The Edge of Doom (3 page)

“It’s what might have suited me that I keep thinking about,” Kate said. “What I might have been. All the other hopes and desires I might have had.”

“What you need,” Reed said, “is another drink.”

CHAPTER THREE

That thou art my
[
daughter
]
, I have partly thy
mother’s word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly
a villanous trick of thine eye and a foolish hanging
of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me.

In the days following, Kate’s thoughts as she went about her work intermittently returned, as of their own volition, to conjectures about genes. This was not a subject on which she was highly informed, nor did she seem to wish to undertake extensive research, or indeed any research, on the matter. Research, in Kate’s view, had to have a purpose, and she could not at the moment see any purpose in the gathering of genetic information. Keeping her mind on her job was effort enough and, on the whole, successful. But in between, the same themes emerged.

She knew the work of so-called sociobiologists who saw genes as the dominant, probably the only force behind individual actions, and the work of those more liberal who, by emphasis on upbringing and environment, countered such theories, finding them racist and socially biased. Between these alternatives she wandered, first convinced of genetic dominance, then persuaded by the force of cultural and social pressures. In short, when not teaching literature or coping with the responsibilities of academia, Kate convinced herself one moment that who her father was hardly signified, made little difference to who she had become, and at another moment felt certain that what had formerly seemed, in her opposition to her family’s doctrines, as originality on her part was little more than different genes at work. She did not yet know if her genes were different, less Fansler than she had supposed, or if she was simply who she had always supposed herself to be. And so she speculated, her thoughts chasing one another circuitously and pointlessly.

Teaching literature in her seminars, she managed to keep her mind on the texts and the students, but questions would intrude: how explain George Eliot, no more like her family than Kate was like the Fanslers? The Brontës, on the other hand, had each other, the moors, their isolation; they seemed to share the same mysterious source of talent. But was not such talent always hard to account for? Not so, Kate reminded herself before her office hours, with musicians or mathematicians, whose amazing talents, manifesting themselves at an early age, seemed almost always to be inherited.

She, Kate, had after all proceeded through her twenties hand in hand, as it were, with the march of feminism, an influence unlikely to have affected her brothers or her parents, and probably sufficient to account for her deviations from them.

Walking home in the hope that exercise and air would clear her head, she considered twins. Who had not heard stories of identical twins raised apart who turned out, meeting as adults, to be wearing identical ties and to each have a dog named Eddie? Well, no one doubted that genes existed, but the human chromosome endowment was so large, who could say whence came what trait? And what about adopted children, who got on with life as life should be got on with, as a living present and not an endowment from the past?

Kate opened the front door of their apartment to find herself greeted by Banny and Reed, both lingering uncharacteristically in the hall.

“Is something wrong?” Kate asked, forgetting about genes and thinking only of disaster.

“Not at all,” Reed said. “We just wanted to be sure we would hear you come in.”

“About the DNA?” Kate now asked, recovering herself.

“Yes,” Reed said. “I just got off the phone with Laurence. He asked for you but seemed willing to talk with me. Relieved, in fact, to tell the truth.”

“And?” Kate urged, as Reed paused.

“That man does seem to be your father. He is also not your half brother, an idea of mine reflecting my ignorance of the finer points of DNA, without basis or, it transpires, without substance. Of course, as Laurence suggested and I agreed, new samples from both of you must be tested. But one does rather have the impression that you are a Fansler in name only.”

“Well, that’s over then. Now we know.” Kate, rather to her surprise, found herself content with the result. What dramatists we all are, and you especially, she said to herself, mocking. What a letdown it would have been to be just what you always were, with nothing new and challenging to disrupt your life.

Something of this must have shown in her face, because Reed grinned and took her hand, leading her into the living room. Kate, still holding on to her bag, dropped it in the hall. “Adventures are always fun,” Reed said, “as is speculation in the right conditions. Apart from your brothers, whose reaction to this news, if true, I can hardly envision, there is nothing much to worry about, and you can stop saying that life holds no more surprises. I call this surprise a dilly.”

