An Ocean Without a Shore

by Scott Spencer

  “How’d you find her?”

  “From the cremation people.” I checked my watch. “We should go now. She has keys to the apartment and the store, and she has your mom’s will.”

  Chapter 32

  Jackson and Wabash

  Jill Zolitor’s office was in a shabby, narrow building in the Loop, wedged between a vacant shoe store and a defunct cafeteria. It took only a few minutes to walk from the hotel but the air was dense and hot and Thaddeus and I were perspiring as we pushed our way into the empty lobby, lit by two flickering fluorescents. The building had but one elevator and we stood before its banged-up doors listening to the Marley’s Ghost rattle of chains as it made its way down to the lobby.

  “What is that smell?” Thaddeus asked.

  “Wet newspaper? Mildew? Failure?”

  “It’s not failure,” he said. “That’s one smell I’d recognize. Hey, wouldn’t it be weird if today’s the day I learn my parents were sitting on a boatload of cash?”

  “What are the odds?”

  “Very long, my brother. Very long indeed.”

  The door to Zolitor’s office was locked. I rapped against the milk glass. Thaddeus looked grim, as if preparing for bad news, though I couldn’t imagine what he might be worried about—hadn’t the worst already occurred?

  “Who’s there?” a porous, smoky voice called out.

  “It’s Thaddeus Kaufman,” I said.

  “Oh, okay, okay.” The scrape of chair legs, the sound of a desk drawer being shut, the shuffle of feet. Zolitor was an extensive woman in her late forties, tall and broad. Her right ankle was wrapped in a compression bandage. Though her face was heavy, her features were sharp, like a wicked jack-o’-lantern.

  “Oh, there’s two of you,” she said, warily.

  “Yes, I’m Christopher Woods,” I said. “I contacted you? And this is Thaddeus Kaufman.”

  She frowned, looked us over, and evidently found us both harmless enough to allow in. Her office was small. Glass-front bookshelves, metal filing cabinets, a wrinkled poster of a unicorn leaping over a rainbow. Her one window was open and a large fan was facing out, removing cigarette smoke from her office. She seated herself in a high-backed leather chair—the only place to sit.

  “Sorry. I killed my ankle over the weekend and I’m on painkillers. Tell me again—which one of you is Thaddeus Kaufman?” she asked.

  “I am,” Thaddeus said.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Kaufman. I didn’t know your mother very well, but she seemed like very special people. This world isn’t always hospitable to special people.” She made a what are you gonna do gesture.

  “May I ask how long you were the Kaufmans’ attorney?” I said.

  She had a portable TV on her desk, tuned to C-SPAN. The House of Representatives was voting on the Iraq resolution and the yeas were comfortably ahead.

  “Now, that’s an interesting story,” Zolitor said, brightening at the question, glancing at the TV and then back at us. “Libby and I met . . . hmm. Give me a sec and I can actually give you an exact date.” She yanked open a desk drawer, pulled out a calendar, turned the pages. “Oh, here it is. Good thing I wrote it down. There’s nothing like good old pen and paper. I would have guessed January. And you want to know why? Because I remember the snow. Big storm. Two feet of snow. The wet kind. The backbreaking kind. But here it is. It was April. That’s Chicago for you. Hot summer days in the middle of October and snow in the springtime. April second. Right in the shop, Four Freedoms. My apartment is only a block away, but it was my first time in.” She made a wave, as if the busyness of her life swirled directly above her head. “I had recently inherited my brother’s collection of Samuel Clemens, who wrote, as you know, under the name Mark Twain. A nautical term. Well, be that as it may . . .”

  She cut her eyes toward me, hearing me sigh. She wasn’t billing by the quarter hour but nevertheless she was undeterred and rambled on—Libby came to her apartment, looked at the books, made an offer, they talked, hit it off, and on and on, the details of their interaction both trivial and horrifying, overflowing with detail that had no purpose or meaning except that the story would eventually culminate in a broken-hearted woman of seventy-four swallowing sleeping pills in her place of business.

