The Auerbach Will (15 page)

“A doctor. A specialist. A doctor who specializes in treating diseases of the mind. In New York, we have Doctor Edmund Bergler, who has studied in Vienna with Doctor Sigmund Freud, of whom you may have heard. But even Doctor Bergler is at a loss to explain our son's problems, or to find a way to deal with them.”

“What are his problems?”

Lily Auerbach studied her pale fingernails. “A certain—indifference. A lack of motivation, a lack of direction, a lack of ambition. A habit of going from one enthusiasm, getting all involved in it, then dropping it, and going on to another. An inability to apply himself, to stick to any one thing. You mentioned the importance of hard work, which I agree with. But our son won't work.” She shrugged her shoulders and threw up her hands. “What more can I say?”

It was such a Jewish gesture, the little shrug, the hands, a gesture Essie had seen her own mother make hundreds of times, that Essie almost laughed at her sudden discovery that this strange, pale woman was Jewish after all. After all! Ah, the eternal, the universal Jew!

“His current enthusiasm,” said Uncle Sol, “which I might add he has only been indulging in for about the last six months, is social welfare programs. The settlement houses. Uplifting the poor. Teaching classes for the poor children of the Lower East Side. This sort of thing seems to excite him now. How long it will last, who knows? What would you say, Miss Litsky, if we told you that this idea of marrying
you
—of taking a poor girl out of the Lower East Side, and elevating her, through marriage with, if I may say so, a family of some prominence and position—that we believe that this notion of marrying you is just another expression of a passing obsession? What would you say if we told you that we believe that you are being used—cruelly used, in my opinion—as part of some sort of social-betterment experiment? That you are being used as a guinea pig in a test that has currently taken his fancy? What would you say to that?”

“If I believed that for a minute, I wouldn't marry him,” Essie said. “And I don't believe that.”

“And meanwhile, he has no occupation, and no income. We do not intend to feed and house and support him forever, make sure of that. How do you propose to eat? Where do you propose to live?”

“Mr. Rosenthal—”

“You can't live
here
, mind you. That's out of the question.”

“Mr. Rosenthal,” she said, “he may not have ambition now, but I do. I'll be his ambition. We'll work together. I'll help him. I'm young, I'm strong—”

“Now, see here young lady!”

“Sol, let her finish what she has to say,” Lily said.

“I mean it. I can help him. There are some things about Jake which I know, which I think you don't. He has a brilliant mind. He has become a marvelous teacher. He has had a fine education at Columbia University. If you want my opinion, I think he has had too much privilege. Jake and I don't need privilege. All we need is each other! I'll help him and—you'll see—he'll be a great success at what he finally does, because we'll do it together—wait and see!”

“Are you saying,” Lily Auerbach said carefully, “that you think you can accomplish something which even Doctor Bergler has been unable to do?”

“Yes!”

“Well,” said Lily, “I suppose we should say that we'd be willing to try anything. As Jake is always saying, it's a free country. But, dear child, please give us time to think about all these things.”

“Of course.”

“I'll tell you one thing, young lady,” said Uncle Sol. “If you marry him, you'll be getting the runt of the litter.”

“Sol, what an unpleasant thing to say about our son,” Lily said, but from her tone of calm reproach Essie was certain that Lily had heard this expression often before.

“The runt of the litter,” Uncle Sol repeated. “The boy has absolutely no head for business.”

“I wouldn't say he has no head for business, Sol,” Jake's father said. “I'd say he has no head for figures, yes, but not no head for business.” These were the only sentences Essie had heard Louis Auerbach utter all afternoon. He had sat there, through it all, nodding and smiling—smiling even during moments when there was nothing to smile about—and Essie had begun to wonder whether Jake's father might be simple-minded. At least, she thought, he had a tongue in his head, even though he was clearly at the bottom of their pecking order. It was he, not Jake, who struck her as the runt of the litter.

“And tell me one more thing,” Lily said. “How do your parents feel about all this?”

“I haven't told them yet.”

