18

At the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens, there was another letter waiting for her from her mother.

Mimi dear—

Aug. 1, 1957

I don’t want to upset you, dearest, but there is something that I thought you ought to know. Your grandfather has been failing badly in the last few weeks, and we are all quite worried about him. He has suddenly lost a lot of weight, and his color is bad, and yet he refuses to see a doctor or to admit that anything might be the matter with him. I also fear that his mind may be going. On Sunday, at tea, he seemed to have trouble remembering my name, and at one point addressed me as “Ruthie,” which was the name of a younger sister of his who died in the typhoid epidemic of 1884! It is terribly sad to see him like this, but your father and I do not know what to do, except to remember that in two more months he will be eighty-eight years old.…

Meanwhile, he insists on going to the office every day, though your father has been urging him to take a rest or perhaps a holiday. And of course he refuses to turn over any of the responsibilities of running the company to your father, which he really ought to do at this point. As your father points out, the company is really too big and complex an operation now for one man to run it single-handedly, the way your grandfather has always run it. Your father greatly fears that management details are being overlooked, and that decisions that ought to be made are not being made. But at this point your father’s hands are tied.

Your Granny Flo has been spending the month of August at the Bar Harbor house, but next week, at my urging, she has promised to come back to the city and look in on him.

I hate to worry you with all this, Mimi, but I thought you should know, just in case something should occur which might mean you’d have to cut your vacation short. Of course for your sake I hope and pray that this won’t happen.

I read in the National Geographic that they sell natural sea-sponges in Greece. If you see any, and they are cheap, would you pick up a few for me? I am thinking of the little tiny ones that I can use for applying makeup. They would be lightweight, and you could tuck them into the corners of your luggage.…

“Hypocrisy!” she said to Brad Moore after reading him the letter. “Did you ever hear such hypocrisy?”

“Hypocrisy? She just sounds worried because your grandfather’s ill.”

“This is the same mother who, a few days before I left for Europe, was screaming that Grandpa was too mean to die. She hates Grandpa! Now she’s acting all worried because he’s a little sick.”

“Sometimes, when they’re angry, people say things they don’t mean. They say they don’t care about people. But then, when things get down to the wire, they care.”

He was like this, that cautious, thoughtful, Harvard Law School mind that always looked at both sides of every question. They were sitting in the central, glass-roofed courtyard of the hotel, sipping Coca-Colas. He would begin a statement with “On the one hand …” and then end it with “But then, on the other hand …”

“Stop being Mr. Lawyer,” she said to him. It had become one of their little jokes.

“Is he very rich, your grandfather?”

“Oh, yes. At least to hear him tell it. People ask him how he can afford to live the way he does. Three big houses. A yacht. ‘A hundred million dollars’ worth of the best gilt-edged stocks in America,’ he says.” She giggled. “Modesty is not one of my grandfather’s strong points.”

“But, you see, that could be one of the reasons why your mother feels the way she does about him now. When he dies, I suppose your family will stand to inherit quite a lot of money. With that money will go an even bigger amount of guilt—over the unkind things she’s said about him in the past. Want to make a bet? I’ll bet when your grandfather dies, your mother is going to be one of the noisiest mourners at his funeral.”

“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully, stirring her Cola-Cola with her straw. “They never give you enough ice in these countries, do they. Mine’s already melted. My Coke’s warm already.”

“I’ve had some relatives who were pretty rich,” he said. “There was an uncle who left my mother some money in a trust. But, on the other hand, we’re New Englanders, you know. We believe in living only on the income from our income. That’s why you and I didn’t meet earlier on this trip. You’ve been up there in first class on all the planes, and I’ve been back in steerage with the peasants.”

“When my grandfather spends money, he doesn’t believe in cutting corners.”

“New Yorkers and Bostonians. They’re a different species, I sometimes think. Or are they? What do you think?”

“I don’t know. You’re the first Bostonian I’ve ever met.”

They sat in silence for a while, and then he said, “I was sent on this trip to get over a love affair.”

“Really?”

“She was a New York girl. At least, Long Island. Not that that’s important.”

“And have you got over her?”

