The Will

by Harvey Swados

  Safely away from the stores, Emersonville’s homes resembled those in the older and statelier areas of the city which had resisted engulfment by the flood of projects and the rushing streams of arterial traffic. Determinedly unmodern, they held painstakingly aloof from one another (even after the finical niceness with which the occasional newcomer was selected) by means of sinuous roadways, head-high hedges of rambler roses, and stone walls sweetened with honeysuckle and wisteria. Tennis courts and lawns tightly trimmed for croquet and garden parties accented delicately the countrylike atmosphere and reinforced the impression that the community consisted of modest estates (although it would have shrunk from that word). On these drives, roads, and lanes, none of which were ever called streets, even the children’s voices were muted.

  Amid all this emphatic understatement, Ray was bemused by the extravagantly colonial street names, apparently selected because they reverberated with the echoes of a history otherwise recalled only when a child, poking through the excavation for his family’s new swimming pool or greenhouse, came upon an arrowhead or a spent bullet.

  So he observed that Martin Stark lived in a rambling three-story pile almost completely buried in glossy green ivy, fixed like a chateau on a sweeping knoll at the corner of Flintlock Drive and Redcoat Lane. As Ralph cut expertly into the curving graveled drive, Raymond glimpsed the tiny iron name-plate, STARK, an inch or two above the pachysandra from which it might have been growing, and half hidden by the yews and junipers which bordered the drive.

  “Looks like they’ve been living here forever, doesn’t it?” It was the first time Ralph had spoken to him since the crossroads. “You’d never know that Dr. Stark was born in the old country just like Pop.”

  Ray could not resist replying, “It’s a little late for jealousy, Ralphie,” but he regretted it when he saw the stricken look come over his brother’s face.

  Ahead, at the end of the driveway, bulked the stone garage, its glass overhead door slung into the roof to reveal, in addition to yellow bicycles, green plastic hose, and pink wheelbarrow, the two Stark automobiles, a white Ford station wagon and a smaller white Mercedes convertible.

  As his brother drew up the hand brake, Raymond heard the high almost wailing sounds of children’s laughter. He climbed out clumsily, self-conscious under the stares of two girls in striped jerseys and shorts who were just leaving a blacktopped badminton court beyond the garage. The girls were only a year or two apart, the older perhaps eleven, but very unlike. The younger was dark and skinny, with huge knees like doorknobs, and much solemnity; she picked at her nose with her free hand as she swung her badminton racket. Her older sister was blondish, like Martin, but decisively fat and hospitable.

  “Hi.” She greeted them amicably by tapping the bird at Ralph, who snared it and slapped it back to her. “I’m Judy. This is Sarah. Sarah, take your finger out of your nose. Are you the men Daddy is expecting?”

  “I imagine we are.”

  “Come on, I’ll show you the way.”

  Ray hastened after her, very much aware of the unblinking gaze of Sarah, who had not uttered a word. But then, neither had he—and he was hoping that he could sit quietly in a dark corner while Martin and Ralph talked.

  But not so fast. Judy was saying, in her bubbling, fat girl’s voice, “Then you must be the Lands. I read all about you in the papers, the missing will, and the hidden money and stuff, and the guy that broke in, and everything. Gee, it must be exciting!”

  Staring at them hopefully, as if at any moment they might do something outrageous, Judy held open the screen door of the carriage entrance for them.

  “Mommy!” she called out loudly.

  Silent Sarah stuck her racket into the umbrella stand of the cool dark carpeted hallway and wandered off, leaving Judy to produce their mother from the living room beyond.

  Ellen Stark, a tall bony woman in her late thirties, came forward to greet them.

  She wore a cashmere sweater set with pale beads at the neck, she was allowing her brown hair to turn gray and, when she shook hands, she put down, alongside the latest number of the American Scholar and a novel by Mary Ellen Chase, a pair of substantial tortoise-shell spectacles. Behind the pleats of her plaid skirt hid Abby, youngest of the Starks, and the only one who really resembled her elderly grandfather.

