It had been a shock to see her mother’s shrunken body looking terribly small as it lay in the center of the narrow bed in the bedroom of the house on Norfolk Street, her head propped up on a single pillow, the room much smaller and darker than she had remembered it. “Mama, why didn’t you write and tell me that you were sick?” she said. “What is it?”
“It’s nothing. The doctor says something is eating at my stomach, but what do doctors know? I’ll be better in a few days.”
Lifting a bottle of pills from the stand beside the bed, Essie said, “Is this your medicine?”
“Yes. Some of it.”
“Have you been taking it, Mama?”
“When I think of it. It doesn’t help. What helps is rest. Mrs. Potamkin is taking care of the store for me till I get better. In a few more days, I’ll be able to go back downstairs. Wait and see.”
“What’s the doctor’s name, Mama? There’s no name on this prescription.”
“Who knows? The visiting nurse comes. She brings it.”
“Has the doctor seen you, Mama?”
“I think so. Yes, he came once. I’m all right. Rest is all I need.”
“I want you to take your medicine, Mama. Here. It says every four hours. When was the last time you took some of these green pills?”
“I don’t want medicine. When I take that medicine it gives me bad dreams. I don’t like that medicine.”
“Are you in pain, Mama?”
“Just my stomach, a little, where it hurts. Don’t worry. I’ll be all right.”
“How long have you been like this, Mama?”
“I don’t remember. Not too long. Mrs. Potamkin knows.” Suddenly her mother, with some difficulty, raised herself on her wasted elbows against the pillow and looked hard at Essie. Then she lay back, smiled, and said, “Ha, I thought so!”
“Thought what, Mama?”
“You’re going to have another baby, aren’t you. I can see it in your eyes.”
“No, Mama.”
“Oh, yes. I can see it. You’re going to have another baby. There’s something in a daughter’s eyes that a mother can always see when she gets that way.”
“Well, Mama, I’m not.”
“Don’t deny it. My mother saw it in my eyes when I was going to have you. She saw it even before I knew for sure. It’s something only the mother can see in the eyes of her own daughter—another life coming.
“I’m sorry, Mama, but it’s not true.”
Her mother closed her eyes. Still smiling, she said, “Ah, that will be nice for you. Another baby. I always wanted just one more, for my old age.”
In the kitchen, her father, as always, sat with his books.
“Papa, I must speak to you,” she said.
At first he said nothing. Then, without looking up, he said, “Who is this speaking? Who is this rich woman who has come into my house without an invitation?”
“I’m your daughter, Papa!”
“I have no daughter. My daughter is dead.”
“She needs to be moved to a hospital, Papa. I’ll take care of everything.”
“Who is this?” he repeated. “Who is this stranger in my house who is telling me what needs to be done with my wife?”
“Papa, I insist!”
For the first time he looked up at her. “Who is this insisting?” he demanded. “Who is this rich woman in a fur coat, the fur of innocent animals which must be killed to clothe her? Look at her! What is that on her arm? A wristwatch? A wrist-watch made of Tiffany diamonds. Do you know what day this is? This is the Sabbath. Do you know or care that you profane the Sabbath of the Jews in your furs and diamonds? Who is this, I ask myself? My wife and I have lived happily in this house for more than thirty years without ever asking advice or being told what we must do by strangers.”
“Oh, Papa, please!”
“My wife and I do not ask outsiders for their visits or their help or their opinions. We fear God and His commandments. That is our way. Only God tell us what to do. We do not seek out the Christian Samaritans. We reject women like you who come to interfere with our lives. We did not ask you here. We do not wish you here. We do not wish you to come back. We ask that you go away and leave us alone and never come back.”
His eyes returned to his books.
She gave him one last weary and despairing look, then gathered up her gloves and bag, let herself out the door, and made her way slowly down the narrow flights of stairs. “Mrs. Potamkin,” she said when she reached the shop, “is there anything you can do?”
“With him—nothing! He will not speak to me because I keep the shop open on the Sabbath—for the Italians, and the schwartzes. Esther, you would not believe how this neighborhood has changed.”
“For my mother, then.”
The older woman shook her head sadly. “It is the cancer,” she said. “There is nothing to be done. We must just wait for God to choose the time.”
For several days she has been working on the short speech which she has been asked to give at the dedication of the new building in December, and which Charles and Josh have written for her, trying to memorize the words, rehearsing in front of the mirror in her dressing room with the typewritten sheet of paper in front of her and then, standing in the center of the library, with Mary Farrell seated in front of her, holding the script.
“‘My husband, Jacob Auerbach, was a pious man,’” she recites to the seated Mary. “‘He believed in the principle of zedakah, which is Talmudic …’”
“‘… in the Talmudic principle of zedakah,’” Mary corrects, “though your way sounds just as good.”
