The Auerbach Will (24 page)

“Mogie, what are you saying?”

“Unless his father was someone else. Now we know.”

“You mean Mother and—you mean
incest?
” Heads turn from several tables, and Joan covers her mouth and says, “Oh, forgive me. Oh, Mogie this can't be true,” she whispers. “This is just preposterous, Mogie.”

“Incest occurs more often than you might think. It occurs, in fact, in one out of ten families in the United States. Those are the statistics. I got them from Doctor Gold.”

“But not Mother!”

“Didn't you say that Uncle Abe used to live in the same house with them on Grand Boulevard? The proximity—”

“Yes, but—a brother and a sister—”

“That's not all that uncommon, either. Why, I used to have incestuous fantasies about you when I was growing up. Did you know that? Do you remember the pool house at The Bluff? I used to stand on a garden chair behind the back window of the girls' dressing room, and watch you taking a shower, and I'd masturbate.”

“I can't believe I'm listening to this at the Pierre.”

“It's one of the things I've had to work out with Doctor Gold. But it's true. When I was eleven or twelve, and you were nine years older, I was head over heels in love with you. I thought that you were the most exciting, most beautiful girl in the world. And you were!” He smiles at her, and covers her hand with his. “And in many ways, you still are.”

Flustered, Joan giggles nervously, and says, “Well, thank you, Mogie,” and lets her hand rest for a moment under his, before withdrawing it. “People did use to say I looked like Gene Tierney. I always thought more Joan Bennett.”

“You can't imagine what a thrill it is for me to watch you come into a restaurant like this, and see people recognize you.”

“But what you're saying—”

“And I can say all this even though I know how much you've always hated me, Joan—for being the first of the second litter of Auerbach children, as we say. But just lately Doctor Gold has given me some new insights about that problem, too.”

“What's that?”

“You always wanted to be the oldest male in the family, didn't you? You always wanted to be what I've become. You always wanted to be the dominant male figure among the Auerbach sibs. You unconsciously wanted to castrate me, and turn me into a younger sister.”

“That's nonsense, Mogie.”

“Of course it's been unconscious on your part. But it finally helps me understand you. It's a classic case of penis envy. You wanted a cock. I had one, so you wanted mine.”

“Mogie—for heaven's
sake!
” Joan says. “Please get back to what you were saying about Mother.”

“Well, a tendency toward incestuous longings does tend to run in certain families. Doctor Gold told me this, too. And it's particularly prevalent among families of Eastern European origin. Jewish families—”

“Like Mother's—”

“Who were ghettoized for so long—”

“Do you really think—?”

“And here's another interesting thing. What color are Josh's eyes?”

“Blue.”

“And Mother's?”

“Also blue.”

“And Papa's?”

“Dark brown. Glaring at us from the portrait in the library.”

“And yours, and mine, and Babette's?”

“Brown. But that doesn't prove—”

“And Prince's eyes? I've been trying to remember. There are no photographs—”

“All destroyed. But they were brown, too—I remember very well.”

“Well, then,” Mogie says. “What about Uncle Abe?”

“I don't remember.”

“Try very hard. From this newspaper picture, it's impossible to tell.”

“I'm sorry, Mogie. It was so long ago, and I was just a little girl.”

“But if it should turn out that Uncle Abe's—or Arthur Litton's—eyes were blue, that would tell us something, wouldn't it?”

Joan considers this a moment. “But no, not really,” she says at last. “Two blue-eyed parents can't have a brown, but two browns or one brown and one blue can have either-or.”

“True enough,” Mogie says. “But the chances are three out of four that brown will dominate, because blue is recessive. That's Mendel. That's the Mendelian Ratio. We need to know what color Uncle Abe's eyes were. Or are. That's the meaning of this dynamic. If they're blue, like Mother's, we could draw some conclusions, don't you think?”

“Now wait a minute,” Joan says. “Uncle Abe left the company in nineteen seventeen. I know, because it was the year America went into the war. The family had no association with him after that. Josh wasn't born until nineteen twenty-eight. So how could he possibly—?”

