Last Will and Testament of Henry Hoffman

by John Tesarsch

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

When their reclusive father, Henry, shoots himself, the lives of three brilliant and unconventional siblings are upended. His daughter Eleanor finds a will: Henry has left his entire estate to a mystery woman. Hiding this from her brother and sister, Eleanor sets out to uncover the confronting truth about her father’s past.Henry, though, isn’t the only Hoffman with secrets. As his children fall out over their inheritance, they learn things about each other they could never even have imagined.The Last Will and Testament of Henry Hoffman is a story of love, loss and survival. Its subjects are those that affect us all: family conflict, guilt and redemption, and how trauma resonates across generations.

Release date: July 1, 2015

Publisher: Affirm Press

Print pages: 352

Sample

I

ELEANOR WAS UNABLE TO convince herself that she was entirely blameless for her father’s death.

When he was old, perhaps she didn’t spend enough time with him, letting weeks and even months drift past between those visits to his farm. Not that she’d been avoiding him. Just that she’d been so busy at work, not to mention writing her interminable thesis. It wasn’t as though she had any life of her own.

She last saw him in winter. After a two-hour drive from the city, on Friday evening she’d pulled up outside his house, bag in hand for a long and wet weekend. He’d hustled down the steps towards her and, for a moment, seemed about to hug her with an abandon he hadn’t displayed before. This was all very odd, as he’d never been that sort of father. Sure enough he stopped, two paces distant, drew himself back on his heels and stared at her through clouded, fish-head eyes. Almost out of habit she jabbered an apology, for whatever offence she may have caused him. He clenched his jaw and his eyebrows bristled, as if he was struggling with one of his mathematical equations, but he didn’t bother to reply. Instead, he turned abruptly and hurried back into the house.

Chilled, damp air from the mountains had drifted through the hallway, settling as thick as morning fog in every room of the old house except the kitchen, where a wood fire crackled in the corner. Sarah, her younger sister, dished up a few measly lumps of rubber chicken – her gifts had never extended to practical, everyday matters such as cooking – and they huddled around the rickety laminex table. Eleanor gagged on her first mouthful and reached for the pepper, just to make her dinner palatable, but there was none left.

The house was a shambles. Worse, far worse than when she had last visited. Or else she hadn’t paid enough attention back then. The chairs were scabbed with rust; the wallpaper was peeling; dust caught in her nostrils. There was a rancid smell, as though someone had left meat out of the fridge. Once, her father could have fixed anything with glue or string or a hammer, but he’d really let his standards slip.

He was staring at her, not all of the time, but only when he believed that she wouldn’t catch him. Now he also reached for the pepper and ground it vigorously, only to discover for himself that it was empty. Hadn’t he just seen her try?

‘You look worn out, Henry,’ she said.

From her eighteenth birthday, he had always insisted on her calling him Henry. As if she was on his level, an academic colleague. Really, though, it was just another trick he had of keeping his distance.

He ignored her – perhaps his hearing was getting worse – and turned to Sarah. ‘Any beer?’

‘No,’ she answered, ever the dutiful younger daughter. ‘I’ll get some more next week.’

He turned back to Eleanor. ‘What’s up?’

Typical. He never asked her anything personal, as if he didn’t care much about her anymore. ‘I’m still teaching French and German.’ She paused. ‘Aber leider wollen die Studenten nicht lernen.’

He grunted but didn’t respond, because he’d never wanted to talk with her in German, his mother tongue. It was only her persistence, at school and university and later in Frankfurt, that had enabled her to learn the language. Every time she’d tried to speak German with him, he had looked away and chuckled as though her accent was poor, not richtig Hochdeutsch, when surely it was nothing to do with her choice of words or her grammar or even her accent, but rather the difficulty lay with some event that had caused him to break with his past and to hide away in the mountains.

‘Hell,’ he muttered. ‘Do I have to beg for a drink?’ He got to his feet and shuffled away.

Eleanor waited until he was out of earshot: no point in having an argument. ‘I don’t know how you can cope with him.’

