A Family Trust

by Ward Just

  She thought, Guesswork, my eye. “Makes complete sense to me,” she said.

  The old lawyer looked at her, smiling slightly. “I thought it might.”

  “Yes,” Bohn said, mystified at the turn the conversation had taken. He knew Tony only slightly and did not know Jake at all.

  “It happens sometimes,” she said.

  Townsend nodded. “True.”

  “Damned shame,” Bohn said.

  Townsend said, “Sometimes.”

  “Well, that’s what businesses are there for,” the banker said. “You know that better than anyone, Elliott.”

  “No,” Townsend said. “You should. But you forgot.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Bohn said.

  “Well.” Townsend said, not letting go. “You should’ve known, dammit, They tell me your new partners gave you a hard time on the bond deal.”

  Bohn sighed. “But it went through, Elliott. The point is, it went through. Only difference is, you’ve got to go to the head office and make a pitch to those apes. Stand there like a clerk. They always say yes, but sometimes they say no. Sometimes they say no just to let you know who’s in charge, who’s got forty-nine and who’s got fifty-one percent. They do that from time to time just to throw a note over the wall—”

  Dana had turned away, distracted by the television set. The women had moved toward and now surrounded it. The men were looking over the shoulders of the women. Now she and the lawyer and Harry Bohn moved close, looking between the women to watch, the screen, and listen to the conversation.

  “... thinks her father is no different from any other father in this block. It is slightly different because every other father isn’t in Alaska one day and California the next. She saw someone with a ... button the other day and was amazed to see them wearing a picture of Daddy but she thought it was completely natural, that she loves her father so much that everyone should wear his picture. Would you like to see her?”

  “Oh, I’d like to very much,” Charles Collingwood said. ‘Are you sure it’s all right for us to intrude on the young lady7”

  Jacqueline Kennedy said, “we will see, Charles. Keep your fingers crossed.”

  Charles Coltingwood said, “Hello, Carotine.”

  “Can you say bent?” Kennedy asked her daughter.

  “Hello,” Caroline Kennedy said.

  “Here,” her mother said, “do you want to sit tip in bed with me?”

  “Oh, isn’t she a darling,” Charles Collingwood said.

  “Now took at the three ears,” said the mother.

  “What is the dolly’s name?” asked the daughter.

  “All right,” Jacqueline Kennedy said. “What is the dolly’s name?”

  Caroline Kennedy said, “I didn’t name her yet.”

  “You didn’t name her yet?” Jacqueline Kennedy said.

  “No,” Caroline Kennedy stated.

  “When are you going to name her?” Jacqueline Kennedy inquired.

  “ts that her favorite?” Charles Collingwood asked, referring to the dolly belonging to the daughter.

  “It is her favorite as of this minute,” the mother replied,

  “Oh!” cried Charles Coilingwood. “Just like all little girls.”

  Oh sweet Jesus Christ, Charles Rising muttered. This is a goddamned cMtrftge. Charles Collingwood! Caroline Kennedy and her dolls! He had met Collingwood once at a seminar at the ANPA or the AP managing editors, one or the other, and he had seemed to be a stand-up guy. A fine war correspondent and a great storyteller. Charles had heard him for years on the radio, he and Murrow and Sevareid and the others, Lowell Thomas, Fulton Lexis, Jr. What was Charles Collingwood doging interviewing a child? He’d interviewed Hitler, Churchlll ... Oh, isn’t she a darling, Charles mimicked. The men laughed but Lee glared at him. 5hhhh, his wite said, He turned to her, irritated. He saw with amazement that his wife was stiling at the screen. She looked as if she were about to cry. He walked stiffly to the bar.

  “Isn’t she sweet,” Lee said. The others murmured agreement and Charles, pouring whiskey, had to agree that she was. Most three-year-old girls were.

  “just darling,” Tony’s wife said, “Look at those curls! Isn’t it a riot?”

  “It’s a riot,” Charles said. “Would someone tell me what this program is called?”

