Her Infinite Variety (17 page)

Clara resumed her seat. She found herself intensely interested. "It's perfectly true that he would be far more interested in such a job for me than for himself."

"Ah, but that's just it, don't you see! You would be giving him what he most wants, a front-row seat to view a remarkable career: your own. You both would be happy, and you'd have the life you've always wanted. And someday, we hope in the distant future, when he dies—"

"Polly, don't spoil it," Clara interrupted her anxiously. "You've been doing too well."

"No, no, I must go on. You must see how beautifully I've worked it all out. Someday when Eric dies—as we all shall unless like the Virgin and Saint John the Divine we are allowed a mortal ascent to heaven—he will leave you the bulk of his fortune. He will have provided amply for Lucile and the children in the divorce, and he will want to take full advantage of the marital deduction in his estate tax. And Clarabel Tyler will find herself a famous philanthropist. How I see it all!"

"You see entirely too much."

Clara was now through with the discussion, but when Polly had returned to her mother's bedside, she passed much of the afternoon thinking. Later, when she called Eric and asked to be taken out to dinner, her tone was conciliatory.

C
LARA ACCOMPANIED ERIC
on his visit to the office of Peter Van Alstine, senior partner of the distinguished Wall Street law firm that had represented Eric, and his father before him, for decades. Peter, a portly tweeded gentleman of more than seventy, with tousled gray hair and blinking little almond eyes that combined a mild friendliness with a slumbering suspicion, received them in his great book-lined chamber, which commanded a magnificent view over the harbor and the Statue of Liberty. He seemed surprised, and perhaps not wholly pleased, to see Clara, whom he had met frequently at his client's home and to whom he always behaved with a faintly avuncular courtliness. She assumed, without the least resentment, that the old boy was embarrassed by their relationship.

Eric explained her presence briefly. "Clara is as much concerned with my divorce as I am, Peter. She has honored me with her agreement to become my wife on the first day that is possible, and I want her to take part in all the discussions."

"Which is fine, I am sure," the lawyer replied in a gravelly tone, like a swimmer hurrying over a rocky beach to get to the water. His voice cleared as he warmed to his topic. "Before I submit to you the offer that Lucile has made, on behalf of herself and your children, I think I should place it in the right perspective. They regard it as a final settlement of any claims which any of them may have against you
or
your estate. In other words they would expect nothing more from you either by gift or by will. They also point out that there are no other issues in the proposed divorce proceeding: none of custody of children or division of personalty or alimony. It would be a simple matter of a transfer of capital, after which Lucile would agree to fly to Reno and obtain a virtually automatic divorce."

Eric smiled and winked at Clara. "The proposed settlement must be a hefty one. Let me take a guess at how much they're asking. I must not underestimate Lucile's appetite. Hmm. Half my worldly goods?"

Peter nodded grimly. "The nail on the head."

"But that's an outrage!" Clara exclaimed hotly. "Offer them ten percent and slam the door."

"But, my dear, aren't you forgetting what I'm receiving in return?" Eric asked with a gentle smile to mitigate his playful sarcasm. He reached over to touch her hand, which was resting on the edge of Peter's desk. "Nothing less than yourself."

Clara was not placated. "But I'm not willing to be the price of such extortion. I won't have anything to do with a settlement like that!"

Peter looked from one to another of his clients and then raised his hands in a plea for a pause. "Please remember that it is only an offer, and presumably not a final one. And your children, Eric, have made a rather unconventional proposal. Tony and Lisa would like to talk to you in front of me, as the old family counsel, without their own lawyer being present, and he has consented to this. They are both waiting in the room next door. Will you see them?"

"My own children? Of course, I'll see them. Clara, you don't mind, do you?"

"No, but perhaps it would be easier if I left."

"I insist that you stay. I may need all your support."

