The Will

by Harvey Swados

  “You’re a lot more quiet this morning than you were the other evening,” the doctor observed, as he drew his car to the curb.

  “I don’t have to prove anything to you,” Mel pointed out. And to make sure that the older man should not mistake this for an expression of confidence, he added spitefully, “Besides, you know as well as I do that your son is getting ready to shaft me.”

  Dr. Stark did not attempt to reply, and Mel, feeling a little guilty for his needless cruelty, shifted about painfully on the front seat and again turned his attention to the house which he would be re-entering in a moment.

  Once you knew what you were going to find inside, Max’s castle became simply prosaically shabby and more than a little ridiculous, with its overblown, billowing windows and pointless tiny porches embellished with curlicued railings, all impressive but meaningless, like the metal spikes that rose up here and there, pointing warning fingers toward a heaven from which no lightning ever struck. At least not until now. It had been different when it had loomed up before his bloodshot eyes the other night, a gloomy apparition in a menacing dream, a stage set for an unperformed melodrama that you knew in advance would come to no good end.

  The chances were that the drama still would not end well, but the house’s mysterious power to appall was quite gone in the June sunlight. Whatever ability he himself still had, though, to exert some control over the remainder of the drama would now be tested.

  “O.K., let’s go,” he said to Dr. Stark, his bandaged fingers on the door handle. “What are we waiting for?”

  The doctor restrained him gently. He gestured with his chin at a spattered and rusting Volkswagen parked across the street.

  “Can’t you make out the card in their windshield?”

  “No.” Mel squinted. “What about it?”

  “It says Press. Even if we sit here and don’t go on in, they’ll be over in a minute. You’d better refer them to Marty and let him do the talking when he arrives—I don’t see his car here yet.”

  “He’s already talked to them. Today it’s my turn.” He opened the door and swung his legs out. “Coming?”

  They were barely at the ragged fringe of Max’s front lawn when the two men from the Volkswagen were trotting across the street, the shorter swaying on stumpy legs with the awkward rapidity of a monkey making for the trees. His camera was banging against his chest, wide like a gorilla’s but covered with a floral-printed sport shirt, and even as he ran he tried to peer through it and bring it to a focus.

  “Stand behind me, Mel,” the doctor said.

  “What for? Let him shoot.”

  The taller of the two approached, his long jaw hanging open. His eyes were watery and sad; he looked like a fish with a long Latin name that you stare at through the thick glass wall of an aquarium.

  “Stanley Jenkins of the Chronicle, Mr. Land,” he said.

  “Tell me first how you knew I was going to be here. Martin Stark?”

  “You can ask him that when he gets here. Do you intend to contest your father’s will?”

  “Ask me on my way out, not on my way in.”

  “Just one more, Mel,” the little photographer said. “Thanks!”

  “I’m going in now with my doctor for a family conference. I’ve invited some guests, so I can’t say anything until it’s over. But afterwards I may have a lot to say. Stick around if you want.”

  “We’ll do that.”

  It was Ray who opened the door for them and closed it swiftly on the reporters. His brilliant blue eyes blinked out from the cool darkness of the front hall, which smelled of furniture polish and fresh coffee. In his white shirt and slacks, and with his woolly beard, he might have been an acolyte going off into the desert to do penance, but first making sure that his hair was combed and his shoes shined.

  “I thought I’d try the front door this time, now that I’ve got a bodyguard with me,” Mel said to him. “You’re more sociable this morning than you were the last time I dropped in.”

  Ray blushed. “I must say something before we go any further.”

  “Say it.”

  “I didn’t want the fighting to spread that night, I wanted it to be contained. That’s an explanation, but it’s not an excuse. The only thing is, how can I forgive myself if you don’t forgive me?”

  “I forgive you, I forgive you. As long as you don’t keep whining about it. Now how’s about some of that coffee I smell?”

  “Let me ask Kitty.”

