A Dual Inheritance (11 page)

“Bravo,” said Raoul. “Hugh will document these evenings. What shall we call ourselves?” mused their host. “A good salon needs a name,” he said, with just enough absurdity in his voice for Hugh to realize that he was joking.

Paparazzo
, thought Hugh mordantly,
that’s me
. Though he’d be hard-pressed to discover more substantive and less attractive subjects, as he trained his lens on Raoul Merva and co. he imagined he was Marcello Mastroianni in
La Dolce Vita
, whose palpable self-hatred was somehow completely appealing. He thought of sitting in the Brattle Theatre last spring, staring into the eyes of that final moment’s Umbrian angel and vowing to learn Italian. Which of course he never had. He thought of how he was a Shipley and it didn’t matter what he did, because the peak of the Shipleys had already happened and the point of his existence was nothing more than to ride out the wave of the Shipley name until it dumped out onto the shore.

Although he maintained to Ed that inheritance meant nothing and that the individual self was everything, he often thought that this was bullshit, and if he remembered one thing from his spotty education it would be how the anthropologist Radcliffe-Brown, while doing fieldwork in Australia, went walking with an Aboriginal in the outback and how they met another Aboriginal to whom the first Aboriginal spoke for hours. How after this conversation (of which Radcliffe-Brown understood nothing) the first Aboriginal said to the anthropologist:
We’re going to be killed
.

Why?
asked Radcliffe-Brown.

Because
, explained the first Aboriginal,
after two hours of conversation we still cannot find a blood link between us. This is why
.

Maybe this was all life amounted to. Maybe he was allowed to sit in this room and amuse himself by taking photographs because he was a Shipley and nothing else he might do in this life could ever come close to that.

But as he continued to shoot, he forgot about his pointless fate or even that he was ostensibly supposed to be capturing—for posterity—this evening’s guests. He saw patterns emerging and he didn’t shy away
from capturing them, whether or not Raoul would appreciate it. He shot short men in the foreground to look enormous, while the taller men faded into the background like unfocused ghosts. Three men stood side by side with their hands pressed so tightly into the pockets of their sport jackets they looked almost frozen, and he shot them from below to exaggerate their immobility. As he retreated further behind the lens, Hugh began to identify these impressive men less by their contributions to scholarship than by their defining gestures—how they sat and stood became as compelling as what they were saying.

The proper way to greet your superior, the Upper Voltaist explained, was to drop to the ground and throw dirt on your head (which he promptly pantomimed), and Hugh immediately imagined himself under a mound of dirt, as he’d never understood so completely that he knew nothing. He also realized that he really had never gone anywhere and that he had to go everywhere, that he’d seen nothing and he’d have to try to see everything. He had just enough money that he didn’t have to work, so long as he lived modestly. He was nothing if not the perfect candidate to be a perpetual student. Normally such a realization would have rendered him useless for days, weeks even, but at the moment he felt not only inferior to this room full of experts but also suddenly, shockingly motivated.

“May I have a volunteer?” the Upper Volta expert asked, back on his feet once again, and of course Hugh shot up from his seat near the door, towering above the professor and grinning like a dedicated fool.

“If you’re greeting your equal,” the expert explained, reaching out his small hand for Hugh to shake, “you simultaneously drop to the ground as you are shaking hands.”

Hugh shook the professor’s hand and they kept shaking and lowering, shaking and lowering, until it felt like dancing the twist with no Twist. He realized he was drunk when he lost his balance and fell to the floor, but no one appeared to care. In fact, his falling seemed to make everyone happier, as if he had proved some point for them. When Hugh cursed himself aloud and worried over the damage done to his camera,
Raoul Merva helped him up and ruffled his hair. His hand lingered there, and Hugh had the distinct sensation that his head was a basketball for Raoul to palm idly while waiting for a game to begin.

All of these gentlemen had traversed the globe, and Hugh, for that one moment, didn’t mind that his connections were the only reason he was invited. He was too grateful to sit and listen and shoot rolls of film that he’d possibly never develop. And—miracle—he got to sleep with Helen afterward.

