A Dual Inheritance (30 page)

She laughed.

“What.”

“I guess you’ll just have to take that chance, now, won’t you?”

He stopped at Connie’s apartment on his way home. He didn’t know if she’d be there, he wasn’t even sure he wanted her to be, but when a doorman—not Rodrigo—told him that he could go up, Ed knew what he had to do.

Connie was too smart for the bullshit he’d been offering, and though Ed knew this, he wasn’t sure if she might play a little bit dumb for the sake of believing in him. He knew if she did that, he was going to have an even harder time coming clean, and so, when she greeted him coldly, he was relieved.

“Connie,” he said, going in for some kind of clumsy embrace, and she turned toward the kitchen before he had to decide what kind.

“I’ll get you a beer,” she said.

“That would be terrific.” He tried not to sound too grateful.

She brought him a bottle, even though she knew he liked his beer in a glass, and he took a sip, stalling. “Let’s sit down,” he said.

“Fine.”

Her couch was beige suede and he ran his finger one way, then another, creating and erasing the same wobbly line. “I love this couch.”

“Ed,” she said. “Please.”

“Connie, I—”

“Just be a man and say the words, Ed. We’ll both still be sitting here after you do.”

“You’re right,” he said, sitting up straighter. “We will.”

“You met someone else.”

“I met someone else. How did you know that?”

Connie just looked at him; her face was not hardened, she had the nicest-looking freckle on her neck, and for that moment he was fairly sure he was making a mistake by closing this door. But then—as certainly and inexplicably—the moment passed.

“I know you met someone else because I know you,” Connie said, not unkindly. “I know you bolted after what happened between us, and I know that you would have done anything to find someone else so that you wouldn’t have to be totally alone when you backed out of this.”

“No,” Ed said, “I swear that isn’t how it is. It’s been one week—less than a week. How could I have—it was just the strangest circumstance—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Okay,” he said. “Fair enough.”

“Don’t call me for a very long time, okay?”

“If I don’t call you for a very long time, do you think we can be friends again?”

“I doubt it,” she said.

“That would break my heart,” he said.

“Your heart is already broken,” she said, with a tone of pity that he’d never quite shake. “Remember?”

That same evening, the first Friday in November, he approached Jill’s address, and he noticed the russet trees and the one denuded ginkgo with its fan-shaped leaves fallen to the sidewalk. He noticed the relative smoothness of the concrete, fouled only by a smear of dog shit. He noticed two teenage boys—one carrying a basketball—hustling at a good clip. The air felt cleaner somehow, and he wondered if it had rained while he’d been in the shower. He checked to make sure of the address, even though it had long ago been fixed in his brain, and as he walked soberly up the stairs, he realized this townhouse was, in fact, a more modest version of the one Jill had parked herself outside only one week ago. He’d brought her a bottle of Bordeaux, which now seemed unoriginal. Shouldn’t he also have at least brought some flowers? She was making him dinner. It was autumn in New York.

He was greeted by a taller, darker, boy version of Jill, wearing jeans and some kind of shirt that suggested a life of picking fruit and sleeping in one’s car. “Howdy,” he said. “Ed?”

“Howdy … Jill’s brother?” asked Ed, extending his hand.

“One of them.”

“How many are there?”

“She didn’t tell you?” he asked. “Talk about insulted.”

Jill came forth in a red apron and kissed Ed on the cheek. “This is my kid brother, Mark,” she said. “He’s a junior at Columbia, and when he’s not smoking grass, he shows up, sniffing around for food.”

“Nice introduction,” said Mark. “Though,” he said, stifling a laugh, “basically true. And, by the way, we do have an older brother, too. Don’t forget Jeremy.”

“No,” said Jill. “Of course not.”

“And Jeremy is …?” asked Ed lightly.

Jill took an audible breath. “Jeremy lives somewhere in Canada after dodging the draft but won’t tell us where. Our parents’ nerves are shot. Soooo … you look great,” she said. “You didn’t have to wear a suit, you know.”

“Well, you didn’t give me much to go on: Is it a party? Is it just us? And, look, given the option of being overdressed or under, you know I’ll choose over. You’ve figured out at least that by now, I’d imagine.”

