A Dual Inheritance (22 page)

They sat in silence while the voices all around them grew louder, anticipating a second set.

She stamped out her cigarette. “I had an abortion.”

When she found a suitable lack of anything judgmental in his expression, she continued. “It was when Hugh and I were, you know, it was in boarding school. Or right afterward, at any rate. I had an abortion.”

“Does he—”

“Of course he knows.” Her face and neck flushed so quickly, it was as if—by his asking that question—Ed had lit a flame.

Helen took up another cigarette and Ed took up the matchbook. How he wished he enjoyed smoking.

“At the time, I didn’t tell him. I guess I disappeared.”

“You did?” said Ed, suddenly angry on Hugh’s behalf. “He must have been devastated.”

“I guess,” agreed Helen. “That’s what he’s said.”

“But …?”

“It’s hard to picture Hugh devastated. Isn’t it?”

He had to nod. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I mean I’m sorry that you were … in that position.”

Her face softened considerably. “Thank you.”

“Helen,” Ed asked, “are you pregnant?”

She shook her head. Then she inhaled softly, the red cigarette tip barely drawing.

“Then …?”

“I’m afraid that Hugh doesn’t—that he doesn’t really need people
around him. Does that make any sense? Sometimes I imagine being with him and he isn’t there somehow. I’m afraid,” she admitted. “I’m afraid of being alone.”

“Well, then, you won’t be,” he said.

“You think that’s how it goes?”

“I do. You’ll get what you need.”

She smiled. “I love that about you.”

“What.”

“You are just the most convinced person.”

“Not the most convincing?”

She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, as if she were trying to see right through him, and for one disorienting moment he was afraid she could. “That, too,” she said. “You are mighty convincing.”

“See,” Ed said, leaning forward, “you’re feeling better already.” Her neck and cheeks were still hot, still pink. “I can tell.”

“D’you want to know something?”

He nodded slowly, unnecessarily.

“That summer when it happened, I went to stay with my aunt for a while. She lives in this old harbor town in Connecticut; austere and completely depressing. Or maybe it was just my mood.” She laughed tightly. “Anyway, black mood or no, you can stroll into the town square and see not a soul, even in the middle of the day. There was a man who I imagined was a war veteran—he had one leg and the rest of him was very upright, but he seemed like a vagrant somehow. I would always pass him everywhere—in the morning when I went to buy bread, in the evening, along the shore, he was always there, and do you know what? Even though he had to have been at least forty years old and he was half decrepit, really unkempt, he looked just like Hugh, like Hugh gone mad and lame. I kept trying to avoid him, but there he was wherever I went.” Helen was looking past him, and he imagined her gaze traveling past the door to those narrow stairs, up the stairs, out into the streets, over the bridge, and onto the expressway, right onto that hulking jet plane.

“Hugh’s fine,” he said.

“I know that.”

“He’s fine.”

She nodded. “He never told you about his mother, did he?”

“Well, I know that she died, if that’s what you mean. I know that he barely remembers her.”

“And do you know how she died?”

Ed shook his head. He realized he had no idea.

“She drank herself to death. Or at least that’s what they told him. Who even knows how she did it. Who knows. That family somehow manages to keep everything very very quiet.”

“All he’s said is that he can’t remember her. And that his aunt May was there.”

“Well,” she said, “that may well be true. His aunt is a lovely person; I’ve met her several times. But think about this: His mother drank so much for the first five years of Hugh’s life that she died from it. Granted, she’d had a long head start—she was forty-three when she had Hugh, you know—but those first five years of Hugh’s life: Those were the years that did her in.”

Ed heard clicking, and it was as if, for a moment, he was back in Adams House, waiting for Hugh. There was the familiar sound of the record player in the background—click and pause, click and pause, the moment before Hugh took time to change the record, no matter what kind of rush they were in. Ed recalled not so much the music, though the choice almost always surprised him, but the silent moment before hearing a brand-new sound. Debussy, Ravel, Bill Evans, Roy Orbison; Ed remembered names but at that moment could conjure nothing but the clicking. Then he realized his own jaw was clicking, over and over again.

