The Auerbach Will (6 page)

Mogie looks up at her. “Would you really do that, Joan? Use your newspaper to expose your own family?”

Joan laughs a little shrilly and sits down in the nearest silk-covered chair. “I'm not saying that I would do that,” she says. “But I'm saying that I'd certainly have that option, wouldn't I? And frankly, Mogie, I keep thinking that this thing may go even deeper than what we know already. Because what I keep asking myself, as a newspaperwoman, is this—why has Arthur Litton, or Uncle Abe, kept so quiet about his Eaton connection all these years? What would he have to lose by spilling the beans?”

“Unless—”

“You're reading my mind, my darling. Exactly. Unless the company—or someone in the company—has been paying him off. Regularly. Steadily. For years and years. Paying him to keep his mouth shut.”

Now it is Mogie who rises, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, and walks to the lighted vitrine where some of his antique toys are displayed—fire engines, a miniature Ferris wheel with tiny passengers rocking in their seats, their faces painted in expressions of delight and awe, a regiment of tin soldiers, muskets in firing position, cannon aimed, a corporal ramming gunpowder into its cascabel, another standing ready with a torch to ignite the fuse; his have been called the finest collections of tin and lead soldiers in the world; behind the cannoneers and artillerymen are arrayed the mounted cavalry, ready to charge. Mogie Auerbach studies the frozen scene in the glass case as though for the first time. “Of course this is a very serious allegation, Joan,” he says at last. “And you have absolutely nothing to prove it.”

“No, but I think I know where to go to find proof if I need it.”

“Yes,” he says quietly. “You know, you mentioned tonight the lemonade stand that you and Babette had. Of course I have no memory of that. I wasn't even born. You're right. I don't remember the house on Grand Boulevard at all. I never lived there. I grew up at The Bluff. I don't even have a clear memory of Prince. I was only six when all that happened.…”

“Yes.”

“But you're right. It was like having two different sets of parents. And then, after Prince … left us … you were the oldest, and I was the youngest, and I was always more than a little afraid of you. I used to feel that you were always jealous of me. And then, a few years later, when Josh came along, he was the baby, and I was very much relieved, because then you transferred your jealousy to him.”

“I suppose that's true enough,” Joan says easily. “I was jealous. Of both of you. Because both of you had things as children that I never had. It was as simple as that.”

“Funny. Years of analysis, and I'm still trying to deal with your ability to intimidate me. Perhaps it's part of the cause of what Dr. Gold calls my too-introverted nature, why I must concentrate on immediate conflicts rather than the conflicts of childhood. Why I must think more about my will to live than my sexual drive. I remember being even more relieved when you went off to boarding school. It's good to talk about these things, Joan—to get these conflicts out in the open.”

“Listen, Mogie,” Joan says impatiently, “please don't misunderstand me. I don't want to do anything that would hurt Mother. Please believe that. The only thing I'm thinking of doing is using what I know to get her to think sensibly. Doesn't that make sense? What she should be doing now is disposing of some of these things—these
possessions
, these objects that are simply cluttering up her life—and turning the proceeds over to us children. For tax purposes, she should begin dividing up her estate right now. Before it's too late, and the government steps in to take a big fat slice. She's eighty-nine, Mogie. She can't last forever. What does she need with an art collection now? She hardly ever entertains anymore. What does she need that enormous apartment for—that takes five people to run it? She should be living in some smaller place. It's ridiculous—all that acreage for one old woman. What use does she have for all that Eaton stock? She can't take it with her. It should be distributed among the next generation. That means you, Mogie, and Christina, and me, and Babette, and even Josh. And her grandchildren—why, you may even have children of your own soon, Mogie, now that you've got Christina. It's the sensible way to do things, don't you see? All I want to do is talk to her, and try to make her use some sense.”

“I understand.”

“Do you realize what three hundred and twenty-five thousand shares of Eaton stock are worth in the marketplace?”

“I have a fair idea.”

“And the art collection? So that's my point. Imagine that amount reduced by half—at
least
—by taxes when she dies.”

“Yes.”

