Clara’s will left simple directions. Stern was named executor. The rights to the trusts’ income passed in equal divided portions to the children—“share and share alike,” as Cal put it. Out of Clara’s own fortune, a number of substantial gifts were made to the children and charities; the rest was left in trust for Stern to use as he saw fit.
Having outlined the will, Cal bored in on the details. As he described the provisions, he used the third person—“spouse Alejandro,” “children Peter, Marta, and Kate”—and did not bother to translate many of the technical terms. Nonetheless, the inevitable calculations seemed after an interval to take place around the table, and Kate suddenly began to weep. The children could expect to divide among themselves an annual income of about half a million dollars. To this was added a cash bequest to each of $200,000, not to mention the prospect of a good deal more when Stern departed the scene. It occurred to Stern that if he could keep Dixon out of trouble long enough, he would probably be a fitting financial adviser for his nieces and nephew. As to himself, Stern, for reasons he could hardly articulate, felt few compunctions about accepting his wife’s gift; perhaps, perversely, because his own estate had grown well past the point where he needed it; or because, after all this, he felt it was his due. By Stern’s quick estimate, the residue of the estate left in trust for him—what would remain of Clara’s stocks and bonds at the bank—-would total about a million dollars.
Going through the details of the trust provision, Cal paused to eye Stern.
“Clara directed specifically that you would remain the beneficiary for life, regardless of any remarriage.”
“I see,” said Stern.
Cal smiled briefly, delighted by this exacting management of the future, but the children seemed nonplussed by their mother’s forethought—a pulse of discomfort traveled the room. None of them had yet raised this subject with Stern. No question they had thought of it; everyone had. Even Clara. But it was disconcerting to one and all—to Stern, as well—to learn that she had formally resolved any objections.
Cal had gone on, but Stern interrupted.
“Is it this trust for me, Cal, that prompted these concerns you raised in the hall?” On reflection, it occurred to him why Cal wanted to speak one-on-one. There might be some conflict between Clara’s desire to provide for him and the restrictions Henry Mittler had set down decades ago.
“I’m not concerned, Sandy. I have a question.”
“But about this trust for my benefit?”
“More or less. Just give me a moment.” Cal dandled a hand; he was too fussy to step out of order. He had been discussing Clara’s charitable gifts and he returned to the subject. Kate was crying with fervor. Van Zandt, the big-firm associate, ever prepared, had come armed with a box of tissue and offered another to Kate, while Cal continued with the details he adored.
“Clara also made a bequest of $500,000 to the Riverside Reformed Congregation, half of which she asked to be used to support the Inner-City Arts Program.”
The children took this in, still dazzled by the fountain of money spilling forth, but Stern—who might otherwise have received the funds—found Clara’s charity characteristic and commendable. For Stern, the notion of himself as a Jew was an absolute and fixed point of reference, the North Pole, as it were, on his personal compass, against which all other issues of identity were judged. Clara and he shared a belief in the importance of the children’s religious education, the observance of the High Holy Days. But her religion was far more institutionalized than his. To Clara the synagogue which her maternal grandparents had helped found was a significant anchor, and against all reason she was devoted to the rabbi, a smug self-promoter, and to his many community projects. At Rabbi Weigel’s urging, Clara had taught music appreciation as a volunteer for three or four years in the Inner-City Arts Program, an interfaith effort to enhance the curricula of DuSable’s most impoverished schools. Clara admired the culture and civility of the well-to-do, but not their sense of privilege. She had always been a person of conscience.
“That’s more or less it.” Cal was done. He put down his memo and looked about the table, as if for applause.
“The problem,” said Stern, referring once more to the trust Clara had left for him. Cal already seemed to have forgotten.
“Oh,” said Cal. “As I say, just one question, Sandy: we’ve been wondering what became of it.”
“It?”
“The money. You understand.” Cal leaned forward. “Don’t you?”
“I had taken it, Cal, from the figures you’d been using that there was another million in the estate.” As soon as the words were out he regretted them, particularly the precision with which he seemed to have calculated.
“Well, not quite,” said Cal, mincing as ever. “Clara’s holdings haven’t made it all the way back from the crash. But it’s the $850,000 that’s gone from her investment account I’m talking about.”
No one, for a moment, said anything.
“Gone?” asked Stern finally.
“Removed,” said Cal.
The two men considered each other.
“You’re not telling us there has been a defalcation, are you?”
“Lord, no!” Cal turned to Van Zandt, as if for help. “We get a consolidated statement from the bank each quarter on the trusts and Clara’s investment account. When we heard the news, we looked, of course, and I saw that this sum had been withdrawn last month. I assumed, Sandy—I was certain she would have discussed this with you.” Cal paused. “I called.”
Stern only now understood.
“You believe Clara spent this money?”
“What else? I took it she’d made an investment on her own, bought a summer home—” Cal’s hand trailed off.
Marta spoke up.
“What would she do with $850,000? That’s bizarre.”
