The Auerbach Will

by Birmingham, Stephen;

“But what is the connection between these?—my random thoughts and memories. What is the lesson to be learned from this new building?” And suddenly there is new confidence—the Shakespeare lines came back so easily!—and now she knows exactly what she would like to say. “To me,” she says, “the lesson is very clear. It is the importance of remembering the difference between what is temporary—” She holds up the cane. “—and what is permanent. This new building, this great new building, looks very permanent today, and yet we all know it will not last forever. Experience tells us that. Today, it is the tallest building in the world but, before we know it, someone will come along and build a taller one, and then a taller one than that, and so on throughout the rest of time. This building is not dedicated to the memory of my husband, and perhaps that’s just as well, because not even memory is permanent. In a thousand years, who will remember the name of Jacob Auerbach, and who will remember that I stood here once and spoke a few thoughts to you?

  “What, then, is permanent? What will last? I believe that only love is permanent, cannot be torn down, cannot be forgotten. Love is the glue of generations, the cement of civilization, the span between life and death. To me, love must be the salvation of nations, the only cornerstone on which any future can endure. That is what must be built in our hearts, taller and stronger and more durable than any mere skyscraper, for love will defy any structure of stone and steel and glass and outlive any plunderer or any war. Love is the staff”—she lifts the cane once more—“we lean on, upon which we erect and dedicate the skyscrapers of our lives, taller and taller, on and on, through our children and theirs. Think of it! What a mighty symbol! Love is what God is. In the end, it’s all we have.”

  She stops. The applause begins, quietly at first, perhaps because they are not certain that she has finished, and then its volume grows, filling the room. In front of her, she sees one woman in the audience rise to her feet, still clapping, and presently there is another standing, and then another, and suddenly the whole room is on its feet, and the sound of the applause is deafening. “Well,” she says into the microphone over the thundering of the applause, “that is what I believe. Thank you.” And now Charles and Josh, on either side of her, his father and their son, rise to assist her back to her seat. She waves them off, she can make it on her own, and still the noisy clapping does not stop.

  At O’Hare Field, it is snowing, and some commercial flights have been delayed, but the weather is not expected to daunt the Eaton & Cromwell executive flight of its Gulfstream-3, which is equipped with some of the most sophisticated navigational equipment in the world.

  “I suppose you’re all cross with me for forgetting my speech,” Essie says.

  “Are you kidding. Mother?” Josh says. “You were magnificent! I just haven’t been able to find the words to say it. It was better than anything I could have written for you. You got a standing ovation—didn’t you notice that?”

  “You knocked ’em dead, Mrs. A.”

  “Well, they did seem to like the last part,” Essie says.

  “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

  “Well, is my jet ready? I want to go home.”

  “It’s ready whenever you are, Mrs. A.”

  It is hard to believe that she has asked that question—Is my jet ready? It is preposterous. My jet. Still, it is the way one comes, and the way one goes. And of course she is ready to go. “Let’s go,” she says, first to Josh, then to Charles. “So then let’s go.” They board the plane, and soon they are in the air again.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard.… There are a few facts you might like to know about our aircraft.…”

  Beside her, Mary Farrell whispers, “Here comes trouble, Mrs. A.” Joan, in a fitted black Dior suit and a glittering pin by Kenneth Jay Lane, is moving down the aisle toward them. She perches on the arm of the double sofa into which Essie and Mary Farrell are strapped.

  “That was a lovely speech, Mother.”

  “Well, thank you, Joan. I’m glad you liked it.”

  “It was addressed to me, wasn’t it.” She puts it as a statement, not a question.

  “Well, no—not exactly. But if you choose to take it personally, you may.”

  “I felt it was addressed to me.” Joan is silent for a moment, then she says, “I’m sorry about last night, Mother. I really am.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. We’re family, and it was a moment of—well, high anxiety, shall we say, for all of us.”

  “It’s just that—with Richard gone, with the paper gone, I’ve been so terribly lonely.” The Gulfstream bounces, slightly, on a pocket of air, and Joan’s shoulders are tipped briefly against her mother’s.

  “Shouldn’t you have your seat-belt fastened, Joan?”

