The Auerbach Will

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “I have them,” she says.

  “Beg pardon, Mrs. A?”

  “Just thinking aloud, Mary. I mean I think I have them all memorized. Where they’ll sit. Why don’t you wind up, dear. You’ve had a long day.”

  “Well, then I think I’ll say goodnight, Mrs. A.”

  “Goodnight, Mary.”

  Yes, Essie’s Christmas parties are much smaller now, just the members of her immediate family. And Charles Wilmont, of course, who is almost like family—her children call him Uncle Charles—her husband’s right-hand man at Eaton & Cromwell for all those years. Yes, Charles is just like family and, in some ways, more like family than some of the rest of them.

  On her way back to the library, Essie pauses in the large sitting room where the big Norwegian spruce has been set up on its stand, and where Yoki has placed a stepladder and laid out all the boxes of ornaments from all the other Christmases. Somehow, though Essie’s parties have gotten smaller, there seem to be more boxes of ornaments, and strands of lights, and tinsel, each year. There are at least thirty cartons full of ornaments and, when these are all hung, those boxes will be replaced with the gift boxes, now stacked in crowded closets. Essie sees that Yoki has laid fires in both fireplaces, at either end of the room, which will be lighted while they are having dinner. Meanwhile, to give the room a welcoming aroma, the tall scented tapers have been lighted in all the heavy silver sconces and candelabra, and the heavy récamier silk window hangings have been drawn shut. This is the largest, and most formal, room in Essie’s apartment, but it is perhaps her least favorite. The other rooms are smaller, cozier, more inviting. Once upon a time this room was called the ballroom, and Essie does not need to be told that ballrooms are seldom found anymore in New York apartments. The Aubusson rug, woven for the room, can still be rolled back for dancing and, in the old days, two concert grand pianos nested back to back for music. Now there is only one piano, and the rest of the room is filled with French sofas, chairs, and tête-à-têtes originally bought for the Chicago house. Still, the room seems cavernous. But what can be done with a room two full stories high, with paneling of carved gilt boiserie, in which are set painted views of Florence, with trompe l’oeil frescoes painted on the ceiling to represent medieval tapestries, and suspended, from huge carved plaster rosettes, with a pair of Baccarat crystal chandeliers? The room, with its massive scale, has always had a way of miniaturizing, and trivializing, everything—and everyone—entering it. Essie rings for Yoki. “Let’s put a small grouping of chairs around the tree,” she says. “Otherwise, everybody will be all spread out.”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  From the library, now, Essie hears voices—more people have arrived. She hears Mogie’s voice, and the shrill giggle of Christina, Mogie’s very new, very young wife who, Joan said (could it be true?), had until meeting Mogie been a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall. Then, from the elevator entrance, there are more voices—the others seem all to have come together. The two maids are collecting coats, Yoki, changed from his white coat into gray, is passing drinks. The party has begun.

  The young man on her right, Mr. Daryl Carter, Karen’s new friend, seems pleasant enough, and is even good-looking in a pale, thin, rather washed-out way. Karen, who is in her forties, seems to be picking them younger and younger, Essie thinks. This man appears to be in his mid-twenties, and seems quite awestruck. He has been fingering the silk lace tablecloth, lifting the heavy silver three-pronged forks and pistol-handled knives, doing everything but pick up the series of service plates to examine the markings on their undersides. Essie has tried to put him at ease. But he has been so full of questions that Essie has been unable to find out much about him.

  “So you’re Karen’s grandmother. Gee. Your granddaughter tells me you once had dinner at the White House,” he is saying.

  “Well, yes, when my late husband was alive.”

  “Which President was it?”

  “Well, in fact, we had dinner at the White House a number of times. The first President was Mr. Wilson, who was rather stiff, and then came Mr. Harding, and then there was Mr. Coolidge, and then Mr. Hoover.”

  “You mean all of them?”

  “They used to consult my husband on economic matters. Of all of them, I liked Mr. Harding the best. They said he was a crook, but I found him very down-to-earth.”

  “Golly!”

  “When Mr. Roosevelt came along, my husband fell out of favor.”

  “But still—knowing all those Presidents!”

  “I actually used to dread them, those White House dinners. All the formality, all the protocol—”

  “Dread them? Really? I’d have given my eyeteeth.”

  The meat course is being passed and, from down the table, Joan leans out across her plate and, interrupting, says, “Mother, I told Richard that you had something to say to him.”

  “Can’t it wait till after dinner, dear?” Essie says.

  Eying Richard fiercely from across the table, Joan says, “Mother’s position is that of a concerned stockholder, darling.”

  Really, Essie thinks, that is a little silly. Her interest in the Express is really very small—just a few hundred shares which she bought to keep Joan from badgering her to invest in it—surely nothing compared with what Joan herself must have tied up in it.

  “My son-in-law, Karen’s stepfather, wants to go to Africa,” Essie says rather lamely to Mr. Carter.

  “Africa! Golly!”

