The Auerbach Will (31 page)

His eyes were shining as though there were tears in them. “It sounds perfectly lovely, Essie,” he said. And then, “This is what you wanted, isn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

“For him to be successful?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I suppose so. It's just that it's all seemed to have happened so fast that it's taking me time to get used to it.”

“It
has
happened fast,” he said. “Faster than I ever dreamed it would. Three years ago, I would have given this company ten years to get to where it's got today. But, as Jake says, we've been very lucky—Parcel Post, reduced mailing rates. We got in at the ground floor of a little business just at the turning point when it almost
had
to become a big business. And it's going to become much, much bigger, Essie. With the momentum we have now, it's inevitable.”

“Rich,” she said. “Getting rich.”

“And with the war coming—and it will come—Eaton and Cromwell will play an important part. I foresee—” He broke off. “Never mind what I foresee. What about you, Essie?”

“Me?”

“Are you ready for all this?”

She laughed. “I guess I'd better be, if it's inevitable.”

“Essie, pardon me for saying this,” he said, “but your husband is not only becoming a very rich man. He's becoming a very powerful and influential man. But you—you seem to have made very few friends here in Chicago.”

“Mrs. Nielsen, next door on Grand Boulevard. But I haven't seen her since we moved up here. I guess I've been too busy raising the children and helping Jake to think about making friends.”

“Jake no longer needs the kind of help you used to give him,” he said. “But you can still help him.”

“How?”

“Get out into the community, do things. Get involved in something. You can't let your own life fall by the wayside, just because your husband has become a rich and influential man. Of course, when the house is finished, and you start to do some entertaining, everyone in Chicago will flock to your doorstep—just to see the house, if for no other reason. But for now—if you could involve yourself in something. To establish yourself as a force of your own.”

“Jake put you up to this conversation, didn't he?”

He smiled. “Let's just say that he would be very pleased if you did. He's aware that you now have time on your hands.”

“Aware.” She stood up, irritated. “That's just the thing,” she said. “Why can't
he
tell
me
what he wants anymore? Why does he have to have
you
tell me?”

“Jake's a very busy man, Essie. Right now he's—”

“Yes, where is he right now?”

He checked his watch. “Right now, he's on a train coming back from Cleveland. He also asked me to tell you he'd be late for dinner.”

“His right-hand man. That's what he calls you, doesn't he—his right-hand man.”

“It's not a bad job, you know, being Jake Auerbach's right-hand man. I've done all right, too.”

“I'm sorry, Charles,” she said quickly, and sat down again. “I didn't mean any of that. All right, I'm to get busy. Busy with what?”

“Well, there's the opera. The museum. The hospitals. Any charity in town would be delighted to have Mrs. Jacob Auerbach on its board. And it's a wonderful way to make new friends, Essie. You'd go sailing into society, Essie. After all, you're young, you're beautiful, and, now, you're rich.”

“Very well. Now how do I go about getting on these boards?”

“If you'd like, I could speak to Mrs. Harold McCormick about it. I know she'd be delighted to hear that you were interested in doing something. Would you like me to speak to her?”

She nodded. “All right. But—again—why can't Jake make these suggestions to me
himself?
”

“To be frank with you,” he said, “Jake doesn't know Mrs. Harold McCormick. I do. You see, Essie, Jake wants you to be the toast of the town, but he doesn't know how to do it. I do.”

She laughed suddenly. “Dear Charles,” she said, “you really are the most extraordinary man—you really are!”

“
Right-hand
man, of course,” he said with a wink. “And I'll be happy to be yours, too.” He stood up. “Meanwhile, downstairs in the lobby, I have someone waiting who would very much like to be your friend. Can I bring her up?”

“Of course. Who is it, Charles?”

“Her name is Cecilia Richardson. And she's the woman I'm going to marry.”

“Oh, Charles!” she cried. “You never mentioned—”

“I'll go fetch her,” he said. “I think you'll like her.”

