The Family Fortune (6 page)

It isn't easy to find someone to rent a house as big as ours, a situation made more difficult by my father's refusal to have the rental formally put on the market. He wanted to be discreet. To Littleton's credit, he was able to find a tenant even with these limitations.

We were seeing a lot more of Littleton lately. He had shown up several Sundays in a row and he always brought Dolores with him. In between Sundays, Miranda and Dolores went shopping together, even though most of Miranda's credit cards had been shredded in a depressing ceremony at the dining room table. Priscilla had been in charge of cutting up the credit cards. She
sent Miranda to get her pocketbook and my unsuspecting sister retrieved it with alacrity, as if Priscilla were about to replace Miranda's current Prada bag with a new one from Gucci. When Miranda returned, Priscilla asked her to drop her credit cards onto the table. Priscilla took out long scissors with an orange handle.

“These are very good scissors,” Priscilla said. “They cut right through plastic.”

When Miranda realized what was about to happen, she tried to rescue some of the cards, but Priscilla held her lips tightly together and shook her head. In the end many cards were victims of the massacre: Brooks Brothers, Talbots, Victoria's Secret, Louis, three MasterCards, two Visas, Bloomingdale's, Saks, and Neiman Marcus. They littered the table like hard-edged confetti. Miranda was gray. She went up to bed and stayed there for three days.

Finally, in an effort to distract her, Dolores dragged Miranda out to a nightclub where they could look for eligible men, but Miranda preferred the parties of people she knew and she usually attended them alone or with Teddy.

 

We were drinking coffee in the sitting room three weeks after the initial announcement when Littleton said that he'd found potential tenants.

I had been distracting myself from our change in circumstance by spending the last three weeks absorbed in a less-than-fruitful search for Jack Reilly. Jack Reilly was such a common name, especially in the Boston area, and I was having no luck. I put Tad on the job, too, but neither of us could come up with anything. We didn't even know if Jack was his real name. It could be John. There were plenty of Johns who called themselves Jack.

I couldn't picture myself driving up to Vermont on the off chance of finding Jack Reilly. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to do, and though I knew I should give up on “Boston Tech” and Jack Reilly's potential as a protégé—and who knew what else—he was stuck like gum to my shoe.

Littleton rested his coffee on one knee. The cup looked precarious there. Unlike Priscilla, Littleton did not look comfortable with fine china. I wanted to grab the cup and place it on the tea table where it belonged, but I could hardly lunge at Littleton, so I remained where I was. I had retreated to my usual seat by the window. It seemed clear to me now that whatever happened would do so without any input from me.

Astrid came in with more coffee. She placed it on the low inlaid table in front of me and I smiled up at her. She smiled back and disappeared into the kitchen. I checked the grandfather clock. She should be leaving soon for her afternoon off.

“I hope whoever takes this house has a touch of class,” Miranda said.

“I imagine that whoever can afford this house has, at least, a touch of good sense,” I said.

Everyone looked at me. It was like watching a painting move. Littleton with his coffee cup balanced on his knee, Teddy in the Windsor chair, Priscilla beside him, Miranda lounging on an Empire-style couch, and Dolores on the ottoman nearby.

“Coffee?” I asked. This was the perfect opportunity to rescue Littleton's cup and saucer. I picked it up with a smile, poured coffee into it, and placed it on the table beside him.

“I'm off coffee this week,” Miranda said. I turned from her and poured for the rest of the party.

“I've made some discreet inquiries,” Littleton said, “and I have found a producer.”

“A what?” Teddy asked. He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. Priscilla looked up.

“A Hollywood producer. Movies, you know. A man and his wife. She grew up in the Boston area and now she wants to come back. I don't know for how long, but they're looking for a furnished place.”

“Our furniture?” Miranda asked.

“It would really cost too much to store and insure it, though I'm sure the Museum of Fine Arts would be happy to take a few pieces on loan. There's that Thomas Seymour breakfront.”

“I didn't know you knew about furniture, Littleton,” Priscilla said.

“It's important to know a little bit about everything,” he said. He looked flattered, but I didn't think Priscilla meant to flatter him. He picked up his cup from the table, took a sip, and placed it again on his leg. I could barely stand it.

