Laurie Horowitz - The Family Fortune

“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.

It isn’t easy to find someone to rent a house as big as ours, a situation made more difficult by my father’s refusal to have the rental formally put on the market. He wanted to be discreet. To Littleton’s credit, he was able to find a tenant even with these limitations.

We were seeing a lot more of Littleton lately. He had shown up several Sundays in a row and he always brought Dolores with him. In between Sundays, Miranda and Dolores went shopping together, even though most of Miranda’s credit cards had been shredded in a depressing ceremony at the dining room table. Priscilla had been in charge of cutting up the credit cards. She sent Miranda to get her pocketbook and my unsuspecting sister retrieved it with alacrity, as if Priscilla were about to replace Miranda’s current Prada bag with a new one from Gucci. When Miranda returned, Priscilla asked her to drop her credit cards onto the table. Priscilla took out long scissors with an orange handle.

“These are very good scissors,” Priscilla said. “They cut right through plastic.”

When Miranda realized what was about to happen, she tried to rescue some of the cards, but Priscilla held her lips tightly together and shook her head. In the end many cards were victims of the massacre: Brooks Brothers, Talbots, Victoria’s Secret, Louis, three MasterCards, two Visas, Bloomingdale’s, Saks, and Neiman Marcus. They littered the table like hard-edged confetti. Miranda was gray. She went up to bed and stayed there for three days.

Finally, in an effort to distract her, Dolores dragged Miranda out to a nightclub where they could look for eligible men, but Miranda preferred the parties of people she knew and she usually attended them alone or with Teddy.

We were drinking coffee in the sitting room three weeks after the initial announcement when Littleton said that he’d found potential tenants.

I had been distracting myself from our change in circumstance by spending the last three weeks absorbed in a less-than-fruitful search for Jack Reilly. Jack Reilly was such a common name, especially in the Boston area, and I was having no luck. I put Tad on the job, too, but neither of us could come up with anything. We didn’t even know if Jack was his real name. It could be John. There were plenty of Johns who called themselves Jack.

I couldn’t picture myself driving up to Vermont on the off chance of finding Jack Reilly. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to do, and though I knew I should give up on “Boston Tech” and Jack Reilly’s potential as a protégé—and who knew what else—he was stuck like gum to my shoe.