  The phone rang and the lawyer grabbed it. “Jill Zolitor’s office. Oh! Look, I’m going to have to call you back.” She listened, smiling at us apologetically. “Yes. The ones I would worry about are in the back of the refrigerator. Second shelf. What? No. Just throw them away. Gar-bage. Okay? Yeah, I’m watching. Jesse Jackson voted against the president. Big surprise. So did Jerry Costello—he can kiss his career goodbye. He’s an idiot. Look, I’m here with a nice couple who have come to see about some very sad business so I have to go. Bye. Yeah. Love you, too.”

  Nice couple? I stood: shoulders back, eyes front, like a Beefeater in front of the Tower of London.

  “Maybe I should have guessed,” Zolitor continued, back to the nice couple before the receiver was asleep in its cradle. “Libby came in. . . . I think it was . . .” Again the calendar was consulted, the pages turned in a fairly leisurely fashion. “Oh my, it was the last day of June.” She smiled at us, why I’ll never know: perhaps she was mentally ill. “She and her late husband had a joint last will and testament, which they made many years ago, but now her circumstances were different.” She made a small deferential bow in my direction, still, apparently, under the impression that Libby was my mother. “She brought me a”—Zolitor breathed in deeply and slowly exhaled—“full inventory of the bookshop, very detailed, Libby was very detail oriented. And other information I would need in order to make a new will, which—”

  Here Thaddeus jumped in. “Yes, the will. I’d like to see it.”

  “Wills are made public after their submission to probate court,” Zolitor said. “Quite a few of us in the profession would like to do away with that step. It’s really quite unnecessary in most cases. Back in . . . I think it was 1992, ’93 perhaps. One of those two. Anyhow, I was in a working group of attorneys and we were putting together a proposal we wanted to take down to Springfield, a way of streamlining the probate process. But you put fifteen lawyers in a room and it’s . . . what can I say? This one says this, this one objects, this, that, on and on. We got nowhere. Anyhow. I meant to walk Libby’s will over to the court this morning, but things have been kind of crazy around here. I have a client who is trying to close on a building on Clark Street and it’s just been a comedy of errors. Plus my ankle, I’ve got a real situation going with this damn ankle.”

  “Awfully sorry about that ankle,” Thaddeus said, “but I’d like to have a look at her will.” He made a slow, broad smile, like easing the pin out of a hand grenade.

  I understood that beneath Thaddeus’s well-tended exterior there was an element of rage. It can be assumed: we’re human, after all. “If you can’t look like Cary Grant,” he once declared, “at least do your best to act like him.” And he did, he did his best. Even when he called me to say he was going to lose Orkney, a certain graciousness was maintained. Even when he let me know his suspicions about Emma, there was a bit of humor. Yet here in Zolitor’s ten-by-ten office he was suddenly no more able to temper his fury than a child lashed to the saddle can control the frantic gallop of a runaway horse. He pressed against her desk, jutted his chin, and pointed. “Give me that will,” he said, his voice boiling over—it was almost comical, like seeing someone you know overact in a community theater production. “I want it right now. You understand me? Right now.”

  Zolitor did not find it amusing. Her eyes radiated pure animal fear, the paralyzing kind—one of evolution’s perplexing moves, in which prey gives predator an extra moment or two to strike. Finally, she was able to say, “I would be in violation . . .”

  “Look here,” Thaddeus said. “My parents are dead. My mother killed herself. I have no idea why. And at this point, I don’t much care. What I care about is what is in that will. For me at this po
int there is nothing else. I want to know what she had, and where it’s going. And if you think for one minute I am going to allow you to keep this information from me—you’re so wrong, you could not be wronger.”

  “It’s not here,” Zolitor said.

  “You already told me that your ankle hurt too much for you to get my mother’s will filed. So it’s here. It’s on your desk, or in a drawer. And I want to see it.”

  “Thaddeus,” I said, rubbing his back, hoping to calm him as you would soothe a dog being driven mad by thunder. “It can wait.”

  “She was broke, Mr. Kaufman,” Zolitor said. She coughed onto the back of her hand; her fingers were trembling. “They were in debt, deeply in debt when your father passed and things only got worse. If it’s money you’re after, I’m afraid your mother’s will is going to be a disappointment.”

