The Auerbach Will (48 page)

“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.

It had been a shock to see her mother's shrunken body looking terribly small as it lay in the center of the narrow bed in the bedroom of the house on Norfolk Street, her head propped up on a single pillow, the room much smaller and darker than she had remembered it. “Mama, why didn't you write and tell me that you were sick?” she said. “What is it?”

“It's nothing. The doctor says something is eating at my stomach, but what do doctors know? I'll be better in a few days.”

Lifting a bottle of pills from the stand beside the bed, Essie said, “Is this your medicine?”

“Yes. Some of it.”

“Have you been taking it, Mama?”

“When I think of it. It doesn't help. What helps is rest. Mrs. Potamkin is taking care of the store for me till I get better. In a few more days, I'll be able to go back downstairs. Wait and see.”

“What's the doctor's name, Mama? There's no name on this prescription.”

“Who knows? The visiting nurse comes. She brings it.”

“Has the doctor seen you, Mama?”

“I think so. Yes, he came once. I'm all right. Rest is all I need.”

“I want you to take your medicine, Mama. Here. It says every four hours. When was the last time you took some of these green pills?”

“I don't want medicine. When I take that medicine it gives me bad dreams. I don't like that medicine.”

“Are you in pain, Mama?”

“Just my stomach, a little, where it hurts. Don't worry. I'll be all right.”

“How long have you been like this, Mama?”

“I don't remember. Not too long. Mrs. Potamkin knows.” Suddenly her mother, with some difficulty, raised herself on her wasted elbows against the pillow and looked hard at Essie. Then she lay back, smiled, and said, “Ha, I thought so!”

“Thought what, Mama?”

“You're going to have another baby, aren't you. I can see it in your eyes.”

“No, Mama.”

“Oh, yes. I can see it. You're going to have another baby. There's something in a daughter's eyes that a mother can always see when she gets that way.”

“Well, Mama, I'm not.”

“Don't deny it. My mother saw it in my eyes when I was going to have you. She saw it even before I knew for sure. It's something only the mother can see in the eyes of her own daughter—another life coming.

“I'm sorry, Mama, but it's not true.”

Her mother closed her eyes. Still smiling, she said, “Ah, that will be nice for you. Another baby. I always wanted just one more, for my old age.”

In the kitchen, her father, as always, sat with his books.

“Papa, I must speak to you,” she said.

At first he said nothing. Then, without looking up, he said, “Who is this speaking? Who is this rich woman who has come into my house without an invitation?”

“I'm your daughter, Papa!”

“I have no daughter. My daughter is dead.”

“She needs to be moved to a hospital, Papa. I'll take care of everything.”

“Who is this?” he repeated. “Who is this stranger in my house who is telling me what needs to be done with my wife?”

“Papa, I insist!”

For the first time he looked up at her. “Who is this insisting?” he demanded. “Who is this rich woman in a fur coat, the fur of innocent animals which must be killed to clothe her? Look at her! What is that on her arm? A
wristwatch?
A wrist-watch made of Tiffany diamonds. Do you know what day this is? This is the Sabbath. Do you know or care that you profane the Sabbath of the Jews in your furs and diamonds? Who is this, I ask myself? My wife and I have lived happily in this house for more than thirty years without ever asking advice or being told what we must do by strangers.”

“Oh, Papa,
please!
”

“My wife and I do not ask outsiders for their visits or their help or their opinions. We fear God and His commandments. That is our way. Only God tell us what to do. We do not seek out the Christian Samaritans. We reject women like you who come to interfere with our lives. We did not ask you here. We do not wish you here. We do not wish you to come back. We ask that you go away and leave us alone and never come back.”

His eyes returned to his books.

She gave him one last weary and despairing look, then gathered up her gloves and bag, let herself out the door, and made her way slowly down the narrow flights of stairs. “Mrs. Potamkin,” she said when she reached the shop, “is there anything you can do?”

“With him—
nothing!
He will not speak to me because I keep the shop open on the Sabbath—for the Italians, and the
schwartzes
. Esther, you would not believe how this neighborhood has changed.”

“For my mother, then.”

The older woman shook her head sadly. “It is the cancer,” she said. “There is nothing to be done. We must just wait for God to choose the time.”

