The Auerbach Will (17 page)

“What Mort and I are proposing, Jacob, is to appoint you manager of our Chicago branch. We offer you a salary of two hundred dollars a month. That may not seem to you a particularly princely figure, nor is intended to be. You are still an unproven quantity, and we are taking a considerable risk, a gamble. Naturally, if we are pleased with your performance, salary increases will reflect our pleasure accordingly. However, this entire offer is conditional, and the condition is simply this: our Chicago venture must show a profit within twelve months' time. If it does not, our interest in your business career, and in your financial future, will terminate. I want to make that point very clear. We are not in this business to lose money. And so, that's it in a nutshell, Jacob. Do you accept our offer?”

“Oh, how exciting, Jake!” his mother said. “A store of your own!” All this seemed to come as a surprise to Lily, though Essie was sure that much of the plan had been of Lily's own devising.

Jake was smiling wryly. “You'll turn me into a retailer, won't you, Uncle Sol,” he said. “Or die in the attempt.”

Essie reached out and touched his hand.

“Beggars can't be choosers,” said Uncle Mort.

“No,” said Jake. And then, “Thank you, Uncle Sol. Thank you very much, both of you. And yes, I accept.”

“A thrilling challenge,” his mother said, standing up. “Now let's go downstairs and join the others for champagne.”

“Chicago!” her mother said. “Oh, Hadassah, that seems so far away.” She dabbed at her eyes when Essie told her.

“There are trains back and forth every day, Mama, and I'll come home whenever I can. And Mama, I'm so happy that you came.”

“Mrs. Litsky,” said Lily Auerbach, extending her hand. “I knew the minute you walked in that you must be dear Esther's mother.”

“What's this?” Minna asked when a butler paused in front of them with a silver trayful of brimming glasses.

“Champagne, Mama.”

“Champagne,” she whispered, taking a glass in her white-gloved hand. She looked bewilderedly around at the red room, where perhaps a dozen other people stood. “Just think,” she said, “my little Hadassah—marrying into all of
this.
”

The wedding canopy was still folded and tucked under her arm.

Overnight in a railway compartment to Chicago may not have seemed much of a wedding trip, but that was what it was. The train left Grand Central at midnight, and they would be in Chicago the next morning. What neither of them said, of course, and what both knew, was that his family wanted them in Chicago so that they would be as far away from New York as possible.

Alone in their compartment, they lowered the window shade, turned off the lights, and undressed in darkness. And when Jake slipped his naked body into the narrow berth beside hers, she had begun to cry. “What am I doing? Where am I going?” she sobbed.

“With me,” he said. He had run his tongue lightly around her eyelids and said, “You are so lovely. I love to taste your tears.”

“Do you love me, Jake? Do you really love me?”

Why had she asked him that? Was it because, even then, she had had doubts? And what had he answered her?

If there was an answer, the memory is lost.

LADDER

Eight

“You've been hiding from me for five days, haven't you, Mother,” Joan is saying. “I've called and called, left messages, and you haven't called me back.”

“Well, I admit I was cross at you for the way you behaved at the tree-trimming,” Essie says. “But it's Christmas Eve, and I've decided to bury the hatchet. I've even bought you a little peace offering.” She hands Joan a gift-wrapped box from Saks.

“Oh, Mother, how sweet. Shall I open it now?”

“If you like.”

Joan pulls off the ribbon, opens the box, and lifts aside the folds of tissue paper. “Oh, Mother, what a beautiful sweater. Thank you.”

“I thought it was pretty,” Essie says.

“It's beautiful. I didn't bring your present by tonight because I was planning to drop it off for you tomorrow.”

This, Essie is certain, is a lie, since Joan has probably not bought her a Christmas gift, and will now have to hurry out and do so, but Essie says nothing. “My only thought,” she says, “is for peace in the family. That's really the only gift I want now—from any of you. Just a little peace among my children. Lord knows we've had our share of troubles in the past. Can we try now for a little peace?”

“Oh, yes,” Joan says, refolding the sweater in its box. “Let's try for that.”

