The Auerbach Will (57 page)

Was it fifty-eight years? Yes, Josh is right, it was. Think of it! Then she suddenly realizes that she has just been introduced, that she is expected to do something, that it is her turn to speak, that Josh is smiling and beckoning to her from the speaker's lectern, that there is applause, that she is expected to rise now. Had Josh warned her that it would be like this—so sudden? She reaches for her cane, but it slides from her grasp and falls to the floor. Deftly, on her left, Charles reaches down for it, retrieves it, and places it firmly in her left hand. In the same gesture, he squeezes her hand and whispers, “Good luck.”

Slowly, Essie rises, using both the cane and Ekiel Matoff's shoulder for support, and makes her way with some difficulty—the passageway behind the chairs across the platform is rather narrow—to the lectern, and the microphone that rises from among the anthuriums. She grips the edge of the lectern, and, leaning into the microphone, says, “This is only temporary,” and holds up the cane.

There is a ripple of polite laughter from the audience, but what astonishes Essie the most is the sound of her own voice coming booming and echoing back to her from every side of the big room. They have not warned her about that, either!

She knows now, too, that every word of her carefully memorized and rehearsed speech has flown out of her head completely. On the lectern, squarely in front of her, where they had promised it would be, sits Mary's neatly triple-spaced typing, but the floodlights—they have not warned her about the floodlights—are shining so brightly in her eyes that she cannot see the words. The sheet of paper is a white, blinding blank. Essie has often addressed meetings of the Opera Guild, where there were lights and a microphone, but there were never such angry, glaring lights as these, and there were never these thundering echoes from walls of bare marble and glass. She turns the sheet of paper this way and that, but the words refuse to come into focus. Still, she must say something. Clearing her throat she begins, “My husband was not Jake Auerbach.…”

There is a titter or two, and some coughing, from the audience.

“No, that's not right,” she says. In the audience, now, she searches for Mary Farrell's face, or for Daisy's, or for any face that will seem familiar or reassuring, but she can find no one. In the distance, coming from somewhere—the street perhaps—she can hear the faint sounds of Christmas caroling, voices singing, “O little town …”

“O little town,” she repeats into the microphone. “When I first came to Chicago, in nineteen-o-seven, it was a little town.…” On her right side, she feels Charles reach out and touch her arm and, on her left, she feels Josh's hand. “My husband and I watched it grow. And now we have this big building.… Oh, dear,” she says. “I had what I was going to say all memorized. When I was a girl, I was good at memorizing.” From the audience, there is more coughing.

“Talmud,” she hears Josh whisper to her.

“Talmud,” she repeats, and the word “Talmud!” comes pounding back at her from the walls and ceiling. Perhaps, she thinks, if I speak more quickly, I can get the words out like lightning before the thunder, and so she begins again, “But it wasn't the Talmud, it was this:
Der shtrom fun menshenz maysim bayt zikh imer
—
nemstu dem rikhtigen, firt er tsu glik; hostu farzen
—
der ganster veg fun leben vet zikh durkh umglik un durkh flakhkeyt shlepen
.…”

There are whispers, now, and rustlings of programs, and the sounds of people shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

“But that's not the Talmud. That's Mr. Shakespeare—‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; / Omitted, all the voyage of their life / Is bound in shallows and in miseries.' But my point is that my husband, who was Jacob Auerbach, became a very rich man—the tide taken at the flood. But the Talmud says that a poor man is more blessed than a rich man. And so I say—look around you—who is more miserable—the rich man or the poor? Those who expect the most often receive the least, and those who expect the least often receive the most. That's from the Talmud, too. My father taught me that, and what are the lessons we remember longest? Aren't they the ones we learned when we were young and new?

