The Family Fortune (5 page)

“Read it now,” I said.

“Right here?”

“Yes. I'll just sit here.”

“And stare at me?”

“Not that I don't find you fascinating, but I'll do some work.” I pulled a sheaf of stories out of my bag.

I snatched glimpses of Bentley as he read, but he didn't notice me. He was absorbed. He was always absorbed when he read.

When he looked up, he immediately ordered a cup of coffee.

“You liked it?” I asked. Bentley's taste had always been important to me. Even though I trusted myself more than when we began, I still needed to know what he thought just to be sure. Our food had come and it sat uneaten in front of us. Bentley put down the story and picked up his knife and fork.

“It's okay,” he said.

“Just okay?” Was I going insane? Had I lost my judgment? Did I want to discover a new writer so badly that I couldn't see straight?

“It's better than okay,” Bentley said, and smiled crookedly. He finished his salad and started in on his steak. I stared at him. “Call him.” He smiled.

“Bastard,” I said.

He continued to chew without paying much attention to me.

“You think I have to read the rest of the stories?” I asked.

“That's up to you, Jane. I'm not your father or your guru. You're almost forty years old.”

“I'm only thirty-eight.”

He shrugged and took another bite of his steak. His bites were huge and he chewed each piece for a long time.

“You know what it reminds me of,” he said. I knew. I took a bite of my own steak. “It reminds me of that first time, the time with Max Wellman. I mean, we've seen other good stories since, but this is better than most. You know, when I read Max's story all those years ago—‘Hook, Line, and Stinker'—I was so envious, I could have spit.”

I swallowed.

“What about this one?” I asked.

“I'd like to find this Jack Reilly and beat the hell out of him.”

“Excellent,” I said.

I sat up most of the night reading the rest of the stories. By morning I was sure that I could call Jack Reilly and tell him that he'd won this year's fellowship.

I waited until I got into the office. Tad wasn't there. He had an early class. I took a sip of my coffee and picked up the phone. This was my favorite part of running the foundation. I loved calling people with good news. I dialed the number on the last page of the story only to receive the message that the number had been disconnected. No forwarding number was given. I held the phone to my ear and listened to the electronic message over and over again.

I knew I was more disappointed than I should have been. It was only a story, but I couldn't lose Jack Reilly, not after he'd entered my fantasy life, which at the time was none too rich. The rational thing to do would have been to go to the next story, but I wasn't interested in the next best.

Maybe this time, with the discovery of Jack, I'd even let myself be interviewed. The two of us would be interviewed together from the house where he would be working, the house with a view of the ocean and the bay. Maybe Max Wellman would be flipping through
Poets & Writers
and read about us. Even though I hadn't seen Max in years, I'm ashamed to say that sometimes I compared my life with his. And when I did, it left me feeling even more stunted than usual.

I had to find Jack Reilly. Maybe he was my second chance. For all I knew, he was twenty years old, gay, or married. Still, when my imagination took hold of something, it wasn't likely to let go until the fantasy had played itself out.

Tad came in while I was still staring at the phone.

“Jane?”

“His phone's been disconnected,” I said.

“Whose?”

“Jack Reilly's.”

“On to the next.”

“I don't want the next person. I want Jack Reilly.”

“Jane, you look feverish.”

“I'm going to find him. You want to come?”

“Cool—an adventure.” He grabbed his jacket.

My car was garaged at a place on Beacon Hill, about three blocks from our house. I didn't use the car often. There wasn't much need for it in Boston and parking was always a problem. Our house didn't have much garage space. When it was built, cars weren't an issue.

I took the story and put it in my bag. I was now seeing everything through the eyes of Jack Reilly, a man I didn't even know. The bag looked dingy.

“I'm going to have to change my clothes,” I said. I was wearing one of
my usual outfits, black wool pants, a gray turtleneck, and black sneakers. It wasn't that I had no fashion sense exactly, it was just that I didn't care.