“Hollywood people,” Teddy said. “It's a sure way for obscure people to gain undue distinction. Would I have heard of these people?”

“Joseph Goldman. One of his most famous movies was based on his brother-in-law's book,
Duet for One
.”

“I saw that movie,” Teddy said. “It wasn't bad. I never read the book. Who wrote it?” If my family could have gotten away with it, they might have remained illiterate.

Priscilla, however, was not so inclined. She had read
Duet for One
and she knew that it was written by Max Wellman. She looked over at me.

I twisted the edge of my cotton jersey until it was wrapped around my finger.

“Max Wellman,” I said.

“What? Name sounds familiar,” Teddy said. “Don't I know the name for some other reason?”

Priscilla looked over at him. “He was the one,” she said, and slid her eyes toward me.

“The one?” Teddy asked.

“You know. The one,” Pris said with tight lips.

“Oh, that boy,” Teddy said.

I wondered how much he really remembered. He looked over at Dolores and must have decided that it would be indiscreet to say more.

“I hope this producer is not a little balding man with a cigar—-someone who will stink up the drapes and the furniture,” Miranda said.

“I don't think he smokes,” Littleton said. “And they don't have children and you know how children can wreak havoc on furniture. This is really a lucky break. They seem like fine, quiet people.”

“That's a new one,” Dolores said. “Fine, quiet people from Hollywood.”

Littleton shot her a look so incendiary I was afraid she might spontaneously combust and scorch the sofa.

“I'm sure they'll show great appreciation for this house.” Dolores tried to save herself.

I doubted she knew as much about “Hollywood people” as she claimed.

“Goldman. That's Jewish, isn't it?” Teddy asked.

“I believe so,” Littleton said.

“Well, you can't have everything.”

My father didn't have any Jewish friends. You'd think that in this day and age or even fifteen years ago, it wouldn't have mattered—the fact that I was Protestant and Max was Jewish—but it had.

When Max's nana heard about us, she sent him a nasty letter from her condominium in Boca Raton. She didn't want him to run off with a shiksa.

“What's a shiksa?” I asked Max.

“A girl who isn't Jewish.”

“Oh,” I said. I was surprised there was even a special word for it. It had never occurred to me that anyone could be prejudiced against me. After all, I was a descendant of the Founding Fathers.

“And what about you?” I asked.

“Me, what?” Max sat on the sofa with his legs crossed and lifted a beer to his lips.

“Do you care that I'm not Jewish?”

“Lots of women convert.” He said this as easily as he might have said “Lots of women register at Bloomingdale's.”

“You never asked me if I would,” I said. The whole issue was premature, anyway. We weren't talking about marriage, were we? He had asked me to go to California with him, not to marry him.

It was at this moment that the hot-air balloon in which two new lovers travel hit the ground. It landed gently, not with a thud or a crash, but it landed all the same. Reality was growing through the floorboards like ragweed. Max put his beer bottle down on the wooden table beside him. I slipped a coaster under it. The house was rented. It wasn't our table and the people who owned it wouldn't want to find rings when they came
back. It wasn't that Max was careless; it was just that he was more casual than I was, but then I couldn't blame him for that. Almost everyone was more casual than I was.

“How about the rest of your family?” I asked.

“They think we should think about it.”

“Maybe we should.”

“I don't want to wait,” he said. He pulled me toward him and nuzzled my neck.

I didn't want to wait either, but Priscilla managed to convince me that if I ran off with Max, I would ruin both my life and his. I should not impede the progress of a man who could be one of the best writers of a generation. Now, I looked across at Priscilla, who was still knitting.

Miranda said, “You have to admit that glamour emanates from the West.”

“I have to admit nothing of the sort,” Priscilla said. “Removing the smallest line from your face before it even gains the respectability of a wrinkle is hardly a move forward in civilization.”

“Don't knock it, Priscilla, until you've tried it.” Teddy smiled.

I hadn't known his vanity extended that far.

“There are more important things than glamour,” Pris said.

“Like good taste and good breeding,” said Teddy.

