6

Adolph Myerson’s first great ambition, once he realized he was becoming a rich man, too rich to bother with the new Jewish bourgeoisie that was moving into the Bronx (I learned all this later from my conversations with Granny Flo), was to become a member of the congregation of Temple Emanu-El.

In those days, membership at Emanu-El was probably the greatest Jewish status symbol in the city of New York. From humble beginnings in a dreary railroad flat on the Lower East Side, and with a starting treasury of about eleven dollars, the congregation and its congregants had grown and prospered to the point where, in less than two generations’ time, Temple Emanu-El occupied a splendid edifice right on Fifth Avenue, where it stood cheek by jowl with the great churches and cathedrals of the Christian faiths—a symbol of a degree of assimilation that Jews, nowhere in their history, had ever known before. It was a symbol of the triumph of the Reform Movement, of reason and rationality over Old World barbarism and provincialism. It was also a symbol of the triumphs of the American capitalist system, for the German Jews who founded it and whose families still ran it had nearly all arrived penniless from Europe in pursuit of the American Dream. Here they had pursued it and, in a remarkably short space of time, captured it, through successful careers in commerce, banking, and industry. The very splendor of the temple itself—its magnificent stained-glass windows, its hand-laid mosaic walls, its vaulting ceilings, its cascading chandeliers—announced proudly to the world that for some, at least—those willing to work hard, lead upright lives, give honest weight, and be a little lucky—America was indeed the Land of Golden Opportunity.

Attendance at a Sabbath service at Temple Emanu-El was free and open to all, to Jews and Christians alike. After all, no house of worship in America can legally close its doors to any orderly person. But membership in Temple Emanu-El was something else again. It was a little like being taken into a private club. The temple was governed by a board of trustees, all of whom were members of what had by then become New York’s uptown German-Jewish establishment, and among the trustees’ duties was the assignment of certain pews to certain families. Needless to say, the best pews in the sanctuary—those in front, closest to the pulpit, and those along the west wall—had long been rented by Loebs, Lehmans, and Lewisohns, who were all related to each other, and by other Loebs, Schiffs, and Warburgs, who were also related to each other, as well as by Seligmans, who were related by marriage to everybody else. The rentals of these principal pews were passed along from one family generation to the next.

By 1915, however, Joseph Seligman—the patriarch of the Seligman family—had become much drawn to the ideas of Felix Adler, a German rabbi’s son who advanced theories of a society based on ethics rather than religious piety, and Seligman was turning away from Judaism toward Adler’s Ethical Culture Society. Thus it was that an excellently placed Seligman pew suddenly became available that year. And Adolph Myerson, applying for membership in Emanu-El, and pointing out that he was in a position to contribute handsomely to the temple’s coffers, was not only accepted but was given occupancy of the Seligman pew. It was located directly behind the Guggenheim family pew.

The Guggenheims occupied a somewhat ambiguous position in New York’s Jewish society at the time. They were a part of it, and yet not a part. For one thing, the Guggenheims were not properly German but had originally emigrated from German-speaking Switzerland. For another, they owed their fortune not to hard work and building a reputation as men of honor, as the others did, but rather to a lucky accident—not unlike the one that had befallen Leopold Myerson and his brother. Meyer Guggenheim had spent most of his life as an unsuccessful peddler of laundry soaps and stove polishes until one day in the 1880s when, in settlement of a bad debt he had been trying to collect, he was handed some shares in an abandoned mine in Leadville, Colorado. Journeying to Colorado to have a look at what he owned, he had discovered a mine shaft filled with water. But when he had the shaft pumped out, he found one of the richest veins of copper ore in the world. Out of this came the American Smelting and Refining Company, the Anaconda Copper Company, and a good deal more. By the early 1900s, the Guggenheims were among the richest families in America, their companies worth even more, some said, than the oil-refining companies controlled by John D. Rockefeller. New York’s German-Jewish upper crust would have preferred to snub these upstarts, but the Guggenheims had become too rich to ignore—a situation in which Adolph Myerson would soon be pleased to find himself.