I remembered once going into the old Ritz with Priscilla before it was renovated. We had tea and I noticed that the arms of the chairs in the lounge were worn. The furniture was good and expensive, but shabby.

“Old Bostonians like that,” Priscilla had said. “It makes them feel comfortable. The Ritz has a tattered grace.”

I was like the old Ritz. I had a tattered grace. I was indifferent to what was modern and fashionable. I liked fine things, but I was happy to keep them until they crumbled in my hands.

“We can shop on the way,” Tad said.

“I can go home and take something out of my closet.”

“No you can't,” he said. “Let's shop on the way. We'll take a cab to Newbury Street and walk from there.”

“You don't think I have anything appropriate?”

“Jane, I've known you for six months and I've never seen you wear something that would be appropriate for anything other than a funeral.”

What I was wearing was not appropriate for a funeral. I'd never wear trousers to a funeral. I was embarrassed to think that I was so somberly and carelessly dressed that a young man would notice it. Still, I figured he was doing me a favor. We stopped at Alan Bilzerian's, a boutique on Newbury Street, where I picked up a forest green suit with a crisp white shirt. In the back of the store there was an array of expensive shoes and bags. I checked over the shoes and chose a brown pair of flats that were made in Italy. The price of the shoes could have been used to take a chunk out of the national debt, but I bought them anyway. I had the money because I rarely spent any. My own trust had barely been used and I had never touched the principal. I also got a stipend from the foundation, enough to support the average schoolteacher. I lived at home and had few expenses, so I could splurge occasionally.

Since I don't like to shop, my excursions are over quickly. We were out of there in half an hour. I wore the suit out of the store and carried the clothes I'd been wearing in the Bilzerian bag.

“Major improvement,” Tad said.

I looked down at the green suit.

“Feels good,” I said.

“Still pretty conservative,” Tad said.

“It's simple and elegant.”

We picked up my car from the garage. I had the Mercedes 460SL that had belonged to my mother. It was ages old and Miranda hadn't wanted it for that reason, but I liked it. The car was barely used and still reliable.

Tad was impressed by the car. “This is awesome,” he said. There was that word again—awesome. Yes, it was a lovely car, but
awesome
?

We drove north toward Lynn. Tad navigated. I knew how to get to Lynn, but we needed a map to find the exact address. Lynn is a run-down city that is always preparing for a renaissance that never arrives. We followed the map to 61 Kennedy Ave. I found a parking spot on the street. Tad looked around when we got out.

“You want me to stay and watch the car?” he asked.

“It'll be okay,” I said. I was none too sure about that, but I was willing to risk it. In minutes, we'd be ringing the doorbell and Jack Reilly would come to the door. He might slouch a little, have heavy brows, and a sexy smile. He'd be thrilled when I told him he'd won the fellowship, just as every winner had been thrilled. He'd be grateful and an instant connection would be made.

Jack Reilly's apartment was on the third floor. Tad and I walked up the stairs. Someone had clipped their toenails onto the carpet and the hall smelled like fried fish.

We reached the door and I rang the bell. Nothing. We looked at each other and waited. Tad hit the bell again. There was movement inside.

The door was opened by a woman. She had one sponge curler in her hair and an unlit cigarette dangling from between her lips. She was thin and wore gray sweatpants and a pink T-shirt with no bra underneath. Tad stared at her as if he'd never seen a woman before.

“Yes?” she asked.

“We're looking for Jack Reilly,” I said.

“You the police?”

“No.” In my suit, I guess I might have been mistaken for a very well-dressed detective, but Tad was every inch the college kid. “Jack Reilly has won an award,” I said.

“Are you Publishers Clearing House? Where's Ed McMahon?” She poked her head into the hallway and looked around.

“I am Jane Fortune of the Fortune Family Foundation. Jack applied for our fellowship.”

“Fellowship?”

“Isn't he a writer?” I was beginning to think something was terribly wrong. Maybe we had the wrong address.

“I guess you could say that. He scribbles. Won't even get a decent job.” The woman's voice was nasal, not too different from my sister Miranda's.