“Ah,” Mogie says, lifting his glass and looking at her over its rim with half-closed eyes. “But I know something that you don't, my darling sister.”

“What's that?”

“I was coming to that. Our Uncle Abe came back.”

“Came back? When?”

“It was about ten years later. I was eight or nine. You, I believe, were off on one of your—marital adventures. I never saw him, but I know he came back, because I remember Mother and Papa having a terrible row about it. I remember Papa shouting, ‘Now what's that damned brother of yours trying to pull?' And I remember Papa saying, ‘He's a crook and a liar, and he's not going to get anything from me.' I remember, because I didn't understand that expression, “trying to pull.' And because I'd never even known that Mother had a brother.”

“What was it he wanted?”

“I don't know. But I know when I asked Mother what it meant, and asked her who her brother was, she just said, ‘It's grown-up business,' and wouldn't talk about it. So whatever Abe wanted, I gather he didn't get.”

“But still, Mogie,” Joan says, twirling the plastic stirrer in her drink. “Do you really think our mother would—I mean, she's always been so proper.”

Mogie's eyes narrow still further. “Which brings me to my final point,” he says. “I'm not sure that
she
did anything at all. In her case, I'm quite certain it was—” he lowers his voice to a whisper, and leans closer to his sister—“rape.”

“Oh, Mogie. No,” Joan gasps.

“Why not? Considering the man's character? Considering the amount of money she's been paying him to keep the facts from coming out? Why, it would be worth almost anything to keep the family from knowing something like that.”

“Why wouldn't she have had an abortion?”

“Hard to do in those days. Illegal, and risky. And how would she have explained it to Papa? Don't you remember when she was pregnant with Josh, how strange she was—irritable and moody?”

“I always supposed she was worrying about having another baby at that age. She was thirty-six, thirty-seven—”

“Nonsense. Women didn't worry about
that
in those days. Nobody'd ever heard of Down's syndrome in nineteen twenty-eight.”

Joan stares at the pale pink tablecloth in front of her. “Sometimes I wish Josh
had
been born a Mongolian idiot,” she says, “instead of—as Mother keeps reminding us—so
smart.
” But even as she says these words, against the pale pink surface of the tablecloth unexpected pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place, and out of a meaningless cryptogram clues appear and gather to form clear English sentences. “Oh, dear God, Mogie,” she says softly. “Because she did say—”

“Say what?”

“Said that Uncle Abe had done something terrible to her years ago. Something that hurt her. Used the word hurt. And she said it was
personal
. Nothing to do with the company.”

“There. You see?”

“Something so awful she couldn't tell me.”

“There. You see?”

“And she said that when they were growing up they slept in the same room. Even in the same bed.”

“There. You see? It all fits.” His eyes are slits now. “It's a classic case. Think of it. Picture it. Uncle Abe—driven to fury, having been denied whatever he wanted from Papa. Determined to have his revenge, against Papa and the family. In his rage, the childhood fantasies come back, intensified in middle age. Out of control, he turns on the family's most vulnerable member—Mother. And finally, irrationally, he acts those fantasies out.”

“Dear God, I think you may be right.”

“I know I am.”

“And Josh is—”

“Arthur Litton's son.”

“A gangster—”

“The result of an incestuous rape.”

“We've got to get to Litton.”

“There was a woman, Daisy Something, who was close to all of them—”

“Stevens. Daisy Stevens. She'd know, yes.”

“The color of his eyes, at least.”

“But if this ever got out, it could ruin all of us,” Joan says.

“It would certainly put an end to dear little Josh's career with the company,” Mogie says with a small smile.

“But what else could it do?”

“It's a can of worms, all right,” Mogie says. Then he says slowly and carefully, “There is one other thing, at least, that it could do. You see, I've given this some thought. If Josh is not Papa's real son, I see no reason why he should be entitled to any share of Papa's trust.”

Joan Auerbach stares across the table at her brother. Then she does an uncharacteristic thing, and takes a swallow of her bourbon old-fashioned.