From his pew just behind the Guggenheims, at Sabbath services and on the High Holy Days, Adolph Myerson could not help but notice, and be attracted to, the pretty Fleurette Guggenheim, a dainty creature with wide blue eyes and golden ringlets. Adolph Myerson was able to make his presence known to Fleurette in little ways. Once, when Fleurette dropped her prayer book during the service, Adolph reached down to the floor beneath her seat and handed it back to her, for which her eyes fluttered a thank-you. On another occasion, when Fleurette appeared to have forgotten the words to a blessing, Adolph leaned across her shoulder and whispered the words in her ear.

But the only trouble was that little Fleurette was surrounded in her pew by a number of burly and protective brothers, by an even greater number of heavyset uncles, and by her formidable father, Morris Guggenheim, one of Meyer Guggenheim’s many sons, and a man whom, when he was born, the press had dubbed “the world’s richest baby.” These little attentions of Adolph’s to Fleurette did not go unnoticed by the menfolk in her family, and after one of these, a council of war was called by the Guggenheim family at the family’s summer mansion on the New Jersey shore. Fleurette’s father stated the problem bluntly. “That nail polish man,” as he always referred to Adolph, “has been sniffing around Fleurette.”

The pros and cons of the situation were weighed carefully. On the one hand, there was no questioning the fact that the nail polish man was a successful entrepreneur who would be able to care for little Fleurette and provide for her in the manner to which she was accustomed. On the other hand, there was the marked difference in their ages. Adolph was by then forty-five, and Fleurette was only seventeen.

At the same time, there was a special problem in terms of Fleurette. Within the family, it had been decided that Fleurette was “simple.”

“Little Fleurette is a sweet child,” her third-grade teacher at the Brearley School had written home to her parents. “She has a gentle, giving nature, and we on the faculty are all very fond of her, but the fact is that she simply cannot do the work at our School. At the third-grade level, when she should be doing her multiplication tables, she still cannot do simple sums. Nor have her reading or writing skills improved at all, and she even has trouble reciting the alphabet. We are terribly sorry, but we do not feel that holding Fleurette back, and asking her to repeat another grade, will provide a solution to her learning problems. It is our advice that Fleurette be withdrawn from Brearley, and that you consider the possibility of further education through the use of private tutors in the home.…”

A later generation of therapists might have diagnosed Fleurette’s problem as dyslexia. But, in those days, the word did not exist, and Fleurette was taken out of school and tutored at home in music and art appreciation, home management, and needlework.

“The nail polish man doesn’t know Fleurette that well yet,” her uncle Ben pointed out. “So he hasn’t noticed anything. This may be just the man we’re looking for.”

“She’s too sweet and pretty to grow up a spinster,” her aunt Hattie said. “But who would ever want to marry her?”

“The nail polish man.”

“Opportunity knocks but once, Morris,” said Aunt Hattie.

“The nail polish man, then,” Fleurette’s father agreed.

“And the sooner the better, Morris. Before he has a chance to … find out.”

And so it was that the Guggenheims proposed Fleurette’s hand in marriage to Adolph Myerson, and not the other way around. At the time, Adolph was almost dizzy with happiness over his good fortune.

With Fleurette went a dowry of one million dollars.

Now, more than seventy years later, Fleurette Guggenheim Myerson sits in her apartment at the Carlyle with her second-born child, and only daughter, Naomi, on a quiet Monday afternoon. The apartment is not small, considering that it has but a single occupant. There is a thirty-foot living room, a fair-sized dining room, a “service” kitchen, a small library dominated by a giant remote-controlled television screen, and two bedrooms and baths, the second of which is called “the guest room,” though to anyone’s knowledge it has never housed a guest. From its location on the twentieth floor, Granny Flo’s apartment commands a view of Central Park, not unlike Mimi’s view a few blocks to the north, and from Granny’s bedroom windows there is even a view of the East River and, beyond it, of Queens and the rising and descending planes at La Guardia Airport—all views, of course, that Granny is no longer able to enjoy.