Stern, strongly inclined to agree, began to add his voice to Marta’s. But some better instinct saved him. He was rising to a treacherous pass. He had no business predicting what was possible or impossible with Clara in these latter days. Perhaps she was funding a hippie sect. Or feeding a drug habit.
“Cal, I am not certain I understand how this could have occurred.”
“I presume Clara went to the bank, dissolved the great bulk of her portfolio, and took the money. It was hers, after all.”
“Have you checked with them?”
“Sandy, I wanted to speak with you first. That’s why I called.” Cal was in excruciating discomfort. Probate lawyers dealt with a world of fixed intentions. They were not suited to surprise. Clearly, he feared that the family might blame him, and had descended already to the sweaty depths of lawyerly justification. “I took it you would know about this. It didn’t occur to me—” Cal cut himself off. He seemed to recognize that he was merely doing harm by reemphasizing how shocked he was that Clara had acted without consulting her husband. Cal’s sudden—and uncharacteristic—sensitivity seemed by some improbable logic to awaken Stern to his own distress. He was, in fact, reeling. Oh, it was absolutely childish, a response greedy as a six-year-old’s, but he could not stifle the thought. She had seen to the children; she had fattened the rabbi and his favorite charity. Only he, in her last days, had been deprived. Shame and anguish, the same venomous mix, rose in him once more.
Cal had gone on talking.
“Now that you tell me you have no idea what this is about, I’ll call Jack Wagoner over at the bank at once. We’ll track it all down. The probate court will require it.” These vows seemed to do little to comfort Cal himself, who sat there worried and deflated, licking his lips. He made it sound as if the money had run away on its own.
“When was this transaction?” asked Marta. “How late in the month?” Cal turned to Van Zandt, who had the date—five days before the afternoon Stern had come home to find Clara. Van Zandt handed a paper, the statement, to Marta; she then offered it to her father, who pushed it aside. The thought of embezzlement, some kind of foul play, occurred to
Stern again, but that was unlikely—worse, absurd.
He looked up at a sound: Kate had begun burbling again. Twenty-six years old, with her face tear-blotched and her makeup washed away, she looked half her age. She lolled back on the arm of her brother, who had been largely silent throughout, still laid low by the contemplation of his mother. Stern, in his present state, found himself easily irritated by Peter’s solicitude. How was it, he wondered, that the women always seemed to turn to Peter? None of them would tell you that he was untroubled; but they all seemed to adore his quiet sulkiness. He was available. Reliable. A person you could count on. Peter had undermined his father in the most insidious way—by exceeding him. By being what it mattered most that Stern was not. This sudden incisive view into the odd mechanisms of his family did nothing to stem the rising tide of his grief.
He shook hands with Cal and Van Zandt. His children stood, too, but seemed to have no idea how to proceed, whether to stay or go, or even if they ought to move. Stern realized suddenly that he was the center of attention. They were all watching him—his children, the lawyers—looking for signals. What to do, how to respond. But he had little to offer by way of instruction. Here in these elegant surroundings his soul again plummeted toward misery. Suicide. Money. Disease. Clara had left behind an unreconstructed mess.
He was accosted, more or less unaccountably, by a memory of her, as he happened to have observed her one day on her way to her teaching assignment in the Inner-City Arts Program. Stern and the children had long expressed concerns for her safely, but Clara twice a week drove her Seville to the city’s depleted neighborhoods for the morning. Coming by to swap cars so he could take hers to the shop, Stern had caught sight of her marching boldly to the school doors—a determined middle-aged lady with a noble look, reddish hair, a substantial bosom. She carried no purse. Her hands were jammed into the pockets of her plain coat and her head was erect, as she ignored occasional quarreling glances. In that split-second, he recognized something essential: not that she was fearless, but rather that he had seen the same expression often before and that for Clara every trip beyond her home apparently required the same effort to master her anxieties. There were all those inner demons which she conquered only by persuading herself they were not real. Somehow, at the end, they had come to life, surrounded and devoured her. A taciturn, mannerly, dignified woman, Clara Stern had gotten herself caught in the world’s muck, and it had sucked her down, like one of those prehistoric creatures whose bones were found in the tar pits. He knew that sooner or later he was going to stumble into the very heart of it, too, enduring all the same nightmare horrors she had.
They reached the street before Kate, briefly under control, began crying once more.
5
HOW DOES ONE GIVE UP A LIFE? At night, Stern wandered in the large house, looking for answers. In the closets, much of Clara’s clothing still hung. With the doors thrown open, he stared at the garments; they seemed as mystical as relics. The empty hangers, remaining from the items Kate and Marta had packed away, waited now like the skeletons of birds.
After Marta left, he moved into her room to sleep. His own bedroom seemed disturbed, torn apart; here he felt by some bare margin more at peace. When he entered the master bedroom to gather up an item or two, the stillness was overpowering. With even a few days of disuse, a shrouded, dusty quietude had come over it. It was like examining a photograph: a bounded portion of an unreachable past, inanimate but preserved. He took his socks, his collar stays, and rushed back out the door.