  “No, no.…”

  And then, “Lonely?”

  “Yes. It’s been harder on me than I think you know. Harder than I’ve let show. And I’m not getting any younger, Mother.”

  “Well, neither are any of us, and perhaps that’s a blessing. Lord knows, I wouldn’t want to be young again. Not even your age again.”

  The Gulf stream bumps again, then seems to seek, and find, smoother air.

  “Lonely,” Essie repeats. “Perhaps you could spend more time with Karen, Joan.”

  “No. Karen has her own new life now.”

  “Or Linda. Your only grandchild. My only great-grandchild. I worry about Linda sometimes. That she’s growing up—too cynical.”

  “No. Linda doesn’t like me much. The generation gap.”

  “Or,” Essie begins somewhat tentatively, “if you could make your peace somehow with Mogie and Josh. Bury the hatchet. That would make me very happy.” And make your peace with yourself, she might have added, but does not. Or your peace with me.

  There is no immediate reply. Then Joan says, “Are you happy, Mother?”

  “Happy?” Essie laughs. “My own mother used to say, ‘Show me a woman in this life who’s happy, and I’ll show you a woman without a brain.’ Well. Happy? Yes, I suppose I’m happy enough. I’ve raised four children—five, if one counts—watched them grow—” She breaks off.

  “But when I was growing up, you were never there.”

  “Never there? Never where? I’ve never understood that argument, Joan, of yours. When you were little, I was there—around the clock! You seem to resent the younger children because they grew up with more things. But if you ask me, it was the younger ones who got short-changed. I was so busy helping your father be successful that there never seemed to be enough time—”

  “It was as though, when I was about nine or ten, you began to disappear. Perhaps those are the years when a daughter needs a mother most.”

  “Well, yes. Perhaps. Perhaps you have a point.” Of course I could say the same thing about you, she thinks. Where were you when Karen was nine or ten? Getting married and married and married. But Essie does not say these things. Instead, she says, “But Babette never seems to have felt that way. Or at least she never said as much to me.”

  “But Babette has no brains, Mother. I’m sorry, but you know that’s true as well as I. I, believe it or not, have brains. And feelings.”

  “Oh, yes. I know.” Perched on the arm of the sofa, Joan’s thin body seems to sway slightly. “You know,” Essie says quickly, “if you’re lonely, Joan, you could always come and live with me. Lord knows I don’t need or use half the acreage of that big apartment. I could convert the upper floor, yes, and we could—” Once more, Essie can’t believe what she is saying. It is something that has been farthest from her thoughts until just now. “After all, we’re flesh and blood,” she says. There is more to say. The words won’t come.

  “Yes, but—” Joan laughs softly. “Oh, no, Mother. That would never work.”

  “Convert the upper floor—just for you. It has its own elevator entrance—”

  “No, no. It would never work. We’d be at each other’s throat in a matter of days—hours—you know that.”

  “Wou
ld we have to be? We could—”

  “No, no. Live with you paying the maintenance? Live on your money? No, never.”

  “It could be treated as our money, Joan.”

  “No, I’m not a charity case yet, Mother, and I’m not ready for Josh’s little handouts, either. You see? Here we are already—arguing about money again.”

  “Always.”

  A silence. Mary Farrell turns a page of her airport paperback, Fodor’s Guide to Modern Greece.

  “But still—” Joan begins.

  “Do you think—?”

  “If—No, no. Oh, Mother, Mother.”

  “Why—”

  “Yes, why? What’s the point?”

  “I’d try.”

  “But no.”

  “Well, then—”

  “Anyway,” Joan says. Then her hand reaches out quickly for her mother’s hand, covers it, and pats it gently, and for a moment it seems as though years of recriminations and hard feelings are about to be wiped away in this small gesture. “Anyway,” Joan says again.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Their hands separate, and Mary, concentrating on her book, turns another page.

  “That’s a pretty pin you’re wearing, Joan.”

  “Thanks. Another Kenny Lane.”

  “Women don’t wear real stones out anymore.”

  “No.” Joan stands up. She touches her hair. Her eyes are very bright. “The seat-belt light’s gone on,” she says. “We must be getting near New York. I’d better get back.”