Still, though not small, the apartment seems that way because it is so crowded with furniture—pieces from the big house on Madison Avenue, as well as from two other houses in Maine and Palm Beach, that Granny has been unwilling to part with. Even a fully sighted person, one might think, would have difficulty picking her way between the nested stacks of little tables, the chairs and ottomans and benches and the floor lamps that are assembled here. But, Granny insists, she has memorized the narrow, twisting passageways that lead between the furniture from one room to the next and can navigate them even in total blindness by reaching out to touch the back of an armchair here, the fringe of a lampshade there. Adding to the sense of crowdedness in the apartment is her art collection, which covers every vacant space of wall from floor to ceiling in every room, two rather unremarkable Bentons having been given just as much prominence as the extraordinary Goya upon which Philippe de Montebello of the Metropolitan Museum gazed so long and thoughtfully the other day.

Granny is seated in one of the many armchairs now, with Nonie opposite her, and with her tiny black Yorkshire terrier, Itty-Bitty, nestled in her lap. Itty-Bitty’s chin rests on her mistress’s knee, and her buttony round, black eyes gaze intently, even suspiciously, at Nonie, while her mistress’s eyes are blank, unfocused. Granny Flo is trying to explain once more to her daughter that Nonie’s father did not resent her simply because she was a girl.

“Your papa loved you just as much as he loved the boys,” she says. “What you forget is that when you were growing up he was busy building his business. There wasn’t as much time for fathering as he’d have liked.”

“Still, he shortchanged me in his will.”

“His will was to give the boys enough to carry on the business.”

“And I was left with virtually nothing. Nothing to build a life on at all.”

“I’m not a bottomless pit, Nonie,” her mother says again.

“Just five million, Mother. That’s all it would take. Five million is nothing to you.”

“Five million? Nothing? You talk as if five million dollars was no more than the cost of a streetcar ride!”

“Surely one of your Guggenheim trusts. Each of your uncles left you—”

“A trust is a trust! I don’t know what a trust is, Nonie, but I know that much. Mr. What’s-his-name at the bank explained it all to me. I get the income from those trusts, but I don’t get the whatchamacallit until after I die. Then it goes to you and Henry and Edwee and Mimi, in a trust. It’s all invested in different things.”

“Henry’s dead, Mother,” Nonie says.

Her mother hesitates. “He is?” she says. “When did Henry die? Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

“Years ago, Mother. Anyway—”

Thoughtfully, her mother scratches Itty-Bitty’s topknot, which is secured with a tiny yellow grosgrain bow, and the little dog closes its eyes and squirms with obvious pleasure, nestling itself deeper into its mistress’s lap. Which Itty-Bitty is this one? Nonie tries to remember. It is at least number three, if not number four. There have been many Itty-Bittys over the years.

“Anyway, couldn’t you borrow against one of those trusts, Mother? Enough to give me just a short-term loan? Because I could pay you back in just a few months’ time—maybe even less.”

“But I don’t understand what you want it for, Nonie,” her mother says. “I know your young man said it had something to do with foreigners, and I told him that President Hoover was against the foreigners. He seemed quite impressed at how well I know the Hoovers.”

Nonie sighs. “Mother, Hoover has been dead longer than Henry has,” she says. “And this has nothing to do with foreigners. It’s called spot currency exchange. And if you’ll just try to listen to me, Mother, I’ll try to explain to you again how it works.”

“Yes. Explain it to me, Nonie.”

“I’ll try. Now please try to follow me closely, Mother. It works like this. The dollar fluctuates from day to day, from minute to minute, against the Japanese yen, the Swiss franc, the German mark, even the Canadian dollar. There’s money to be made whichever way the dollar goes, up or down, it doesn’t matter. And my friend Roger is an expert—an ace, an absolute ace—on these trades. I mean, it’s as though he wrote the book on the subject, Mother.”

“You see? I was right. Foreign money.”

