Shades of Fortune by Birmingham Stephen;

Author:Birmingham, Stephen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media

17

“I’m Jittery, Mimi,” her mother says, twisting her rings. “That’s the only way I can describe it. I’m jittery. I’m all a-jitter. Thank you, dear, for coming by. I told your Mr. Greenway that I just wasn’t up to seeing him today.”

“Well, he’s not my Mr. Greenway, Mother,” Mimi says. “And you don’t have to see him at all, if you don’t want to.”

They are sitting in her mother’s cozy living room in Turtle Bay, overlooking the private central courtyard with its fountain, leafy trees, and busy squirrel population. “Oh, I’ll see him,” her mother says, “because I know he wants to talk to all of us, and because I know you want us to talk to him. But not today, because I just feel so … jittery!”

“You look fine, Mother. In fact, you’ve never looked better.”

“God love you for a liar! I know how I look. There are mirrors in this house, too, you know!”

Mimi looks into her mother’s face and tries an encouraging smile. But it is true. In another year, her mother will be seventy, the beginning of old age, and Mimi must admit that her beautiful mother, the mother she once thought must be the most beautiful woman in the world, is looking old.

“What kind of a story is it, do you think, that he wants to write, Mimi?”

“I have only one theory when it comes to dealing with the media,” she says, “particularly the print media, and that’s be honest with them. If you’re not, they’ll just make up something. But I like this man. I think he wants to write an honest story.”

“He’ll want to ask me about your father, I’m sure. But that was so long ago—more than twenty years. I’m not sure I’m up to going back to all those memories, at least not today. Of course, they told us at the Ford Center there’d be days like this, when you just … can’t seem … to …”

“What’s wrong, Mother?”

Her mother’s laugh is almost gay. “I want a drink, that’s what it is! I want a drink, right now! A nice cold drink, with lots of ice, that I could nurse, the way I used to. My medicine. Liquid courage—that’s all I want!”

“Deep in your heart, Mother, you know you don’t.”

“That’s not true! Deep in my heart, I do! I keep a bottle, you know, right over there in that sideboard. They tell us to! Face your enemy, they say! Well, what would you say if I told you I’d opened that sideboard at least twenty times this afternoon and faced my enemy! But I’ve resisted, Mimi. I’ve resisted.”

“Good,” she says. “Good for you. I’m proud of you, Mother. Because you remember some of the things that happened.”

“What things? What things happened? Oh, you mean on the airplane, going to California. Yes, I admit I was a naughty girl then—and thank God you were there to help me, Mimi. But other times I wasn’t so bad, was I? I used to think of whiskey as my friend.

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