The Will

by Harvey Swados

  Kitty said this wonderingly. In a way that made it all the more cutting.

  If he was more entitled to the old man’s loot than those who hated Max or were ashamed of him, by the same token he—not Ralph—had been the one most tormented by Max’s stepping on his mother and father. Instead of them teaching me, he thought, I tried to demonstrate to my parents not by precept but by practice, by conning, looting, lifting, and hooking, what really lay below their life, to spade up the manure in which it was rooted. And to reveal to them what was going to happen to us all, even to little Ray, if they didn’t stand up to that mad old man who trotted around town after his rents with his crazy eager laugh and his falsely forbidding hound at his heels.

  “My mother knew the score. But she was too weak to go back to the schoolroom she’d left for that great catch, Leo Land. She was so grateful for being married that she had no spirit left.

  “I know how Ralph has taught you to think of her. A character, pining away, going into a decline, because her oldest son, the slant-eyed wild one, had hit the road. What crap! She knew me. When I left she knew I intended it as a last warning, the only kind I could give, that unless she cleared out too she would bring worse on the boys who remained.

  “She couldn’t clear out, so she paid the price. Whom could she turn to? Her mother the overstuffed widow, all tits and no milk, with whom she had been living like two spinsters, until Dr. Stark came along with Leo Land? But Grandma Kadin had already gone and died in an apoplectic rage at Jenny’s having left her for a spooky pair. Then who, her only relatives, the female cousins? But they were turds, the two of them. They washed their hands of her, after she went from decent schoolteaching to raising a crank’s brats in a moldy flat. Her husband, maybe? But poor old Leo had long since burned out.

  “Naturally she gave up without a fight and let herself die. She must have known what was in store for your Ralph, who was already a Sunday morning fiddler and a Monday morning cheat. And for little Ray too. If anything brought her down besides what Dr. Stark wrote on her death certificate, it was that she couldn’t face the future for Ray.

  “See what a laugh it is, Max’s final joke, that the most hopeless son should be the one to pick up all the marbles? The one that your husband the hypocrite plays big brother for?”

  It was so quiet that he could hear the pulse in his temple thumping against the sandbag.

  “Ralph has never been a hypocrite with me.”

  “Has he told you what I just told you?”

  “You’re a fool if you expect his version to be the same as yours.”

  “That’s not what gripes me. It’s his gall in claiming Max’s dough. Everything Max did was beneath him. He was too busy sawing away at his fiddle and bucking for the Honor Roll to give us a hand.”

  “What do you mean, us?”

  “I was saving string and bottles for Uncle Max before I was out of kindergarten. By the time I was eight I was covering the city, picking up empty cigarette packs for him. I’d start at seven on a Sunday morning, the best time because everyone’d been out the night before and the sweepers hadn’t cleaned up after them yet.”

  “What good were cigarette packages?”

  “Tin foil. I worked all the streets with the Indian names. Mohawk, Chippewa, Niagara, Seneca, Genesee, Iroquois, Delaware, Ottawa, Algonquin. I’d stop in Agassiz Park for a hot dog and strip down the packs and smooth out the tin-foil sheets. Max had a ball of silver foil out behind the drugstore as big as an Italian cheese, hanging on a cord. It must have been worth something, but the crazy bastard liked the look of it too much to sell it. And Ralph? You’d know what I mean by hypocrisy if you’d seen the look on his face every time I picked up a cigarette pack stuck in a sewer drain. The shame of it, the shame of it.”

  “If you tried to understand that he was different, instead of sneering—”

  “You didn’t listen. I still loved him then, I covered up for him with Uncle Max. When I got bigger, Max used to take me along to collect his rents. Not Ralph. Me. By then Max was getting scared to go through the bad neighborhoods with dough in his pockets. It never bothered me, I went any place, that was one of my assets. But one day he decided that he needed protection, so he went to the pound and bought Sasha for a buck and a half, plus license. Then he and I and Sasha would go out together, rent-hunting. There were even times when we tried to beat each other out, to see who’d collect first, sometimes on different floors in the same tenement.”