Helen’s stem wrists and lily hands lay on the table and he touched them, covered them up, as if this was a test and he was hiding his answers—his precious answers—as if all he needed was right here, and there was his breath, fast and tight, then rushing forward.

“Hugh’s fine,” he said. “You both are.” But
Jesus
is what he thought.
Jesus Mary and Joseph
.

He slept later than he’d wanted to, almost late enough to miss Ira’s ride to East Hampton. He’d been looking forward to this day out of town for weeks. A beach still sounded great—less so a party—but he was focused on the sea, how (despite having to keep his bandaged finger dry) it would clean him up, clear out his head, and offer some perspective. He knew he needed distance: from his room and the familiar innards of the city—the underground sausage smell and nuts for sale and soda sweating into flimsy napkins discarded underfoot; that subway going and going and going—but most importantly from this past week; the nights had felt too important. He had climbed that narrow stairwell behind Helen before the second set. He had memorized her as if she were yet another piece of crucial information, and—after Helen tried and failed to light a cigarette, sending them both into drunken peals of laughter—Ed had hailed her a cab. What a rushed and completely (could there be any other kind?) anticlimactic goodbye.

“What’s eating you?” asked Ira, during a stretch of no traffic on the expressway. “You were the one who was late. You should be groveling.”

“I’m working on it. I’m getting ready to grovel.”

“Okay, then. Wouldn’t want to rush you. Wouldn’t want to be
vulgar
.”

“What the hell d’you mean by that?”

“You spend nearly all of your time around a bunch of tense WASPs.”

“And?”

“You’re not afraid of it rubbing off on you?”

“No,” Ed said. “Christ, Ira, no, I’m not. I’m trying to work a goddamn
job
is what I’m trying to do.”

Ira nodded, focused on the road.

“What.”

Ira shook his head.

“Just say it.”

“I only wonder how you can stomach it.”

“Stomach
what
.”

“It doesn’t bother you that they see you as—well, you know—that Harvard Jew that Ordway hired in order to make his company some real Jew money?”

Ed shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. Not for a second. Now would you please back the fuck off?”

Once they’d made it past the many houses and gas stations and outcroppings of stores and new construction, they were surrounded by farmland, and it was calming him down.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Ira said.

“No, it’s fine.”

“I am sorry.”

“Okay.”

“It’s just that you’ve been an ass since you got in the car.”

“Yeah, well.” Ed put his good hand out into the air, feeling the speed, the hot breeze. “An old friend was in town this week. I’m afraid I’m paying.”

“I thought you never went out during the week.”

“It was a really good friend.”

“From Boston?”

“That’s right,” he said, watching the fields, orderly green rows of crops about which he knew nothing, “an old pal from Boston.” He thought of how he’d accused Hugh of keeping Helen a secret, and now here he was doing the same.
What is it about her?
He put this question to himself, downright resentfully, and came up with only this: She made him feel strongly that there would never be enough of her. What crumbs there were inspired the most basic of impulses: to hoard.

“Okay, let’s get ourselves together, man,” urged Ira. “Do you think Dick and Sarah go inviting everyone to their house?”

“To be honest, I guess I did.”

Ira laughed and drove faster, but it still wasn’t fast enough. It was good, Ed knew, that he wasn’t at the wheel.