“Yes,” said Jill. “Yes, I have.”

“Take off your tie, man,” suggested Mark.

“No thanks,” said Ed.

Her apartment was the first floor of this townhouse, and with its fireplace and French doors and garden, it reminded him of Boston, which he almost said but didn’t. He didn’t want to talk about that time at the Mervas’, even in the abstract, even just to compare the houses. He tried to imagine describing that time in his life, the time spent with Hugh and Helen, but any description, he knew, would only serve to scrape away its clarity; words would dilute the meaning. Mark turned up the hi-fi until the apocalyptic tone of the Doors threatened to bring down Ed’s mood. Mark was excitedly recounting how Jim Morrison’s death was obviously not from natural causes, and Jill—who was disconcertingly well informed—was disagreeing. Ed was eating all the cheese. He could barely recognize the music of the Doors, let alone have any kind of conversation about its members. They drank the bottle of Bordeaux. When Ed asked Mark what he was studying, he answered vaguely that he wasn’t so sure anymore. This wasn’t what Ed had pictured when he’d set out for the evening. About an hour in, Ed took off his jacket and tie; he rolled up his sleeves. He had to physically readjust himself in order to continue paying attention.

But then Mark said, “Okay, I’m taking off. I volunteered to be part of a psychological study. I really dig the grad student, so I figured it couldn’t hurt my chances with her. Do you think that’s unethical?”

“Yes,” said Jill. “Definitely.” Jill’s laugh was kind of loopy, and Ed had no trouble imagining her as an adored older sister, an excellent audience from the start.

“Ed,” Mark said, clapping Ed on the back, “you’d better hope that chicken isn’t underdone, man.”

“That was one time!” said Jill. “You’re so ungrateful,” she said, “and you smell, Mark, you really do.”

She walked him to the door, where there was some mumbling and giggling before Mark was gone, and—nearly simultaneously—the record finished and Jim Morrison blessedly stopped singing. Ed closed his eyes, relishing the silence. When he opened them, Jill was standing in the doorway. “Long day?” she asked.

He sat up straighter. “Is anyone else coming? I hope not. You are very distracting in that apron.”

She smiled graciously. She was obviously used to compliments, had learned long ago how to properly accept them. “Mark seems like a hippie, but he’s only into free love for himself. He insisted on checking you out. I apologize if it was obvious.”

“How did I do?”

“Shit,” she said, “I forgot to set the timer. How long do you think you’ve been here?”

“About an hour and a half,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Ninety-five percent.”

“Good enough for me. Let me set it now and then I can put the rice on.”

He followed Jill into the kitchen and watched her baste a chicken, set a timer, measure out cups of water, rice. Her movements were intermittently languid and erratic. Salt was overpoured. A pot’s lid went clattering to the floor. She struggled with a corkscrew and, when finally victorious, spilled some of the newly opened wine. Ed noticed, too, the silver art deco containers for coffee and sugar, dahlias overflowing from a bright-green vase. There were three framed black-and-white photographs
on the wall next to the stove: a bridge Ed didn’t recognize, a set of train tracks, and something that looked like undulating sand, shot up close. The blacks of the images were so deeply black, and the whites had so many subtle changes, they almost looked iridescent. “Those are something,” Ed said. “Do they have a story?”

“Oh, I guess so. I mean, I took them. The bridge is in Prague, which I really loved. The train tracks are in Germany, which—for obvious reasons—I did not love, but I couldn’t stop taking pictures of those tracks; I took way too many. Then I had to print all the negatives, and now I can’t bring myself to throw any of those prints away, no matter how lousy the shot.”

“That makes sense.”

“What does?”

“That you want to hold on to them. Why
not
hold on?”

“Well, first of all, there’s something obviously morbid about them, and second, they take up space.”

“People keep things for far less valid reasons.”

“Like what? What do you hold on to?”

“Me?” He thought about the pieces of Helen’s note, collected, taped together, and sealed in a manila envelope three times their size. He thought of the yellowing receipts and cocktail napkins and books and books of matches; he thought of how the one photo he had of her was also of Hugh and him. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m just talking.”

“You’re good at talking,” she said, “aren’t you?”