“Yes. And you know why? Because now that I’ve had time to think about it, I realize it wasn’t love. It was only sex, and love isn’t just sex. I mean, on the one hand, I agree that sex is important—it is. But on the other hand—”

“Now, Mr. Lawyer—”

“I’m serious. Someone you love has to have more than just sex to offer, don’t you think? I mean, don’t there have to be other qualities like intelligence, and sensitivity, and a real interest in the other guy’s life? This girl had none of those things. You know what she was like? She was like one of those Stately Homes we toured in England—a beautiful facade, but no central heating.”

“Oh, Brad!” she laughed. “I like that!”

“Nice to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.”

“I know what you mean, exactly.”

“That was Barbara.”

“Barbara?”

“That was her name, Barbara Badminton.”

She almost squealed. “I know Barbara Badminton! She was at Miss Hall’s!”

“Were you at her coming-out party?”

“No!”

“Well, if you know her, would you say she was particularly … intelligent?”

“No! She tried to copy my answers in chemistry quizzes.”

“Then I gather you two weren’t exactly friends.”

“Hardly. In fact, I disliked her intensely.” Then she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. She was your friend.”

“Not anymore. I’m able to see through her now. All it was, was sex.”

Mimi said nothing.

“That would have been like her, to cheat on a chemistry quiz. She cheated on other things, too. You see, I found out that I wasn’t the only one she was involved with. In terms of sex.”

“No,” she said quietly, “that really doesn’t surprise me. I might as well tell you, I really didn’t like Barbara Badminton, and she didn’t like me. Part of it was that I was on a scholarship at Miss Hall’s. That put me in a different social class from people like Barbara. Also, I was—or, rather, I am, Jewish. That makes a difference to people sometimes.”

“Not to me,” he said.

“And then, my family being in the beauty business—that made a difference to someone like Barbara, whose father is the president of some bank. But I’ve never been ashamed of the beauty business. It’s a fascinating business, very ancient, and I’ve done a lot of reading about it. For instance, did you know that in China, as long ago as three thousand B.C., women used nail polish? It indicated rank. Dark red and black were the royal colors, and women of lower rank were restricted to paler shades. Nowadays it’s all tied in with fashion. Did you know that cosmetics colors depend on the hemline? A few years ago, when Dior introduced the New Look, and hemlines dropped, nail and lip shades became very deep and dark. This was because, when a woman couldn’t show her legs, she wanted to draw attention to face and hands. Now that hemlines are up again, we’ve got the Pale Look in lipsticks and nail polishes. When I was at school, I drew up a chart showing how hemlines dictate cosmetics colors and sent it to my grandfather. But of course at home nobody pays attention to me because I’m just a girl. But I’m boring you with all this, aren’t I?”

“No, no,” he said. “Go on. This is fascinating.”

And she realized all at once, sitting there, that one reason she liked Brad Moore so much was that he was one of the first people she had ever known who actually listened to her.

“I love listening to you talk,” he said, echoing her thoughts.

“Do you really?”

“Oh, yes!”

And now another silence fell between them, and suddenly Mimi felt that something else was happening. At first, she wasn’t sure what it was. “I don’t quite know how to say this, Mimi,” he said at last, “but I like you—very much.”

“Thank you,” she said, and was immediately not sure that this was the appropriate thing to say. “I like you, too,” she added.

“Very much,” he said. And now the air between them was somehow emotionally charged, and a kind of current seemed to have quickened between them. Suddenly their conversation became full of pauses, and everything that each said seemed to carry a secret innuendo, or double meaning: On the one hand, it said. But on the other hand, it also said.

“What is it this afternoon?” she said. “The Parthenon, I guess.”

“Yes. Optional. That’s one thing I like about this tour. Everything is optional.…”

“The Parthenon will still be there tomorrow, I suppose.…”

“Yes.…”

“The Parthenon is one of those things you can always trust to be there. Like you can trust the Leaning Tower of Pisa not to fall down.”

“Yes.”

“I have a fine view of the Parthenon from my room,” he said. “Can you see the Parthenon from yours?”

“I don’t … know. I didn’t … look.”

“A fine view. Would you …?”

“All right.…”

His room on the fifth floor of the hotel did indeed face the Acropolis, and they stepped out onto the small balcony to look at it. “There it is,” he said softly. “It’s been there for twenty-four hundred years. And it only took nine years to build.”

“Only nine?”

“Only nine.”

“Do you … know a lot of facts like that?”

“Some,” he said. “A few.”

“So do I. A few. I know … I know the atomic weight of nitrogen.”

“Fourteen point zero-zero-seven.”

