Shades of Fortune

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  She shivers. “And I was a part of it, too, wasn’t I? I, or at least my nursery school, was part of a scheme to destroy my father. They used me, too. And—oh, my God, I’ve just remembered something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How old was I then? A little over three? And yet I can remember someone—one of Granny’s servants, perhaps, someone who was taking care of me—saying to me, over and over again, ‘If anyone asks you how long you’ve been in Maine, you’re to say, “Mama and I have been here since my birthday party.”’ I remember being made to repeat those words again and again, ‘Mama and I have been here at Granny’s house ever since my birthday party.’ My birthday is May twenty-fourth. It must have been that summer, and it must have been to help her establish—”

  “Her alibi.”

  “Yes. So I was part of the cover-up, too!”

  “So it seems. Did anyone ask you how long you’d been in Maine?”

  “I don’t remember. I just remember being made to memorize that line. But if anyone had asked me, I know I’d have said what I was told to say. I was always the sort of little girl who did what she was told. Oh, Michael, this is all so awful.”

  “Well, I warned you,” he says.

  “But how could Nate go on doing this? It said the case was closed. Isn’t there something called the statute of limitations?”

  “There is no statute of limitations in a criminal manslaughter case, Mimi. That case could have been reopened at any time. Nate knew this, and he must have made it very clear to your father.”

  “You mean the case could be reopened … even now?”

  Still staring at the ceiling, he says, “Even now. Forty-six years later.”

  “Oh, God,” she says.

  He glances in her direction. “Look,” he says, “I don’t think it’s very likely. The prosecutor’s office would have a hard time rounding up any witnesses after all these years. Most of the original witnesses are probably dead by now, or disappeared. But, technically, it could be reopened—the whole can of worms.”

  “My mother could never be put through such a thing. Not at this point, Michael.”

  “Meanwhile, Nate or Leo, or the-two of them, got hold of your grandfather’s diaries, with all the other very incriminating stuff in them—the date of your mother’s departure for Bar Harbor, and all. The diaries turned up in Nate’s daughter’s house.”

  “How did they get hold of them?”

  “That I don’t know. But they obviously got them in the fall of nineteen forty-one. There are lots of ways they could have got them: bribed a security guard, bribed one of the building’s cleaning staff. There are lots of ways to burglarize an office building. Look at Watergate.”

  “Has Louise Bernhardt ever read these, do you think?”

  “That I don’t know, either. But I do think one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That your father had her father killed.”

  “What?”

  “Remember that day in nineteen sixty-one—the day we drove to East Orange to see my new house? The day I’d been to see your father at his office, to see if there was some way I could help him save the company? I didn’t tell you the complete truth of what happened in your father’s office that day. He asked me if, through the building trades, I had any contacts with the Mafia. There was a man he wanted killed, he said. The man’s name was Nathan Myerson. Your father was very serious—desperate, in fact. I told him there was nothing I could do to help him. But I think by nineteen sixty-two, when Nate’s body was found in the Saw Mill River, he’d found somebody willing to do it for him.”

  “Oh, my God,” she says.

  “And then less than one week after Nate was murdered, your father shot himself.”

  “Do you think there was a connection?”

  “Probably, yes.”

  “But why? Oh, it just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it? But still—why? Even if he’d just had that horrible thing done, that desperate thing done, why would he then kill himself? Why would he come home to that empty apartment, lie down in a bathtub, and put a bullet through his head?”

  “Who knows how he felt? Guilty conscience, perhaps. His cousin’s blood was on his hands, and maybe he couldn’t live with that. Maybe it was that, and a combination of other pressures. You have to admit he was under a lot of different pressures. Probably only your mother knows the real reasons now.”

  “My mother was out of town when it happened. She said she had to get away, to find some peace.”

  “Yes, I imagine she’d have been looking for a little peace at that point. At least, when your grandfather was alive, he did what he could to try to help her—even though, as you can tell, his opinion of her wasn’t the highest. When the chips were down, the old man did what he could to help his family. That’s when I began to revise my opinion of him. He wasn’t all bad. He had a side that cared about all of you.”