“I see no reason at all,” her brother says. He glances at his gold Cartier tank watch. “I've got to run. I promised Tina. We're trying to get pregnant ourselves. My sperm count is fine, and Tina's ovulating this week.” He signals the waiter for his check.

Outside the hotel entrance, Mogie's car and driver are waiting, and the driver gives Mogie a crisp salute and holds open the door. “You're looking very chipper, Mr. Auerbach,” he says. “You must have had a pleasant meeting.”

“As a matter of fact, Warrington, I have,” Mogie says as he slides into the wide back seat of the Rolls. “Extremely pleasant. Back to Beekman, please.” As the car pulls away from the curb, Mogie pulls down the writing table that is set into the back of the front seat, lights the goose-necked reading lamp, and removes writing utensils—a sheet of his crested stationery and a gold pen—from the special pockets where they are kept in the car. Ah, darling Joan, he thinks. Darling, darling Joan. Phase One of his little plan, his elegant little plan, has gone more splendidly than he had ever dared to hope it would, and now is the moment to embark upon Phase Two. Mogie's orderly mind likes to do things in this fashion, in carefully timed and organized phases, and after Phase Two, in due course, will follow Phase Three.

One of the many facets of Mogie Auerbach, as a Renaissance Man, which even his family is not aware of, is that among his many talents he is also a better-than-passable sonnet-maker. He has been composing this particular sonnet in his head for several days, and now he is ready to set the lines to paper. He has chosen, for this sonnet, the Shakespearean mode, and, with a flourish, he writes its title across the top of the page—“
J'Accuse!
” He continues writing rapidly—a Coleridge uninterrupted by a gentleman on business from Porlock—and, by the time his car has traveled the short distance between Sixty-first Street and Beekman Place, it is finished, and he reads:

Whose pictures these, we might gently inquire?

Though one is recent, one from years ago
,

Which is the noble son and which the sire?

What is it that the wisely child must know?

How scant apart, in simple years, they seem!

And yet full thirty years apart be they!

Has it yet dawned, all clear, as in a dream
,

What these two images do seem to say?

Father, or not? Whose stern but kindly gaze

Stares down from high upon a paneled wall?

Did he suspect throughout his final days

That son he called a son was not a son at all?

Whose faces, these, both whom you know so well?

If walls could talk! If pictures, too, could tell!

Not bad, he thinks. Not bad at all. Too good, in fact, for the rather private use to which the lines must be put. Good enough, indeed, to satisfy the wrong-headed editors of
The Georgia Review
, for whom Mogie occasionally writes under the
nom de plume
of “Lycidas,” and who have turned down three of his most recent efforts. But no, not yet. “
J'Accuse!
” must serve another purpose first. A pity, but there it is. He folds the sheet of paper, slips it in the breast pocket of his Weatherell suit, raises the writing table and snaps it into place. “I won't need you again tonight, Warrington,” he says as he steps out of the car.

“Have a pleasant evening, sir!”

“I will, Warrington, I will.”

Once inside his house, however, Mogie does not immediately go upstairs to Tina. First, he must go to his desk and copy his sonnet in a hand that will not be instantly recognizable. His own Italianate Chancery script is too distinctive. To copy his verses, he chooses plain block printing, of the sort taught to every schoolboy in the first and second grade. This chore completed, he opens his secret drawer, takes out his pipe, fills and lights it, and soon he is suffused with even higher spirits. An erection begins to swell in his trousers as he admires his handiwork and contemplates the excruciating pleasures that are to come. Elated, he moves quickly now. He goes to the bookcase, unlocks it with his key, and removes the two scrapbooks with their pages carefully marked with white strips of paper. Using his silver library shears with their mother-of-pearl handles, he then neatly excises the two pertinent photographs. He prints a date on each, then places them, along with the sonnet, in an ordinary white envelope, seals it, addresses it in the same schoolboy printing, and stamps it. “Farewell, my lovely,” he says, and takes another long, deep draw on his pipe. Invictus!