“And good values,” I said from my place in the corner.

“Did you say something, Jane?” Teddy asked.

“Please. We all know what Miss Holier-Than-Thou thinks,” Miranda said.

Priscilla stopped knitting, and I thought, for a moment, that she might stab Miranda in the thigh with a needle.

I excused myself and went into the kitchen.

“You hear that?” I asked Astrid.

“She's a bitch. She's always been a bitch. And your father. He should stand up for you, but no.”

I shook my head. “What are you going to do, Astrid? They think you'll go to Florida with them.”

“Are you going, Jane?” she asked.

“I don't know. I don't think so.”

“Don't go. This is your chance to start your own life.” She wiped her hands on her apron and sat across from me at the kitchen island.

“I'm not going,” she said. “I have plans.” She stood up and walked to the window. “This is a lovely house,” she said.

“I know.”

“Still, it's only a house. I moved to a different country for a better life. You can move from this house.”

“It doesn't look like I have a choice.”

“Sometimes that's the best way,” she said.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“My brother's coming from Brazil and we're going to open a restaurant.”

I could see her in her own restaurant, with her music playing, coming to the front to greet the patrons, still in her apron and with a wooden spoon holding up her hair. It was the right setting for her. I had to find the right setting for me. Unfortunately, I had always thought that this was it.

I entered the living room just in time to hear Miranda say, “Okay, then. I guess it's all set. We're off to Palm Beach.”

I had to say one thing for Miranda. She might be snippy and she might be rude, but she was suffering this calamity with a good deal more equanimity than I was. The idea of living in an apartment in Palm Beach with Teddy and Miranda was about as appealing to me as a luxury trip to war-torn Afghanistan.

“And I think Dolores should come with us,” Miranda said.

“Oh, Miranda, that's too nice of you. I just couldn't impose.”

“Of course you could.”

Dolores looked up at her father and he smiled back at her in a distracted way. Priscilla stopped knitting and stared at Dolores, then looked at me.

“Daddy, Dolores has to come,” Miranda said.

“Certainly, if she wants to.” He gave Dolores a benign smile, but the smile Dolores turned on him was anything but benign. Her smile was both ingratiating and insinuating. It was obvious that, despite her Hollywood experience, Dolores was a better actress than anyone gave her credit for.

The day the Goldmans came to see the house, Priscilla and I went to a lecture on Elizabeth Barrett Browning at the Boston Public Library. On any other day I might have been perfectly happy to listen to a bespectacled academic, but on that Saturday morning I couldn't get the Goldmans out of my mind. If they took the house, it was inevitable that soon Max would be standing in the same spot where I had stood just that morning, gazing out of the same window.

By the time the question-and-answer period began, I felt sick.

I looked over at Priscilla. Her attention was concentrated on the librarian type at the podium, as if there had never been a more
riveting subject than Browning. The hall felt stuffy, even though the floor-to-ceiling windows were wide open. I was amazed at how many spinsters you could pack into one room. I had attended many lectures with Priscilla and was rarely restless, but after listening to the speaker drone on for over an hour, I had to escape. We were in the middle of a row (Pris always insisted on sitting in the center) so I had to “excuse me” past at least eight frumpy women who were annoyed at being disturbed. Priscilla looked at me with concern, but she didn't follow me out.

In the hall I went to the watercooler, leaned over, and took a long drink.

That summer fifteen years ago, Max and I had been sitting on the seawall in late August and the sun was setting all pink and orange over the Boston skyline. Max handed me a brown paper bag and in the bag was his manuscript. He was finished.

“I'm moving to California and I want you to go with me,” he said.

I didn't even have to think about it. It was one of the only times I can remember that I immediately knew what I wanted.

The next morning I took the commuter boat to Boston so I could tell Priscilla. I'd tell my father later, but first I wanted to test the news on Priscilla. Teddy would follow her lead. I found Priscilla in her breakfast nook, nursing a cup of coffee and reading the
Boston Globe
.

“Hello, dear. You've been making yourself scarce. Pour yourself a coffee and sit down so we can have a chat,” she said. That summer Priscilla had spent most of her time in Kennebunkport, presumably with some man, and she had just come back so there was no reason I would have seen her.