  She is silent for a moment. Then she says, “But a lot of this that you’ve just told me—it’s just conjecture, isn’t it? We don’t really know—”

  “Well, this much isn’t conjecture,” he says. “Just to be sure, I had one of my guys go down to the Motor Vehicle Department and look up the old records. In the year nineteen forty-one, a nineteen forty Lincoln Zephyr sedan, color black, was registered in the name of Alice Myerson, Eleven East Sixty-sixth Street. License number: KIG-013—awfully close to the plates the witnesses remembered. So it’s a good shot to guess that the police were close to an arrest before you and she left for Maine. And here’s another thing we found. Later that summer, she registered another Lincoln Zephyr in New York. It had been previously registered in the state of Maine. Your grandfather went to a lot of trouble, and must have spent a lot of money, to save your mother’s skin and cover her tracks. The only thing he hadn’t foreseen was Nate.”

  “But that’s not the worst part, is it? The worst part is Mother and Daddy, and what they did to each other. I used to think it was all my grandparents’ fault—that they were to blame for everything, that they destroyed my father and my mother. But now … it’s clear, isn’t it? Mother and Daddy destroyed each other. When I was old enough to know, couldn’t one of them have told me? I might have done something to help. Just sharing what happened with me might have helped them. Now it’s all too late.”

  “We turned up one other thing,” he says. “And this may make you feel a little better.” He reaches in his pocket and hands her a photocopy of a newspaper clipping. “It’s from the Utica Gazette, dated October fifteenth, nineteen forty-one.”

  She reads:

  ANONYMOUS BENEFACTOR REMEMBERS WIDOW, KIDS

  Betty Lee Elkins of 37 Oak Street, Utica, received a Postal Money Order in the amount of $50,000 today from an anonymous benefactor in New York City. Mrs. Elkins is the widow of Larry J. Elkins, the popular Utica High School math teacher who was slain June 3 by a hit-and-run driver on New York’s Fifth Avenue, and the mother of the couple’s two children, Mark, 13, and Justin, 9.

  In a letter accompanying the gift, the donor said, “I have read of your recent, terrible bereavement, and wish to extend my sympathy. As a parent myself, and aware of the cost of educating children, I have calculated the size of this gift to provide a college education for your two little boys. You, of course, are free to use this money in any way you see fit.” The letter, which bore a Manhattan postmark, was unsigned.

  “I’m absolutely overwhelmed,” Mrs. Elkins told the Gazette today. “Everyone in town has been so wonderful—with cards, condolence letters, gifts and flowers. I can’t express my gratitude. But this, coming out of the blue—so unexpected—words simply fail me at this point.”

  Mrs. Elkins told the Gazette that she plans to place the funds in a special savings account in her sons’ names, to be used for the purpose requested by her mystery benefactor: their college educations.

  “I’m sure that the benefactor was your father,” Michael says, “and the sum matches the amount he borrowe
d from your grandmother that month. He did what he could to try to make it right.”

  “Well,” she says quietly. “What to do now? Destroy all these books, I suppose. I know I can never confront my mother with any of this.”

  “Do now?” he says, still stretched on his back on her sofa. “Well, I have one suggestion. First of all, you’ve got an important party to get through on Thursday night. Still want me to come? Because I’m planning to be there. Then, on Friday, we’ll fly to Palm Beach. Don’t start shaking your head, kiddo; listen to me. We’ll fly down on my jet for the weekend. Have you ever been in Palm Beach in September? It’s the best time, absolutely the best. The season hasn’t started yet; we’d have the place to ourselves. You won’t believe how peaceful it is there right now, before the usual zoo arrives after Christmas. That’s what you need right now: peace, and quiet, and nothing to do but slather suntan oil on each other and lie in the sun. I’ll take you sailing on the lake. We can water-ski. Or we can just sit on the terrace and listen to the palm trees rustle and smell the jasmine flowers. You need to get away from all this, Mimi. You’ve had too much shit thrown at you recently. What have you got here? A husband who’s been cheating on you, and you sure as hell don’t think that this is the first time he’s done it, do you? Or that it will be the last time? I’ll tell you one thing, if you’d marry me I’d never cheat on you.”

  “Are you suggesting that I divorce Brad and marry you?”

  “He’s offered you a divorce, hasn’t he? I want you, Mimi. You see, I have everything in the world I’ve ever wanted—except you. I told you I wanted to be the richest guy in New York, and now people say I am. Who knows? But the one thing I always wanted was you.”

  She studies him thoughtfully. “There was a time, years ago, when I was ready to say yes,” she says. “Do you remember that day in East Orange? You hurt me terribly then. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so hurt, so rejected, as I did that afternoon. Can you ever expect me to forget that kind of hurt? Every time I look at you, I remember that hurt.”

  “It was all different then,” he says. “Everything was against us then—your family, your father’s situation. Now that’s all changed. We’re two different people now. We’re rich. We’re independent. We’re free, and we still love each other. You needed Brad then, and you don’t now. So come to Palm Beach with me, Mimi. Just for a few days. The main thing is, we could get to know each other again—get to know these two new people we now are. That’s the main thing. Letting ourselves feel together again. There’s a lot we can talk about. There are lots of things, secret things, that we share, that no one else knows about. Do you remember how I said I wanted you to have towers—towers, and mosques, and minarets, and waterfalls? Well, my house in Palm Beach has towers, and minarets, and even a waterfall. Come to Palm Beach, and I’ll place you in a fairy tower, and every night I’ll climb up a golden stair to see you.” He smiles. “Or we can even talk a little business, if we feel like it—family business, like Badger’s plan to take your company private again.”

  “What?” she cries. “How do you know about that?”

  “I’ve said this before, Mimi. New York is a village. People talk.”

  “Do you know everything about me?”

  “I sort of make it a point to,” he says.

  “Now wait a minute,” she says angrily. “Now I see. Now I see what this is all about. You’re planning to use these diaries and that letter against me, aren’t you? You’ve probably got all this Xeroxed! You’d even use my mother, my poor seventy-year-old mother, who’s going through the most difficult period of her entire life right now—use her, to blackmail me, in order to get what you want. That’s it, isn’t it? I should have guessed this all along! Of course! You’d stop at nothing—and to think I was about to say yes, I’d go to Palm Beach with you!”

  He sits up, a little wearily, swings his long legs over the side of the sofa, and plants his stockinged feet on the floor. “Oh, Mimi, Mimi,” he says. “Look at what this has done to you. Listen to what you’re saying. You’re saying you don’t trust anybody. You’re saying everybody in the world is gunning for you. You can’t go through life like this, Mimi. Everybody in this life has to have somebody he can trust. What’s happened to you, Mimi? What’s happened to the little girl with the broken skate lace? Has this business turned you into some kind of monster?”

  She says nothing, but stares at him defiantly from behind her desk.

  He pats the seat of the sofa beside him. “Come,” he says. “Come sit beside me for a minute. Let’s see a little of the old Mimi with the polished-silver eyes. The lady executive is done for the day, isn’t she? Come on, Mimi. I won’t hurt you. Come. Come sit by Papa, and let me tell you my plan.”

  Reluctantly, she rises and moves to the long sofa and takes a seat a little distance from him. “I’m very tired,” she says.

  “Of course you are. But this is better, isn’t it? Maybe I’m a chauvinist, but I can never talk seriously to a woman when there’s a desk between us. Now let me tell you what we’re going to do. There are monsters in those diaries there. There are demons that have got to be exorcised, and there’s only one way to be rid of them. We’re going to destroy those little devils. We’re going to carry those books out of here and place them, one by one, in the incinerator. This building has an incinerator, doesn’t it? Most buildings do. It’s usually in a closet near the elevator bank, and that will be the end of the demons. Exorcism by fire. But first—”

  “First?”

