The Auerbach Will

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  If you asked him, Arthur Litton would tell you that he has always viewed his business as just one of several avenues out of the ghetto, out of the poverty of Norfolk, Rivington, Hester, Orchard and Delancey Streets. Many others chose the same route, he was by no means unique. It was a route that worked, that brought him to where he is today, to an oceanfront condominum that would probably fetch $750,000 if he were ever to put it on the market, which he does not plan to do. His route has made him several times a millionaire, though he is not as rich as some published reports would have him be. No matter. It is enough to give him and Angelique an easy life.

  His sister Essie simply chose another route, marriage, and the fact that her marriage to that piss-pious Jake Auerbach made her a woman worth hundreds of millions and was thanks to Arthur Litton is something that he never forgets to remind himself. It was thanks to him, not Jake, that the Auerbachs got in on the ground floor at Eaton & Cromwell. It was he, not Jake, who heard about George Eaton and Cyrus Cromwell and their crummy little mail-order shop—a fact that the piss-pious Jake very quickly managed to forget. Piss-pious. That is a term he reserves for his late brother-in-law. Where would you be, Esther Auerbach, he often asks himself, if it hadn’t been for me? Still scrubbing linoleum on Grand Boulevard, still trying to grow cabbage in the backyard. If Arthur Litton ever decided to write a book about his life—which, of course, he will never do—he would have quite a juicy little tale to tell. But he is no longer really bitter—or so he tells himself—about being forced out of what could have been his own company. He has led his life without it. Essie has paid her debt. Still, when he thinks of her millions in the hundreds, compared with his five or six, it rankles.

  Just as Arthur Litton has always thought of his as a life without regrets, he has also thought of his life in retirement as one without cares—no cares more pressing than deciding which filly to put a nickel on next Saturday at Hialeah. Until about three weeks ago, that is. That was when his niece began telephoning Angelique from New York, asking to speak to him, and leaving messages. He has not laid eyes on Joan since she was a snot-nosed little kid. He hadn’t liked Joan then, and he is sure he doesn’t like her now—particularly with this latest development. Now Joan is in Miami, demanding to see him, leaving a message that what she has to tell him is important for his future. He has not spoken to her, but these are the messages Angelique has relayed, and now Joan is just a few miles down the beach, checked in at the Omni.

  Why should he see her? Just because she is Essie’s daughter? That, to him, is not reason enough. Arthur Litton knows how to deal with federal and state prosecutors and their bureaucratic toadies, for their moves are always predictable. A family’s moves are not. In fact, they are often dangerously the opposite. Joan, furthermore, runs a newspaper—he knows all about that—and if there is any group for whom Arthur Litton has less respect than federal prosecutors it is newspaper people, who will make up any kind of story, tell any kind of lie, to make a headline. No, he is certain that Joan is here on some kind of fishing expedition, wanting to pump him for some kind of information. She has told Angelique that she has some sort of message for him from Essie, but that story makes no sense. If Essie needs to reach him, she knows exactly how to do it, and so does Charles. No, a fishing expedition is what it is.

  But should he see her? That is what is worrying him now. That is what is keeping him up after his normal bedtime, unable to sleep, prowling about the terrace of his penthouse, smoking cigarette after cigarette, listening to the night noises. Of course he will tell her nothing. Essie has kept up her end of the deal, and so will he. Unlike her late husband, Essie is a straight-shooter, and so, in any deal, is Arthur Litton. There is no question on that score, in which case there is no reason not to see her. But still, but still. She is a newspaper person, and a woman, and if he has no use for newspaper people as a breed, he has even less use for newspaper women. Newshens, Time magazine used to call them. Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, Dorothy Kilgallen, Adela Rogers St. Johns—always grubbing around in the dirt like chickens for pieces of old corn. Or old porn. It was all the same. Perhaps all she wants to write about is his “life-style,” or how Arthur Litton looks today. But he has had enough publicity to fill a lifetime, and isn’t looking for any more today. He has also had his share of aggravation, and doesn’t need any more from a long-lost niece.