“How is everything? And why haven't I seen you more? Tell me about your experiment in literature.”

I wasn't thrilled by her patronizing tone.

“It's going very well,” I said. “The first recipient of the fellowship has finished his book.” I tasted my coffee.

“I hope he can find a publisher. That would be a real feather in your cap,” Priscilla said.

“And in his.”

“It would be good for the foundation.”

I paused, not knowing how to approach the subject of Max. I took another sip of coffee and blurted it out.

“Max has asked me to go to California with him,” I said.

I wanted Priscilla to act as my mother's emissary, to take all she knew about my mother, put it in a blender, and come out with the essence of what my mother would have said.

“Don't be ridiculous. We don't even know this boy,” Priscilla said.

“You can meet him,” I said.

“I'm afraid you're escaping your grief,” she said.

“You're wrong,” I said. I had never told Priscilla she was wrong before, but this was the first time I felt manipulated, as if maybe she didn't have my best interests at heart. The feeling was so deep I could barely reach it, let alone recognize it.

“You'll ruin his career and your life,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“He'll have to spend his time figuring out how to support you both. It will leach his energy away from his writing and he'll resent you for it.”

“But I have the trust fund. And I can work.”

“The trust doesn't kick in until you're thirty and you've never worked. Besides, do you think any man wants to live off his significant other or partner or whatever you're going to call yourself—even today? You think he'll be proud of himself if his history reads that he married his patroness? Think about the word
patronize,
Jane. Patron and patronize are from the same root.”

“He didn't ask me to marry him. He asked me to go to California.”

“Worse. At least if he asked you to marry him, you'd have some respectable connection, such as it is. This way, he's free to drop you whenever he wants to. I'm only thinking of you. I'm standing in loco parentis, saying what I think your mother would have said.”

“My mother wouldn't have tried to protect me from life.”

“You're wrong. She tried to protect you from everything unpleas
ant in life. Even with her illness. She was sick long before she ever told you. She didn't want you to suffer. She never wanted you to suffer,” Priscilla said.

“Well, it didn't work. I suffered all the same. People do, you know.”

“I know what she would have wanted. I knew her best. You don't understand anything about men. You never have. I'd be more likely to trust Miranda with something like this.” I didn't bring up Guy Callow, but then no one knew what really happened with him—and Miranda hadn't suffered much. “You and Max come from different backgrounds. He's just beginning on what is a very difficult career. Give him a chance. If the love is strong, a few years won't change it.”

I didn't believe her. Romantic songs and books prattled on about eternal love, but I knew that if I didn't go with Max now, I'd lose him.

When I called Teddy, who was on the Vineyard, to tell him my news, he told me that he wouldn't give me any money (not that I had asked for any) and that, of course, I'd have to give up the foundation.

“The Fortune girls don't run off to California. Not on my watch,” he said. “Besides, you won't like it. It's not your kind of place.”

How would he know? He'd never even been there.

 

Priscilla came out of the lecture and saw me leaning with my forehead against the wall. She put her hand on my back.

“Buck up,” she said. “The thing with that writer was so long ago. You really should have forgotten about it by now.”

I lifted my head from the wall. Priscilla stood there with her solid stick figure encased in a tweed skirt. Perhaps any normal person would have forgotten, but it wasn't as if so much had happened to me since to make me forget.

“I wasn't thinking about Max,” I said.

“I just thought that since we were escaping the house so we wouldn't have to see his sister, he might be on your mind.”

“It was hot in there. That's all.”

“The windows were wide open. I actually felt a chill.”

“I was hot,” I said.

“Whatever you say, dear.” Priscilla peered over her half-glasses with a look so tolerant I felt like I'd shrunk to the size of the buckle on her shoe.

We walked home from the library and entered the house, where Miranda and my father were having drinks in the sitting room.

“You should have stayed, Jane,” Miranda said. “They were really interesting people.”

“Nothing like what you'd expect in
show people,
” Teddy said. I think Teddy still thought in terms of vaudeville. He didn't equate “show person” with someone like Joseph Goldman, who ran a multimillion-dollar company.

