The Auerbach Will (53 page)

“How do you justify a liberal, or generally left-wing political stance with your own family's conservative tradition, Mrs. McAllister?” a reporter asked her. “Your father was one of America's great capitalists, was he not?”

“Incidentally, on the masthead I will be identified as Joan Auerbach,” Joan said. “To emphasize that the
Express
will be much more than a Mom and Pop operation.”

There was laughter, and then Joan continued with her answer to the question.

This is what the newspapers printed:

“While it is true,” said Mrs. McAllister, who will use the “professional” name of Joan Auerbach, “that my late father achieved great wealth in his lifetime, and was a longtime supporter of Republican causes, it should not be assumed that I have spent my entire life surrounded by luxury. On the contrary. When my younger sister and I were growing up, we were dirt poor. I had no toys whatever, and I went to school in rags and tattered garments. Our house was little more than a hovel. It had no heat, and I was often starved for food as well as affection, since Mother was far too busy keeping house and caring for a husband and growing family to give any attention to the needs of a little girl. In those days, our father worked in a menial position in a store owned by some cousins in New York. Quite often, there was not enough money to put bread on the table, much less to pay for a new pair of shoes for a little girl who had outgrown her old ones. Even in the dead of winter I went about barefoot. To earn a few pennies of spending money, my sister and I set up a small stand at a streetcorner to sell fruit juices. I did not own a pretty dress until I was sixteen. It is hard for my two younger brothers, who were born after my father started on his road to great success, to imagine how different my early life was from theirs. But I am perhaps fortunate to have seen the other side of the coin, and to know what it was like to be poor. I can champion the underdog because I
was
the underdog, and have experienced poverty—abject, grinding poverty.”

“Jake must be spinning in his grave,” Essie said to Josh when he read the story aloud to her.

“You're feathering your paddle, Essie,” Charles said to her. “We're going around in circles.” They had gone together to the Adirondacks that summer, and planned to spend the month of August there, just the two of them. It would turn out to be the last time they would spend there, and the following year Essie would put the place on the market.

“Is that the story of our lives, Charles? Going around in circles?”

“If you'll just paddle, Essie,” he called back to her from the front of the canoe. “Just paddle, and we'll go straight.”

“So now you're the new president of Eaton's,” she said. “How does it feel?”

“I'm just holding it in stewardship for Josh. Next year, I'm going to ask them to bump me upstairs—board chairman, or something. Something mostly honorary.”

“Is Josh ready for it, Charles?”

“That kid's been ready since he was thirteen. He's married to the company now.”

“Well, he's married to Katie, and their son.”

“I mean married to it the way I've been married to it all these years.”

“Married? And not to—” She left the question unfinished, and they paddled in silence again across the smooth water.

“Shall we have our picnic in the little cove where we saw the deer?”

“Yes, that would be nice.”

“You're feathering again,” he warned her.

“I should have sat in front, and let you sit in back.” Then she said, “We could get married now, you know.”

He rested his paddle across his knees, turned and looked back at her. “Do you think so?”

“Well, we could. We're both free now.”

“Don't you think we're a little too old for that?”

“Oh, people get married at our age,” she said. “Look at Averell Harriman.”

“Hmm,” he said. “But wouldn't your children—wouldn't they object?”

“We're free to do what we want, aren't we? Without consulting them?”

“No. They'd worry about their inheritance. There'd be a lot of unpleasantness.”

“But you and I certainly aren't going to have more children, for goodness sake! Why should they worry?”

They were floating now, not far from shore, both paddles idle.

“But suppose you were to die first,” he said, “and decide to leave everything to me. And then suppose I decided to leave everything to a cat hospital. That's what they'd worry about.”

“That's silly, Charles!”

“Still, it would be the first thing that would come into their minds.”

“Well, I don't care. I still think it would be nice.”

“What would be nice?”

“To be married to you.”

“I see,” he said.

“There's nothing standing between us now—not Jake, not Cecilia. Not even Daisy, to protect us—whatever it was you meant by that.”

“Don't you know, Essie?”

“No, unless you meant that Jake—knew?”

“Yes.”

“
Did he, Charles?
”

“Yes. Knew. Or at least suspected. I'm quite sure of it. He must have. But Daisy was his Achilles' heel, the chink in his armor. As long as I knew about Daisy, as long as Daisy stayed in the picture, there was nothing that Jake Auerbach could do to touch me. He couldn't touch me, or do anything about us. Daisy was always my ace in the hole, my little bargaining chip.”

She was looking at him, now, with dismay, at a man she felt she knew too well. “Do you mean to say that that was all it was for you—just keeping your job?”

“It was more than a job, Essie. It was a career. It was my life.”

“And in order to have me—
and
your career—you—”

“I admit I wanted both. Why wouldn't I? Can't you understand?”

“I understand one thing,” she cried to him across the length of the canoe. “I understand that I've been
used
—used for more than thirty years! Used as another little stepping-stone in your career! Right from the beginning, Charles Wilmont, because where would you be if it hadn't been for me? Who brought you to Jake in the first place? Where would Jake be, for that matter, if it hadn't been for me—but most of all, where would
you
be? Who sat with you—for three years—trying to break that—habit of yours? Who kept your bloody little secrets for you? Who helped you keep your cake and eat it too? Was that all I was for? And now that you've got both—me, and your career, you say no to me!”

“You're being hysterical, Essie.”

“Oh, I see exactly what's happened,” she said. “You've turned out to be exactly like Jake Auerbach. That's what you've turned into. That's who you're married to—not the company, but Jake! Jake had his cake and ate it too—your mentor, the man whose shoes you've filled!”

He turned completely in his seat to face her, the paddle still across his knees. “Essie, don't ever say such a thing to me!” he said.