He looked at Jill and tried to tell whether or not she was making fun of him. Her face was a beautiful blank. Her cheeks boasted
nearly
invisible fine white fuzz; he’d identified this—yet another of her more lovely and original aspects—when, bathed in the last of the setting sun, she’d opened the first bottle of Bordeaux. “I can shut up when I need to.”

“I know,” she said softly. She refilled their wineglasses. And even though there was more work to be done, more basting and stirring near the hot stove, she took off her apron. She was wearing a silky navy dress with a splashy print. One strap fell off her shoulder; she let it stay there.

He felt a tightening in his chest, but it wasn’t panic, not exactly. It
was helplessness. He held himself back from her and, for a moment, resented that he had to.

“Tell me about the last photograph.”

“Oh, it’s just fabric from one of my dresses. I’m not sure why I took that one, but it’s my favorite.”

“Mine, too.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “I thought maybe it was sand, that you’d taken it somewhere in the desert. These are really very good; ever think of being a professional photographer?”

“Nope,” she said, without hesitation.

“Well,” he said, smiling—because he appreciated her self-knowledge, her unabashed confidence—“anyway, they’re very good.”

“Thank you.”

“When did you do all the traveling?”

“After I graduated from high school. My grandparents took me. It was their gift. Jeremy had gone with them two years before I did.”

“How terrific.”

“I know,” said Jill. “I know. I always felt so bad that Mark never had his chance to go. I even go as far as to think maybe he’d be different.… I don’t know; they were both sick by the time Mark graduated. Anyway, it
was
wonderful. They spoiled me.”

Ed shook his head. “You don’t seem spoiled.”

“I don’t?”

“No. You seem … impressive.”

“Thank you.”

“Even your apartment. This is a real home,” he said.

“As opposed to a holding pen?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. Of course I do.”

She sat down in one of the rattan chairs, looking briefly disoriented.

“Jill?”

“It was my grandparents’ place until they died. One after the other, my grandmother first. I was in my last year at Vassar, and before my
grandfather died, I promised him I’d keep this place up beautifully, that even while I was in law school, I’d keep it just so. And he told me no—don’t worry about keeping it like anything. Just make it yours.”

“I can’t imagine,” Ed said, and what he was thinking was how he couldn’t imagine having so much so early on—not only the European tour and charming inherited apartment but also having such kindness—from anyone aside from his mother. “I can’t imagine how much you must miss him.”

“I do,” she said, rising to choose a wooden spoon from a drawer full of only wooden spoons. “Anyhow, I hate how most girls think of their homes as holding pens until married life. Even girls with their own money”—she paused to taste a simmering sauce—“like me.”

They stood in the kitchen and Jill held his gaze, waiting—he supposed—to see what he’d say in reaction to her candor. He took her hand and held it, listening to the stove fan and faint sound of traffic. “No one’s like you,” he said, suddenly serious, even somber.

“Aw,” she said, “you’re so sweet.”

“Sweet?”

“Sweet.”

“You sound like you’re talking to a puppy or a kid.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not. I’m not ridiculous.”

“I never said you—”

“You are impressive. I am crazy about you. You are seriously goddamn impressive to me. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you, but come on,” she insisted, “you said something sweet, did you not?”

He swallowed his urge to continue this. He told himself to let it go.

It was hot in this kitchen, he’d been on display for the deadbeat brother, and Jill hadn’t even reassured him of the kid’s approval. Why should he have been on display like that? The two of them chattering at the front door, so obviously about him?

“Why do you like me?” he asked. Suicide.

But, somehow, it wasn’t. She didn’t look uncomfortable. Instead, she put her arms around his neck as if they were about to start dancing or—it did occur to him—boxing. They were exactly the same height.

“I’m not sure,” she said, looking at him dead-on. “Maybe it’s your appetite.”

He held himself back from questioning this or from asking her for more. They were close enough that for one near painfully fine moment he could feel her long lashes brush against his cheek. When she kissed him and he realized that her initiative surprised him, he felt slightly stung at the realization and so continued holding back, until he realized that she was being—for the first time all week—utterly straightforward.

“Oh,” he relented. “My God.” Then he pulled her to him, hard.