“Are we to know his name?” Kate asked when Reed had poured their drinks and she had at last sat down, allowing Banny to collapse at her feet with a grateful sigh.

“That’s about all we know,” Reed said. “Laurence almost forgot to ask him his name, doubtless, as I suspect, bowled over by the DNA report. I think your brother didn’t really believe the man’s story for a moment, and is quite rocked by this proof—which Laurence doesn’t doubt, by the way—proof about you and his sainted mother. I hope you’ll forgive me for referring to her in so discourteous a way.”

“His name?” Kate demanded, ignoring this.

“Ah. Well, that’s rather a shock, too. His name is Jason Ebenezer Smith. Everyone calls him Jay.”

“Ebenezer! Laurence is incapable of making that up. Are you being cute, Reed? I must say that isn’t like you.”

“I am never cute,” Reed said with mock dignity. “The man, Jay, gave his name as Jason E. Smith—that was the name on the letter that came with the DNA report—and Laurence demanded to know what the
E
was for. No doubt he was hoping against hope that something would prove the whole business untrue. So Jay E. Smith told him his middle name was Ebenezer.”

“And of course Laurence didn’t know enough to ask a question about Dickens. He or you might have quoted Shakespeare: ‘I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.’ And I still can’t get over his reading up on Edith Wharton.”

“No, apparently he didn’t catch the Dickens connection. And I don’t believe that’s a Shakespeare quote.”

“You can look it up. But why would anyone name a child after Scrooge?”

“Well, he did reform in the end, after all, and buy that huge turkey. Or was it a goose? Jay’s parents might have thought they needed something rather unusual to go with Smith. Or, here’s a thought: Maybe he was born on Christmas. You can ask him when you meet, after we get confirmation of these results.”

“You don’t doubt them, do you?”

“No. It would make no sense as some sort of con game. Your brother may not be very up on his literary references, but just given who he is and the firm he’s a part of, someone would have to be balmy to try to put this sort of thing over on him as a swindle.”

“I expect you’re right. Well,” Kate finally put her feet up and seemed to relax slightly, “while we’re waiting for the confirmation, I’ll try to think what to ask him when we meet. There are many obvious questions, even exciting ones, but I think I’ll begin with why he’s called Ebenezer.”

“It does prove,” Reed said, “that unlike Laurence, his parents had read Dickens. He may not have been your brothers’ tutor, since they didn’t have one, but he probably wasn’t the gamekeeper either. All this is ridiculous speculation; I shall be silent and await news of your encounter with your father.”

“I still can’t quite believe it,” Kate said.

“You might consider the definition of a father. Is he the man who oversees his child’s life from birth to maturity, or the man who happens to have been in the room when his child was conceived?”

“I’m sure there’s some kind of definition between those two,” Kate said, “even leaving biology and genes out of the picture.”

“Perhaps. Your second question might be whether he ever met you before your meeting now.”

“I shall ask that, of course. But all this has started me thinking about my Fansler father. He wasn’t the most attentive parent on earth, but given the period in which he lived, when fathers like him were expected to spend their weekdays at the office and their weekends on the golf course, he wasn’t inattentive. He did seem pleased that I was a girl. Now that I think of it, they had rather hoped my youngest brother would be a girl. How did I know that? One of the things children pick up, no doubt. I expect it’s what made David so macho, much more so than William, the middle brother.”

“David’s a Dickensian name,” Reed pointed out.

“Perhaps Jay was around for that birth and suggested it. You don’t suppose . . .”

“Not for a minute. Remember, I’ve met David a number of times, and if he looked much more like the pictures of your father I’ve seen, he would be a clone. And Dickens hardly had a copyright on the name David.”

“Unlike Ebenezer. Well, that’s a relief anyway.”

“Good,” Reed said. “Of course your parents may have seen the movie of
David Copperfield
, the long-ago one, with W.C. Fields and Freddie Bartholomew. ‘Another boy: What shall we call him? What about that nice movie we saw the other night?’ ”

“I’m not sure my parents ever went to the movies; I suppose they must have, really. I used to go with my governess to approved films.”

“Your brother David is named after a movie; that’s my story and I stick to it.”

