She got her handkerchief again, but simply held it tight in her hand. — Once I, I went once and they had a concert he was learning to play the, played the cymbals I just couldn’t ever go again…
— But, but perhaps your father finds it just as pain…
— Freddie’s his son! she used the handkerchief and then, stilled, her eyes over its lavender edge looked even larger — sends his, he sends his best wishes he knows I’m sitting a foot away but he couldn’t…
— Mrs Joubert he had an important meeting and just took a moment to call with something quite urgent regarding the situation in Gan…
— A moment yes he couldn’t take a moment to speak to me to, even to ask how I am there’s always a meeting an important meeting he hides in meetings even that day, the day I brought the children in I was in his office to, waiting to sign something like I always am he was standing beside me there molding his nose like he always does looking down at me and he said, he said you look tired Amy he looked so concerned so, so concerned I thought he wanted to talk to me to tell me something to say something he, and then he turned with all that concern he turned to you and asked about his last option…
— I, I understand yes but I think you should consid…
— I’m sorry, is this all you want me to sign?
— Yes and, oh the changes yes if you’ll just initial the changes, they’re marked in the margins Mrs Joubert it’s not my, I just mean to say your father has been under a good deal of pressure recently I don’t think you should take that to mean he’s not extremely concerned about you, when you mentioned earlier the trusts your mother had set up for yourself and your brother, your income…
— Oh honestly… she initialed, initialed, — how can you call it my income it’s…
— No but you see I understand your impatience but I think in expressing his concern under the provision that the income may be reinvested by the guardian until…
— By Daddy yes till he thinks I’ve stopped drifting? till I stop wasting my, stop teaching school out in the woods somewhere just to have something to do, something alive to do even if it’s, even if I hardly know what I’m teaching them just following the lesson guide but it’s something it’s, something…
— I didn’t mean…
— And don’t say the trusts Mama had set up for me and Freddie no, no Daddy and your father and Uncle John set them up and old Judge Ude in the Surrogate Court where Uncle John put him they set them up, it was Mama’s money and they set them up with all these provisions and she signed the papers just like I’m signing these without even knowing what she, why they…
— Please no wait a moment, no I should make it clear of course I have no way of knowing the conditions surrounding these trusts of your mother’s Mrs Joubert but, but in signing these papers in your capacity with these foundations the implication that you’re being taken advantage of beyond…
— A convenience…
— Well in a, perhaps in a manner of spea…
— A convenience yes, it saves Uncle John the trouble of finding trustees on the subway.
— Yes well, perhaps yes but certainly you do understand his wish to secure his financial position? You see in eight of ten previous years, his taxes plus charitable contributions had taken ninety percent of his net income enabling him to make a charity gift of some nineteen million dollars to…
— Oh honestly, charity just the word…
— Yes well I use it in its tax law connotation and of course since his bank holds the pension fund of the hospital where he’s a trustee, and his position as a director of this leading nonprofit health insurance program assures the hospital against nonpayment of…
— The idea of him ever giving away nineteen cents nineteen, nineteen peanuts nineteen anything if he had them he’d…
— No you see Mrs Joubert the point is that this particular nineteen million represented the market value of the securities constituting his gift he’d originally paid something like, something under half a million as an original investor and this approach merely enables him to avoid the substantial capital gains tax he would have been liable for if he’d sold them, and made his income for the following very prosperous year entirely tax free, you see the high personal tax rate, in setting up these foundations in view of the high personal tax rate he was subject to on the dividends from these securities it was decided that since a dividend in the form of stock was not considered income, he might authorize and receive a new issue of preferred at one hundred dollars par redeemable by the company at one hundred two which of course would not affect his control of, Mrs Joubert? you, you did want to know…
— Preferred stock doesn’t vote, yes. We had it in class, preferred stock doesn’t…
— Yes in this case however it appeared advisable for tax purp…
— Doesn’t sing doesn’t dance doesn’t smoke or drink or run around with women, doesn’t even…
— Pardon?
— Oh nothing Mister Beaton it’s all so, just so absurd so, lifeless, I can’t…
— Please I, Mrs Joubert I didn’t mean to make an emotional issue of it, the…
— Well it is! It is an emotional issue it simply is! because, because there aren’t any, there aren’t any emotions it’s all just reinvested dividends and tax avoidance that’s what all of it is, avoidance the way it’s always been it always will be there’s no earthly reason it should change is there? that it ever could change?
— Only, well, in this particular case as I was going to say it appeared advisable for tax purposes that this preferred issue paying six percent semiannually would have no voting rights unless four consecutive dividends were missed and of course in that case, the trustees would vote the stock, install new directors if they wished to and assume control of the extensive assets which…
— I think that’s your phone again, if this is all you want me to…
— I’m sorry yes, hello? Beaton… yes, yes just hold on a moment Dick, you did initial the second set Mrs Joubert?
— Oh dear… she opened her bag again digging for glasses, coming up with the wrong pair — I’m already…
— I’m sorry I thought you’d, these right here yes. Dick…? I did yes but I think this Endo divestiture has priority, he’s getting quite impatient about the Diamond tender and of course nothing can be… for you specifically to handle it as soon as you’re finished there yes, Frank Black’s doing most of the spadework and as soon as you… Yes originally yes, but they informed us the substantial tax write-off we proposed could be jeopardized by a suit with an original stockholder over sequestering the patents, that would probably drag the goodwill write-off down with it and the most sensible thing seems to be straight divestiture in connection with the Diamond tender once this decree has been… I know it yes but the sooner you can clear it up and get to Washington the better, we… you did yes she’s right here… I will yes, goodbye… I will, yes. That was Mister Cutler, he sends…
— Sends me kindest regards… she initialed, turned a page.
— He’s in Rome yes he, I’m terribly sorry Mrs Joubert did you want to speak with him? I didn’t even…
— What on earth about… she initialed, initialed.
— Well I, I don’t know of course I, he did ask me to tell you he hoped to be back in time to take you to the horse show and I think if your father is…
— Mister Beaton that’s what we’ve been talking about! he, Daddy still wants it all to be like it was when I rode at the Garden myself with that ghastly Ude girl, when her brother came down with Dick Cutler from Choate and, if he could see if Daddy could just see the only men I’ve met I can imagine getting into, into anything with them he’d die, one’s probably Freddie’s age he drinks and plays the horses his face is like the, he laughs and his face is just torment and, and his hands and the other’s a boy, a composer and he’s just a boy just all, all radiant desolation and he’s dear…