“It's true! I see it in your face, and I can hear it in your voice. It's Jake!”

He raised his paddle. “Essie, I warn you,” he said.

“Are you going to strike me with that? Jake hit me once. Is it going to be your turn now?” She stood up in the canoe and lunged toward him, and he also rose, the paddle held across his chest toward her off. “
Sit down!
” he shouted and, with that, the canoe overturned.

“Oh, help me!” she screamed. “I can't swim!”

Near her, she heard his voice say calmly. “Just put your feet down, Essie. The water's only about three feet deep.” And then, “Come on. Help me pull this thing to shore.”

When they had waded ashore, and pulled the overturned canoe up onto a strip of sandy beach in the cove, and stood, panting for breath, on the beach, looking at each other—two people in their seventies, in dripping wet clothes—they both began to laugh. They were still laughing after Charles had waded back out into the lake to rescue the floating paddles, and had righted the canoe again.

“Look at us.…”

“We'd better get out of these clothes. We'll both get pneumonia.”

“Thank goodness it's a warm day. We can dry our clothes in the sun—on those rocks there.”

“Our picnic's at the bottom of the lake.”

“The fish will enjoy it.”

“Caviar sandwiches?” They were still laughing.

When they had stripped off their clothes and had arranged them on the rocks to dry, and lay down in the sun on the beach near the water's edge, Essie let herself look across shyly at his naked body. Yes, they had both grown old, but with half-closed eyes she could still see the well-muscled body of a much younger man, in clear outline, and with one hand she reached out and ran her fingertips through his chest hairs. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean any of those things I said, Charles. You're your own man, and always were. There's only so much you can give me. I don't want more.”

“Are you sure?”

“You've given me so much. I shouldn't have brought up marriage.”

“There's another thing,” he began, speaking slowly. “It's not just how your children would take it. You mentioned my so-called secret past. If you and I got married now, that would be bound to come out. Don't forget we're both pretty well known now, you and I. A wedding—if we were to get married—there'd be publicity. Reporters—they'd dig around. Harvard. Business school. They'd find out none of that was true. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you, Essie? That was really what I was thinking. That would just embarrass us both—and Josh, and the others. I've lived most of my life with my little secrets. I'd like to be buried with them now, if I can.”

“I understand.” But I understand much more than that, she thought. What made me feel I had to put him to the test at this point? Only to find that Charles is Charles.

He leaned toward her on his elbow and, with his free hand, drew a series of circles in the sand. “But that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be nice to be married to you, Essie. Let me put it more formally. Will you marry me?”

“No! Why should we marry when we have it all anyway?”

He sighed, leaned back.

“Do you remember that night? At The Bluff? Joan's party?” she asked him.

“Of course I remember!”

“Here we are again.”

He turned to her. “Do you still love me?”

She smiled. “Always.”

He was stroking her breast now, supple and pendulous, the tender nipples, the soft places of her flesh, and he—rounded, smooth, feathery as corn silk, still cool, shrunken and moist from the lake water—was in her hand. “Forgive me,” he said, “but I'm not the randy fellow I once was.”

“Oh, yes, you are,” she whispered, and then, as their stroking became more determined and her breath began to come a little fast, she said, “Look. It's like a garden here, isn't it. This lake is our garden, and you are the tall birch tree growing up by the shore. Here. Let me water it with my lips. Think of nothing. Move a little here. Here, by this soft grassy spot. No pebbles. I will make a garden of my body. What did the girls in Delancey Street say? They could make gardens of their bodies, even in the shadows of the tenements, even in winter … my knees are like mountains. Let me taste your tree in its grassy place again.”

After a time, he lay back again. “No use. Too old.”

“No! Try that. Yes, let me try that. What did those girls say? I pretended not to listen, but I did anyway. Put your hand there, let me do the rest. There, you see? Oh, Charles, come to me in my garden. See, there it is, like a tree. Don't move for a moment, darling. Just lie still in my garden. There is a golden thing growing—yes, oh, oh, yes, do that. Is it warm there? Are … is … oh, yes … oh, my love. I do, did, can, will. Have done, do.
Do!
”

Afterward, they had fallen asleep and when they woke the sun was low over the trees and their clothes were stiff and dry on the rocks. A loon was calling.

“We'd better get back.”

Then why, after that, when they were paddling back across the smooth lake in the righted canoe on a perfect summer evening, had she suddenly felt tears come? “What do I have, Charles?” she asked him. “Why am I crying?”

“What's wrong, Essie?”

“I have everything, don't I? Children … grandchildren … beautiful houses … beautiful things … all the money in the world … you …”

“What is it?”

How could she tell him that she felt as though she had flown out of her body, and was weeping for all lost things from some other past: Mama, Papa, Prince, Jake's old self.

“Here, let me do the paddling. You're feathering again. What's
wrong
, Essie?”

“No … no.…” He would never understand, not in a lifetime of explaining it. And she had wept all the way across the lake, sobbing uncontrollably, leaving him to pilot the canoe alone. And when they came to the landing, she had scrambled awkwardly, still weeping, up onto the dock, and had hurried down its length and up the path, into the big log house and up the stairs to her bedroom and flung herself onto the bed. He had followed her up and sat beside her on the bed, rubbing her shoulders. “Essie, please tell me what's the matter,” he kept repeating.

“No … no.…”

“Please. Was it me, Essie?”

“No … don't you understand? I'm afraid. I'm afraid to die.”

“You're not dying, Essie!”

“I'm old … we're old … where did everything go?”

“You're not old, Essie. We still have everything.”

“No … no.…” Still she could not stop. She had continued to weep, noisily, like a child, for what seemed like hours while he sat there with her in the darkness—wept until her pillow was as drenched with tears as her dress had been that afternoon from the lake, until there were no tears left, weeping for nothing at all.