  “Here’s some good advice—and I think you should take it. For your own peace of mind. Understand? Do not cross me, and don’t get in my way. Give me the will, right now. I’m not interested in your little summary. I want to see it.” He grabbed six or seven or eight of the manila folders haphazardly stacked on her haphazard desk in this haphazard excuse for a lawyer’s office, and raised them above his head, brandishing them for a moment before slamming them down.

  My work often brought me into rooms where the tension was palpable, but normally the rules of social etiquette were followed. Smiles were smiled, nods were nodded, voices remained modulated. (Businessmen in dramas deliver hysterical orations, but really they tend to be circumspect, evasive, untruthful, and their antipathies as well as strategies remain hidden.) But here in Zolitor’s claustrophobic office what was often on the inside of a negotiation was on full display—it was like the Pompidou Center, where the building’s infrastructure wraps around the edifice like vines around a tree. Zolitor took a few moments to recover from the shock at being aggressed upon, but I have to hand it to her: she calmed quickly. She rose from her chair and the same hand that moments before had been fluttering nervously now yanked open the bottom right drawer of her old oak desk. She pulled out an old manila envelope, which had been reused several times—three sets of names had been crossed out; “Elizabeth Kaufman” was printed in ink, the letters slanting far to the right. She tossed the envelope across the desk toward Thaddeus with a snort of contempt.

  “I billed for two hundred dollars and believe me this has been from the outset more trouble than it’s worth. I am sorry for your loss, Mr. Kaufman, but there is no excuse for your behavior here.”

  “Fuck yourself,” Thaddeus said, reaching for the envelope. He tore it open and two sets of keys fell to the floor. He put them in his pocket and turned to leave, reading his parents’ will as we headed for the door.

  I could hear the congressmen and congresswomen cheering the passage of the resolution.

  Chapter 33

  The World as Will and Idea

  A renter her whole life, eschewing jewelry, furs, antiques, and anything that could be construed as luxury, Libby died owning very little. At first glance (which turned out to be accurate), whatever money she had was in four separate checking accounts, a strategy based on her fear of bank failures, though each of the accounts held sums that were monetary miles under what would be covered by the FDIC.

  Her will was brief; devoid of boilerplate, it was just a couple of pages. Thaddeus had begun reading it in the elevator and by the time we were in the lobby whatever lingering hopes he had of being rescued by some marvelous legacy were gone. Even as I avoided looking directly into his face, I could see his disappointment in the slump of his shoulders, the clouding of his eyes, the wince. Libby had chosen a different beneficiary for each of the checking accounts. Her former cleaning woman, Margaret Thomas, was to receive whatever was in Libby’s account at the Hyde Park Savings Bank. “I was never really sure what her first name was. Margaret,” Thaddeus said. “We called her Mrs. Thomas. You know, in honor of the civil rights movement and all. Anyhow, I think she died about ten years ago, so I have no idea what the hell she’s doing in my mother’s will. I would have to say that money will go back into the estate. Yes? And this one, at Woodlawn Savings and Loan, it’s earmarked for Uncle Morris. Who needs the money like Christ needs a bicycle. Anyhow, I called him. He was really shocked when I told him what happened and said he was coming out here.”

  “Ah. It’ll be good to see him.”

  “Right. I forget that you and he became great friends. And look at this, she’s got Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy in the will. Do they even exist anymore? Didn’t they just sort of fade away at some point?” His expression was furious and confused.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, let’s say they don’t exist anymore. If that’s the case, what happens to the money at”—he glanced at the will—“the Amalgamated Bank of Chicago?”

  “It’ll be complicated.”

  I was going to add that probably we were not talking about a great deal of money, but I decided not to. An elderly man in a porkpie hat and white plastic shoes came into the lobby, his unhappy face beaded with perspiration. He had to maneuver sideways through the door because he was wearing a Cash for Your Jewelry sandwich board, with a picture of a diamond ring on one side and a watch on the other. I guessed his shift was over and he was going to drop the sandwich board off, maybe get paid, and then deal with whatever the rest of the day might bring.