  Richard, working quietly on his veal chop, says nothing, but seems to be smiling slightly, or perhaps it is simply a chewing expression.

  “We simply cannot let you go at this point, darling. The paper needs you now more than it ever did before. You, the most brilliant and talented journalist in the United States—”

  Really, Essie thinks, this is carrying it a little far, simply because Richard is in Who’s Who in America. Richard, looking up from his plate, says pleasantly, “I agree with Nana, Joan. After dinner. Okay?”

  “She’s a concerned stockholder.”

  At the foot of her table, Essie sees Charles Wilmont, who of course knows all about this, and who appears to be in earnest conversation with Katie, Josh’s wife, but who manages, in just the briefest moment, to catch her look and to return her a quick wink. Dear Charles. What he has had to put up with with the Auerbachs. Essie decides that this is the moment to turn the conversation, and she turns to Josh, her youngest son, on her left. “Tell me, Josh,” she says. “I want to know everything. I want to know how young Josh is doing with the company.…”

  After dinner, Essie finds herself on the arm of young Mr. Carter, who has asked her to show him the rest of the apartment.

  “Golly, is that a real Picasso?” he asks.

  “Yes, and in fact all four of the big paintings in this room are by Picasso. We wanted one from each of his periods—the rose, the blue, the cubist …”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “I call this the Picasso room,” Essie says and, leading him along, “… and this little room I call the Gainsborough room, though the two paintings on that wall are by Romney. Both Gainsborough and Romney have gone out of fashion, I’m told, but still I’m quite fond of them.

  “… And this we called the Oriental room. As you can see, my husband also collected Chinese Export porcelains. I think it looks pretty displayed against the Coromandel screens, don’t you? And these”—pointing to the locked glass bookcases—“are all incunabula.”

  “Incunabula?”

  “Books printed before the year fifteen-oh-one. They’re also called cradle books, for some reason.”

  “How did your husband have time to collect all these things, on top of everything else he did?”

  “Well, there was a Mr. Duveen who helped us. And the Post-Impressionists were all bought when the prices were very, very low. Tell me, Mr. Carter—what do you do with the Parks Department?”

  “Nothing as interesting as this,” he says. Then he says, “Karen drinks too much.”

>   “I know. What do you propose we do about it?”

  He shakes his head. “She says she drinks because she’s unhappy. But how can she be unhappy with all this—beauty—in her life? Golly, it’s beyond me, Mrs. Auerbach. Beyond me.”

  “It’s her mother. Joan hounds her. She hounds everybody.”

  He hesitates, as though wondering whether or not it would be proper to agree. “Mrs. McAllister is—a very good looking woman,” he says.

  “Oh, yes. When she was younger, there were some who said that she bore a resemblance to Gene Tierney, who was an actress,” Essie says.

  Now is it time to trim the tree and give the toasts, and everyone is gathered in the big sitting room where the tree has been set up and where Yoki has lit the fires. By tradition—how it started Essie cannot remember—each guest selects an ornament, fills a glass with champagne, and mounts the stepladder. From the ladder, he pins his ornament on the tree, and then proposes a toast. Sitting on one of the French sofas, Babette is still chattering, as she has been most of the evening, about Palm Beach, where she and Joe will soon be going to spend the rest of the winter in the Addison Mizner house they have bought there. Of her two daughters, Essie has to admit, Joan got the brains, whereas Babette—well, Babette has a mind more suited to the society type of life she chooses to live. Babette is saying, “Do you know that ever since Marjorie Post died, and now that Rose Kennedy is nothing but a shell, the Shiny Sheet is calling me one of P.B.’s leading hostesses? Isn’t that extraordinary?”

  Essie claps her hands. “Time to begin the toasts,” she says.

  As the president of Eaton & Cromwell, it is up to Josh Auerbach to make the first, and to carry the big star up and pin it to the top of the tree. It’s funny, but whenever Essie sees Josh’s name and photograph in the papers she has trouble reconciling this graying, good-looking “business leader,” as he is usually called, in his early fifties, with the picture in her mind of the bright little boy who was her youngest son. Surely this tall man in a dark business suit who is mounting the ladder rather carefully, the star in one hand and his champagne glass in the other, cannot be the same Josh. But of course it is.

  Essie finds an empty spot on a sofa next to Karen, and sits down beside her. “I very much enjoyed talking to your young man,” she whispers.

  Karen smiles into her glass, which Essie notices is not champagne, and is probably vodka. “Yes, he is nice, isn’t he?”

  “Is it serious, dear?”

  “Oh, Grandma, I don’t know. He’s not all that smart, and he has no money. I almost didn’t bring him, thinking he wouldn’t be good enough for this family.”

  “I thought he held up very well,” Essie says.

  Now, from the top of the ladder, Josh has affixed his star and, with his free hand grasping the ladder, he turns, faces the room, and lifts his glass with the other. “Family, friends,” he begins, “as most of us know, our mother celebrated her eighty-ninth birthday just two weeks ago. We all know that this time next year, when we all gather again, Mother will have marked an even more momentous birthday—her ninetieth. I know that all of us know, that as Mother enters her ninetieth year as head of this house, we all wish her another decade of health, happiness, and usefulness. Let’s drink, then, with a special l’chayim greeting to Esther Auerbach.”