  “A very peculiar relationship.” Kitty spoke coldly. She was pulling herself together.

  “That’s exactly it. I knew him for what he was, he knew that I knew, and we got a bang out of each other—to a point. He realized that when I cut out, it was partly because I had to get loose from him. But what makes you think I’ll hold still while Ralph does me out of Max’s money?”

  “I don’t recall that Max Land left you a dime.”

  “Can’t you see why he left it all to his brother? Don’t play dumb.” His head ticked like a bomb, the tube was like a sausage in his mouth, and his throat was parched again, but he dared not break off to ask her for more water. “Not only did Max have to cover his brother, my father had to cover Ray. But I know what my father intended, and I know what Max intended.”

  “What a pity no one will believe you.”

  “Don’t bet on that. There’s still such a thing as evidence, baby.”

  Weak and stinking as he felt, it gave him genuine pleasure to see her face go blank and guarded.

  Before she could reply, the door had opened again. The little black-haired nurse with the student cap. Her voice was startlingly high and clear, almost childlike, after Kitty’s.

  “Mrs. Land, you’re going to have to leave at once.”

  “And none too soon,” Mel said, following with his eyes the lower portion of Kitty’s figure as it made for the door.

  “You’ve been very considerate,” she was saying to the nurse. “I realize I’ve taken advantage. Are the reporters still there?”

  “The policeman sent them away.” The student nurse added tensely, almost in tears, “Please go now. Please. I’ll get in awful trouble if you don’t.”

  Kitty turned to address Mel. “If we let this go on any longer, it won’t be just you and Ralph who will be at war. You’ll drag down the whole—”

  “If you’re worried about the whole human race, you can’t be all bad. I look forward to meeting you some day with your clothes on.” Gratified at seeing her turn red, he concluded, “Don’t forget to deliver my message.”

  But would she? Caught between blowing his horn and playing softer violin music than Ralph, he had produced for her a jumble of sounds that could have had almost any effect. If she didn’t tell Ray, or at least Ralph, there was no way for him to get at them short of staggering out of here on his own.

  Ray was still the key. He would have to be shown that Papa had willed everything to him because he feared for him, helpless as a guppy, and hoped that the responsibility of parceling out the estate would increase his self-reliance.

  To cut Ralph down to size would be worth almost any gamble, bigger than the one he had already lost with Ralph, or the one he had just taken with Ralph’s wife, and probably lost.

  What could those two know? As far as they were concerned he was an outlaw; he wanted to overturn everything they had been painfully building after their own little rebellion; he refused to abide by Ralph’s rules, according to which people lived together in hypocritical respect. No matter how much they apologized, for them he would remain a psychopath who had all but murdered his mother and would have further dishonored the family if he hadn’t mocked at it by spurning its very name.

  “What’s your name?” he muttered to the little nurse, who was hovering over him gently, gently moving him to ease the soreness.

  “Leone.”

  “Leonie what?”

  “No, that’s my last name. Laura Leone. Comfortable now?”

  “Considering that people have be
en jumping up and down on my face. Take this goddamn tube out of my head, will you, Laura?”

  “It comes out after the noon feeding. Isn’t that good news?”

  “Don’t baby me. What about the real news, can I see the papers?”

  “Sorry.” Then she relented. “Don’t blame me. I just work here.”

  She had an open face. It wasn’t just professionally kind—she couldn’t have seen too many people die so far, or even suffer. And yet she wasn’t just another kid. Her violet eyes were young, but there were shadows under them. On her own she had already suffered, in some way, of that Mel was sure. He began to wonder.

  “What’s the matter,” he demanded, “is that Polack cop still hanging around?”

  “After he couldn’t get in here, he went to see Mrs. Land. Then he left.”

  “At least you know who I’m talking about.”

  She flushed, then began to bustle. “I don’t mean to seem nosy.”

