The elevator rolled open on the eighth floor revealing the reception room of Palmer, Palmer, and Crick. The place had been redecorated since the last time I’d been there, brought into the 1950s, the walls paneled in dark hardwood, the floor a tawny deep-pile wall-to-wall carpet, and the clutch of waiting-room furniture upholstered in maroon patent leather. The two secretaries behind the high front desk wore headsets. The one on the left was talking into hers, while the one on the right offered me a professional smile.
“How may I help you?”
I stepped forward, not bothering with a return smile. It wouldn’t have looked right given the occasion, and there was no use wasting it on one of those office girls. They probably got the sweet talk from the janitors on up. “I’m here for the reading of Quinn Rosenkrantz’s will. Shem Rosenkrantz.”
“Yes, Mr. Rosenkrantz. Mr. Palmer is in the conference room just through these doors to the right.”
I drummed my hands on the top of the desk, then gave an awkward nod, and headed through the door. It had been maybe twenty years since I’d been to those offices for the divorce. Palmer’s son had still been in law school then, and now he was a partner. Crick had had only four other shysters under him and half of the eighth floor instead of the whole thing. I guess some people have to come up in the world while the rest of us go down.
The conference room was poorly lit. The same paneled wood from the reception room covered the walls, with gilt-framed oil portraits of the senior partners at regular intervals along the inside wall, each lit by its own arc lamp attached to the frame. The other walls were devoted to glass-fronted bookcases with uniformly bound sets of law treatises. I felt the moment of distraction I always get in a library, the need to look at the titles, to flip through a volume, to search out my own books amidst the stacks. But I knew that these books were dry lifeless things that held no interest to anyone but lawyers, which was perhaps more interest than anyone had in my own work anymore.
“Shem, Shem, I’m glad you’re here.” It was Palmer Senior, now almost seventy-five, crossing the room ramrod straight with the vigor of a man half his age. He took my hand in both of his. “I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances,” he said, and held my hand a moment longer than was necessary, trying to be discrete about smelling for liquor on me. So what if he did?
“Mr. Palmer.”
He gave my hand one more squeeze and let it go. “Frank. Please, Frank. And you look well,” he said, which wasn’t true. Then he stepped back and indicated the conference table. “Please, take a seat. We’ll start this shortly. It won’t take long.”
I stepped up to the table and put my hands on the back of one of the oversized leather armchairs. There he was, Joseph and a young woman whom I took to be his fiancée, next to each other on the far side of the table. They talked in a subdued whisper, Joseph purposely ignoring me, and that hurt. It wasn’t right, and it hurt.
It had been three years since he and I had spoken, four since I’d seen him at his high school graduation. He’d grown up; lanky limbs fleshed out, broader face, the hint of a beard or at least the five o’clock shadow that stood in for a beard. If I hadn’t known who he was, I would have said he was one of those angry young men who want something they’re never going to get and are just realizing they’re never going to get it, so they’re going to make the world pay for it. You see lots of those guys hanging around the corner or at the pool halls or the garage. But usually they’re not sitting on a couple of million dollars like Joe.
His fiancée—I’d forgotten the name she’d given on the phone two weeks before when she called about Quinn...that she... about her dying—the fiancée was a prim blonde, with an aura of wispy down over lightly tanned and freckled skin, a soft woman with which to make a wealthy life. She hazarded a look, and when our eyes met, she smiled despite herself, and that made up for Joe some.
In the back of the room, in the corner, not even at the table, sat Connie, Great Aunt Alice’s Negro maid. A stocky woman now in her late forties or early fifties, she held her large trapezoidal purse in both hands on her lap. She gave me a polite nod when I caught her eye.
“Now I’ve asked you all to be here,” Palmer said, taking the chair at the head of the table, “because you or those you represent are mentioned in Mrs. Rosenkrantz’s will in one way or another.” He took a machine-rolled cigarette from a silver case and lit it with a paper match. He waved out the match and tossed it in a brass ashtray, then slid the folder on the table closer to him. He opened it, and talked down into the will, and I sat down.
“I’m going to read the will aloud straight through, and I ask that you hold any questions until the end. We can go through it line by line after that, either together or individually. I want to urge all of you, no matter what has happened in the past, not to get excited here and make any decisions. These things can take time, and there will be time enough for any unpleasantness later.” He looked up at us without raising his head like a judge handing down a sentence. “Not that I expect any unpleasantness. This is a simple will, and to my infinite sorrow, there aren’t many Hadleys left as you can see here today.” He picked up the papers, and tapped them on end to straighten them.
