Inheritance (68 page)

'"Oh." ife tried to decide where to look. *'Suie. I, uh, I have an appomtment, so . . . sure. Have a nice time." Confiised, a little soued, he disappeared into the crowded lobby.

Leni moved her arm from Ben's grasp. 'I'd rather have a drink."

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*^Good. So would I."

They walked without speaking into the Oak Room, and when itiey were seated in the bar Leni studied the room as if she had never seen it before. Ben admired her sleek, angular elegance, the perfect bow of her silk blouse, the way she contained her emotions—embarrassment or anger? he wondered—the only sign of them the flush across her high, prominent cheekbones. "Vodka and tonic?" he asked.

She smiled faintly at his remembering. *Thank you."

They were silent again until their drinks were before them. •*I suppose you think you've done a good deed," Leni said.

"I don't know," he said frankly. "I didn't think about it."

*Then think about it now.'*

"All right." He contemplated her. "I don't suppose this was a first. You want me to think about it? That won't take long. I ftdsk it's a goddam shame that a very classy lady makes her body a playground for— '* j Her drink splashed onto the table. "How dare you talk to me like that! Who do you think you are? You don't know anything about—"

"I know you're Allison's mother, she loves you and thinks you're perfect and— **

"Don't. Don't say that. I'm not perfect." She gave him a small smile. "I don't want to be; it would be such a burden."

("Well, you don't have to worry about it," he said coldly. "It's a burden you don't have." I She looked at him wonderingly. He was furious, and in his anger he seemed very young. 'There are so many things you don't understand," she said.

"How can I? You don't talk to me; I hardly know you, after all this time. Why the hell are you doing this to yourself? My God, the thought of you . . . how many hotel rooms . . . how many beds . . . how many studs pawing you like a <^eap—^" "Stop it!" she exclaimed. "You sound like— '* She laughed j.jinervously. "Like a lover."

,r! "How about a son-in-law?" he fiung at her. "Or anybody in your family who cares about you. How often do you do it?"

"Whenever I feel like it," she snapped. "Whenever it pleases me."

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Judith Michael

**Why? Why the heU do you—?"

"I (k)n*t know," she said, surprising herself. "But it shouldn*t make any difference to you. If I'm satisfied— **

"Are you? Satisfied, happy, proud? Everything wonderful in your life?"

"I told you it*s none of your business!"

"The hell it isn't; I care about you, and that's enough to make it my business." He turned sharply as the waiter appeared. **Tiie same for both of us." He gazed at Leni. "Ever since I met you, something about you reminded me of something—I don't even know what—but you're important to me. And you're important to my wife. And if you ttunk I'm going to let you go around like a goddam call girl— **

"Oh, Ben, for heaven's sake, stop it." Leni shook her head. *This is embarrassing, but it's not a Greek tragedy. I'm the same person you've known since you married Allison, and if I've disappointed you I'm sorry, but you'll get over it. We're not a faniily of saints or gods, you know; don't ask so much of us."

Ben stared into his drink. Once he had hated them all: the name Salinger was enough to set him shaking with fiiry. Now they were his family, and he wanted them to be everything a fanoily should be. Felix was different; Felix didn't fit; but the rest of them had to be perfect.

"Besides," Leni was saying, "are you so above reproach you can demand perfection of us? Are you always honest? Do you do nothing that can be criticized?"

He looked up and met her eyes, then looked away. "I want you to make me part of your fainily. But you don't, not really; you watch me as if you think I'm about to attack you or take something from you. Isn't it good enough that I'm in love with Allison? £)oesn't that make me good enough to be close to you, too? I want a whole family, not part of one, but you don't like me. I think I understand why Felix doesn't accept me, but why the hell don't you?"

"Why are you here?" Leni asked.

"Here?"

"Married to Allison."

"Because I love her. She's my wife; we have a son. What the hell kind of question is that?"

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"Why did you meet AUison?"

Ben*s voice grew cautious. "She told you how we met.'

"You didn't arrange to meet her?"

"Arrange—? What the hell does that mean? As if I knew who she was? How would I know who she was?" He stopped, hearing himself protest too much. "Did you wonder that with her first husband?"

