Shades of Fortune Page 10

  As for what actually happened on that life-changing day in 1912, while painting Mrs. Spitzberg’s kitchen, we are forced to rely on accounts that Adolph gave verbally to his family, since no living witnesses to the event remain. As Adolph later told it, the brothers had been bickering, as they often did, on the job. The two had never met Mrs. Spitzberg, but Leopold had decided that Mrs. Spitzberg was wrongheaded, if not downright crazy. She had decreed that her kitchen be painted fire-engine red.

  “This is craziness, this is narischkeit,” Leopold kept muttering (according to Adolph). “Why does a woman want her kitchen painted the color of a fire engine? A kitchen should be white, or maybe yellow. Not like a fire engine!”

  “This is a rich woman, Leo,” his brother had counseled. “A rich woman wants her kitchen painted like a fire engine, so she gets a fire engine. A good tailor cuts the cloth to suit the customer. Our job is to give Mrs. Spitzberg what she wants.”

  “She won’t like it when it’s done, wait and see,” “Leopold predicted. “When she sees all this red, like the bedroom of a whore, she’s going to make us do it over. Wait and see. And how many coats of white paint will it take to cover up all this red? Three? Four? Maybe five?”

  “Mrs. Spitzberg is the boss.”

  And it was while the brothers argued, back and forth, over Mrs. Spitzberg’s color scheme, mixing a five-gallon drum of paint to the exact hue of an N.Y.F.D. truck, that Leopold accidentally poured an extra quart of the chemical toluene into the mixture. At least that was the way Adolph told it. It could easily have been the other way around and could have been Adolph who supplied the accidental overdose of toluene. But Adolph invariably blamed every careless act on his younger, clumsy brother, and so the story would go down through the family for seventy-five years that the extra toluene had been Leopold’s misstep, and that it was Adolph’s ingenuity that had managed to save the day.

  The chemical toluene is a thickening agent, which, added to a paint, causes it to cling more evenly to the brush and also to dry more quickly. But, with as much as a whole quart of toluene added to a drum of paint, the paint becomes too viscous to use, hardens within seconds after exposure to the air. If the brothers had attempted to apply such a mixture to Mrs. Spitz-berg’s kitchen walls, the result would have been a sagging, gummy mess.

  We can be sure that Adolph Myerson spent some time berating his brother for his clumsiness. After all, nearly two dollars’ worth of ingredients—two dollars that had come out of the brothers’ pockets—had been wasted. Leo had been able, according to Adolph, to come up with no solution other than to throw the mixture out, swallow the loss, and start mixing another drum of paint. But then Adolph—and, again, we have only Adolph’s word for this—came up with his inspiration.

  Women had been painting their fingernails for years, though usually with clear lacquer or a pale pink shade. Only in the theatre did actresses paint their nails bright red. But fashions were already moving toward a more liberated era, which would come to a climax in the Roaring Twenties, and the painted-lady image, no longer confined to actresses on Broadway, was being taken up by fashionable women on Fifth Avenue who were appearing with crimson-painted nails. The only trouble with nail lacquers of the day was that they dried slowly, and a woman often had to sit immobilized for twenty minutes or longer, with her fingers outstretched, while she waited for her nails to dry, unable to perform any other task without risk of smearing her polish. Adolph’s brainstorm was to peddle his fire-engine-red housepaint, which his brother had considered ruined, as a new kind of quick-drying nail lacquer. Dipping a fingertip into the drum of paint, Adolph showed his brother how quickly it dried hard and lustrous and smooth.

  “We’ll sell it as nail polish,” he said to Leo. Or so he always claimed.

  In any case, Adolph moved quickly at that point. He immediately sealed the drum of red paint tightly, before exposure to the air caused its surface to form a thick “skin.” That very day, he was able to buy a wholesaler’s overstock of small bottles with tiny brushes affixed to their caps, for a total cost of ten dollars. With the paint transferred to the little bottles, he began peddling his new quick-drying nail polish door-to-door, concentrating, for his customers, on the newly rich Jewish ladies who were moving to the Grand Concourse. From a five-gallon drum of spoiled housepaint that had cost him less than two dollars, he was able to create thirteen hundred bottles of half an ounce each, which he sold for ten cents apiece. Thus, for a total investment of twelve dollars, Adolph’s return was one hundred and thirty dollars—a profit of more than a thousand percent, and no businessman could possibly complain of figures like these! What was more, Adolph’s customers were delighted with his product. News of it spread by word of mouth. New orders and reorders poured in, and Adolph and Leopold Myerson were on their way. Within a year, the brothers were able to place their nail polishes in five-and-ten-cent stores, and to begin advertising with the slogan, “Dries in just seconds’ time!” … and with the brand name Miray, which Adolph came up with by rearranging the various letters in his name.