“That’s right!”

“Chemistry,” he said. “There can be a chemistry between two people, don’t you think? Positive and negative forces … that attract.”

“Yes.”

“Should there be sex before marriage, do you think? What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never—”

“On the one hand—”

“But then, on the other hand—”

But this was no joke now, and neither of them laughed. She felt his arm circle her waist. “I like you—very much,” he said again.

As he drew her to him, she whispered, “Brad, there are some things I don’t know very much about. Do you understand?”

She felt him nod, because she had still not looked into his face, and when she did she saw that a thin line of perspiration beaded his upper lip, and somehow this sign of his insecurity reassured her. It would be all right. “Do you have a … you know, a thing?” she said.

He nodded again. They parted the curtains with their hands and stepped back into the room, and he kissed her there.

“You’ll have to tell me what to do,” she said.

But that, of course, had not been necessary. Is it ever? A girl from Manhattan, a boy from Boston, a boy with a head for dates and arguments, and a girl with a head for figures, a girl who thought her heart was broken, a boy who thought he had lost his last illusion—positive and negative forces. There are only a few things that can happen to human beings under these circumstances when you are four thousand miles from home.

In Istanbul, there was another letter waiting from her mother.

Darling—

Aug. 9, 1957

Guess what? There is good news about your grandpa. He looks ever so much better, his color is better, and he seems much better in spirits. I think it was Granny coming down from Bar Harbor that did it, and for once maybe they’ll both thank me for having a good idea. Granny says that she thinks that when she goes away he works so hard that he forgets to eat! She’s going to spend the rest of the summer with him in New York, and see that he gets three good meals a day. I know you’ll be relieved to hear this.

Of course we all wish that he’d ease off a bit at the office, and not insist on supervising and overseeing every tiny detail that goes on. Miray is launching a new polish/lipstick shade for autumn, with an amusing name, “Candied Apple,” and your daddy says that the office these days resembles the War Room at the Pentagon, what with all the charts, sales projections and quotas that keep changing daily. I’m sending you some samples of “C. A.” separately, and hope the package will make it to you through the Turkish Customs. It’s really a very pretty shade.…

And guess what else? Your grandpa actually seems to be mellowing a bit in his old age. The other day, he suddenly asked, “What do you hear from Mireille? I miss her.” What do you think of that? He said he misses you! So I think it would be awfully nice, dear, if you wrote him another letter soon. I know you wrote to thank him for the trip, but I think he’d appreciate hearing from you again with all your news, the sights you’ve seen, the people you’ve met, etc., etc. Do me a favor, and do this.

How is your wardrobe holding out? Are you getting good mileage out of your black ballerina …?

“Mireille,” he said. “That’s a lovely name. I didn’t realize that was your real name—Mireille.”

“Oh, yes. I was named after my grandfather’s Miray Corporation. I think my parents named me that hoping it would make him treat them better. At school, they used to tease me about being named after a nail-polish company, so I decided to be called Mimi.”

“Will he like me, do you think?”

“Well,” she says, settling into the banquette beside him, “where are these alleged diaries?”

“Hell,” he says, “you didn’t expect me to bring them with me, did you, kiddo? There’re over forty-five volumes, covering almost fifty years of business and personal history. They fill a good-sized suitcase. Did you expect me to lug that over here and spread out all those books on a table at the Rainbow Room?”

“I thought that was the purpose of this meeting, Michael.”

“One of the purposes. Just one of them.”

“Then I assume you’ll have them sent over to my office by messenger in the morning?”

“Hold on,” he says, holding up one hand. “I’m not so sure. That’s one of the things we’re going to have to discuss. Let’s have a drink, and we’ll discuss that.”

“But I promised Jim Greenway he could look at those diaries for his research—that is, if they really exist.”

“Oh, they exist all right. But first tell Pablo here what you want to drink. I’ll have my usual, Pablo,” he says to the captain who is standing over them.

“A dry martini,” Mimi says. And then, when the captain has disappeared, she says, “I don’t need to tell you, Michael, that these diaries, if they exist, and if they were written by my grandfather, do not belong to you. They belong to my family. Legally, they are part of my grandfather’s residuary estate, as it’s called. I don’t know how you managed to obtain them, but they are not your property.”

He gives her a sideways look. “Did I say they were?” he says. “But what’s that they say about possession? Nine tenths of the law? Something like that.”