  “Shhhh,” Lee said. “It’s called Person to Person. In a minute, Kennedy himself is coming on. Then you can get the anger out of your tme.”

  Charles looked at the others. All of them were staring at the set with fixed grins. Kennedy “himself.” What the Christ did that mean? Who did she think he was, God? Charles Rising groaned audibly and turned toward the screen again.

  “... we will go and join him now,” Jacqueline Kennedy said.

  “Oh, that will be a treat for him,” Charles Collingwood said.

  “Shall we go see Daddy?” the mother asked.

  “Yes,” Caroline Kennedy said.

  “Can you take us to the parlor?” the mother asked,

  “Yes,” Caroline Kennedy said.

  “And we will go see Daddy?” the mother asked.

  “Yes,” Caroline Kennedy said.

  Charles Rising looked at his wife. Her hand was at her mouth and her eyes were shining. Emily Bohn and his brother Tony’s wife were standing poised, their heads to one side, as if they were witnessing a christening or some other religious event. It was Mitch’s wife Sheila who stared at the screen in sullen fury; everything there was out of reach. Charles watched the others. They were enchanted by the ambiance, the pretty young mother, the golden-haired daughter, the house in Georgetown with its antiques and quiet paintings and tasteful appointments, and Jacqueline Kennedy looking cool and selfpossessed. It was Collingwood, usually so smooth, who seemed nervous and ill at ease. Charles looked at her and tried to imagine her as a president’s wife. Too young, he thought. He looked at his wife again. Kennedy “himself” was on the screen now, talking to Collingwood. The newsman seemed more relaxed now, talking man to man with the candidate. His manner said, Now we can get down to real business, the women are out of the way But the reference was still there.. Then Kennedy was talking about the primaries, the four years of campaigning, his own family, his father and grandfather “in” politics. Welt, this would do it, Charles thought. The son of a bitch would win the ejection. Nothing could prevent it. Lee Rising was smiling through tears; Sheila Rising was watching with narrowed, envious eyes. Dana was looking at him, grinning widely. She nodded at Sheila and at the television screen and then she shrugged and levered her fist, thumb down. Charles laughed out loud; at that moment, he could have kissed his daughter.

  Lee said, “She has wonderful taste.”

  “Wonderful,” Sheila Rising said, her anger barely disguised.

  “The house, the way it looks. She has the background for it.”

  No, Charles thought. He has the background. Rum-running and the films and a crooked mayor of Boston ... Charles imagined sueddenly that all over American, wherever television sets were on, damp-eyed women were saying that Kennedy’s wife jacquehiie had the background—whatever that meant—to be a president’s wife. Shit, he thought,. Nixon didn’t have a chance, poor bastard. And Pat Nixon, as gracious a My—My, quiet, kept to the background. There wasn’t a woman in the room who would vote tor John F. Kennedy, thank God. They had not yet come to that. But they would not mind if he was elected because he had her, the stylish Jacquetine. And that was what won or lost selections, not minding if the other man won.

  “Pretty soupy, isn’t it?” Dana whispered into his ear. He put his arm around her and sighed and shook his head. Kennedy was telling Charles Coliingwood about his service on the Senate Rackets Cormmittee and how “uncomfortable” the hearing had made jemmy Hoffa.

  “What is this, Dana?” He was genuinely puzzled, it was as if he were watching a commercial for the Democratic campaign. “Isn’t there a law—”

  She laughed, quietly because the others were attentive to the progra
m. “No, Daddy No laws. They’re doing the same thing with Nixon in few weeks.”

  “But Nixon can’t match-” He did not finish the sentence. He wanted to say that it wasn’t equal, that Nixon couldn’t match the house and the furnishings and the infant daughter and the young wife, all of them “attractive,” Pat Nixon could not draw tears from an oatherwise sensible woman living in the Midwest. “It makes me laugh, took at your mother!” Lee Rising had moved forward on the edge of her seat and was staring at the screen, listening carefully.

  “Look at your friend Eurich.”

