The Auerbach Will

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  As the train pulled into the station, he said, “This has really been very pleasant. I’ve talked your poor ear off, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.”

  “I’ve enjoyed it, too,” Essie said.

  “Here, let me give you my card,” he said. He took a card out of a small silver case, and scribbled something on the back of it. “And this is the address of the relatives I’ll be staying with in Chicago, and their telephone number. Please call if I can ever be of service.”

  And so Essie deboarded the train in Chicago with her purse and its miraculous contents intact, still clutched against the bosom of her gray traveling suit with both hands, and with Charles Wilmont’s calling card pressed between two fingers.

  The Café bar at the Hotel Pierre is crowded at this hour of the evening, but Joan Auerbach quickly spots her brother sitting alone at a corner table, and makes her way across the floor to him. He rises, and Joan lets him kiss her gloved hand, one of those little Old World gestures he is fond of making. Then she settles herself at the table beside him, throws back the shoulders of her black mink coat, and removes her gloves. “Well, Mogie,” she says. Then, to the waiter who appears, she says, “A bourbon old-fashioned, please—no cherry,” which, of course, she will not drink. Mogie is sipping a frozen daiquiri. Then, rather defiantly, Joan lights a cigarette. Mogie Auerbach does not like people to smoke, even in public places.

  “I mustn’t be too late,” Mogie says. “Tina’s expecting me home by seven.”

  “This,” Joan says, “will not take more than a few minutes, when I tell you what I have to say. Thank you,” she says to the waiter, when her drink arrives. Then she cocks her head, just slightly, for she has just heard someone at a nearby table say to his companion, “That’s Joan Auerbach, the publisher.”

  “Well?” Mogie says.

  “We must keep our voices down, Mogie,” she says. “I’ve just been recognized.”

  “Very well,” he says.

  “Well,” she says in a low voice, “you won’t believe what I’ve found out. I did as you suggested, went to the apartment last night, and went through Mary’s files. Checkbooks. Statements. Everything. And it’s just as I suspected. She’s been paying him off.”

  “Who?”

  “Arthur Litton.”

  “Oh, God,” Mogie says, cupping one hand across his eyes.

  “Every month. And—get this, Mogie. She’s been paying him off at the rate of ten thousand dollars a month! That’s a hundred and twenty thousand a year!”

  “Oh, dear God,” Mogie moans, rocking his head back and forth as though about to undergo some sort of emotional collapse.

  “Even for Mother, that’s a lot of money. Of course I didn’t dare remove the canceled checks to have them Xeroxed—but they’re there. We know they’re there. Bank records will back us up—”

  “Oh, Joan … Joan … it’s so awful.”

  “Now all we need to know is what she’s paying him off for. But you can bet it’s something pretty big. You don’t pay an estranged brother a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year for nothing. He’s being paid to keep his trap shut about something pretty damned important, if you ask me. That’s what we’ve got to find out now, and the only one who can possibly tell us is Arthur Litton himself. Maybe he won’t tell us, but we’ve got to try. I’m going to contact him, and try to find out what all that money’s going to him for.”

  “Oh, Joan, don’t. It’s too awful.”

  “What are you talking about, Mogie? What’s so awful? It’s what I suspected all along.”

  “Don’t, Joan.…”

  “Here’s my plan. I go to Arthur Litton—Uncle Abe—and I tell him, ‘Look, Mother’s old, she’s going to die.’ I mean—ha-ha—we’re all going to die some day, aren’t we? And I tell him that I know about these payments, and I’d like to continue them after Mother’s gone—but the thing I need to know if I’m going to do this, is what are the payments for? How’s that for strategy? Logical, isn’t it?”

  “But Joan, listen to me. You’ve got to think twice about this. Because now that you’ve told me about the payments, I know exactly what they’re for.”

  “You do?”

  “Just tell me one thing—how far back do these payments go?”

  “Years and years. Back to the late nineteen twenties, at least.”

  Mogie nods. “Yes, that would be right. Yes, it’s exactly what I was afraid of.”

  “Mogie, please tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “I want to show you something,” he says. He reaches in the breast pocket of his jacket and pulls out one of the old clippings from Joan’s files. He spreads the clipping on the table and, covering the picture caption with one hand, he says, “Joan, who is this a picture of?”

  “Why, it’s a picture of Arthur Litton, taken sometime in the twenties. I gave it to you the other night. From my files.”

  “Look more closely.”

  “I know it’s a picture of Arthur Litton, Mogie. I—”

  “Look more closely. Don’t you see—someone else?”

  “Else?”

  “It’s a picture of our brother, Josh, the way he looks today.”

  Joan studies the picture. “Well, there is a resemblance. But—”

  “It’s identical.”

  “But after all, Arthur Litton is Mother’s brother, Josh’s uncle—”

  “But this close? Did you ever wonder, Joan, why Josh never looked a bit like Papa? I always did. There wasn’t a trace of Papa in Josh, and then, the other night, when I saw this photo—I had the answer.”

  “Mogie, are you saying—?”

