The Auerbach Will (7 page)

“That's not possible. You have a daughter in college.”

“Thirty-four, then.”

“Even so—”

“Besides, she was my husband's daughter by an earlier marriage.”

“But she has your same name.”

“Of course. She was my husband's
daughter
. I adopted her.”

“But your mother's over seventy. She must have been … well on … when you were born.”

“Right. She was.”

A hesitation. Then, “I think—you're older.”

Karen sits straight up in bed, the coverlet falling from her bare breasts. “There!” she says. “See? See the way you are? Always dragging my mother into it! And while you're asking all these nosy questions—how old are
you?
”

“Twenty-five. I can show you my driver's license.”

Her head falls back across the pillow again. “Oh, no,” she says. “I don't want to see your driver's license. Where did I meet you, anyway?”

“At P. J. Clarke's. Now I've really got to go.”

From the outer corners of her eyes, two nearly identical tears flow downward toward the pillow. Her hand still grips his wrist tightly. “Oh, no,” she says in a small voice. “Don't go. Lie down beside me. It's cold in here. Lie down beside me and keep me warm.” With her eyes tightly closed, she says, “In the old days—when I was a girl—I was considered to have—great—charm.”

With his free hand, he works as gently and yet as firmly as possible to release his wrist from her grip.

Three

“Who is that woman in the picture?” one of her grandchildren would occasionally ask when, years later, they stumbled on one of the old photograph albums with their brittle pages filled with yellowing snapshots, which used to lay about on tables at The Bluff.

“Her name was Daisy Stevens,” she would say. “She was an old family friend.”

Daisy Stevens's picture would begin turning up in the family albums in the year 1918. Essie remembers the year for two reasons. For one thing, it was in September of that year that Jake and Essie's second son was born. They had named the baby Martin, but by the time he got to Lawrenceville and Harvard he had permanently acquired the nickname Mogie. And it was in 1918 that Essie had first met Daisy Stevens, when she had come to a party at The Bluff, as they had named the Lake Forest estate, a party to celebrate the Armistice between Germany and the Allies that had been signed in November of that year.

This particular morning, in her apartment at 710 Park Avenue, Essie has been thinking of Daisy Stevens again, though she has heard little from her in nearly fifteen years. Not long after Jake died, she knows, she had received an announcement in the mail saying that Daisy had married a man named Burton St. George, a widower and, Essie believes, a stockbroker. Of her doings in the years since, Essie knows little, though Daisy would be a woman in her early eighties now. Still, Jake had not been particularly generous to Daisy in his will—a bequest of merely fifteen thousand dollars in cash—and, for whatever reasons Jake had for being so miserly with Daisy, Essie wonders if now is not the moment to set things to rights.

It has been a busy morning. Essie has spent it with her lawyer, Henry Coker, redrafting her own will. Jake had never trusted lawyers, and Essie supposes that she has inherited some of her distrust from him. “Make the decision, draw up the plan, and then tell the lawyers what you're going to do,” he used to say. “Then, by God, if anything goes wrong, let them straighten it out. If you ask them ahead of time what you ought to do, you'll never do anything.” Also, as he grew older, Jake became convinced that the lawyers were hovering around like vultures, ready to snatch up for themselves whatever crumbs there were from the estate. Still, Essie got along well with Henry Coker.

“I want a will,” she told him, “that can't be broken by any disgruntled member of my family, Henry.”

“That's exactly what we're going to give you, Essie,” he said.

“Can we insert a clause to the effect that, if any of my legatees attempts to take action to break the will, that legatee will be automatically disinherited?”

“We most certainly can.”

“Good. Now I want it made clear that immediately upon my death, or if I am taken to a hospital prior to my death, this apartment is to be locked and sealed. No one is to be admitted. The insurance company has a full inventory of everything that's here, of course, but I don't want anyone even trying to come in and snitch anything.”

Scribbling notes on a pad of yellow legal cap, Henry Coker nodded.

