It wouldn’t be the last time we’d hear a version of that line from him. And it wouldn’t be the last time I’d slug one of my brothers.
Now I said to Danny, “Do I need to break your nose again?”
“Grow up, Jenny.”
“You first.”
I wasn’t there because I expected some great windfall from my father. In all ways,thatwas the boat of his I felt had sailed, at least for me. It wasn’t just that I had walked away from him. It was that I had never shown any interest in the family business, even after graduating from law school. He told me I was the smartest one of his children. I told him that wasn’t my problem, it was his. Then we’d had our last argument, the granddaddy of them all. There had been no contact since. He was stubborn, and so was I. I told myself I didn’t hold grudges the way he did. But I knew it was close.
From behind me Thomas Wolf said, “Is there going to be cake?”
“All of you hush,” Elise Wolf said, in a tone of voice that always reminded me of the crack of a whip.
“Does that include me?” Rachel said from the other side of the office.
My mother, who had ignored her to this point, looked at her with enough fire and brimstone to turn her into a pillar of salt.
Mercifully, the office door opened then, and Harris Crawford walked in. He had been my father’s lawyer and best friend for all my time on earth. Tall, flowing white hair, one of the three-piece suits that I knew he had made in London. I’d always thought that if Morgan Freeman hadn’t played God, Harris Crawford could easily have gotten the part.
He sat behind his desk, made a sweeping gesture with one hand that took in the room, and said, “Still one big happy dysfunctional family, I see.”
My mother sighed with such force that I was surprised it didn’t send ripples through the curtains behind him.
“You have no idea.”
“Why do we even have to do it this way?” Danny asked.
“Because that’s the way Joe wanted it,” Harris Crawford said.
“Hestillwon’t let go,” Danny muttered.
“Shall we begin?” Crawford inquired, looking out at us over his reading glasses.
“The sooner we do,” Danny said, “the sooner we get this over with.”
Harris Crawford started reading. Mom got the Nob Hill house on Jones Street in which we’d all grown up along with an extremely generous amount of money, which I knew was guilt money from my father because of the way he’d hurt her. I looked for a change of expression. But there wasn’t one. She’d always been the toughest one of all of us. The real alpha Wolf.
Rachel Wolf got the house in which she was living, the one in Presidio Heights she’d sold to Dad before they began the affair that became his second marriage, a marriage that included a prenup that my dad once said would have survived the earthquake of ’89 far better than the Bay Bridge had.
She smiled, waiting for Harris Crawford to say something else. But he didn’t.
“That’s it?” she said.
I was watching her.
Rachel Wolf began to color slightly.
“Just this additional note from Joe, directed at you, Rachel,” Crawford said, reading now. “‘If you’re looking for more, sell the place to another sucker. Or your boyfriend the tennis pro.’”
At this point Rachel Wolf looked as if she might have just swallowed a hamster.
“This is bullshit,” she said.
And walked out of the room.
“Nevertheless,” Harris Crawford said in a voice as dry as the papers on his desk.
My mother was always a lady, no matter what the circumstances, with an almost regal bearing. She turned to me now, smiling, and said, “I wasn’t watching, sweetheart. Did the door hit her in that remade ass on the way out?”