Sarah glanced at the floor and twirled her hair. ‘He has good days and bad days.’

‘You can’t throw your life away, trying to look after him.’ Eleanor gave up on the chicken. ‘You need help.’

Eleanor had a restless night in her narrow childhood bed. What should she do about Henry? He was even more erratic and unpredictable than last time. But it wasn’t his temper that worried her. No, it was the way he’d stared blankly at her when she’d arrived, as if for that agonising moment he couldn’t quite place her.

She’d waited far too long, hoping that Sarah would come to her senses and insist that it was time he went to a retirement home. Plainly, that would never happen. Sarah had unthinking, almost canine devotion, while their older brother, Robbie, just didn’t seem to care. So it was up to Eleanor, yet again, to act. It was time to intervene.

In the morning, she called all the local doctors listed in the Yellow Pages. No one was prepared to make a house call except Tom Lambert. He was the last name on her list – scuttlebutt had it that he’d once been addicted to painkillers – and she had only called him out of desperation.

When he arrived, Eleanor hurried down the path and intercepted him as he got out of his car, a bronze Commodore with rust patches bubbling under the enamel. He had grizzled sideburns and a comb-over, a cardigan and scuffed shoes, and a pronounced limp. He opened the boot of his car and hauled out the bulging leather bag of a travelling salesman on an overnight trip. The clasp was broken and his notepad fell into the dirt, and he swore under his breath.

‘I could use a cup of tea,’ he drawled, and picked at his teeth.

She already regretted calling him. If he was as rude as this to Henry there’d be trouble. She took him to the kitchen, made him his bloody tea and left to hunt for Henry. After searching the entire house, she scouted around outside and found him in the shed, rummaging through a dusty pile of old books. What should she tell him? As far as she knew, he hadn’t seen a doctor for twenty years, not since he’d sliced open his arm on the barbed-wire fence. But she might as well be frank, as he’d find out sooner or later. ‘There’s someone here to see you,’ she said. ‘A doctor.’

He drew himself up to his full height and stared at her with those rheumy, bloodshot eyes. Six foot three, with a barrel chest and arms that could throttle an intruder. She flinched, but didn’t back away. ‘I’m worried about you, living all the way out here. Time you had a check-up.’

‘Nothing wrong with me,’ he blustered. ‘Don’t waste your money.’

Like a lion tamer, she stared him directly in the eye. ‘If there’s nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about.’

It was surprising, even troubling, how easily he relented and followed her inside. As if she was now the parent. Or else he’d already lost interest in what they’d been arguing about.

Lambert was in the kitchen, wiping his nose with a torn handkerchief that he hastily stuffed into his pocket. Henry ignored him and retreated to the corner, where he warmed himself next to the fire. Meanwhile Sarah drifted in from the study.

‘Could you girls leave us alone?’ asked Lambert.

‘They don’t have to leave,’ Henry snapped.

‘Papa, it’s all right,’ said Sarah, and patted his wrist. ‘We’ll just be next door.’ She took Eleanor’s hand and dragged her into the living room.

Sarah’s old piano still took up half the room, and Eleanor wandered over and opened the lid. Some of the ivories were cracked and broken, so that the keyboard brought to mind a row of decaying teeth. She tapped out a scale and, even though she was almost tone-deaf, she could tell that the piano was horribly out of tune, and some broken strings buzzed like those of a sitar. Obviously Sarah hadn’t touched it for years: what a waste of talent.

‘He can’t look after himself, can he?’ asked Eleanor.

‘Of course he can.’

Eleanor didn’t want to argue, but she had to bring her little sister to her senses. ‘I don’t believe it. No, he’s entirely dependent on you.’

