Shades of Fortune

by Birmingham, Stephen;

“Nevertheless, that was my promise, and it’s my sad duty to honor that promise now. I’ll call my lawyers at Dewey, Ballantine tomorrow, have the legal paperwork done. Have her declared incompetent, incapable of handling her own affairs. You and I can do it, because we’re her only remaining living issue. We’ll just sign whatever papers are necessary to declare her—”

  “Oh, Edwee, no!”

  “What do you mean, no?” His voice is angry now.

  “Because she’s not incompetent! No more than she ever was, I mean, which was never very—”

  “Damn it, she is. Do I have to draw pictures for you? Didn’t you hear what she said in the car? About giving away the art collection—just giving it away! Do you call that competent? That collection is p-priceless! The Goya, the Bentons—the Goya alone! She’s already seen Philippe de Montebello, Nonie! God knows what de Montebello may have gotten her to sign! Well, if she’s signed anything, we’ll have it declared null and void, based on her incompetence. That collection is part of our inheritance, Nonie. It’s ours.”

  “Well, it really isn’t, Edwee. It’s hers, and hers to do with as she wishes, it seems to me.”

  “Do you mean to say you approve of this insanity—just giving away this priceless collection of paintings?”

  “I’ve never cared all that much about art,” she says.

  “Well, I do,” he says. “I care.”

  “Just because she wants to give away her collection doesn’t seem to me reason enough to have her shipped off to a nursing home,” she says. “It just doesn’t.”

  “One of us will have to be appointed her conservator,” he says. “I think that should be you. You’ve always gotten along with her better than I have. Besides, you don’t have anything else to do.”

  “What do you mean, I don’t have anything else to do?”

  “It’s just a legal technicality,” he says. “How much work could be involved in taking care of somebody who’s a vegetable?”

  “Edwee, this is our mother you’re talking about!”

  “Well, can you think of a single reason why we’d want to keep that old hag around any longer, that old hag that does nothing but cause us trouble? Unless …” He hesitates, and his eyes narrow slightly. “Unless … unless—”

  “Unless what, Edwee?”

  “Unless,” he says, “you have some personal agenda that involves keeping her around. Is that it, Nonie? Have you got some new scheme up your sleeve that involves Mother?”

  “Well,” she begins guardedly, “I do have a life to live, and …” She falls silent. She knows from experience that it is unwise to divulge too much of her plans to her brother. He cannot be trusted.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? And it probably involves that young thug you brought to Mimi’s tonight, doesn’t it?”

  The house is silent now, except for the oddly soothing rumble of the traffic that passes, unceasingly, along the FDR Drive and through the Sutton Place Tunnel beneath the foundation of the house. All the houses on Edwee’s little mews experience this steady rumble, and it is Edwee’s opinion that this small, steady vibration has a salubrious effect on the growth of plants. His herb garden, he claims, benefits from this effect, and he has even expounded on this theory in an article for House & Garden, which an unfortunate change in editorial direction caused an inexperienced new editor to reject. The vibrations from the FDR Drive as it passes through the tunnel, he wrote, has the effect of “massaging” the roots of his specimen herbs, an effect that he likened to “subterranean petting—petting to climax.”

  “Of course,” he says finally, “I should have known all along. You have some new scheme up your sleeve. That’s why you oppose having Mother put away. What is it this time, Nonie?”

  “I really don’t see that it’s any of your—”

  “How many others have there been, Nonie? How many other money-losing schemes? Let’s see: there was the dress shop on M-M-Madison Avenue. There was the little restaurant. There was the jewelry boutique. There was the p-p-p-pathetic attempt to start a new fashion magazine. All of these required the financial backing of M-M-Maman, of course. Who else would back such obvious losing schemes?”

  “Certainly not you!” Nonie cries. “I’ve learned long ago that it’s useless for anyone to turn to you and ask for help.”

  “You’ve always been so money-grubbing, Nonie. Why is that? Why are you so money-grubbing? Money bores me.”

  “Money bores you because you’re rich! I’m not. I’m the poor relation. I was shorted out of Papa’s will, remember?”

  “You were shorted out of Papa’s will because he didn’t consider you responsible. He considered Henry and me responsible.”

