Shades of Fortune (23 page)

“Yes, god damn it!” he shouts. From the anteroom outside Mimi's office, there is the sound of Mrs. Hanna, Mimi's secretary, rather conspicuously clearing her throat. Mimi hears this, rises quickly from her desk, goes to the door, and closes it, leaning her back against it.

“Is this something they taught you at Yale?” she says through clenched teeth. “To talk like a bigot and a snob?”

“They taught me to recognize a lowlife when I see one!”

“Michael Horowitz is more of a gentleman than you are. And a better Jew.”

“Me? A Jew? Don't give me that crap!”

“Why do you think you weren't taken into Skull and Bones? Because you're a Jew. The captain of the golf team, but you weren't taken into Skull and Bones!”

“You're full of
crap!
You know why I wasn't tapped for Bones? Because Tony Beard blackballed me—after I saw him move his ball from a bad lie in the semifinals, that's why! If the Myerson half of me is Jewish, the other half is Protestant. And I've never been inside a synagogue in my life.”

“You might try. You might learn something, because you're a Jew. Jewishness comes from the mother. It comes from the mother's milk.”

“I can't
believe
I'm listening to this crap,” he says. “Next thing you're going to tell me is that you breast-fed me, for Chris-sake.”

“As a matter of fact, I did. Though I don't expect you to remember it.”

He averts his eyes. He rises, crosses to the window, and stands, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, his back to her, looking out at the afternoon. “Anyway,” he says, “we weren't talking about breast-feeding. We were talking about why you can't seem to make a business decision, which is supposed to be your goddam job.”

“My job,” she says, and for the first time her voice has the beginnings of tears in it, “has involved a bit more than that, you might want to remember. It's also been trying to hold this family together. It's been trying to help my mother all these years. It's been listening to Nonie's complaints. It's been trying to keep Edwee out of trouble. It's been coping with Granny. It's been dealing with the tragedy that was my father. It's been trying to pick up the pieces of the shambles and mess that were left after Grandpa died, and it's been doing all these things for years, since you were too young to know about any of these things, or even remember. That's also been part of my goddam
job
.” Surprisingly, though tears were threatened, Mimi's eyes are dry when she finishes saying this, and she is pleased with herself for this.

“We weren't talking about that, either. We were talking about a New York wheeler-dealer who's showing every sign of wanting to take over this company in a very unfriendly way—a guy you said you positively did not trust.”

“And you're watching me have second thoughts about him. You see, I think … I think Michael admires us in a certain way. I think he'd like to feel he's a part of us—not a big part, but a little part. Maybe that's all it is. Michael has his sweet, kind of boyish and innocent side. He's not
all
bad.”

He turns and faces her, and whistles softly. “Hey,” he says, “what's going on here? Did this guy
seduce
you, or what?”

“Of course not!” she cries. “What a ridiculous thing to say.”

“By golly, I think he must have! This guy who's managed to lay every good-looking broad in town.”

“Are you implying that I am one of Michael Horowitz's
broads?
” They are shouting at each other again.

“That's gotta be it: that baby-face got to you. You were taken in by those baby-blue eyes and cute little dimples! You've goddam fallen for the little prick!”

“Shut up, Badger! I will not listen to this garbage!”

He slams the palm of his hand on the windowsill. “Then stop waffling, Mom! Because that's what you're doing, waffling. Make up your effing mind. Is this guy a snake, or isn't he?
You're
the one who had lunch with him. Me, I've never met the creep!”

“The lunch was
your
idea, not mine! You're the one who got me into this mess, you know!”

He stares at her. “All I know,” he says, “is that I'm talking to someone I used to think was a pretty smart lady, but who suddenly isn't making a hell of a lot of sense.”

“Are you questioning my judgment?”

“If you want an honest answer—
yes
.”

She is pacing now, shoulders hunched, back and forth across her office carpet, like a sleek leopardess circling her prey, but her voice is wondering. “I wanted this company,” she says, “not for myself, but for you. I always wanted it for you, to take over someday from me.”