  Charles turned. Bill Eurich was leaning against the bookcase watching. He held his glass under his chin and his eyes were narrow and alive, his mouth parted in a slight smile. He was watching it all with the impartiality of a camera, and while he watched he listened and there was a kind of hush around him, like a man witnessing aerialists or magicians. He looked at Charles and winked, then returned to the screen. Charles thought there must be something there; Irish didn’t waste his time, and Irish was truly listening, and listening with respect.

  Elliott Townsend was at his elbow. “About the bond issue,” he said. “One word before we break up—”

  “Did you watch that?”

  The lawyer turned back to the screen. “Part of it,” he said.

  “Doesn’t it make you mad as hell?”

  “No,” he said. “Why should it?”

  “It’s crap like this that wins elections,” Charles said heatedly. He lowered his voice when the women turned toward him, fingers to their lips.

  “Hell, boy,” Townsend said. “Nobody watches television.”

  Dana turned. toward him, incredulous. “Nobody watches television?”

  “Of course not, it’s a boob tube.” Then the lawyer took her father into a corner. She could barely hear his slow, logical voice explaining something to do with a bond issue. She could sense her father’s impatience. She watched the screen. The child had returned and conversation ceased in the Rising library. Even the lawyer and her father turned reluctantly toward the television set. She listened, half amused, half fascinated.

  “... hello, there’s Caroline,” Charles Collingwood said.

  “Hi, Caroline,” her father said.

  “Do you want Daddy to read you a story?” Jacqueline Kennedy said.

  “Come on over.” Senator Kennedy said.

  “Read these stories to you?” her mother asked. “All right, which one do you want him to read?”

  “That one,” Caroline Kennedy said.

  “What’s ‘that one’?” Charles Collingwood asked. “Looks like a good one.”

  “What is the name of that one?” Jacqueline Kennedy inquired.

  “That is Turkish Fairy Tales,’” John F, Kennedy said. “Do you want to come up here and we’ll read it?”

  Dana heard her father groan and mutter something obscene under his breath. There was a chorus of shhhhhs from the davenport. But her father and Townsend were looking again at the screen, as were the women and her two uncles and her cousin and the Bohns and Bill Eurich, whose narrow eyes were missing nothing. Her mother was literally rapt in front of the screen, fascinated with the transaction. The room was dead silent except for her father and the lawyer, who had pulled away to the far corner of the room. On the screen Charles Collingwood was making his farewells. Very good of you, he was saying, to let us came by and call on you today. Everyone was smiling, the people on the screen and the people in the room. Then a commercial replaced Charles Collingwood and conversation began to build again. The women were talking about Jacqueline Kennedy’s clothes and the furnishings of the house in Georgetown. No, they agreed, they did not like the senator’s politics or the party he belonged to. But they all liked his wife and his daughter and his surroundings. And God knows he was a handsome man, probably too handsome for his own good. Bill Eurich stood in the background, saying nothing but listening carefully; his drink, lukewarm now, was forgotten in his hand. Above the female voices she heard Mitch talking to Harry Bohn. She heard the words “labor unions,” “balanced budget,” “socialists,” and finally “goddamned menace.” Suddenly she wished that McGee were there, McGee who knew some of the senator’s men and had given money to the campaign even though he was a Republican. All of this would be new to McGee and she wondered how he would react to it.

  “How are you, Dana?”

  It was Jake, handing her a drink. She thanked him and said she was fine. He gestured in the direction of her father and Elliott Townsend and said, “I don’t think they cared much for the TV program.”

  She said, “It doesn’t matter anyhow.”

  “Why not?”

  She said, “No one watches television. That’s what Elliott said, ‘Nobody watches television.’” She shook her head, laughing.

  “He really said that?”

  “He said it.”

  “Well, as you can see. Everyone here is just as much in touch as they always were.”

  “Looks like it,” she said.

  He leaned close to her. “I may vote for him.”

  “Shhh,” she said. “Don’t let them hear you.” Then, “How’s the law?”

  “Hard work.”

  “What are you doing? Corporate?”