“But what is the connection between these?—my random thoughts and memories. What is the lesson to be learned from this new building?” And suddenly there is new confidence—the Shakespeare lines came back so easily!—and now she knows exactly what she would like to say. “To me,” she says, “the lesson is very clear. It is the importance of remembering the difference between what is temporary—” She holds up the cane. “—and what is permanent. This new building, this great new building, looks very permanent today, and yet we all know it will not last forever. Experience tells us that. Today, it is the tallest building in the world but, before we know it, someone will come along and build a taller one, and then a taller one than that, and so on throughout the rest of time. This building is not dedicated to the memory of my husband, and perhaps that's just as well, because not even memory is permanent. In a thousand years, who will remember the name of Jacob Auerbach, and who will remember that I stood here once and spoke a few thoughts to you?

“What, then, is permanent? What will last? I believe that only love is permanent, cannot be torn down, cannot be forgotten. Love is the glue of generations, the cement of civilization, the span between life and death. To me, love must be the salvation of nations, the only cornerstone on which any future can endure. That is what must be built in our hearts, taller and stronger and more durable than any mere skyscraper, for love will defy any structure of stone and steel and glass and outlive any plunderer or any war. Love is the staff”—she lifts the cane once more—“we lean on, upon which we erect and dedicate the skyscrapers of our lives, taller and taller, on and on, through our children and theirs. Think of it! What a mighty symbol! Love is what God is. In the end, it's all we have.”

She stops. The applause begins, quietly at first, perhaps because they are not certain that she has finished, and then its volume grows, filling the room. In front of her, she sees one woman in the audience rise to her feet, still clapping, and presently there is another standing, and then another, and suddenly the whole room is on its feet, and the sound of the applause is deafening. “Well,” she says into the microphone over the thundering of the applause, “that is what I believe. Thank you.” And now Charles and Josh, on either side of her, his father and their son, rise to assist her back to her seat. She waves them off, she can make it on her own, and still the noisy clapping does not stop.

At O'Hare Field, it is snowing, and some commercial flights have been delayed, but the weather is not expected to daunt the Eaton & Cromwell executive flight of its Gulfstream-3, which is equipped with some of the most sophisticated navigational equipment in the world.

“I suppose you're all cross with me for forgetting my speech,” Essie says.

“Are you
kidding
. Mother?” Josh says. “You were magnificent! I just haven't been able to find the words to say it. It was better than anything I could have written for you. You got a standing ovation—didn't you notice that?”

“You knocked 'em dead, Mrs. A.”

“Well, they did seem to like the last part,” Essie says.

“There wasn't a dry eye in the house.”

“Well, is my jet ready? I want to go home.”

“It's ready whenever you are, Mrs. A.”

It is hard to believe that she has asked that question—Is my jet ready? It is preposterous. My jet. Still, it is the way one comes, and the way one goes. And of course she is ready to go. “Let's go,” she says, first to Josh, then to Charles. “So then let's go.” They board the plane, and soon they are in the air again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard.… There are a few facts you might like to know about our aircraft.…”

Beside her, Mary Farrell whispers, “Here comes trouble, Mrs. A.” Joan, in a fitted black Dior suit and a glittering pin by Kenneth Jay Lane, is moving down the aisle toward them. She perches on the arm of the double sofa into which Essie and Mary Farrell are strapped.

“That was a lovely speech, Mother.”

“Well, thank you, Joan. I'm glad you liked it.”

“It was addressed to me, wasn't it.” She puts it as a statement, not a question.

“Well, no—not exactly. But if you choose to take it personally, you may.”

“I felt it was addressed to me.” Joan is silent for a moment, then she says, “I'm sorry about last night, Mother. I really am.”

“Oh, that's all right. We're family, and it was a moment of—well, high anxiety, shall we say, for all of us.”

“It's just that—with Richard gone, with the paper gone, I've been so terribly lonely.” The Gulfstream bounces, slightly, on a pocket of air, and Joan's shoulders are tipped briefly against her mother's.

“Shouldn't you have your seat-belt fastened, Joan?”

“No, no.…”

And then, “Lonely?”

“Yes. It's been harder on me than I think you know. Harder than I've let show. And I'm not getting any younger, Mother.”