“Is he here?” I asked.

“He took off. I don't know where he is,” she said.

“Do you have his phone number?”

“I doubt he even has a phone. I had to beg him to get his own phone when he lived here. He likes to live off the grid.”

“Off the grid?”

“No phone, no address. He wouldn't want the IRS to be able to find him, not after all the years he's forgotten to pay his taxes.” She hadn't invited us in and it didn't look like she was going to.

“Isn't there any way we can reach him?” I asked.

“I think I have his sister's address around here somewhere,” she said. “But how do I know you are who you say you are?”

“You don't, really,” I said. “I do have a card somewhere, but that doesn't mean much.” I dug into my bag—the old canvas one—and fished a card out of my wallet. I handed it over.

She shrugged. “You know, I don't even know why I asked. I guess it just seemed like the right thing to do, not that Jack would ever do the right thing. To tell you the truth, I wouldn't care if you were the Mafia. If you find him, can you remind him that he owes me two hundred bucks? I'll go
find the address. I'll be right back.” She retreated into the apartment, leaving the door open a crack.

Tad looked at me. “That's that, then,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“We looked for him. We can't find him. He seems like a loser anyway,” he said.

“We don't know that,” I said. “Look at her. She isn't exactly an arbiter of good taste. For all we know, he could just be some kind of iconoclast, which would be appropriate for a really great artist.”

“I thought you didn't believe that artists had a license to misbehave. That's what you always say.”

“Well, that's true.” He was making me a little uncertain. I did have a long-held belief that the true artist spent more time on his art than on creating an artistic persona.

“He owes her two hundred and fifty dollars,” Tad said.

“Two hundred,” I said.

“Two hundred, then. He still sounds like a loser.”

“She probably doesn't understand him,” I said.

Tad looked at me as if I'd gone mad.

“You sound like
the other woman,
” Tad said.

He was right. I had all the symptoms of infatuation for a man I hadn't even met. Maybe you become susceptible to that sort of thing when you've been alone too long.

The woman came back with a slip of paper that had been ripped from a notepad. She was also carrying a spiral notebook and two books,
Jitterbug Perfume
and
Duet for One.
“This is his sister's address. She lives in Vermont. I'm sorry, but I don't even know her name. I know it isn't Reilly.”

I took the paper and pulled out my wallet. I slipped the paper in and took out a hundred-dollar bill. “Here,” I said. “Some money came with the fellowship. Here's a down payment on his debt.”

“Thanks,” she said. She smiled. “That's white of you. Look,” she said, “if you find him, can you give him these?” She handed over the notebook and the books. “He left them here and frankly you have a
better chance of seeing him than I do. I hate when men abandon stuff after they leave. So if you take it—whatever you do with it—it would be a favor to me.”

I slipped the things into my bag. Of course I'd find Jack Reilly. I might as well take them.

We walked back down the hall, then down the fish-stinking stairwell and out onto the street. The car was still there, and untouched.

“That's that, then,” Tad said after we got inside.

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“There's no point in looking for him. I don't know why you took that stuff. I think we should just dump it right here into the sewer.”

“I disagree,” I said.

Tad frowned. “Come on. Let's get out of here,” he said.

I pulled from the curb and we drove away from
Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin—you never come out the way you went in.

We reconvened Tuesday evening to discuss the finer points of our financial collapse.

After dinner we went into the sitting room. I sat on the brocade sofa in one of what Priscilla called the “conversation areas.” I didn't want to take a seat in the corner. My days of sitting in the corner like a china figurine were over—at least for the moment.

Littleton perched on a Chippendale chair near me. Miranda sat on a settee. Dolores had stayed at home for once. I glanced at Pris, who was knitting with a fluffy green wool. Teddy was slumped in a wingback chair by the fireplace. He sat just apart from our little group, as if he couldn't bear to join us.

“You'll have to cut out the Christmas party,” Littleton said.

