Shades of Fortune by Stephen; Birmingham Page B

merchandise one finds there.”
    â€œThis rift with his brother Leopold,” Jim Greenway is saying. “Was it sudden, when Leo left the company in nineteen forty-one, or was it a disagreement that had been building over the years?”
    â€œOver the years. Yes, over the years. My husband kept a diary, you know, over the years. It was all in his diary—everything.”
    â€œReally?” he says eagerly. “A diary? Do you still have it? I’d love to see that.”
    â€œOh, no,” she says sadly. “It’s gone. Disappeared. Destroyed, perhaps. Gone, all gone, but it was all in there, the whole thing.”
    â€œReally, Granny?” Mimi says. “I never knew that Grandpa kept a diary.”
    â€œOh, yes. Wrote in it every day. Put everything in. Sometimes he’d read it to me.”
    â€œIt would certainly be helpful to Mr. Greenway in his research, Granny, if we could locate Grandpa’s diary.”
    â€œBut it’s gone. Vanished. Gone.”
    Speaking up in full voice for the first time now, Alice Myerson says, “I certainly never heard that my father-in-law kept a diary. If he had, certainly Henry would have mentioned it to me.”
    â€œBut he did. He did.”
    â€œI don’t believe you, Flo!”
    From across the table, Granny Flo gazes steadily at her daughter-in-law. Then, turning to Jim Greenway, and nodding in Alice’s direction, Granny Flo says, “She killed a man once, you know. It was all in Adolph’s diary.” She pauses for a moment to let this sink in. Then she says, “I have to go to the toilet. Will someone lead me?”
    Brad, returning from his telephone call, steps to her chair. “I’ll show you the way, Flo,” he says, taking her hand.
    Felix, in the silence that follows, clears the soup bowls, one by one, and serves the salad course.
    â€œThis is my cook’s famous Niçoise salad,” Mimi says brightly, breaking the silence. “Instead of tuna, she uses smoked Scotch salmon, and she’s found a little shop where we get fresh pimentos!”
    â€œMr. Greenway,” Nonie says when her mother is out of earshot, “I must apologize for my mother. It’s—well, it’s Alzheimer’s disease, I’m afraid. She forgets things. She loses track. She imagines things. In other words, you really must not pay any attention at all to anything she says.”
    But, across from her at the table, Alice Myerson’s eyes are very wide and very bright, and two pink spots have appeared on her cheeks. “ What — did — she — say? ” she demands. “What did she say about me?” She flings her napkin on the table. “Why does everyone in this family hate me? Why is everyone trying to hurt me?”
    â€œMother,” Mimi murmurs. “Mother, dear—”
    â€œShe’s saying that I’m to blame for your father’s suicide, isn’t she? Well, it wasn’t me! It wasn’t me who put that bullet through his head! If anyone’s to blame, she is! She, and Adolph, and Leo, and all the others! Put that in your story, Mr. Greenway: that evil old woman killed my husband, killed her own son, just as surely as if she’d been in the room when he pulled the trigger! Yes, put that in!” There are tears in her eyes now, and she pushes her chair back from the table.
    â€œMother, please—”
    â€œPlease! Please! I’m the one who should be crying ‘please.’ Please, leave me alone, all of you! All of you, in this family of hating and hurting and destroying people. Where can I go now, what can I do? When will you all have had enough of me, and let me die in peace? Never, that’s when! Not till I die in my tracks from exhaustion, from the exhaustion of trying to fight back against this family that’s destroyed everything … my husband … everything I ever loved. You didn’t see it, Mimi, you