“‘… in the Talmudic principle of zedakah which, in the Jewish religion, means something more than charity. It stands for righteousness. But my husband also had other faiths …’”
“‘But my husband also had great respect for other faiths.’”
“Oh, dear. My memory has gone, Mary. I’ll never learn this.”
“Yes, you will, Mrs. A. There’s plenty of time. Now let’s start over from the beginning.…”
But the trouble is (she was thinking, gazing into her reflection in the glass in her bedroom at The Bluff, studying her eyes) that. The trouble is that. You are thirty-seven years old, not too old, not too young. For three weeks you have been trying to pretend that nothing is the matter, trying not to think about, trying to put out of your mind the thing that you think the trouble is. But now it will not go away. You have given no thought to this possibility, but now it is a possibility, and you must decide what you are going to do about this possibility. Because the trouble is that your mother, with her Old World intuition, may be right. For three weeks, you have dismissed it. Now you must face it, Esther Auerbach, and think hard.
Let us consider the choices. For instance, it could be something else altogether. You could see Doctor Ornstein and have him tell you what it is for sure. But do you entirely trust Doctor Ornstein? He is Jake’s doctor as well. How can you be certain he will not say something to Jake, or are you ready to tell Doctor Ornstein that this is not Jake’s child, and then proceed to the next step, whatever the next step may be? Do you know any other doctors well enough to trust? No, you do not. There are abortions. Women have them all the time, including a number of your friends. You have the money for it. You could say, casually, to one of your friends, “Give me the name of that doctor who—” Who. Daisy, of all your friends, would probably know best, but do you even know her well enough to trust her to keep this kind of secret? You do not know, because you have never tried. Nor do you trust Doctor Ornstein, and you can already hear him saying, “Essie, I think we must make Jake a part of any decision as crucial as this one.” “But Doctor Ornstein, this is not Jake’s child. We have not slept together since nineteen twenty-three.” “I see.”
So. You go to another city. You use another name. You have the money. You make the connections. You find the name of someone who. Who. Who will do it, of course. Of course, it is not quite that easy, you being who you
are. You are Mrs. Jacob Auerbach, wife of the Chief Executive Officer of one of the largest retailing firms in the world, your picture is in the papers often. You pay with cash, but people have a way of finding out, and you do not need another blackmailer. How do you explain this journey to another city to your husband? That is perhaps the easiest part. Any lie will do. Of course there could be an accident, something could go wrong, a dirty knife and there will be no need for lying after that.
You could tell Charles what the trouble is. But what would that knowledge do to Charles? Could Charles accept this knowledge and continue to work with Jake as closely as they do? Charles and Jake need each other more than any two men you know. You also need Charles, and Charles needs you. And there is of course Cecilia. Divorce. Do you say to Charles, “Charles, I am going to divorce Jake and have your baby. I want you to divorce Cecilia, and marry me.” That, of course, would be the end of Charles’s career with the company where he has invested so many years. “But we will strike out on our own, Charles, build a new life for ourselves in another city. Yes, we may be getting a little old for that, but we can try. We won’t care what Chicago says, the pregnant wife of the Chief Executive running off with the Executive Vice-President—the scandal, the stories in the papers …” But you do. Charles does. You have a ten-year-old son. You have a daughter who plans to make her debut, her formal bow into Chicago society, this autumn. No, you will lose Charles this way, my dear. And of course Jake. And the children. No, you do not tell Charles. Charles, forgive me. Us.
Or anyone else.
The only secret that is ever kept a secret is a secret that is never told. The only person you can truly trust is you.
And so the only solution to the problem, the only choice, is the one that is as simple as the conception of life itself. And you must do it, must force yourself to do it, and do it quickly, even though you are not sure whether it can be done, or exactly how to do it, it must be done.
She tapped lightly on her husband’s bedroom door, and heard him call out, “Come in!”
He was sitting up in bed, propped up by many down pillows, a heavy man of forty-four who, with the thick mustache he had worn for the last seven or eight years, looked older—his dark hair graying and thinning on the top. He was wearing white cotton pajamas and a blue silk robe and half-spectacles, and spread out on the coverlet in front of him were many file-folders and loose sheets of paper. The room smelled of his pipe smoke and the cologne from his bath, and he looked startled, as she had expected he might, to see her.
“I thought it was the butler with my hot milk and fruit,” he said. “Where are my hot milk and fruit?”
“I’ll get it for you,” she said.
“No, no,” he said, reaching for the enunciator button by his telephone. “You’ve got to stop running errands for the servants, Essie. What do you think we have servants for? The butler, what’s-his-name, is supposed to come in here every night at nine, bring my milk and fruit, and close the curtains.”
“Well, at least I can do that part,” she said easily, and moved to the windows and drew the heavy curtains closed.”
“What can I do for you, Essie?” he asked a little crossly. “No Opera Guild tonight?”