  “Almost entirely. All the businesses around here, the head office may be in New York but they find they need local counsel.” He smiled. “We’ve seen to that.” He looked over his shoulder at the old lawyer in conversation with Charles Rising. “Of course Elliott handles most of the I’s legal stuff. We need a third man, actually. If we wanted to, we could add six men. There’s enough work for six but Elliott wants to keep it small. Tidy,” He sighed and drank. “Close.”

  “Jake,” she said. “I’m surprised you didn’t go into the paper.” He shrugged and his eyes moved away, and then back to her. “Though it was probably for the best.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She didn’t know why she said it; it seemed the thing to say. She looked at him and smiled. “There’s an awful lot of family in that business.”

  “That’s what it’s there for,” he said. “But what with one thing and another my dad didn’t think it would be a good idea. Of course he didn’t insist. You know Dad. But it seemed to mean quite a lot to him, that I practice law. And Elliott’s almost family Close enough anyhow.”

  This was all new to her and she did not reply for a moment. Jake was so earnest, towering over her now; she noticed he was dressed in corporate gray. She asked, “Why?”

  “He thought I’d get frozen out. In a word.”

  “Well—”

  “He didn’t want me to devote my life to something and then get frozen out.”

  She felt his hostility and moved back a step. “What’ll happen to the I, then?”

  “I don’t know You tell me. That’s for your father to decide, he’s the one with control. It’s his candy store. Is it ever.”

  “All right then. I’ll put it another way What do you suppose he’ll do? When the time comes to do something.”

  Jake said, “Nobody knows.”

  “I suppose they don’t.”

  “Frank was the logical one ... ”

  She listened to him talk about Frank and wondered if anybody had ever thought of her brother as anything other than an heir. It was possible that he had been an excellent soldier; the letter from his commanding officer indicated that he was. Though of course he had been frightened. Perhaps he had been fantastic in bed. though he was only eighteen when he went to Korea and might not’ve known. But men knew. Even inexperienced men knew that. She said, “Yes,” when he finished.

  “But I’ll tell you this,” Jake said. “He ought to make some decision soon, and let it be known. Because people are nervous. There’s been so much movement in the town, there are only a few things that are continuous, if you know what I mean. Townsend is continuous; Marge Reilly is continuous; and the I is continuous. Bohn’s bank was continuous but it isn’t any longer. There’s talk h
e’s on his way out. Between Mrs. Reilly and Elliott and your father the town somehow gets run. Though sometimes I’m not sure who’s running who. Whether they’re running the town or whether the town’s running them. They’ve completely neglected the political picture, Elliott’s too busy and out of touch and your father doesn’t care. Never has cared, politics has always bored him. But now there’s a new cast of characters, some good, some bad. Somebody ought to be paying attention and nobody is. The state’s attorney is a thief—”

  She put her arm on his shoulder. He had begun to talk faster and faster. “The state’s attorney has always been a thief.”

  “Well, that’s not true.”

  “It’s true,” she said.

  “You really are different,” he said suddenly. He stepped back and looked at her at arm’s length. “My parents always said you were the different one in the family. You always had an opinion about everything and that opinion was always different from anyone else’s, Always, even when you were little. What do you know about Dement state’s attorneys?”

  “Well, I grew up here, for one thing.” She motioned to the corner where her father and Townsend were deep in conversation. “I have ears. Eyes.”

  “Well, they haven’t ‘always been crooked.’ Our grandfather saw to that. And the one we have now is crooked as a stick and no one’s prepared to do anything about it because of course he’s a nice guy, they always are, and because he’s been helpful in other ways.” Jake paused and looked at her, waiting for a reply of some kind. She heard the women on the davenport, talking now of food. Mitch and the banker were at the liquor cabinet. She said finally, “What do you mean, ‘different’?”

  He said, “In a minute. The thing is. They believe everything is under control, the way it’s always been. They think it’s just the same, only bigger. That’s what they think but they’re wrong.” He turned away. “The truth is, it’s falling apart.”