He was shown a ceremonial kindness by neighbors and families from the synagogue. The suicide’s spouse was too gruesome for the dinner table—how do you explain to the children? But the women came by with pots of stew, various chicken dishes, for him to consume alone. The freezer was jammed. Most evenings, he would place something in the microwave, open a bottle of wine, eat and drink, and roam about the household.
On the refrigerator was a note to phone Nate Cawley. He had tried a number of times, hoping to dispel the question of Clara’s medical bill, but Nate, busy after his week away at the medical conference in Canada, had not yet responded. Softened by the wine, Stern took calls—friends or Marta or Kate checking in—and then resumed his movements. He sat in chairs he had not bothered with for years. He went from room to room, stared at the furnishings, the pictures. This tiny porcelain bird. Where had it come from?
Occasionally he was asked out, generally in groups, and usually by other lawyers, a kind of conventional solicitude that reflected more his stature in the legal community than any particular intimacy. This was the sort of social commerce which the Sterns had always minimized. Clara, with her quiet, firm manner, had no interest in people or occasions that offered little substance. Now free to go on his own, he could not bring himself to the pretense these encounters would demand, an evening of vagrant chatter in which everyone would stare at him with unvoiced questions about his wife.
The only outings which he made willingly were to be with his children. In the first two weeks after Marta’s departure, he went to Kate’s house twice for dinner, and she and John met him once downtown. But the suburban sprawl of Kindle County meant that they were almost an hour apart, and in the work week the travel was exhausting, particularly for Kate, who was wearied by the early phases of her pregnancy. And even with her, he sensed that her attentions required some self-conscious effort; Kate, always unreflectively loving, now seemed vaguely frightened to deal with her father on his own.
Peter, no doubt acting at the instruction of his sisters, also called, and at Stern’s suggestion they had dinner one evening. “Something quick,” as Peter put it, accepting. They met at a delicatessen downtown, but Clara’s absence loomed between them, enormous, agonizing. She had been pained by their estrangement—and for her sake they had always done their best. Now it was suddenly clear that the tie had not survived her; they were both playing roles in a production which had closed. After a few minutes ill at ease they lapsed completely into silence amid the ringing plates and voices of the restaurant.
So for the most part he was alone. One night there was an unexpected interruption. A woman from the neighborhood phoned, claiming to be a friend of Clara’s. She went on without a pause to describe her husband’s repeated failures in the bedroom—the man had many problems—and ended their conversation saying, simply, “Call me.” Stern, of course, did not. Yet the incident provoked a storm of odd feeling. He had heard the same stories as everyone else, of the unattached females who accosted widowers with striking boldness, but given the circumstances of Clara’s passing, he was sure that would not happen to him. Oh, perhaps there had been a card or two, a few calls of sympathy from widows and divorcees of somewhat remote connection. Yet, suddenly, something seemed clarified. People were lonely; women, in particular, were lonely like him. But who knew about all of that—women? Certainly not he. And to what purpose, anyway? The thought of all this left him feeling worse, baffled and inept, stuck within himself, like something buried.
Whatever the distractions, these evenings in the end always found him roaming. He drank wine, told himself he would work, and wandered about the house. As soon as this routine began, he realized that this, not working, was the primary business of his day. He suffered terribly—at sea with tender recollections and volumes of harsh self-recrimination—and yet he receded to these moments almost urgently, as the years swam over him.
His memory of the past was of a million pages observed by a single incandescent light, and of doors falling open as he arrived, burdened with heavy cases, in a hundred different courtrooms. In the decades he recalled, it was always late at night or the morning of a trial, his emotions an intense admixture of determined concentration and stilled anxiety. He puzzled in his hours at home; his children spoke and went unanswered as he nursed motions in his mind, a particular careful tack for cross-examination, and reached forth with a tender hand, meant to hush them, while he thought of something else. Oh, he had achieved. He was in his o
ffice with his cigars, his books, his phone, his clients, from seven in the morning until nine or ten at night. He came home then to a quiet house. The children were bedded down, gone. Clara waited with a book on her lap in the quiet living room, the aroma of his warming dinner through the house: an image of order, resourcefulness, sufficiency.
Was he persuaded by that pose? For how many years had he comforted himself with the thought that they did not quarrel, that she seldom voiced the criticisms of other wives? That would have struck Clara as common. True, he treated her with unsparing courtesy. He rarely disregarded her wishes. But, of course, he had chosen wisely, for she seldom spoke up in her own behalf. Oh, they had had their rough spots. Who didn’t? The period when the children had gone off to college was one of intense disruption for Clara. When Kate, the last, departed, there were times when he found her in the dark, in tears. It was there each day, the quiet insinuation, throbbing like a bruise: she did not like her life, no part of it. When he tried to soothe her, she turned on him openly, livid with decades of previously unspoken complaints. But they had stumbled on, and Clara had eventually reverted to her strict self-control, her taut smile, and her insistence that she was bearing up. She was like some Swedish minister enduring existential torment in silence and low light.