It was totally irrational, there was no reason, no explanation for it, but after he had left the apartment to fetch this Cecilia Richardson, Essie's heart was pounding with—what was it?—a kind of rage, almost, a kind of fury. It made no sense, she told herself. Charles had every right—every right in the world—to marry any woman he wanted. And yet he had no right. She felt betrayed. How could he commit this sort of treachery? Charles belonged to her, to them, she told herself, even though she knew, in the sense of a sane and ordinary world, that he did not. But she had discovered him. If she had not happened to be seated next to him on a train in 1913, none of what had come about would be. How could he do this to her, to Jake—bring this woman into the established pattern of their lives? And with another flush of anger she realized that, no doubt, Jake already knew about Cecilia Richardson, this uninvited intruder. She sat, arms pressed tightly to her sides, on the sofa in her elegant suite at the Palmer House, dumbfounded at the extent of her feelings, appalled and ashamed of herself for the feelings at the same time, trying to control herself, to bring the world that seemed to have toppled down upon her back into some sort of sane and rational perspective.

When Charles ushered Cecilia Richardson into the room, Essie felt her face still hot with anger, and she rose a little unsteadily from the sofa to greet his fiancée.

“Mrs. Auerbach,” the young woman said, extending her hand. “I've heard so much about you from Charles. It's so nice to meet you.”

“Yes,” Essie said awkwardly, disliking Cecilia Richardson instantly, and for no good reason, but knowing that she must at least be civil.

“We wanted you to be among the first to know,” Cecilia Richardson said. “To Charles, you and your husband are like a second family.”

“Yes,” said Essie again, and she could not avoid noticing how bright and proud and happy Charles was looking, watching Cecilia's every move with an expression that was—well, quite obviously, adoring. Cecilia Richardson reminded Essie of a younger version of Lily Auerbach—tall, slender, blonde and cool.

“What a lovely apartment,” Cecilia Richardson said.

“Well,” said Essie, “would you like a cup of tea?”

“I'd adore that,” said Cecilia Richardson.

It was in the summer of 1916 that Jake Auerbach's worst fears were realized, and the apartment swarmed with uniformed policemen and plainclothesmen. The note had been delivered in the mail that morning:

Mr. Jacob Auerbach:

You a big rich man, but I think you like your little son a lot. You not want him bad hurt or killed, I think. But that he will be if you don't give us $$ we ask
.

Do not call police and wait for next instructone
.

“The writer of the note has deliberately written it in a childish handwriting, in order to disguise it,” said the brisk young lieutenant in charge of the case. “The postmark is Chicago, but of course we don't know what part of town. Mr. Auerbach, we'd like to place a plainclothes detective here in the apartment, to monitor any incoming telephone calls and wait for the kidnapper's next message. Meanwhile, we'll take the note back to the lab, dust it for fingerprints, and see if we can trace where the paper was purchased.…”

“Prince is to be taken out of his school,” Jake said. “From now on he will be tutored here. He is not to leave this apartment for any reason.…”

New dead-bolt locks and chains were placed on both the front and back doors of the apartment. Though the weather was hot, all the windows were ordered locked and bolted, on the unlikely chance that the kidnapper could scale the walls of the hotel to the eighth floor. A very blurred fingerprint was found on the letter, but it could not be identified. A detective, changed on eight-hour shifts, remained in the apartment for three weeks, but there were no further communications from the would-be kidnapper.

“Of course we must face the possibility that this was a hoax,” the young lieutenant said at last.

And it was not until several weeks after the detectives had been dismissed that Essie Auerbach, who had been just as frightened and shaken as her husband, had a sudden insight. She stepped into Joan's bedroom, where Fräulein Kroger was reading to her. “Fräulein, I'd like to speak to Joan alone,” she said, and when Fräulein had left, Essie closed the door and leaned against it, trembling. “Joan, did you write that note?” she asked.

Joan burst into tears. “Please don't tell Papa!” she cried.

“What a wicked, wicked thing to do!”

“Don't tell Papa!”

“I certainly shall!” Essie said. Then she immediately reversed herself. “No, I certainly won't. And don't
you
ever tell him, either! Do you realize how
furious
he'd be if he knew what a fool you'd made of all of us? Don't you dare tell him. You are a wicked, wicked little girl.” She pulled open the door. “Fräulein!” she called. “Joan is to remain locked in her room, alone, for the rest of the afternoon. And she is to have no supper. She has been a very, very naughty girl.”