“Then, immediately upon my death, Mr. Hubbard or his representative from the Met is to be invited in, and he will be told to pick out anything he wants for the museum. Anything he wants. What he doesn't want is all to be sold at auction. I don't want any of them quarreling over my things, you see.”

“I understand.”

“Now, Joan and Babette and Mogie will all be taken care of comfortably, of course, and their children and my great-granddaughter. But the major share—fifty percent—of my estate I want to go to my youngest son, Joshua. You can write it in such a way as to say this is not to be considered a case of favoritism. It is simply because Josh is the only one who's ever really given a damn about the company.”

“Yes,” said Henry Coker.

“And now,” said Essie, “I'd like to bring up a point. I'd like to ask you a question in confidence.”

“Everything we talk about today is in the strictest confidence,” Henry said.

Essie hesitated. “Let me put it this way,” she said. “If any member of my family should claim—should claim to have evidence, or should threaten to claim—that my son Joshua, who will be my principal heir, is not a legal member of this family, could they, using that, try to break the will?”

“I'm not sure I follow you, Essie,” Henry Coker said. “What do you mean by ‘not a legal member of the family'?”

“Just what I said, Henry.”

“Do you mean that Joshua was adopted? Or—”

“No, no. I meant—not legal.”

Henry Coker's eyebrows rose just slightly. “Oh,” he said. “I think I see what you mean, Essie. You mean that Joshua is not, was not—”

“Was not Jacob Auerbach's son.”

Coker cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said. “Well, of course Joshua has already inherited substantially from his father—I mean from your late husband.”

“I know. But I'm talking about what I want to give him. If that came out, would it make a difference?”

“Only,” he said, “in the sense that someone might try to blackmail him with that knowledge. But I don't think Joshua Auerbach is the sort of man to sit back and let himself be blackmailed over something that is, after all, a private and secret matter between you and your Creator.”

“And now you,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Will it make any
legal
difference—with the will?”

“None whatever. After all, Joshua was raised as Jacob Auerbach's legal son. Jacob Auerbach's name is on the birth certificate—even if he may have been, as you suggest, illegitimate.”

“Are you absolutely certain, Henry? I want to be very clear on that point.”

“Absolutely. For one thing, after your death Joshua's parentage can only be a matter of speculation. For another, your will is what it says it is—
your will
. Under the terms of
your will
, you can do whatever you
will
with your estate. You can disinherit all of them, and leave everything to a hostelry for homeless cats—if that's your
will.
”

Essie sighed. “Good,” she said. “I'm glad to hear that. As you can imagine, it's been something that's been weighing on my mind.”

“I understand,” he said.

“How much is it, Henry?” she asked him.

“How much is what?”

“My estate. How much am I worth?”

He smiled and spread his hands. “Dear Essie, I really don't know,” he said. “I can't give you a firm figure. Of course I could have the office put together some figures, and get back to you in a couple of weeks.”

“No, no,” she said. “Don't bother. I guess I'd rather not know.”

“I know this—it's vast,” he said.

“Yes. That's the trouble with it, isn't it?”

Henry Coker had then cleared his throat. “But to get back to the point you brought up earlier,” he said. “About Joshua's parentage. There is one small problem that you should be aware of, Essie.”

She sat forward in her chair. “Yes? What's that?”

“Your late husband's trust instrument, under which Joshua and the other three children derive income.”

“What about it?”

“I shouldn't have said that there
is
a problem there, but that there
might
be.”

“Please explain what you mean.”

“Well, unfortunately—unfortunately, the way the instrument is worded—and I know because I drafted it—”

“Please get to the point, Henry. You're upsetting me.”

“Your late husband's trust is directed specifically ‘To my son Joshua Auerbach, et cetera, et cetera.' Therefore, if anyone—one of the other beneficiaries of the trust, for example—should have reason to believe that Joshua is
not
Jacob Auerbach's son, the trust could be challenged. On that technicality.”