“Is that what you'll do—just tell them? Not ask?”

“Tell them. Because our minds are made up.”

“Their reaction,” said Lily, “will be very interesting.” She rose slowly from the red sofa where she sat. “And now,” she said, “would you like to refresh yourself before you leave?”

“Yes,” said Essie, though she wasn't quite sure what Lily meant by the expression.

Lily moved to a smaller door at the corner of the red room, opened it, and said, “Down this little hall, the first door on your right.”

Essie followed Jake's mother's directions, and turned the handle on the indicated door. It led into a bathroom, but it was like no bathroom she had ever seen, stranger than anything else she had encountered in this strange household. It was all done in shiny black marble—floor, ceiling, walls—and it was not one room, but three. In the central room was a huge marble washbasin, with golden spigots. On either side were stacks of fresh white towels, folded, monogrammed with L.R.A. in gold threads. On a golden soap dish reposed an enormous cake of fresh, sweet-smelling transparent soap. Behind the soap dish were arrayed large crystal bottles of perfumes, and over the basin hung a mirror in a golden frame. In a separate room, on one side, was the toilet with a caned seat and back and, on the other side, in the third room, was a huge bathtub set in more black marble, and placed so high above the floor that two short steps and a railing were required to reach it. She closed the outer door, and found herself facing a full-length mirror.

Looking at her reflection in the tall glass, she found herself smiling, thinking: Jake Auerbach's mother had called her “dear child.” Think of it!

Seven

“They liked you,” he said.

“Yes, I think they did.”

“Uncle Sol said, ‘She's got spunk.' Coming from him, that's high praise. And what did you think of them?”

She thought for a moment of how to put it. “They're dealers, aren't they,” she said at last. “Traders. Merchants.”

“Have been for three generations, right back to Great-Grandpa R. B. Rosenthal himself in eighteen fifty.”

“And I have a feeling that some sort of deal is going to be offered,” she said. “Some sort of bargain is going to have to be struck with them. You're going to be asked to give up something, in return for me—a trade.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Just a feeling. And I think, when it happens, that we ought to accept it, Jake—whatever it is—even though we may not like it all that much at first.”

He whistled. “Well, let's wait and see.”

“Your mother dominates your father, doesn't she, Jake.”

“Oh, yes. She's the
Rosenthal
, you see. The Auerbachs were considered nobodies. Years ago, when she married Pop, it was supposed to be a great
mesalliance
. Want to know a family secret—why she did it?”

“Yes.”

“Can't you guess?”

“Let's see,” Essie said. “She had a domineering father—like mine. She did it to show her independence.”

“I wish it were as dramatic as that. No, I'm afraid it was a much more basic reason.” Against the rattle of the approaching streetcar, he bent and whispered something in her ear which at first she did not hear, and asked him to repeat it. “She was pregnant—with me,” he whispered.

“Really?”

The downtown streetcar was crowded at that time of day, but they managed to find two seats together. “It was quite a scandal,” he said, still whispering. “I'm not supposed to know anything about it, by the way. But a nurse told me, when I was growing up. Why do she and Pop never celebrate their wedding anniversary? Because if I knew the date, I might put two and two together. I'm the product of a shameful union. Now you know it.”

All at once she began to laugh, was laughing so hard she could not stop, and several passengers turned around to look at her. “Oh … oh … oh …” she laughed, doubling over and hugging her elbows to her sides.

“What's so funny?” he asked in a harsh whisper. “It's something that I thought my future wife should know.”

“Oh … oh … Jake, I'm sorry. I can't—” Because what she couldn't tell him was that the most outrageous, wild mental picture had just flown into her head. It was of thin, cool Lily Auerbach outstretched across a row of garbage cans in an alley behind Delancey Street, fully clothed, legs outspread, and of plump little Louis Auerbach laboring on top of her to get his two dollars' worth. “Oh … oh … oh,” she sobbed.

“Essie, you're making a scene! I don't see why you're treating this as some sort of joke.”