Joseph sat hunched in his seat, his nostrils flared, a scowl cutting valleys that joined his nose and mouth and pushed dimples into either side of his chin. His bride, turned sideways, held his clenched fist with one hand and his forearm with the other, her entire attention on him.
Palmer started, “I, Quinn Rosenkrantz née Hadley, being of sound mind and body, do solemnly swear that this is my last will and testament signed on this Thursday the 12th of June 1941, containing instructions for the dispersal of my estate, both real and liquid, and personal effects. This will is to make null and void all previous wills and agreements...”
It went on like that for several pages, Palmer intoning the words in a rapid-fire monotone. There was an outdated section regarding Joseph’s custody should Quinn die when he was still a minor. I was named fourth in line after Quinn’s grandmother Sally Hadley, who had since passed away in ’45, then Great Aunt Alice, and then Connie Wilson, who shifted uncomfortably when that part was read, for it was surely meant to be a jab at me.
All cash, stocks, bonds, insurance policies, and other liquid assets—in short, somewhere around two million dollars—were to pass into Joseph’s possession if he was of age, and into a trust overseen by Palmer and the elder Hadley women if he was not. The house was also Joseph’s. Its contents, however, were his only after Great Aunt Alice had selected any items of importance to her.
As Palmer had stated, a simple will. Except for this. Should Joseph predecease Quinn, the estate would be dispersed as described, but with me in his place.
“...pursuant to the laws of the great State of Maryland and the United States of America. Signed, Quinn Rosenkrantz, Thursday the 12th of June 1941, witnessed by Frank Palmer Sr. and Frank Palmer Jr., Thursday the 12th of June 1941.”
Palmer cleared his throat and ran his hand across his lips. He took a drag from his cigarette and gathered the papers. There was a palpable and awkward silence. I was stunned. That Quinn might award me anything had been a shock; but that I had been in line for everything—it emptied my mind. But then, Quinn had all the reason to believe that Joseph would survive her. So maybe my place as the next heir in line was meant as no more than a gesture, a way of being the better party and lording it over me. And this was why Palmer had gotten me all the way out from the West Coast? He should have saved me the trouble.
The silence continued. There was an understanding that the cue had to come from Joseph. He had just been awarded a tremendous amount of money. But he sat with the same scowl on his face, his eyes straight ahead, not focused on anything, no doubt fuming at my position in the will. The fiancée, Connie, and I all shifted in our seats, and Palmer cleared his throat again, which turned into a barking cough, and then he stood, picking up the folder in one hand and his cigarette in the other. I stood as well, and Joseph’s gaze remained steady, now somewhere around my belt.
“My secretary can have copies available for any of you later this afternoon,” Palmer said, and he walked around and put his hand on Joseph’s shoulder, which elicited no reaction. He leaned down, and I heard him say, “Joe. Are you okay?”
Joe said nothing. Yeah, he was a hard boy now.
“Joe, we should talk about a will for you at some point.”
Still nothing. Palmer appealed to the fiancée with his eyes, but she shook her head primly. He said, “Joe, we can do it right now, if you want, or you can set up an appointment with my secretary, but it’s important you have a will.”
Palmer looked across the table at me, and that woke me up, and I started to leave. As soon as I made it through the doorway, I heard Joseph say, “Not now. Maybe after we’re married.”
He wouldn’t even talk when I was in the room, my own son. I didn’t care what he thought I had or hadn’t done—and I’m not saying I hadn’t done anything, because you can ask anyone, I’m the first to admit I’ve done something wrong—but to not even talk in front of me, that just wasn’t right.
“Joe, a will...”
“When we’re married,” he repeated, and then I was in the reception area out of hearing range.
Palmer came out a moment later. “Shem.” I turned and he shook my hand again. “I’m sorry about all of this,” he said.
“Sorry about what?”
“Quinn’s dying. I’m not supposed to see you people dying. You’re supposed to bury me.”
“I’ll have someone remind you of that at my funeral.”
“It was spiteful what she did about Joseph’s custody. I advised her not to do it.”
“It’s a moot point now.”
“I still wanted you to know, it wasn’t the right thing to do. But you couldn’t have expected to come out any better from this thing financially.”
“I didn’t expect to have come out at all.”
“Like you didn’t come out for the funeral?”
I smiled and said nothing to that. So that’s why he got me out here, out of spite.
