The Auerbach Will (21 page)

“In the usual way,” Jake said. “He came over from Bavaria in eighteen forty-five, worked in a butcher shop for a few months, made a little money, and started out on his own as a peddler—off foot, all through Pennsylvania, New Jersey. Dry goods. Handkerchiefs, undershirts, cheap German watches. When he could afford it, he bought a horse and wagon, so he could carry more merchandise and extend his routes. Soon he'd made enough money to lease a building and open his first store.”

“And today the Rosenthals are millionaires.”

Jake shrugged. “Some of them,” he said.

“But today, what's become of the country peddler? He's no more. I'm not talking about the Hester Street peddler, Jake, though his days are numbered, too, I reckon. I'm talking about the country peddler, the young Jew who went from farm to farm with his pack of goods and, if he was lucky, the farmer let him spend the night sleeping on the haymow in his barn. He's gone, because he's no longer needed. He's been replaced, and do you know what replaced him?” Abe snapped his fingers. “The year was nineteen-o-three, and what replaced the peddler was called Rural Free Delivery. The mail-order business. That's the future of the retail business in the twentieth century, I reckon—mail order. Oh, you'll always have some big stores, like Rosenthal's, in the big cities. But what about the rural population, the famers, the small-town housewives—they can't get to the big cities to shop whenever they feel like. So now they buy by mail order.”

He produced a slim volume from his pocket. “Take a look at this,” he said. “Two fellows here in Chicago, George Eaton and Cyrus Cromwell, got an idea back in nineteen-o-three, when they read about Rural Free Delivery, to go into the mail-order business. This is their catalogue. Right now, they're strictly in medical items, but they want to expand—into clothing, housewares, home furnishings. In just ten years, they're already doing a business of two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year, and I've even got a slogan for them—though naturally I haven't told them what it is yet.”

“What is it?” Jake asked.

“‘Eliminate the Middle Man—and Save.'”

Jake flipped through the catalogue. “But the customer wouldn't really be eliminating the middle man, would he? Eaton and Cromwell
are
the middle man.”

“Oh, I know that,” Abe said airily. “But it sounds good, don't you think? As I said, they need cash, to expand. For a hundred thousand dollars, they're willing to cut us in for a half share of their business.”

Essie studied the catalogue. The adjective “Amazing” seemed to apply to each of the remedies, potions, and lixiviums which Eaton and Cromwell had to offer. There were amazing bust developers, creams, and foods; there were amazing cures for “female complaint”; equally amazing were the baldness cures, the youth restorers, the obesity powders, the virility pills, the bowel restoratives, the liver and bile pills, the cures for consumption, morning sickness, nerves, dizziness, drunkenness and the tobacco habit. Still more amazing potions eliminated flatulence, hysteria, heart disease, cancer and the common cold. The amazing bust development machine for $1.49 looked to Essie very much like an ordinary plumber's friend. Toward the back of the catalogue were sections offering eyeglasses, ear trumpets, false teeth, hair dyes—“Amazing! Eliminates gray hair permanently!”—and, for those whose baldness was of the incurable variety, a selection of toupees, wigs, false mustaches and beards.

“Do any of these things really work, Abe?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “The point is, people are buying them. Their sales have gone up every year. So,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, “what do you say, Jake? For a hundred thousand, half of this business is ours. Here's my half of the partnership right here—fifty thousand dollars.”

“How did you ever get so much money?” Essie whispered.

He winked at her. “Oh, I have my little ways,” he said. “A little bit here, a little bit there. So, Jake, what do you say? With another fifty thousand from you, we'll each own a quarter share in a business that's doing a quarter of a million in annual sales. Within two years, we should have our investment back—and more.”

“You want
me
to go into this with you, Abe?” Jake said.

“Why not? You'd be working for yourself, not for your relatives. Think about that.”

“Why don't you just buy a quarter share for yourself,” Jake said, “with what you've got?”

“A half share is what these fellows have for sale. And a hundred thousand dollars is their price.”

“You couldn't have made that much just tending bar,” Essie said.