  Ray hurried on ahead of them into the living room, the furniture of which had been arranged in a loose circle. Ralph was seated before the fireplace and his wife was bending over him. Protectively? No, she was merely pouring cream into his coffee; at Ray’s whisper she turned to greet him and Dr. Stark. Apparently she had decided, or had been instructed, to receive him correctly.

  “Make mine black,” he said to her. “No sugar.”

  “And you, Doctor?”

  “Nothing. Trying to control my consumption of stimulants.” The doctor raised his hand before his face and lowered himself onto the couch. “How are you feeling, Kitty?”

  “Never better. But I’m not nearly as good an ad for your services as Mel. I think he’s recovered amazingly fast.”

  “If I look beautiful,” Mel said, “I do owe it all to the doctor. But he’s sending Ralph the bill, not me.”

  Kitty laughed, a little too shrilly. The doctor was merely smiling wryly. Ralph was staring into his coffee cup, making no effort to be pleasant—or unpleasant for that matter. In his dark green summer business suit and tie figured with little signs of the Zodiac, he looked like a young professional man waiting uneasily for a client. Fair enough. Now was the time.

  “I’ve got a little announcement,” Mel said. “I’ve invited some reinforcements to Marty’s meeting. I hope you’ll have enough coffee for our cousins, Henrietta and Lillian. And Henrietta’s husband.”

  Mel paused and cocked his head to one side so that he might have the pleasure of an unobstructed view of the anger rising to his brother’s dark flushed face.

  “What are you trying to pull?”

  “Marty told me in the hospital that I couldn’t buck you without substantial backing. Well, I’ve got it.”

  Kitty took her husband by the arm to restrain him, but he shook himself free. “I wouldn’t put it past him to make a pact with those unspeakable people. You can’t imagine how ashamed they were when he used to give Mama and the whole family so much misery. But now that it’s a question of giving us misery, it’s a different story. And he’s not too proud to finagle with people like that.”

  “I leave the pride to you, Ralph,” Mel said. “You’re the one that wears the five-dollar ties and drives the stupid little English car. If Ray wouldn’t negotiate with me, the Kadins will. That’s good enough for me.”

  Dr. Stark growled placidly, “Damned if I can see why they should want to become involved. I thought all along they’ve been desperate to stay clear of the Lands and to keep clear of your troubles.”

  “It’s too late for that anyway.”

  “If they go into litigation with you, though, they’re just asking for it.”

  “They’re going to get it no matter what they do. So why shouldn’t they come in with me? At least that way they’ll have a chance at a cut.”

  Ray was staring. “You mean you’ve offered them a share of the estate?”

  Mel turned on him. “Not only are you slow on the uptake, you’ve got bad manners. You hurt the Kadins’ delicate feelings. Here they went and kept your guilty secret, when they were the only ones besides the doctor and his son to know you were sacked out upstairs. And how did you repay them? Did you offer to cut them in, after the will turned up? Not you.”

  “What did they expect him to do?” Ralph demanded. “They never once showed up all the years he was living here. The only thing they ever did was to gloat over our troubles. It’s no wonder neither Uncle Max nor Papa mentioned them in their wills. Why should they have? W
hy should Ray, why should I, why should you—”

  “I already told you why I should. And if you think their motives are any chintzier than yours—”

  The doorbell rang loudly.

  “—why not take it up with them? That must be them. No, no,” he said to Kitty as he started for the hall, “this one is on me. After all, I invited them.”

  When he got to the front door, however, Sasha tottered against his leg and growled stertorously, as if he wished to bar the way to whoever stood on the other side. Holding the hound by the collar, Mel flung open the door.

  The driveway was now lined with cars. Before the latest arrival, a white Mercedes, Martin Stark and a broken-nosed stranger stood deep in conversation with the two journalists. A fifth man had just stepped away from them and was hurrying up the walk with the wind whipping his tie over his shoulder, to join the two women who already stood before Mel, panting and outraged as though indecencies had just been suggested to them. Until now the two Kadin sisters had existed in his mind not as specific human beings—despite his telephone conversation with Ben Lurie—nor even as generalized women, but merely as cousins of his mother’s, and as such simply as emanations (not as savory as the odor of fresh bread and soap that she always gave off) of someone who had been surpassingly real for him. Therefore it had been easy to persuade himself that but for his mother, the indomitable Kadin who for love had driven him out of the Land house, these Kadins would have no objective reality of their own.

