The Auerbach Will (23 page)

“Yes, but it will take a lot of money to buy into it, and we don't have it.”

“Essie,” Minna said, “you're taller.” She pointed. “Reach up behind the cookie jar on the top shelf and get me the little book that's there.”

Essie did as she was told and, from the back of the shelf, extracted a small black book, its pages secured with an elastic band. It was a passbook from the Union Savings Bank.

“Tell me how much is there,” her mother said.

Essie sat down again and removed the rubber band. She opened the book and began turning the pages. They were filled with entries. Some were small—a dollar or two. Others were larger, for as much as a hundred dollars. Furthermore, there seemed to be an entry for nearly every day of the week, and the dates went back for more than twenty years. The only entries that were not deposits were interest payments which grew steadily larger as she turned the pages, year after year. There were no withdrawals.

“Mama, this bank's on Union Square,” she said. “How can you have gone up there every day?”

“Mrs. Potamkin does it for me,” her mother said. “Now tell me how much is there. What's on the last line?”

Essie stared, bewildered, at what she saw on the last page. “Mama,” she whispered. “How did you do this?”

“Just tell me what the last line says,” her mother said.

“Sixty-three thousand, one hundred and twenty-seven dollars and nineteen cents.”

“Take it,” her mother said. “It was to send Abe to college and medical school, to be a doctor. So what is the use of that now? What use do I have for it now? Take it. But don't give it to Abe. I don't trust him with money yet, just so long as he has a job. You take it. Take it all.”

“Mama …”

“Take it, I tell you. Take it all.” Minna held her hand up straight. “No more talking. Just take it.”

On the train ride back to Chicago, Essie sat with her purseful of money clutched tightly in her lap. Every stranger in the car was a potential thief and, though she was very tired, she fought sleep, knowing that if she dozed off for a single moment her purse, and the miracle of the cash that it contained, would be snatched from her. At a station called Harmon-on-Hudson, a young man boarded the train, came down the aisle, and took the empty seat next to her. She clutched the purse even tighter against her stomach with both hands, looking at him warily out of the corner of her eye. He was a fine-looking young man with a square, clean-shaven jaw, a long, straight nose, and a shock of blond hair that fell gracefully across his forehead. He was well dressed in a tan-colored tweed suit. He didn't look like a thief, but wolves sometimes dressed in sheep's clothing, and Essie did not relax her grip on her purse. From the corner of her eye, she watched him warily as he crossed his tweed-trousered legs, lifted a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles from his jacket pocket, placed them across his nose, unfolded a copy of the New York
Times
, and began to read.

After a time, he put down his paper and said to her, “How far are you going?”

“Chicago.”

“Ah, so am I,” he said. And then, after a little while, “Is Chicago your home?”

“Yes.”

“It'll all be new to me,” he said. “I'm from Boston. I'm going to Chicago to seek my fortune in a strange land.” He chuckled.

She said nothing. The fortune he sought, of course, was right in her lap.

Down the swaying aisle a Negro porter in a white coat was moving with a rolling cart full of orange and lemon drinks and sandwiches. The young man reached in his pocket and jangled some change. “Care to have something to drink?” he asked.

“No thank you.”

“Sandwich?”

“No thank you.”

The porter arrived at their row of seats, and the young man purchased a roast beef sandwich and a bottle of lemon pop. For the next few minutes he concentrated on his sandwich and his soda. He seemed to have very good table manners, wiping his fingers on a paper napkin after each bite. Then, finished, he turned to her and said, “If we're going to be traveling companions for the next few hours, let me introduce myself. My name's Charles Wilmont.”

He extended his hand, but Essie would not release her hand from her purse. “How do you do,” she said. And then, “I'm Esther Auerbach. Mrs. Jacob Auerbach.”

“I see,” he said. He looked at his outstretched hand, smiled, and withdrew it. “I think you're nervous,” he said. “If you're nervous about rail travel, don't be. This train's as safe as—as rocking in the arms of Morpheus. Is it your first time on a train?”

