The Auerbach Will

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  Later, as they lay together on the impromptu bedding they had made of their discarded clothes, he said, “This is what we both wanted. Always. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And of course you’re right. I have hated him. Because he had you. And I didn’t.”

  “But you do now,” she whispered. “You do now.”

  The aborted coming-out party was given rather lurid treatment by some of the press, under such headlines as “DEB DISAPPEARS,” and “HEIRESS HIGHTAILS IT.”

  Jean-Claude de Lucy was rather vaguely described as “a ten-goal polo player.” He was forty-two, and had had three previous marriages, one of them to a Pittsburgh Scaife, who was related to the Mellons.

  Jake Auerbach announced that he intended to do absolutely nothing to try to get his daughter back, nor would he send her a cent of money.

  But six weeks later Joan was home again anyway, with a broken collarbone, asking for a divorce, charging “extreme cruelty.”

  Twenty-two

  Today, Essie is having lunch with her only grandson, and as usual he has chosen the restaurant. He prefers the fashionable and expensive places, which is fine with Essie, since she is happy to see him develop taste and discernment. For the past few years, they have been having these little lunches together every three or four weeks, and Essie always looks forward to them. Sometimes they go to “21,” sometimes to La Caravelle, sometimes to Côte Basque, sometimes to the Four Seasons. Today, young Josh has chosen Le Perigord Park, just a few blocks down the street from Essie’s apartment building. Joshua Auerbach, Jr., who is just twenty-three, derives obvious pleasure from using his credit cards, making suggestions from menus, ordering cocktails, selecting wines, tipping waiters and captains. And Essie derives pleasure from imagining that the other patrons of the restaurants they visit look at the two of them and assume that the old lady in her sable cape has purchased for herself a handsome young gigolo.

  Considering what some of her friends have for grandchildren—shuffling, shaggy things in beards, Fu Manchu mustaches, patched jeans and horrible sneakers—young Josh is a blessing. Not that he looks like a gigolo, however. He is tall, well-built, clean-cut and clean-shaven, a tennis and lacrosse player, a skier. His sandy-colored hair tends to have a rather wind-blown look but, with the rest of him so well put together, from his scent to his well-clipped fingernails, Essie finds this one detail attractive. Today he is wearing a neat blue pinstriped business suit, a white shirt, and a blue-and-red striped tie. As usual, he has arrived at the restaurant a few minutes ahead of her, and rises to greet her when she enters the room. One thing must be said for Katie, his mother: she taught her son manners. He squeezes her hand and kisses her lightly on the cheek—“Hi, Nana”—and no sooner has Essie seated herself than a waiter arrives with a dry martini, on the stem with an olive, just as Essie likes it. He always does this.

  “Well, then,” Essie says, removing her gloves. “So how’s by you?” It is one of their little jokes, talking in Jewishisms, though young Josh looks about as Jewish as Robert Redford.

  “Okay by me, so how’s by you?”

  “You like my new dress?”

  “On you it looks good. You should live to a hundred and twenty.”

  “I should have such luck. It’s a nothing of a dress.”

  “Well, so long as you got your health,” he says. And then, lifting his glass, “L’chayim.”

  “L’chayim, Joshie. It’s nice to see you.”

  Essie loves him very much. It is wrong to have favorites, of course, but of her grandchildren Josh is hers.

  “Seriously,” he says, “how’s Aunt Joan?”

  “She’s fine. She’s home. She’s still pretty depressed, but she’s seeing this new doctor. I’m hoping—”

  “What actually happened, Nana, do you know?”

  Essie hesitates. “I like to think she had an accident,” she says finally. “You know how doctors ladle out these pills. I think that she was pretty upset, and—well, couldn’t sleep, and forgot she’d taken some pills, and then took some more. She’s always been so—highstrung.”

  “I blame that rotten story in the Times about the Express,” he says. “That story even upset me, and I didn’t have anything to do with her paper.”

  “Well, when a newspaper goes under, the Times has got to print the news.”

