The Will

by Harvey Swados

  “I doubt that any of the rest of this junk is worth anything.”

  “Still, there are the rolls.” Ray nudged one with his carpet slipper. “So you see, you never can tell. And there I go, talking just like Uncle Max and Papa!”

  “It’s no wonder.”

  “But I haven’t been close to them, not really, not for years. People thought they were strange. What did that mean? Only that they wouldn’t disguise their weaknesses. When they were dirty and disorderly you could see it and smell it. And when they were featherheaded they let you know about it, whether it was Papa with his inventions or Uncle Max with Ann Sheridan. That’s why it was hard on me, the filth, the useless things piled up, the miserliness—everything about them reminded me of my own weaknesses. The only way I could protect myself was not to become involved in their daily existence, and to build my own instead.”

  “I cleared out, why didn’t you?” Even as he threw out the challenge, Ralph knew that it was ludicrously insufficient for a man who, he now began to see, was as frighteningly complicated as the timer for an engine of destruction. Nevertheless he could think of no other way to proceed, so he persisted. “I wrote you more than once to get out.”

  “And I have. It’s only that you and I took different paths. You went out”—Ray’s teeth gleamed in the tangle of dark hair as he gestured sacerdotally with raised index finger—“I went up. And that was a matter of compromise as well as of convenience.”

  “You make everything sound reasonable, but it proves nothing. Compromise with what?”

  “With my conscience. It was convenient for me to have them look after me, get me my books and groceries. But they needed me too.” Innocently—but how innocent was he?—he stared at Ralph, and wound up almost pleadingly, “They needed the feeling, Papa especially, that there was somebody who needed them, who wouldn’t laugh at them, or die. Or walk out on them.”

  Ralph was enraged. The gall of the kid, to pass judgment on him, and worse, to lump him together with Mel.

  Then Raymond, as if completely unaware that he had said anything out of the way, extended his arm in a comradely fashion and declared, in another of his sudden turnabouts, “But I know you want to talk about practical matters. Let’s go see if we can find a place to sit down.”

  He led Ralph, who had suddenly been deprived of anything to protest about, through a four-pillared hallway, forested between the pillars with narrow dowels spooled at intervals with varnished wooden balls like those of an abacus. They had been stylish, if just as pointless, forty or fifty years earlier; now they supported moldering ranks of rusted umbrellas and fishing rods. Ralph could not remember the layout of the house, but in any case there was no longer any visible differentiation between foyer and living room, dining room and kitchen. All had become one teetering warehouse for this garbage museum of discarded artifacts appropriated and reinvested with significance by Max Land. Ralph followed his brother through the mossy, greening forest of poles, canes, and rods, but tripped over an unforeseen heap of what appeared to be the feed bags of dray horses: at least, an odor like oats came up to his nostrils as he drew back his foot gingerly from the pile of rotting burlap and leather.

  “There were some school desks around that Uncle Max picked up one day.” Ray peered about. “They might do.”

  “Isn’t that a couch under all those aprons?”

  “Those are kids’ Halloween costumes. Remember the cockeyed man, Evil Eye, that ran the candy store? He went out of business and Uncle Max bought up his stock. Say, here’s a couple of church pews. Give me a hand with these folders, will you, Ralphie?”

  Stung by the diminutive which no one had used in a decade or more, Ralph hastened to help his brother clear a place on the pews. Still in his bulky storm coat and gloves, he managed to pick up only one accordion-pleated folder while Ray was energetically brushing others to the floor. That one, however, was relatively new and unsoiled.

  “Wait!” he ordered. “Don’t throw those around.”

  Ray’s smile was amiable but devastating. “So you really are another Land.”

  Ralph replied stiffly, “They look recent, they might have Papa’s papers in them.”

  “So?”

  Ralph seated himself next to his brother on the scarred pew, took off his gloves, and opened his coat. “Don’t you care?”

  “It’s Papa I miss, not his papers.”