“Emma looks like Lauren Bacall, and you really can't do better than Lauren Bacall,” Miranda said.

“And he had presence,” Teddy said. “He certainly wasn't what you'd call attractive. He was far too short for that. But he had what it took to command a room.”

“So now it's just the brass tacks,” Teddy said. His face was ruddy and he wouldn't have liked it if he'd known. The drink in his hand was obviously not his first.

 

My father, Miranda, Astrid, and Dolores all left on the same day.

Priscilla was furious that Miranda had chosen Dolores as a companion on this sojourn to Palm Beach. She thought Dolores was certainly not in the league of a Fortune, even a Fortune without money. Besides, she thought my claim on my family should be stronger than that of a stranger, and she was far more angry than I was to see me so easily discarded. True, I didn't want to go, but they might have acted, just for a minute, as if I'd be missed. I realized that I had been under the misconception that I performed some important function in my family. But now it looked like my role could easily be assumed by just about anyone.

A black Lincoln Town Car arrived to take Teddy, Miranda, and Dolores to the airport.

“That's the very least we can do,” Miranda said. “We can march out of here with style.”

“Well, goodbye, dear,” Teddy said. He kissed me on the cheek and checked his watch. “Where is Dolores? She's late.”

A taxi pulled up and Dolores toppled out. She was lugging an army surplus duffel over one shoulder. With the other hand she pulled a rolling suitcase. She also had a handbag and a carry-on piece. She juggled it all without much grace.

“Come on, then,” Miranda called to her from the front steps. “We don't want to miss our plane. We should have ordered a limousine. The Town Car is going to be tight with the three of us,” she complained.

“I could keep the cab and meet you at the airport,” Dolores said. Miranda paused to consider this. She looked at Dolores and her haphazard luggage.

“Of course not. We'll all fit.” Teddy signaled the driver, who took Dolores's bags and shifted them into the Lincoln, then came up the steps and gathered some of Miranda's luggage.

Miranda pecked me on both cheeks, European style, took her Louis Vuitton train case, and trotted out to the car. She was wearing high heels and a Chanel suit—no jeans and T-shirts for her. She would arrive in Florida with all the ostentation of a small-time celebrity.

My father took several bags, and between him and the driver, they eventually filled the car. The trunk wouldn't close, so instead of leaving the neighborhood with the desired aplomb, they looked slapdash and Beverly Hillbillyish. But it didn't matter. There was no one but me and Astrid to watch them go.

After they left, Astrid looked at me. There were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling.

She wrapped me in a strong hug. It made me uncomfortable. I wasn't used to hugging people and I never knew what to do with my hands. I always ended up patting the other person on the back awkwardly.

“You're the only one of them who is worth anything, Jane,” she said, “and don't you ever forget it.” She handed me a piece of paper with her new address on it. “I want to know how you are, and if you ever need a place to stay, you can always come to me.”

Ironically, in the end, it was our maid who thought to offer me a place to stay, but I was going to my sister Winnie's for Thanksgiving. It was a command performance. Winnie's life as a wife and mother wasn't exactly what she had imagined it would be and she had difficulty keeping up with it. She often called to complain that she was sick and needed me “immediately or before.”

Priscilla had already left for Canada, where she would spend the holidays with her sister.

I thanked Astrid, thanked her for everything. I could never thank her enough. I watched her walk away toward her friend's car. Several people had come during the past few days to help her move, and it made me wonder about her life outside of our house. It was obviously far more rich than I ever imagined. The end of the Fortune family establishment was the best thing that could have happened to her. She was on the threshold of a new life.

Alone in the house, I spent days wrapping up what Max would have called tchotchkes
.
The silver service, pewter bowls, snuffboxes, china figurines, the framed letter from President Martin Van Buren. I stored it all in the basement, where at least it would remain insured. I packed the rest of our personal things and moved them to a Public Storage facility on the side of the highway, one of those places with rows and rows of orange doors.

It made me smile to think how horrified Miranda and Teddy would be if they knew that some of their prized possessions would be “wintering” on the edge of Route 128.