  “I meant all that rotten stuff about how she couldn’t control her staff, and how that meant she couldn’t build a solid enough advertising base. All that was personal, and gossip, and rotten.”

  “Well, what can you expect from the competition? As your grandfather used to say.”

  “The Times made it sound as though she was a candidate for Welfare. She’s not, is she?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Essie says. “Her father left her ten million in an unbreakable trust. And if the income from ten million dollars isn’t enough to live comfortably on, she should have her head examined. Anyway,” Essie adds, “she is having her head examined. This new doctor—I forget his name—not that I have all that much faith in shrinks, as your generation calls them. How long has your Uncle Mogie been going to a shrink? Forty years?”

  Josh laughed. “Ah, but look at him—look at that dishy new wife he’s got!”

  “She’s—dishy, all right. Was she really a Rockette, Joshie?”

  “She told me she was a dancer. But I don’t think she ever made it to the Music Hall, Nana. I think it was Roseland, more like it.”

  “You’re teasing me, of course. Actually, I like her. Not a brain in her head, of course. But a girl like that doesn’t need brains. At the tree-trimming, did you notice how Mogie hovers over her? Hovers! All her brains are below the waist, if you ask me.”

  “The Women’s Libbers would scalp you for that kind of talk, Nana,” he says. “And what about Richard? Has he left for good, or—”

  “Who knows? I could ask you the same question. He’s in—in South America, or South Africa, I forget just where, and Joan hasn’t heard a word from him.”

  “I bet he’ll be back, Nana.”

  “Well, for her sake, I hope so. Or that she can find some new outlet for her—energies.”

  “How many divorces have there been in this family?”

  “Don’t ask!” Essie says, slipping back into the Jewish accent. “Enough already.”

  They bantered like this, back and forth, as they always did, for about half an hour, before picking up their menus. Their lunches never had any specific direction, there was never any specific reason for them, no business to discuss, no agenda. They gossiped about the family, about friends, about what Josh was doing at the office. After graduating from Princeton, with honors, a business major, young Josh had joined Eaton & Cromwell in the company’s training program, moving from department to department. Right now he was working in the Advertising Department. One day, Essie knew, he would be president of the company. Already, they were calling him the Fair-Haired Boy. “Let’s see,” Essie says, studying the menu, “do you think the shad roe would be fresh?”

  “I … think … not,” he says carefully. “Too early. But I know their Dover sole is flown in fresh every day.…”

  “I’ll have that, then.”

  Later, during lunch, she asks him suddenly, “Joshie, when you were in school and college, did you ever get involved in what they call this—drug scene?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Oh, heavy, Nana. Heavy, heavy.” Then he winks at her. “But I won’t deny I’ve smoked a little marijuana.”

  “Now that strikes me as perfectly harmless,” Essie says, “from everything I read. Sometimes I think that Joan should take up marijuana—something that would relax her a little bit.”

  “Somehow, I can’t picture Aunt Joan rolling a joint.”

  “I wouldn’t even mind trying it myself,” Essie says.

  “Well,” he says with another wink, “some Saturday afternoon I’ll come by your house and we’ll go tripping together.”

  “I’d li
ke that,” she says. “I really would. I like the sound of it. Tripping.” Then she says, “But you know, Joshie, you’ve always been an exceptionally good boy. I thought that the very first time you were put in my arms, as a tiny baby. I thought to myself: this little baby is going to grow up to be an exceptionally good boy.”

  “Well, thanks, Nana.”

  “That’s why I’m so happy you’ve gone into the business. Besides you and your father, no one else in the family seems to give a Chinaman’s damn about it.”

  “I find the business fascinating.”

  “It’s good. It’s nice to think of the third generation still caring about it. It gives a nice—continuity.” She realizes that, years ago, when her own mother-in-law expressed these sentiments, she didn’t agree with them at all. She adds, “I didn’t use to feel this way, but now I do. It comes with old age, I guess. Anyway, your grandpa would be pleased.”

  “He must have been quite a guy, Grandpa.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes indeed. Quite a guy.”