"No. But it turned out her first husband married her for her money."

"And you think I did."

"I don't know. I don't know what you want from us."

"Love. A family. People I care about who care about me."

"That's all? From the beginning?"

"From the beginning," he said evenly. He didn't care anymore about lying to Leni. He had fallen in love with Allison —he hadn't expected to, but he had—and that was all that was important. He wouldn't lie about his two years with Allison, but he'd lie all he had to about the years before that.

Leni shook her head. "I'm sorry, Ben, but I don't believe it. There was something about you, that first day at the airpcnt. You didn't look as if you were in love with Allison; you were a lot more interested in the rest of us. You looked . . . careful. And cautious. As if you were trying to memorize us and figiffe out who'd be on your side. As if you were putting on an act."

"That's not true! Oh, what the hell, I don't know what I looked like but I was meeting all of you for the first time and I was nervous—anybody would have been—and anyway, who are you to accuse me of putting on an act when you're die one who's been pretending: ttie loving wife, the loving mother, the lady —dodging in and out of hotel rooms—^"

"You're so much like your father," Leni said clearly. "So full of fire."

"Myfather?"

"And you look so much like him. I tried to think you didn't, but of course you do."

"My father? What the hell do you know about my father?*'

"We were lovers. I was nineteen and he was—^"

"What? Wait a minute. You and my father were ... Is this some crazy kind of joke?"

Judith Michael

**I know it sounds like—"

•*You knew my father and you were lovers? Bullshit. What about my mother? And me? Where was I?**

"Your mother had left Judd because he was drinking. You were living with her; you were only eight, almost nine. I met Judd and fell in love with him, and we lived together for a year. I loved him"—her voice caught and she stopped and then went on—^"more than anyone I've ever known."

Ben could not take it in. "You knew my father? And you never told me?"

**I was waiting. I thought you'd found us because of Judd. I didn't know why, but I couldn't think of any other reason for such an incredible coincidence. And I didn't know how to talk to you about him. I've never talked about him to anyone; I diifai't know anyone who might have understood what it was like, being with him and loving him even when so many things were wrong." She looked at Ben. "Your hair grows the way his did, and you have almost the same profile, and that little line between your eyes, and your smile ... He was terribly unhappy, but for a while what we had was lovely; for a while we did have love . . . and hope. . . .**

Ben locked at his hands, remembering his father's haunted eyes the last months of his life. "*However long we were loved,'" he murmured. " 'It was not long enough.'"

•*What? What did you say?"

"It was a poem my father liked. He said it was about a dream he had once of a girl with soft . . ." His voice faded away and he stared at Leni with stunned eyes. "With soft hands and a love that wouldn't die. That was you. That was you. I can't believe . . . You were with him, in that hole in the Village, with the broken chairs— '*

**And the mattress on the floor." She smiled wistfully. "It was my one attempt at rebellion. Judd said I couldn't keep it op, and he may have been right; I wish I could know for sure whedier I was a real rebel or only playing at one. But he sent: me away, and I went back to my parents and sleeping in ordinary beds and eating ordinary meals at ordinary times, and I then I made a proper marriage. I've never been a very brave ; person, Ben."

He made a quick gesture with his hand; he would have.'

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liked to talk about that, but not now. "What was he like? He didn't talk about himself much, and I've forgotten a lot."

Leni told him everything she knew about Judd. She recreated that small dilapidated apartment, the moments of sweetness diat had brightened it, and the unhappy ones that had made it seem darker and more cramped, a prison for Judd, with Leni trying to be the angel who could free him. She made Judd seem as rcal as if he were sitting at the table with them: his classic golden looks, ravaged by alcohol and rage; his tenderness and her adoration; their laughter in the days and even weeks when he could overcome the corrosive anger inside him; the poetry he quoted that she still remembered; their dreams of a trip to Europe and a new Ufe that both of them knew would never take place; the books they read together and the jokes they shared; their quarrels when he drank too much; the passion he taught her on that mattress on the floor; the way he frightened her, and himself as well, when his anger swelled and seemed to consume him from within.