  By the time Adolph Myerson was rich enough to move to the Bronx, he was too rich to want to live there.

  And the Battle of the Brothers was well under way. Which one deserved more credit for their success? The brother who had had the lucky accident, or the one who had had enough wit to turn it into profit?

  “My first memory of him?” Mimi says. “Oh, I must have been six or seven, so that would have been nineteen forty-four or ’forty-five. My grandparents lived in a big ugly house on Madison Avenue and Sixty-first Street. It’s gone now, but it took up half a block, and the other half of the block belonged to August Belmont. Granny, of course, was a Guggenheim, and her money helped, and how she and Grandpa met is a whole other story; they were not from the same sort of background at all. The house had great, wide marble steps leading up to the front door, which was on Madison, and I remember my mother leading me by the hand up those steps and making me practice my curtsy on each step as we went up. I had to have my curtsy perfect before she would ring the bell. I remember how humiliated I felt, curtsying and curtsying, going up those steps, a little girl curtsying in front of a huge, blank, closed front door! People passing by on the street must have looked at that little girl, dipping down in deep curtsies in front of a door, again and again, bobbing up and down like a marionette, and thought that there must be something terribly the matter with her. There was a girl in my class at Hewitt who was a spastic. It was probably multiple sclerosis, or something like that, but in those days it was explained to us that Eileen McKensie was a spastic—she had this terrible, lurching gait. I was sure that everybody on the street was watching me, and was thinking I was a spastic, just like Eileen McKensie.…”

  “One more time, Mireille,” her mother said. “Just one more time before we ring Grandpa’s doorbell.”

  “Oh, Mama, please,” she begged, trying to squeeze back the tears.

  “Just once. Ah. There. You see? That was much better. Now remember everything I’ve told you. Curtsy to Grandpapa first, then to Grandmama. Say, ‘Good afternoon, Grandpa, sir,’ and then ‘Good afternoon, Grandma, dear.’ Then don’t say another word until one of them speaks to you. Then don’t forget always to call Grandpapa ‘sir,’ and Grandma ‘ma’am.’ Don’t remove your gloves until tea is served, and then remove only the right one, to hold the teacup with, and place the right glove in your left hand. When the tea sandwiches are passed, never take more than one at a time, and never eat more than two sandwiches altogether. It isn’t ladylike to appear to be hungry, so if the sandwiches are passed a third time, just shake your head politely. It isn’t necessary to speak to the maid. Oh, and—my God, I almost forgot! If you have to go to the toilet, just excuse yourself politely, and always remember to put the lid of the toilet seat down after you’ve finished. And another thing: never use one of Grandmama’s little linen guest towels! After you’ve washed your hands, dry them on a piece of toilet paper, throw that in the toilet bowl,
and flush again. And then put the lid of the toilet seat down again. Can you remember all that, Mireille?”

  “Why is there so much to remember, Mama?”

  “Because we want your Grandpapa to think you are a perfect lady, don’t we? Your Grandpapa would be very upset with us if he didn’t think you a perfect lady.” With a gloved fingertip, her mother reached out to press the doorbell.

  Her grandparents’ butler opened the door and, bowing, admitted them wordlessly into the house.

  The entrance gallery she remembered was all red damask and gilt, red cut velvet and velours. The walls were covered with damask, and the doorways leading from it were swagged with heavy red damask portieres fringed with gold. Large, heavy, and uncomfortable-looking chairs, covered with more cut velvet, lined the hall, and, from the walls, gilt-framed portraits slung from velvet-covered chains (later she would learn that these portraits had no bearing whatever on her family) gazed menacingly down upon her. The butler led Mimi and her mother down the red-carpeted entrance hall to the double staircase that ascended upward to the parlor floor, and Mimi remembered that the banisters were upholstered with more red velvet and that, where the double curves of the staircase met at the landing, the newel posts were surmounted by identical bronze statues of a winged Mercury, one foot lofted in the air, each holding up an electrically lighted flame-shaped torch. Mimi remembers reaching out to touch one of Mercury’s bare heels, and her mother’s harsh whisper: “Don’t touch!”