When Tony and Lisa appeared it was immediately evident that Lisa had come only at her brother's insistence. She took a seat farthest from her father and Clara and gazed sullenly out the window. Tony, on the other hand, was tense and active. He went up to his father and briskly shook his hand. But when, to his surprise, Eric reached up to grab his shoulder and pull him down to embrace him, he reddened with pleasure and grinned—even Clara had to admit—almost attractively. He then straightened up and faced the others, glancing obliquely at Clara.

"Perhaps I should preface this meeting by explaining why my mother and her counsel have requested so substantial a settlement. In the first place she takes the position that the Tyler capital is really family money. Although we all recognize Daddy's brilliance in the publishing world"—here he paused to make a little bow to his father—"it is still the case that the money was earned by my grandfather, and it is natural to suppose that he intended it to descend to his posterity."

"If that was his intention, he should have left it in trust," Clara intervened sharply.

"If you would just let me finish, please, Mrs. Hoyt."

"But I'm not admitting your premise!" Clara was irritated by his omission of the more familiar term of address he had used in Eric's office. "He left the property outright to your father to do with as he pleased, and just as he pleased! Or do you suggest that your grandfather didn't understand the difference between an outright bequest and one in trust? Perhaps you are questioning his testamentary capacity?"

"Clara, dear, let him finish," Eric urged her quietly.

"If my mother should reject the divorce," Tony continued now, "and if she should survive Daddy, she would be entitled to one-third of his estate, even if his will left her nothing. So her consent would cost her at least that much, and she feels she cannot ask for less in yielding it. And she has raised the share requested from a third to a half on the theory that she will need the extra amount to make settlements on her children who, after the divorce, may not be able to look to their father for further gifts or bequests."

"Why do you say that, Tony?" Eric asked.

"Because, Dad, you will then be subject to an influence that will not be likely to favor your offspring." With this he stared defiantly at Clara.

She threw back at him: "Do you consider your father a mere puppet?"

"No, but I have a good idea of what he'll be up against."

"If you mean me, say so!"

"Of course I mean you!" As Tony's temper erupted, Clara took in how deep and savage his resentment of her had to be. For it was not like him to lose all control. "I learned on a safari in Botswana that the most dangerous thing a man can do is to get between a hippo and the water. Well, that's like getting between you and Daddy's dough!"

Clara glanced at Eric. Was the gleam in his eye dismay, or did he, the eternal audience, relish the conflagration that his divorce had sparked? She could not tell. But she decided to strike a different note.

"It's not money for myself that interests me," she pointed out, addressing herself to Peter. "It's what Eric can do with it. You know, he has his own foundation now and is interesting himself more and more in charitable causes. Lucile and the children have already had settlements that should keep them in luxury for the rest of their days. Why does Tony need more money for shiny speedboats and foreign cars or Lisa to endow her future spouses?"

"That's a cheap cut, Clara," Lisa snarled from her corner.

"Can there never be a time for truth?" Clara demanded. "I think a little plain speaking is what we all need."

"And it's plain to see that everything should end up in the lap of the great Mrs. Hoyt!" Tony exclaimed shrilly. "So that she can be the empress of charity!"

Clara rose at this and turned to Eric. "As I suggested earlier, offer them ten percent, take it or leave it. We don't need the divorce. We can go on just the way we are, perfectly well."

Eric also rose. "I think at any rate we should break up this meeting. I suggest we may all think more clearly if we're less confrontational."

***

Clara that night had grave reason to suppose that Eric had not derived the amusement she had feared from the hectic scene in the lawyer's office when she was awakened by a telephone call from Eric's butler asking her to come right over. Eric had suffered what appeared to be a mild stroke.

She had ridden with him in the ambulance that had taken him to the hospital and sat for the rest of the night in an armchair by his bed. After a long day of tests he was pronounced out of danger with no permanent damage but a slight impairment of the memory and an occasionally faltering gait. He was allowed to return to his apartment and to go out for a daily airing but at first in a wheelchair. A full recovery was assured him, but his regime had to be carefully monitored.