“Please listen, Mother. There’s nothing illegal about it. The biggest banks in the country do this sort of thing, and it’s so easy! Listen. He gave me a demonstration the other day, right in my apartment, of how it works. He telephoned Zurich, right from my apartment, and said he was interested in buying five million U.S. dollars. He was quoted the prevailing rate, which was seven million, six hundred and fifty-five Swiss francs. I know this, Mother, because I heard the quote. Roger had me listen to his calls on an extension. One minute later—one minute, Mother—the rate had crept up fifteen hundredths of a Swiss centime, and the moment that happened Roger made another call to a bank in Chicago, offering to sell five million dollars. If he had, his profit from the trade would have been twelve thousand, five hundred francs—or about eight thousand dollars. That’s eight thousand dollars a minute, Mother! Hypothetically, of course, because Roger was just demonstrating how it worked to me. But that’s what the profit would have been if an actual trade had been made. Think of it, Mother! Eight thousand dollars a minute, and Roger can make hundred of these trades a day. Isn’t it exciting? I knew you’d think so.”

Her mother says nothing. The little dog hops now from her mistress’s lap and settles on the floor beside her feet. “Where’s Itty-Bitty going now?” her mother asks. “Oh, there you are, sweetheart,” she says, nudging the animal with her toe.

“Our plan is to start small,” Nonie continues, “right in my apartment. Of course, we’d have to install lots of extra telephone lines, because this business involves being on the telephone, all over the world, all day long, and even into the night with some markets, handling many different calls at once. Eventually, of course, we’ll hire a staff and move into an office—probably in the Wall Street area, where the action is. But we’ll be making hundreds of thousands a day right from day one, Mother. And you’d be paid back in no time. If it’s to be a loan, we’ll pay you back with interest. Or, if you decide to buy stock in our company, you’ll get income from dividends. You can’t lose, Mother, either way!”

Once more, her mother says nothing. Then she says, “If this man is so smart, why isn’t he rich?”

“He needs seed money, Mother. It’s called seed money. He needs a sponsor, a patron. Every genius needs a patron.” She looks up at her mother’s art-crowded walls and has an inspiration, a small one, but an appropriate one. “Even Michelangelo couldn’t have painted the things he did if he hadn’t had a patron!”

“And so you’re to be his patron. Or rather, I am.”

“Just to get us started, Mother. And for such a little amount of money. Would you like me to bring him by and have him demonstrate to you how simply it all works?”

“Frankly, I didn’t like his looks, Nonie,” her mother says.

“You didn’t like his looks? But how can you tell what he looked like, Mother, when you can’t—”

“I can smell a man’s looks,” her mother says quickly.

“If you smelled anything about him, it was Mimi’s new cologne! I saw him splash some on his hands before he sat down to dinner.”

“I smelled him before he splashed the cologne on,” her mother says firmly. “He had an oily smell. He smelled like a greaser. That’s what your father would have called a man like that—a greaser.”

“But he’s not! He’s a graduate of the Harvard Business School.”

“Is he? I wonder. He didn’t talk like a Harvard man. Edwee’s a Harvard man, and Edwee doesn’t talk like that. I don’t even believe that Roger Williams is his real name. It sounds like a made-up name to me. Roger Williams sounds like the name of some hotel.”

“But it is his name.”

Once again, her mother says nothing, gazing emptily into space, and stroking Itty-Bitty’s back with the tip of her toe.

“This is my one big chance, Mother.”

Softly, her mother begins, “How many other big chances have I given you money for, Nonie? The dress shop, the restaurant, the—what was it?—oh, yes, the fashion magazine. All of them cost me money, these big chances of yours. I am not a bottomless pit.”

“Those were … bad luck, I admit. It was bad luck, bad advice, untrustworthy partners. But don’t you think I’ve learned something from my mistakes?”

“Have you?”

“Oh, yes! I have! I’ve learned to be much tougher. I’ve learned to be … like Mimi, and look what she’s done! Oh, Mother, please—give me one last chance! Edwee’s been given the money to do what he wants. Even Henry was given a chance! Oh, Mother, I’m not getting any younger. Please give me one last chance to become somebody, the person I deserve to be!” In a sudden gesture that she knows would displease her mother if she could see her, Nonie flings herself to her knees on the floor in front of her mother’s chair and stretches her arms across her mother’s lap, which is still warm from Itty-Bitty. “Mother, do you see what I am doing? I am begging you. I am begging you for one last chance. I am begging you on bended knee!”