“No.”

“Or are you nervous about talking to strange men? If so, I'm sorry.”

He did seem very pleasant and polite, and Essie decided that perhaps he was not a thief and relaxed her grip on her purse somewhat. “No, I'm not nervous,” she said.

“And you've already told me you're married, so that's not what I'm interested in,” he said. “I just thought it would be nice to have someone to talk to on the trip. I guess I'm a gregarious sort of fellow.” He had already used two words that were unfamiliar to her. Morpheus. Gregarious. “But look, if you don't want to talk, just say so,” he said. “And if you want me to move, I'll take another seat.”

Perhaps, she thought, she was lucky to have had this nice young man sit next to her. If he changed his seat, who knew what might come along next and sit down? “No, don't move,” she said quickly.

“Well, then let me tell you a little about myself,” he said, “so I won't seem like so much of a stranger. As I said, my name is Charles Wilmont, and I've just graduated from the Wharton School of Finance and Economics. In case you don't know, the Wharton School is where they teach you everything there is to know about business except how to get into a business yourself. I mean, I am now fully prepared to go into—even run—any kind of business in the world, but how do I find that business? That's what I'm going to Chicago to find out.”

“I see.”

“Now tell me a little about Chicago.”

“It's a big city,” she said.

“Oh, I'm prepared for that,” he said. “I'm prepared for bigness. But what place will there be in all that bigness for young Charlie Wilmont? That's what I'd like to know.…”

And so he chatted on like that, and the more he talked the more at ease Essie felt with him. He told her about all the courses he had taken at the Wharton School, and about the courses he had taken as a Harvard undergraduate before that. He told her about his parents, whom he described as “typical, dull, suburban North Shore Boston,” and about a young woman whom he hoped—though he was not yet engaged—to marry, once he had established himself in some sort of business. He had a gentle, self-mocking way about himself. “What will become of me, do you suppose, Mrs. Auerbach?” he would cry in mock despair from time to time. Listening to him talk made the long trip seem to pass more quickly, and presently she was laughing at his wry little jokes. By the time they passed the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, it was quite late, and he asked her if she minded if he slept for a while. She said no, not at all, and presently he was asleep in the chair beside her, snoring softly. Essie of course kept rigidly awake as the train sped on through the night, looking out at the lighted and mostly deserted station platforms where they stopped—Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, South Bend. From time to time his drowsing head nodded against her shoulder, but he always pulled himself quickly up straight again, and by the time he awoke the first light of morning was showing. He smiled, rubbed his eyes, and told her that he had dreamed he would find success in Chicago. And by the time they had reached Union Station she had decided that she had made a new friend, and he had used so many big words—Management Design, Corporate Structure, Production Potential—that she decided he might be some sort of genius.

As the train pulled into the station, he said, “This has really been very pleasant. I've talked your poor ear off, but I've thoroughly enjoyed it.”

“I've enjoyed it, too,” Essie said.

“Here, let me give you my card,” he said. He took a card out of a small silver case, and scribbled something on the back of it. “And this is the address of the relatives I'll be staying with in Chicago, and their telephone number. Please call if I can ever be of service.”

And so Essie deboarded the train in Chicago with her purse and its miraculous contents intact, still clutched against the bosom of her gray traveling suit with both hands, and with Charles Wilmont's calling card pressed between two fingers.

The Café bar at the Hotel Pierre is crowded at this hour of the evening, but Joan Auerbach quickly spots her brother sitting alone at a corner table, and makes her way across the floor to him. He rises, and Joan lets him kiss her gloved hand, one of those little Old World gestures he is fond of making. Then she settles herself at the table beside him, throws back the shoulders of her black mink coat, and removes her gloves. “Well, Mogie,” she says. Then, to the waiter who appears, she says, “A bourbon old-fashioned, please—no cherry,” which, of course, she will not drink. Mogie is sipping a frozen daiquiri. Then, rather defiantly, Joan lights a cigarette. Mogie Auerbach does not like people to smoke, even in public places.