“Then do I have your support, Mogie? Can I talk to her? Try to convince her? Maybe apply a little pressure? In a nice way, of course.”

“What about Babette?”

“Babette will do whatever I tell her to do. First, I need your support. All I want is to be able to say to her, ‘Mogie agrees with me that if any of this came out a lot of people would be hurt.'”

Mogie smiles, still gazing at the tin militia. “Well, I do agree with that, Joan,” he says.

“Then you're with me?”

“Let me think about it for a day or so,” he says. “I'd like to talk it over with Dr. Gold.”

“
Don't
talk it over with Dr. Gold. He'll get it all involved with childhood conflicts.”

“Well, at least let me study these clippings.”

“Certainly. That's why I brought them. I have Xeroxes of everything at the office.”

“You know,” he says, “you're my sister, but you never fail to surprise me. I don't think I've ever understood you.”

“I think that may be because I'm tougher than you are, Mogie,” Joan says. “And I think that's because I had a mother who used to tell me stories of what it was like being a little Russian Jewish immigrant girl growing up on the Lower East Side.”

“The Litsky genes coming out,” he says, still smiling at the miniature battle scene. “But, you know, you were lucky. I never had a mother at all.” He pauses. “Say, I think that's a meaningful insight. I must remember to tell that to Dr. Gold.”

After Joan has said good night, Mogie Auerbach, who is in his early sixties but who, thanks to the ministrations of a caring therapist, now often manages to feel much younger, juicier, more resolved in his will to live, moves about the lower floor of his town house, turning out the lighted cases one by one. I never had a mother, he thinks. Joan did. I am the one who should be jealous. The thought gives new lightness to his step, and to his mood. And now, he thinks, Joan needs me. He leaves burning only the lamp by his big desk, where he returns and picks up the sheaf of clippings and slowly thumbs through them, whistling softly to himself. Then he stops. One photograph in one of the yellowed clippings strikes him in particular, and he goes back to it, studying it intently under the light, turning it this way and that. He rises slowly from his chair, the clipping still in his hand, and takes a deep breath. Help is needed.

And so he goes to the nearest window, draws aside the heavy drapes, raises the light-proof shade, and then lifts the window sash an inch or two, pausing, his chin cupped in one hand, to give the image of his face a fond sizing-up in the dark glass. A chill December wind blows in from Beekman Place. On the street, a private guard, making his rounds, does not look up. I would have made a splendid homosexual, Mogie thinks, having come to this conclusion from several clandestine encounters in the past. He returns to his desk, opens the lowest left-hand drawer fully, and presses a finger against the back panel of the drawer, which falls open. Inside this second compartment are a small cloisonné footed box, said to have come from the Palais de Versailles, an ivory pipe, and a box of kitchen matches. He removes these objects, and opens the box. Inside is what appears to be a small cake of clear golden soap. With a penknife Mogie scrapes and pares several shreds of this amber, waxy substance, and tamps these shavings carefully and compactly into the rounded bowl of the pipe. It is pure, uncut hashish from Izmir.

Mogie picks a match carefully out of the box, strikes it across the sole of his shoe, and lights the pipe, inhaling deeply. The night outside is very still.

He sits at his desk, studying the photograph. Somewhere in all of this, he thinks, lie the seeds of a delicious little plan. There they all are, the early members of Eaton & Cromwell's board—his father, Abe Litsky, Charles Wilmont, George Eaton, Cyrus Cromwell, much younger than when he had ever known them, but still recognizable. He sits back, draws again on his pipe, waiting for the rush of insight to come, for the seeds to germinate.

