Shades of Fortune

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Not so much your advice,” Mimi says, leaning forward eagerly. “Your support, Aunt Nonie. I’m going to ask you for your help.”

  “Oh, my goodness. Well, surprise, surprise. Well, tell me what I can do for you, darling. I’m putty in your hands.”

  “I’ve been meeting with all the members of the family,” Mimi says. “All the family members who own Miray shares, including the Leo cousins, whom I’d never met before.”

  “Most unattractive people, so I’ve been told.”

  “Well, some are more attractive than others,” Mimi says with a little shrug. “But the thing is, what I’m trying to get is a consensus—a unanimous consensus of family approval of a plan Badger and I are working on, which will affect all of us.”

  “I see,” Nonie says guardedly.

  “What we suspect is that we’ve become the object of an unfriendly takeover. We’re quite sure we know who’s after us. It’s Michael Horowitz. He owns more than four percent of us already, and he’s already approached the Leo cousins and made attractive offers for their shares.”

  “I see,” Nonie says, again guardedly.

  “The plan—and this is Badger’s plan, actually—is that we would take the company private again. If we were to go private, that would leave Mr. Horowitz out in the cold. We’d become a family-owned company again.”

  “And how, pray, would you manage to accomplish this?”

  “Going private is the exact opposite of what I did after Daddy died when I took the company public—but with a difference. Instead of a buyback of publicly held shares, which would cost us millions, we would telescope the stock. It’s called a reverse split. For every thousand shares of old stock, for instance, we’d issue one share of new stock. Holders of less than a thousand shares would be paid for their stock in cash. There’s another advantage to this. If we can do this, we figure we can reduce the number of Miray shareholders to less than three hundred, which means we would no longer be subject to SEC regulation. That in itself would save us a lot of money annually. Those savings could go into new-product development, as well as increased dividends to the remaining shareholders. Do you follow me, Aunt Nonie?”

  “Well, what good are increased dividends to me?” Nonie says. “Everything that I own is in that damned trust. I can never get my hands on any of the principal. Even if you doubled the dividends, which I’m sure you wouldn’t, I’d still be the poor relation, wouldn’t I? How many shares does my trust own, anyway? I’ve never bothered to look at the statements, since they’re quite meaningless to me.”

  “Approximately two hundred and fifty thousand shares.”

  “So, if you do this reverse split you’re talking about, instead of having two hundred and fifty thousand shares, I’d wind up with a measly two hundred and fifty shares. That hardly sounds like a good deal to me, Mimi.”

  “Your shares would have the same monetary value, Aunt Nonie.”

  “Well, I don’t like the sound of it,” Nonie says. “No, I’m opposed to it. I’m unalterably opposed to it, Mimi, and if you want unanimous family backing of this scheme, you’ll have to count me out.”

  “Really, Aunt Nonie? Why?”

  “On general principles,” she says, crossing her knees in the opposite direction and letting the other red pump swing from her toe. “Because it doesn’t sound fair. Because nothing this company has ever done to me has ever been fair. Because I know my big brother Henry would have been opposed to it. Henry was horrified, absolutely horrified, at the way I was treated in our father’s will.”

  “Your big brother Henry was also my father,” Mimi says.

  “Well, I knew him a lot longer than you did, and a lot better. I know he’d be horrified with this scheme of yours. Or, I should say, this scheme of Badger’s. I’m surprised you even listen to Badger, Mimi. He’s not a real Myerson.”

  “Now, Aunt Nonie—that’s not fair.”

  “His name is Moore, isn’t it? He doesn’t have our family’s best interests at heart, if you ask me.”

  “Well,” Mimi says quickly, “I happen to disagree. But there’s another thing you might consider.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If we do this, we in effect would be reorganizing the entire company. We would even adopt a whole new corporate name—Miracorp, Inc., for instance, or something like that. And issuing an entirely new issue of stock, in an entirely new company—I’ve checked with our lawyers about this—would also have the effect of dissolving Grandpa’s trusts.”

  Nonie sits forward in the sofa. “Dissolving his trusts?” she says.

  “Yes. The trust he set up for you, for instance, applies only to stock in the company that existed then. The stock you’d acquire in the new company would have to move out of the trust.”

  “Out of the trust? You mean it could be mine? Free and clear?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How much would it be worth?”

  “Roughly twelve and a half million dollars,” Mimi says.

  “To do with what I want?”

  “Well, we’d hope you wouldn’t turn around and sell it to Michael Horowitz,” Mimi says with a little laugh. “But, yes, it would move into your personal portfolio.”

  “Well, in that case … well, that puts a different light on it, doesn’t it? With twelve and a half million, I could—I’d be—”

  “Free from Grandpa’s trust.”

  “Free! Free at last!” Then she says, “What does Edwee think?”

  “I haven’t approached Edwee yet. I’m seeing Edwee on Monday. I wanted to know what you thought, first.”

  “Well, if it will dissolve that damned trust, I’m all for it!” Nonie says. “But don’t expect me to try to talk Edwee into it, Mimi. Edwee and I are … a little on the outs at the moment. Edwee is being incommunicado to me right now.”

  “Oh? What’s that all about?”

  “Edwee wanted something, and I helped him try to get it. But now he can’t get it, and his nose is out of joint.”

  “Does this have something to do with Granny’s Goya?” Mimi asks quietly.

  Nonie is silent for a moment. Then she says, “All I can tell you right now is that Edwee and I had a contract—a legal contract, with a witness. It should stand up in a court of law, if I decide to take it there. I held up my end of the deal, but now Edwee is trying to welsh on his end. We’ll just see what happens next.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s a matter between the two of you,” she says, deciding, probably wisely, she thinks, to let the subject rest at that.

  “But if this plan of yours goes through, it won’t matter! I’ll have all the money I need. How long will it take, do you think, before I get the money?”

  “It won’t be money, Aunt Nonie. Remember that it will be stock. And remember that it’s more difficult to sell stock in a private company than it is in a public one.”

  “But I can use my stock as collateral for a loan, can’t I? With twelve and a half million in stock, I could borrow … five million, couldn’t I?”

  “I see no reason why not. Why not? The stock will be yours.”

  “That’s all I need. When will I get it?”

  “After the launch party, there’ll be a stockholders’ meeting. We’ll notify each of you. We’ll take a vote.”

  “Well, you can count on my vote,” Nonie says. “I’m all for it now—now that you’ve explained it all to me. Just think, a whole new company! Miracorp, Inc.—I like the name, Mimi. Just think, I’ll be a first-class stockholder of Miracorp, Inc.!”

  “Just please keep all this confidential, Aunt Nonie. We’re not ready for news of this to reach the street.”

  “Oh, I will! As you know, I’m a woman of my word. But, Mimi, there’s just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  She hesitates. It kills her to ask a favor of Mimi, and she is certain that Mimi knows it kills her. She has always known that Mimi never liked her very much. Perhaps, Nonie sometimes thinks, it is because she and Mi
mi are so much alike. Both are ambitious, driven women. Both are clever, both are smart, both are beautiful. Both have inherited the genes of Adolph Myerson and, with them, his keen business sense, his astuteness, his intuitive know-how, his stamina and guts, his courage and integrity, and his charismatic flair. All that is from Myerson genes. The only difference between them is that Mimi has been lucky, and Nonie has not. In life, and in everything one encounters in life, luck is everything. Every success, every failure, is a matter of luck. Mimi has had all the luck; Nonie has had none of it. But now Nonie’s luck is beginning to change. She can feel it beginning to change.

  “Do you think,” Nonie begins, “that after you’ve gone private, and after the new company is organized—do you think I could be on the board of directors of Miracorp, Inc.?”

  “Why, I think that’s a lovely idea, Aunt Nonie,” Mimi says. “I’ve always thought that there should be women on our board.”

  Nonie claps her hands. “Oh, Mimi,” she cries. “I always thought you were a darling girl! And Badger too! And brilliant! Both of you—just brilliant!”

  Mimi hops down from her desktop perch, steps toward her aunt, and clasps her hand in hers, her eyes shining. “Do you know something, Aunt Nonie?” she says. “I’ve just had the craziest idea!”

  “What’s that, darling?”

  “I think that, after all these years, you and I could actually be friends! Is that possible?”

  “I’m losing her, Flo,” he says to her. “I can feel it. I’m losing her.”

  “Losing who, Bradley?” Granny Flo asks her visitor. Granny Flo has always had trouble with Brad Moore’s name, sometimes calling him “Bradley” and sometimes confusing his name with his son’s nickname, calling him “Bradger.”

  “Mimi,” he says. “I wanted you to be the first to know, in case something happens between us. I’ve always suspected, you see, that it was you, and not Mimi’s grandfather, who was behind that trip to Europe, where Mimi and I met. If it hadn’t been for you—”

  “Well, you’re right about that one,” Granny Flo says. “That trip was my idea, but I let Adolph take the credit for it. She was so brokenhearted, you know, when that romance with the other one, that what’s-his-name, didn’t work out. I’ve never seen a girl so brokenhearted. My own heart just went out to her, back then.”

  “Well, it’s beginning to look as though our marriage may not be working out, I’m sorry to say. And I felt I owed it to you to warn you.”

  For several moments Granny sits in her chair, saying nothing, her mouth working, her eyes staring vacantly into the distance. Then she says, “Well, it won’t be the first divorce in this family, if that’s what’s worrying you. Look at Nonie. Do you still love her, Bradger?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You haven’t been fooling around, have you?”

  He studies the backs of his hands. “Yes,” he says quietly.

  “Well, there you go,” she says. “That’s the thing of it. A woman like Mimi won’t put up with a man who has mistresses. That’s one thing I can say about my Adolph. He never had mistresses. Or, if he did have, he was smart enough not to let me find out about it. That’s the other thing about it. A woman doesn’t mind if her husband has mistresses, as long as she doesn’t know about it. Like they say, what a person doesn’t know won’t hurt her. But if she finds out—watch out! Particularly a girl like Mimi. The finding out is the part that hurts.”

  He nods his head silently.

  “Do you want to keep her?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Then tell me something,” she says. “Did you ever meet my friend Dr. Sigmund Freud?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “He’s actually some sort of relative of ours,” she says. “He’s related to us, by marriage, through the Bernays family. He used to stay with Adolph and me when he came to America giving his lectures. But I think he’s back living somewhere in Europe now.”

  “I think Sigmund Freud has been dead for a number of years, Flo,” he says gently.

  “Is that so? Cousin Sigmund’s dead? Why didn’t Cousin Nettie write and tell me, I wonder? Well, anyway, he was supposed to be so smart. He was supposed to know all about the brain, you know, and all about the whatchamacallits, the emotions. But if you ask me, Bradley, that man wasn’t as smart as he was cracked up to be.”

  “Why do you say that, Flo?”

  “I’ll tell you why. Exactly. He was staying with us, with Adolph and me, when we had the house on Madison Avenue, and he was here to give those lectures, or whatever it was, which were to tell everybody who’d listen to him how smart he was. And one night after dinner, I said to him, ‘Cousin Sig, if you’re supposed to be so smart, then suppose you tell me what love is.’ He looked at me with that kind of stupid look of his, and he said, ‘Flo, there is no definition of love.’ What do you think of that?”

  “Well,” he says cautiously, “is there a definition of love?”

  Granny Flo slaps her knee and says, “Of course there is, and I told him so. I said, ‘Love is sacrifice—that’s all it is, sacrifice.’”

  “But,” he begins, “doesn’t the sacrifice have to be … mutual? On the part of both the people involved?”

  “Nonsense! When you start thinking like that, that’s when you’re in trouble. Sacrifice is what it is—just that, sacrifice. It means giving up something for another person. It doesn’t have to be tit for tat, if you’ll pardon my French. In fact, when you make it tit for tat, that’s when you’re in trouble again. Sacrifice is giving up something you care about, for the person you love. It’s something you do—never mind what the other person does. Sacrifice means personal. It means individual. If you give up something you care about, and then expect the other person to give up something she cares about, then it’s not a sacrifice. That’s called a trade-off, and that won’t work. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Sacrifice,” he says.

