The Auerbach Will

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Call them public-relations reasons if you like.”

  “Explain them to me, please.”

  “Well, you know—over the years there have been stories, rumors that you and he didn’t get along. That you and he led almost completely separate lives.”

  “True enough. Almost completely toward the end.”

  “But if you were there, on the stage, to say a few kind words about him—”

  “And tell a few lies?”

  “And there are stories, too, that for all his philanthropies, he was something of a monster and a despot—”

  “Which he was. Money did that to him. Money does that to some people. To weak people. I know. I saw it happen.”

  “But he also had his kind and tender side.”

  “Ha. So, they say, did Adolf Hitler.”

  “That’s a cheap shot, Mother. Surely you loved him when you first married him.”

  “Oh, yes. That’s the trouble.” Her eyes suddenly well up, and the moisture dims her vision. “Don’t you understand? I married a totally different man. And then he changed, and he changed because I helped him.”

  “Then do it for the man you married. After all, Mother, he’s dead now. There’s nothing he can do to hurt you now. Can’t you forgive the dead? I’ve always been of the opinion that while it may be hard to forgive the living, the dead should be forgiven. Doesn’t the Talmud say that?”

  “Who knows? I’ve forgotten what I ever knew about what the Talmud says. You should have asked my father that. He had some interesting theories on forgiveness. So. You want a memorial. A memorial to my dead love. Will it be bronze?”

  “What?”

  “The bust. In the lobby. Will it be bronze?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Good. Appropriate material. A mixture of copper and tin, and sometimes other elements. Zinc and phosphorus. They wanted me to bronze your first baby shoes, but I wouldn’t let them. But I do have a lock of your hair from your first haircut. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t, Mother.”

  “I wonder where it is. Mary would know.”

  “So may I please have a decision, Mother? Yes or no? If it’s no, I’ll be terribly disappointed, but I’ll promise never to pester you about this again.”

  “I don’t want to disappoint you, Josh,” she says. She hesitates, then, closing her eyes, says suddenly, “Suppose I say yes—on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you ask Daisy Stevens, too.”

  He frowns. “Now, Mother. Why would you want her?”

  “As an old family friend. If this is to be a memorial to Jake, then I think that Daisy ought to be invited.”

  “She’s just the kind of person we don’t want to be there.”

  “We? Who’s we?”

  “All of us. Look—you know there were those rumors about him, too—that there were other women—”

  “Well, there were! And she was one of them. An important one.”

  “And you expect us to put her up there on the platform with the rest of us? To advertise the fact that—”

  “Suddenly you’re going all plural on me, Joshua. First, it was what you wanted. Now it’s what a whole bunch of people want. Which is it?”

  “Let me put it this way, Mother. I don’t want my father’s mistress at the dedication of our building.”

  “But if it’s to be all lies anyway, then why not? If people saw her sitting up there on the platform, right beside me, they’d think to themselves, ‘Why, those old stories couldn’t possibly be true! Just see how friendly those two old ladies are.’ Wouldn’t that be what they’d think? That’s public relations, if you ask me.”

  “Of course if she has a shred of good taste she won’t come.”

  “I don’t know whether she’ll come or whether she won’t. You’re right—she probably won’t. All I’m asking is that she get an invitation.”

  Shaking his head, he says, “Well, I guess that’s not too much to ask. You drive a hard bargain, Mother.”

  “The same invitation that the high mucky-mucks will get. The same as the Vice-President, whoever he is.”

  “But if she decides to come—”

  “We cross that bridge when we come to it. Do we have a deal, Joshua?”

  He lets out a long sigh. Sitting back in the garden chair, he stretches his long legs, hooks his thumbs in the belt-loops of his trousers and stares glumly at the tips of his brown loafers. “Okay,” he says at last, “we have a deal.”

  Abe Litsky is dead and, gone with him, is the alter ego he created for himself whom he had named Arthur Litton.

  He was Arthur Litton that afternoon in the apartment on the seventh floor of the Palmer House when Mrs. Jacob Auerbach’s visitor was announced from downstairs. But he was still Abe Litsky to her when she opened the door for him and let him in, in 1928, and though it had been more than ten years since she had seen him he seemed not to have aged at all. He still had the same youthful, wiry build, the same boyish, slightly lopsided, but nonetheless engaging smile—except that he was not smiling now.