  As she spoke to Ralph, in a softly modulated voice, Mrs. Stark picked up a pair of garden shears from the hall table and commenced to prune the late white peonies standing thickly in a vase.

  “We’ve regretted that you and your wife haven’t been able to visit us, but then it’s been a difficult time all round. Perhaps after she returns from the hospital? I’m so relieved to learn from my father-in-law that she’s doing well.”

  “Thanks to him,” Ralph replied readily. “Now that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting your charming girls, I’m all the more sorry that we haven’t gotten together earlier. But let me introduce—”

  “Raymond, I assume.”

  Ray nodded dumbly. He was impressed by the ease with which his brother could manage this kind of small talk. It was one thing to know that Ralph had to do it all day long; it was something else to see him in action. As for Ellen Stark, she spoke so coolly, with such poise, that if this were San Francisco and he had just swum in from Alcatraz, he would have elicited from her, he felt, nothing more than a very polite, “You look quite wet, would you care for a towel?”

  She murmured, “Now that you’re getting about, you must come one day with your brother and sister-in-law.”

  “Thank you,” was all he could manage, in a half-strangled voice. He wanted to clear his throat, but he was afraid it would sound even worse. If Laura were this poised, he would never have been able to speak to her.

  “I know you want to see Martin, and he’s most anxious to see you, so I won’t detain you. Let me show you to his study.”

  They moved through the living room over faded Oriental carpeting, skirting a dark old Steinway with massive spooled legs, past prints of Venice labeled Ca d’Oro and Scuola di San Rocco, past many bookcases crowding the long hallway, to a solid-looking door on which Ellen Stark rapped lightly before opening it. Imagine anybody in our family, Raymond thought, knocking on a door before opening it. Uncle Max had never bothered, even when Mama was still alive, to close the bathroom door. But at least Uncle Max was no hypocrite, in fairness you had to say that, especially when you sensed how anxious this very well-bred woman was to be rid of her two visitors.

  “Come on in,” Martin Stark called out, and arose from behind his desk, at which he had been stuffing a curved meerschaum from a large tin of Blue Boar tobacco. He had slung his jacket over the back of a leather chair, from which he lifted it as he approached them; he was cool but correct in a short-sleeved white shirt with a severe regimental-stripe tie. The hospitable haste with which he propelled his lanky frame forward made his limp more pronounced; it made you nervous to watch him, even though his self-assurance was absolute.

  “May I bring you anything, Martin?” his wife inquired.

  “Thank you, dear, no. I have all the needful.”

  “Then I’ll leave you.” Ellen Stark’s brisk closing smile was almost palpably one more in her long list of well-managed household duties.

  “What’ll it be, gents?” Martin demanded, bending over a private bar which was so stocked with bottles, like the compounding alcove of Land Bros. Pharmacy, that Raymond was intimidated into denying his thirst.

  “Nothing, thanks,” he said quickly. He cursed himself; now Martin must know that he had no idea what to ask for.

  Martin however, after remarking, “How about just some ice water, all right?” turned amiably to Ralph.

  “Scotch and water, please. Yes, with ice. You have a beautiful place here, Martin.”

  “That’s right, this is your first visit, isn’t it?” And as if he had overheard Ralph’s bitter remark in the driveway, and wanted to forestall another such, Martin added candidly,

  “Sometime
s when I glance around me I can hardly believe that only fifty years ago my dad was working his way through med school as a greenhorn candy butcher on the lake boats. Our history here is pretty brief, after all, isn’t it?”

  The lawyer served them, motioning Raymond to a brass-studded red leather chair before the bookcase, and Ralph to another, beside a three-legged globe. While the men sipped, Raymond, his back to the curtained window (he could hear the girls’ voices outside, including Abby’s, now raised to a whine, and uselessly soothed by a Negro maid), glanced about at these strange surroundings, so clean, so orderly, so carefully comfortable, and as Martin himself said, as stable as if the Starks had always lived like this.