“I didn't say I did, did I?” he said crossly. “I didn't come to Chicago dead broke, you know. So, how about it, Jake?”

“Have you approached your friend Mr. Field?”

“Field is a fool!” Abe snapped. “No, I want you, Jake. I want someone I can trust. I told you they want to go into the clothing business. You know the clothing business. I know nothing about that. You know who the manufacturers are, the suppliers—”

“But I don't have fifty thousand dollars, Abe,” Jake said. “I don't even have a tenth of that.”

Abe Litsky spread the fingers of his left hand and studied them. “But,” he said carefully, “you have relatives in New York who have ten times that much, don't you? Ten times ten times that much? A little loan?”

“No,” Jake said, shaking his head. “I owe them money already. I can't ask them for any more. No, that's out of the question.”

“Well,” Abe said, slowly gathering up the piles of cash that lay about the table and stacking it in the canvas suitcase he had brought it in, “Eaton and Cromwell are not in that big a hurry. I've promised them a decision by the end of the month. Think about it, Jake. Take your time. It could be our big chance, Jake.
Your
big chance. On your own, at last—like me.”

“No, it's out of the question.”

Later, after Abe had gone, and Essie and Jake had gone to bed, they had made love, but Essie had not been able to give this matter her customary happy concentration. Her head was awhirl with other thoughts. It was not just what Abe had said; there were other thoughts racing through her head, which were connected. With what Abe had said about little towns and fanners' wives was linked something else, something she had read in the newspapers just a month or so ago. It was in all the headlines … a storm of controversy … bitter, acrimonious … small-town merchants in an uproar … petitions, protests from people who called themselves collectively “the little fellow” … letters to Congressmen. But, said the modernists, the past was dying, the wave of the future was at hand and, in its wake, the little one-room schoolhouse, the village grocer, the friendly corner druggist, would disappear.

She touched his shoulder to see if he was still awake. “Jake?”

“What?”

“What if—I mean, what harm would it do, just to ask your Uncle Sol and Uncle Mort? I mean, there'd be nothing to lose, would there, in just asking?”

He sat straight up in bed, suddenly very angry. “No!” he said. “Haven't I had enough? Enough humiliation? Enough degradation? Enough of thanking them day after day for the simple fact that I earn enough to feed and clothe my wife and children? Do you want me to endure even more of that? Is that what you want? You may not know it, but I still have some pride left—not much, but some!” His voice cracked and, in the dark, she wondered if he was weeping. Beside her, she felt his arm go up and thought for a moment that he was going to strike her, but he only struck the pillow. “And when I think of what I used to want to do, the work I did best, working with the poor, helping people—people like yourself—all gone, for nothing … no way back. And what do you think it was like for me tonight? I'm almost thirty years old, and what do you think it was like for me to see a man more than ten years younger than I am—your baby brother—come in here rich tonight, with more money made in seven months than I've been able to make in seven years? And from being a bartender! Dear God, give me
something
, Essie—a little shred of pride! No. I say no, Essie. I say it's out of the question. And I never want to hear another word from you on the subject again. Do you understand? Not another word.”

The bedroom door opened a crack and, silhouetted in the night light from the hall, Little Jake, six years old, stood there rubbing his eyes and asked, “Mommy, why is Daddy crying?”

Eleven

“I had a letter from Mama this morning,” she said to him a few days later. “She hasn't been feeling well, and I really think I should go to New York to see her. After all, it has been nearly seven years.…”

“How much is the train ticket?”

“I have enough. From what I've saved from the household money. Mrs. Nielsen, next door, has offered to take care of the children during the day, and she'll walk little Jake to school in the morning and meet him in the afternoon. I'll leave plenty of food in the house for your dinners. And it will only be for a few days. Can I, Jake?”

“Of course,” he said. “If your mother's ill, you must go.”

And so, with that small, white lie out of the way, she boarded the train for New York on a windy April day in 1913.