  “Yes.”

  Joan moves slowly up the aisle. Mary closes her book. “Mrs. A?”

  Essie closes her eyes. Happiness. Loneliness. Well, I did what I could do, and the rest is rainbows, dreams. On cold nights on Norfolk Street, we used to huddle against each other to keep each other warm, but that was before our friend, electricity. And there was Mr. Levy’s place with the good egg creams, and there was Union Square in the springtime by the fountain. And there was Prince with his pony at The Bluff, dressed in a new white suit from Best’s, but no, he does not have the pony yet, but is rolling a hoop on a sidewalk of Grand Boulevard, or is it Elberon. Papa is at the kitchen table with his books. His voice is harsh: “Can fire and water be together? Neither can godliness and Mammon.” And yet there is something in the steadfastness of his faith, a zealousness so pure that it seems carved into his face, that shines in his eyes, that Essie almost envies and wishes she could share, even a little bit of it, for herself. It is so confusing. There is a combustion of children. Jake is a shadow by her side, carrying her books through Hester Street. He will not go away. He follows her down among the paths of trillium, arbutus, maidenhair fern, lady’s slipper and lily-of-the-valley in her wildflower garden, his purposeful footsteps crunching on the tanbark trails. He will not free her, even when she is free. Where shall we spend the winter, my darling, now that we’re both free? The Adirondacks? We should have to melt ice from the lake for drinking water, and heat the house with log fires, and cuddle against each other at night for warmth. Do you still love me? Always. Shall we have our picnic here, in the little cove where we saw the deer? Yes.

  The young steward, Jim Ulrich, whispers to Mary Farrell. “Is the old lady all right? Is she okay?”

  “She’s just fine,” Mary Farrell says. And, always attentive to order and detail, she places Mrs. A’s cool hand gently back into the lap from which it has fallen. Jim Ulrich still looks uncertain but, with that protective, secretarial, and proprietary smile, Mary Farrell reassures him. “She’s fine,” she repeats. “She’s just fine.”

  “We are being vectored into what is called the Liberty holding pattern,” the captain’s voice says. “So-called, because our focus is the Statue of Liberty. Below, on your left, is Ellis Island, where so many immigrants arrived in the nineteenth century.…”

  Outside, the night has cleared. The city glitters like the towers of fairyland, but Mary Farrell does not look out or down, and instead fixes her eyes blindly on Fodor’s depiction of the Attic hills. Oh, get us home, she thinks, just get us home.

  Epilogue

  ESTHER L. AUERBACH

  1892–1982

  In Memoriam

  Because our mother requested specifically in her will that she be given neither a funeral nor any sort of memorial service, we, her children, have each elected to write a short tribute or memory of Mother, which we hope will be shared by our own children, grandchildren, and other members of our family. The result is this small memorial pamphlet, privately printed for distribution to family and close friends. We think it is interesting to note that, when these three short pieces were collated, each of us managed to focus on a different aspect of Mother’s character and personality, but perhaps this was inevitable in trying to sum up, in mere words, a complex and many-faceted human being such as Esther Auerbach.

  Joan Auerbach

  Babette Auerbach Stern

  Martin R. “Mogie” Auerbach

  JOAN:

  It is very difficult for me to write of Mother because, for the rest of my life, I will have to live with the knowledge that, the night before her sudden death, she and I exchanged angry words. It doesn’t matter any longer what those words were, or what we were angry about, but the fact that those words were spoken at all I shall forever regret. If a day of my life could be erased from history, that day would be it for me but, unfortunately, it cannot be. At least at the very end Mother and I had a wonderful heart-to-heart talk and were able to make our peace. This comforts me considerably.

  I must also face the knowledge that, as far as the rest of the family is concerned, the single most memorable fact about my mother’s and my relationship will always be that she and I did not get on. And, to be honest with myself, I must admit that this was true. I regret this, too, and in the months since her death I have struggled to figure out the reasons why it was true.