Robbie was brash and headstrong and had always clashed with Henry; Eleanor herself had rarely fought with him, but nor had she ever felt especially close – but Sarah and Henry, they had always shared a special bond. Both of them were introverts and they would sit at the kitchen table, each reading in silence, utterly contented with each other’s company. Like minds. Henry had been a great mathematician and Sarah alone had inherited his incandescent flash of genius, transmuted into musical ability. Robbie was successful in business, if you could believe his own reports, and Eleanor was writing her doctoral thesis, but their achievements had only ever been within the bounds of normality, and the result of effort rather than inspiration, whereas by the time she was a teenager Sarah had toured Japan and America and Europe, and had been lauded by revered elders like Abbado and Giulini and Ashkenazy.

Finally Sarah looked across at her: puzzled or annoyed, or both. ‘What of it?’ she countered. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? We’re happy here. We don’t need any interference.’

Eleanor persisted. ‘You have to think about yourself for a change.’

Hardly words of reproach, but they caused Sarah to respond with uncharacteristic venom. ‘Why don’t you stop thinking about yourself? What does it matter to you, if I look after him? After all he’s done for us?’

‘He shouldn’t let you put your life on hold.’

‘I’ve had enough of this.’ Sarah turned on her heel and hurried off.

Rather than call after her, Eleanor settled on the old green couch, mulling over the distance she felt not only from Henry, but now also from Sarah. Maybe she was jealous because she was forever the interloper, because she wasn’t equipped to understand them.

Poor Henry. Sarah was covering up for him. He was unshaven, had stale breath, that whiff of mildew about him. And the longer Sarah insisted that she could look after him, the more she would ruin her own life. Perhaps she had a self-destructive streak. Regardless, Eleanor had to persuade her that she had done enough and there was no shame in seeking professional help.

Henry’s voice echoed through the hallway. ‘Get out,’ he roared, ‘and don’t come back!’

Eleanor hurried to the kitchen and found Henry skulking next to the fire, while Lambert was already out the door. She caught up to him in the garden, next to the clothes line, with Sarah trailing behind her. ‘That’s the last time I’m coming here,’ he said.

‘What happened?’ asked Sarah.

‘I’ve just given him a cognitive test.’ It was so cold that Lambert’s breath fogged up his glasses, and he took them off and polished them with that filthy handkerchief. ‘At least I tried, but he didn’t let me finish.’

‘And?’ asked Eleanor.

Lambert put his glasses back on and peered at her with obvious sympathy. ‘He couldn’t remember his age, or write a short sentence, or copy a simple drawing. I’m sorry to say this, but your father could have dementia.’

Somehow Eleanor had expected this, or something like it. Still, hearing it from a doctor, that devastating word dementia, caused her heart to shudder.

‘I can’t yet be certain.’ Lambert lowered his voice. ‘There could be some other reason for his confusion. I’ll refer him to a specialist, who can run some tests.’

Henry appeared at the doorway and eyed them all suspiciously, each in turn. Surely he couldn’t have heard them from inside. They’d closed the door behind them – or had they? He strode towards Lambert and thrust out his chest, ready to throw a punch, until he broke off eye contact and looked away wistfully towards the mountains. ‘You can tell me straight,’ he said, ‘what you’re telling them.’

That afternoon, there was a violent rainstorm that ended as abruptly as it had started, the sort of downpour that cleared every scintilla of dust from the air so that you could see the ranges with miraculous clarity. Henry wandered in from outside, his coat drenched and his nose burnished red from the antarctic wind. He opened the pantry and took out a loaf of rye, and ransacked the fridge for a hunk of cheese and a jar of gherkins. After he shrugged off his coat, he joined Eleanor at the table as if nothing untoward had happened. He sawed away at the bread with a blunt knife – he’d always had trouble with knives, missing all those fingers on his right hand – balanced a lump of cheese on the bread and took a bite. His jaw muscles bulged and great knots of sinew rose and fell in his throat, as though he was a snake devouring its prey whole.

He turned to Eleanor. ‘You should make your sister play the piano again. She won’t listen to me.’

‘She’s busy enough.’

He left the table, rummaged through the cupboards and opened a bottle of wine. It was unlike him to be drinking in the afternoon. ‘What are you saying?’ His speech faltered. ‘That I’ve become a … burden to her.’