  “A nice sentiment, but not very practical.” Ralph checked himself, and began again, in what he hoped was a more friendly tone. “Ray, you’re going to have to get fixed up a little for Papa’s funeral.”

  “Why?”

  “You can’t expect to go like that.”

  Ray’s shoulders humped forward, his hands hanging loosely between his thighs. He replied simply, “I’m not going at all.”

  Ralph bit his lower lip until he tasted blood. Angry accusations crowded forward, but he swallowed them with the blood. What was most maddening was the air of sanctimoniousness that his brother exuded, from his tangle of beard to the holes in his slippers. Who in God’s name did he think he was, to play the saint when he didn’t even have the decency to bury his father properly?

  “I thought one reason you stayed on in this house,” Ralph said, with as much reasonableness as he could summon, “was that you loved Papa.”

  “There were so many reasons. It’s hard to talk about even one without sounding like a crank. I did love Papa—but I don’t see what that’s got to do with going to his funeral.”

  “A simple mark of respect, that’s what.”

  Ray smiled slyly. “Did you respect Papa?”

  Ralph leaped to his feet. A grease-stained faience vase, decorated with blue shepherdesses in bell skirts, toppled to the floor from the lid of a hand-winding Brunswick phonograph. “You know damn well I didn’t. Why should I have? Look at the life he gave Mama. Look at the way we all grew up. Look at yourself now, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Then why did you come home for the funeral?”

  “Somebody had to. I suspected I couldn’t count on you. How would it look, to leave everything to Dr. Stark?”

  “I don’t care how things look. I care how they are. Dr. Stark doesn’t mind making the arrangements. I would.”

  “There are times when you have to do things whether you want to or not. That’s life, and it’s damn well time you found out about it.”

  “But I’m afraid, Ralphie. Instead of getting more beautiful, life grows more ugly and dangerous every day. And me along with it. Can’t you understand that I’m afraid not just of the world, but of myself too? Haven’t you ever been afraid of yourself? If you had, you’d sympathize.”

  “I find this very funny,” Ralph said bitterly. “Here I stand in this junk shop, this filth heap, pleading with you to grow up and assume your responsibilities. In return you intimate that I’m unreasonable. If you’re the reasonable one, tell me something: what am I supposed to say this afternoon when everybody asks where you are?”

  “Nobody knows that I’m still here except Mama’s cousins. People won’t ask where I’ve gone, not at the funeral. You don’t even have to be afraid that they’ll ask after Mel.”

  That was exactly what he did fear, and he hadn’t even been able to broach it to Dr. Stark, who might only have sneered, or gone into one of his self-indulgent long-winded analyses. How could Ray have known? And how did he manage to turn it so easily to his advantage, dealing himself the upper hand even while he pleaded for an extension on his eviction notice?

  Ralph sat down next to him once again. “Supposing I do cover up for you this afternoon. Let’s face it, sooner or later you’ve got to come down out of the attic.”

  “Why do I have to face such things? Why?” His voice rose. “Why? Why?”

  It occurred to Ralph that maybe he had been seeking to delude himself about his brother’s sanity through some simple mechanism that Dr. Stark would be happy to explain; maybe Ray really was as crazy as a loon, despite his recurring and receding rea
sonableness. But how did you handle someone who was crazy like that? He could think of nothing better at the moment than countering with more reasonableness.

  “First of all,” he said, “both Uncle Max and Papa are gone now. You’re alone, in an oversize pigsty.”

  “If I want to stay for a while, it’s partly because I really did love them both. They thought I was kind of crazy too, imagine! But they didn’t mind, they wanted this to be my home and they were willing to leave me alone. Does that sound funny, to love someone because he leaves you alone, so you can think and wonder?” Ray put his fists to his cheeks, like a small boy, and then rubbed his knuckles into his eyes.

  “That must be why a lot of people marry. To be taken care of, and at the same time to be left alone. That’s probably the ideal existence for some, I imagine. But now the old boys are gone and you’ve got a pressing problem in this place. And you’re my responsibility.”

  “I’m so happy to hear you say that!” Ray cried, and clutched Ralph by the arm.