  Should he see her? What does she want? He has to admit to a certain amount of curiosity. How did she find his unpublished number? From Daisy? It is not fair, he thinks almost petulantly, to be handed these questions and worries at this time of his life, when life should be easy, quiet, good. He decides to postpone any decisions until tomorrow.

  From behind the shadow of his building, a half-moon appears, and Arthur Litton’s wide terrace is bathed in a gentle, restful light, and he thinks he will sit for just a moment longer to enjoy it, and moves to a garden bench near the clump of blue hydrangea bushes. His terrace is his great pride. It is lushly planted, and it has a secret. Every climbing vine, every shrub and tree, every bloom is artificial, made of plastic, but fashioned so cleverly that most people, seeing it for the first time, do not realize it. Even the water lilies blossoming in the basin of the central fountain are not real. His terrace garden was created, at no small expense, by an outfit called Fabulous Fakes in Bal Harbour, and few people who have visited Arthur Litton’s apartment have stopped to wonder how he gets tulips and chrysanthemums to blossom in the same season, or why the blue hydrangea bushes, more indigenous to the New England coast, do so well in southern Florida. The reasons for the artificial garden are threefold. First, it requires no maintenance. Second, in the hurricane season, the garden can be quickly packed up and stored out of harm’s way. And third, having planter boxes and tubs that require no watering keeps Arthur Litton free from complaints of neighbors on the floors below that his water is coming through their dining room ceilings. If their ceilings leak, it is only from rain, not from Arthur Litton. He knows that, when the identity of the anonymous purchaser of his condo—for whom his lawyer was acting as agent—became known, there was some displeasure expressed by other tenants in the building. For this reason, he has always tried scrupulously to be a good neighbor. And in the seventeen years he has lived in this apartment there has never been a single complaint involving the tenancy of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Litton. In fact, he has even heard himself and Angelique described as “model neighbors.”

  So I do not deserve this latest aggravation, he thinks, sitting on his garden bench, admiring his luxuriant, man-made garden, where palms and cacti from the desert sprout up among sweet Williams, primroses, phlox and columbine, and where Alberta spruce grows in a ground-cover of California ice-plant. I do not deserve this worry at the end of a long and for the most part satisfying life. At this time of life, a man deserves peace. He is tired, but not yet sleepy. His head aches slightly, and there is a small pain in his right shoulder. In his shirt pocket, he fishes for a digitalis pill, and places it under his tongue. It is angina pain, for his ticker has been giving him a bit of trouble lately, which his doctor tells him is normal for his time of life, particularly for a man who refuses to quit smoking. He waits for the pill to do its work.

  But suddenly, instead, the pain grows sharper. He starts to rise, then decides to sit still until the pain, as it must, passes. But there is something different now, and he thinks he should cry out to Angelique for help, but he suddenly cannot find the breath. He seizes the trunk of a hydrangea bush for support, to pull himself to his feet, but the slender metal rod that provides the armature for the shrub is no match for his weight and, instead, the bush is easily uprooted from its planter tub of Sim-U-Soil. At this point, the pain becomes massive, and Arthur Litton falls sideways into the hydrangeas.

  The plastic boughs sag with his weight, and in the half-moon-light the vivid blooms seem to embower his fallen body with the pale blue clusters of their lifeless blooms.

  On the telephone, Charles is saying to Essie, “I don’t know
whether I have good news for you or bad, old girl.”

  “What is it, Charles?”

  “Your brother Abe is dead. He was found this morning in his garden.”

  “Ah,” she says softly. She cannot help feeling a sudden, deep pang of grief.

  “There’s been talk of a gangland-style killing, because he was holding a bunch of flowers in one hand, but the Dade County Coroner’s Office has ruled a simple coronary.”

  “Ah.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Joan’s imminent arrival on his doorstep didn’t bring it on.”

  “She didn’t see him, then.”

  “No.”

  “Ah,” she says again.

  “Anyway, I wanted you to know it before you read it in the papers.”

  “Thank you, Charles.”

  “I had a call from the Times, from the reporter who’s writing his obituary. They’ve made the Litsky connection, and asked whether he was related to you.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I fudged it. I said, ‘Possibly. It’s a common Jewish name.’ They may try to call you, but I hope not. I told them you were very old and ill, and couldn’t be reached for questions.”

