Shades of Fortune (47 page)

“An absolutely stricken look came across B.B.'s face. I have never seen a man wear a more stricken look. He grasped my elbow. ‘The Myerson Goya,' he whispered. ‘I begged Duveen not to force me to verify that picture. It is most assuredly a fake. It is the worst deception I have ever committed in my life. I pleaded with Duveen not to force me to do this! But Duveen insisted that he must have this sale. The world was in a Great Depression, the art market was in disarray, and he needed the money. He pointed out that I needed the money, too—and it was true! There were doctors' bills for an illness of Mary's'—poor Mary would die, you know, a few years later—‘and he threatened to withhold other commissions that were due me if I did not do as I was told. And so I succumbed to the devil Duveen, may he twist eternally in his grave! Dear Nonie, I am so ashamed of what I have done. Can you ever forgive me? Can your mother ever forgive me?'

“I was stunned, of course. I didn't know what to say. Wallis was the first to speak. ‘Are you certain it's a forgery, B.B.?' she said. ‘Absolutely,' he said. ‘It is a nineteenth-century forgery. Duveen knew this, too. He knew the painting's provenance.' I said, ‘I must tell my mother.' ‘Yes,' he said with tears in his beautiful eyes, ‘I'm afraid you must.' That was when Wallis reached out and touched my hand. Wallis was always such a kind, sweet soul. ‘Don't,' she said. ‘Don't do that. It would hurt your mother too much to know that she has been deceived. It would also hurt our dear friend B.B.'s reputation if word got out that he had knowingly taken part in this deception. Don't tell your mother, Nonie, for everyone's sake. What difference does it make, after all? Your mother's happy with her painting. Let sleeping dogs lie.'

“Diana agreed with her. ‘Wallis is right,' she said. ‘You must never tell her. Too much hurt would be caused by telling her now. Promise us you'll never tell her.' And so that's what I promised them, my dear friends Wallis and Diana, years ago. And I've kept that promise to this very day. And when I made it, dear B.B., who was weeping now, bent over me and kissed my forehead, and whispered, ‘Thank you, blessed Nonie.'”

“And so,” Edwee says, after a little pause to let Nonie's performance sink in, “that is the cause for our concern. We don't want the Metropolitan Museum to be saddled with a costly fake—the embarrassment, the horrid publicity, if it turned out, later on, that the museum had been deceived too. We felt you should know this now, for your sake.”

“Tell me something,” Philippe de Montebello says. “Did Berenson mention anything about placing a question mark after his verification?”

“To him, there was no question about its being a fake at all! He said it was
unquestionably
a fake!”

“I see,” he says, rising from his chair. “Very interesting. Obviously, I'll want to have another look at the painting. And I'd like to bring along some of the museum's curatorial staff when I do.”

“Of course,” Edwee says. “That will be no problem. Do give Mother a call, and set that up. Poor Mother, of course, may have no idea what you're talking about, and what you all are doing there. But I'm sure she'll let you have another look.”

“Well,” Nonie says when the other two have gone, “how'd I do?”

“I think,” Edwee says carefully, “that we may be going to pull it off. That ‘blessed Nonie' business was a bit much, perhaps. But otherwise … yes, you did a satisfactory job.”

“By the way, where did this question mark come from? Never mind. I don't want to know. I've done my job. Everything I was supposed to do. Now where's my money?”

“You'll have it in a few days,” he says.

“How many days?”

“A few. These things take time. Don't be greedy, dear. And de Montebello's right: that
is
a nice jade elephant. So
familiar
-looking, too.”

“There's one thing I don't understand, Mimi,” I said to her one afternoon when we were chatting in her office. “All those years before your grandfather died, before it turned out that the old man had squandered most of his money, and your grandmother's trusts as well, your father earned a good salary with the company—well into six figures, which was good money in the forties and fifties. And yet, when you were growing up, you say your parents never seemed to have any money. You were sent to Miss Hall's school on an academic scholarship, for instance. Why was that?”

“That,” she said thoughtfully, “is the sixty-four-million-dollar question. If you can find the answer to that one, I'd love to know what it is. I've never understood it, either.”