  “Well, at least I’m in the will,” Thaddeus said, as oblivious to the old man as the old man was to us. “I’ll take some relief in that. No mention of David or Emma, of course. Big surprise. I get whatever’s in her checking account at Republic.” He squinted. “Oh Christ. She has me living on Twenty-Third Street. I doubt that building is still standing. Did she really not know where I lived? Or did everything that’s happened in my life since moving to New York seem ridiculous to her? I guess my life lacked gravitas.” He said the word as if there were something loathsome about it.

  We left the building. Heat radiated everywhere, the sidewalk, the street, the buildings, the passersby, all of whom had grim expressions, even the children. Cars were barely moving. A Trailways bus disgorged clouds of foul exhaust while the driver tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. Near Wabash, jackhammers were tearing up the road. There is a special kind of misery when cities are hot, a kind of frenzied stasis, stubborn and hopeless. A glance toward heaven made matters worse. How did we ever make the world so filthy? Where were our damn manners? This was really not the planet we had evolved to inhabit. We were not built to breathe this kind of air, or to hear this level of noise, or to live beneath a sky that looked like the top of a plastic container in which mysterious leftovers are stored.

  Thaddeus showed me the keys to his parents’ bookshop. “I’m going. Who knows? Maybe there’s something there.”

  “Right. Who knows?”

  “Do you want to come with me?”

  “Of course.”

  He folded the will and put it in his back pocket, and let out a long sigh.

  “I feel humiliated,” he said.

  “This is so terrible,” I said. “But it’s so good to see you again.”

  “Let’s walk over to Michigan,” he said. “Maybe things are moving a bit better there.”

  We hailed a cab on Michigan Avenue and headed to the South Side. The driver was a middle-aged woman, gaunt, her face as narrow as a crescent moon. Ready for the war that was by now certain to come, she had lashed a small American flag to her side-view mirror. She blinked her eyes rapidly and continually, her long white lashes fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird. Thaddeus and I sat on opposite ends of the backseat, gathering our thoughts as the taxi crawled through traffic on the way out of the Loop and onto the Outer Drive. Suddenly, it began to rain, a pelting downpour that struck the roof of the cab and the windshield, each individual raindrop large and heavy.

  We passed McCormick Place, monumental in a kind of Midwest Mussolini way—yet it brought to life a lovely mem
ory: here was where Thaddeus and I saw the Stevie Wonder concert more than twenty-five years ago. In some live concert recordings you can hear one guy in the audience who seems almost unhinged by how much he is loving what he’s hearing, shouting “Yeah” and whooping like a mounted soldier. Well, that evening at the Stevie Wonder show, Thaddeus was that person. He leapt from his seat, he shouted out requests, he screamed Stevie’s name, and I looked on in amazement, wondering if I had pinned all of my hopes for human happiness on someone who might be a bit of an exhibitionist, a tiny bit gross, silly, too, and maybe even a click or two out of his mind, like those guys who went to our college’s football game with their bare chests painted blue and yellow.

  “Hey, look,” I said to him in the taxi. “Remember when we saw Stevie Wonder there?”

  “Sort of,” he said, “but not really.”

  McCormick Place was behind us, and now we were passing a landscape of weeds and cruddy trees and train tracks, with a backdrop of public housing, that Chicago mix of prairie and blight.

  Thaddeus rapped his knuckle against his window. “Look at this place.”

  “Grim.”

  “You could make a movie about East Germany, 1970, right here,” he said.

  “You could make a movie about here here,” I said.

  The downpour had stopped by the time we arrived at Four Freedoms. Its long front window was streaked with rain but the books displayed were still visible, standing there with a desultory air of abandonment hanging over them. A daddy longlegs was making its sideways skitter from head cap to head cap in search of sustenance or a resting place, from Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln: The Prairie Years to The Collected Works of Karen Horney to The Family of Man, where it turned itself in a half circle and seemed to be facing me. Meanwhile, Thaddeus had gotten the door open and I followed him in, glancing a last time at the spider, who raced from book to book, urgently following my movements.