  Even though he had already heard about it, Ralph was astonished at the strength of his little brother. He could feel the powerful grip of the boy’s fingers through the gabardine of his storm coat, through its wool liner, through his tweed suit, through his shirt sleeve. Dismayed, he almost tried to yank his arm free, but desisted. He knew he would be physically unable to, and then how much more ludicrous he would look! Or was that what Ray wanted? How could you know, with someone who was practically a stranger, in a sense reborn for you, whether he was truly ingenuous or whether this desperate clutching was in reality a considered sacrifice, a preliminary gambit in a prolonged maneuver?

  Ray was saying, “You don’t know how I’ve been hoping that you’d say that to me. There’s no reason why you can’t stay on here for a while, is there? You said you had to go through all Uncle Max’s and Papa’s papers.” With his free hand he indicated the accordion-pleated folders at their feet. “I’m sure you’ll be occupied settling up the estate with Martin Stark, and that’ll take some doing.”

  “With Martin?”

  “He’s more or less the family lawyer.” Ray laughed unsteadily and released him. “Except that nothing seems to be exactly legal in this household.”

  Ralph sat silent. He had come expecting he knew not exactly what, but prepared if necessary to bully or bluff or even father the kid in order to do what had to be done so he could get out as soon as possible. He felt now instead that it was Ray who was preparing to define the terms of their connection. For even though he had proposed that Ralph take up where Papa had left off, he was not simply asking to be fathered; he was suggesting that Ralph become his accomplice, indefinitely, in this unnatural clandestine existence.

  “It wouldn’t be too bad, Ralphie. You’d be comfortable here, and undisturbed, while you do what you have to.”

  “Would you help me do what I have to?”

  Again Ray gave him that clear yet guarded glance, simple yet inordinately sophisticated. “I wouldn’t get in your way.” He gestured upward with his thumb. “I’d be up there.”

  “Don’t you want to see the estate settled?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “If you looked out the window—”

  “Oh, I do!” Ray laughed. In that moment he sounded like a beardless boy. “I do every day, from my little attic window. You’d be amazed how much I see.”

  “Then you must see that this house is doomed.”

  “Doomed?”

  “It’s going to have to come down.”

  “Then I’ll come down with it. Sooner that than profit from it.”

  “Haven’t you been profiting from it for years?”

  “Yes, I have, I have, it’s true.” Ray’s face shone with sudden sweat. “But I couldn’t help it. Is that so awful, just because it’s not logical?”

  What was galling was that Ray didn’t have to be logical. All he had to do to queer things was to sit there, stubbornly, on the slab-sided wobbly pew.

  “Regardless of how you feel about it, matters are going to have to be brought to a conclusion.”

  “To a conclusion, yes.” Ray peered into Ralph’s eyes, his neck thrust oddly forward. “But not regardless of how I feel about it. You don’t mean that, do you, Ralphie?”

  Reluctantly Ralph shook his head—and was embarrassed to be rewarded with a spontaneous, powerful, and woolly embrace.

  “Please, let me take your coat. It’s not cold in here.” Ray helped him out of his overcoat and asked pleadingly, “Can we forget, for a little while, why you came?”

  There was nothing to be gained, Ralph thought, and maybe a good deal to be lost, by antagonizing the boy, who was all mixed up between strong bombs and weak relatives, and so inside out about money that even the discovery that there was a sizable estate might impel him to do something foolish, or even destructive.

  So he said, “You’re right, Ray.” His brother struck him suddenly, not as frightening, but as pathetic in his eagerness to be pals, his paws clutching the storm coat, his mop of black hair, wiry like their mother’s, standing every which way on his head, his threadbare bridegroom’s trousers glinting as their satin stripes caught the light. “Let’s get to know each other. We have to try, we can’t count on anyone else.”

  After that, things went better. Ray led the way into the kitchen, threading through stacks of sheet music, bound sets of Popular Mechanics, and boxes marked “Lotto” and “Parcheesi,” and insisted on preparing sandwiches and coffee, as well as tomato soup, which he made with milk and stirred carefully as he talked, taking care that it should not be lumpy.