“Well, neither are any of us, and perhaps that's a blessing. Lord knows, I wouldn't want to be young again. Not even your age again.”

The Gulf stream bumps again, then seems to seek, and find, smoother air.

“Lonely,” Essie repeats. “Perhaps you could spend more time with Karen, Joan.”

“No. Karen has her own new life now.”

“Or Linda. Your only grandchild. My only great-grandchild. I worry about Linda sometimes. That she's growing up—too cynical.”

“No. Linda doesn't like me much. The generation gap.”

“Or,” Essie begins somewhat tentatively, “if you could make your peace somehow with Mogie and Josh. Bury the hatchet. That would make me very happy.” And make your peace with yourself, she might have added, but does not. Or your peace with me.

There is no immediate reply. Then Joan says, “Are you happy, Mother?”

“Happy?” Essie laughs. “My own mother used to say, ‘Show me a woman in this life who's happy, and I'll show you a woman without a brain.' Well. Happy? Yes, I suppose I'm happy enough. I've raised four children—five, if one counts—watched them grow—” She breaks off.

“But when I was growing up, you were never there.”

“Never there? Never
where?
I've never understood that argument, Joan, of yours. When you were little, I was there—around the clock! You seem to resent the younger children because they grew up with more
things
. But if you ask me, it was the younger ones who got short-changed. I was so busy helping your father be successful that there never seemed to be enough time—”

“It was as though, when I was about nine or ten, you began to disappear. Perhaps those are the years when a daughter needs a mother most.”

“Well, yes. Perhaps. Perhaps you have a point.” Of course I could say the same thing about you, she thinks. Where were you when Karen was nine or ten? Getting married and married and married. But Essie does not say these things. Instead, she says, “But Babette never seems to have felt that way. Or at least she never said as much to me.”

“But Babette has no brains, Mother. I'm sorry, but you know that's true as well as I. I, believe it or not, have brains. And feelings.”

“Oh, yes. I know.” Perched on the arm of the sofa, Joan's thin body seems to sway slightly. “You know,” Essie says quickly, “if you're lonely, Joan, you could always come and live with me. Lord knows I don't need or use half the acreage of that big apartment. I could convert the upper floor, yes, and we could—” Once more, Essie can't believe what she is saying. It is something that has been farthest from her thoughts until just now. “After all, we're flesh and blood,” she says. There is more to say. The words won't come.

“Yes, but—” Joan laughs softly. “Oh, no, Mother. That would never work.”

“Convert the upper floor—just for you. It has its own elevator entrance—”

“No, no. It would
never
work. We'd be at each other's throat in a matter of days—hours—you know that.”

“Would we
have
to be? We could—”

“No, no. Live with you paying the maintenance? Live on your money? No, never.”

“It could be treated as
our
money, Joan.”

“No, I'm not a charity case
yet
, Mother, and I'm not ready for Josh's little handouts, either. You
see?
Here we are already—arguing about money again.”

“Always.”

A silence. Mary Farrell turns a page of her airport paperback,
Fodor's Guide to Modern Greece
.

“But still—” Joan begins.

“Do you think—?”

“If—No, no. Oh, Mother, Mother.”

“Why—”

“Yes, why? What's the point?”

“I'd try.”

“But no.”

“Well, then—”

“Anyway,” Joan says. Then her hand reaches out quickly for her mother's hand, covers it, and pats it gently, and for a moment it seems as though years of recriminations and hard feelings are about to be wiped away in this small gesture. “Anyway,” Joan says again.

“You're sure?”

“Oh, yes.”

Their hands separate, and Mary, concentrating on her book, turns another page.

“That's a pretty pin you're wearing, Joan.”

“Thanks. Another Kenny Lane.”

“Women don't wear real stones out anymore.”

“No.” Joan stands up. She touches her hair. Her eyes are very bright. “The seat-belt light's gone on,” she says. “We must be getting near New York. I'd better get back.”

“Yes.”