“I'll bet you would,” she said, and with a wave at him, finally forced herself to leave. He was still smiling as she left, and told the nurse she could find her way downstairs on her own.
She clattered down the steel stairs again, her steps resonating on the iron staircase, as the sound reverberated in the narrow hall. The threadbare carpet did little to muffle the din. And it was a relief when she stepped out of the service door into the noon sunshine that had finally come uptown. She walked slowly down to Union Street, thinking of him, and found a cab there. She gave the driver the address of her office building, and thought of Stanley all the way downtown. She was afraid he wouldn't last much longer. He seemed to be finally sliding slowly downhill. Her visit had perked him up, but even Sarah knew it wouldn't be much longer. It was almost too much to hope that he would reach his ninety-ninth birthday in October. And why? He had so little to live for, and he was so alone. His life was so confined by the tiny room he lived in, and the four walls of the cell where he was trapped for the remainder of his days. He had lived a good life, or at least a productive one, and the lives of his nineteen heirs would be forever changed when he died. It depressed Sarah to think about it. She knew she would miss Stanley when he was gone. She tried not to think about the many warnings he gave her about her own life. She had years to think about babies and marriage. For now, she had a career that meant the world to her, and a desk full of work waiting for her at the office, although she appreciated his concern. She had exactly the life she wanted.
It was shortly after noon as she hurried back to her office. She had a partners' meeting at one o'clock, meetings scheduled with three clients that afternoon, and fifty pages of new tax laws to read that night, all or some of which would be pertinent to her clients. She had a stack of messages waiting on her desk, and she managed to return all but two of them before the meeting with her partners. She would return the other two, and whatever new ones she had, between client meetings later that afternoon. She had no time for lunch … any more than she did for babies or marriage. Stanley had made his choices and mistakes in life. She had a right to make her own.
Chapter 2
Sarah continued to send books and relevant articles to Stanley, as she always did, through July and August. He had a brief bout of flu in September, which didn't require a hospital stay this time. And he was in remark ably good spirits when she visited him on his ninety-ninth birthday in October. There was a sense of victory to it. It was a remarkable achievement to reach ninety-nine years of age. She brought him a cheesecake and put a candle in it. She knew it was his favorite, and reminded him of his childhood in New York. For once, he didn't scold her about how hard she was working. They talked at length about a new tax law that was being proposed, which could prove advantageous to his estate. He had the same concerns about it she did, and they both enjoyed batting theories back and forth with each other, about how current tax laws might be affected. He was as clear and sharp as ever and didn't seem quite as frail as he had on her previous visit. He had a new nurse who was making a real effort to make him eat, and Sarah thought he had even gained a little weight. She kissed him on the cheek, as she always did, when she left, and told him that they'd be celebrating his hundredth birthday the following October.
“Christ, I hope not,” he said, laughing at her. “Whoever thought I'd make it this far,” he said as they celebrated together.
She left him a stack of new books, some music to listen to, and a pair of black satin pajamas that seemed to amuse him. She'd never seen him in better spirits, which made the call she got two weeks later, on the first of November, more shocking somehow. It shouldn't have been. She had always known it would come. But it caught her off guard anyway. After more than three years of doing legal work for him, and enjoying their resulting friendship, she really had begun to expect him to live forever. The nurse told her that Stanley had died peacefully in his sleep the night before, listening to the music she had given him and wearing the black satin pajamas. He had eaten a good dinner, drifted off to sleep and out of this world, without a gasp or a whimper, or a final word to anyone. The nurse had found him when she went to check on him an hour later. She said the look on his face was completely peaceful.
Tears sprang to Sarah's eyes as she heard it. She'd had a hard morning at the office, after a heated debate with two of her partners over something they'd done that she didn't agree with, and she felt they'd ganged up on her. And the night before, she'd had a fight with the man she dated, which wasn't all that unusual, but upset her anyway. In the past year, they had begun to disagree more. They both had busy days, and stressful lives. They confined their time together to weekends. But sometimes she and Phil got on each other's nerves over minor irritations. Hearing about Stanley dying in the night was the topper. She felt suddenly bereft, reminded of when her father had died when she was sixteen, twenty-two years before.
In an odd way, Stanley was the only father figure she'd had since then, even though he was a client. He was always telling her not to work too hard, and to learn from his mistakes. No other man she knew had ever said that to her, and she knew how much she was going to miss him. But this was what they had prepared for, why she had come into his life, to plan his estate, and how it would be dispersed to his heirs. It was time for her to do her job. All the groundwork had been laid over the past three years. Sarah was organized and ready. Everything was in order.
“Will you make the arrangements?” the nurse asked her. She had already notified the other nurses, and Sarah said she'd call the funeral parlor. He had long since selected the one he wanted, although he had been emphatic that there be no funeral. He wanted to be cremated and buried, without fuss or fanfare. There would be no mourners. All his friends and business associates were long dead, and his family didn't know him. There was only Sarah to make the arrangements.
She made the appropriate phone calls after speaking to the nurse. She was surprised to see that her hand shook as she made the calls. He was to be cremated the next morning, and buried at Cypress Lawn, in a spot he had purchased in the mausoleum a dozen years before. They asked if there would be a service, and she said no. The funeral home picked him up within the hour, and she felt somber all day, particularly as she dictated the letter to his unsuspecting heirs. She offered a reading of the will in her offices in San Francisco, which Stanley had requested, should they wish to come out, at which time they might like to inspect the house they had inherited, and decide how they wished to dispose of it. There was always the remote possibility that one of them would want to keep it, and buy out the others' shares, although she and Stanley had always considered that unlikely. None of them lived in San Francisco, and wouldn't want a house there. There were a multitude of details to attend to. And she had been advised by the cemetery that Stanley would be interred at nine o'clock the next morning.
She knew it would be several days, or longer, before she began hearing from his heirs. For those who didn't wish to come out, or couldn't, she would send them copies of the will, as soon as it had been read. And his estate had to be put into probate. It would take some time to release the assets. She set all the wheels in motion that day.
By late afternoon, the head nurse had come to the office to bring all the nurses' keys to her. The cleaning woman who had come in for years, just to clean the attic rooms, was going to continue working. There was a service that came in once a month to clean the rest of the house, but nothing was changed for them. It was startling how little had to be done at this point. And Stanley had so few personal effects and so little furniture, that when they cleaned out the house for a real estate broker, Goodwill could take it all away. There was nothing the heirs would want. He was a simple man with few needs and no luxuries, and he had been bedridden for years. Even the watch he wore was of no consequence. He had bought a gold watch once, and had long since given it away. All he had were properties and shopping malls, oil wells, investments, stocks, bonds, and the house on Scott Street. Stanley Perlman had had an enormous fortune, and few things. And thanks to Sarah, his estate was totally in order at the time of his death, and long before.