  “I was pretty little when he died. I don’t remember too much about him. I just remember him giving me holy hell one day for putting my galoshes on the wrong feet.”

  “Oh, yes. That was his way. He gave a lot of people holy hell when they didn’t do things just his way. That was his nature.”

  “Speaking of which,” he says, “I do have one small piece of business to discuss with you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The dedication of the new building in Chicago. Will you be coming out for that? Uncle Charles asked me to ask you whether or not you’ve made up your mind.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “We’d fly you out on a company plane. Put you up in style at the Ritz.”

  “Tell Charles I haven’t decided yet.”

  “For some reason, he gets real sentimental about wanting you there. Continuity—what you were talking about.”

  “Well, for various reasons I don’t have the happiest association with Chicago.”

  “Really, Nana? Why?”

  “Reasons not to be gone into here.”

  “Of course Uncle Charles is getting pretty old,” he says.

  “Now see here,” she says, putting down her fork and placing her napkin on the table. “Charles may be getting old, as you say—though he’s two years younger than me—but he still knows more about this business than you or I or any other living soul. You must always listen very carefully to everything he says. Very carefully, Joshie.”

  From across the table he smiles at her. “What he says is that he wants you to go.”

  “Ah,” Essie says, returning the smile, “but what I said was that you must listen to what he says. Not that I must.”

  “Touché,” he says.

  As they leave the restaurant, Essie’s car and driver are waiting at the curb. The driver hops out and opens the door for her. The late February wind is cold, and Essie clutches the folds of her sable cape about her. Josh takes her elbow to help her into the car and kisses her good-bye all in one motion. “So long, Nana. Enjoyed the lunch.”

  “So did I. Thank you, Joshie. Tell Charles I’ll try to have a decision for him before too long.”

  “’Bye, Nana.…”

  From the back seat, she waves to him as the door closes. As the car pulls out into the traffic, she turns and watches him as he strides purposefully down Park Avenue, coat collar turned up, shoulders hunched against the wind, his hair blowing. Watching him walk away from her she cannot help but be reminded of another beautiful young man, years ago.

  The driver lowers the window between them for instructions.

  “Home,” she says.

  Jake’s company had kept the apartment at the Palmer House, and used it to put up out-of-town salesmen and plant managers whenever they came through. But it stood empty much of the time, and it was here that Essie and Charles would meet, usually in the middle of the day, at lunchtime. The hotel staff, he was certain, would be discreet, particularly in matters pertaining to one of their highest-paying tenants, and he had been correct. The only stipulation which Charles and Essie made to each other was that they should always arrive and leave separately, with their own keys.

  Those years had a very special quality for them both—hard to define. They were years with bright edges framed around them that were definite and in place. Her own feelings were so different from that youthful, almost schoolgirlish love she had once felt for Jake, a love that seemed to spring from some visceral point in her belly rather than from her heart. Perhaps this was what people meant when they talked of mature love, because after all Essie was thirty-six when the affair began and, in those days, thirty-six was considered middle-aged. It was an affair, for instance, that did not involve much kissing. Oh, they kissed, of course, but the thing was that kissing was not the point. Years later, Essie would ask herself if Charles had ever said to her the words, “I love you,” or whether she had ever actually uttered the words to him. Oh, they probably both had but, again, hearing these vocalized assurances was not the point of what they had together, was not what gave those years their strong framework and their sense of wonder and surprise. That was part of it—surprise, surprise that each could derive so much pleasure from the other. Surprise at their luck—because luck seemed an important ingredient in it all. How lucky she had been to be seated in a certain car on a certain train when he got on board at Harmon on that certain day, how lucky it had been for them that Joan had skipped out on her debut party to marry an unlucky Frenchman. And how lucky they both were to have reached points in their marriages where neither attached any guilt or remorse to the passionate happiness, the passionate affection they found they were able to offer to each other. That was it. It was not love in the love-story sense. Passionate affection described it best. They had become lovers, of course, and they were in love, and they made love, but the usual baggage and burdens that come with love did not exist, had been stripped away, and left behind somewhere in time. It was an unmortgaged love—debt-free. Essie had been astonished to find that this sort of love existed and so, she was sure, was Charles.