  “It’s only natural, I’m in the papers, I’m a crook and all the rest. Doesn’t that make you nervous?”

  The girl regarded him frankly. “You’re in no condition to make trouble, for me or for anyone else.”

  “Never bet on that, Laura. You have no idea how hard up I am. It’s been a long long time.”

  She did not color at this, or even become annoyed. Instead she took it straight. “You must have had it rough.”

  Touched, he mumbled, “By and large I’ve asked for it … If it wasn’t for these cement earphones I’d be grabbing for you. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  The girl hesitated, then spoke nervously, rapidly. “They’re going to ask for an indictment as soon as you can be released to police custody.”

  “I’ll beat the rap, Laura. In fact with your help I can do even better than that.”

  Amused, she crossed her arms over the crackling breast of her uniform and showed him her small irregular teeth, the canines squeezed like a kid’s over the molars. No wonder she hesitated to smile. What a number she would be if her teeth were fixed! She was a giving girl.

  He pressed on. “I’m out of commission for the time being. But I need a friend. I need help. I need someone I can trust.”

  “You need a good lawyer.”

  “Don’t make jokes. I’m asking you something. What do you say, kid?”

  She replied, consideringly, in her high girlish voice, “I took an oath. I’ll take another when I graduate. You can’t even imagine what that means to me. I won’t jeopardize it just because I feel sorry for one patient.”

  “But feeling sorry is progress.” He said quickly, “Now listen to me, Laura. I’m not going to ask you to do one thing that would violate your oath. If you’re not supposed to pull out the tube from my insides, don’t. If you’re not supposed to give me a newspaper, don’t. All I want is for you to deliver a message for me.”

  “In the hospital?”

  “No. Just listen. I can’t telephone. I can’t go myself. I’m so cross-eyed I can’t write a note, even if somebody’d give me pencil and paper. So it’s got to be you.”

  “I don’t go off duty until four-thirty.” She added hastily, “I mean—” but it was too late.

  Mel said jubilantly, “It’s the Land house. I know it’s far, but there are buses. It’s where we had the fight, you know?”

  The young nurse gave him an odd sidewise glance that he could not interpret. “I know it all right. I’ve known it for years. It stands kitty-corner from the shopping center of Happy Valley.”

  “Exactly. Now if you can go there as soon as you get off duty … The person to see is Mr. Land himself, nobody but Mr. Land. Capeesh?”

  Looking hard into her eyes, which were enlarged in the pupil and fixed on him unblinkingly as if she were an actress and he her director, he thought delightedly, She isn’t a stranger any more, I’ve done it, the old Oriental magic still works!

  Still staring at him, she nodded.

  “Then you give him this message: If he doesn’t produce Ray at once, I’ll tell them who I am.”

  “If he doesn’t produce Ray at once, you’ll tell them who you are.”

  “Right, right, right! Don’t change a word, or you’ll get mixed up and you’ll mix him up.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Let me worry about that, O.K.?” When she did not reply he repeated, “O.K.?”

  At last she said weakly, “I must be crazy.”

  “You’re one of the few uncrazy ones, that’s what you are.” With all the strength he could summon he pulled at her wrist, until she had to sit beside him if she did not want to fall on top of him. “Anyone else would have refused, or tried to find out what it meant, or said, Why not telephone? You renew my faith, kid. What am I to you besides a beat-up bum and a jailbird?”

  “For one thing, you’re persuasive.” She tugged gently until he had released his grip so that she could arise. “Besides, the Land house isn’t all that far. It’s practically on the way to my house.”

  “I must look even worse than I feel.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “For you to feel so sorry for me.”

  “But I’m not that sorry for you. You’ll heal up all right. And it isn’t as if this was the first time you’ve been in trouble. It’s just that I think everybody ought to get an even break.”

  “Just that?”