Random thoughts collided in her head, as if it was a bag full of loose change. Should she tell him it was time to shift to a nursing home? Make friends with other oldies, instead of rotting away in isolation on the farm? That he couldn’t lean on Sarah forever? To settle her nerves, she poured a glass of wine and gulped it down – a cheap, metallic red that set her teeth on edge.

‘Henry.’ There was a tremor in her voice; she couldn’t help herself. ‘Can I take you into town next week?’

‘Why?’ He hacked off another slice of bread.

She hesitated. ‘The doctor said you should have a few tests.’

He took another bite. ‘What for?’

‘Just a precaution.’

‘So they can put me down like a dog if I piss in my bed?’ He grabbed her wrist. Unnerving, his manic stare. ‘I won’t be locked up in a kennel.’

He took his coat and marched outside, leaving her alone at the table. Damn, she’d hashed it all up. Stupid, stupid. Should have shown more tact.

She cleared away the leftovers, washed and stacked the plates, wiped the benches – anything to keep herself busy and distracted. When there was nothing more to do, she trudged to her old bedroom, drew the curtains and threw herself on her bed. The window frame rattled with distant thunder and raindrops splintered on the roof – another storm front had arrived. The room was an ice-box, and she wrapped herself in blankets, tight as swaddling bands. It was strangely comforting that the contours of the mattress still fitted perfectly around her, as if the bedsprings remembered her shape.

Fatigue overwhelmed her, and she was ensnared by unpleasant dreams. The deputy principal told her she had to spend the weekend supervising a school camp and, when she refused, he fired her. She was evicted from her apartment because she couldn’t pay the rent. She had to pawn her collection of teacups, but dropped them on the way to her car and they shattered on the pavement.

She woke, unsettled, and lathered in a cold sweat. It was dark outside so she must have slept for hours. She lay on her back, staring at the contusions of cracked plaster on the ceiling, her joints aching as if she’d come down with the flu. So exhausted, she couldn’t get out of bed.

If Henry was still outside he might catch his death of cold, or become confused and lose his way. Should she run out and find him, coax him back? Perhaps she was worrying too much, because the rain had stopped and the wind had eased and, besides, he’d never been lost before. So she dozed off again and now her dreams were pleasant, about a holiday at a beach somewhere up north, with white sand and warm water and coconut palms. One of these days … Until suddenly she woke again, this time in shock, to the sharp and unmistakable report of a shotgun.

II

THE FUNERAL HOME WAS an old converted scout hall on the edge of town. It was all cream brick from the early sixties, with narrow windows tucked under the ceiling and rows of cheap vinyl seats. There had been no end of debate about whether the hall was suitable. Although Sarah preferred the Anglican church near the primary school, Robbie’s will prevailed, as always. ‘Our father wouldn’t want that,’ he’d insisted. ‘He never went near a church.’

Sarah was back on Zoloft after finding Henry facedown in the mud, with a shotgun blast to his head, and Robbie refused to give the eulogy because of all his issues with Henry over the years. It was no surprise that their mother, Rachel, said that she was too sick to fly down from Queensland – she was no help whatsoever. So the task of delivering the eulogy fell to Eleanor, even though she dreaded public speaking.

She tackled it like an undergraduate essay, writing a draft in longhand, double-spaced, that she amended and corrected for hours before typing it up and rehearsing it in front of the mirror. The problem was that the more she redrafted it, the more it became obvious that she had almost nothing to say about Henry’s life before she was born. He grew up in Switzerland, emigrated to Australia and became a professor: the few, disparate facts that she knew about those years barely filled a paragraph. And he’d never kept in touch with any family or friends from his distant past, so there was no one she could call to fill in the missing details.

Henry had been a recluse for so many years that few, if any, of the mourners had been close to him. Although some of them dabbed their cheeks with their handkerchiefs, surely it wasn’t out of any great sense of personal loss. Doubtless, some were more interested in catching up on the local gossip than the service. Their indifference made Eleanor’s assignment even harder, because she had to explain why the world was different, and poorer, now that her father was gone. She couldn’t allow herself a single glance at the coffin, lest she choke with tears, and read her typed notes verbatim, but the corrective braces inside her front teeth caused her to lisp and to stumble over the words.