“Your grandmother blames it on your mother's extravagance.”

“That isn't true. My mother wasn't extravagant. We lived very simply. She did her own housework, her own cooking. When she went to the market, she always had a purseful of Green Stamps to paste into those little books. Her clothes, and mine, were always bought at sales. My grandparents were the ones who lived extravagantly.”

“Was your father a … gambler, do you think?”

“Not that I was ever aware of. Wouldn't you think, growing up as an only child in that household, I'd have noticed it if he was? Wouldn't I have noticed it if he'd been always at the racetrack, or on the phone with bookies, or whatever? All he ever did, as I remember it, was go to the office in the morning and come home at six o'clock for dinner. They didn't even have friends in for bridge. Daddy wasn't a drinker. My mother, of course, was—or is, I should say—an alcoholic. That's probably what Granny was talking about—the drinking. But that wouldn't have been enough to do it. One person couldn't possibly drink a hundred thousand dollars' worth of whiskey a year, could one? She even shopped for discounts at the liquor store. My father's finances were always a mystery to me. They still are. After I married Brad, he couldn't understand it either.”

“Would your mother know the answer, do you think?”

She hesitated. “Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, I think she does. In fact, I'm sure she does. But do me a favor, Jim. I don't want to try to influence the way you write your story, but I want to ask you an important favor. When you interview her, don't ask her that question. As I say, she's a recovering alcoholic. She's been sober since the middle of May. In fact, her four months' anniversary is coming up soon. Emotionally, she's still in a very fragile state, as you saw that night at dinner at my house. If you ask her that question, it will upset her. I know it will, because I made the mistake of asking her the same question when I went out to California with her in May, to check her into the Betty Ford Center. It set her off. It could set her off again. She's like a ticking bomb on that particular subject. So, when you talk to her, be gentle, Jim. She's trying, now, to live each day in the present. Don't try to draw her out too much about the past.”

“I'll try not to, then.”

“I trust you,” she said. “I don't know why, but I trust you.”

“Evil forces,” her mother said. “There were evil forces in the world. They ruined your father's and my lives, like a curse.” They were sitting side by side in the first-class compartment of the wide-bodied United Airlines jet to Los Angeles that day in May.

“What sort of evil forces, Mother?”

“I said evil forces! Evil people,” Alice Myerson said. “What more do you want me to say? Leo died, but then there was Nate. Then Nate finally died, thank God, but then it was too late.”

“Nate?”

“Nate. Your father's cousin Nate! I don't want to talk about this anymore, Mimi!”

Mimi had changed the subject. “I'm so glad you've decided to do this, Mother,” she said. “I'm terribly proud of you.”

“Decided to do what?”

“The Ford Center. You're going to feel so much better about yourself.”

“I'm going to try.”

“I know you are, Mother.”

“I'm going to make it work.”

“I know you are,” and Mimi had squeezed her mother's hand.

But, about an hour out of La Guardia, Mimi got up to go to the ladies' room, and when she came back, her mother's tray-table was down and she had ordered a double Scotch.

“Oh, Mother,” she said softly. “Please don't.”

“Don't worry,” Alice said. “I'm not going to get drunk. I just need a little liquid courage. This is a big step I'm taking, and I need a little bit of liquid courage to get me there.”

Mimi said nothing but closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. The captain announced over the loudspeaker that they were passing over Indianapolis or St. Louis, or some other dim place, and presently, through half-closed eyes, Mimi saw her mother wave her finger at the flight attendant—a slenderly beautiful black woman with sleek, ebony hair pulled back tightly in a bun—and say, “Two more Scotches, please,” in her most ladylike voice.

“Why, sure, honey!”

Mimi is not sure how many more drinks her mother had ordered after that because, somehow, she had genuinely managed to sleep. But she remembers waking to hear the cockpit announce that passengers seated on the right-hand side of the aircraft would have an excellent view of Pike's Peak, and she remembers her mother poking her in the shoulder and saying, “Wake up! Wake up! You're only pretending to be asleep. Pike's Peak! Don't you want to see Pike's Peak?” Across the aisle from them, a businessman in a grey suit, doing briefcase work in his lap, stared momentarily at Alice, then tapped the papers in his lap with the head of a pencil. “Two more Scotches,” Alice had called to the flight attendant.