  But here they stood in all their dumpy substantiality (which was Lillian? which was Henrietta? did it make any difference?), sending forth waves of face powder mingled with the honest sweat of fear arising from their meaty bosoms.

  “Hello, cousins!” he cried. “Come in! You’re in the nick of time! Revelations are the order of the day. Also threats, exposures, and reprisals.”

  “Can we wait here in the hall for my husband, all right?”

  This was the heavier one, who was therefore Henrietta, wife of Ben Lurie, the panting insurance salesman. As she and her spinster sister—who licked chapped lips beneath a disconcerting mustache—accepted the hospitality of Mel’s outstretched arm, she continued, “Let’s just hold the door for Mr. Stark and the other man too. He saved us from those awful reporters just in time.”

  “Hello, Mel, you’re looking pretty good, considering. How do you feel,” Ben Lurie said. To emphasize the fact that he did not expect an answer, he went on immediately, in a voice roughened by running, “We understood that a statement had already been given out. Wasn’t this supposed to be a private meeting?”

  “Well, it is, it is, at least inside.” Mel shoved Sasha ahead into the parlor. “The reporters are just trying to live up to their movie image. When they nab you on the way out, either lie like hell about what went on inside, or tell them the absolute truth about everybody except yourself. That’s what’s always done at conferences like this, it’s expected. Doesn’t it always work like a charm?”

  He raised his hand in greeting to the two reporters, the sad fish and the picture-taking gorilla, as they retreated to their Volkswagen. Then, fixing a glassy smile of welcome on his battered face, he attended the lawyer and his companion, who were mounting the porch steps, sober-faced.

  “Good morning, Counselor,” he said to Martin. “You know my cousins? You don’t object to my having invited them to your séance?”

  “Object?” The lawyer’s smile was bland; Mel felt suddenly as though he had swallowed a heavy object. “If you hadn’t, I’d have asked them myself.”

  Ben Lurie spoke up in his sharp nagging salesman’s voice: “I was telling Mr. Stark that we want to try to help you young people.”

  As he took his wife and sister-in-law by their fleshy upper arms, two ball point pens and a retractable pencil glinted in the handkerchief pocket of his Palm Beach suit. When they had all trooped into the living room, Martin took over the introductions, identifying his broken-nosed companion, whose aging face was white and soft and withdrawn, as though he had been locked in a closet, only as Mr. Jesse Treadwater.

  “O.K.,” Mel said impatiently, surveying the coffee-sipping circle, eight of them, not counting himself. “I hear the rest of you know each other from condolence calls at the time of my father’s death. We’re here this morning on a happier occasion—to see that the right people get their hands on the loot—so let’s get cracking.”

  “Now wait a minute, Mel.” He had been a little blunt for Cousin Ben, who had to be both noble and aggrieved. “We only want to see justice done. The Kadin family has had nothing but grief from the Lands.”

  Ralph raised his eyes from his coffee cup. He smiled coldly. “Just be glad you’re not a Land. We have nothing but grief from ourselves. And I don’t recall that the Kadins ever offered to share it. So if some of us haven’t offered to share other things than grief with you, that shouldn’t be too hard to understand. Not even for a stranger like Mr. Treadwater.”

  Ben Lurie held out both arms to restrain his wife and her sister. “Don’t put words in my mouth. We’re accusing nobody.” He repeated: “All we want is to see justice done.”

  “We all know what grief is,” Ralph persisted. “But justice is a relative matter. What do you mean by it?”

  “To me,” the insurance agent replied stubbornly, “it’s justice that your mother’s only living relatives besides her sons should participate in the estate. When I think of what she suffered, I’m not saying at whose hands, it strikes me funny that Mel is the only one of you who should acknowledge even this much.”