“Now tell me exactly what it is you want to talk to me about,” Essie says. “And why it's so all-fired important that Richard not go to South Africa and write his book.”

Joan hesitates. Then, her arms folded across the Saks box, she says, “I need him here if I'm going to save the paper.”

“Save it? From what?”

“Creditors.”

“But the other night you said that everything was going so well.”

“That's because all the others were here. I didn't want them to know, but I'm going to be honest with you, Mother. I'm in desperate straits. I need to raise half a million dollars, and if I can't do that—” She spreads her hands; “then the paper's finished.”

“I see,” Essie says guardedly.

“And Richard is trying to leave the sinking ship.”

“Well, half a million dollars shouldn't be hard to find, should it?”

“That's the trouble. At this point, it is,” Joan says.

“But your papa left you plenty of money,” Essie says. “Your share of his trust—”

Joan casts her eyes downward at her hands. “I've borrowed against the trust,” she says quietly. “Borrowed all I can. They're talking now of calling in loans.”

Essie stands up. “What do you mean, borrowed against your trust? How is that possible?”

“I know I wasn't supposed to. But they let me, and I did.”

“This is very distressing news,” Essie says, and she thinks: And in practically my last breath I was talking about having a little peace. Peace on earth, good will toward men. Well, Essie thinks, there goes that delusion out the window.

“Half a million dollars is all I need, Mother. That's all I need to get us over this present hump. With that, I know I could make the paper turn the corner. If I had that, I know I could persuade Richard to stick with it. I need him desperately, but even more desperately I need the money.”

“Are you saying you're broke?”

“Overextended. Overborrowed. If I can't get hold of this little extra bit of cash, my only alternative will be to fold the paper. Sell the plant and equipment, the printing presses, everything. Everything I've worked so hard for all these years.”

“I don't call half a million dollars a little bit of cash,” Essie says.

“Mother, I've come to you tonight on bended knee. Will you help me out?”

“Oh, dear,” Essie says, sitting down again. “Oh, I suppose I knew that it was going to be something like this. It always is with you, isn't it? No, I wasn't expecting anything different.”

“I could pay you back, Mother, in just six months' time. I know I could. It would be just a loan. I'd pay you back, with interest.”

“Joan, how many times have I heard that argument from you? It's always just a loan.”

“On bended knee, Mother …”

“It was just a loan to pay off that first husband of yours, the polo man. The same thing for the second one, Karen's father, and for the third one, the queer one. How much has it all added up to? I'd hate to go back into my books and tell you. I gave you two hundred and fifty thousand to help you get your paper started—”

“You bought stock, Mother.”

“Well, it's never paid a penny's worth of dividends that I know of. Joan, that paper's never made a profit, has it? I'm not saying it's your fault. Yes, it sounded like a good idea in the beginning—‘A liberal voice in New York in the afternoons,' as you put it. But it's just never caught on, has it? I mean, I read the New York
Times
and the
Wall Street Journal
. I know what they've said about the New York
Express
—‘The financially ailing New York
Express
,' they call it, ‘fueled by the Auerbach millions.' Joan, if you want my advice I'll give it to you. Admit that you've run out of fuel. Fold the paper, as you say, and get what you can for the plant and equipment. Let Richard go off and research his book. And you—you can look for some new outlet for your energies. Yes, that's my best advice to you.”

“The paper is my life!”

“Find a new life. And I'll tell you something else. I don't think it's been a good idea for you and Richard to have worked so closely together. I've noticed it in Richard. He isn't happy—”

“Now don't get into my marriage, Mother!”

“It's never good for a marriage, that sort of arrangement. It wasn't good for your father's and mine, when we used to work so closely together years ago. Oh, it worked for a while. But then—then it didn't. It just didn't. Take an old woman's advice, Joan.”

“Half a million dollars would be nothing to you.”

“That's not true. You've been to this well too often. The well's run dry.”

“You have all that Eaton stock—”

“Yes, but I can't sell it. Not without the permission of the trustees—Henry Coker, Charles, Josh. I live on a fixed income, Joan.”

“But a rather
large
fixed income.”