Clara spent as little time in the Tyler offices as possible and the rest of her days and nights with him. As his doctor forebade any tax on his emotions, she never reverted to the matter of the divorce settlement, and when Tony or Lisa called on their father she silently—and without so much as a nod of greeting—left the room. But one afternoon after the daily tour in Central Park in which she pushed his chair, and during the consumption of the single diluted cocktail that he was now allowed, Eric himself brought up the controversial subject.

"My dear, I have something to tell you. My divorce has been arranged, and Lucile is actually on her way to Reno. If everything goes ahead on schedule, you and I can be married in six weeks' time. That is, of course, if the doctors offer me a decent number of years to live, and you are still willing. I should more than understand if you are not."

"When did all
this
occur?"

"In my talks with Tony."

"And may I ask from where the pound of flesh that he extorted will be taken? Not your poor heart, I hope."

"It's not that bad, my dear. They dropped their demand from a half of all my worldly goods and chattels to a mere third. You are worth far more than that to me!"

"Oh, but I'm not!"

She managed to stifle her cry of dismay. She could not risk it in his condition. By firmly changing the subject, and warning him that he must not get excited, she managed to convey the impression that she would go along with the new arrangement, no matter what her misgivings. But in her lunch the next day with Polly Madison, whose husband was now a vice consul in New York, she exploded.

"The whole thing is so degrading! That a man like Eric should be reduced to crawling before those bloodsuckers who are taking every advantage of his weakened state. And strip himself of one whole third of his wealth to throw it away like all the huge sums they've already got out of him!"

"But, Clara, think of all he has left! You couldn't possibly spend it in a thousand years!"

"Oh, but we could, he and I. It was for the foundation he's set up. One-third of its assets at one fell swoop! How can I marry a man who's capable of such folly? Where's his backbone?"

"Clara! Even you can't be such a fool as that!"

"But think of it, Polly. I was willing to look after him and nurse him and God knows what—to give over my whole life to him if he has another stroke, which the doctors say could happen anytime—and he does
this
to me and all our plans, without so much as a word of warning!"

"Well, it was
his
money, wasn't it? All I can say is that if you throw him over on a flimsy pretext like this, you're a very hard woman to please."

"And why shouldn't I be a hard woman to please? I have only myself to satisfy. Suppose I marry him, and after a year or so Tony and Lisa come around begging for more? Saying they've had losses or expensive ex-spouses to pay or gambling debts—I don't know what. How can I be sure they won't get another giant handout?" Clara was suddenly struck with an idea, and she stared for a long silent moment down at her plate. "Unless I can protect myself with some sort of binding agreement. I've been reading some of those pamphlets on estate planning the bank sends out."

Polly's sigh was a warning. "Oh, my dear, be careful. Men hate women who thrust legal documents at them. They like us at least to pretend we're romantic."

"I can be romantic, Polly. But I need to be a realist first."

"Yes, you
are
a realist. But if I may say so, my friend, you also have a way of cleaning up certain facts that have an aspect not entirely agreeable for you to face."

"For example?"

"Well, don't bite my head off, but I've never quite forgotten how you told me that you were taking nothing from Trevor Hoyt but didn't mention the fact that he had settled a considerable sum on you when you were married."

"Well, would you have had me give
that
up?"

"No, of course not. It was only your attitude. The attitude that you were starting a new life, so to speak, with nothing but your guts and spirit."

Clara looked at her friend now with something close to dislike. "And how do you relate this to me and Eric?"

Polly's embarrassment revealed her regret that she should have given in to the age-old temptation of saying something disagreeable even to her oldest and most useful friend. But she had committed herself now. "I relate it," she replied in a bolder tone, "to my apprehension that you are using your perfectly proper wish to do great and noble things with Eric's money to disguise your equally natural desire to keep it out of the greedy hands of his family."

"But what you really mean is my perfectly natural desire to fill my own pockets!"

Polly shook her head sadly. "Now I've made you mad. I'm sorry. I suggest we've had enough of this.
Parlons d'autre chose.
"