  “I only wanted to carry out my father’s wishes,” Ray protested.

  “Everyone for reasons of his own,” Martin Stark murmured.

  It made no difference to whom he addressed himself, Mel thought, whether to the strange white-faced man or to the others, he had to get everything said, no matter what the outcome, and quickly, for their faces were beginning to swim strangely.

  “The story is that I left town and stayed away because I was a coward and deserter. Wrong. It was my Mama, your cousin Jenny Kadin, who pleaded with me to leave. I agreed because I thought some people might learn something from my going. Now it turns out that she was put up to it by the one member of the family who swore he was sticking with me.

  Dr. Stark, who had been sitting in self-effacing silence in the furthest corner of the circle, now took hold of his long bulbous bologna of a nose and tweaked it. It made a soft dull sound that caught everyone’s attention.

  “I don’t mind rehashing everything all over again,” he said, “but aren’t you guys a little embarrassed in front of a stranger?

  “When Mel has quite finished,” his son remarked calmly, “Mr. Treadwater can explain why he’s here.”

  “I don’t know who the hell you are, Mr. Treadwater,” Mel said, “but you must have gotten one version already from Perry Mason here. Well, from what I’ve heard I’m more convinced than ever that I’m entitled to Uncle Max’s dough. Before, I felt I had a claim on Max’s love. Now, after what they’ve told me, I want reparations.”

  “Can I butt in one last time?” the doctor asked. “I’m on Mel’s side, but only because I’m on everybody’s side. If you all took turns, each of you could recite a whole catalogue of suffering at the hands of both of the deceased. Ralph, who never had a proper home; Raymond, who was brought up by a committee of confounded men; even the Kadins, embarrassed by their family connection and pained by Jenny’s unhappy life. Everyone has grievances. But why insist—”

  “They’ve been working on theirs,” Mel cut in. “I’m just catching up with mine.”

  Martin Stark squinted through the pipestem he had been cleaning, as if it were a rifle barrel, and remarked offhandedly, “Mr. Treadwater is attached to the office of the district director of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. What he has to say may affect all this talk about grievances.”

  The stranger arose. Mel gazed at him speculatively, not startled by his identity, nor even wondering particularly wh
at he was about to reveal (for it struck him suddenly that he had always known what the man was going to announce), but fascinated by the disjunction between his appearance and his official role. Standing soberly, indeed almost shyly, with his trousers bagging and his overlong belt strap dangling limply, he appeared unable to look any of his eight listeners in the eye despite the fact that the room had been engulfed in a roaring Niagara of silence. Mel, shrunk within the tender envelope of his hardly healed skin, could only marvel at the capacity of this frail, thin, already elderly man—who, to judge from his pallor, must for years have occupied without protest the nethermost desk in the darkest corner of his office—to impose breathless attention as if he were not a tired civil servant but a military commander about to order his troops to undertake a suicidal assault.

  Ben Lurie was biting fiercely on his lips. They were not only redder than usual, they were the only spot of color in his face. Beside him, the Kadin sisters sat with parted thighs, stuck to the couch and sweating hard. Raymond perched in absolute silence, his hands hanging loosely between his legs; but a strange smile had come to his lips, a painful smile, as though he too had divined what was going to be said. Only on Ralph’s and Kitty’s faces, Mel thought with a bitter satisfaction, could you read clearly a terror that was so nearly uncontrollable that they clung openly to each other like two small children. It was impossible to read on Dr. Stark’s countenance whether he already knew Mr. Treadwater’s message. His hangdog chops were gloomy and eternally shaded by the immaculate but liver-spotted hand which supported them; his eyes were un-amused but hardly ready to shed tears either. As for his son, he wore the self-satisfied look of alert interest that you see on the face of a chairman who has just delivered a witty introduction of the main speaker of the evening.

  “I guess you all understand,” the main speaker was saying in a voice rusty from disuse, “that my being here is a little unusual. We don’t ordinarily do this, but then I don’t turn down a friend like Marty Stark when he asks me to do him a little favor and help you folks to understand a peculiar situation.