  At the top of the stairs, the butler led them to the closed double doors of the drawing room, tapped lightly on the door, and then stood aside to let them enter as he opened it.

  “Mrs. Henry Myerson, and Miss Mireille Myerson,” the butler announced.

  Her grandparents sat at the opposite end of the long, dark, formal room in a kind of five-sided bay window, its panes of green and purple and red stained glass, at either end of an extraordinary semicircular sofa unlike any piece of furniture Mimi can remember seeing before or since. It was covered in purple toy plush, tufted and buttoned in a diamond pattern. Its legs were in the shape of eagles’ talons clutching golden balls. But the most astonishing thing about it was that midway in its half-circle it seemed to change its mind and become a jardiniere, for mounted in its frame was an Oriental-looking vase, planted with a tall palm tree. Later, Mimi learned that her grandfather had had this multipurpose piece specially designed for this window alcove of his house, and Mimi remembers thinking that from where her grandparents sat they could not possibly see one another through the vase and the thick palm fronds. As mother and daughter moved toward the seated couple, her grandfather rose in a maroon velvet smoking jacket, and her grandmother remained seated, a square of needle-point-work in her lap.

  Now it was time for the curtsies. “Good afternoon, Grandpapa, sir. Good afternoon, Grandmama, dear.”

  Her grandfather motioned them to two chairs opposite the curved sofa, and Mimi remembers seating herself carefully, as her mother had told her to do, arranging her skirts carefully beneath her, her legs crossed at the ankle, and her white-gloved hands folded in her lap.

  Her grandfather returned to his seat on one end of the curved sofa, and then for the longest time—an eternity, as Mimi remembers it—no one said anything at all.

  Finally her grandfather spoke. “You are in school, Mireille,” he said, putting it as a statement, not a question.

  “Yes, Grandpapa, sir.”

  “And are your grades exemplary?”

  Mimi had not understood this word but, inferring that an affirmative reply was expected, she said, “Yes, Grandpapa, sir.”

  “Oh, she’s doing just wonderfully, Father!” her mother had said a trifle too quickly and loudly. “Her teachers send home the most glowing reports!”

  Mimi remembers her grandfather giving her mother a long, somewhat baleful look, and there was silence again. Her grandmother had resumed her needlework.

  From out of some dark corner of this cavernous room a maid appeared in a black uniform with a white lacy collar and cuffs, wearing a small lacy cap, wheeling a huge silver tea service on a lace-draped cart. The maid wheeled the cart in front of Mimi’s grandmother, who inspected its contents—a large silver urn and its accompanying vessels: teacups and saucers and other smaller silver bowls and pitchers for hot water, for milk, and for sugar. As her grandmother began to pour from the great silver urn, Mimi noticed that she was wearing little black lace wrist-length gloves that had no fingers! Her grandmother poured for her husband first, then for Mimi’s mother, and the maid transported each person’s cup to each. Knowing that her turn would be next, Mimi removed the white glove from her right hand, removing it finger by finger, starting with the pinky, as her mother had taught her, and placed it in her left hand.

  “One lump or two, Mireille?” her grandmother said. It was the first time she had spoken.

  In a panic, Mimi had looked quickly at her mother. They had not rehearsed this part of the ritual.

  From where her hands lay in her lap, her mother raised one gloved fingertip.

  “One lump, please, Grandmama, ma’am,” Mimi said.

  One lump of sugar was tonged into her cup, and the cup was delivered to Mimi, who accepted it with her ungloved right hand. Then there was silence again, and, in another panic, Mimi began to realize that she did want to go to the toilet but had no idea where the bathroom was in this vast house. She squeezed her legs tightly together.

  They sipped their tea. The maid reappeared with a silver tray arranged with tiny sandwiches. Mimi accepted one. It was made of the thinnest white bread she had ever seen, and inside it there was a tiny sliver of cucumber, which, as Mimi remembers it, had absolutely no taste at all. She heard her mother whisper, “Sit up straight, dear.”