“It's comfortable. Sufficient for my needs. But if I had to get my hands on half a million dollars in cash, I wouldn't know how to do it.”

“Which brings me to the point I was trying to make with you the other night, Mother. The art collection.”

“The art collection goes to the Met, as I told you.”

“But it doesn't
have
to go to the Met, does it? Leaving it all to the Met is plain foolishness. It would mean its value would be taxed as part of your estate. The taxes would be staggering. The thing to do, if you want to be clever, would be to sell it, and begin making disbursals to—”

“And live with bare walls? No, I couldn't stand that.”

“And that's another thing—why do you need this big apartment? Practically a whole city block. At your age. With a staff of people working for you who—well, who may not be the most reliable. If you want
my
advice, you'd sell this too, and I'd help you find a smaller place that's more practical and easier to care for.”

“What's the matter with my staff? I have an excellent staff.”

“Well, there are some people who think that Yoki has a few under-the-counter deals with certain tradespeople, kickbacks—”

“Nonsense. Mary's very meticulous about things like that. There's never been the slightest question—”

“But you've got to admit, Mother, that you don't really
need
all this space.”

“Need it? No, I suppose I don't. But I like it. I didn't always live like this, you know. But now that I do, I like the way I live. No, I think the thing for you to do is close the paper, sell the plant, and stop sending good money after bad.”

“But wouldn't that be a terrible embarrassment to you, Mother, personally—to the whole family? To have the news all over town that Joan Auerbach has failed? Wouldn't it be an embarrassment to Charles and Josh and everybody?”

“Not at all,” Essie says. “All families have their share of bad luck—certainly ours has had some. I can't speak for the others, of course, but as for me I'd be considerably relieved.”

Joan says nothing, merely crosses her legs and reaches for a cigarette from a cut-glass box, staring absently to space.

“Joan, fix me a martini,” Essie says. “I'm ready for a little Christmas cheer. Let's try to look on the bright side of all this.”

“There is no bright side,” Joan says in a dead voice. She rises, goes to the bar, pours gin and ice into a silver shaker, and adds a splash of vermouth.

“Such as, if you sold the plant, how much could you get for it?”

“How many martinis do you drink a day, Mother?”

“As many as I wish, thank you!” Essie says. “Now, Joan, it's Christmas Eve. I asked you to come by because you're my daughter, and I love you, and I wanted to patch things up between us. I didn't ask you to come by to quarrel.”

Handing her mother her drink, Joan says, “But you won't give me the money.”

“Not won't, dear. Can't.”

Joan resumes her seat, and replaces the flat Saks box on her lap. With her lacquered fingertips, she raps out a short tattoo on the polished surface of the box. It is a warning signal, and Essie braces herself for another of Joan's angry outbursts. But it doesn't come. Instead, Joan says, “Whatever became of Uncle Abe?”

The question catches Essie off her guard. “Abe?” she says. “What about him?”

“I just asked whatever became of him.”

“He changed his name. He lives in Florida. I haven't seen him in over fifty years.”

“He's Arthur Litton now, isn't he?”

“Yes, that's the name he goes by.”

“The gangster.”

Essie laughs abruptly. “Well, I think that's rather too strong a term,” she says. “I've heard him described as a racketeer, but not a gangster.”

“He was one of the original investors in Eaton's, wasn't he?”

“Yes. Very briefly. Fortunately, your father was able to buy him out, and that was a good thing all around.”

“What did he do, Mother?”

“Do? Well, Abe was—Abe is—well, you know Arthur Litton's reputation. Not the best. I can't—I don't try to—what is the word the psychology people use? I don't try to
rationalize
Abe's behavior anymore. Oh, I used to. But now I try to think about him as little as possible. When he was a youngster, he got in with a bad crowd on the East Side. He stayed with that bad crowd. How to explain it? It was hard for me then, because once upon a time we were very close. He was my baby brother, and I loved him very much. We slept in the same room, even in the same bed when he was little. Now I try to push all that into the back of my mind because—because he was a bad boy. Every family has its black sheep, I suppose, and Abe is ours. Why are you so interested in Abe?”