“Then may I ask, if you don’t intend to turn them over to me, what you intend to do with them?”

“Hold on,” he says. “Will you please just hold on? I said there are things we need to discuss. We can discuss these matters, one point at a time, if you’ll just simmer down and stop talking about who legally owns what. Thank you, Pablo,” he says as their drinks arrive. He lifts his glass. “Here’s looking at you, kiddo,” he says.

“Thank you,” she says. “Now let’s have our discussion. Point by point, as you said.”

“Okay,” he says. “Well, to begin with, there’s a lot in those diaries that’s pretty boring stuff. Detailed descriptions of how they came up with the names of certain products, advertising strategies, promotional plans, sales figures—stuff that wouldn’t interest anybody but a student of corporate history.”

“Which is exactly what Jim Greenway is writing. A history of the company.”

“I’d say maybe seventy-five, maybe eighty percent of what’s in those books is stuff like that. But the point is that when your grandfather kept those diaries, he put in everything that happened. Everything.”

“Jim is also interested in personal material,” she says.

“Some of it is very personal. Intensely personal. As I said on the phone, there are things in there that changed my opinion about your grandfather completely.”

“Such as?”

“As I read through them, I realized—I couldn’t help but be struck by how deeply he cared about his family. Not just about his own reputation as a big shot, but his family’s, how concerned he was about all of you, about his children, their safety, their well-being, their happiness, how protective he was of everyone. How he worried about them, how he tried to protect them.”

“Protect them from what?”

“As I read some of these … more personal entries, I realized that this wasn’t a bad guy at all. He was a man whose children’s safety came first.”

“But safety from what?”

“From forces, from people, who could have caused them great harm, great unhappiness. I guess what I’m trying to tell you, Mimi, is that there are things in the diaries that I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want your friend Greenway to read about or know about. By the way, where’s your husband tonight?”

“In Minneapolis on business. But go on about the diaries.”

“Does he know we’re having dinner tonight?”

“I don’t see why that matters. I’ll be talking to him in the morning. Please don’t change the subject, Michael.”

“Well, as you can imagine, there’s a lot about your father in the diaries—things I don’t think you’d want Greenway to know.”

She says nothing.

“As well as living people—people you wouldn’t want to hurt. Your mother, for instance.”

She hesitates. “Her drinking problem, I suppose.”

“Well, yes. And your aunt Nonie.”

“Nonie is—well, Nonie sometimes takes things from stores that she hasn’t paid for. It only happens when she’s upset about something, and it hasn’t happened for some time, but—”

“And your uncle Edwee.”

“Edwee’s penchant for little boys, you mean? Nothing new.”

“Your grandfather had to deal with all those problems, and he dealt with them as best he could, to protect his children and his family. There was a blackmail attempt from Florida, for instance.”

“Involving Edwee? I’ve heard whispers about something like that over the years. No big deal.”

“But there were some other things,” he says quietly. “Even worse things. Things that had to be covered up. Things that your grandfather was forced to deal with. And did deal with.”

“What, for instance?”

“For instance, a criminal manslaughter case,” he says.

“That was my father’s cousin Nate—Leo’s son. I know all about that. Please tell me something that I didn’t know already.”

“No,” he says. “It wasn’t your father’s cousin Nate. Nate died in nineteen sixty-two. This is a case that goes back to nineteen forty-one, the year Nate left the company—and the year coincidentally when the diaries end. The criminal is still very much alive. You see, what I’m trying to tell you, Mimi, is that there are entries in those diaries that I don’t think you’d want to know about, and that I don’t want you to know about.” He covers her hand with his, and she allows it to rest there a moment before withdrawing hers. “And the reason I don’t is because I care about your family, too, believe it or not, and don’t want them hurt. And the only reason I care about your family, of course, is because I care about you and don’t want you to be hurt.”

Suddenly she finds herself becoming annoyed with him. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Michael, cut out this cat-and-mouse game. Everyone knows it’s a game you play very well. You don’t need to show off for me.”

“I think those diaries should be destroyed,” he says. “Too many people could be hurt by what’s there. Including you. I’d like to ask your permission to destroy them.”

“I think,” she says, “that I should discuss this with my husband, who also happens to be my lawyer—after we’ve examined these diaries, which, in any event, are my property.”

“Tell me something,” he says. “Did Brad ever know about you and me?”