  My brothers and sister used occasionally to say, or suggest, that I was jealous of Mother, and of course jealousy is not a pretty emotion to accept or admit to. But since this is being written to my brothers and sisters too, as well as to my daughter and granddaughter, I would like, if I can, to disclaim jealousy. In many ways, looking back, it seems to me, at least, that I had no cause for jealousy. In many ways, my own life was a happier one than Mother’s. Her early years, growing up in New York, which she talked little about, cannot have been easy ones. And our father, when he became successful, cannot have been the easiest man to live with. Yet she lived with him for more than fifty years, and I do not ever remember hearing her complain. She had pride, and she had guts.

  No, the real reason why my relationship with Mother was stormy, to say the least, was that she and I were so much alike. I was always testing Mother’s love—to see to what extremes of behavior I could go, and still have her love. Mother, I think, liked to test people too, for the same reasons. Sometimes it was a subtle form of testing, but it was still there.

  But in the end I suspect that Mother’s and my habit of testing the strengths of each other’s love may have done me some good. I’ll mention only one incident. I went to Mother once, wanting to borrow a fairly sizable amount of money. She refused me. Naturally, that made me very angry at the time, and made me eager to do something that would equally anger and disappoint her. That was the way our battles went—what a psychiatrist would call the “dynamic” of our relationship.

  In the end, of course, it turned out that it was a good thing that Mother refused me that money. It forced me to go out and do something on my own. I didn’t enjoy it much, but perhaps I learned something from doing a thing I did not enjoy. I grew up a little.

  Mother taught me not to be lazy, just as she herself was not a lazy woman. In the contest between us, in our lifelong competition with each other, perhaps we both benefited. The only thing I am sure of, though, is that I adored my mother. But I am not sure that she ever knew it.

  BABETTE:

  What I remember most about Moth
er was her gaiety and sense of fun, the wonderful energy she threw into giving parties at The Bluff, our home outside Chicago, her love of extravagance and the Grand Gesture. She loved jewelry, for example, and I recall so vividly her wearing, with great flair, the expensive Cartier emeralds which she passed on to me, and which I have had reset in more modern settings. Concerning the emeralds, one anecdote will say it all. Coming home one night from a party at someplace or other, Mother simply slipped off the necklace and earrings and dropped them in one of the chairs in the drawing room. The next morning one of her maids brought them up to Mother’s room. She’d found them under the cushion when she plumped up the chair!

  That was typically Mother. Devil-may-care!

  MOGIE:

  As the third-born, and first male, sibling, my early life was, needless to say, dominated by older women—Mother, and my two sisters. Learning to deal with this was, of course, a problem for me.

  In order to cope with my fright of the anima, as Jung would describe it, I developed a strong and vigorous pursuit of the animus, and the intellectuality of scholarship (art, history, literature, and music) became my sublimation. I started to collect, and objects became my obsession. I have, for example, my collection of war games and tin soldiers which, I believe, will handily put the lie to the mythic assumption that in being dominated one cannot dominate. I learned to love and savor the effect of finally being able to control my destiny. Once, I remember my mother asking me why I had decided to collect and write about “things.” I asked her, “What things?” She referred to my soldiers. I replied that this focus was simply my attempt to enrich and enlarge my ability to feel adequate; to show my newly discovered options; to have a hypothetical erection, and that through hypothesis comes apotheosis. She was deeply impressed.

  Even though females ruled my life, I had no clear idea of the female psyche. Mother, of course, was of a generation which shunned discussions of the “facts of life,” and, being a very Victorian woman, not to say a prude, Mother was also of that prim upbringing which, in its proper and straitlaced way, would have been shocked by the writings of Freud, et al. But it is clear to me that my cognitive development from infancy onward, my classificatory thinking and transitive inference under the perceived control of emasculatory females, can only have been direct result of Mother’s own male-dominance.* Though I never knew my maternal grandfather, his influence ruled her life. Similarly, our father, in Mother’s eyes, was a classic, God-like Father Figure. He could do no wrong! How natural that she should redirect her male-dominated life to dominance of me! Fortunately for me, of course, when it became clear to me that the matriarchy in which I grew up, and the Puritan repressions which I inherited from Mother were leaving deep psychic scars, Mother saw to it that I received the needed therapy. And the happy result is my beautiful wife, Christina, and our beautiful baby daughter, Artemis Esther Auerbach, named in Mother’s memory.