  “I’ve thought about this a long time, Essie,” he was saying, looking straight into her eyes. “And it simply isn’t fair. What’s more, I’m sure you know it isn’t fair. Who found out about Eaton and Cromwell in the first place? I did. Who came up first with half the money they wanted? I did. Who brought Jake into it, in the beginning, with the cash you were able to come up with? It was me. If it hadn’t been for me, your husband wouldn’t be where he is today, would he? He’d never have heard of Eaton and Cromwell, if it hadn’t been for me. He’d still be running a second-rate clothing store for Sol Rosenthal if it hadn’t been for me.”

  “I know all this, Abe,” she said.

  “So, I got into a little trouble with the New York cops years ago. Years ago. To save his stinking hide and reputation, Jake Auerbach wants to buy me out. He uses threats. If I don’t take the price he offers, he’ll put the New York cops on my trail. That’s threats, Essie. That’s blackmail, and I admit I was scared. He had me. He forced me out. But I’m not scared now. That case against me in New York was dropped years ago, and I’m not in any trouble now. I want back in. I want the share of the company that would rightfully have been mine. I want what’s fair.”

  “I understand, Abe, but—”

  “Now Mr. High-and-Mighty won’t even talk to me on the phone! Is that fair, after what I did for him? Is that fair in your book, Essie?”

  “Fair or not, you’ve come to the wrong person,” she said. “I have absolutely no influence with him.”

  “All I got out of it was a stinking million and a half bucks. But when I got Jake started in this company I owned twenty-five percent of it! Just think of that! And do you know what that same company is worth right now? Between two and three hundred million! Now that you’ve gotton so fancy, maybe you won’t like my language, but Essie, I’ve been screwed.”

  “I’m sorry, Abe.”

  “I want my share.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”

  He sat forward in his chair, hitched up his trouser legs, and reached in his jacket pocket for a cigar. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “No.”

  Lighting his cigar, he glanced at her sidewise and said, “What do you hear from old Daisy Stevens?”

  “Daisy’s in Ohio for the summer, visiting her parents.”

  “Ah,” he said, pulling on the cigar. “That so? Kind of a long summer visit, isn’t it? Almost six months? You know, old Jake has me to thank for that one, too, though that’s another favor I did him that he’s managed to forget. Or maybe you didn’t know that. I passed old Daisy along to him.”

  “I didn’t know. But I don’t really care.”

  “Daisy’s done all right, too, or so it looks.”

  “Jake is—generous to her,” Essie said.

  “Yeah, it looks like everybody’s done all right in this. Except me. Daisy’s done all right, Jake’s done al
l right, Charlie-boy’s done all right. You’ve done all right. Everybody but yours truly. Doesn’t seem quite right, does it?” He paused. “Sorry about your kid.”

  “What?”

  “Prince. Read about it in the paper. Gun accident. Terrible thing.”

  “Oh … yes.”

  He crossed his legs and appeared to be studying the cigar. “So old Daisy’s in Ohio, visiting her folks,” he said. “Well, as a matter of fact I knew that. Ohio’s where I just came from. Columbus. Where her folks live. In fact, I popped in on her while I was there, just to say hello.”

  “Did you,” she said.

  “Yeah, she’s doing fine,” he said. “But I suppose she didn’t tell you the real reason for her little trip.”

  “Reason?”

  “She went to give birth to Jake’s kid.”

  She stared at him. “You’re lying,” she said.

  “I figured you might say that,” he said. He was smiling the familiar half-smile now. “But would your baby brother lie to you?” He reached in his trousers pocket and withdrew a wallet. “So, I thought to bring along a little of what you might call proof. I managed to take a little snapshot of Daisy and her kid with my little Kodak. Thought you might like to have a look at it.” He withdrew a photograph from the wallet and offered it to Essie. She reached for it, and saw that her hand was trembling.

  “There she is, the nursing mother, with the blessed event itself. Real cute kid, too. Little girl. She named it Jennifer—honor of Jake Auerbach, I suppose.”

  Looking at the photograph of Daisy with the baby at her breast, Essie’s first impulse was to tear it into pieces and scatter the pieces into a fire, as Jake had done with all the photographs of Prince, so that there could never be any remaining evidence of his existence on the earth.