“What has that got to do with this discussion?”

“Rather a lot, I’m afraid. I don’t mean about when we were supposed to be engaged. I mean later. I mean Riverside Drive. I mean the way you straightened my sock drawer. I mean the cranberry juice, and the Kellogg’s bran flakes. I mean the days of the little white stars, the days when I was trying to make some sense of that crazy mishmash that turned out to be your grandfather’s estate, the days of our brief reencounter with one another, the days I called our Strange Interlude days.”

“Are you implying that’s in Grandpa’s diaries? How could it be? He was dead by then. You’re really trying my patience, Michael. Please stop this. I really think I want to go.” And, flipping her napkin on the table, she starts to rise, but, gently pressing her arm downward, he restrains her.

“Do you love him, Mimi?” he asks. “Did you ever love him?”

“Brad and I have been happily married for nearly thirty years.”

“That’s not an answer, is it?”

“It’s my answer. Now, please—”

“And—happily? He has a girlfriend, you know.”

“Nonsense.”

With the tip of his left forefinger, he pulls down the lower lid of his left eye in a European gesture of disbelief. “I saw him with her at Le Cirque,” he says. “So did you.”

“It’s nothing serious. It’s just a mid-life fling.”

“And what was it that we had? A youthful fling? Was that all it was? Why do I remember how you liked your tea?”

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

“Half a lump of sugar with your tea. You told me that at your grandfather’s house they always gave you one lump, because that’s what you’d been told to ask for when you first went there as a little girl. But you really preferred just half a lump, and a slice of lemon. Do you remember when I brought you tea in bed on Riverside Drive—with half a lump and a lemon slice? What you said then?”

“What I said then has absolutely nothing to do with why I met you here tonight. And I’m not going to listen to any more of this drivel.”

“And Paul Anka singing on the radio, ‘Put Your Head on My Shoulder’? That was your favorite song.”

“Michael, you lured me here tonight with a promise to show me my grandfather’s—allegedly—all-revealing diaries. But you haven’t produced a single page. What’s going on?”

“Oh, I could show you plenty of pages. Just not all of them.”

“Oh. So now I think I get it. If I want to see these diaries—which may or may not even exist—I have to come up to your place to see them. Right? Is this the old come-up-and-see-my-etchings approach? Really, you disappoint me. I would have expected something a little more original from the great Michael Horowitz. Now I’ve really got to go.”

“In the old days, you trusted me, Mimi. You needed me then. You said you loved me.”

“I may have been vulnerable then. I’m not vulnerable now.”

“Why do you take everything I say as a kind of threat? Even loving things. Do you remember, when you first came to my apartment, you wore my ring?”

“I may have been foolish then. I’m not now. I’m as tough as you are. Now—”

“Do you still have it—the ring?”

“Irrelevant question! Now let me go.”

Once more he makes the gesture with his lower eyelid. “Sure you do. Don’t lie to me, Mimi. You were always a lousy liar. I know you kept it so you’d always remember me.”

“And you’re turning into an absolute pest. Now let go of my arm. Do you want me to make a scene? I can, you know.”

Still holding her arm, he says quietly, “I just want you to hear me out. In the old days, you always believed in hearing the other guy out.”

She relaxes slightly. “Then will you please tell me something?” she says. “Why have you suddenly come back at me after all these years? Why are you trying to break me down? It doesn’t make any sense—no sense at all. Everything we had was over long ago. Why have you suddenly come back at me, thirty years later, stirring things up again? What the hell do you want? Why?”

“It’s pretty simple,” he says. “You were the first nice girl I’d ever met. Who was I? A caterer’s kid from Queens. But you were the first nice girl. You still are. I’ve had a lot of girls since then, I admit that. I know my reputation—the Romeo of Real Estate, and all that crap. But there’s never been another nice girl. And all these years I’ve waited—waited until I was rich enough—richer than the Myersons ever were—rich enough to come back and claim you, to come back again and have what we had again, the little white stars, because those were things I’d never had before and, believe me, I’ve never had since with anyone. That’s why I’m back: because I find you just as beautiful and desirable as ever, even more so. Your fah-nee, fah-nee face, remember? That’s why I’m back: to have those things again, before it’s too late for both of us.”