“Stand up, Nonie,” her mother says quietly. “That’s undignified. It’s unladylike. Are you sleeping with this man?”

“No!”

“Then stand up. Stop acting like a child.”

Rising, Nonie sobs, “It’s just that I want this … I want it … so much …”

“Why don’t you ask Edwee for the money? He’s rich. Or Mimi? She’s rich, too.”

“I couldn’t … humiliate myself like that. To ask Mimi for money. She’s my niece. And Edwee—I don’t trust Edwee. Edwee is a sneak.”

Her mother nods. “You’re right about that,” she says. “I hate to say that about my own son, but you’re right. Edwee is a sneak. Sneakiness has always been Edwee’s problem.”

“Then who else? Who else can I turn to?” She extracts a hanky from her Hermès bag and blows her nose noisily into it, aware that the sound is harsh and unpleasant.

Her mother’s eyes gaze vacantly into space. When she speaks now her normally fluty voice is hard and even. “How much have I given you over the years, Nonie, for your various enterprises? Thirty million? Would that be a good ballpark figure? Thirty million, over the years, and that’s not counting what it cost me to bail you out of three marriages. People used to say I was no good with figures, but when figures like that come out of my pocketbook, I keep track. Did it ever occur to you that is more than either Edwee or Henry inherited from your father in Miray stock? And yet you say you were shortchanged. That is why I am saying to you today that I am not a bottomless pit.”

Nonie, dabbing at her eyes, at first says nothing. Then she says, “If you can’t afford five million, Mother, then how much could you lend me? As you can see, I’m desperate.”

“Five thousand.”

“Five thousand! That’s an insult, Mother! I can’t do anything with five thousand dollars. I need—”

“And let me ask you another question. Where’s my jade elephant?”

Nonie gasps. “What are you talking about?”

“My jade elephant. Han Dynasty, first century.”

“I—I don’t know anything about a jade elephant!”

“It used to sit over there,” her mother points, “on that piecrust table. It was there the last time you came to see me, in July. After you left, it was gone. No one else was in this apartment. Have you taken to pinching things from me, Nonie, as well as from other people?”

“Why—why—what a perfectly dreadful thing to accuse me of, Mother! Your own daughter, your own daughter who—”

“Are you sure you didn’t just drop it into your purse, Nonie, as you were walking out?”

“Of course not! Obviously, one of the hotel staff—”

“I’ve lived at this hotel for fifteen years, Nonie, and I know all the staff. Nothing has ever been missing before.”

“A waiter, or a—”

“My waiter is always Eric. They always send up Eric, because they know I like him. And Eric hadn’t even been in that day. I’d lunched out.”

“What a perfectly despicable, contemptible thing to accuse me of, Mother!”

“Let me just say one thing, Nonie. It’s one thing when you come to me asking me for money. But when you start pinching my things, it’s another.”

“I can’t believe I’m sitting here listening to this sort of thing! I—”

Her mother sighs. “Well,” she says, “if you decide to sell it, don’t take it to some Third Avenue pawnshop. Take it to John Marion at Sotheby’s. It should fetch quite a nice price. If John Marion has any questions about it, refer him to me. I’ll tell him I gave it to you.” Then she says, “What time is it?”

Hesitantly, dabbing at her nose, Nonie sniffles, “Four-thirty.”

“Then I’m going to have to send you on your way, Nonie. That Mr. Greenway is coming by at five to interview me. He says I’m a living link with the past. What do you think of that? A living link with the past!”

“You’re sending me on my way on a perfectly horrid note like that? Accusing me of stealing—”

“Edwee may be sneaky, but at least he’s never stolen anything from me.”

Suddenly Nonie leans forward, close to her mother’s face, and says, “And speaking of darling Edwee, I don’t suppose you’ve heard what darling Edwee is planning to do with you.”

Her mother’s eyes snap immediately into focus. “What?”

“He’s planning to ship you off to a nursing home. In Massachusetts. He’s going to have you legally probated. He’s going to have you declared incompetent. He’s collecting witnesses to say that you’re senile and incapable of handling your own affairs. You’ll live in a tiny cell. You’ll have to give up your apartment and all your things. You’ll have to give up Itty-Bitty.”