“You've got to be kidding,” Miranda said. Miranda was a renowned Boston party-giver. People jockeyed all year to get onto her Christmas party list. She had three-by-five cards on her dressing table with people's names on them and she moved them from one pile to another depending on how well disposed she was toward the person on that particular day.

Though I wasn't much of a party person, even I enjoyed Miranda's Christmas parties. They were always done in a Roaring Twenties style with a big band and costumes. I liked watching the couples pull up to the valet in their fancy cars. They'd rush into the cold, the women hobbling toward the house in spiked heels, the men secure in their spats, and arrive at the door all flushed and smiling, blowing the frosty air like smoke.

Miranda loved to pull the strings of Boston society. She got invited to all the best parties because people hoped that their invitations would be returned. It was as if after my mother died, Miranda and I split her traits down the middle. Miranda got everything that was outgoing and social and I got all that was thoughtful and sedentary. Miranda flourished and became, in her way, a social luminary.
Town & Country
did a story on her. When Miranda and Teddy went out together, their pictures often appeared in the society pages of the
Boston Globe
.

“To be honest, you can barely afford to run this house, and if you are to continue to do it, you'll have to make some major changes. Perhaps you could take in boarders,” Littleton said.

Priscilla's head snapped up. I tried to picture myself as the proprietor of the Fortune Family Bed & Breakfast. We would introduce our guests to the moneyed class of the twenty-first century, the diminishing, foolish, useless moneyed class that didn't even have the sense to hang on to what they had been given.

But, of course, the city would never allow it, nor would our neighbors, nor would our sense of propriety.

“Take in boarders?” Miranda whined. “What can you be thinking, Littleton?”

Littleton was perspiring into the collar of his shirt. He took out a linen handkerchief and wiped it across his neck.

“I don't understand how this happened.”

This came from Miranda, whose collection of designer shoes and handbags filled an entire walk-in closet on the second floor. Teddy had some expensive habits also. He collected wines, cigars, antique watches, and first editions of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. He didn't read the books; he just collected them. But all these things were minor indulgences for us. What had really happened was that for two generations we lived extravagantly and made no money. The family had dipped into the principal of its many trusts little by little until they were dangerously depleted.

My father also made some bad investments. He would read something in the paper, get an idea, and call his “broker.”

“Couldn't we remortgage the house?” Teddy asked.

“You have two mortgages already,” Littleton said.

“We do?” I asked. I thought our house, which my father inherited free and clear, had remained that way.

“Even if you got another mortgage, how would you pay it back?” Priscilla asked. “You could pay it back when you sold the house, I suppose, but are you really planning to sell the Fortune family home?” She continued to knit without looking at her work. She was staring at Teddy. He stroked the arms of his chair as if it were a friend from whom he would soon be parting.

“What choice do we have?” he asked. He was haggard and I had never seen him look that way, except during the few months after my mother died.

I couldn't believe that Teddy would think of selling the house. It had been Euphemia's house. It was a house that gave him status, that defined us as a family. It was the best of what we had.

“You could rent it out,” Littleton said.

“Over time, you could rebuild your capital,” Priscilla added.

“What would people think?” Teddy asked. He rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on the top of his folded hands.

“No one would have to know that it wasn't your choice. You could make it seem like it was your idea. After all, your girls are grown and this is such a big house. And there's the place on the Vineyard. You could sell that,” Littleton said.

“But, Littleton, they always rent the Vineyard house out in the winter,” Priscilla said. “It pays for itself. I think they can only gain by keeping the Vineyard house. Besides, they'll need somewhere to live in the summer,” Priscilla said.

“What about the charitable trust?” Miranda asked.

“What about it,” Priscilla said.

“I don't see how we can keep giving charity when we don't have any money of our own. Can't we break the trust?”

“No, dear.” Priscilla bit at the inside of her cheek. “There is no provision in the trust that says ‘If my progeny should be such spendthrifts that they run through all the family money in one generation, you can break the charitable trust.'”

“You don't have to be nasty about it. It was just a question,” Miranda said. “Still, I don't understand why it isn't possible.” She raised her head and stuck out her chin in a combative way.