“The operative verb is claim isn’t it? You’ve come back to stake a claim on me. Well, you can’t. Because I’m not some piece of real estate! I’m not one of your co-op apartment houses. I’m not one of your hotels. I think what you really want is to control me, to own me, but nobody owns anybody. You want to control me by saying you have incriminating evidence about my family in Grandpa’s diaries. That’s called blackmail, Michael. And I’m not going to be blackmailed, and I am not going to be controlled. I am not for sale!”

“I want you back,” he says simply, “because I love you.”

“I don’t think so. I think you want me back because I’m the only game you ever lost, the only deal you didn’t cinch. I think your poor little male ego has been bruised all these years.”

He shakes his head slowly back and forth. “Why don’t you admit some things?” he says.

“And why are you making these threats? Because that’s what they are—threats. Criminal manslaughter! Just who the hell are you talking about, anyway?”

He hesitates. “Your mother, perhaps?”

“That’s a lie! Mother was hundreds of miles away when Daddy died. You’ve been talking to Granny Flo, haven’t you? You’ve been talking to all my relatives, trying to get them to sell their stock to you. I know what you’ve been up to, and it’s not going to work. If you think you hold some trump card against me, you’ve picked the wrong opponent. And if you’ve been listening to what Granny Flo says, you’re even crazier than she is.”

“I’m not talking about your Granny Flo, and I’m not talking about your father. I’m talking about stuff that’s in those diaries, and I’m talking about stuff that could damage living members of your family. But I’m not going to tell you anything more. I’ve told you more than I wanted to already.”

“More threats. More bullying. That’s all you are, Michael, is a bully. That’s all you ever were.”

“You didn’t use to think so, did you, kiddo? Remember?”

“And stop calling me kiddo. I’m not a kid anymore, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“How can you have forgotten, when I remember everything?” He inches closer to her on the banquette. “Why can’t you be honest with yourself? Do you remember the day we drove out to the new house I was building in East Orange? Do you remember walking through the empty rooms, telling me where I should put the piano? What color I should paint the walls of the den? Chinese red, you said—a nice lipstick color. And cafe curtains. The year was nineteen sixty, and cafe curtains were the big thing. Why do I remember all of this? The things you said you’d do if the house were yours?”

“Ancient history. I haven’t thought of that for years.”

“And do you remember we walked out onto the terrace, where the pool was going to be, and you looked across at the city skyline, and you said that was exactly where you’d like to keep New York—miles away, on the other side of the river? And you told me that you’d like to live in that house with me, told me that you were free now, and were ready to divorce Brad and marry me. Do you remember any of that? I remember, because you told me that you’d always loved me.”

“I remember,” she says evenly, “that it was a terrible time for me. Grandpa had just died, my father was at his wits’ end trying to pick up the pieces of the company, and everything in the family seemed to be falling apart, and you seemed to be the only one—”

“The only one who what?”

“The only one who seemed able to make any sense out of the shambles Grandpa had left things in. It was a terrible time, and I was frightened, irrational, not knowing what was going to happen. I was weak then—at the weakest point in my life. I’m strong now. You were useful to us then. You’re not useful now.”

“Yes, irrational. Don’t you think I saw that? That’s why I said no—no, because you’d made your choice of husbands. And I didn’t want to be called a home-wrecker.”

“Yes! So pious, weren’t you? Mr. Goody Two-Shoes! But now that you’re so rich and powerful, you think you have a perfect right to try to wreck any home you want! Well, you can’t wreck mine!”

“Ah,” he says. “So that’s it. You’re still angry at me because I rejected your proposal.”

“You son of a bitch. I won’t even dignify that comment with an answer.”

“But how can I be a home-wrecker now? Your home’s already wrecked, isn’t it?”

“That. Is. Not. True,” she says through clenched teeth, making each word a sentence. “Now let me—”

“I want you back because I think that now you’re able to make a sensible choice between Brad and me.”

“The only choice I’m making is to leave this restaurant. If you have property belonging to my family, I’ll sue to get it back. If you have plans to take over my company, I’ll see you in court on that matter, too. Understand one thing, Michael. Nothing about me or my life belongs to you. Is that quite clear? Now I think I’m ready to make my scene. Ready? Here goes. Waiter!” she calls.

“And because I think you’re the mother of my son.”

She quickly reaches for her drink and, in so doing, overturns her half-filled cocktail glass. Both of them watch as the pool of clear liquid spreads across the white tablecloth, Mimi’s expression frozen.

