Free Middle Age by Joyce Carol Oates

is what truly matters to me . One of the photos was of a child of about eleven, evidently Roger’s daughter, an unsmiling little girl squinting in sunshine, oddly posed so that Marina surmised that another person, the ex-wife probably, had been scissored out of the scene; in another photograph, the girl was older, square-jawed and plain, with Roger’s small squinting eyes and thick coarse dark hair, now smiling tentatively; in the third and largest, the one that exuded the most hope, Roger and the girl, both in tennis whites, gripping racquets, were posed side by side squinting and smiling in front of a tennis net; the girl now looked to be about fourteen, almost as tall as her father. Marina said, “Your daughter?” and Roger said, without glancing at the photographs, “Yes.” He spread a bulky document of about twenty pages in front of Marina. Last Will and Testament of Adam Berendt . The date was April of that year. Roger said, “Possibly you know, Adam has left most of his estate to charitable organizations. His house and land to the Rockland Historic Trust, and enough of an endowment to establish and maintain it as an arts center. Other endowments to environmental organizations, the ACLU and related liberal causes, the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter, and so forth, exactly what you’d expect of Adam. Apart from the property on the river, which might be worth a couple of million dollars, I doubt that Adam has much of an estate, but I could be surprised. Lawyers, like priests, are often surprised. Death brings out not usually the worst in us, nor even the best, but the muted, the secret; you get used to surprises, which aren’t invariably unpleasant. But you’ll be relieved to learn, Marina,” Roger said, glancing sidelong at her, with such a look of strain that Marina couldn’t comprehend how this could be relief, “that Adam didn’t leave sums of money or significant gifts to any individuals, including his closest friends, or any of his possessions except ‘random works of art’ as he calls them, to be disposed of as his ‘personal executor’—you—sees fit. I’m Adam’s estate executor, as you know.”
    Marina said, uneasily, “He didn’t designate any heirs?—relatives?” “He did not.” “But we have a moral obligation to locate them, don’t we? I mean,
    
    J C O
    Adam’s relatives? To notify them of the—funeral.” “We can try to locate them. We’ll drive over to his house this morning, and see what we can find, if you’re comfortable with going through his papers so soon after, well, what happened yesterday, but Adam himself never supplied me with the names of any relatives, and you can be assured that I asked him, I asked him more than once, so I doubt very much that we’ll find what we’re looking for.” Marina objected, not liking Roger’s preemptory, lawyerly tone, “But we have to make the attempt. It’s our moral obligation. Even if Adam wanted to cut himself off from his past, his relatives have a right to be informed of his death, don’t they? He was only in his early fifties, at least one of his parents might be still living. From remarks Adam would sometimes make, without knowing what he said, when we were hiking especially, I have the idea he spent his childhood in a western state like Montana or Wyoming.” Marina considered, but decided against, telling Roger about the gift; she felt uneasy, guilty over it, and the secrecy of the transaction; the moral thing might be to return the property to Adam’s estate, somehow—but was it possible to give something to a dead man?
    Roger was saying, “This is more important, Marina. Adam’s will.”
    Roger had opened the document to its final pages where Adam’s characteristic scrawl Adam Berendt had been signed above testator . But other spaces, above witness and notary public, were blank. Marina said, “Adam has signed the will, but no one else? Why?” Roger said,