Her mother’s hand flies to her throat. Then she reaches quickly down and scoops up her little dog and clutches it protectively against her bosom. “What?” she cries. “He can’t do that, can he? He can’t take Itty-Bitty away from me!”

“Who knows what he can do? He’s the oldest surviving son, and he’s working on it already. He’s got the nursing home all picked out; your room’s reserved.”

“You wouldn’t let him do this to me, Nonie!”

“What can I do? He’s the oldest surviving son, and he’s got all these lawyers at Dewey, Ballantine working on it. He can afford to hire forty lawyers at Dewey, Ballantine to have you put away. I can’t afford that sort of thing to fight him.”

“Mimi won’t let him! Mimi’s the boss of the company now, isn’t she? She wouldn’t let him do this sort of thing to me, would she?”

“Mimi!” Nonie cries. “Don’t you know that Mimi hates you, Mother? Hates you—because of the way you treat her mother. Like the other night, at her dinner party.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The other night. At Mimi’s dinner party. The way you lashed out at Alice.”

Her mother blinks. “I’ve been to no dinner parties at Mimi’s,” she says. “I haven’t set foot in Mimi’s house for at least two years!”

“Now, Mother. This was last Thursday night. Surely you remember. That was when you met my friend Roger Williams, remember? That was when you suddenly lashed out at poor Alice. I wish you could have seen the expression on Mimi’s face when you said what you said. It was an expression of … sheer horror, Mother. No, I don’t think Mimi feels very charitable toward you—particularly right now. Mimi’s not going to do anything to help you, Mother.”

“Well, if she hates me so, why did she ask me to dinner?”

“She probably thought you’d behave yourself. So you do remember the dinner.”

Her mother says nothing, still clutching her little dog. “Well, perhaps,” she says at last. “Perhaps I do remember. But Alice—Alice’s trouble is ingratitude. Alice has never learned the art of being grateful. Gratitude is an art she’s just never learned, that’s all. If you only knew what your father and I did, what we went through, to try to help Alice, and help Henry. Not even Mimi knows. And never so much as a word of thanks! I’ve never understood how a person could be so ungrateful!”

“Still, Alice is Mimi’s mother. And the things you said to her were not nice. Did you ever call Mimi to apologize? I’m sure not.”

“Oh, Nonie!” her mother cries suddenly. “You’ve got to help me! Will you help me, Nonie?”

Nonie dabs the last tears from her eyes with her handkerchief and replaces the handkerchief in her clutch bag. Suddenly the expression on her face is one of regained self-confidence. Gently, she reaches out and touches her mother’s knee. “What I’m suggesting,” she says almost tenderly, “is that I could try to help you, and you could try to help me. We could help each other, Mother.”

The little dog in her mother’s arms reaches down and, with its rough pink tongue, begins licking the gold bracelets that tumble from the sleeve of Nonie’s black silk suit.

The delivery men from F.A.O. Schwartz could barely maneuver the huge shipping carton through the front door of Mimi’s parents’ apartment on East 97th Street, and their job was even more ticklish since the carton was affixed with big red FRAGILE stickers. At last they had the box wedged into the narrow entrance hall, and, their job completed, they presented Mimi’s mother with the receipt form to sign.

It was Mimi’s tenth birthday, and inside the big box was a card that read, “Happy Birthday, dear Mireille, from your adoring Grandmama and Grandpapa.” Then came the chore of removing the contents of the box from many layers of white tissue paper.

