Carriage Trade (49 page)

“Again, out of shame. Nine percent was Moe Minskoff's promise, and of course it was an impossible one—another reason why my father couldn't bear to face either of you. He'd already let his family down once. Now, thanks to Moe, he was being forced to do it again. I don't think my father was essentially a dishonest man. But his hands were always tied—by Moe.”

Simma shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I know a little about psychology. I've been in analysis for thirty years. I know a little about how the human mind works. I think that once he got our money, and got us to sign those papers, it was just easier to forget all about us. He knew we couldn't sue him. So he said to himself, Forget about those two. To hell with them. I got what I needed from them. What more do I need those two for?”

Miranda sighs. “You may be right,” she says. “Perhaps he let half of his mind forget you. But I'm sure with the other half he was always remembering what had been done to you—with guilt. Perhaps that's why he was so bitter. But neither of us knows his innermost thoughts for sure, do we? And now he's dead. But I'm not. I'm alive, and I want to make it up to you. That's why, the minute I found out about you, I wanted to see you.”

“How are you going to make it up to us, Miranda?”

“Look. Let me tell you the truth. I don't know. If I had the money, I'd pay it all back to you with interest. But I don't. You and I are in the same boat, Aunt Simma. All we have is stock in the company and a ridiculously high offer to purchase it. For me, the stakes are higher since I own more shares. Nobody knows yet what else my father may have left in tangible assets besides his stock. He was supposed to have a valuable art collection, but his paintings turned out to be fakes.

“All I have right now is a belief in Tarkington's. It was my father's dream, and it's become my dream. I'm fighting to save that dream. If Continental buys us, that will be the end of everything, because Continental isn't much more than a glorified J C Penney.

“How do you put a price on a dream? There just isn't any way. You mentioned dividends. Tarkington's has never paid a dividend. Not even my father ever received a dividend on the shares he owned. All he ever received was salary. I wish I could promise you that, if Tommy Bonham and I succeed in fighting off this takeover Moe is engineering, we're immediately going to start paying dividends. But I can't. All I can promise you is that we intend to put the store on a sounder fiscal basis, so that, with any success at all, all of us can start receiving dividends in future. But that's not a promise, Aunt Simma. All it is is asking you to have faith in me, a woman you've just met.”

“But this offer from Continental is for sixty dollars a share—eighty percent of it in cash!”

Miranda leans forward in her chair. “That offer is much too high,” she says. “It makes no sense. It has to be phony. If Moe Minskoff is behind it, it's a trick. Once we agree to sell, that offer is going to change, and all any of us will end up with is a lot of Continental's junk bonds. The only person who will profit from this will be Moses Minskoff. It's also a very cruel offer. A number of our employees own stock. This offer is intended to divide their loyalties. On the one hand, they'd like to see Tarkington's kept the way it is. On the other hand, the idea of selling out for a lot of money is very tempting. Right now, they're feeling torn. But that's one of the strategies of a hostile takeover—to divide and conquer. One final plea to you, Aunt Simma. It was Moses Minskoff who divided this family. Please don't go along with another scheme of his that will divide us even more. We're more than a store, we're a family.”

She considers this. “Well, let me talk to my husband,” she says at last.

“Yes. It was thanks to your husband that you got a twelve percent position. Your mother, for the same investment, got only three percent—another Minskoff trick. By the way, I suppose you have your mother's power of attorney and can vote her shares for her?”

“Power of attorney? She'd never give me that. And don't be so sure she'll vote her shares the way I tell her to.”

“But I'd heard she was senile,” Miranda says.

“Senile!
I wish she were. It would be a lot easier on me if she were. She's quite alert, thank you very much. She tries to run that nursing home she's in. She goes around to all the residents' rooms at night, seeing to it that they're all properly tucked into bed. She pesters the kitchen staff, either complaining about the food or offering new recipes for them to try. She tries to plan the menus. And her bridge club! She plays bridge for ten cents a point, which none of the other residents can afford, so she has this big stack of IOU's. Once a month, she goes from door to door, trying to collect. Oh, she's a caution, Miranda. Would you like to meet her? After all, she's your grandmother.”

Miranda jumps to her feet. “I'd love that!” she cries.

“Well, let's go right now,” Simma says. “It's not a long drive up to West Palm. We can take my car. It's right outside.” And she also rises.

“Tell me something,” Miranda says. “What do her other grandchildren call her?”

“They all call her Granny Rose.” They move together toward the front door.

“And tell me something else,” Miranda says as they descend the front steps of the condominium toward the parking lot. “Did Granny Rose or any other Tarchers ever live on West End Avenue?”

“In Manhattan? No. Leo and I lived in Kew Gardens. That's really Queens, of course, but Kew Gardens sounds a little better. And Mama lived in the Bronx. We couldn't budge her off the Grand Concourse, even when the neighborhood became completely black, until we moved her down here. And that's all of us there were, for Tarchers.”

The old woman runs her fingers gently across Miranda's face. “So you're Solly's daughter,” she says. “Yes, I can see Solly in your face. It's in the eyes. But I forget—are you the child of the first one, or the second?”

“The second, Granny Rose.”

“Both shiksas, weren't they?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess I can't complain,” she says, “though I didn't think much of the first one. She seemed land of la-di-da to me. The second one I never met. Well, what do you want? Solly's daughter wouldn't come all this way to see me if she didn't want something. What is it? Money, I suppose. How much this time?”

Miranda squeezes her grandmother's hand, which seems to her surprisingly firm and strong. “I'd like it very much if you'd like me, Granny Rose,” she says. “I'd like it even more if you could love me.”

“Sixty dollars a share!” Leo is saying. “And eighty percent of that in cash, and the rest in Continental bonds! Why didn't you show me this letter before, Simma?”