Then, it was in December of that year when so much seemed to be happening in fast succession, that the invitation had come from President and Mrs. Wilson for dinner at the White House. The date coincided with the date Charles and Cecilia had planned for their wedding, and so the wedding was postponed a week so that Jake and Essie could attend. For days, Jake rehearsed her on the etiquette of the White House dinner.

“The President is to be addressed as ‘Mr. President,'” Jake said. “When you meet him, merely shake his hand. Do not bow or curtsy. Mrs. Wilson is to be addressed as ‘Mrs. Wilson,' and again, a simple handshake. The dinner, I gather, will be kept quite small because of the situation in Europe. There will be the President and Mrs. Wilson, the President's three daughters, Eleanor, Margaret, and Jessie—who, you remember, are the President's daughters by his first marriage, and therefore not Mrs. Wilson's daughters—General and Mrs. John Pershing, and yourself and me.”

At the dinner, Edith Wilson had complimented Essie on her jewels, which Jake had bought for the occasion. “Those are very pretty emeralds,” Mrs. Wilson said. “I imagine green is your color—with your eyes.”

“All except once,” Essie said. “When I wore a green dress to meet my future mother-in-law, whose parlor is all done in red damask.”

“I know good stones,” Mrs. Wilson said. “My first husband, Mr. Galt, had a jewelry store here in Washington.”

“My mother runs a little store,” Essie said. “Newspapers and candy—on the Lower East Side.”

“Really?” Edith Wilson said with a warm smile. “How charming. We're just a nation of shopkeepers, aren't we, under it all?”

President Wilson had turned his attention to Jake Auerbach. “Mr. Auerbach,” he said, “I've read with much interest of how you've utilized Mr. Henry Ford's production-line techniques in the manufacture of dry goods and other merchandise.”

“It works as well for dry goods as for automobiles, Mr. President,” Jake said.

“Tell me something,” said the President. “A year ago, I was being praised for keeping this country out of the European war. Now I'm being criticized, by the same people, for not getting us into it fast enough. In a matter of weeks, we may have no choice. We have reason to believe that Germany may soon announce unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic. We can't have U-boats steaming into New York harbor. If that happens, war is the only course. And so my question to you is this: in the event of war, how quickly could you turn your plants into, say, the manufacture of military uniforms and other war materiel? Soldiers' mess kits, cots for military barracks, blankets, that sort of thing.”

“Mr. President,” said Jacob Auerbach, “it would not take us so much as twenty-four hours.”

President Wilson nodded approvingly.

“Do you realize what this means?” Jake asked her in the limousine that was taking them back to their Washington hotel. “This means wartime contracts. This means not just millions of dollars. It means
tens
of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions!”

“Oh, Jake—but it means war.”

“Hundreds of millions,” he repeated. Then, quickly, “From now on, we drink and order no more German wines. From now on, Fräulein Kroger will be
Miss
Kroger. Do you understand?”

In the darkness beside him in the car, Essie nodded, and the car turned into Connecticut Avenue.

“And Essie, why, for sweet God's sake, did you have to tell Mrs. Wilson about your mother running a candy store? For sweet God's sake—
why?
”

Despite herself, tears sprang to her eyes. “She told me it was—charming,” she said at last. “She didn't say
you
were charming!”

They continued toward the hotel in silence.

Sixteen

Crusty little George Eaton, whose field of expertise was advertising, had always been given a fairly free rein in that department, with the only restraints being applied to Eaton's tendency, from time to time, to exaggerate the splendor and value of certain products. Usually these curbs were applied good-naturedly. “George,” Jake or Charles might tell him, “you just can't say that these coats for oversize women will make them look ‘thin as a reed.' A fat woman in a heavy coat is just going to look fatter.” But now, at the April meeting of the board in 1917—two weeks after the United States had formally declared war on Germany—the discussion had taken a more serious turn. At issue was the advertising budget. Traditionally, the company had always spent between nine and thirteen percent of sales on advertising and promotion. Now, for the coming fiscal year, George Eaton wanted to raise the figure to seventeen percent. “Hell, we've got all these government contracts,” Eaton said. “We'd only be spending the government's money.”