“Oh,” she said, struggling to control herself, “it's just … just a crazy thought I had … a shameful union.…”

“Essie, people are staring at us.”

She whispered in his ear, “And I suppose that's the first thing they thought when you told them you wanted to marry me—that you and I—that I was—” She was still giggling, but now the picture in her mind was of herself sprawled in some dark place, and the figure above her was—but that picture was more sobering to contemplate. “Am I right?” she asked him.

His face reddened. “How did you know that?”

“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.”

“What in the world are you talking about? Is that from the Bible?”

She was still trying to suppress the giggling fit. “Do you know?” she said. “I've thought of it. Does that shock you? I've thought of it—a shameful union—with you. Do I have an evil mind?”

“No,” he said quietly. “I've thought of it, too.”

“So let's cheat them,” she said. “Let's disappoint them and not be shameful—until—and let's make our marriage—not like theirs. Let's stay shameless and blameless.”

“You've got to remember,” he said, “that when my father was younger he was a very handsome man. Maybe not too bright, but he was considered quite a heart-breaker. To give the Rosenthals credit, they've always been very good to Pop—and to me. And though Mother pretends not to care anything about what goes on in the store, she goes over the daily figures every night with Uncle Sol and Uncle Mort. Like a hawk.” They rode in silence for a while.

“We won't ever let her dominate us like that, will we, Jake?”

“Of course not. What's that your father says about the man being the king of his house? I subscribe to that.”

She covered his hand with hers, and waited to feel the heat from his hand rise up to join hers. Instead, his fingers fidgeted beneath her own, and she knew that somehow she had managed to disappoint him. The streetcar lurched to a stop, and they stood up. “And speaking of that,” she said, “I've got to get home. The king is in his castle now. Give me a kiss for courage.” But he was still cross with her, she knew, for her reaction to his news, and when they had dismounted from the car and were on the street again, she said, “I'm sorry I got to laughing. I don't know what was the matter with me. Nerves, I guess.”

“I shouldn't have told you that on a public streetcar. It was my fault.”

“No, it was mine. Forgive me.”

“You've got to remember that Pop used to be a very handsome man,” he repeated.

“I'm sure of it. He has a very handsome son. And the quote was from
The Scarlet Letter
. My evil mind.”

Then he kissed her.

There is a side to him, she thought, that is very serious and dark, and that cannot be taken for granted.

But why, in her excitement, in her foolishness, had she that afternoon been able to delude herself into believing that her apprehensions about her father's reaction to her decision had been misplaced? All Essie remembers is that, walking home from the streetcar, she had suddenly been flushed with a euphoric burst of wishful thinking. All at once she was so full of confidence and resolve that she could imagine quite a different scene taking place from the other one she had been dreading. Her father would leap from his chair in happiness at her news, crying “
Mazel tov!
” And taking her in his arms. His only daughter, whom he wanted to marry well, was going to marry this fine Jewish boy, from a fine Jewish family—a boy with a college education, and what seemed like limitless prospects and expectations. Excitedly, she would tell Papa first about the fine Uptown house—a whole house, four stories tall, with only one family living in it—about the room all done in red damask and gold tassels, the manservant, the silver tea service, the elegant mother in her pearls, the bathroom that was not one room but three, the full-length mirror, the stacks of towels with their embroidered monogram, L.R. A. “How my little Esther is improving herself!” he would say, and perhaps he would open a bottle of the special wine that was reserved for the High Holy Days, and toast her with his blessing. There would be talk of joy! Freedom! Luck! Only in America! Then Mama would join them, and produce, from the trunk underneath her bed where it lay folded, her wedding canopy which now of course would be Essie's. Then perhaps some of the neighbors would be invited in to share the happy tidings. Oh, there might be a little surprise at first, of course, a few questions and a few misgivings—Jake, after all, was a
Deitch
—but how could Papa deny her happiness? Perhaps, in her memory, if she had brought up the matter a little less abruptly, a little more delicately, it all might have turned out just that way.