As they approached the house, Sarah—the sassy broad from the ball game—and Dick waved them into a field where a shingled farmhouse had been freshly painted white. It was an all-American vision corrupted or perhaps made more spectacular by the sight of their hosts, clearly eccentrics
(he’d somehow missed this at the ball game—Dick had been wearing a baseball cap at the stadium, and now his hair, revealed, was a white nimbus, a true Einsteinian spectacle). “Welcome,” they cried, offering booze and snacks and inflatable balls and towels and girls out back. He’d never been in such a house. Paintings and sculptures covered every available surface. Abstract oils hung beside seashore watercolors, wire and metal sculptures sat beside enormous bowls of lemons (they had a thing for lemons), and books and books were not only on shelves but stacked on the floor and tables. There were collections: Hotel ashtrays, fountain pens. A bright yellow telephone. He wanted to call Helen just to hear her breathe, just to hear her shout,
Who is this
? into the silence of the telephone line. But Helen was on the way to Idlewild, on her way to the other side of the world, and instead of calling Helen he was telling Sarah how pleased he was to be here.

“It’s the end of summer and you’re terribly pale,” she said. “Poor dear, it isn’t right. Especially with your wonderful olive complexion. Why, I bet you are as dark and regal as a Negro when you put in the time.”

Ed wasn’t sure what to say to this, but he understood he was supposed to flirt with her, that this was what she wanted. And she was easy to flirt with, decades ahead of him and nobody’s fool in an orange caftan, with tits still saying hello.

“Come,” said Sarah, taking his arm and leading him out toward the back of the house. Through the screen door he saw figures in shadow against the bright sun, figures that, when Sarah opened the door, came to life in a dizzying array of mostly young people in various states of summer undress, playing badminton and croquet, or mixing themselves drinks, waving away barbecue smoke while puffing on cigarettes. And there on line for the barbecue, waiting patiently with an empty paper plate, was a girl he knew. There was Polly—Polly from Ordway Keller!—so out of context that at first glance he thought she was someone from Dorchester. She evoked that same familiar response before he realized it was a new and still-mysterious familiarity, because all he
knew was what she ate for lunch and how she answered the phone with the slightest of accents that told him only that she wasn’t from New York or New England. “Polly,” he cried out, “hey, Polly,” and Sarah looked delighted.

“You know each other!” cried his host, and immediately glided away, calling out gaily to someone named Armande.

“Mr. Cantowitz,” said Polly, blushing all the way down to her chest, which was—bikini top!—on full display.

“Ed,” he said. “Please, call me Ed. I mean, take a look around you.”

“Okay, then,” she said. “Ed.”

“Some party, huh?”

“They’re very social,” she said, before blushing again. “I mean, obviously.” She smiled.

They stood together in silence, in grill smoke, and when it was Polly’s turn at the grill she chose a frankfurter, and Ed had one, too. Her nose was upturned and seemed permanently sunburned, which was actually very pretty and made her look like a kid. He hadn’t noticed this at the office, and he wondered if she covered it with powder. They drank spiked lemonade and ate frankfurters and told each other knock-knock jokes. At the beach they rode waves, and when Ed wanted to get out, Polly stayed in and swam some more. He watched her. The sun was just warm enough on his salty skin; the spiked lemonade had taken the edge off the previous night.

“You’re some swimmer,” said Ed, handing her a towel. She shook water from her ear.

“I grew up in Florida.” She shrugged. “Not much else to do.”

“That sounds like the life.”

“It’s all right. I like it better here; there’s more going on.” She sat down beside him. “How about you?” she asked, running her hands over her hair. It was such an unexpectedly confident gesture. Her back was strong; as she lifted her arms, he saw the small muscles moving. He also thought of Helen on Fishers Island and wondered if he’d ever get over that dream of his, the dream that began something inside him that was,
in fact, terrible. Though he’d been living with that feeling for longer, it was far less recognizable than this, right now, by the sea. He felt as if he should touch Polly, and he did; he could.

“I like you,” he said.

Which might have changed his life for the better, might have brought him to Florida during the winters to eat fried-fish sandwiches, to drink fresh orange juice, to tour, along with her beloved father and brothers, the local military base—all of which Polly had described to him over the course of this lovely day. But: During the evidently annual viewing of Dick and Sarah’s travel footage, projected on the white shingle of their farmhouse, Polly had leaned over, smelling of melted butter, and whispered rather sheepishly, “I’m staying with a girlfriend’s parents.”