“And broken?”

“There's that possibility. I'm not saying that such a challenge
would
be successful, but that it
might
be. Similarly, it might not.”

“But it would have to be proven, wouldn't it?”

“Presumably, yes.”

“How could it be proven, Henry?”

He hesitated. “I don't want to ask too many questions, because I don't want to know the answers. I don't want to know who the boy's natural father is, I'm not asking you that. But just tell me this. Is the boy's father living?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, unfortunately there are ways of proving paternity. Rather recent medical procedures. A complicated series of blood tests performed on the mother, the child, and the alleged father. It is called the Human Lymphodite Antigen test. Courts have ordered it performed in cases where there was—a question of paternity.”

Essie said nothing.

“I don't want to alarm you, Essie. But since you've told me this, I felt it was my duty to alert you to this possibility, however remote, that there could be a challenge—not to your will, but to Joshua's trust from his father, or rather from your late husband.”

“And the trust is everything he has.”

“Well, very nearly everything.”

“And they could get their hands on it.”

“They?”

“Joan. Mogie. Babette.”

“Put it this way—they would have a legal basis on which to try to do something of the sort.”

“And it would be just like them. Thank you, Henry. You've eased my mind on one score, and given me a whole new worry on another.”

“Would they really be that vindictive, Essie?”

“Oh, yes. Joan would, certainly. She hates Josh. Babette—perhaps not. Babette is too interested in seeing her name in the society pages. And Mogie—well, Mogie is a loony, you know that.”

“Do any of them suspect?”

“I don't know. I'm not sure.”

“Surely, if any of them did, you'd have heard about it before now.”

“Yes, that's a point.”

“I'm sure your secret is safe, Essie,” Henry Coker said. “It's certainly safe with me. What you've told me this morning will never go beyond the four walls of this room. I wouldn't worry if I were you. In fact, I urge you not to.”

Then Henry had left, kissing her hand in his courtly way, as though he had told her nothing at all of importance. And though he had told her not to worry, not to worry if he were she, Essie kept thinking that she was
not
Henry Coker, and what is a greater potential cause for worry than to be told not to worry? But then she had thought of Daisy Stevens, and wondered whether she should telephone Henry at his office and ask him to insert another bequest for Daisy. Of course such a thing would probably come as a great surprise to Daisy. But it would be done in the spirit of what Essie's father used to talk about,
zedakah
—righteousness. And thinking of Daisy reminded her of something she had not told Henry Coker—something that might, in fact, be very useful, the card up the sleeve, the chip that might win the game if and when the time came for it to be played. After all, Daisy was a part of the puzzle, too. Essie had buzzed for Mary Farrell and asked her to try to locate the whereabouts of Mrs. Daisy Stevens St. George. With that project under way, Essie found herself feeling somewhat better. “
Cherchez la femme
,” she had said with a wink to Mary Farrell.

During the day, too, and for the past several days, there have been a number of telephone calls from Joan, which Essie has chosen not to take. Though nearly a week has passed, she has not yet forgiven Joan for her performance at the tree-trimming, and Mary had offered Joan various excuses—that Mrs. Auerbach was out shopping, that Mrs. Auerbach was at lunch, that Mrs. Auerbach was taking a nap, and so on. And, needless to say, in the meantime these unsuccessful telephone attempts and unreturned calls have not created an atmosphere of serenity at the South Street offices of the publisher of the New York
Express
, Joan Auerbach McAllister, or, as she calls herself professionally, Mrs. Joan Auerbach.

“I know that that bitch is lying,” Joan says to her secretary after the latest failed try to reach her mother. “I know that Mother's right there in the apartment.”

It is at this moment that Richard McAllister steps into her office. “Can I talk to you about South Africa?” he asks her.

Joan presses her fingertips against her temples and says, “
Please
, Richard, not now. I've got to talk to Mother first, before we make any decisions. It's important.”