  Despite all the hair and the moth-eaten clothes, he was meticulous.

  The kitchen was not like the rest of the house. The ceiling had been painted white not too long ago, even the tiles had been washed. Everything was old—the refrigerator’s round guts were coiled away atop the box, the stove’s flue slanted across the room and out the window to the courtyard, the kitchen table top on which he leaned was not plastic but baked enamel—but everything was clean.

  “So you’ve been in charge of the kitchen.” Ralph blew at his steaming soupspoon.

  “No, this was Papa’s domain. He wouldn’t let Uncle Max store anything here. This was their center, just like the kitchen used to be when I was little and we lived behind the drugstore, remember? The main difference was, Mama wasn’t here, or you … or Mel. So Uncle Max never brought his junk in here, just groceries, newspapers, and accounts. Late in the evening, after supper, when the store was closed, they’d sit here like we are, and go over the books before doing the dishes. And when Papa’s eyes began to go bad—I think he never saw that truck—Uncle Max would read to him. Walter Lippmann, or David Lawrence, over a glass of tea. And sometimes your letters. When they came.”

  “They should have put a fan in here.” Ralph’s eyes were smarting. “But at least they had your company.”

  “No, they didn’t. I couldn’t eat what they did. Papa and Uncle Max had to have their soup meat just about every night. You remember? But I’ve become a vegetarian.”

  Ralph took a bite of the cheese sandwich, which Ray had prepared carefully with lettuce and sharp mustard, and glanced across the table at his younger brother, who was turning a cup of soup around in his fingers with evident embarrassment. “A vegetarian? What brought that on?”

  “Well, all the killing,” Ray replied hesitantly. “I read that more human beings and more animals have been destroyed in this century than in all human history. And I thought, what right do I have to add to it? I don’t need the flesh of killed animals. I’m strong enough without it. Too strong.”

  Ralph shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t do you any harm. But you certainly are missing things.” He surveyed his brother and could not refrain from adding, “Boy, are you missing things!”

  Ray’s cheeks flushed above the curly beard. “I don’t think so. Really.” He was speaking fast. “It’s amazing, after you clear away the nonessentials, like shav
ing, and ironing shirts, and cooking stews, how much more time you have.”

  “Time for what?” Ralph was amused and, despite himself, touched in a way that he could not exactly identify. Everybody wanted more time; when you asked them why, they stammered or fell silent.

  Not Ray. “For reading, radio, exercise. For watching what goes on in the neighborhood. You know something, Ralphie? The houses in that new development across the way were not built well. They’re not worth the price.”

  “What is, nowadays?”

  “Neither would the building be that they want to put up here.”

  Aha, Ralph said to himself, I am not the only campaigner in the house. How bold of the boy, to move over to the offensive! And how subtle. Who knows, Ralph thought, maybe he thinks that I am the crazy one, as paranoiacs believe that a crazy world is leagued against them, and he is planning a slow program of attrition against my worldly ambitions and vanities. Remembering his resolve, Ralph refused to be drawn into a premature discussion of the estate’s disposition.

  So he asked coolly, “What’s this about radio?”

  “I wrote you about my ham station. I must have.”

  “I forget.”

  “It’s mostly Hallicrafter, but I hooked it up myself from parts that Uncle Max dragged home. I put a pretty good rig together, and I got my FCC license, and I’m in touch with people who think more or less like me, all over the globe. You’d be amazed.”

  “I am.”

  “When you come up, you’ll see. The world keeps up with me, even if I don’t keep up with it. And I hear music.”

  Ralph felt as uncertain and shaken now as he had yesterday when the phone had rung and he had heard the hoarse voice of Dr. Stark, thin and disembodied like that of an oracle. It wasn’t just that Ray was unmanageable; it was more that he was indefinable, as if he were not a brother, but someone exotic, beyond the boundaries of ordinary experience.