There was an upright piano in the corner. Robbie had suggested that Sarah should play some Bach, so they wouldn’t have to rely on the usual elevator music, but she’d refused. As it turned out, the CD jammed when they were filing out behind the coffin. It was a miserable service, fit for a pauper, and hardly a celebration of Henry’s life.

Afterwards, there were club sandwiches and cups of tea. They had catered for fifty, but only a couple of dozen had bothered to come. Such a waste of food. The hall was freezing and everyone huddled together in small tight groups like cattle keeping out of the wind.

Eleanor was talking with her siblings when the celebrant, Bruno, wandered over. ‘Fine speech,’ he said. ‘Straight from the heart.’ He must say that to everyone, just to reassure them.

Robbie cornered him. ‘It’s a sin to take your own life. Isn’t it?’

Eleanor finished off her sandwich. ‘Not now,’ she warned Robbie. Meanwhile his wife, Carla, was chewing her bottom lip: she had learned not to interfere.

Once, Bruno had been a Lutheran pastor, until he lost his faith. Now he was yet another bush-block hermit, all shaggy hair and goat’s-milk breath, who passed the time writing letters to the local newspaper about anything from the lack of public transport to affordable child care. ‘Poor fellow,’ he said, then paused, perhaps admiring his own orotund voice. ‘Must have been suffering.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ Sarah lamented. ‘Didn’t he realise I would have looked after him?’

Another man interrupted them. Short and balding, with saloon-keeper spectacles and a nasty patch of eczema on his scalp. He introduced himself, but Eleanor didn’t catch his name. ‘Sorry about your loss,’ he said, handing her a business card.

‘How did you know my father?’ she asked.

He bounced on his heels, perhaps to give himself an extra inch of height. ‘I was his solicitor.’

She glanced at the name on the card. Arnold Chapman. ‘I never knew he had a lawyer.’

‘Well … there are certain things that everyone must attend to. I’m his executor.’

She put down her plate with a jolt. ‘You mean he had a will?’

‘But of course,’ said Chapman, evidently puzzled. ‘Everyone should have a will.’

‘What does it say?’ Even though she knew it was an unseemly question, she had to ask it.

He clicked his teeth with his tongue. ‘Sorry, but I can’t remember all the details. And now isn’t the best time … so give me a call. Make an appointment.’

A week later, Eleanor drove back to the farm to sort through Henry’s belongings. She would gladly have stalled for months, if not years, before making a start on this morbid task. That said, the sooner she helped Sarah to clear everything out, the better. Sarah was clinically depressed and might never recover while she was surrounded by all the books and tools and junk that Henry had accumulated over the years.

When Eleanor arrived, she wandered up the hillside to the bench where Henry had often watched the sunset. It was such an idyllic spot. With one sweeping glance you could admire the whole valley: the creek twisting around the red gums, the foothills of the ranges and, in the distance, the sunlight glinting from the roofs of the nearest town. The fields were lush and waterlogged, and the higher ground was veiled in mist. So lovely, it brought to mind Wordsworth and his descriptions of the Lake District. It had really dug its hooks into her, this landscape, and had inspired an organic – although reluctant – sense of belonging.

Nearly thirty years ago, when she was barely as tall as the ryegrass tangled in the fence line, Henry had taken her hand and together they’d walked up the hill to this bench. ‘I’ll never leave here,’ he’d told her. ‘And I’ll never leave you.’

It was shortly after Rachel had packed her only suitcase, tan leather with a tartan strap, kissed Eleanor and her siblings on their cheeks as they lined up on the porch, and marched off down the gravel, crunching her determined path towards the nearest road. Only Henry had decided not to wave her off. He must have believed that his time was better spent cleaning out the shed.

They’d all agreed that Rachel would return by nightfall. ‘Maybe,’ said Robbie, ‘she just needs to see a doctor.’ Sarah clutched her doll and nodded. But with each and every meal time, when dusk crept over the hills and Eleanor looked out the window towards the empty, yawning sky, she slowly came to understand, in her own simple terms, the finality of her loss.