  As a result, whenever they met, she could not wait to hear him tell her how he had spent his day, or week, and he could not wait to hear her latest news. When they met, they would talk furiously, eagerly, for twenty minutes or so. Then they would order a light lunch from Room Service, and talk some more. Then they made love. When they parted, there were never tears, and when they could not meet there were never recriminations. Though the years have blurred details, that is what Essie remembers most vividly—that bright framework that supported a tall structure of talk, laughter, passion and affection, solid as a city skyscraper.

  Also, we must remember—Essie must remember—that those years helped her forget the loss of Prince. Not forget. But put it in the only perspective it could be put, which was in the perspective of the over and the past. Now, perhaps, is the moment to deal with that.

  Picture a late-afternoon room, long shadows, curtains blowing in from a breeze off the lake. All this must be imaginary, of course, because Essie was not there. And fix the time at some point earlier than the beginning of her affair with Charles—make it 1923. Yes, somewhere in 1923 must have been when our imaginary scene occurred, because that was the year Prince was fifteen, and was given his first shares of Eaton & Cromwell stock and, as we shall see, there was a connection.

  Imagine, then, Hans standing naked beside the bed, smiling slightly, and saying, “Princey, what do you figure your daddy would say if he knew about what you and I like to do?”

  Prince pulls the bedclothes up across his knees, and says, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” says Hans, “I think he’d be pretty fairly well upset by it, if he found out. About you and me. Don’t you by it, if he found out. About you and me. Don’t you figure?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Prince says.

  “I figure your daddy would be pretty fairly mad. If somehow he found out.” He reaches down for Pr
ince’s toe under the sheet and wiggles it and says, almost in a whine, “You know, old Hans here doesn’t get paid much money for the job he does. Don’t you think old Hans is worth a little extra? For the little extra things he does for Princey? For making sure that Princey’s daddy doesn’t find out what Princey likes to do with Hans? Your daddy’s a rich man. The papers say he gives away millions of dollars to people he doesn’t even know. Don’t you think you could work out a way for old Hans to get a little more money?”

  Prince says nothing.

  Hans wiggles his toe again. “You’re your daddy’s fair-haired boy,” he says. “You can do it, I think, for old Hans.”

  As has been said, who knows whether this little exchange took place as written? What difference does truth make about a thing like that? Does truth bring back anything?

  What is certain is that in that summer of Prince’s fifteenth year, 1923, there was a discussion between Prince and his parents on the subject of his finances, and Prince had asked that his allowance be increased.

  “Your grades haven’t been exactly spectacular at school,” his father said.

  “I’m going to work real hard next year, Daddy, to bring them up.…”

  In the end, Jake Auerbach had hit upon a better idea than increasing his son’s allowance. He would sign over to Prince a certain number of shares of Eaton & Cromwell stock, enough to yield him an income for about four hundred dollars a month. Prince would open a bank account. This would give him a personal stake in the family business which he would one day head. It would teach him the value of money. It would teach him how American Capitalism worked.

  Still, all might have been well if, in the following year, 1924, there had not been a ghastly scandal in Chicago. A fourteen-year-old boy named Bobby Franks had been abducted from his schoolyard and brutally murdered, his mutilated body found near a drainage ditch. Within hours, the two chief subjects were two youths not much older than Prince himself, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. The suspects and the victim were all members of prominent Chicago Jewish families. The Frankses, Loebs, and Leopolds had all been to parties at The Bluff. As more details emerged, the Bobby Franks kidnap-murder became even more lurid and spread to newspaper headlines across the country. Loeb and Leopold, it seemed, had had Nietzschean visions of being supermen, of committing the perfect crime. The two were homosexual lovers, and had killed Bobby Franks to achieve the ultimate homosexual thrill. The newspapers were filled with words like “pederasty,” which anyone who could read could look up in a dictionary and figure out what was meant.