  Finally, her grandfather put down his teacup, rose, and crossed the room to some dim and distant corner of it. When he returned, he was carrying a small, leather-bound book. “This will interest you,” he said and, sitting down again, opened the book to a page marked by a leather bookmark.

  “Tomorrow morning, a Monday, the third,” he began, “I have a marketing meeting at ten o’clock. I can devote no more than half an hour to that, because at ten-thirty I must telephone Paris and reach them before their offices close at five. Now that the war is over, Revson is going to try to beat us into the European market, but we’re not going to let him. At eleven-thirty, I have an appointment with my dentist. At twelve-thirty, I am lunching with Andrew Goodman at the Plaza. Bergdorf’s has not been displaying our products to the best advantage, and I intend to correct that situation with Andrew himself. At two-thirty, I have a …”

  He was reading to her from the pages of his engagement calendar. He continued reading until he had recited every appointment on his calendar for the entire week that was to follow. Then he closed the book after Friday’s last meeting of the day, and it was time to go.

  Rising, Mimi’s grandfather turned to her mother and said, “We shall do this again next Sunday, Alice. Four o’clock, for tea. Here.”

  As they left the house, Mimi’s mother ran down the marble steps, clutching Mimi’s hand in hers. “He’s invited us back!” she cried. “Do you know what this means? It means he likes us, darling, because he’s invited us back!” She waved excitedly for a taxi in the street.

  In the taxi, Alice Myerson said, “Isn’t this exciting! Oh, your father will be so pleased. I can’t wait to tell him! He’ll be so pleased with you! So pleased with me!” From her reticule where she kept it, her mother removed a small flask, uncapped it, lifted it to her lips, and took a long swallow. “My medicine,” she said.

  But from her seat in the taxi beside her mother, Mimi, though her legs were squeezed together as tightly as she could squeeze them, could no longer control herself. She felt the first warm drops. Then it all came.

  Her eyes brimming with tears of shame, she whispered to her mother what had happened, but her mother seemed totally unconcerned. “It doesn’t matter,” she laughed. “We
did it. He’s asked us back! Do you see what this means, my darling? It means that everything’s going to be all right!”

  Of course, at the time, Mimi had no idea what her mother was talking about.

  “And so that,” Mimi says to Jim Greenway, “is what my mother and I did from that day on—until I was twelve years old and went away to boarding school. Every Sunday afternoon, we’d get dressed up and go to have tea at my grandparents’ house, four o’clock on the dot. It was always the same: the same little tasteless cucumber sandwiches, my grandmother with her needlework, saying nothing. It wasn’t until after he died that she began to get garrulous. I think that when he was around she was too frightened of him to open her trap! And it always ended with Grandpa reading from his appointment book—everything he was doing the following week, the lunches with captains of industry, the dinners with senators, the weekly sales meetings, the appointments with his proctologist—everything. You see, I think that’s where Granny is confused when she talks about a diary. It wasn’t a diary, it was just an appointment book.… Needless to say, I finally found out where the bathroom was. And do I need to add that it had a toilet disguised as an antique wicker chair?

  “What was the point of it all? Afterward, we’d go home to our miserable little dark apartment on Ninety-seventh Street, and the more of these teas I went to, the more confused I became. Obviously my grandparents were rich, but why weren’t we? I couldn’t understand it. I knew my father worked for my grandfather’s company and had a title of vice-president in charge of something or other, but no money seemed to go with it. We had no butler, no cook, no maids—nothing but an old black lady who came once a week for a couple of hours and ran a dustrag around the place. My mother did her own cooking, her own ironing and mending, everything. It was terribly confusing to me. My uncle Edwee, Daddy’s brother, was rich—and he didn’t even work! So was my aunt Nonie. But we weren’t. There was never enough money in our house, and there were always arguments, terrible arguments, about it. All I was able to conclude was that Grandpa gave Daddy a job, and that Daddy was lucky to have that, and he gave him a fancy title but no money to go with it. And I began to realize that these Sunday visits, these high teas, had something to do with trying to get Grandpa to give more money to Daddy, but no more money ever came.