She had chosen to arrive on a weekday morning, when the uncles would be at the office, and she made her way from Grand Central Station, a dozen or so short blocks, to 14 West 53rd Street on foot, wearing her new gray traveling suit, to where she was certain she would find her mother-in-law at home alone. Marks, looking just slightly surprised, answered the doorbell, ushered her into the red sitting room, and said, “I'll tell Madam you're here.”

“Esther, what a delightful surprise!” said Lily Auerbach when she stepped into the room a few minutes later, wearing a white silk dressing gown and white satin slippers. She gave Essie a little kiss on the cheek and then, holding her hands, held her at arm's length. “You're looking
very
well,” Lily said, inspecting her. “You've changed your hair. It's very becoming. Now come sit down, and tell me all the Chicago news. But shame on you for not telling me you were coming to New York!” With her hand she gently tugged at Essie's, pulling her down into a red loveseat beside her. “Quickly—how
is
everyone?”

“Everyone is very well,” Essie said.

“I feel so badly that I haven't been able to get to Chicago to at least meet my grandchildren,” Lily said. “I will, one of these days, but life keeps one so busy in New York. I have all their photographs, of course, on my dressing table, in pretty silver frames.”

“They all send their love, Mother Auerbach.”

Still smiling, she looked Essie up and down. “Yes, you look very well, my dear. Three children, and you've kept your figure. That's the hardest thing on a woman's figure—child-bearing. And that's an attractive suit. Where did you find it?”

“Actually, I designed and made it myself.”

“Really? How clever you are! I couldn't edge a hanky!”

“At least I know better than to wear a green party dress for tea in a red room,” Essie said.

Lily Auerbach put her head back and laughed. “You know,” she said, “after I met you for the first time, I said to Jake, ‘She had all the makings of a beautiful young woman.' But then I admit that I added, ‘All she lacks is a sense of
style.'
But now I see that you've acquired that, too, and that pleases me. Do you mind my telling you that? Yes, I'm sure you've become a great asset to our Jake—in Chicago.”

There was a slight inflection there, which Essie caught. “In
Chicago.
” Chicago was where they had been assigned, and Chicago was where they were intended to remain. Only a long tenure in Chicago, an inferior city, would earn the exiles their reprieve, a commutation of their sentence, and the possibility of a return to the only world that mattered, which was New York.

“Would you like a cup of coffee, Esther? Some tea?”

“No thank you, Mother Auerbach.”

“Then tell me,” Lily Auerbach said, leaning forward, “I'm sure the purpose of this visit isn't entirely social. Am I right? Tell me why you have come to see me. Tell me what it is that's on your mind.”

It was one of the things that Essie liked about her mother-in-law. Lily might start a conversation obliquely, taking light and inconsequential little tangents, but it wasn't long before she got down to the business at hand.

“Well,” Essie said, beginning the little speech that she had rehearsed in her mind the night before sitting up on the train, “the fact is, Mother Auerbach, that Jake has been offered what seems to us a tremendously exciting business opportunity—in Chicago. A feeling in my bones tells me that this is his chance of a lifetime, Mother Auerbach—as they say, the bird in the hand.”

“Really? What is that?”

“It's a company called Eaton and Cromwell, Mother Auerbach. They sell—”

“Yes, I've heard of them. They sell cheap medicines. Through the mails, with a catalogue. Not the best reputation, you know.”

“I know,” Essie said quickly, “but the point is that their business is at a turning point right now, right now in nineteen thirteen. They're at a point where they're ready to branch out, into a wider variety of merchandise, of better quality, with more—”

“And they're looking for financing. Correct?”

Essie decided to ignore this and to plunge ahead. “Mother Auerbach,” she continued, “Jake has told me a bit of how your grandfather, R.B. Rosenthal, started his business as a peddler in little towns and communities where there were no stores. From this little start, he built a wonderful business. Eaton and Cromwell was started just ten years ago, in nineteen-o-three, as a result of a new service offered by the United States Post Office called Rural Free Delivery. They started as peddlers, too, but with more modern methods—through the mails. It's more modern and more efficient, and already their business has a quarter of a million dollars a year in sales.”