  “And did you ever wonder—as I often did—how Josh ever got conceived? Josh was born in nineteen twenty-eight, when I was ten. Mother and Papa were barely speaking to each other, except on social occasions when they’d put on a show of getting along, much less sleeping together. I used to ask myself, how could Josh have been conceived, unless—”

  “Mogie, what are you saying?”

  “Unless his father was someone else. Now we know.”

  “You mean Mother and—you mean incest?” Heads turn from several tables, and Joan covers her mouth and says, “Oh, forgive me. Oh, Mogie this can’t be true,” she whispers. “This is just preposterous, Mogie.”

  “Incest occurs more often than you might think. It occurs, in fact, in one out of ten families in the United States. Those are the statistics. I got them from Doctor Gold.”

  “But not Mother!”

  “Didn’t you say that Uncle Abe used to live in the same house with them on Grand Boulevard? The proximity—”

  “Yes, but—a brother and a sister—”

  “That’s not all that uncommon, either. Why, I used to have incestuous fantasies about you when I was growing up. Did you know that? Do you remember the pool house at The Bluff? I used to stand on a garden chair behind the back window of the girls’ dressing room, and watch you taking a shower, and I’d masturbate.”

  “I can’t believe I’m listening to this at the Pierre.”

  “It’s one of the things I’ve had to work out with Doctor Gold. But it’s true. When I was eleven or twelve, and you were nine years older, I was head over heels in love with you. I thought that you were the most exciting, most beautiful girl in the world. And you were!” He smiles at her, and covers her hand with his. “And in many ways, you still are.”

  Flustered, Joan giggles nervously, and says, “Well, thank you, Mogie,” and lets her hand rest for a moment under his, before withdrawing it. “People did use to say I looked like Gene Tierney. I always thought more Joan Bennett.”

  “You can’t imagine what a thrill it is for me to watch you come into a restaurant like this, and see people recognize you.”

  “But what you’re saying—”

  “And I can say all this even though I know how much you’ve always hated me, Joan—for being the first of the second litter of Auerbach children, as we say. But just lately Doctor Gold has given me
some new insights about that problem, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You always wanted to be the oldest male in the family, didn’t you? You always wanted to be what I’ve become. You always wanted to be the dominant male figure among the Auerbach sibs. You unconsciously wanted to castrate me, and turn me into a younger sister.”

  “That’s nonsense, Mogie.”

  “Of course it’s been unconscious on your part. But it finally helps me understand you. It’s a classic case of penis envy. You wanted a cock. I had one, so you wanted mine.”

  “Mogie—for heaven’s sake!” Joan says. “Please get back to what you were saying about Mother.”

  “Well, a tendency toward incestuous longings does tend to run in certain families. Doctor Gold told me this, too. And it’s particularly prevalent among families of Eastern European origin. Jewish families—”

  “Like Mother’s—”

  “Who were ghettoized for so long—”

  “Do you really think—?”

  “And here’s another interesting thing. What color are Josh’s eyes?”

  “Blue.”

  “And Mother’s?”

  “Also blue.”

  “And Papa’s?”

  “Dark brown. Glaring at us from the portrait in the library.”

  “And yours, and mine, and Babette’s?”

  “Brown. But that doesn’t prove—”

  “And Prince’s eyes? I’ve been trying to remember. There are no photographs—”

  “All destroyed. But they were brown, too—I remember very well.”

  “Well, then,” Mogie says. “What about Uncle Abe?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Try very hard. From this newspaper picture, it’s impossible to tell.”

  “I’m sorry, Mogie. It was so long ago, and I was just a little girl.”

  “But if it should turn out that Uncle Abe’s—or Arthur Litton’s—eyes were blue, that would tell us something, wouldn’t it?”

  Joan considers this a moment. “But no, not really,” she says at last. “Two blue-eyed parents can’t have a brown, but two browns or one brown and one blue can have either-or.”

  “True enough,” Mogie says. “But the chances are three out of four that brown will dominate, because blue is recessive. That’s Mendel. That’s the Mendelian Ratio. We need to know what color Uncle Abe’s eyes were. Or are. That’s the meaning of this dynamic. If they’re blue, like Mother’s, we could draw some conclusions, don’t you think?”

  “Now wait a minute,” Joan says. “Uncle Abe left the company in nineteen seventeen. I know, because it was the year America went into the war. The family had no association with him after that. Josh wasn’t born until nineteen twenty-eight. So how could he possibly—?”

  “Ah,” Mogie says, lifting his glass and looking at her over its rim with half-closed eyes. “But I know something that you don’t, my darling sister.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I was coming to that. Our Uncle Abe came back.”

  “Came back? When?”

  “It was about ten years later. I was eight or nine. You, I believe, were off on one of your—marital adventures. I never saw him, but I know he came back, because I remember Mother and Papa having a terrible row about it. I remember Papa shouting, ‘Now what’s that damned brother of yours trying to pull?’ And I remember Papa saying, ‘He’s a crook and a liar, and he’s not going to get anything from me.’ I remember, because I didn’t understand that expression, “trying to pull.’ And because I’d never even known that Mother had a brother.”

  “What was it he wanted?”