“That's a lot of self-righteous, self-pitying crap.”

“But maybe I was wrong. Maybe this company isn't for you. Maybe you find it … humiliating, to be working for a woman, and a woman who happens to be your mother in the bargain. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's time for someone new, someone like Michael, to come in and take this company over. Maybe that's why I can sympathize, a little, with what Michael says he wants.”

“More self-righteous, self-pitying crap.”

“I'm losing you, aren't I, Badger. I can feel it, that I'm losing you. I feel it in the terrible things you've said to me today. I'm losing you. I feel you slipping away from me.”

He moves toward her and takes her by the shoulders, turning her so that she faces him. “Listen to me,” he says quietly. “All I know is that Horowitz is a fighter, and a fighter who, if he has to, doesn't mind fighting dirty. All I'm saying is that
if
you're going to have to fight him, you're going to have to be prepared for a dirty fight. You're going to have to go after him with a killer's instinct. Where's your killer instinct, Mom? It was old Adolph's killer instinct that built this company, wasn't it? The way he went after the Revsons, after Arden, after Rubinstein. If you're going to find yourself in the ring with Horowitz, you're going to have to decide what you think of him. Because if there's going to be a fight, and if you're going to win it, you're going to have to go for the jugular.” Suddenly, he thrusts out his lower jaw sharply and, in the same motion, tosses a lock of sandy brown hair from across his forehead. “You're going to have to
hate
him! You've got to be
prepared
to hate him. So don't let yourself fall under his famous spell!”

“What?” she gasps. “
What?
”

“I said we've got to be prepared. We've got to line up our ammunition. He's got his toe in the door already. And once the camel gets into the tent—”

“No,” she says, her eyes blazing. “I meant what you did just then, with your chin. Your hair. Have you always done that?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

She moves away from him toward her desk and slumps limply in her chair, feeling faint. “You're right,” she says. “Michael has no right owning any part of this company. Do your feasibility study. Do it as quickly as you can. Get the cousins' names, addresses. I'll contact them. We've got to get rid of Michael Horowitz as fast as we can. I think you're right. He's a dangerous man.”

“You're the boss,” he says.

“And you're the next boss. Remember that.”

The slim, stylishly dressed woman swings out through the 50th Street door of Saks Fifth Avenue and immediately an alarm goes off.

A uniformed guard steps toward her. “Excuse me, madam,” he says politely, “but may I just glance at the contents of your shopping bag?”

“What?” she says in a cultured voice. “What did you say?”

“I think,” he says, “that one of our salespeople may have neglected to remove the magnetic tag from one of your purchases. It caused the alarm to sound. If you'll just let me look at the contents of your shopping bag, I think we can locate the problem.”

“Why, I've never heard of such a thing!” the woman cries indignantly. Other shoppers, heading out into the late-afternoon rush hour, pause to observe the scene.

“They've caught a shoplifter!” one woman says loudly to her companion.

“I must ask that you open your shopping bag,” the guard says. “Otherwise, I must—”

“Well, certainly!” the woman says. “But honestly, I've never been subjected to such a—”

“Ah,” the guard says, lifting a man's alligator belt from the shopping bag. “Here is the problem. You see! The magnetic tag has not been removed from this article. You have your sales slip for this, of course.”

“Certainly! It's in there somewhere, I suppose!”

The guard extracts a pink slip of paper from the bag and examines it. “I'm sorry,” he says, “but this is from the women's shoe department, for the pair of shoes that I assume are in that box. I see no sales slip for a man's belt.”

“This is ridiculous!” the woman cries. “I've been a Saks charge customer for years! Never have I been subjected to this sort of thing before!”

“Perhaps if we can go back to the small leather goods department, we can straighten this out,” he says, taking her arm.

“
What?
” she says, pulling away from him. “I'm in a terrible rush! This is most inconvenient. Don't you know who I
am?
I am Naomi Myerson!”

