Laurie Horowitz - The Family Fortune

“She’s finishing the frittata,” I added. This was his favorite of all Astrid’s dishes and I knew that this would appease him.

“I do love Astrid’s frittatas,” he said.

I poured coffee for Dolores. Although she hadn’t been invited, she was still a guest. Priscilla, who sat across from her, was a guest also, and older, so proper etiquette would indicate that she should be served first, but Priscilla was as good as family.

Whatever was going to happen that morning, I wanted them to get it over with. Maybe Teddy was sick. Whatever it was, I wanted to know. If something had happened to my sister Winnie or to one of her boys, someone would have told me before this. There would be no need for Littleton, no buildup.

Astrid came in with the frittata. She had a bandage on her finger. I followed her back into the kitchen to help her with the biscuits, bacon, and fruit.

“You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?” I asked.

She gave me a bowl of berries.

“Not my place,” she said. Astrid, who came to us speaking very little English, was now fluent, but she still retained a mild accent. She shouldered me gently to let me know I should head back into the dining room.

“That never stopped you before,” I said.

“Well, it’s stopping me now.”

Between us, we put everything on the table. Astrid didn’t stay to serve. That was my job. Or, if Miranda was so inclined, she could play lady of the house.

When I sat down, Dolores was talking.

“I was in Starbucks,” she said, “in West Hollywood.” She talked as if we should all have a clear picture of the West Hollywood Starbucks. Our picture had only as much clarity as it could get from all Starbucks being just alike. “And you would not believe who I saw.” She paused. When no one responded, she continued. “It was none other than Tootie from The Facts of Life.” She ended with a flourish.

“That’s nice,” Teddy said. He gave her a twisted smile. I knew that he had no idea that The Facts of Life was a dead sitcom from the 1980s. Even if he knew, he wouldn’t have cared. He was not impressed by celebrity. He was much more interested in having an old Boston name and the old Boston money that went with it.

“Oh,” Miranda said with feigned interest and less enthusiasm. We were not a television-watching family. My mother had seen to that. When we were children, she had orchestrated our spare time like a symphony. Miranda had been a tennis champion. Winnie had won ribbons for dressage, and I was told I could have been an Olympic skater if I had given the time to it. My mother thought it unnatural for a child to focus too much on one thing, so I became a very good skater, but nothing more.

Miranda made up for her childhood television deficiency by becoming addicted in college to a soap opera called All My Children. My assistant, Tad, was named after a character in All My Children, and though I’d never seen it, I thought the idea of naming your child after a soap opera character delightfully silly. My little sister Winnie, a housewife in the suburbs, has also made up for the dearth of television, and now she compares almost everything in life to an episode of Seinfeld.

“And I saw, if you can believe it, Sally Struthers in Ralph’s. That’s a supermarket,” Dolores said. She was trying for more traction, but the ground she was treading was just too slippery.

“Who?” Priscilla said.

“You know. From All in the Family.”

“I don’t know,” Pris said, “and I’d rather not know. Dolores dear, whatever happened to your husband, Mr. Mudd?”

The silence in the room took on a shape of its own. Dolores tucked a fugitive hair behind her left ear and summoned all her dignity.

“We had a falling-out,” she said.

“So I assumed,” Priscilla said. She took a sip of coffee. Priscilla had the posture of someone who never dropped fine china.

“They just didn’t get along.” Littleton stepped into the ring to defend his daughter, but compared with Pris, he was a mere featherweight.

“If you must know,” Dolores said, “my husband, Howard Mudd, was gay.” She sank her chin toward her pert breasts in a gesture that was calculated to inspire pity.

“Before or after you married him, dear?” Priscilla lowered her voice and made it soft and inviting.

My father shot Pris a glance meant to let her know that she’d gone far enough. No one was allowed to be rude to guests at his table.

After the meal, we took our remaining coffee back into the sitting room.

Dolores sat down on the edge of a settee and took a sip of coffee. Littleton stared at her until she looked up.

“Oh yes, right. I must be going or I’ll miss the concert,” Dolores said.

I still believed that the concert was a complete fabrication.