  “I don’t know. But I know when I asked Mother what it meant, and asked her who her brother was, she just said, ‘It’s grown-up business,’ and wouldn’t talk about it. So whatever Abe wanted, I gather he didn’t get.”

  “But still, Mogie,” Joan says, twirling the plastic stirrer in her drink. “Do you really think our mother would—I mean, she’s always been so proper.”

  Mogie’s eyes narrow still further. “Which brings me to my final point,” he says. “I’m not sure that she did anything at all. In her case, I’m quite certain it was—” he lowers his voice to a whisper, and leans closer to his sister—“rape.”

  “Oh, Mogie. No,” Joan gasps.

  “Why not? Considering the man’s character? Considering the amount of money she’s been paying him to keep the facts from coming out? Why, it would be worth almost anything to keep the family from knowing something like that.”

  “Why wouldn’t she have had an abortion?”

  “Hard to do in those days. Illegal, and risky. And how would she have explained it to Papa? Don’t you remember when she was pregnant with Josh, how strange she was—irritable and moody?”

  “I always supposed she was worrying about having another baby at that age. She was thirty-six, thirty-seven—”

  “Nonsense. Women didn’t worry about that in those days. Nobody’d ever heard of Down’s syndrome in nineteen twenty-eight.”

  Joan stares at the pale pink tablecloth in front of her. “Sometimes I wish Josh had been born a Mongolian idiot,” she says, “instead of—as Mother keeps reminding us—so smart.” But even as she says these words, against the pale pink surface of the tablecloth unexpected pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place, and out of a meaningless cryptogram clues appear and gather to form clear English sentences. “Oh, dear God, Mogie,” she says softly. “Because she did say—”

  “Say what?”

  “Said that Uncle Abe had done something terrible to her years ago. Something that hurt her. Used the word hurt. And she said it was personal. Nothing to do with the company.”

  “There. You see?”

  “Something so awful she couldn’t tell me.”

  “There. You see?”

  “And she said that when they were growing up they slept in the same room. Even in the same bed.”

  “There. You see? It all fits.” His eyes are slits now. “It’s a classic case. Think of it. Picture it. Uncle Abe—driven to fury, having been denied whatever he wanted from Papa. Determined to have his revenge, against Papa and the family. In his rage, the childhood fantasies come back, intensified in middle age. Out of control, he turns on the family’s most vulnerable member—Mother. And finally, irrationally, he acts those fantasies out.”

  “Dear God, I think you may be right.”

  “I know I am.”

  “And Josh is—”

  “Arthur Litton’s son.”

  “A gangster—”

  “The result of an incestuous rape.”

  “We’ve got to get to Litton.”

  “There was a woman, Daisy Something, who was close to all of them—”

  “Stevens. Daisy Stevens. She’d know, yes.”

  “The color of his eyes, at least.”

  “But if this ever got out, it could ruin all of us,” Joan says.

  “It would certainly put an end to dear little Josh’s career with the company,” Mogie says with a small smile.

  “But what else could it do?”

  “It’s a can of worms, all right,” Mogie says. Then he says slowly and carefully, “There is one other thing, at least, that it could do. You see, I’ve given this some thought. If Josh is not Papa’s real son, I see no reason why he should be entitled to any share of Papa’s trust.”

  Joan Auerbach stares across the table at her brother. Then she does an uncharacteristic thing, and takes a swallow of her bourbon old-fashioned.

  “I see no reason at all,” her brother says. He glances at his gold Cartier tank watch. “I’ve got to run. I promised Tina. We’re trying to get pregnant ourselves. My sperm count is fine, and Tina’s ovulating this week.” He signals the waiter for his check.

  Outside the hotel entrance, Mogie’s car and driver are waiting, and the driver gives Mogie a crisp salute and holds open the door. “You’re looking very chipper, Mr. Auerbach,” he says. “You must have
had a pleasant meeting.”

  “As a matter of fact, Warrington, I have,” Mogie says as he slides into the wide back seat of the Rolls. “Extremely pleasant. Back to Beekman, please.” As the car pulls away from the curb, Mogie pulls down the writing table that is set into the back of the front seat, lights the goose-necked reading lamp, and removes writing utensils—a sheet of his crested stationery and a gold pen—from the special pockets where they are kept in the car. Ah, darling Joan, he thinks. Darling, darling Joan. Phase One of his little plan, his elegant little plan, has gone more splendidly than he had ever dared to hope it would, and now is the moment to embark upon Phase Two. Mogie’s orderly mind likes to do things in this fashion, in carefully timed and organized phases, and after Phase Two, in due course, will follow Phase Three.

  One of the many facets of Mogie Auerbach, as a Renaissance Man, which even his family is not aware of, is that among his many talents he is also a better-than-passable sonnet-maker. He has been composing this particular sonnet in his head for several days, and now he is ready to set the lines to paper. He has chosen, for this sonnet, the Shakespearean mode, and, with a flourish, he writes its title across the top of the page—“J’Accuse!” He continues writing rapidly—a Coleridge uninterrupted by a gentleman on business from Porlock—and, by the time his car has traveled the short distance between Sixty-first Street and Beekman Place, it is finished, and he reads: