Her Infinite Variety (19 page)

"He says now you'll be rich. Very rich. That's true, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's true. I'll be able to do things for people. People who need it. It will be a great challenge."

Sandra's silence seemed to contemplate a less philanthropic use of her mother's new resources. But she wasn't going to say it. Not a word! What she did say was very different. "Daddy was afraid it might be hard on you."

"Riches? Why? I know they're not meant to bring happiness, but they don't have to bring unhappiness, do they?"

"He said there were three things the possession of any one of which could make people hate you. And that you have all three!"

"Heavens! And what are those three things?"

"Wealth, power and beauty."

Clara gasped. "Well, thank him anyway for the beauty! I guess he hasn't seen me for a while."

"Oh, yes, he saw you at the funeral."

"Really? He came to that?"

"He did. He said Eric had always been good to me. And he took me home when you had to go to the interment."

"That was very dear of him." But she didn't somehow quite like it. It was as if her old life were joining with the rest of her world in a tribute to a man which mysteriously excluded her. "Anyway, to answer your question, of course, I shall miss Eric. But I shall have the sense of his being with me, working at the foundation on all the things he and I cared about."

It rang false, and she felt sure that Sandra took it so. But it didn't matter. There had to be a base on which they could settle things, and what base was there that contained no alloy at all?

"Will the foundation be in Eric's old office?"

Clara welcomed the switch to detail. "For the time being, I suppose. But it will be a bigger proposition now. It will eventually need its own quarters."

Sandra nodded and rose to get ready for school. In the following days she made no further reference to the man who had been so briefly her stepfather, but her deportment to her mother was unexceptional.

A great deal of Clara's time in the next weeks had to be spent in the not unwelcome distraction of the administration of her husband's estate, and her visits to Peter Van Alstine's office were frequent and prolonged. She was determined to dispose of most of the periodicals, keeping a couple of favorites, so that she could devote most of her time to the foundation, but she was in no hurry, and the same caution would be used in the sale of Eric's various residences. Her own houses in town and country would do well enough for her, and she would pick what she wanted from his art collection and auction the rest.

"And the children?" Peter inquired. "Nothing for them?"

"They can have what they want, within reason," she replied with a shrug. "But they're going to have to come to me and ask. Neither Tony nor Lisa has been near me since the funeral. What are they hatching? Have you heard?"

"The silence may be ominous. I know Tony's been seeing Irving Sayles."

"Who's he? Some shyster?"

"Far from it, Clara. He's the big litigator who broke the Murphy will."

It was only another week before Sayles fired his first round. Representing what he dramatically described as "the shorn next of kin," his petition on behalf of Eric's two children alleged an "infamous" conspiracy between the decedent's treacherous counsel and his designing widow to deflect his entire estate from his natural heirs. Tyler, it was affirmed, had been reduced to a state of childishness by his stroke and isolated from his family and associates so that his feeble willpower could be more effectively worked on. And in the execution of the fatal deed of gift in trust, his "paramour"—not yet his lawful spouse—was said to have virtually guided his trembling hand.

"What puzzles me about this petition," Peter told Clara as they went over it, "is the violence of the language. That's not like Irving. After all, it's got to be a strike suit, looking for an early and advantageous settlement. They must know that Eric was of perfectly sound mind and that they can't prove any of this garbage. Why get our backs up so that we might rather die than settle for a penny?"

"Because Tony cares more about splattering me with mud than he does about the money itself!"

Peter shook his head in rumination. "He must have paid old Irving a whopping retainer to make him go against his better judgment like this."

"Good! You mean that old Irving isn't taking the case on a purely contingent basis?"

"No, that's not his way. He wants his hourly stipend."

"Then let's bust Tony, Peter! We're sure to win the case, aren't we? Oh, I know you lawyers always say that no case is a sure bet, but this is as near a one as possible, isn't it?"

"Well, I'd say it's twenty to one in our favor, yes. There's always the chance of some quack medical testimony and a crazy jury."

"Then can't we drag it out?" Clara suggested eagerly. "Can't we look as if we were just about to crumble and then start up again? Can't we keep suggesting settlements and then withdrawing them? I don't care if we litigate for
years!
If we can only bust Tony with his legal fees. And don't worry about yours! I'll pay them whatever they are!"

Peter held up his hands in dismay. "Clara, Clara, my dear, you're asking
me
to be a shyster. And think what you yourself would be going through. Think of the publicity!"

"Oh, I don't give a hoot about that! If Tony thinks I'm going to mind a bad press, he forgets that I've been in that game for years."

"Then must I remind you, as a realist, that if the contestants ask for a settlement that would cost you less than a protracted legal battle it might be your duty, both as executrix and foundation president, to settle it."

"You mean that I have no moral right to protect my own reputation? I'll take that issue, sir, to the highest court in the land!" She felt a sudden exaltation as she spoke. This was the note to strike! She was now on the side of the angels. She might in her heart even find it possible to be grateful to Tony!

"Well, let us see what comes of it. Maybe I can move for a directed verdict after they state their case."

Peter ended their interview with the complacent nod of the old lawyer who has heard so many brave words, all too many times before. Clara understood what he was thinking: that like so many volatile female clients she could be made to see reason in the end. But he would find out!

And as the months dragged on he did find out. The contestants were very persistent. Their counsel dragged every lawyer and secretary and accountant in Eric's office who had ever worked on a Tyler matter to the stand, and every servant who had ever served in the Tyler household. They had Clara in the witness box for hours, but she never flinched or hesitated in her bold clear testimony. One journalist even observed that she seemed to be enjoying herself.

At last the stubborn Tony appeared to have been persuaded by his weary counsel to submit to settlement, and the offers began to creep in. The contestants kept lowering the figure demanded. No longer did they insist on half the residuary estate, or even a third, or a tenth...

At last an offer was received that would do little more, in Peter's shrewd estimate, than compensate Tony's counsel for all their violent forensic efforts. He wrote the sum on a slip of paper and handed it silently across his desk for Clara to see.

She glanced at it and then up at the wrinkled brown face before her, furrowed as it seemed with decades of calming down impetuous clients, pleading against their hasty and unruly judgments, draining the emotions out of their lives to leave the dark sediment of common sense. She took in the tousled gray hair, disarrayed by the lifelong scratching of his scalp over human folly and the blinking little almond eyes that could peer into every crack and corner in search of compromise.

When he spoke it was to anticipate her objection.

"If you could only bring yourself, my dear, to view the matter in the light of which will cost Eric's estate the least—to pay this sum or go on with the fight—it would make things much simpler."

"But that is not at all the way I see it. Tony has held me up to the world as a brazen and shameless hussy. And Tony is going to pay for it!"

"But all that was just the usual language of will contests. Everyone knows it means nothing. Nobody in their right mind today thinks that an advantageous settlement is an admission of charges. They know what the costs of litigation are."

"Peter, there is no point in your even submitting to me another offer of compromise. I tell you here and now that I won't settle for a penny!"

She looked again at the paper in her hand. If that were indeed what Tony would have to pay his counsel, it was a thumping sum, and she felt an exhilaration in her heart. But as she watched her old lawyer, shaking his head mournfully as he turned back to the pile of papers beside him and plucked one out, apparently for further discussion, she had a sudden misgiving. Was she whitewashing herself with the heavily splashed paint of her lofty stand? In so sternly rejecting the very possibility that there could be the smallest validity in her stepson's charges, was she desperately affirming her own virtue to herself? Even buying it with what was still a substantial sum of money?

"I must bring to your attention, Clara, that there is another aspect to this proposed settlement. It can be arranged at no cost to you personally. Eric's sister, Miss Tyler, who, as you know, is an officer of his foundation and who has taken your side consistently in this litigation, has approached me with the suggestion that the foundation make the payment to the contestants and that no part of it be charged to your trust. She completely understands that you wish to have nothing to do with any settlement with the contestants who have so wrongfully aspersed you, but she feels that it is to the economic advantage of the foundation to settle and that its officers should not be swayed by personal resentment. She has also informed me that a majority of the foundation's five trustees agree with her."

