The Auerbach Will (5 page)

“Or you, Charles.”

“Yes. You or me. What was that Yiddish word you used to call him?”

“
Shmendrick?
” Essie laughs. “I'd call him that when I was angry, yes. But Jake wasn't a
shmendrick
, exactly. A
shmendrick
is a little man who wants to do big things. But Jake was a big man who wanted to do big things. And did.”

“With a lot of help from other people.”

“Oh yes. Who got no credit. Do you know—tonight—in the middle of everything—Linda asked me if I loved him?”

“What did you tell her?”

“I didn't know what to say. The question knocked me nearly off my pins.”

Smiling, he says, “It would take more than that to knock you off your pins, old girl.”

“I don't know. My pins aren't as steady as they used to be.”

“Miracle worker.”

“Yes … I remember that. When was that, Charles?”

“I'll tell you exactly. It was September twentieth, nineteen thirteen.”

“A Saturday …”

“And you'd been drying dishes. The dishtowel was blue.”

“Yes …”

“So remember the miracles, Essie.”

She studies his kindly, one-of-the-family face. “I'll try. Still, I'm worried, Charles,” she says.

Two

The town house residence of Mr. Mogie Auerbach on Beekman Place is always kept very dark. Even during the daytime, the heavy blackout shades and draperies are kept securely drawn on both the east and west exposures of the house, and the purpose of this, Mogie explains to guests, is to preserve the delicate hues of the Chinese silks with which the sofas and chairs are covered, the tones of the Aubusson and Oriental rugs, and the soft pastels of the antique scenic Zuber wall coverings. The darkness also serves the better to display Mogie's personal collections, the precious Amatis, the uncut gems, the silver and the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century toys, which are arranged about the downstairs double drawing room in lighted glass cases. His long years of bachelorhood have turned Mogie Auerbach into a creature of fixed and immutable habits. Nothing in his house can ever be changed from its original arrangement, and small chalk marks on the floors and shelves and walls indicate where each object must be replaced when it has to be moved for dusting. Here, Mogie likes to imagine acquaintances thinking as they enter his house, is the home of a gentleman, scholar, and esthete.

In the center of the larger of the two drawing rooms which flank the entrance, stands Mogie Auerbach's ancient rolltop desk, a Chippendale piece of considerable importance, its tambour top rolled upward to reveal a certain amount of gentlemanly clutter—a massive crystal inkwell and quill-tip pen on an ivory base, purchased by Mogie in Venice in 1949, and thought to have belonged to Felipe II of Spain; a Chinese abacus from the twelfth century, with ivory bars and counters of pink jade, which Mogie actually uses to figure his accounts; a heavy pair of silver library shears with inlaid mother-of-pearl handles, which Mogie uses to cut clippings from newspapers and journals; and the clippings themselves, secured beneath
millefleur
Baccarat paperweights; a magnifying glass with a carved baleen handle; a photograph in a silver frame of Mogie and his father at the railing of a sailing vessel; a photograph by Man Ray of Mogie himself, and a great deal else.

It is at this desk that Mogie does what he calls his “serious” work, which is writing art criticism for various small and usually obscure journals. A partly written article, in longhand, on India paper, is also on Mogie's desk, conspicuously in preparation. Mogie is the first to admit that he writes slowly. Often it will take him weeks to produce a piece of criticism just a few hundred words long. At the same time, Mogie's writing displays certain mannerisms, fond as he is of such phrases as “catholicity of taste,” “insightfulness,” and “meaningful juxtapositions.” Just this afternoon, for example, he has written, “Joan Miró's skeinlike line suggests not only the artist's catholicity of taste, but reveals his wit, insightfulness, and philosophy through meaningful juxtapositions.” Mogie is rather proud of that sentence.

It is in this room, too, that Mogie now sits with his sister Joan and his young wife, also having a nightcap after his mother's party. Joan, whose husband went directly home complaining of a headache, had offered to drop Mogie and Christina off in her car, and was invited in. Now Joan would like to light a cigarette, but knows that she may not, since smoking is not permitted in Mogie's house. To emphasize this rule, the house on Beekman Place is not furnished with a single ashtray. “If you must smoke, please go out into the garden,” Mogie rather irritably tells his smoker friends at the small, formal dinners for six or eight he is fond of giving.

“Well,” Joan is saying, twirling the stem of her champagne glass, the contents of which she has not touched, “what did we all think of that performance tonight?”

Mogie picks a speck of lint off the shawl collar of his dinner jacket and says, with a trace of sarcasm, “Whose performance are you talking about, dear?”

“Mother's, of course. Just getting up and stalking out of the room like that.”

“I can't stand that secretary of your mother's, that Mary O'Brien or whatever her name is,” Christina says.

“Farrell.”

“I just can't stand her. She's so snippy. She acts like she owns the place.”

“
Stalking
out—right in the middle of a conversation. Such rudeness. Really.”

“Weren't people singing?” Christina says. “I thought people were singing when she walked out.” She kicks off her shoes. “I don't know about you, honey,” she says to Mogie, “but I'm pooped.”

“Christina, darling,” Joan says, “if you're tired, why don't you just run upstairs to bed? There's something I want to talk to Mogie about. And alone, if you don't mind—family business.”

“But Christina's family,” Mogie says.

“Would you mind, Christina?”

“Oh, sure,” Christina says, reaching down to pick up her shoes. “Because I'm really pooped.” Slowly, she rises from the sofa, goes to Mogie, puts her arms around his shoulders, and kisses him on the top of the head. “Don't stay up too late, honey,” she says.

“I won't, darling,” Mogie whispers, stroking her hand and running his lips along her lower arm. “I promise.”

“Good night, Joanie,” Christina says, stifling a yawn. “You and Richard have got to come by and see us real soon. I'll do a little din-din.”

“Good night, darling,” Joan says, blowing her a kiss.

After Christina has left the room, Mogie Auerbach sits quietly, a dreamy smile on his face. “Wonderful girl,” he says. “Don't you think so, Joan?”

“Oh, yes. Wonderful. Very pretty.”

“I'm a lucky man. A very lucky man.”

“I'm so happy for you, Mogie.”

“Do you know that she's the first woman with whom I've been able to achieve a full erection?”

Joan makes a small choking sound. “Really, Mogie,” she says at last, “why did you think I'd want to know a thing like that?”

“My doctor says I should tell people. ‘Extemporize your feelings,' he says. ‘Act them out. Free associate, in order to get into your primary process.' It's really very helpful. He's very pleased with the way it's going.”

“Of course you go to that damned Jungian,” Joan says. “But what I really want to talk about is Mother. Mogie, we're going to have to do something about Mother.”

“Really? What's wrong with her? She seems perfectly fine to me.”

“She's becoming senile, Mogie. That's all there is to it.”

“Do you really think so, Joan?”

“Oh, there's no question about it, darling. Going quite gaga. That business about giving her paintings to the Metropolitan—sheer insanity. If that collection went into her estate, it'd be taxed until there'd be nothing left. It's got to be sold, Mogie, and soon. We've got to do something before she—well, dies.”

Mogie studies his sister across the quiet room, and carefully crosses one elegantly tailored knee atop the other. “Speaking of performances,” he says at last, “I thought yours was rather spectacular tonight. Quite worthy of a Bernhardt, if you ask me.”

“Well, I did get angry.”

“And of course it was me you were talking about, wasn't it. Not Josh.”

“Nonsense, Mogie.”

“Nonsense? That business about Josh not knowing what it was like to be poor. You were looking at me when you said that. It was directed to me.”

“That's not true!”

“You've always hated me, Joan. You know that. You never wanted me to be born. Miss Kroger told me that when I was little. ‘Your sister never wanted you to be born,' she said, and a nanny doesn't lie.”

“Well, she was lying. I always hated Miss Kroger, if you want to know the truth!”

“So you've been punishing me for being born for sixty years.”

“That's your Jungian talking again.”

“I only mention it because it's pivotal to this particular dynamic,” Mogie says.

“But it has nothing at all to do with what I want to talk to you about. Nothing at
all.
”

“Then what do you want to talk about, Joan?”