For several days she has been working on the short speech which she has been asked to give at the dedication of the new building in December, and which Charles and Josh have written for her, trying to memorize the words, rehearsing in front of the mirror in her dressing room with the typewritten sheet of paper in front of her and then, standing in the center of the library, with Mary Farrell seated in front of her, holding the script.

“‘My husband, Jacob Auerbach, was a pious man,'” she recites to the seated Mary. “‘He believed in the principle of
zedakah
, which is Talmudic …'”

“‘… in the Talmudic principle of
zedakah,
'” Mary corrects, “though your way sounds just as good.”

“‘… in the Talmudic principle of
zedakah
which, in the Jewish religion, means something more than charity. It stands for righteousness. But my husband also had other faiths …'”

“‘But my husband also had
great respect
for other faiths.'”

“Oh, dear. My memory has gone, Mary. I'll never learn this.”

“Yes, you will, Mrs. A. There's plenty of time. Now let's start over from the beginning.…”

But the trouble is (she was thinking, gazing into her reflection in the glass in her bedroom at The Bluff, studying her eyes) that. The trouble is that. You are thirty-seven years old, not too old, not too young. For three weeks you have been trying to pretend that nothing is the matter, trying not to think about, trying to put out of your mind the thing that you think the trouble is. But now it will not go away. You have given no thought to this possibility, but now it is a possibility, and you must decide what you are going to do about this possibility. Because the trouble is that your mother, with her Old World intuition, may be right. For three weeks, you have dismissed it. Now you must face it, Esther Auerbach, and think hard.

Let us consider the choices. For instance, it could be something else altogether. You could see Doctor Ornstein and have him tell you what it is for sure. But do you entirely trust Doctor Ornstein? He is Jake's doctor as well. How can you be certain he will not say something to Jake, or are you ready to tell Doctor Ornstein that this is not Jake's child, and then proceed to the next step, whatever the next step may be? Do you know any other doctors well enough to trust? No, you do not. There are abortions. Women have them all the time, including a number of your friends. You have the money for it. You could say, casually, to one of your friends, “Give me the name of that doctor who—” Who. Daisy, of all your friends, would probably know best, but do you even know her well enough to trust her to keep this kind of secret? You do not know, because you have never tried. Nor do you trust Doctor Ornstein, and you can already hear him saying, “Essie, I think we must make Jake a part of any decision as crucial as this one.” “But Doctor Ornstein, this is not Jake's child. We have not slept together since nineteen twenty-three.” “I see.”

So. You go to another city. You use another name. You have the money. You make the connections. You find the name of someone who. Who. Who will do it, of course. Of course, it is not quite that easy, you being who you are. You are Mrs. Jacob Auerbach, wife of the Chief Executive Officer of one of the largest retailing firms in the world, your picture is in the papers often. You pay with cash, but people have a way of finding out, and you do not need another blackmailer. How do you explain this journey to another city to your husband? That is perhaps the easiest part. Any lie will do. Of course there could be an accident, something could go wrong, a dirty knife and there will be no need for lying after that.

You could tell Charles what the trouble is. But what would that knowledge do to Charles? Could Charles accept this knowledge and continue to work with Jake as closely as they do? Charles and Jake need each other more than any two men you know. You also need Charles, and Charles needs you. And there is of course Cecilia. Divorce. Do you say to Charles, “Charles, I am going to divorce Jake and have your baby. I want you to divorce Cecilia, and marry me.” That, of course, would be the end of Charles's career with the company where he has invested so many years. “But we will strike out on our own, Charles, build a new life for ourselves in another city. Yes, we may be getting a little old for that, but we can try. We won't care what Chicago says, the pregnant wife of the Chief Executive running off with the Executive Vice-President—the scandal, the stories in the papers …” But you do. Charles does. You have a ten-year-old son. You have a daughter who plans to make her debut, her formal bow into Chicago society, this autumn. No, you will lose Charles this way, my dear. And of course Jake. And the children. No, you do not tell Charles. Charles, forgive me. Us.

Or anyone else.

The only secret that is ever kept a secret is a secret that is never told. The only person you can truly trust is you.

And so the only solution to the problem, the only choice, is the one that is as simple as the conception of life itself. And you must do it, must force yourself to do it, and do it quickly, even though you are not sure whether it can be done, or exactly how to do it, it must be done.