I shifted in my seat. If the trust were breakable, what would that mean for the work I did? Would we just shut down our office in Kenmore Square and cease to be? Now that we were a known entity, maybe I could raise money. But I had never raised money for anything before, not even for a cup of coffee. Money had never been a problem. The foundation was well endowed and I had used the money carefully, making sure—with the help of the bankers—to continuously grow the capital.

Littleton broke in. “Priscilla's right,” he said. “There is no provision for breaking the trust. I checked. Besides, your family name is associated with it. You've done some good in the community through it. You wouldn't want to jeopardize that.”

He acted as if the Fortune Family Foundation did the work all by itself, as if the money jumped up and spread itself all over Boston. But there was someone behind it, making the choices and writing the checks, and
that someone was me. I couldn't lose the foundation. I had taken it from near obscurity to a position of respect among the other great foundations for the arts.

Miranda stood up. It looked like she was ready to have the kind of tantrum she so often had as a child, but before she could do anything other than stamp a foot, she sat back down. Tantrums don't look good on anyone, and even she knew that they looked ridiculous on a woman who was almost forty.

“No Christmas party. I won't be able to show my face,” she said.

“It will be easier if your face isn't here,” Pris said.

“What do you mean?”

“Littleton and I think that the best place for the family this winter is Palm Beach. You can get a lovely apartment there with the money you get for renting this house and you'll still have plenty left over.”

“The Fortunes are wintering in Palm Beach,” Teddy said. “I don't mind the sound of that.”

Miranda walked over to the window, tied back the drapes, and gazed out. “No Christmas party.” She released a theatrical sigh.

“There are worse things than wintering in Palm Beach,” Priscilla said.

I, for one, couldn't think of any. I hated the bright yellows, greens, and pinks of country-club chic. I couldn't see myself walking the streets among the tanned and the leathered. I wasn't big on drinks with little umbrellas in them. And though I could probably run the foundation from anywhere, it helped if I showed up at the office occasionally.

“If we went away for the winter,” Teddy said, “no one would have to know the truth.” He stood up and looked stronger, less disheartened.

“We could blame it on your health,” Miranda said.

“There's nothing wrong with my health.”

“I think we should tell people what's easiest for them to hear,” Miranda said.

“It might be easier for you to have people think I've lost my health, but it would hardly be easier for me.” Teddy was proud of the fitness he
achieved at the Boston Athletic Club. Being known for his youthfulness and robust constitution was not one of the things he was willing to sacrifice to maintain any other part of his reputation. The evening wasn't bringing out the best in either Teddy or Miranda. They were usually willing to sacrifice me to any cause, but when they started to sacrifice each other, the situation was grim.

Maybe no one would care that the Fortunes had fallen upon hard times. Perhaps we were foolishly guarding a reputation that wasn't worth a thing to anyone but ourselves.

The meeting was over. Our lives were going to change. What else was there to say?

“Come on, old lady, walk me home,” Priscilla said. Her voice had the calm intimacy I had learned to associate with what was maternal in my life. Priscilla had always been there to pull me through the difficult times. Without her, I don't know what I would have done after my mother died.

Priscilla and I walked outside. I was grateful to be in the crisp air. It was sweater weather, and even though we were still in daylight saving time, it was getting dark much earlier. That, to me, always signaled the end of summer.

“They've asked me to come and speak to some of the girls at Wellesley,” I told Priscilla.

“Why?” There was an inherent insult in that question—the assumption that I had nothing to offer—but at the time I let it pass.

“To the girls who want to be writers,” I said.

“That's nice.” She seemed distracted.

“I'm afraid of public speaking.”

“You can't be afraid all your life,” Pris said.

“Do you think I'm a very fearful person?” I asked.

“I would never call you a risk taker, but then none of you girls is. Your mother wasn't much of one either. That's why she married your father. It was the safe thing to do.”

I left Priscilla at her door and walked home. The first fires were being lit in fireplaces and the city was beginning to smell like autumn.