very much. Everyone says you’re very smart. They say—”

  “You’re growing up,” he said. “When I first met you, you were just a little kid with a broken skate lace. Then you broke my heart.”

  “I probably shouldn’t have called you,” she said. “I probably shouldn’t be here.”

  “No, I’m glad you called me.” He rose and crossed the room and sat down beside her on the sofa. “I think you need a friend,” he said.

  She studied her lacquered fingertips. “Yes, that … and perhaps something else,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Advice, perhaps. You’ve made a lot of money, haven’t you?”

  He smiled. “Yes, I’ve got to admit that’s true,” he said.

  “People all over New York are saying you’re a brilliant businessman.”

  He shrugged and spread open the palms of his hands in a Jewish-peddler-parody gesture. “Just schlepping along,” he said.

  “Please. I’m serious. I want you to tell me the truth. Is my father a brilliant businessman, or isn’t he?”

  “Golly, I—”

  “I used to think he was. But now I’m not so sure. Since my grandfather died, I’ve tried to learn a little bit about this business. After all, I’m the only grandchild. Someday—who knows?—I might be in a position to take it over. But from what I’ve learned, I now think my father has made some very serious mistakes. And now there are all these lawsuits, charging mismanagement. Recklessness. Fiscal ineptitude. What do you think, Michael?”

  He scowled. “I don’t know anything about your dad’s business,” he said. “All I know is what I’ve picked up on the street. And, since I’ve become at least peripherally involved with your family, I’ve kept my ears open.”

  “And what have you heard?”

  “Well, to be frank with you, most of what I’ve heard has not been good. People in the business are saying that this new merchandising strategy of his is suicidal.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “That’s what I’ve heard, too. I’ve read it in the newspapers. What’s going to happen, do you think?”

  He spread his hands again. “I don’t know. How much longer can your grandmother keep pouring money into the company? She’s going to run out of properties to sell at some point, you know.”

  “And that’s another thing. I see all this money of Granny’s going into the company. But I see nothing coming out. What’s happening to those funds, Michael?”

  “I have no idea. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I’ve tried. I’ve tried to meet with him, tried to talk about it. But he’s too … preoccupied. And the thing is, too, that I’m a woman. Women in this family—the whole female sex—have never exactly occupied a position of respect. But I’m thinking that if a man, a businessman like yourself, could talk to him, man to man, maybe he’d listen to you. Maybe you could help him, guide him. And also find out what’s happening to Granny’s money.”

  “Someone like me,” he said flatly.

  “Yes.”

  “It seems to me that if someone were to do that, it should be your husband.”

  “Brad is too … too preoccupied with his own career,” she said. “He’s been made a partner in his firm. There’s been talk of him running for public office. Brad has ambitions of his own that have nothing to do with my family’s business. Besides, Brad thinks that the beauty business is a little bit—”

  “Too Seventh Avenue for his Christian taste.”

  “Yes, perhaps,” she said lowering her eyes.

  “You and he have had words on this subject, I gather.”

  “Yes. But what if you were to try to talk to Daddy?”

  Suddenly he sprang to his feet and began pacing the white room, his hands thrust deep into the back pockets of his jeans, pacing and bouncing springily on the balls of his sneakered feet. “Why would he talk to me? Why would he listen to anything I had to say? I only met the guy once before.”

  “He has great respect for what you’ve been doing for Granny.”

  “What could I tell him, Mimi? What could I tell him without looking at the company’s books? And why would he let me look at the company’s books? It’s a private company, you know, and he could simply tell me to go to hell. Why would he let me look at his company’s books? Why would he let me look at a single balance sheet?” He continued pacing up and down the length of the white-carpeted floor, his shoulders hunched forward, pantherlike, or like a boxer sizing up his opponent in the ring. “No way,” he said, pounding his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “No way he’d let me do that, Mimi. Now your grandmother, she’s another story. She could ask to look at the books. She’s entitled, after all.”

  “What would she be able to tell from looking at the books?”

  “But me? No way.”

  She sat forward in her chair. “But would you at least try it, Michael?” she said. “For me?”

  All at once he stopped pacing and stood in the center of the room gazing at her, his dark eyes seeming to grow wider and deeper. He tossed the sandy forelock of hair back from where it had fallen across his forehead and began to smile that slightly crooked smile, revealing the perfect teeth and the three dimples, one at each corner of his mouth and one in his chin. Pink spots of excitement lighted his cheekbones, and with her fingertips Mimi touched her own cheeks because she could feel them reddening as well.

  “Well, if you put it that way, of course I will,” he said. “For you, I’ll do anything. For you, I want everything. For you, I want towers—yes, towers. Towers and minarets and spires, and palace gates, forests, shores and islands, gems and pearls and scepters and all the emperor’s diamonds, and every brilliant in King Oberon’s crown. You shall have temples and mosques and fountains, rings on your fingers and bells on your toes, fountains and waterfalls and tapestries and flowers and thornless roses from the spice islands, and …”

  And as he spoke he moved around the room again, opening and closing doors of the mirrored built-in closets and cabinets.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “Turning off the stereo, turning off the computer terminals, turning off the telephone, so we can make love in the afternoon.”

  “Michael, I didn’t come here for this,” she said. But even as she spoke, she knew this wasn’t true, because once again the air between them was charged, electric, the way she remembered it from nearly three years ago. The current in the air that separated them was so strong that it was almost tangible, a thick and ropy presence that seemed to draw her toward him, and her voice choked when she tried to speak. And she knew that this, yes, was of course what she had come here for, for this reason above all others, to see if this would happen again, and that all the rest
had been just an excuse—an honest excuse, forgive me for that, she thought—for this, and now that it was happening again she was overwhelmed with desire for him, that overpowering Michael feeling.

  His eyes were blazing now, and from her place on the sofa, she tried to stare him down with her own eyes, but his wide, smiling eyes defeated hers, and she looked down at the changeless pattern of the thick white carpet, feeling weak and not quite ill.

  “I want to make you … happy,” he said at last.

  “Michael, I …”

  He pressed a button, and the electric drapes across the wall of glass drew silently closed. One narrow shaft of sunlight remained between the closed drapes and fell directly into Mimi’s eyes, and she raised her left hand to shield her eyes.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Your eyes have little white stars in them when the sun shines in them. I want to remember this when you have to go. The sun in your polished-silver eyes.”

  “The world’s gotten to be such a small place,” she said.

  “Yes. Here we are again.”

  “Is it …?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should we …?”

  “Yes.”

  “It isn’t ended, then?”

  “No.”

  “Can we?”

  “We can. We must. I must. You must. You must,” he said. “We can.” And on noiseless, sneakered feet he moved toward her, took her outstretched hand, and lifted her gently to her feet.

  When it was over, his laugh was almost boyishly exultant. “I saw them again!” he said. “Litde white stars—in my brain, when it happened! Did you see them too, darling?”

  “Yes, I think I did.”

  “Little white stars!”

  Soon he was asleep, and Mimi rose and moved about the mirrored half-darkness of his bedroom. In his bathroom, she found an oversized white bath towel and wrapped herself in it. Then she began exploring his closets, opening the mirrored doors and drawers and touching his things: the suits, the shirts, the racks of neckties, the tiers of shoes, the drawers of handkerchiefs, sweaters, socks, and underwear. Suddenly she was aware that he was awake again and watching her.