  Still smiling, Abe said, “You can keep that if you like. I’ve got lots of other prints.”

  “No, thank you.” She placed the photograph, face down, on the table in front of her. “Why does Jacob have to be the father? The father could be anyone.”

  He shaped the end of his cigar against an ashtray. “Well, now, that’s not likely, is it? I know Daisy. She’s a one-man woman. Oh, there may’ve been more than one man in her life, but never more than one at a time. That’s Daisy.”

  Staring at the back of the photograph, she said, “Does Jake know?”

  He spread his hands. “Now how would I know that? Jake won’t talk to me. I know he wanted her to get rid of the kid, gave her the money to have it done. But when she got to Ohio, she changed her mind, decided to have the kid. I know her folks have offered to raise it. That’s about all I know.”

  “I see,” she whispered.

  “So,” he said, speaking with his cigar clenched between his teeth, “what do we make of this development? What would the good board of directors and stockholders of Eaton and Cromwell make of this if it got out?”

  “Daisy is our friend,” Essie said. “She’d never let anything like this happen to us.”

  “There’s not a hell of a lot Daisy can do about it at this point, is there? The kid’s been born. We have the facts. Besides, there’s a little business matter between Daisy and I that hasn’t been settled. She got to be quite the little gambler when she was with me back in Reno years ago. A few little I.O.U.’s that haven’t been paid. They’d amount to quite a bit, with interest, if I called them in. Would you like to see some of your friend Daisy’s I.O.U.’s?”

  “No!”

  “Then there’s another little important point, Essie, which I ask you to consider. What would your own nice little kiddies feel if they knew about this? Think they’d be a little—upset? Hurt, maybe? I maybe think so. I read in the papers where your Babette is having what they call a coming-out party this year. Could be rough on her. What would her friends say? And your youngest—only ten, isn’t he? What do you call him—Moogie?”

  “Mogie.”

  “Facing up to a thing like that could be rough on a kid of ten. Little kid of ten who worships his father. The publicity from it. His little schoolmates—they’d never let him forget it, Essie, oh, they’d tease the pants off him. Make his life miserable. You know how kids are. Wouldn’t want to do anything that would hurt a little kid of only ten. It could scar him for life, a thing like that. Joan—well, she’s older and been married twice already. She probably wouldn’t give a damn. But a little kid of ten. And he’s your only son now, remember that. You wouldn’t want to have happen to him what happened to Princey, would you? A gun accident. That’s what the papers called it. But you and I know different—”

  “Stop it,” she said. “Stop it!”

  “One good threat deserves another, don’t you think? Don’t forget that I got threatened once. All I want to do is settle the score. Do unto others what others done unto me.” He smiled. “The golden rule.”

  Suddenly she was in a rage more towering than any she had ever known. Her fury had a color. It was crimson, the color of blood, and if she had had Hans’s service revolver strapped to her shoulder, she would have reached for it instantly and murdered her brother on the spot, and watched his gore spill anonymously across the hotel carpet. She leaped to her feet, rushed to the sitting-room window, and leaned against the ledge, gripping the sill with her fingers, thinking she was angry enough to plunge through the glass and hurl herself down onto the avenue below, feeling the taste and odor of her own vomit rising in the back of her throat. I must not feel self-pity, she told herself. I shall not scream out for mercy. There shall be no tears. He will pay for this and be found hanged on a tree, as it was written in the Book of the Chronicles before the king. “What do you want?” she said. “Just tell me what you want.”

  “I figure a rich lady in your position—you’ve got to have some bank accounts here and there. Jake’s not that kind of husband, that shorts his wife. He wants his wife to look right and have nice things, her own money to spend, no strings. He may have his faults, but he’s a good Jewish husband. I figure you and I can work out some sort of little arrangement. All I want, you see, is my fair share. Take your time thinking about what my fair share might be. A monthly check, maybe. We can work out the details later, when you’ve pulled yourself together over this.”

  “Money,” she said scornfully. “Only money. You pitiful creature. You miserable, contemptible bastard. Bastard.”

  “You might say the same about the little girl in the picture,” said Abe.

  “All right,” she said. “All right! We’ll work something out. Now get out of here. But first—”

  “Anything you say.”