“Thank God,” Priscilla said.

“Pris.” Teddy and I spoke at the same time. If we didn’t watch out, Priscilla would soon be shooing Dolores out of the house on the end of a broom. I wasn’t entirely sure this would be a bad thing, but it wouldn’t be polite, and the Fortunes were nothing if not polite.

“She shouldn’t be here. It’s as simple as that,” Priscilla said.

Dolores put her cup down on an inlaid table and stood up.

“I’ll be heading out, then,” she said.

“I wish you didn’t have to leave,” Miranda said. “The afternoon will be so boring without you.”

Dolores looked at her father.

“I have to,” she said. “We can do something later.”

“I’m shopping this afternoon. You’ll miss the shopping,” Miranda complained.

At the mention of shopping, Teddy looked at his feet. Finally, Dolores trotted out of the room on her impractical heels. If she was really going to the Esplanade, those heels would be a hindrance. She’d sink right into the grass.

After she was gone, Littleton put his cup on our elaborately carved mantelpiece. He stood at the fireplace with his back toward us, his arms outstretched in an odd, theatrical pose.

He spun around so quickly his body made a swishing sound.

“I’ve been going over your finances, and we need to take drastic measures,” he said.

Astrid, who had just come in with some mini-biscotti and more coffee, put the tray down on an ottoman and backed quickly out of the room. I tried to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at me.

Drastic measures?

What was he talking about and why didn’t Teddy look surprised—or Priscilla? The words drastic measures yanked Miranda from her natural lethargy.

“Whatever this is,” Miranda snapped, examining a pearl-toned fingernail, “can we get it over with? I dislike histrionics of all sorts. Drastic. Please. What on earth are you talking about? There’s a special sale at Louis today and I’d like to get there before everything is gone.” Though Miranda is always happy to pay full price, she can never resist a really good sale.

“Louis will have to wait,” Littleton said. “I want you to sit and listen very carefully. This is the bottom line.” I hated the term bottom line. It always struck me that the people who used it didn’t really know what it meant. It was something a slick financial adviser would say, and Littleton was hardly one of those. “You have overspent and invested unwisely.”

The room, though large, felt like the inside of a cigar box. I wanted to pull back the velvet drapes and open some windows. Didn’t anyone else notice how hot it was?

“I don’t understand,” Miranda said. She was looking at Littleton as if he held the key to the vault at Shreve, Crump & Lowe.

“The Fortune family is experiencing an insufficiency of funds.”

“Go on,” Miranda said.

Littleton was sweating at his hairline.

“Economies must be taken,” he said, “compromises made. Your fortunes, excuse the pun, have diminished.”

Miranda continued to stare blankly at him as if he were speaking in tongues.

“We’re broke,” I said.

Miranda turned on me.

“Jane, must you be so dramatic? Must you always be so dramatic?” Miranda must have been very upset, because as everyone knows, I am not in the least dramatic. “We couldn’t be broke. We’re not broke, are we, Daddy? Broke—it’s such a shoddy word. We may be experiencing a financial shortfall, but people like us—we don’t just go broke.” She spat out the last word as if it were made of broken glass. “What does it all mean?” Her words were drawn out and her voice was as nasal as Gwyneth Paltrow’s when she played English. Miranda slumped onto her chair. Teddy walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder, but he couldn’t look at her. He ran his fingers through his thick blond hair. Teddy’s hair, like Dolores’s, was a deception, but he had a good colorist and his looked completely natural.

Miranda peered up at him and touched his hand. Her look was pleading, the same look she gave him as a child when she wanted a new toy.

“Littleton discussed it with me and I discussed it with Priscilla last week,” Teddy said. “She and I thought it best that Littleton explain it to you, but the fact is—Jane’s right.” There had been many times when I had wanted to hear those two words, but this was not one of them. “We’re broke.”

And in Teddy’s mouth, the words sounded oddly like a curse.

There was a pile of manuscripts on my nightstand and I wasn’t really in the mood to read them, but I picked one up and started to give it the quick once-over. By now I was usually able to spot a story’s potential within the first paragraph, certainly within the first page.