other at least twenty-five years, back to when Harry was going through a divorce and, after giving his house to his ex-wife, lived for a time above a shoe store here in downtown Promise Falls, in upstate New York. Harry used to joke that he had a lot of nerve, offering his services as a divorce attorney, after getting taken to the cleaners during his own.
Harry’s phone emitted a single chime, indicating an e-mail had landed, but he didn’t even glance at it.
“Last time I talked to Dad,” I said, nodding at the phone, “he was thinking about getting one of those. He had a phone that would take pictures, but it was an old one, and it didn’t take very good ones. And he wanted a phone that would be easy for sending e-mails.”
“All this new high-tech stuff never scared Adam,” Harry said, then clapped his hands together, signaling it was time to move on to why I was here. “You were saying, at the funeral, that you’ve still got the studio, in Burlington?”
I lived across the state line, in Vermont.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Work’s good?”
“Not bad. The industry’s changing.”
“I saw one of your drawings-is that what you call them?”
“Sure,” I said. “Illustrations. Caricatures.”
“Saw one in the New York Times Book Review a few weeks back. I can always tell your style. The people all have really big noggins and the tiny bodies, looks like their heads would make ’em fall over. And they all have these rounded edges. I love how you shade their skin tones and everything. How do you do that?”
“Airbrush,” I said.
“You do a lot of work for the Times?”
“Not as much as I used to. It’s a lot easier to run a file pic than hire someone to do an illustration from scratch. Papers and magazines are cutting back. I’m doing more for Web sites these days.”
“You design those things? Web sites?”
“No. I do artwork for them and hand it off to the Web site builders.”
“I would have thought, doing stuff for magazines and newspapers in New York and Washington, you’d have to live there, but I guess these days, it doesn’t much matter.”
“Anything you can’t scan and e-mail, you can FedEx,” I said. When I said nothing else, Harry opened the file on his desk and studied the papers inside.
“Ray, I take it you’ve seen the will your father drew up,” he said.
“Yes.”
“He hadn’t updated it in a long time. Made a couple of changes after your mother died. The thing is, I ran into him one day. He was sitting there in a booth at Kelly’s having a coffee and he offered to buy me one. He was by himself, at a table by the window, staring out at the street, looking at the Standard but not really reading it. I’d see him in there every once in a while, like he just needed time alone, out of the house. Anyway, he waved me over and said he was thinking of amending it, his will, that is, that he might need to make some special provisions, but he never got around to it.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said, “but I guess I’m not surprised. What with how things have been with my brother, I could see him wanting to give more to one than the other.”
“I think, to be honest, if Adam had come in here wanting to make some changes, I might have tried talking him out of anything that would have favored one child over the other. I’d have told him, the best thing to do is treat all your kids the same. Otherwise, that’s going to lead to resentment after you’re gone. Of course, it still would’ve been his decision. But while this existing will is fairly straightforward, there are things you’re going to have to think about.”
I was picturing my father, sitting in the diner, the rest of the booth unoccupied. He’d had plenty of time to himself in the house since Mom died, even if, technically speaking, he wasn’t alone. He didn’t have to leave the house for solitude. But I could understand his need to escape. Sometimes you needed to know that you were absolutely alone. You needed a change of scenery. It made me sad, thinking about it.
“So I guess the way it is now, then,” I said, “is fifty-fifty. Once the estate is liquidated, half goes to me and half goes to my brother.”
“Yes. Property, and investments.”
“About a hundred thousand there,” I said. “What he and Mom had managed to scrape together for retirement. They’d saved for years. They never spent anything on themselves. He could have made a hundred grand last him till the day he died.” I caught myself. “If he’d lived another twenty or thirty years, I mean. And I gather there’s a life insurance policy that’s fairly small.”
Harry Peyton nodded and leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers at the back of his head. He sucked in some air between his teeth. “You’ll have to decide what to do about the house. You’ve every right to put it up for sale, split the proceeds with your brother. There’s no mortgage on the place, and I’m guessing you could get three, four hundred thou for it.”
“About that,” I said. “There’s nearly sixteen acres.”
“Which, if you got that, would leave each of you with about a quarter million, give or take. That’s not a bad chunk of change, all things considered. How old are you, Ray?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“And your brother, he’s two years younger, that right?”
“Yes.”
Peyton nodded slowly. “Invested wisely, it might be enough to last him quite a few years, but he’s still a young man. And he’s got a while before he hits Social Security. He’s not really employable, from what your dad told me.”
I hesitated. “That’s fair.”
“For you, well, the money’s a different thing. You could invest it, buy a bigger house for the time when you have-I know you’re not married now, Ray, but someday, you meet someone, you have kids-”
“I know,” I said. I’d come close to getting married, a couple of times, in my twenties, but it never happened. “I don’t see any kids on the horizon.”
“You never know.” He waved his hand again. “None of my business, anyway, except in an unofficial capacity, because I think your dad hoped I’d look out for you boys, offer you guidance where I could.” He laughed. “You’re hardly boys anymore, of course. It’s been a long time since that was the case.”
“Appreciate it, Harry.”
“The point I’m making, Ray, is for you it’s a minor windfall, but you’d have made out fine without it. You make a good living, and if your work takes a downturn, you’ll find something else, land on your feet. But for your brother, this inheritance is all he’ll ever have. He might need the money from the house to keep him afloat, provided he can find a place, someplace suitable, where his rent’s subsidized or something.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said.
“What I’m wondering is, will you be able to get him out of the house? I mean, you know, not just for the afternoon, but permanently?”
I looked about the room, as though I might find the answer. “I don’t know. It’s not like he’s-what’s the word-agoraphobic? Dad managed to get him out, once in a while. Mostly for his doctor’s appointments.” I found it hard to say the word “psychiatrist,” but Harry knew. “It’s not getting him outside that’s the problem. It’s prying him away from the keyboard. Whenever he and Dad went out, they both returned home pretty frazzled. Moving him out, settling him in someplace else, it’s not something I look forward to.”
Harry said, “Well, I’ll get the ball rolling here. The great thing for you, being an executor, is there really isn’t all that much to do, except to come in here the odd time and sign some papers. There’ll be the occasional item I’ll need your take on, and I’ll have Alice give you a dingle. You might want to get the property appraised, tell you what it could go for.” He ruffled through his papers. “I got all your numbers and e-mail address here I think.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And you probably knew-your dad had sent me a copy of the policy for his files-that there was an accidental death provision in his life insurance.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Another fifty thousand. A little something else to go into the pot.” Harry paused while I digested this news.