“No,” she said, returning from the windows. “And I was feeling a little—well, lonely. And I thought maybe you and I could talk. It’s been a long time.” She sat on the corner of his big bed.
He shifted his feet uneasily under the blankets. “Lonely? With all you have to do? Why don’t you find Daisy and have a game of Patience?”
“Daisy’s in Ohio with her family, remember?” Did he really care so little for any of them, she wondered, that he had forgotten where Daisy was?
“Oh, yes. Forgot. And I thought you were in New York.”
“I came back on the overnight this morning.”
“Ah. Good trip?”
“Yes.”
“Shopping, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
There was another tap on the door, and the butler, whose name was Yoshida that year, appeared with a goblet of milk, with an apple, an orange, a banana in a Meissen bowl, a white folded napkin and a fruit knife and fork, all on a silver tray. He padded on slippered feet across the room and placed the tray on the nightstand by Jacob Auerbach’s bed.
“I’ve closed the curtains, Yoshida,” Essie murmured. “But you should remember that Mr. Auerbach likes his milk and fruit, and the curtains closed, precisely at nine.”
Yoshida bowed and, just as quietly, padded out of the room again.
“That was good, Essie,” her husband said. “Got to keep reminding them. Keep them on their toes.” He reached for his fruit knife and began to slice his apple.
“So can we talk a little, Jake?” she asked him.
“Certainly. What about?”
She was wearing a silver kimono with a silver sash and a white maribou collar, and with one hand she drew the collar a little closer about her shoulders. “I was thinking, coming back from New York,” she began. “So many memories. I was thinking of Union Square, where we used to meet, and of my school, when you taught there. And of the pictures I used to draw of you—remember?—when you thought I was taking notes.”
With his hand, he made a new arrangement of the papers in front of him on the coverlet. “If you’ve just come in here to reminisce, Essie—” he began.
“No. Wait. Let me finish. It was because I went to see my mother, and the car drove me through Union Square. Yesterday. She’s very ill, Jake. And she won’t go to a hospital.”
“Well, I’m certainly sorry to hear that,” he said. “Of course for the life of me I’ve never been able to understand your mother. How many times have we offered to help her out? How many times have we invited her to come here? She won’t be budged.”
“No. She won’t leave Norfolk Street. She’ll die in Norfolk Street.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, now—”
“But that’s not what I wanted to talk about,” she said. “It was more that I realized, coming back through Union Square, what a long distance we’ve come, Jake. You and I. What a terribly long distance—from there to here. From Mr. Levy’s shop, and the egg creams. We’ve moved into a completely different world from that one, and it seems so short a time. We’ve been married twenty-one years.”
“But—”
“Wait,” she said, holding up her hand. “Hush. Let me finish. When I met you, I thought you were the handsomest man I’d ever seen, did you know that? It’s true. Just the handsomest! And I always knew you’d be successful. But you’ve been more successful than anyone—surely I—ever dreamed, Jake. I mean, it’s just extraordinary the success you’ve been. Who would have dreamed all this success? Did you?”
“Hard work is the answer.”
“But surely some kind of vision, too. You must have had some special kind of vision.”
“Well, yes, perhaps.”
“Extraordinary. And yet, in the process, Jake, we’ve grown apart.”
His voice had a guarded tone. “Well, perhaps that was inevitable. Separate interests. My business—”
“Oh, I don’t fault you for that at all, Jake,” she said. “No one could have had your success without complete devotion to your business—no one. I’m so enormously proud of you. I could just burst with pride, but—”
“But what?”
“But I just wanted you to know that I still have feelings for you.”
“Feelings?”
“Yes. For all that our lives have changed, I haven’t changed. Do you remember when you kissed me that first night you walked me home through Hester Street? You’re that same man, for all your success, for all your fame. I’d like to be kissed that way again. Just once.”
Once again, his feet shifted under the blankets. “What are you driving at, Essie?” he said.
“Jake,” she said, reaching out to touch his knee beneath the covers. “Now don’t interrupt, because this is the most important thing. I know you do
n’t like to talk about little Prince, we both loved him so, and after what happened everything changed between us, between you and me. But what I want to say, what I’ve wanted to say to you for the longest time, is that I blame myself for what happened. For much of it, anyway.”
“Nonsense, it was that damned—”
“Hush. Listen to me. I was too busy—building this house, decorating it, too busy watching and trying to adjust—that’s it, adjust—to your enormous success. I was simply awed by it all, Jake, and so overwhelmed with what was happening to my own life, and yours, that I didn’t give Prince the time I should have as a mother. Though he had everything in the world I thought he wanted, there was so much more that I could have given him, but didn’t. I know better now. I would have done it all so much differently if I’d known then what I know now. And so I want another chance, Jake. I want to try it again. I’ll be so different this time, Jake, I promise. Even with Mogie I didn’t know what I know now. I want to be a mother again, Jake, but a different one this time—”
The Auerbach Will Page 37