“
Mother
. And what we're going to do about her.”

“Well,” he says carefully, “what do you propose we do, exactly?”

Joan hesitates, setting down her glass of champagne. “I don't suppose you'd bend the rules just once, and let me have a cigarette. Just one. A quick puff.”

“Now, Joan—”

“Sorry. Shouldn't have asked. Anyway—” She picks up her glass and studies it. “Anyway, you're almost ten years younger than I am, so I don't suppose you remember Uncle Abe. Mother's brother—Abe Litsky.”

“Oh, I know he was somehow in the picture for a while,” Mogie says.

“Yes. Very much so. He lived with us on Grand Boulevard when Babette and I were children. He helped Papa get started at Eaton's. He was important long before Charles Wilmont came along.”

“Then something happened.”

“Yes. And I'm not sure yet exactly what, but there was something, some kind of falling out. Papa bought Uncle Abe out, and as far as I know the two never spoke to each other again.”

“This is all very ancient history,” Mogie says. “We're talking about pre-World War One, before I was even a glimmer in Papa's eye, as they say.”

“I know.” Joan stands and begins to pace back and forth across the room, a thin, moving exclamation point in her short black dress. “Now—second question. Does the name Arthur Litton mean anything to you?”

“Vaguely. Prohibition. Bootlegging—”

“
And
extortion.
And
the rackets.
And
the longshoremen,
and
the Teamsters,
and
Las Vegas gambling.
And
prostitution,
and
drugs—probably.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Very much so. Alive and well and living in Hollywood Beach, Florida, with a new wife and two Welsh corgis.”

“Fine. But so what?”

“They call him Mr. Untouchable. A life spent in and around organized crime, arrested dozens of times, but never spent a night in jail. They couldn't even get him on income tax. The worst they could do to him was revoke his passport, so he can't skip the country.”

“All very interesting. But again, so what?”

“I had my people at the
Express
go through all the old files, all the old newspaper clippings, asked them to find out everything they could about the early days of Eaton and Cromwell, and everything they could about Arthur Litton.” She goes to the table where she has laid her handbag, opens it, and takes out a sheaf of papers secured with a rubber band. “I brought some of these things along to show you, Mogie,” she says, “because what would you say if I told you that Arthur Litton
is
Abe Litsky?”

“You're not serious.”

“I am
quite
serious. It's all here—photographs, news stories, everything. Arthur Litton is our Uncle Abe—Mother's long-lost baby brother!”

Mogie slips the rubber band from the sheaf of clippings and spreads them in his lap.

“Look at these two pictures,” Joan points. “One of Abraham Litsky, Eaton and Cromwell partner. Another of Arthur Litton, wanted on an illegal gambling charge. It's obviously the same man.”

Mogie studies the photographs. “There is a resemblance,” he says at last. “But tell me, Joan—if this is true, why has no one uncovered it before?”

“Because not too many people are around who remember what Uncle Abe looked like, and I do. Because he lived with us when Babette and I were little. And because the company has conveniently forgotten that anyone named Abe Litsky was ever connected with it. At the office, I also have a copy of the company history that was published in nineteen seventy-five. I'm sure you got a copy of it too. There's a whole section in it called ‘Early Struggles.' It's all about Papa, and there's a lot about Charles, but I assure you that Abe Litsky's name is not mentioned even once, even though he was Papa's first partner. And for good reason.”

“An untidy branch of the family tree.”

“Precisely, Mogie.”

Mogie Auerbach sets the sheaf of clippings aside. “Have you mentioned any of this to Babette?” he asks her.

“No. I wanted to get your opinion first.”

“Opinion? What sort of opinion? What I'd like to know is, now that you have this information, what do you intend to do with it?”

“Well, I happen to run a newspaper, and this in my opinion is news. Can you imagine the reaction in the business community if this came out? The stockholders, for instance. What would this do to Eaton's sacred image—honesty, integrity, public-spiritedness, the customer is always right? Think of what Charles's reaction would be—because he's been part of the cover-up. And dear little Josh's reaction, who I'm sure doesn't suspect a thing. And
Mother's
reaction—her own brother.”