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but I must—”

Suddenly she snatches the alligator belt from his hand and flings it in his face. “Take your damn belt!” she cries. “And if that belt turns up on my next Saks bill, I'll sue! Do you hear me? I'll sue!” She hurls herself through the second set of swinging doors and out into the rush-hour street.

It is evening now, and Mimi and her husband are sitting in their living room, sipping a martini before dinner.

“How was your day?” she asks him.

“Oh, routine,” he says. “Today was our monthly partners' lunch. No big issues to discuss.”

“Ah, your partners' lunch,” she says. She sips her drink. “Where did you do it this time?”

“At the Downtown Club. And you?”

He has obviously forgotten that today she was lunching with Michael. “Oh, I was fairly busy. I just had a sandwich at my desk.”

She gazes into her cocktail glass. And so here we sit, she thinks, two famously successful people in a two-career household, so smiled upon by fortune. And this is the point to which twenty-nine years of marriage have brought us. We sit here, domestic as that silver cocktail shaker—that cocktail shaker that was a wedding gift, that has all the names of Brad's ushers at the wedding engraved on it—and tell lies to one another.

Palm Beach, Michael had said, come with me to Palm Beach. Palm Beach, that latest triumph of the Jewish Renaissance. She has always hated Palm Beach, and all those other places that were always her grandfather's places, never her own. If he had suggested Srinagar or Ootacamund or Katmandu, or some other more exotic place—the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, he had once suggested in a moment of fantasy, where they would start a sheep ranch—would she have flown there with him?

“
You never loved the shegetz you married, did you?
”

Right now, she does not have the answer to either of these questions.

10

Granny Flo Myerson (interview taped 8/27/87):

Leo was a crook. I think I already told you that, but what I didn't tell you was that his son, Nathan, also was a crook. In fact, Nate Myerson was worse than a crook, he was a rat. Nate had it in for my son Henry, but I'm getting ahead of my story. My Adolph may have had a lot of enemies, but he wasn't a crook. Leo and Nate were both crooks. They're all dead now, so I can say this.

Leo was five years younger than Adolph, and my goodness, I don't think those two ever got along. Even when they were in the painting business in the Bronx, they were always scrapping. Adolph would want to do things one way, and Leo would want to do it another. It was always like that. I think I told you that Leo was much the better-looking of the two brothers. Oh, my, Leo was a looker, for all his crookedness. Leo looked a little bit like What's-his-name, the movie star, Douglas Fairbanks, and Adolph was short and fat. Leo had all the girls—even after he was married he had girls—and Adolph could never get a girl, until I came along and proposed to him. Those two used to sit right behind my family at temple, and my eye was always on Leo, even though I knew it was Adolph's eye that was always on me. I think I told you that I'd have rather married Leo than Adolph, but how could I do that? Leo already had a wife, named Blanche. These people are all dead now. Blanche was all right, though I didn't have too much to do with her. At least Blanche was nicer than Leo turned out to be.

You see, even though Leo was five years younger, he'd married earlier—around nineteen hundred, it seems to me. I married Adolph in nineteen fifteen, and Adolph was already forty-five! By then, Leo and Blanche already had a family. There was the son, Nate, that I told you about, and two little girls, Minna and Esther. Nate, I told you, is dead, and under mysterious circumstances that I'll get to later. I don't know what's become of Minna and Esther, because the family's been out of touch with those cousins since before the war. They may be dead too, for all I know, but if they're alive they'd be pretty old ladies now—nearly as old as me!

But the point of it is that Adolph never got along with his brother. Part of it was because of Leo's way with the ladies, but that was only part of it. Adolph used to say that Leo was stupid, and Leo used to say that Adolph was cheating him out of his share of the money, but it wasn't true. One thing I can say about my husband is that he never cheated. He did other things, but he didn't cheat his brother. If anything, he was too fair with him—fairer than Leo deserved. Anyway, after my husband invented nail polish, things got quite worse. Of course I can't say that my husband invented nail polish, can I? It'd been around for some years. It was the
quick-drying
nail polish that was new. That was the thing. That, and the catchy names, like Three Alarm.