  “Thank you for making me old and ill!”

  “The Times is usually pretty gentlemanly about things like that. But you might want to alert Mary, in case there’s a call, so she and I can have our stories straight.”

  “I understand,” she says. “Though actually I don’t mind if they say he was my brother.”

  “Neither do I,” says Charles. “Because he was. But think of Josh.”

  “You’re right,” she says. “I understand.”

  “Good-bye, Essie.”

  “Good-bye, dear Charles. And thank you.”

  Upon hanging up, she goes directly to Mary Farrell’s office. “Mary,” she says, “has this month’s check gone out to Arthur Litton?”

  “Not until the thirty-first, Mrs. A.”

  “Good. There’ll be no more checks, Mary. He is dead.”

  Mary looks quickly at her employer, then back at her typewriter keyboard. “I see,” she says.

  “And if any newspaper reporters call for me, I am very old and very ill, and cannot come to the telephone.”

  “I see,” says Mary Farrell.

  Outside the funeral home, two heavyset men in dark suits and white neckties block Joan’s entrance at the door. “Sorry, Ma’am, but your name’s not on the list.”

  “My professional name is Joan Auerbach, but in private life I’m Mrs. Richard McAllister.”

  “Neither name’s on the list, Ma’am. These services are strictly private and invitational, by the widow of the deceased.”

  “I’m with the New York Express.”

  “You ain’t on the list, Ma’am. Sorry.”

  “Listen, the deceased is my uncle. I’m his niece.”

  “Sorry,” the dark-suited man says, tapping his sheet of paper with a pudgy finger. “You gotta be on this list. Otherwise, my orders is you can’t go in.”

  “Just tell me one thing,” Joan says, “is it an open casket?”

  “Yeah, it’s open.”

  “Are his eyes open?”

  “What?” the heavy man says. “Are you crazy? What do you mean are his eyes open? The guy is fuckin’ dead.”

  “I need to know the color of his eyes.”

  “Wait a minute,” the man says. Turning away from Joan, he mutters to his cohort, “Al, can you take my place at the door for a sec? I got a crazy lady to get rid of.…”

  “Yes?” Mogie Auerbach says into the telephone in a somewhat impatient tone. “Who is this?”

  “Mogie—it’s me. Mogie—I’ve got terrible news.”

  “Joan, can you call me back in half an hour?” he says. “Tina and I are having intercourse.”

  Twenty-one

  Esther Auerbach, having donated the Auerbach Pavilion, is treated very much as a V.I.P. at Mount Sinai Hospital, and as her limousine pulls up in front of the main entrance on Upper Fifth Avenue, four people, who have been waiting just inside the glass doors, step out onto the sidewalk to escort her inside—the executive director of the hospital, the chief physician, and two senior members of the nursing staff in crisp white uniforms. The doctor offers Essie his arm as she gets out of the car, they cross the sidewalk, and one of the nurses holds open the door for them.

  “She’s going to be all right,” Doctor Roth assures her. “We were worried about possible brain damage, but she’s conscious now, and seems clear-headed. We still have her in Intensive Care, of course.”

  Essie nods, and they cross the foyer to where an elevator is waiting for them.

  “The thing is, we’re still not sure when it happened,” he continues, as the doors close. “Her maid found her early this morning. It may have been only a few hours, in which case she’s very lucky.…”

  Essie nods again.

  “I wouldn’t recommend spending too much time with her today, Mrs. Auerbach,” he continues. “No more than fifteen minutes. She’s a mighty uncomfortable lady.”

  Essie nods her assent to all these instructions as they leave the elevator and start down the corridor.

  The Intensive Care Unit is dark and shadowy, the better to read the screens of all the computerized monitoring equipment, and its only sounds are the various little beeps from the machines and the rustle of the nurses’ skirts. The head nurse leads the way now to a pale figure on a hospital bed, and Essie hears her whisper, “Your mother is here to see you, Mrs. McAllister,” and lightly touches Joan’s wrist, into which an I.V. tube runs. Then she closes the screens around them, and leaves them alone. Essie, who has promised herself to be brave about all this, still feels tears welling in her eyes when she bends to kiss Joan on the forehead and to squeeze her hand. “Joan … Joan, darling …”

  “Hello, Mother,” Joan says in a hoarse voice.