  There is a round of clapping, and cries of “Hear, hear!”

  “Why, Josh, dear, how very nice,” Essie says.

  Now it is Mogie’s turn. If Josh has turned out to be the business head of the family, Mogie is the sensitive, artistic one. It is Mogie who plays both the cello and the violin so beautifully, and has collected four extraordinarily matched Amatis. Mogie also collects old silver, antique toys, and precious stones. He was not cut out for business, not from the very start, but that is all right. Or at least at this point there is no point in dwelling on Mogie’s shortcomings as a businessman. Mogie is nine years younger than Joan, eight years younger than Babette, and ten years older than Josh, and it is sometimes difficult for Essie to realize that none of her remaining four children is in any way still a child. Far, far from it. Mogie is sometimes considered the best-looking of her children, though Essie would not agree. Her vote, if solicited, would go to Josh. But Mogie himself thinks highly of his looks, and cannot pass a mirror—or indeed a shop window—without an admiring glance, a necktie-adjusting pause, to appraise his reflected image. He is always immaculately tailored in bespoke suits from Helman, always shod in hand-made, hand-benched shoes from Lobb on St. James’s Street. At home, Mogie is usually to be found in one of his large collection of silk pajamas and robes from Sulka, and Joan has wickedly suggested that even her younger brother’s underwear has a designer label. The small gymnasium off his bedroom in his house in Beekman Place contains the latest in exercise equipment. His pink nails with their carefully shaped half-moons are always perfectly manicured and polished, and his crowning glory—a full head of wavy, silver hair—is dressed twice a week by Mr. Elio at Bergdorf’s. There have been more women in Mogie’s life than Essie could possibly count, and so she was happy to see him end his long bachelorhood, even though his pretty little blonde Christina still reminds Essie of a dance-hall hostess, despite the furs and jewels Mogie has bought her.

  Mogie steps toward the tree, leaving behind him a faint waft of Guerlain Eau de Cologne Impériale as he moves. He has chosen an antique glass bell to hang on the tree, and now he turns to propose his toast. “I’d like to ask that we drink to someone who is no longer among us,” he says, “a man whom we have to thank for all the blessings and good fortune and comforts which life has bestowed upon us—a pioneer in business and finance, a pioneer in philanthropy, both Christian and Jewish …”

  Over her shoulder, Essie hears Mr. Carter whisper to Karen, “Is your family Jewish?” And she hears Karen giggle.

  “… To the warm and lasting memory of a great man, Jake Auerbach.”

  “Hear, hear …”

  Essie rises, blinks a bit of mist from her eyes, and says, “Mogie, that was very nice, too. Thank you.”

  Mogie descends the ladder and offers his hand to Joan. Joan pins an ornament to the tree, but does not climb the ladder. Instead, she stands in front of it, smiling brightly, her glass raised. “Darlings,” she begins, “darlings, all of you. I’d like to propose a toast to a man who is here. To a man who has just agreed to make the most extraordinary sacrifice, to give up an exciting trip to South Africa, where he has an assignment to write a brilliant book, in order to remain at the editorial helm of the New York Express.…”

  Essie thinks: This is news. She looks at Richard. Richard, who has said very little all evening, merely smiles.

  “My darlings, I propose a toast to the most brilliant newspaper editor in America, to the most brilliant writer in the world, to the most wonderful husband a woman could ever have—my husband, my Richard.”

  More applause, more voices of approval.

  But Joan isn’t finished. “And now,” she continues, “for those of you who have a special interest in the Express—and particularly those of you who are stockholders, including Mother, Mogie, Josh, and Babette—as publisher and chief executive officer, I have exciting news.…”

  Goodness, Essie thinks. She’s turning my party into a business meeting.

  “The point in our paper’s eight-year life has been reached where it is about to become one of the great journalistic forces in the United States. I’m talking about a national newspaper, not just an afternoon tabloid for the city of New York. I’m not at liberty to release the full details yet, but let me just tell you that the response from the advertising community has been fantastic, unbelievable, almost overwhelming in its enthusiasm. All I can tell you now is that all of you, particularly you who are stockholders, will watch with amazement and”—she laughs—“a certain amount of pecuniary anticipation as events unfold in the next few months.”

  There is a brief silence, then more polite clapping.

  “The name of Jaco
b Auerbach has come up this evening,” Joan goes on. “Let me tell you just this: that great and wonderful man would be truly proud, were he with us today, of what his older daughter, a mere woman, has been able to accomplish.…”

  The room, Essie notices, has grown a bit restless. Karen has gone to the bar to refill her drink, and Karen’s daughter Linda has come to curl on the floor by Essie’s feet, her elbows resting on Essie’s knees. “Did you love him very much, Great-Grandma?” Linda whispers. “I was so little when he died I hardly remember him.”