  Self-contained again, Laura Leone nodded and laughed a little, as she walked to the door bearing his urinal, nicely napkined, like a precious amphora. Observed from the back, her calves, efficient and serviceable as they were in their snug white nylons, were slightly bowed. Peasant stock. Many generations of women with too much pasta and too many burdens. Carry the jar on your head, he wanted to call after her, it’ll be more natural.

  Instead he repeated hoarsely, “Don’t change a word, you’ll only confuse him. Say it again to yourself on the way. I’ll be waiting here. I won’t go away.”

  Her laugh floated over her shoulder and ended with the closing of the door. So did everything else about her. Twenty seconds away, and already he couldn’t remember exactly what she smelled like or looked like. No, what was paining him was not the long months of deprivation.

  It was, rather, that there was no single human being to whom you could really say everything, not even yourself. The price of bachelorhood? More likely a portion of the grief every human being had to expect, after his parents had conceived him without being able to conceive of his reality, and the hired midwife, their impersonal agent, had dragged him, reluctant, into the world.

  His head rang from talking so much with those two women. But how little he had told them! Ralph’s wife’s amends supposedly stemmed from sympathy as well as from fear. Yet he had come closer to the quick of it, and in a shorter time, with the little nurse.

  But even with Laura Leone he hadn’t ventured beyond the clearing at the edge of the jungle because, wild as were the chances he took with himself, he didn’t dare take them with anyone else. Such were the cautions that thirty years of disappointments imposed on you, even at the hands of those presumably of your bent or your blood. How could he be sure that Kitty wasn’t working both ends? Or that Laura wasn’t working for the enemy, the Polish cop? The world was jammed to overflowing with self-seekers and double agents. Everybody’s secret heart, when you saw inside it, yearned to bring you down. Far from being exceptions, women proved the rule, especially when they were sold on the fiction that their behavior was patriotic, kindly, noble. And cops—cops were capable of anything.

  It was inevitable that Karpinski would discover very soon who he was. Maybe he knew already and was holding off for his own reasons. In any case he’d be bound to make his move soon. So would Ralph.

  Shifting slowly and painfully onto the other haunch, feeling all down his side the hurt that Ralph had inflicted on him, he turned again to confront the brother he once had loved. It was Ralph who had drawn him back to the scene of the new crime, breaching his parole the moment h
e was able, after reading the new myth of the missing will.

  To this very minute Ralph was living in his cheaply tailored lie, filling his wife with babies and with fairy tales of repentance and amends, denying the truth, feeding her a faked-up version of the Lands’ history, with himself as the responsible revolutionist and his brother as the guilty subverter.

  The simmering hatred rose yet again in Mel’s throat like water coming to a rapid boil. Remembering now how he had come upon Ralph naked in their father’s bed, lolling with his blond wife on the lonely old bastard’s dream-soaked mattress, Mel had to remind himself that the rage which had overcome him then had not been simply hateful envy of his brother’s sexual prosperity.

  And in reality he had wanted to find Ray no more than he desired Max’s loot. Both were only ostensible goals, excuses for outrage, extensions of the self-deception that Ralph practiced so habitually that he had become incapable of honesty, like a cellmate who confessed that during an earlier imprisonment he had gone to bed so long with pictures of naked girls that upon his release he had been incompetent, even incurious, when confronted with a living girl.

  What was the honest living actuality that he was determined to confront? This he could not define. But it was worth staying alive to discover it.

  Exhausted, he lay back on the sheet that Laura had smoothed for him and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  10: LAURA

  ALL THE WAY OUT to the Land house, Laura had the feeling that people were staring at her. Old workingmen peering over their Polish Dailies, waddling wives carrying live ducks and white cauliflowers in shopping bags, little girls licking lollipops, jacketed repairmen toting gray tool kits all seemed to be sneaking glances her way, first on the platform in front of the hospital and aboard the bus, then while she waited, transfer in hand, for the second bus, and finally on the last long ride to Happy Valley. She was startled to realize that she had never felt so uneasy before, never, not even during all the bleak joyless trips she used to make to Happy Valley on a far more conspicuous errand.