  “Just keep that word in mind if you really love Mimi, Bradley, and if you really want to keep her. The word is sacrifice. Even the great Dr. Sigmund Freud didn’t know what to say when I told him that. Just gave me that stupid look of his.” Then she says, “But remember, it doesn’t have to be a big sacrifice. Nine times out of ten, a little one will do.”

  29

  “Can we talk a little?” Brad asks her. “Can we talk a little about what’s going to happen to you and me, about the future?” It is Sunday morning, and they are sitting at their breakfast table at 1107 Fifth Avenue. It is the first time they have spoken to one another in two days.

  “Yes, I suppose it’s time we talked,” she says, setting down her grapefruit spoon into a Chelsea plate with a raised border of hand-painted grapefruit sections. “Yes, I guess it’s time.”

  “No tempers this time? Just two middle-aged married people who are supposed to be intelligent? Just two mature adults?”

  “Goodness, are we middle-aged? I guess you’re right. Maybe that’s part of the trouble.”

  “I’ll start with a grown-up question,” he says. “You’ve been locking me out of your bedroom. Is that intended to tell me something? Is it … divorce?”

  She studies the border of the plate. “Frankly, I’m not thinking about divorce right now,” she says. “Or at least I’m trying not to. I’m thinking of a dozen different things right now, but not divorce. Not now. Not yet.”

  “Tell me what you’re thinking about, Mimi.”

  “Oh, I’m thinking about these Chelsea plates,” she says absently. “When we bought them. That little place on Lexington Avenue. You spotted them first.”

  “I remember the shop. I think it was I who spotted the shop. You spotted these plates.”

  “No, it was—” She sighs. “It doesn’t matter. They’re pretty, aren’t they? But that’s the thing about divorce, isn’t it? Things get broken up. We’ll have to divide the collection.”

  “No, it’s your collection, Mimi. I’d want you to have it all.”

  “But I
don’t think I’d want it. It was something we did together. Do you remember that hotel in the south of France?”

  “What hotel?”

  “Outside Béziers. The dresser in our bedroom had five drawers. We each insisted that the other one had to take the fifth drawer. We got into such an argument that we wouldn’t speak to each other all through dinner, though I remember the wine was nice. Somehow, this discussion reminds me of that. But we’re supposed to be talking about the future, and here we are talking about the past.”

  Now there is silence between them for several minutes, and a breeze from Central Park through one of the partly opened windows blows a strand of Mimi’s loose hair across her face, and she brushes it aside with one hand. She rises slowly and walks to the mantel where the pair of pink Sèvres vases stand. With a fingertip, she traces the tiny cat-scratch markings where the glaze has been repaired. “And these vases,” she says. “Who’ll get the one that Badger broke?”

  “What else are you thinking about?” he says. “You said there were a dozen things.”

  “Oh, and I’m thinking about how I loved to go to those windows there, and look out at the park, and the lake. But now I can’t, because I’m afraid I’ll see her sitting there, watching this apartment.”

  “I think she’s finally gotten my message,” he says. “It’s been three days now, and I’ve heard nothing. No telephone calls, no threats. No more signs of sidewalk vigils from across the street.”

  “But how can you be sure she won’t come back?”

  “I can’t, of course,” he says.

  “And so how can I walk out of this building without keeping my eyes on the ground, without looking up or around, without diving into my car as fast as I can so I won’t catch sight of her? I feel right now like some sort of strange prisoner in my own house, that my freedom has been usurped by her, that I’m under some strange sort of house arrest—that I don’t own myself anymore, that part of me is owned by her. I’m thinking that.”

  “And what else?” he persists.

  “And I’m thinking how hurt I was the other night—when you said you’d spent the past two years trying to have a marriage, while I’d spent the time creating a new perfume. That hurt, Brad. Years ago, I swore I’d never let a man hurt me like that again, but that did hurt.”