“I mustn't be too late,” Mogie says. “Tina's expecting me home by seven.”

“This,” Joan says, “will not take more than a few minutes, when I tell you what I have to say. Thank you,” she says to the waiter, when her drink arrives. Then she cocks her head, just slightly, for she has just heard someone at a nearby table say to his companion, “That's Joan Auerbach, the publisher.”

“Well?” Mogie says.

“We must keep our voices down, Mogie,” she says. “I've just been recognized.”

“Very well,” he says.

“Well,” she says in a low voice, “you won't believe what I've found out. I did as you suggested, went to the apartment last night, and went through Mary's files. Checkbooks. Statements. Everything. And it's just as I suspected. She's been paying him off.”

“Who?”

“Arthur Litton.”

“Oh, God,” Mogie says, cupping one hand across his eyes.

“Every month. And—get this, Mogie. She's been paying him off at the rate of
ten thousand dollars
a month! That's a
hundred and twenty thousand
a year!”

“Oh, dear God,” Mogie moans, rocking his head back and forth as though about to undergo some sort of emotional collapse.

“Even for Mother, that's a lot of money. Of course I didn't dare remove the canceled checks to have them Xeroxed—but they're
there
. We know they're
there
. Bank records will back us up—”

“Oh, Joan … Joan … it's so awful.”

“Now all we need to know is what she's paying him off
for
. But you can bet it's something pretty big. You don't pay an estranged brother a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year for nothing. He's being paid to keep his trap shut about something pretty damned important, if you ask me. That's what we've got to find out now, and the only one who can possibly tell us is Arthur Litton himself. Maybe he won't tell us, but we've got to try. I'm going to contact him, and try to find out what all that money's going to him
for.
”

“Oh, Joan, don't. It's too awful.”

“What are you talking about, Mogie? What's so awful? It's what I suspected all along.”

“Don't, Joan.…”

“Here's my plan. I go to Arthur Litton—Uncle Abe—and I tell him, ‘Look, Mother's old, she's going to die.' I mean—ha-ha—we're all going to die some day, aren't we? And I tell him that I know about these payments, and I'd like to continue them after Mother's gone—but the thing I need to know if I'm going to do this, is what are the payments for? How's that for strategy? Logical, isn't it?”

“But Joan, listen to me. You've got to think twice about this. Because now that you've told me about the payments, I know exactly what they're for.”

“You do?”

“Just tell me one thing—how far back do these payments go?”

“Years and years. Back to the late nineteen twenties, at least.”

Mogie nods. “Yes, that would be right. Yes, it's exactly what I was afraid of.”

“Mogie, please tell me what you're talking about.”

“I want to show you something,” he says. He reaches in the breast pocket of his jacket and pulls out one of the old clippings from Joan's files. He spreads the clipping on the table and, covering the picture caption with one hand, he says, “Joan, who is this a picture of?”

“Why, it's a picture of Arthur Litton, taken sometime in the twenties. I gave it to you the other night. From my files.”

“Look more closely.”

“I know it's a picture of Arthur Litton, Mogie. I—”

“Look more closely. Don't you see—someone else?”

“Else?”

“It's a picture of our brother, Josh, the way he looks today.”

Joan studies the picture. “Well, there is a resemblance. But—”

“It's identical.”

“But after all, Arthur Litton is Mother's brother, Josh's uncle—”

“But
this
close? Did you ever wonder, Joan, why Josh never looked a bit like Papa? I always did. There wasn't a trace of Papa in Josh, and then, the other night, when I saw this photo—I had the answer.”

“Mogie, are you saying—?”

“And did you ever wonder—as I often did—how Josh ever got conceived? Josh was born in nineteen twenty-eight, when I was ten. Mother and Papa were barely speaking to each other, except on social occasions when they'd put on a show of getting along, much less
sleeping
together. I used to ask myself, how could Josh have been conceived, unless—”