He gripped my upper arm. I could tell he smelled the alcohol on me. But so what? Can’t a man have a few drinks every now and then? “She loved you still, you know.”
“Thanks for thinking that.”
He looked back in the room. “I’ll be in my office. I’m available to you for the remainder of this hour. I’ll have those copies prepared.” And he strode out of the room, his cigarette perched in his mouth.
I shuffled my feet, sort of just standing there. I figured I better get a copy of the will or Vee would think I was holding out on her. In the conference room, the fiancée was leaning right into Joseph’s ear. The sight caused a pang of jealousy, not so much about this particular girl, but just the idea of a girl whispering earnestly in your ear. Vee wouldn’t ever have done that unless she planned on shouting next, to break your eardrums, her idea of a joke.
Connie came out of the conference room and slid up to me then, her purse still gripped two-handed and held at her waist. She nodded. “Mr. Rosenkrantz.”
I forced my face to stretch into a wide, charming grin, a skill I had learned in the wilds of my youth with Quinn when charm mattered above anything else. “Connie, how long have you known me? Shem, please.”
She hunched her shoulders, and backed a step away from me into the shadows of a five-foot ficus tree. “Mr. Rosenkrantz. Miss Hadley expects to see you while you’re in town. You will stop by the house later?”
The last thing I wanted just then was to see Great Aunt Alice. She had a famed reputation for not pulling her punches, and in the state I was in, there were plenty of punches to throw. “Well, Connie, I don’t know if I can,” I said, still displaying that dapper grin.
“Tea is generally at two-thirty.”
I checked my watch as a stall. Just one now. “I don’t think that’s going to work for me.” Connie’s whole body fell in disappointment, as though inviting me to tea was the real reason she was there, the reading of the will just a coincidence. “You’ll send Aunt Alice my best, of course.”
She took another half-step away from me. Then, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
I sighed through my nose. “Thank you, Connie.”
She waited another half beat and the fiancée appeared beside me, her brow wrinkled, her lips puckered ever so slightly. Connie ducked and said, “Thank you,” and hurried to the elevator where she pushed the call button and watched the row of lighted numbers above the door.
I turned to the fiancée, who looked a little lost, and renewed my smile. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember your name,” I said.
She looked at me, confused, as though she didn’t expect that I could speak. “Yes, of course,” she said, “Mary O’Brien.” She held out her hand, and I took it, turning it so I could hold it in both of mine.
“Joseph is a lucky man.”
She looked at her hand in mine, but seemed unsure how to reclaim it. “Yes, well...”
“I thought Quinn always wanted a daughter.”
“She was very kind to me, even while she was sick.”
It was hard to reconcile the phrase “very kind” with Quinn, but I nodded as though I knew just what she meant. “Perhaps we could mend things now. I would very much like to have a daughter as well.”
“I thought Joe needed some time to himself,” she said. She had exquisite cheekbones and small bright eyes and her unease and the wrinkle across her brow were precious.
“Of course.”
“He’s upset. He’s not himself.”
I still held her hand and it grew warm in mine. “Of course.”
“I’ve read your books,” she hurried.
I felt my own face falling, the charm slipping. “Thank you.”
“Joe didn’t want me to, but I needed to. You do see why? Don’t you?”
I felt strained, tired.
“You will be my father-in-law, even if... Well you understand.”
Joseph appeared then, still stormy, and upon seeing me clutching his future wife’s hand, he sucked in his lips to try to control himself as he took her by the elbow. “Come now, Mary.”
She drew her hand back as though she’d touched something hot and he steered her towards the elevator. It was a move I had used many times myself on his mother—but never on Clotilde—and I knew Mary was in for a talking to on the way home.
“I was just saying you’re a lucky man, Joseph,” I said, keeping pace, but maintaining a distance of several feet. “I wish you’d give me a chance to make things right with us.”
He kept his eyes on the numbers above the elevator, his back to me, not even allowing the possibility that I might come into his line of sight, and whose fault was that? My own son! He kept a firm grip on Mary’s elbow. I knew my face had grown plaintive, and it made me sick at myself.
The elevator came, the bell dinged like the end of a round, and I watched them get on. Just before the doors closed, they turned, and Joseph gave me a withering look of pure hatred, a look that hurt more than any words could have, used to, as my years of drunkenness had made me, declarations of disgust, pathetic amusement, consternation, pity, and sadness. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to pick up my feet to walk a single step. And my empty stomach was much too hollow.