*'He told TOR about that," Ben mused aloud. He had forgotten where he was as he listened to Leni's soft reverie; he had been recalling his father, feeling envious of Leni for knowing Judd better than he ever had, and gripped again by the helpless anger and terrible loss he had felt when Judd moved out of the house and they saw each other only once or twice a week—and then even that was snatched from him when he was thirteen and Judd died.

He remembeied that day. He'd gone to see him with a book he'd stolen from a sidewalk book stand outside the Aigosy because it was his fadier's birthday. He found him on tbe mattress, lying on his stomach, very cold. He tried to close his eyes, but they wouldn't stay closed. He could still feel the softness of his father's eyelids as he tried to close them; he could still taste the salt of the tears he had sobbed, alone with his father's body. Reliving it all, he dropped his guard over the present. "^He told me all about his anger and how it was eating him up inside. He knew he was sick. He said he'd probably never have a chance to get back what he'd lost, and I'd have to do it for him, get revenge on the man who stole—^ He sucked in his breath with a sharp hiss, and the mood was isroken.

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Judith Michael

•*What is it?" Leni asked.

Ben looked at her through narrowed eyes. "You don't know."

**I know someone stole Judd*s company; it was what started his drinking. He lost his company and all the money he'd put into it and then his family: he lost them all. He and Felix were talking about it the day— '' This time she was the one who stopp^.

**Felix was there?" Ben asked. "But they didn't see each other after . . . You didn't tell me Felix was there."

Leni gestured to the waiter and waited until he replaced their drinks. *That's another story."

1 want to hear it." He looked at his watch. "I'm going to cancel my dinner plans; do you have anyone to call?"

She shook her head. "You've already changed my dinner plans.**

He smiled faintly and asked the waiter to bring a telephone. Leni watched him as he made his call. He had Judd's blond hair and blue eyes, his high, straight cheekbones, his wide mouth. But behind his horn-rimmed glasses, his eyes were cleaier than Judd's, and he had a kind of hard self-awareness and self-confidence that Leni had never seen in Judd. Perhaps Judd had had them before she met him; perhaps that was where Ben got them. Or Ben created them in himself when he lost his fatl]ir and had to make his own way in a tough world. She wondered how he was with Allison: if he had Judd's tenderness and quick anger and the elusiveness diat had kept Leni OD edge, never knowing how much he loved her or could ever share wiA her.

Not much, she thought sadly. He sent me away, after all.

*1 want to hear it," Ben said again as he hung up the telephone. **How did you meet Felix?"

L»ii told him. She did not spare herself, or Judd, or Felix. "They made some kind of a bargain. I never understood what it was; I wasn't really paying attention. AU I knew was that Judd was sending me away, and I thought I'd die because of it They said they'd been roonmiates in college, and Judd said he di(fai't remember much about the past. That wasn't true; I knew he did; but nothing was making sense that night. All I leaily cared about was that Judd wouldn't let me stay with

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him. He told me"—her voice grew very soft— '' *I have nothing to give you, and you deserve a kingdom.' I kept hearing him say that for years. He meant it, I know he did, and I'm sure that's why he took the money from Felix. I don't know why Felix offered it, but I know why Judd took it: so that I couldn't tell him he needed me to support him. He took what Felix offered, and then he sent me away."

Ben shook his head; there was too much to think about. "He never told you who stole his company from him?"

"He said he would if he needed to. And he said he'd told his son, and his son would get revenge— " Once again the words stopped in her throat. Her eyes met Ben's for a long moment. She was very pale. "It was Felix, wasn't it? Ctf course it was Felix. If I'd been paying more attention ... if I'd been thinking . . . That's why Felix paid him. So he'd go away without telling me. My God. All tiiiese years I've lived with Felix, and he was the one who destroyed Judd." She leaned her head on her hand. And then in a moment, sharply, she drew back in her chair. "And that's why you married Allison. To get Judd's revenge."

Ben sat very still. The chatter and bustle of the room had faded away; there was just the two of them. And my whole future, he thought. He started to shake his head, to tell Leni it wasn't true, he had never thought of revenge. But he didn't do it. If he lied now, Leni would never accept him. Her suspicions would grow and fester and eventually sway Allison; she was too close to her mother not to be affected by them. It was better to take a chance with the truth, at least part of it.