Shades of Fortune (52 page)

“Well, Edwee and I do eat out a lot. And there are a lot of good restaurants. So maybe I will. But I hope not.”

“Yes. You should watch your diet very carefully.”

“Oh, I
know
. But the thing is—the clothes. I've got to get a lot of summery-type things. All I've got now is a lot of New Yorky-type things.”

“Summery things?” Nonie counts on her fingers. “Well, let's see. This is September. I suppose that could bring you up to June. When is all this going to happen, anyway?”

“Oh, any
day
now. Maybe next week.”

“Next
week?
Surely you're not—”

“That's why I've got so much to do! After I leave you, I've got to go out and shop and shop and shop. I just hope they speak some English there.”

“Where, in the stores?” But suddenly Nonie realizes that she and Gloria must be talking about two different things. She reaches for her glass. “My dear, what exactly are you talking about?”

“Edwee's and my little secret. Belize.”

“Belize?”

“It's the most darling little tropical country, just off South America. We're going to have the sweetest little house there, right on the beach.”

“I see,” Nonie says. “You're taking a trip.”

“I'm so excited, Nonie. I've never been outside the United States of America.”

Nonie takes a deep breath. “And how long do you plan to be gone?” she asks.

“Oh, permanently. Didn't Edwee tell you that? We're moving there permanently. That's what's so—”

“I see,” Nonie says, studying the little bubbles rising in her glass. “Edwee didn't tell me … the exact purpose of this move.”

“It's his health,” Gloria says. “Edwee's doctor's told him that he'll do much better in a tropical climate.”

“There's never been anything wrong with my brother's health!”

“His doctors say—but, anyway, all he's waiting for is a certain letter, some sort of business he's involved in, and then, off we go! You'll come and visit us there, I hope.”

“Edwee told me you were pregnant.”

Gloria giggles again. “Oh, that turned out to be a false alarm. But we're still trying. Edwee really wants a son. He says we need a son to carry on the Myerson name.”

“So,” Nonie says. “It's Belize.” She grips the stem of her glass but is afraid that her hand will tremble so violently that she will be unable to lift it to her lips. She looks at her watch. Then she says quickly, “Look, Gloria, do you mind if we make this just a drink, and not for lunch? I just remembered that I promised a friend I'd meet her plane at La Guardia at one-thirty, and it's quarter of. And you've got all your shopping to do. Do you mind terribly, darling?” She calls out to a passing waiter. “Check, please!”

Edwee is in fine spirits this morning. There is a faint, crisp scent of autumn in the air, but the sun is warm and the breeze is as light as Edwee's step, ruffling his long silver hair—in an attractive, youthful fashion, he thinks, as he glances at his image in the shop windows along Madison Avenue as he walks uptown, and adjusts the fresh red carnation in his buttonhole. God is in his heaven, Edwee thinks, and all's right with the world.

This morning's letter from Philippe de Montebello had contained everything he could have asked for—well, almost everything. “Dear Mr. Myerson,” it began.

I visited your mother on Thursday afternoon with four members of my curatorial staff, at least two of whom are considered experts on the Spanish painters of Goya's period. I must tell you that both my Goya experts are convinced that your mother's portrait of the Duchess of Osuna is authentic, and that the curious “question mark” you noted following Berenson's signature was added later, and in another hand
.

There had been a heart-stopping moment when Edwee read this sentence, but then he read on.

On the other hand, in light of your sister's account of her meeting with M. Berenson at his villa several years after your mother acquired the painting, and the fact that at least someone has questioned the authenticity of the painting, we feel that the position of the Museum must be to decline your mother's most generous offer. We hope that this will not disappoint your mother or yourself
.

Disappoint! Edwee thinks. Ho-ho! Ha-ha!

Needless to say, out of consideration for your mother and her advanced age and certain infirmities, I do not plan to tell her the precise reasons why we are declining her gift, since the reasons might cause her undue distress. Rather, I am writing her separately today merely to say that, while we deeply appreciate her offer, the Museum feels that it already has a sufficient representation of Goya's work, and that due to such considerations as insurance costs, shortage of hanging space, etc., we are respectfully declining her offer
.

Yours sincerely
,

Philippe de Montebello

His mother, when he had phoned her this morning, had also seemed in an unusually chipper and cheerful mood and surprisingly willing to see him when he told her he had something he wanted to discuss with her. “Do come by, Edwee,” his mother said brightly. “I'd love to see you. It's been a coon's age. I'll be right here all morning.”

“Good morning, Patrick!” he said to the doorman as Patrick held the door open for him.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Fine day, isn't it?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Good morning, George,” he said as he passed the front desk.

“Good morning, Mr. Myerson. Your mother's expecting you.”

All the way up to the twentieth floor, Edwee whistled a little tuneless tune.

“Come in, Edwee!” his mother called when he rang the bell. “The door's off the latch.” As he opened the door to her apartment, the sheer glass curtains against her open windows billowed into the room from the westerly breeze, billowed like white sails on an open sea, billowed and flapped and gusted into the sitting room where she has been sitting, waiting for him, wearing her pearls.

“It is you, isn't it, Edwee?” she says.

“Yes,
M-M-M-Maman
.”

“Come in, come in.”

Immediately, Itty-Bitty begins barking shrilly, crouching, her rear in the air, forepaws extended, barking, growling, snarling at him. But the minute Edwee steps from his mother's entrance foyer into her sitting room, he stops in his tracks. “Where is it?” he gasps.

“Where's what, dear?”

“The Goya!
Where is it?
”

“What Goya, dear?”

“
There!
” he screams, pointing at the empty wall, at the pale rectangle against the yellower wall, where it had hung. “It was right there! It hung right there! It's always been there! What have you done with it, Mother?”

“Well, you know I can't see,” his mother says. “So I don't know what you're talking about, Edwee.”