  “Joan … Joan, why did you do this?”

  “Simple … nothing to live for … lost everything … lost the newspaper … lost Richard … and now look. I’m still here.”

  “Oh, Joan. Why didn’t you come to me?”

  Joan looks up at her with dead eyes. “Tried,” she says in that terrible rattling voice. “Stupid secretary … Mary … always said you were busy … out to lunch … Besides, you already turned me down.”

  “But Joan, I had no idea things were as bad as that.”

  “Were … only worse … still are … Sixty million dollars, Mother … your investment, too.”

  “That doesn’t matter to me, Joan. You know I’ll always take care of you. All I want is for you to be happy.”

  “I want to die,” Joan says.

  “Oh, don’t! Don’t say that.”

  Joan does not reply, and turns her head away from Essie, into the sheet, and now Essie can think of nothing to say. The wall of years behind them is too thick and sturdy. When Joan was little, back at 5269 Grand Boulevard, and had the measles, and had to lie in a dark room like this one, Essie would sit beside her bed and read to her by the light of a flashlight. In those days, she used to read to all the children, the three of them, Prince, Joan, and Babette, all snuggled together under the covers of one narrow bed—Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and all the Beatrix Potter books which Essie almost knew by heart. But what is there to read to her now? What is there even to talk to her about? A nurse enters the screened enclosure and quietly and quickly checks Joan’s vital signs, makes a notation on her chart, and leaves.

  “Your poor newspaper, you worked so hard on it,” Essie says at last.

  Joan says nothing.

  “Has Richard been to see you?”

  “’Course not … bastard.”

  “Joan, I’m sorry.”

  “Just tell me one thing, Mother. What color were Uncle Abe’s eyes?”

  “He had dark eyes. Dark brown. He had my father’s eyes. Why?”

  Joan closes her own dark eyes. “Nothing … stupid Mogie …
Mother, I don’t want to talk anymore. Terrible sore throat.…”

  “I understand,” Essie says. “Good night, darling.” She kisses her again. “I’ll be by again tomorrow.…”

  “We have no idea how many she took,” Doctor Roth says as he escorts her out to her car. “There was an empty bottle by the bed. But the point is she didn’t take enough to do the trick. Maybe twenty Seconals. That’s not enough to do the trick. I suspect that this was an angry act. She wants to punish someone.”

  “Oh, me, of course!” Essie says. “Isn’t that what the psychiatrists always say? It’s always the mother’s fault.” And she suddenly has an ugly, irrational, unworthy and totally unmotherly thought: for the briefest moment she wishes that Joan had taken enough, as Jim Roth rather crassly puts it, “to do the trick.”

  “Either tomorrow or the next day, she’ll start seeing Doctor Weizman, head of Psychiatry. That’s routine in these cases.”

  “And there’ll—there’ll be nothing given to the newspapers about this, will there, Jim?”

  “Absolutely not, Mrs. Auerbach. We’ll see to that.”

  “What’s she trying to do, Mother?” Babette’s voice screams at her over the telephone from Palm Beach. “First she pirates a third of my trust—and now this!”

  “Well, be grateful you still have two thirds left,” Essie says. “And don’t yell at me about this. I didn’t let her do it. You did.”

  “But I didn’t know! I’m going to sue her, Mother!”

  “Good idea. And good luck, because it doesn’t sound as though she’s got much left to sue for. Babette, I have more important things to think about.”

  “More important things? What’s more important than my money and my social position in Palm Beach?”

  “I can think of several. Such as my dinner, which is about to be served, and which I intend to eat. Good-bye.”

  Joan. What had ever made her happy? Essie never had been sure. The year was 1927, when Joan was eighteen, and when Joan was to have her coming-out party. It was for that party that Essie had first found it necessary to hire a private secretary, Agnes Lauterbach, because it was the largest and most elaborate party Essie had ever given and required months of preparation. It was true that Agnes Lauterbach was a little dictatorial, requiring—among other things—that the children make appointments to see their mother. But there was no doubt that she was efficient, and efficiency was required for a party of this scale.