  She reaches for her bag and gloves to go. “You’re not telling me anything I haven’t known for years,” she says. “I was shorted out of Papa’s will because I was a girl, and Papa had no use for girls. He only wanted sons. I was a disappointment to him from the moment I was born.”

  “No, I think it was later, as you grew older, that he began to actively dislike you.”

  She stands up, facing him, and slowly his eyes withdraw from hers. “But what ambitions he had for his two sons,” she says. “Do you remember? Henry was to run the company, and look what happened to him. You were to become the first Jewish President of the United States, remember that? ‘Edwin will be the first Jew in the White House,’ he used to say. Well, now you’ve become Nancy Reagan’s little pet, and I suppose that’s close enough—being Nancy Reagan’s walker.”

  His right hand, holding the pipe, jerks visibly upward, as though about to strike her, but he manages to restrain himself, and the hand falls downward.

  “Good night, Edwee,” she says. “Have fun sitting on your wife’s face.” Then she is gone.

  Alone in his office, among his crowded collection, Edwee Myerson returns to the chair behind his big desk and relights his pipe. The pipe is ordinarily just a prop. He uses it mainly just for effect, pointing its stem at a conversational partner to emphasize an argument or to drive home one of his well-thought-out opinions. But now he puffs on it fiercely, inhaling deeply, as though the pipe and its tobacco were an uncontrollable addiction.

  His eyes travel upward to one section of walnut-paneled wall that, miraculously, considering the well-planned clutter of the room, is unaccountably bare of ornamentation or garniture. This space has been reserved, always, for his mother’s Goya.

  There are two possessions of his mother’s that he has always been determined one day to own. One is her large square-cut emerald solitaire with its girdle of diamonds. The other is the Goya. He would not want to wear his mother’s emerald ring, of course. But he would like to hold it, fondle it, rub the emerald’s facets with his fingertips, to possess the ring as one would possess a lover. His passion for the Goya is just as powerful, just as sensual, just as erotic. Someday, he has always known, he must possess just those two things. The absence of those two things has created a hole in his life that nothing else can fill, a well of longing, a black hollow of desire, as achingly empty as that waiting square of walnut wall.

  He has always known that it would be futile, sheer folly, to ask his mother for those two objects. He knows her too well to do a thing like that. She is an accomplished player, a pro, at turning down requests, at deflecting solicitations, at ignoring panhandlers, and at being both blind and deaf to beggars. At denying the needs of others, his mother should be given a Lifetime Achievement Award. Except, of course, for her soft spot, which is Nonie. He has, however, tried to suggest to her obliquely that there are a couple of things of hers that he rather fancies. He has said, for instance, of the emerald, “If I owned that ring, I’d display it, in a lighted jar, suspended on the thinnest platinum chain.” And as for the Goya, when in her presence—when she still had her eyesight, that is—he would try to send signals to her subconscious by simply standing for long periods in front of the painting, gazing at it worshipfully. Now, it is clear, these mental messages never reached whatever remains
of her cerebrum, for she is thinking of giving his Goya away.

  His eyes wander to the collection of firearms and flintlocks displayed above the door, and to the collection of lethal blades in the elephant’s foot. Is there a way to murder his mother? Is there a way to snuff out the life of the conniving Philippe de Montebello?

  Dimly, the vague shape of a plan begins to float into his mind, and he lets its scattered pieces fall into place. At first, the pieces do not fit. He shuffles them, re-sorts them, rearranges the elements of the plan, first this way, then that. The first thing he must do, he decides, is to make sure that he is on the best of terms with Mimi. A letter is required.

  From the center drawer of his desk, he removes a sheet of his heavily crested ivory letter paper, with the serifs of his monogram—E.R.M.—twisted and curled around and within each other like royal blue liana vines. He takes his antique quill pen, the one he uses when setting down his essays, dips it in a silver inkwell, and begins to write. “My dearest Mimi,” he begins.

  Thank you for your truly quite splendid dinner, and you were a jewel to include me. Your food, flowers, and decor were, as always, perfection, and I thought to myself as I watched you from my end of the table: “Has Mimi ever looked lovelier? No! Never! Jamais dans sa vie!

  Second only to your beauty, I decided, was your new fragrance, which you named so aptly—nay, brilliantly!—Mireille. I have just now dabbed a bit of the men’s cologne on myself, and the scent is positively thrilling—luxurious, thrilling, utterly captivating, and quite different from anything else I have ever sampled in men’s toiletries. I know you are going to have a brilliant success with this, Mimi, and that Mireille will provide just another bright feather in your already well-feathered cap.

  May I also say this, dear Mimi? Your dear father would be so very proud of you!

  A very clever touch, Edwee thinks. He envisions Mimi dabbing at her eyes over this evocation of her dead father.

  Of course I must also apologize for the unspeakable behaviour of poor, dear Maman. I know it must have upset you, but brave

  He gropes for the right noun. Brave girl? No, girls don’t like to be called girls anymore. Brave woman? Brave little soldier? Brave little trouper?

  creature that you are, you did not let the upset show. I must say that after Maman’s behaviour

  He always spells it “behaviour,” the English way.

  tonight, I am convinced, sadly, that she is now completely ga-ga, no longer responsible for either her words or actions. Indeed, tonight, your aunt Nonie and I had a long meeting to discuss the advisability and possibility of a

  The words nursing home have an unpleasant connotation. What else can one call it? He writes:

  an alternative care facility.

  Thank you, dear Mimi, and I don’t need to wish you success with Mireille because I can “smell” success in the sample you gave me. Congratulations in advance!

  Fondly, your

  Uncle Edwee

  He puts down his pen, and there is a buzz on the house intercom. He picks up the telephone and says, “Yes, Pussy-face?”

  “Aren’t you ever coming to bed, Daddy? It’s almost one o’clock!”

  “Just finishing up,” he says. “I’ve an Art & Antiques deadline. You know deadlines! You know the creative process!”

  “I’ve got the poppers out and everything.”

  “Five more minutes, Pussy.”

  He now adds a hasty postscript.

  P.S. Incidentally, that

  Now he rummages in his mind for the proper adjective. Charming? Delightful? Pleasant? Attractive? Interesting? Sexy hunk? He settles on something bland and noncommittal.

  nice young chap who’s to be your model for your advertising mentioned that he had some recipes that I might like to try. When she has a moment—no hurry—ask your secretary if she’d drop his name and address and home phone number in the mail for me. Thanks much!

  E.

  He folds the letter (it ran to three pages), places it in an envelope, addresses it, licks the tip of the envelope, and seals it.

  Outside, the private security guard that the residents of Sutton Square employ is making his hourly rounds, quietly testing doorknobs, and Edwee makes his way upstairs and to Gloria, turning out lights as he goes.

  Alone in her bedroom, Mimi sits at her dressing table removing her makeup, using many tissues, and then creams her face. Appraising her reflection in the glass, she says: Not bad. No, not bad at all for forty-nine. I’ll give this face at least five more years before I begin to worry about it. In this business, your face is part of your overhead. Look at her face, people say. It must be her cleansing creams and toners and moisturizers that do it, and they remember this as they browse the cosmetics counters at Bergdorf’s and Saks and Bloomingdale’s, picking up the little jars and bottles, trying the samples, and see the name Mireille, and remind themselves that there is a woman, and a face, behind that name. A name behind the face. A face. The face that launched a thousand little jars of night cream by Mireille, for a thousand women who dream of looking only a little better, a little younger, when their husbands or their lovers turn to them at night and say, you look so young, you feel so young.

  “I love your face,” someone had once said to her. “Your fahnee, fah-nee face.” He had also said he loved the color of her eyes. She had always thought of her eyes as her worst feature. Too grey, too pale. She studies her eyes in the mirror now. Nowadays, with cosmetics, with tinted contact lenses, one can even change the color of one’s eyes, but she had never changed hers. “Her wide, snapping black eyes,” she had read of the heroine in some novel long ago, and she had used to wish that her eyes were snapping black. Eyes that snapped. Noisy eyes. Eyes that yipped and snarled like one of Granny’s little dogs. Try as she might, her eyes would never snap. But he had said he liked her eyes. “Silver,” he said. “Like George the First antique silver that’s been polished every day. They go just right with your fah-nee, fah-nee face.” Who had said that in the movie? Oh, yes, Fred Astaire, in Funny Face.

  Facts to face. Fact one. He is, I know he is, of course he is, there’s nothing to be gained by denying it, by gainsaying it, so say it: he is. Who is she? I don’t want to know. There’s nothing to be gained by knowing her name, she doesn’t need to have a name, she doesn’t even need to have a face. Does he turn to her in sleep and call her by my name? That would be nice. Oh, yes, old Brad, old boy, old pal, old friend, you can’t keep that from me, no sir, no siree. We used to say we were like one soul, we knew each other’s thoughts. The words of a song would be going through my brain, and you’d start whistling it. About time for him to call, I’d think, and the telephone would ring. Must clean out the garage in that summer place we rented at the Cape in ’74, I’d think, and I’d go out and find you doing it. I need to wash my tennis shorts, you’d say, and I’d say, they’re already in the dryer, and feel holy. On the beach at St.-Jean-de-Luz, you buried my feet in the sand because you knew that was what I wanted you to do. That’s how close we were, that’s how young we were.

  You won’t find Bradford to be a very demonstrative young man, your mother said. None of us Moores or Bradfords are. It’s the New England in us. Why should I want him to be demonstrative? I asked her. She looked so uncomfortable, poor dear. She said, I mean … I mean … I guess what I’m trying to say is that the Jewish people I’ve known, my Jewish friends, seem to be such demonstrative people. Hugging. Kissing. Things like that. We’re just not quite that way. Poor thing. That’s how little she knew you, that’s how little she knew the Jews, the so-called passionate people. Oh, she’d have much preferred it if you’d married someone else named Moore or Bradford, she made that quite clear, but she didn’t disapprove of me, she didn’t try to stop us. An ancestor of ours compiled the first Hebrew-to-English dictionary, she told me proudly, as though that proved the family’s long history of religious tolerance. She touched my elbow when she said that, to show she liked me. Demonstrative.

  Oh, i
t wasn’t really passion, was it? No, because passion comes from the Latin word for suffering. I looked it up once. No, because passion comes to an end and so, in the end, does suffering. It was more like affection, friendship, caring, pleasing one another, delighting in each other’s pleasure and the pleasure of each other’s company, collecting things together, the things that endure, that don’t come to an end. These are the things that last, that can make a marriage last for twenty-nine years. Or so I thought.

  I suppose he finds her sexually exciting, whoever she is, this nameless, faceless woman. That’s all right. Or is it? It is a new thought for me, something I never thought about before, something I never had to think about, because this is the first time it has happened to me, though I am hardly the first woman in the world who has had this happen to her. It has happened to googooflex women—googooflex: in school we used to say this was the highest number in the world. I am not alone, so join the club, old girl, and here’s your membership card.

  But I’ll tell you one thing, old Brad, old chum, old pal, she isn’t making you happy, this whoever she is. I can see it in your eyes. I see new worry lines around your eyes, I saw them tonight. I suppose she’s the type who’ll say no, not until you divorce your wife. The ultimatum type. But men don’t like those types, the ultimatum types, those old-tomato types. Particularly you don’t like those types. And particularly you aren’t the type who would divorce his wife, not you, not now, not after all these—or are you? Why am I suddenly not so sure? Why am I suddenly not so sure I know you as well as I thought I did? Do I know you at all? I just don’t know.

  Is it because you’ve finally grown tired of the jokes? We used to joke about it, you and I. The introductions at the business parties: And this is Mimi Myerson’s husband, Bradford Moore. We made a joke of it, of you being Mr. Mimi Myerson with my business people. We were just another two-career couple, you used to say, with two different names for business purposes, with separate listings in Who’s Who. But has the joke worn thin after all these years? Has it become stale and overworked, and when you hear that sort of thing now, does it stick in the craw, sourly, like a poorly digested meal? Is that what she offers you, this person whom I do not know—a male identity at last, an opportunity to be something more than someone else’s husband? “Now I know what Prince Philip must feel like,” you said once at some Miray function. “Always having to walk that required one pace behind the queen.” A joke? Haven’t I let you enjoy your sovereign malehood, your princely individuality? Haven’t I offered that to you, too? Haven’t I tried? Come back, Brad, come back to Mama, and I’ll try harder. Come back, and you’ll see how hard I’ll try.