“What have you done with your Goya, Mother?”

“You see, you don't stammer when you don't want to,” she says. “Sit down, Edwee. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“God damn it, Mother—what have you done with your Goya?”

“Don't swear, Edwee. It's rude. What are you talking about?”

“Your
Goya!
Where is it?”

“Goya?” she says thoughtfully. “You mean the painter, Goya? I've never owned any Goya, Edwee. I considered buying one years ago, but I changed my mind. Mr. Montecarlo, from the museum, was here the other day. He admired my Monet, my Cézanne, my little Renoir still life, my Degas dancers—but he never mentioned any Goya.”

“You're lying, Mother! Don't try to pull that stuff on me! It was right
there!
”

“Well, whatever used to be there must be still there, because nothing's been moved out of this apartment since I moved in, so you must be thinking of something else, because I've never had any Goya. You must be thinking of something else.”

“I am
not
thinking of something else!”

“The little Renoir still life maybe? As you know, I'm old, and you know I can't see.”

“I think you
can
see!” he says. “And you know exactly what I'm talking about! Where is it, you bitch?”

His mother rises from the sofa to her full height and, touching her pearls, faces him. “If you've come here to be rude and nasty to me, Edwee,” she says, “then I don't want to talk to you anymore. You can just go.” She turns quickly and walks to her bedroom door, opens it, and closes it behind her with a small slam. He hears the bolt in the lock.

He runs to the door and begins pounding on it with his fists. “What have you done with it?” he screams. “What have you done with my Goya? What have you done with it, you stupid, senile, selfish, disgusting old bitch! I'm going to put you in a nursing home!”

“Get out of here, Edwee,” he hears from behind the door. “Get out of here before I call Security.”

He continues banging on the panel of the door. “Bitch! Bitch! Horrible old bitch that I hate!”

“I'm going to call Security.”

He leans against the door. Near him, on the floor, Itty-Bitty still crouches, barking noisily, snarling, growling. Edwee steps toward her, and the little dog shies away, snarling and snapping angrily, but Edwee moves faster and seizes the little dog by its collar and its tail. While the little dog screeches and struggles in his grip, trying to bite him, Edwee strides to the open window and flings the dog out. The sheer glass curtains billow outward now, outward into the bright New York morning.

In the sudden silence that follows, Edwee Myerson leaves quickly.

He is well out of the apartment, well out of the Carlyle, when, perhaps ten minutes later, George from the front desk telephones Granny Flo Myerson to tell her the dreadful news.

Part Four

A HOMECOMING

25

“I finally had a chance to speak to your uncle Edwee today,” Brad says.

“Oh?” she says. She has momentarily forgotten what it was that he wanted to speak to Edwee about. They are sitting in the living room of the apartment at 1107 Fifth Avenue, having their customary before-dinner cocktail. On late-summer evenings such as this, Mimi likes to use as little artificial light in this room as possible, letting the sunset colors, reflected from the lake, refracted by the glass prisms, and echoed by the colors in the abstract paintings (the Morris Louis, the Youngerman, the Jasper Johns) supply the only flashes of color in the otherwise all-white room, adding to the room's feeling of floating in space above the park. “I forget,” she says. “What was it you …?”

“About this apparent interest in your male model—what's his name?”

“Dirk Gordon. Oh, yes.”

“I'm a little worried about Uncle Edwee, Mimi.”

“Really? Why?”

“Well, Edwee's never been exactly the most … stable person, has he? And when I talked with him today, I actually wondered if he was losing his mind.”

“Seriously, Brad?”

“He was quite irrational—hysterical, almost. He went on and on about Granny Flo's having hidden a painting from him. Her Goya. He says she's taken it off the wall and is hiding it somewhere … from him.”

“She's giving that painting to the Met. That's probably where it is. They've already collected it.”

“No. He says he's had a letter from the museum, and he says that they don't want it. He says your grandmother had a letter to the same effect.”

“That's strange. I thought they'd kill to get that painting.”

“Anyway, now it's disappeared. And he wants us—or you, specifically—to get it back. For him. He kept referring to it as ‘my Goya.'”

“That's ridiculous. It's always been Granny's Goya. Everybody knows that.”

“And now you're supposed to find out where it is, and get it back.”

“Well, I certainly have more important things on my mind right now than worrying about where Granny's Goya is.”

“I told him that. That was when he really became irrational. That was when he began to threaten.”

“Threaten? Threaten what?”

“I mentioned your male model. Edwee has—or at least
claims
he has—a pornographic videotape, featuring your model, Mr. Gordon. He says it could be potentially embarrassing to your Mireille campaign if he were to release it.”

Mimi is silent for a moment. Then she says, “I see. Thank you, Uncle Edwee. I needed this.”

“Could it be? Embarrassing to you?”

“Well,” she says, “they say Joan Crawford made porno films before she became a star. They say they're collectors' items now. She lived it down. Vanessa Williams posed in the nude for Bob Guccione. She lost her title, but she bounced back. But right now … well, the timing couldn't be much worse, could it? If he's telling the truth. What do you think I should do, Brad? Oh, god damn you, Edwee!”

“Well,” he says, “I've been thinking about it. First, there's the possibility that he's lying. There's the possibility that he's gone completely off his rocker. But I think we should face the possibility that he's got something. There are things we could do, legal steps we could take. We could bring in the FBI—this, after all, is a blackmail threat. But that could generate publicity. It could also take time. You don't have a lot of time before your campaign breaks—”

“A week and a half.”

“We could demand to see the alleged tape. Or we could help him find where the damned Goya is—which is what he wants. Or we could simply call his bluff, and do nothing.”

“Which do you think?”

“I told him that I refused to take his threat seriously unless I could see the tape.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“He hung up on me.”