J R

— It’s a shame you… you’ve never had children, Stella. Children of your own, you and… oh, I can never recall his name.

— Whose.

— Why, your husband, Mister…

— Norman, oh, said Stella in the same dead calm, and then — and this? turned again to a picture. — Sitting at the piano beside Uncle James, this little boy. It’s not Edward, is it?

— That? No. No, that’s not Edward, no.

— Is it… anyone?

— It’s… no, it’s a boy. A boy James took in for lessons.

— Reuben? Stella turned abruptly, and stood there as the turn had left her, one foot cocked on a heel. — The boy he adopted?

— He didn’t. James never adopted him. There. Do you see? the stories that get started?

— Yes, that Mister… this lawyer who was here. Prying and gossiping, trying to bring Reuben into things too, saying the adopted child has the same rights as the blood child and so forth, why…

— Here, his card’s here somewhere. Cohen, here it is. You see? he said they’d left out the h. You would think he’d want to get new cards printed.

— Perhaps he doesn’t care to spend the money. It might be cheaper just to change his name, you remember Father saying…

— Why your husband had to send him out here Stella, as though things weren’t confused enough.

— I’m sorry I missed him. When Norman’s secretary said he was coming out to see you and Edward and help clear things up…

— Clear things up? Waving his arms around, breaking furniture, tossing papers every which way? And his language!

— I’m sure that Norman never meant him to…

— Crystal clear but he couldn’t speak simple English, unless you call profanity crystal clear. Be careful of that chair arm, he broke that too.

— Perhaps Edward can fix it, Julia.

— Yes he warned us against Edward, if you can imagine.

— But I’m sure Mister Coen didn’t mean…

— Referring to Edward as an infant…

— A lunatic…

— Talking about suing the Ford Motor Company, using infancy as a sword instead of a shield whatever that means, he kept repeating it. Remember Danziger, he said, versus the Ironclad Realty Company. I won’t forget them in a hurry after that performance, but heaven knows why. I never heard James mention either of them.

— Or Father either, why Mister Cohen even wanted to hear that old story about Father and the violin.

— And that picture of Charlotte in the Indian headdress to prove some notion about resemblances, that gossip about our Indian blood and talking about emancipation, Edward being emancipated! as though we were all a family of… well!

— We even had to sew a button on for him. Where do you suppose that picture is, Julia? The one on the song sheet. It was when she opened at the New Montauk Theater…

— It must be over in James’ studio with everything else.

— With everything else, yes. It’s a good thing he never got loose over there. When he started to pry into James’ income tax returns, asking if James took Edward as an exemption…

— There’s no reason he shouldn’t. I’ve heard James say myself that as long as Edward is a fulltime student…

— That Bryce boy, the one they called the young planter, he was still in high school at the age of twenty-nine.

— That was quite a different story, Anne.

— Wasn’t Reuben an orphan? Stella said abruptly over them.

— No. Certainly not.

— I thought I’d heard my father say…

— Just because James found him in an orphanage. The boy’s mother had died and his father couldn’t look after him and put him in an orphanage where he’d get decent care. That’s where James found him, giving music lessons. The Masons did charity work, you know, and James was giving lessons in a Jewish orphanage. He thought the boy had talent and, well, that it should be developed.

— But he brought him home, didn’t he?

— James brought him home to teach, simply that. It’s… it was all so many years ago and I’m sure the only reason your Mister Cohen brought it up was to try to stir up those old stories about James and your father. About James and Thomas not getting on, simply because of… of what’s at stake.

And Stella’s turn and movement from them in her gray took a melancholy dimension from the fading streaks of the fall sun mottling the glass. — What’s that, she said.

— Why, the business. After all.

— After all, it was James who helped him get started. When Thomas first talked about music publishing…

— I’d hardly call it music publishing, Anne. When Thomas first talked about making piano rolls, James said he thought that playing reed instruments all those years had loosened something in Thomas’ head.

— Nevertheless I would not have imagined there was still so much money in piano rolls, but your Mister Cohen says it’s doing very well. I thought people had radios and things today. It’s not as though James has no stake in it, after all.

— But he still owns his stock, said Stella from the pictures. — And you both do too?

— You certainly wouldn’t know it from the dividends.

— Not that it’s all just a matter of money.