And to Reed’s relief, they both laughed and went on to speak of the day’s happenings in their usual manner.

The question was where were Kate and her father Jay to meet? When speaking with Reed she had tried calling her father Ebenezer but soon found Jay came more readily to the tongue; also
Ebenezer
when often said seemed to occupy an inordinate amount of time. That Jay Ebenezer Smith was her father had been twice confirmed, and meet they must. After dismissing several venues, Kate had decided on the Oak Room at the Plaza; challenged she could not defend this choice, but felt it the appropriate ambience for so Victorian an event as meeting, in middle age, one’s father for the first time. This, however, was not to be.

Laurence had taken on the role of sponsor to this odd encounter; he called it a reunion, but Kate was not yet certain if she and Jay Ebenezer had ever had a first meeting, however long ago. Whether because he clung to lurid doubts of Jay’s intentions which no DNA test could erase, or whether he was simply curious and unwilling to miss out on a dramatic moment was hard to determine. Nonetheless, Laurence claimed the role of host to this meeting, and insisted it must take place at his club where he had first broken the news of Jay’s paternity to Kate. Kate suspected that Laurence had not yet told the rest of the Fanslers, including his wife and brothers, about Jay and wished to have an ample report when he came to do so, including the first meeting of father and daughter.

Reed, agreeing with her interpretation, urged her to acquiesce. Meeting one’s father for what was probably the first time at so late a date might best be undertaken, he argued, in the presence of a third person. Why deprive Laurence of the pleasure of introducing the two of them to one another? There were, as Kate had to admit, few enough significant human events in Laurence’s life—events, Reed meant, not dehumanized by elaborate ceremonies and celebrations—so that one hesitated to deprive him of this one.

So Kate went yet again to meet Laurence at his club. She had agreed to arrive some minutes before Jay Ebenezer, and indeed found Laurence in the same corner they had occupied previously, as though, Kate thought, he saw this as a drama and the setting the same as that of act one.

Jay was prompt. He appeared before them, led by an employee of the club. Laurence and Kate both stood. “I’m Jay Smith,” the man said, before the other two could gather their wits. He was over seventy—Kate had already figured that out—but clearly vigorous, standing quite straight. He bowed slightly toward her before sitting down.

“I’m Kate,” Kate said. “Obviously,” she continued, though why obviously she didn’t quite know. True, she was the only woman present, but she might have been another relative sitting in for Kate, either because Kate had funked it or had asked someone else look this stranger over. Pull yourself together, Kate told herself.

But indeed, who she was, and who he was, was obvious because of the resemblance. Like Kate, he was tall and on the slim side, though like her now without the slimness of youth. Later, Reed would find the resemblance startling, though perhaps, he thought, only to someone looking for it, or to a portraitist. Jay’s eyes were the same greenish gray as hers (why, Kate thought, have we never wondered why I am the only one in the family without blue eyes?) and both their two front upper teeth crossed slightly one upon the other. No wonder Laurence had not immediately sent the man packing.

A memory flashed across Kate’s mind of a college friend who had confessed to an affair and subsequent doubt as to the father of her expected child. Anyway, she had startled Kate by saying, it hardly matters; the husband and the lover have the same coloring and the same eyes. Such a thought had clearly not occurred to Kate’s mother. But then, she had probably had no doubt about who the father was, or the child’s likely failure to resemble her husband in the slightest. Men like Fansler, as she would have known, took their wives’ fidelity for granted; no doubt he attributed Kate’s dissimilarity to her brothers either as the result of recessive genes exhibiting themselves, or, more probably, to the fact of her being a girl.

These thoughts, though rapid, had taken a little time. Kate realized they were all standing, and she sat, as did the other two. Laurence waved for a server. Kate asked for Scotch, as did Laurence. They both turned to Jay.

“Might I have tea?” he asked.

“Tea it is,” Laurence said. “Tea for you, Kate, or will you stick to Scotch with me?”

“Scotch, please,” she said. Some old-time family loyalty seemed called for. “Do you not drink,” she asked Jay, “or only not in the afternoons?”