It was the biggest and most beautiful dollhouse she had ever seen, and it was nearly as tall as she was. It was white with green shutters, in a Palladian style, and its front opened outward on hinges to reveal the rooms within. On the first floor was an entrance hall with a curving, carpeted staircase. On one side of this was the parlor, completely furnished with tiny sofas, chairs, tables, and lamps, all very formal. Across the hall was the dining room, with table, chairs, a pair of Victorian sideboards, a crystal chandelier, even dishes, silverware, and candlesticks to set the table with. Pictures the size of postage stamps hung from the walls. Next to this was the kitchen, with a miniature old-fashioned cookstove, an icebox that opened to reveal tiny bottles of milk, a little china loaf of bread, a cake with pink icing, a trussed chicken ready to pop into the oven. Tiny pots and pans and cooking utensils hung from hooks along the walls, and cabinets opened up to display more dishes, cups, saucers, and a larder filled with canned goods. A cookpot no bigger than a thimble stood on the kitchen stove, and on the kitchen table rested the smallest possible rolling pin beside a bowl of rising dough. Upstairs, there were three formal bedrooms, a bathroom with an old-fashioned tub and bowl, and a child’s nursery filled with dolls, stuffed animals, and a rocking horse, all fashioned to scale. On the third floor, under the gabled and dormered roof, were the prim and Spartan servants’ rooms with their little iron beds and plain wooden chests of drawers.

The dollhouse was too large to fit into Mimi’s bedroom, and so it had to be set up in a corner of the dining room. Mimi can remember sitting on the dining-room floor, introducing her two favorite dolls, Matilda and Miss Emily, to their new house, while her mother screamed at her father in the kitchen next door.

“How much do you suppose that thing cost?” her mother cried. “From Schwartz’s? Two thousand? Three thousand? Why don’t they give her something she can use? Why don’t they give us money? What did they give her last year? An ermine jacket with a matching muff and hat! Ermine! I don’t even own a decent winter wool coat! Why don’t they send us money? Why don’t they help us pay for her education so that we’re not always applying for scholarships? Why is there never any money, Henry? What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with you?”

“Do you want a divorce, Alice?” she heard her father ask.

At that point, she heard the word divorce so often that it had lost its power to terrify her. She tried not to listen to their shouting and to concentrate instead on Matilda and Miss Emily, who were seated now at their new dining table, preparing for an evening meal.

“Will you serve the soup, Matilda?” Miss Emily said.

“Certainly, Miss Emily.” The dolls were always very formal and polite with one another.

“Is that it, Alice? Do you want a divorce? Because if that’s what you want, you can have it!”

“Divorce!” her mother sobbed. “Then where will I be? What will become of me? What will become of the child?”

Mimi remembers thinking that, whenever her parents quarreled, she was always just “the child.” When they were like this, she had no name at all.

“This soup is delicious, Matilda!” Miss Emily said.

“Thank you, Miss Emily. It is made from larks’ tongues and quails’ eggs, of tiny golden apples from sunny Spain, of spices grown in the Fairy Islands, of herbs cultivated in far Cathay, of honey and hibiscus blossom and raspberry flowers, and salted with Mother’s tears.…”

“You see, Mr. Greenway,” Granny Flo is saying, “the thing that distinguished my husband from his brother, Leo, was that my husband came up with the idea of giving his colors names. I mean, he named his colors. He was the first one to do that. Before that, if a nail polish was pink, it was called pink. If it was red, it said ‘red’ on the label, and if it was clear, it said ‘clear.’ But Adolph was clever. I think I told you that his first color was from a paint that was supposed to be the color of a fire engine. So what did Adolph decide to call it? He called it ‘Three Alarm.’ Wasn’t that clever? Three Alarm caught on right away. Women liked it, and they liked the name. All those others who came later, Revlon, Arden, Rubinstein, and the rest, with their fancy names for colors—they just copied Adolph. He was the first, with Three Alarm.” Granny Flo spreads her fingers. “I remember the first time he painted my nails with Three Alarm; I thought it was so pretty. Adolph used to say that I had pretty hands, and he loved to have me wear his polishes. He liked me to wear the kind of little lace gloves that have the fingers cut out, so that I could display my fingers—and his polishes, of course! You may notice that I no longer wear nail polish. That’s not out of disloyalty to my husband. It’s because I can no longer see my fingernails, and my pretty hands, so what’s the point?”

“Your granddaughter mentioned that your husband used to read from an appointment book, Mrs. Myerson.”

“Oh, yes. His appointment book. Every Sunday afternoon.”

“Was that what you meant when you mentioned a diary the other night?”