“Si's daughter was here. Miranda. She's an executive with the store. She doesn't like the sound of this deal. She says don't sell.”

“You've got only ten business days to act on this. And you've already let five of those days go by! My God, Simma, you've got to get an answer off right away!”

“I don't think I'm going to sell, Leo,” she says.

“Are you out of your
mind
?” he cries. “In cash alone, they're offering you almost a million dollars for the shares you own!”

“I think Miranda's right. The deal doesn't sound right. We smell a rat. Moses Minskoff is his name.”

“Are you crazy? Continental stores is offering you almost a million dollars in cash, and you're turning it down? I'm not going to let you do this, Simma. Give me that letter.”

“No,” she says evenly. “This is a letter to me. This is my stock they're offering to buy, not yours.”

“Well, I'm the head of this household, and I'm taking charge, since you're obviously not capable of thinking rationally!”

“You may be head of this household, but you're not telling me what I can or can't do with something that's mine,” she says.

“You're crazy, Simma! I
am
telling you what to do!”

“And I'm telling you I won't do it. Rita says I should be more assertive. She says I shouldn't let you boss me around the way I do.”

“Who got you to hold out for twelve percent of the shares—
me
!
”

“And who didn't want me to buy any stock to begin with—
you.”

“That's my stock as much as it is yours!”

“No, it isn't, Leo. I bought it with part of Papa's inheritance. If it had been your inheritance, from your papa, it would be yours. But I didn't see any inheritance coming from your father, did I?”

“My father left me nothing because I'd married you!”

“Oh. So now that's my fault too, is it? Funny, but I remember things a little differently. As I recall, your father died leaving nothing but debts.”

“Give me that letter, Simma—right now!”

“Here. Take the letter. What are you going to do with it? You can't sell my stock for me. Only I can do that. And I'm going to do what Miranda wants me to.”

“You're listening to that niece of yours? A niece you've only met for half an hour? A niece who's your crooked brother's daughter?”

“I liked her. I trust her. Rita says I should trust my feelings.”

“Simma, how can you do this to your children and your little grandchildren. Simma, think of them. How can you do this to me, who's provided for you for all these years, paid all your bills?”

“The rest of what Papa left me helped to do that, didn't it? As I recall, I turned all the rest of that money over to you.”

“I'm not going to let you do this to your family, Simma.”

“Well, it's what I'm going to do. Rita says—”

“Rita says! Rita says this, Rita says that! Why do you need all these psychiatrists, Simma? Because you're crazy, that's why. You are completely out of your mind. You are stark, raving mad, Simma. You're a raving lunatic, and I am going to have you placed in a lunatic asylum! I am going to have you declared mentally incompetent and have myself made the legal custodian of your financial affairs, which you are no longer competent to handle!”

“Well, you'd better get working on that, Leo,” she says. “You'd better get working on that right now. These things take time, and you've only got five business days left. Today is Thursday. That gives you until five o'clock next Wednesday to have me declared insane. Hurry, Leo! Get out and get cracking on it! You've got to get me declared insane by five o'clock next Wednesday.”

“Craziness! Insanity! The more you see these psychiatrists, the crazier they make you!”

“Not really,” she says. “Actually, Rita and I seem to be making progress. With all the stress you're putting me through right now, I should be getting an asthma attack, or one of my migraine headaches. But look—no asthma, no migraine. What do you make of that?”

Back in her office at the store, Miranda is going through her telephone message slips and finds a message to call Pauline O'Malley, her father's former secretary.

“Well, Pauline,” she says when she reaches her at home, “how are you enjoying your retirement?”

“Oh, Miss Miranda,” Pauline says, “I hate to trouble you with this, but something very strange has happened.”

“What's that?”

“After I left the store, I applied for my retirement benefits from the pension fund. But this morning I had a letter saying that the pension fund has been temporarily suspended.”

“Suspended?”

“‘Suspended until further notice,' the letter says. But Miss Miranda, we all contributed to that, and the store was supposed to be matching our contributions. How can they just suspend the fund?”

“Let me see what I can find out, Pauline,” she says. “I'll call you back.”

She steps into Tommy Bonham's office. “Tommy, is there some sort of problem with the pension fund?” she asks him.

His face looks grim. “You've been talking to Pauline, I guess,” he says.

“Yes. She says—”

“Early in August the store was having a cash flow problem. We needed cash to pay our suppliers. We'd already asked for, and been given, a fifteen-day extension, and our suppliers were threatening not to ship us any more merchandise until they were paid. The pension fund seemed an obvious place to find cash, so your father had those funds transferred to the store's general operating account.”

“But Tommy, is that even legal?”

“I begged him not to do it, Miranda.”

“But you're the chief financial officer. You let him do this?”

With the tip of his index finger, he wipes a thin band of perspiration that has formed along his upper lip. She notices a small facial tic she never noticed before. The right corner of his mouth is twitching, as though he were about to smile, but he is not smiling. Perhaps because he sees she has noticed this, he covers his lips with his left hand. She sits with her legs together, and his eyes shift away from hers. “Your father was not exactly the kind of man one
let
do anything,” he says almost crossly. “If he wanted something done, he did it. He said it was just a question of shifting money from one pocket to the other. It was intended to be temporary. Obviously, he didn't expect anyone to be applying for retirement benefits for a while. And he obviously didn't expect to die.”

“Then we've got to get that money back into the pension fund as quickly as possible.”

“I agree,” he says. “But that's easier said than done at this point. Where are we going to get the money? It's gone.”

“Gone,” she repeats numbly. She stares at him. “Are things that bad, Tommy?”

The corner of his mouth continues to twitch. “Yes, at this point, I'm afraid they are,” he says.

“But what if Pauline should decide to hire a lawyer? What if—?”