“Be honest, Mimi,” he says softly. “You have something that I want. I have something that you want. Why don’t we both admit that what we’ve both always wanted is each other?”

“Dearest Mother,” she had written when the little party of summer tourists arrived at the Hotel du Palais in Lausanne late in August of that year:

I feel a little strange writing to you to ask you the question that I am about to ask you, but there is no one else whom I can ask, and so I am asking you.

There is a young man I’ve met who is in our tour group. His name is Bradford Moore, Jr., and he is from Boston, Mass. He is 24 years old, 6 ft. tall, with dark brown eyes and dark brown hair, and he graduated in June from Harvard Law School. This fall, he will start working with a N.Y. law firm downtown. He is nice, and pretty funny, though in a serious sort of way. For instance, he says that his real name could be Bradford Moore IV, but he thinks all that II, HI, and IV business is pretty silly, so he settles for the “Jr.”

Those are the vital statistics. I like him very much. But the important thing is that he has asked me to marry him.

Now this is the hard part, Mother. As you know, I was planning to start at Smith in September, and I have my scholarship and everything. I was really looking forward to college, and I told Brad that, but he doesn’t want to wait four more years. He says he is too much in love with me to wait four years, with me in Northampton and him in N.Y.C. He says four years is too long to wait, and he wants us to be married as soon as possible, if my family approves.

Now here is the question, which is really two questions. For one thing, he isn’t Jewish. In fact, one of his grandfathers was the minister in the First Congregational Church of Concord, Mass., for several years. He says it doesn’t matter to him that I’m Jewish, if it doesn’t matter to me, or to my family, that he isn’t. Several of the partners in the law firm he’ll be joining are Jews, and he likes them very much. He likes and admires the Jews. But—what do you and Daddy think? More important, what will Grandpa say?

Now the second question, which is really the most important question to me. He says he is in love with me, but I don’t know whether I’m in love with him because I’m not sure I know what being in love means. I thought I was in love with Michael H., but this feeling of mine now is so different! I mean, I like everything about him. He is so nice, so kind and thoughtful, and I love being with him. I like being with him better than any friend I’ve ever known, just because he is so nice to be with. We laugh at the same things, and we talk and talk and talk. Is that what being in love feels like? Mother, what is being in love? You and I have never talked much about what being in love is, what it should feel like, how you and Daddy felt about each other when you were married. What did you feel, Mother? What was it like for you? What should it be like for a woman? What should she feel? Mother—what is love like for a woman? Please tell me, if you know.

I admire him, too, Mother. He is wonderfully ambitious and says his goal is to be a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. You see, I like and admire everything about him, and he is simply the nicest person I have ever met, and I think you will think so, too, when you meet him, but first, before I give him any answer, I need to know these other answers, and you are the only person in the world I can think of who can answer these questions for me. Please write to me here, or in Zurich, as soon as you can.…

Her answer was a long cablegram from her mother.

DARLING YOUR DADDY AND I SO EXCITED ABOUT YOUR NEWS. THIS IS THE MOST WONDERFUL THING THAT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU AND YOU MUST SAY YES. DO NOT WORRY ABOUT SMITH ETC. BECAUSE WHY IS COLLEGE EVEN IMPORTANT FOR A GIRL LIKE YOU. COLLEGES LIKE SMITH ONLY TURN GIRLS INTO BLUESTOCKINGS ANYWAY. SO EXCITED I CALLED YOUR GRANDPA IMMEDIATELY AND TOLD HIM THE NEWS AND HE IS THRILLED. HE KNOWS THE MOORES OF BOSTON WELL. DOESN’T REALLY KNOW THEM BUT KNOWS WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY REPRESENT. A FINE OLD FAMILY. DARLING LOVE IS THE BIRD IN THE HAND AND THE RIGHT MARRIAGE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN ANY WOMAN’S LIFE ALWAYS BEAR THAT IN MIND. WHEN YOU COME HOME GRANNY AND GRANDPA WANT TO HAVE A LITTLE TEA TO MEET HIM. OH HOW LUCKY YOU ARE DARLING. YOUR DADDY WILL PROBABLY KILL ME FOR SENDING THIS LONG CABLE BUT IT’S TOO IMPORTANT FOR A LETTER. LOVE AND HUGS AND KISSES AND CONGRATULATIONS. MOTHER.