“Oh, no. The appointment book was an appointment book. The diary was a diary. He put everything in the diary, the good things and the bad. He read the appointment book to us to remind us of how busy he was, of how hard he had to work, and also to help him memorize all the appointments he had in the week to come. It was a loose-leaf thing. At the end of each week, he threw all the used pages out. But the diaries he kept. Eventually, there was a stack of them”—she holds out her hand—“there was a stack this high. He used to read aloud to me from them. I was never much of a reader, but I liked to listen to Adolph read to me from his diaries. He never read to anyone else from these because, well, frankly, Mr. Greenway, because there were a lot of things in there that were confidential. Family matters. Not for publication.”

“And the diaries are gone now?”

“Gone, yes. Disappeared. If you ask me, Leo took them, but I can’t prove that. Leo’s dead now, and there’s no way of proving that. Leo was a crook.”

“A crook?”

She holds up her hand. “No. Don’t put that in. Don’t put it in that I said Leo was a crook. Leo is dead, and speak no ill of the dead is what I always say. Just say that Adolph and Leo had … different business philosophies. Yes, that sounds good. Different business philosophies. And my husband was smarter, what with coming up with the idea of names.”

“Can you remember any details from the diaries, Mrs. Myerson?”

“Ha!” she says. “I might choose to remember some of the good things, Mr. Greenway. But you won’t get me to remember the bad things. You heard what Mimi said Thursday night at her party: ‘Say only nice things about the company to Mr. Greenway.’ I was thinking before you arrived that there are some not-so-nice things I could say about my son Edwee—things even my daughter doesn’t know—but I’m not going to say them. They’re not for publication—not yet, anyway. We’ll see. Besides, most of the bad things are dead things now. They died with my husband, with Leo … and with poor Henry, I suppose. But where was I? Oh, the good things, the good things …”

“What are the good things, Mrs. Myerson?”

“The good things are that we’re the recognized leader in the American cosmetics industry today!” she says triumphantly. “And you can quote me! That’s for publication. The Magnificent Myersons—that’s what they called us back in the thirties. That was the headline of the article about us in Town & Country. I could probably dig the article out for you, if you’d like. They called us magnificent then. Then there were some hard times. But now we’re magnificent again, and you must give Mimi all the credit for that.”

Now, as I set this material down, I notice that a strange thing has begun to happen. Though I have been working on this story for less than four weeks, it is as though each member of the Myerson family is trying to adopt me, for his or her personal reasons. It is as though I am to serve as a kind of private messenger, a bearer of personal sentiments between them. There are only seven members of the immediate family (I am not counting Edwee’s wife, Gloria, as an immediate family member), so this doesn’t present much of a chore. But it’s as if, even in a family as small as this one, lines of communication between the individuals are often jammed. And I have been assigned the task of unjamming them, passing along the little dispatches from one to another. I feel a bit like Jodie, who is the traffic manager in Mimi’s office, a formidable Irishwoman whose formidable responsibility it is to see that each new job is carried out from initial concept to finished product ready to be shipped.

For instance, when I was interviewing Brad Moore in his Wall Street office yesterday about the problems—or rewards—of a two-career household, he said a strange thing. I see Brad as a decent, intelligent, and somewhat shy man who, as a lawyer, doesn’t want his own feelings to be revealed too much. Behind the obvious polish and poise of the man, there is a certain dignified reserve, and it is easy to see why, in considering various New Yorkers to fill the late Armitage Miller’s unexpired term in the U.S. Senate, the name of Bradford Moore, Jr., has been brought up several times. But occasionally there are breaks in that reserve. And yesterday he suddenly said to me, “You know, Jim, you must make it clear in whatever you write about us that my wife is the most important person in the world to me. Not just the most important woman. The most important person. Whatever you hear in this very gossipy business she’s in, no matter what you may hear the gossips say, she is the most important person in the world to me.”

I thought: Fair enough. Then I thought, “My wife.” Not “Mimi.” And, question: If he wishes to convey the message that his wife is the most important person in the world to him, why does he tell me? Does he want me to pass that word along to her? Has he ever told her that himself?