Even though decades had passed since that frosty afternoon, Eleanor still felt like a little girl with pigtails, watching from the porch as her mother walked away. All the intervening years, all the hopes and dreams and disappointments, had been as inconsequential as a heartbeat.

As it turned out, Sarah was laid up in bed with a virus, so she wasn’t able to help clean out the house.

Eleanor began in Henry’s bedroom. In his wardrobe, two threadbare coats dangled aimlessly from their hangers, neither fit even for the Salvos. She rummaged through the jumble of shirts and shorts and pants, checking the pockets for cash receipts and coins and reminder notes dashed off on scraps of paper. Could there be anything worse?

Under a tangled pile of old pullovers she found a photo album, filled with typical happy snaps of a young family. Even Rachel always managed to smile at the camera. In the last photo Henry was holding Eleanor’s hand – she barely came up to his waist – and they were both laughing. How young and energetic he looked, with his brawny arms and his long wavy hair and his strong, angular jaw. That was how she should always remember him, not as an old man with the bewildered stare of a wounded beast.

Henry’s clothes still had his distinctive musky odour, and it was hard to believe he was gone forever. Instead, it felt like he had left the room to fetch a beer and would return any minute. It was distressing, that smell, and she had to get out of there, so she left off with his clothes and went to his study. This had been his sanctuary, where he’d kept his lofty distance from the world outside and even from his own family. It was crammed with all his books on physics and mathematics, and the task of clearing it out was also daunting.

All the old bills and dockets and brochures he had stuffed into the shelves could be thrown away, but there were other papers that Eleanor was uncertain about, and that she left in an archive box for Sarah. There were letters addressed to Henry from the university and Rotary and the local council, and among them was a letter from Rachel, dating back to the year she’d left, in which she accused Henry of driving her away. It was surprising that he’d been calm enough to fold up the letter neatly and keep it in his study, when it would have been more in keeping with his temper to tear it to shreds. Unnerving, to read it, like eavesdropping. It was written in two different inks and on two different types of paper. Rachel must have put it aside when she was halfway through, only finishing it days later when she had collected enough suitable insults.

Eleanor took a couple of deep breaths and forced herself to keep working through his papers. No sooner had she started again, than she found another envelope with the words Last Will and Testament printed on it in bold blue ink. When she took it off the shelf it had a peculiar, weighty feel, as though it didn’t contain a letter or a document but something more substantial, perhaps a collection of gold sovereigns. She hesitated, and began to pick open the seal.

There were footsteps in the hallway. ‘Do you want a drink?’ called Sarah.

‘No.’ Eleanor hastily buried the envelope under a stack of papers.

Sarah wandered in. ‘Anything wrong?’

‘Nothing, nothing at all. It’s just so sad.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Sarah wiped her nose with a crumpled tissue. ‘Take your time, I’ll be in the kitchen.’

Eleanor waited, listening to the footsteps retreat along the hallway, until they were no louder than the pulse thudding in her ears. Only then did she take out the envelope. When she opened it she found a single sheet of grey, flecked paper, thick as parchment.

It was surely one of those cheap self-help will kits sold by newsagents, with cookie-cutter legalese and blank spaces for personal details. Dated December last year. No mention of that lawyer, Arnold Chapman. She scanned the page. This is the Last Will and Testament of Henry Hoffman … I revoke all former wills and testamentary dispositions and I declare this to be my last will … She skipped to the next paragraph. After payment of my just debts, testamentary and funeral expenses, I give my entire remaining estate to KRISTINA MAIER.

Eleanor shuddered. She had never seen that name before, and had never heard Henry or anyone else mention it. But there it was, unmistakable, scrawled across the page in large capital letters, not in the failing longhand typical of Henry in his old age, but with obvious purpose and vigour, so that the nib of his pen had punctured the paper.

Henry had signed the will at the bottom of the page, and so had . . .