  Martin’s fiddle, about which Ralph had spoken so often, lay in its case, alongside a cello and a music stand on which rested a volume of Schubert sonatinas. So he practiced here, away from all the females except his wife—his three daughters and their girl friends, the maid, and doubtless his mother-in-law. Above the desk at which he sat, drawing meditatively on his meerschaum, hung an oil portrait of Dr. Stark—“He broke down and let us commission it,” Martin explained, “to commemorate his seventieth birthday”—painted by an artist who had not merely captured a likeness but had succeeded in seizing the doctor’s inimitably rueful regard, half somber, half mocking, as he sat before a wall decorated with the bearded sketches of some of his illustrious predecessors in the medical arts.

  The books at Ray’s elbow were mostly histories, biographies, and travel books. He supposed that lawyers kept their lawbooks in their offices, where they were more impressive and probably more useful, although he did see here a number of volumes on aspects of the law by Holmes, Cahn, and Frank, and a fat tome entitled The Wisdom of the Supreme Court, a gift no doubt. The only novels that he noticed were The Caine Mutiny and By Love Possessed, both of them under a long shelf of multicolored back issues of Commentary.

  “I hear you’ve got word for us from Mel,” Ralph remarked.

  How casually he said it! He might have been asking after someone’s health.

  “I don’t mean to stall, but I think it would be best if you told me first how the two of you stand.” The lawyer spoke gently, but there was something minatory in his tone; Ray felt the goose flesh rise on his arms, and waited tensely, as much to hear what his brother would explain as to learn what Mel had conveyed to the lawyer.

  “Martin, you know that we can’t go on. We’ve done things that we’d rather not remember. Now, finally, we’re ready to settle up.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not going to be quite that easy.”

  Ralph’s hands were shaking. The ice cubes in his glass slid from side to side, clinking gently as they moved. “Better tell us, Martin.”

  The lawyer sighed. “If only you two had gotten together earlier.”

  No matter what reply Ralph would make to this, Ray saw, it would not do. He leaned forward and said eagerly, “But that’s the whole point. It was Mel’s coming, and his fight with Ralph, that brought things to a head. Without Mel, who knows when we’d have gotten together?”

  Martin Stark contemplated his pipe. “Neither of you seems to realize what you’re up against.”

  In the sudden silence that followed, little Abby’s weeping voice was high and clear. “If they go, why can’t I? Why can’t I?”

  “I think I told you, Ray,” Martin went on, “Mel’s nurse got hold of my dad at the hospital. He rang me up here just as I was coming into the house. Now, I didn’t get it straight, whether she had delivered a message from you to Mel. I think she must have, but in any event her message from Mel was for me. I don’t know whether it’s any consolation to you, but he’s not too sick to talk very tough indeed.”

  “How tough?” Ralph was on his feet. “That’s what we want to know. How tough? And why did he send you the message instead of us?”

  “Because he doesn’t trust you,” Martin replied in his smooth, dark lawyer’s voice. “Because he wanted to find out whether I’m the Land estate executor, the family lawyer, or what. To put it bluntly, he means to attack you with every weapon he can find. Both of you.”

  “Why both? And what does he want?” Ralph’s voice rose. “For God’s sake, what does he want?”

  “He believes you have brainwashed Raymond. The nurse said she couldn’t argue him out of it. He’s convinced you betrayed him, Ralph, and you mean to chisel him out of his due.”

  “His due? Legally he’s got no more coming than I do.”

  Martin Stark said patiently, “He’s in a rage. He talks about legalisms, just as you do, but actually he’s no more rational now than you or Ray were until this afternoon. He talks about morality too, just as”—the lawyer smiled coldly—“all of us do. No doubt he thinks he has a moral right to all of your Uncle Max’s property.”

  “But that’s preposterous!”

  “Of course,” the lawyer said with maddening deliberateness, “on the surface of things it’s preposterous. It seems perfectly clear, A, that Raymond is the legal heir, B, that in a matter of days he comes of age, and C, that when the will is admitted to probate the estate will become his to dispose of as he sees fit. But you never know. Mel might claim that your father, or your Uncle Max, or both, were of unsound mind when they executed their wills. Certainly it would be foolish, especially when you’re ready to give him a substantial share, but do you have any idea how many legal actions have been inspired by hatred? In fact, there are many other things he could do. Most of them would be self-defeating, but they’d be messy, dragged-out, expensive. If he’s bent on making you suffer …”

  Raymond arose. In his agitation he bumped against the globe and sent it spinning rapidly.

  “I’m sorry.” He bent down to stop it. “It’s just that there’s been so much suffering already. Too much.”

  “We’re all agreed on that. But don’t you find it odd, how so many of us think we can bring it to an end by inflicting more?”

  Prowling restlessly, Ralph mumbled, “Now you sound just like your father. Let’s get practical. What can we do in a hurry to finish this thing? Don’t tell me we’re doomed to years of litigation with that fanatic.”

  “Everyone uses that word about everyone else.” Martin Stark pushed back his chair. “But you’re right, I couldn’t agree more. It’s to everyone’s advantage to move fast. The quicker you can bring Mel to reason, the quicker outsiders will lose interest. The less publicity, the less suffering for everyone—including Mel.”

  “I think he wants to suffer. But never mind. We ought to go see him as soon as possible, is that what you’re saying?”

  “It is.”

  “The thing is, Martin, I phoned the hospital earlier. The police say no visitors. Do you think you could get around that?”

  “I already have.” Martin smiled impartially at them both. “While I was waiting for you, I spoke to my father again. He’s going to have Mel waiting for us, in the hospital pavilion. So whenever you’re ready …” He glanced at a glass-walled, four-sided clock on his desk.

  “I’ll be damned. I’ll really be damned.” Ralph was staring at their host with unfeigned admiration. “No wonder your old man is proud of you.”

  But Ray could not still the uneasiness which the lawyer’s words had aroused. It was not so much that Martin Stark had been planning for them while he waited for them—that could be accounted a kindness—as that he had his own plans, a parallel course which might be serving his own ends more than theirs.

  Martin misunderstood, or chose to misunderstand, the hesitancy that Ray was unable to conceal.

  “Don’t worry, Ray, about the reporters and the police. I’ll be right there with you. Just bear in mind that the quicker we can get to Mel, the better disposed he’ll be to settle matters. The same goes for the authorities. The quicker the three of you state your relationship, the easier it will be for me to convince the district attorney that it’s merely a family affair.”

  Is that the reason, Ray wondered, why he seems so eager?
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  The lawyer went on, “All the advantage rests with you if you take the initiative in making a public statement. It’s rather wonderful, how quickly the media lose interest in you once you’ve shown that you have nothing to hide.”

  Ray said nothing. But Ralph, gnawing on a finger, demanded, “How can we give out a statement when we don’t know what to say?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean before seeing Mel. I meant after. What we might do would be to inform the authorities and the press—I could do it, if you’d prefer it that way—that Ralph and Mel hadn’t seen each other since ’forty-nine, that Mel was trying to find his way around the house in the dark, that Ralph was naturally nervous about intruders after all the unfortunate publicity. What could be more understandable than a struggle in the dark? Or that now Raymond, who had been living in seclusion for reasons of health, should be concerned about his eldest brother to the point of giving up his seclusion and coming to the hospital? Then, if things work out with Mel, I can simply issue a brief statement on the way out, to the effect that the family has made private arrangements for disposition of the estate.”

  It reminded Ray of the pastel portraits executed by lightning artists at fairs and carnivals. Martin’s construction was an excellent likeness, swiftly and cleverly sketched in but, precisely to the degree that it was a caricature of the truth, it lacked humanity. The lawyer might have been talking of anyone, and so in the end he talked of no one. Above him, his father’s face grinned, more sardonic than ever.

  Was this what was troubling Ralph? His thick black eyebrows were drawn together into the familiar menacing straight line.

  “That’s great as far as it goes,” he said, “but it’s full of holes. Like, why did Ray put off having the will probated, even though he was staying in the house? Or why didn’t I let on to anyone that he’s been in the attic all this time that people have been supposedly looking for him? Or where has Mel been all these months before he turned up in the dead of night?”