Suddenly he puts the clipping down. The answer is not there, not quite, but Mogie is quite sure where the answer can be found. When Mother broke up her house at The Bluff, Mogie fell heir to several family scrapbooks and, in his informal role as family historian, he has kept them up. They repose behind locked glass doors in one of his many bookcases. He rises and goes to the bookcase now, unlocks it with a key from his watch fob, and removes two albums. He returns with them to his desk, and slowly begins turning pages. Their lives fan out in front of him, in chronology, but with a gap, since the two photo albums he has chosen are one of the oldest and one of the most recent. He studies the children's faces, his own, Joan's, Babette's, Josh's, their parents' and the faces of their parents' old friends and business associates, Charles, Daisy Stevens—everyone, of course, except Prince—watching them all grow older as the pages turn. It is not long before he has selected two clear and well-focused snapshots that will suit his purpose perfectly—one from the older album, one from the newer. Ah, he thinks, sucking deeply on his pipe, ah, dear darling Joan, Queen of Greed, what elegant fun we are going to have with you. Ah, the luxury of mischief, especially when perpetrated by Mogie Auerbach, the Renaissance Man!

Beside his elbow, a buzzer sounds and, with his free hand, he picks up the interhouse phone. “Yes, my darling?”

“Aren't you ever coming up to bed, honey?”

“Just be patient, darling,” he says in a soothing voice. “Daddy's just finishing some work on his article. Then he'll be straight up.” And he adds, laughing softly, “And that pun
is
intended.” But first he marks the places in the albums with two white slips of paper, returns the albums to the bookcase, closes and locks the door with his little key, smiling and whistling softly to himself.

In another part of town, on West Tenth Street in Greenwich Village, where Karen Auerbach Collier Schofield has kept an apartment since her divorce, Karen lies naked across her bed with a cold washcloth folded across her forehead. Daryl Carter who sits, fully clothed, on the bed beside her, lifts the cloth gently, refolds it, and replaces it so that the cool side is down. “Feeling better now?” he asks her.

“Parks,” she says. “You work for the parks. There's a statue of my grandpa in a park. Lincoln Park. That's in Chicago.”

“You've just had a little too much to drink,” he says, his eyes carefully averted from her nude body.

“So what. What's that got to do with parks?” Her head rolls sideways toward him. “Aren't you going to make love to me?”

“I think—not tonight.”

“Or,” she giggles. “Or. Or.”

“Or what?”

“Or are you gay?” Giggling again, she says, “I think you are. I think Mr. Parks is gay.”

“Well, I'm not.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“Not.”

“I had an uncle who was gay.”

“Oh? What happened to him?”

Another giggle. “Family secret. Pots and pots.”

“Pots and pots of what?”

“Secrets. Pots and pots of family secrets.”

“I had no idea your family owned Eaton and Cromwell.”

“Yup. All of it. Pots and pots of it.”

“Golly. You must be really rich.”

“Oh, yeah.” She closes her eyes. “Especially Granny. Not my mother, though. She just spends it.”

“Your mother is—quite a woman.”

Her eyes flutter open. “Now you just leave my mother out of this,” she says. “What's she got to do with anything?”

“Sorry. But you brought her up.”

“Just leave her out of this,” she says. “Besides.”

After a pause, he says, “Besides what?”

“Besides,” she says. “Besides, you've made me forget what I was going to say.”

“And your family is—Jewish.”

“Not
Jewish,
” she says. “Jew-
ish
. That's different, you know. We're Jew
-ish
. Just a little bit Jew-
ish
. Just a little bish—I mean
bit
. Like a little bit south of North Carolina. Besides, my father wasn't Jewish. Just Mother.”

“I see.”

“But don't go bringing up my mother again. Besides, I think you're gay.”

He stands, and in the same movement reaches down and pulls the coverlet up across her. “I think I'd better go now,” he says. “Get some sleep.”

But Karen reaches up and seizes him tightly by the wrist, her long polished fingernails digging into his flesh, and says, “No. Stay. I want to talk to you. Fix me another drink.”

“I think you've had—”

“No.” She pulls him down beside her again. “Listen to me. No one ever listens to me. I want to tell you everything.”

He studies her pale face on the pillow, the blond hair, damp now and clinging to her temples from the cold washcloth, and the outline of her thin body under the coverlet. Tossed on a chair beside her bed is the pale green evening dress, the shoes, the underthings that he has helped her remove. For a moment or two he says nothing. Then he says, “Tell me how old you are.”

“Thirty-two.”