  “Give me your hand.” She extends her hand. “No, the other one,” he says. “First, we’re going to turn back the clock, back to a time when we didn’t know about the demons. Remember how they used to do it in the movies? The calendar pages flipping backward across the screen, leaves falling, then snow blowing, back to the humble little cottage where it all began.” Slowly, he begins twisting the rings from her ring finger.

  “Please don’t,” she says, trying to withdraw her hand.

  “Just for a little while,” he says, and gently but firmly he removes the rings—the emerald-cut ruby engagement ring, the ruby-and-diamond wedding band, and the two smaller ruby-and-diamond guard rings—and places them on the coffee table in front of him. “Now you’re naked,” he says. “If I had your real engagement ring, I’d put it on your finger now. Where is it, Mimi?”

  “At home … in my jewelry case.”

  “Then this will have to do instead,” he says, and he lifts her bare finger to his lips and kisses it. “Oh, my God, Mimi,” he says, “I love you so. I’ve tried so hard to forget you. Nothing works.”

  “We mustn’t—” she begins.

  “We must.”

  “No, no,” she repeats, even as she feels the room around her seem to turn into a kind of sea, and herself caught in an undertow, a warm, dark tide of loneliness and desire. His lips find her mouth now, and then the hollow between her breasts, and his hands move expertly in all the tender, special places. “Michael!” she suddenly cries out because, with no more than that, she has felt the first wild burst of orgasm.

  “Oh, my,” he says. “You see? It was meant to be this way from the beginning.” And then, “No, don’t turn out the light yet. First, I want to see all of you, all over. I want to look at all of you. Oh, my, this is going to be so fine … so fine.”

  When it is over, he says, “White stars.”

  “White … stars. Whave have we done, Michael?”

  “Done? Just exactly what we should have been doing all these years, that’s all. Did you see them, too?”

  “See them?”

  “The white stars flashing? Was it just as wonderful for you as it always was?”

  “Mm,” she says drowsily. “Mm.”

  “Is that a yes ‘Mm,’ or a no ‘Mm’?”

  “Mm,” she says again, and she thinks, wonderful, wonderful. As it always was, as it always will be, always. Her mind and her body were provided with wings, and they were stretched and arched and flying. There.
For a moment she was there. But now the wings have begun to fold, and she is here again, back in this room, and her rings are in a little row on the coffee table.

  “Let me hear you say it.”

  But how can she tell him that it was not the same, not really, because how can anything ever seem as wonderful as it once did? Nothing is ever quite the same, nor is anything ever quite so wonderful, even if one could turn back the clock, after the years have reaped their haphazard harvest. “Brad knows about us,” she says.

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “That will make it easier when you tell him you’re leaving him to marry me.”

  “Is that what I’m going to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Michael—”

  “Of course. All the obstacles that stood in our way are gone now.”

  “Obstacles …”

  “First your grandfather. Then your parents’ problems. Then the man you married. They’re all gone.”

  “Brad is … gone?”

  “He’s got another ladyfriend, hasn’t he? He has no more claim on you. Now we’re free to do what we’ve always wanted to do. Which is just this.” He is gently stroking her nipples, and, against her thigh, she feels his erection swelling again. “Oh, my, so much catching up to do,” he says, and enters her smoothly and easily again. “Tell me,” he whispers, pushing himself more deeply and with greater urgency into her, “did he ever make you feel this way? Was it ever like this with him? Did he ever make you feel as good as this? Tell me … tell me, Mimi. Tell me what I’ve always wanted to hear you say. Say the words I’ve waited half my life to hear. Tell me you never loved him, Mimi. You never loved him! Let me hear you say it! Say it! Tell me!”

  But all at once tears come, and she sobs against the body pressed so insistently against her own. “I can’t,” she sobs. “Please don’t make me say that, Michael! I can’t say that. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”