The flight attendant had eyed her dubiously. Returning with the pair of miniatures, she had said, “This will be last call, ma'am.”

“Last call? What do you mean last call? We're only halfway there. We're only at Pike's Peak!”

The flight attendant's smile had been intense. “Last call for you, ma'am,” she had said.

“Why do you think I fly first class? With a first-class seat I'm entitled to as many drinks as I want!”

“I'm sorry, but FAA regulations permit us to use our discretion and refuse service to any passenger who appears to be intoxicated.”

“Intoxicated! Mimi, am I intoxicated?”

Mimi, her eyes still closed, her head back on her seat, said through clenched teeth, “Yes.”

“This is outrageous! The president of this airline will hear from me about this! Do you realize who I am? Which airline am I flying?”

“This is United Airlines flight one forty-two,” the flight attendant said.

Across the aisle, the grey-suited businessman snapped his briefcase shut, rose, and moved his seat to one that was vacant two rows behind them, in the smoking section. Mimi heard him mutter, “Drunken bitch.”

“What did that man just say to me?” Alice said. Then she said, “Well, luckily for you, Miss Last Call, or whatever your name is, I happen to have brought my own bottle,” and she reached into her purse and removed a silver flask.

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but FAA regulations prohibit passengers from drinking alcoholic beverages from their own supplies,” and she reached for the flask.

“Don't you dare touch my flask!” Alice had cried, clutching it to her bosom. “This is
mine
. It is a sterling-silver flask given to me by my late husband, Henry Myerson! And do you know who
he
was? Only the president and chief executive officer of the Miray Corporation, that's all! Ever hear of the Miray Corporation? And do you know who this young lady with me is? Only the
present
president of the Miray Corporation, my daughter, Mimi Myerson. She was on the cover of
Time!
”

“Please serve her the drinks she wants,” Mimi said to the stewardess. “It's the only way.”

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but FAA regulations do not permit—”

Then Alice apparently changed her mind. “Never mind,” she said. “Just bring me a Coca-Cola.”

“Certainly, ma'am.”

But when the flight attendant returned with the glass of Coca-Cola, Alice had taken it and then poured its contents onto the carpeted floor of the plane beside her, retaining the ice cubes with her fingers. Then she refilled the ice-filled glass with whiskey from her flask. “Thank you
very much!
” she had cried, triumphant.

“I'm sorry, ma'am, but I cannot permit—”

“Look at her!” Alice cried. “Look at Miss Last Call! Look at her nails! Look at her lipstick! She's not even wearing Miray products! She's wearing some cheap stuff, I can tell. Typical nigger!”

The flight attendant stared at Alice for a moment with expressionless eyes, saying nothing. Then she turned and walked toward the front of the plane, opened the door to the cockpit, stepped inside, and closed the door behind her.

“There!” Alice cried out to no one in particular. “That got rid of Miss Last Call!”

Beside her, Mimi closed her eyes again.

Presently, the cockpit door reopened and the stewardess re-emerged, followed by a tall young man in a dark blue uniform with three gold stripes on his sleeve.

“Do we have a little problem here?” he said in a pleasant voice.

“Yes! We certainly do! Your stewardess tried to steal my priceless heirloom antique sterling-silver flask!”

That was when Mimi left her seat and walked back to the middle of the plane where there was a telephone.

These air-to-ground telephones are gadgets, at best, and have a long way to go before they are satisfactory media for human communication. Making a call involved inserting a credit card, then listening to a computerized voice repeating, “Please … wait … for … the … dial … tone,” again and again. The dial tone sounded, then disappeared, then sounded again, and disappeared again, as the robot's voice continued to instruct the caller to please wait. Finally, when Mimi had a recognizable human voice, which could have been a man's or a woman's as it bounced across the scarps of the Sierra Madre Mountains, at the other end of the connection, Mimi had to shout into the receiver to make herself heard. “Is this the Betty Ford Center?” she had shouted. “Is this the Ford Center?”