  “All right,” she said. “But if there’s something you’re going to get out of me, then there’s something I’m going to get out of you, you bastard.”

  “What’s that, bubeleh?”

  She turned to face him, and felt the strength surging back into her with a charge of feeling. “They say you’re in the liquor business. There’s something we need that’s becoming difficult to get. You can get it for us.”

  “Booze? Any kind. I’ve got the connections, bubeleh.”

  “No. It’s called phenanthrene sulfate. It’s a drug.”

  He laughed now. “Now, why would you want that? For yourself? That’s kind of a heavy-duty item, Essie. For Jake? Not for Jake.”

  “Never mind who I want it for!”

  “Or is it for old Charlie-boy?”

  She felt her face redden. “I’m not going to tell you!”

  “Oh,” he said. “So that’s it. Old Charlie-boy needs a little pick-me-up, does he? I might have known. Well, that stuffs really not my line, but I pretty much know how to get ahold of it. Across the street, as they say. So old Charlie-boy needs his little pick-me-ups. Very interesting.”

  “Shut up. You heard what I said. Get that for us, and I’ll see that you get your filthy money.”

  “Regular money, okay, bubeleh? Monthly money—and don’t be stingy, bubeleh. I like nice things, just like you.” He rose from his chair and, with
his cigar still clenched between his teeth, moved toward her where she stood, her back braced against the window ledge. “Remember, all I want is my fair share,” he said. “What I got cheated out of. I don’t need money. I want it, because I want justice.” He reached out and put his hands hard on her shoulders, smiling at her with that crooked smile. “You’re my only sister, after all,” he said. “So no hard feelings, all right? We always looked out for each other. So you’ll look out for me, and I’ll look out for you. Just like always. Remember when it was you and I against the world? Remember when we used to cuddle against each other in that little bed to keep each other warm on winter nights on Norfolk Street? Remember?”

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, struggling against his hold. “Get out of here. I don’t ever want to see your face again. Get out of here before I scream for help.”

  His smile faded. Still holding her shoulders, staring hard into her face, he said, “Just one thing, Essie. Go and see our mama. Soon. She’s very sick. She’s going to die.”

  Twenty-five

  In her dream, it is her bust, her bosom that is being admired, dimly in a hand-held mirror or in a shadowy windowpane, and yet the setting is some large public space, a great concourse filled with people, who are pausing, quite calmly, to examine her firm breasts and pale nipples. All around her is a white sea of marble across which people come and go. What is she doing here, naked and unashamed? A soft chipping, hammering sound alerts her, and she realizes what is happening. She is being turned into a bronze sculpture, and her living body is the mold. Little by little, the warm metal is rising around her, hardening, encasing her feet, ankles, legs and knees. Soon it will cover her entire body, but a terrible mistake is being made because it is not a statue of her that is wanted, it is of Jake, and far across the wide corridor she can see his statue now. But his statue is finished, standing imperiously in the Douglas Chandor pose, and his body is already entombed inside bronze. Even though there is something that she desperately wants to tell him, it is too late because he can no longer hear or see or speak to her. His eyes are dead hollows. Workmen she cannot see, meanwhile, are rapidly moving upward on her body with their molten metal, which hardens the instant it touches her skin. Her hips, navel and breasts are now covered, and she cannot move because her feet are rooted in a marble base. She tries to cry out because they think that she is dead, but she is quite alive, and once the poured metal reaches her mouth and nose and eyes she will be blind and suffocated. She tries to cry out, but no sounds come, and with that her mouth is plastered closed with bitter-tasting metal. The chipping, hammering sounds continue, and she realizes that the setting is not some indoor concourse at all, but out of doors, in Union Square, where she and Jake are to be placed, in bronze, facing each other across the park. Then her eyes are sealed shut, and she can no longer see. They must spare her ears, she thinks, because there is some last, important message that Jake, from inside his bronze casing, is trying to convey to her. She has just one last breath left, and she must cry out through her own bronze shell. They are shaking her now, as though to test the hardness of the metal, rocking her back and forth on the stone pedestal. Her scream will not come. She awakens, opens her eyes, and Charles is with her, gently shaking her shoulder. “You were having a bad dream,” he says, and she realizes that the chipping, hammering sounds were the branches of the plum tree on her terrace rattling against her windows in a summer storm.