"But not I! Not the president!"

"I'm afraid the president can be outvoted. It's four to one, Clara."

Clara drew herself up. She had anticipated this. "Then tell my sister-in-law, and the others—of whom you are one, Peter, dear old traitor that you are—that if one penny of the foundation's assets is paid either to Eric's children
or
their counsel by way of settlement of their false claims, I shall execute a will in which I exercise the power of appointment, given me by my husband, to direct that on my death the principal of my trust shall pass to a beneficiary or beneficiaries
other
than the foundation."

Peter gaped. "You would defeat Eric's plan?"

"And do so with the knowledge that he would totally approve!"

"But you gave him your word, Clara!"

"And now I take it back! Do you doubt me, Peter?"

"Oh, no." For a moment he simply scratched his brow. "No, I do not do that. Very well, I must tell Miss Tyler that the offer must be rejected. For of course no foundation could risk the loss of a principal that would double it in size for the relatively minor sum that the continuation of this futile suit would cost it. So there we are! At least, my dear, you have been consistent."

P
ETER VAN ALSTINE
declined to implement Clara's plan of spinning out the defense of the suit in order to expand the contestants' costs. His litigating partner conducted the case with efficiency and dispatch, asking and receiving a directed verdict for the executors as soon as he had finished cross-examining the last witness called by the plaintiffs' counsel to sustain their flimsy cause. Tony appealed desperately and unsuccessfully to the Appellate Division and was stuck, as Clara had ardently hoped, with big fees. It was total victory.

And this was only the prelude to better things: two years of what seemed to the radiant Clara to be a kind of apotheosis of herself. The press appeared to be intent on making her a symbol of female glamor and power in the era of waxing women's rights that characterized Ike's second term. She was seen as the angel of beneficence, photographed in the new offices of the Tyler Foundation in a new Fifth Avenue tower against an entrance foyer with a small reflecting pool or a conference chamber adorned with Eric's collection of Gauguin Tahitian scenes. If her picture failed to appear any Sunday in the
Times
's account of parties of the week, her friends joked, they would call up to ask if she was ill.

The board of the foundation consisted, initially, of only five persons: herself, as the all-powerful chairman; Peter Van Alstine; Polly Madison; the now retired Albany judge who had married her and Eric; and her sister-in-law, Miss Elmina Tyler. Clara had at once established as the goals of the foundation the support of the liberal arts in museums, colleges and theatres, which meant that every hour of the considerable workday that she was happy to put in would be not only interesting but amusing. She appointed the compliant art critic whom she had already hired for
Style
as executive director and gave him a staff of six. Only Miss Tyler offered her any trouble at all, and that was very mild.

Elmina Tyler was a robust, mannish, goodhearted woman, with a square red face and bobbed gray hair, who made no effort to be anything but the bluff, down-to-earth creature that she appeared. She was what her generation called "horsey," and indeed she ran a small stud farm in northern New Jersey. If she had lesbian inclinations she kept them well out of sight. Clara had found her as easy to win over as Eric's secretary, Annie Hally; Elmina had been sincerely fond of her brother and had sensibly seen that Clara was a far better mate for him than any of his earlier lady friends. She had little interest in the arts, but she was faithful in her attendance at board meetings and paid close attention to the discussions. When she introduced propositions of her own, unrelated to the stated goals of the institution, such as saving the wolves or the rain forests, Clara could usually satisfy her with a relatively small grant. But there was one subject on which their disagreement was not so easily settled.

"I'm well aware that Tony has treated you shamefully," Elmina told her, "and I've certainly let him know it. But a lot of that was attributable to his lawyers. You know how they get when they sink their teeth into a lawsuit! Tony has had some hard knocks recently, but I believe he's learned his lesson. And I think it's a sad thing that a son of Eric's hasn't a seat on the board of his foundation."