They lay in Helen’s bed, staring at the ceiling, regaining their breath.

Months had passed since their meeting at the Peabody, when they’d taken right back up again, even keeping each other secret out of habit until Ed forced Hugh to admit he was hiding something. And when Ed finally forced the truth, Hugh had been left to wonder not only why he’d kept Helen a secret but why Helen had kept him a secret as well. This was something he always wanted to ask her about, along with the details of the abortion. But somehow he never did.

He didn’t miss their tree. He
liked
taking her to dinner and meeting her on campus and introducing her as his girl. He liked watching people watch her. Sometimes, if they were meeting in the Yard or on a street corner, he would glimpse her waiting for him and stop for a moment or two, admiring not only Helen but also how other people responded to the sight of her. She seemed to inspire goodwill and good posture. He would feel the initial tinges of jealousy, only to remind himself that she was actually waiting for him.

Helen was funnier than he’d ever properly understood and a skilled conversationalist with nearly everyone. At first, this realization was disappointing. He’d always imagined that Helen suffered being misunderstood as distant and even (he was embarrassed to admit this) not very bright, due to her decidedly blond beauty and a sometime forgetfulness, and that he—Hugh Shipley—was the person who was uniquely suited to appreciate not only her outer self (absurd to imagine a personal claim
to something so obviously appealing) but also her unique and complicated inner self. He now understood that she came across as distinctly nuanced and that any idiot would be able to see that.

But if, as she was fond of saying, he was her favorite person, well, then, he ought to feel a good deal better about himself than he was used to feeling.

He was starting to. Especially when he slept here at the townhouse. Especially when Helen crossed her ankle over his as if it were her own.

“Why do you think she does that?” Hugh asked, looking up at the ceiling. On the floor above them, Lolly’s footsteps created a diversion; she liked to clean in the middle of the night.

Helen said she thought the act of cleaning during the daytime felt—for Lolly—too damningly bourgeois and depressing, but she somehow still couldn’t bring herself to hire help around the house. “I’m sure she talks about this with her analyst.”

Hugh laughed without averting his gaze from the ceiling. “I see you’ve given this some thought,” he said.

“Tell me, Lolly,”
she intoned in her best Viennese accent,
“you like ze broom
?
”
Her narrow shoulders and small breasts moved up and down, and he had to kiss her again.

“I think we should go on a double date with Ed,” said Helen. “I’ll set him up.”

“You mean it?”

She nodded, running fingers through his damp hair.

The only two times Ed and Helen had spent an evening together, Helen answered Ed’s questions perfunctorily—with little to no warmth—until Ed had stopped asking, and it had fallen to Hugh to break the awkward silence, which was not exactly his forte. He was too surprised at their not getting along to have any idea what to do. When Hugh had asked Ed what he’d thought of Helen, Ed had countered, “Do you really want to know?” And of course Hugh didn’t. Not really. Not if it meant Ed saying that Helen was cold and snobbish and all of the things that Hugh knew she wasn’t. Though Hugh had to admit she had
maintained a surprising remove when they’d all drunk bad coffee together at Hayes-Bickford.

“There’s a girl from my typing class I think Ed would like,” Helen said.

Hugh wondered how Helen could possibly have any idea of whom Ed would like—Hugh certainly didn’t—or exactly what kind of girl she not only imagined might be interested in Ed but also of whom she’d approve. He was curious. “You were not exactly … nice to him.”

“I was chilly,” she acknowledged, “I know.”

“Was it all his questions?”

“I found him off-putting,” she admitted. “But, for whatever reason, he’s your friend. I’ll find something to like. I usually do.”

“You do?” Hugh rolled onto his side and Helen nodded, turning her back to him. He folded himself around her, and when he was once again nesting in her softest place, he was all excited.

“Yes,” she said.

“Is that right?” He put his hand on her hip.

“Or I pretend.”

“Ah,” he said, starting to rock back and forth.

“I pretend until it’s true.”

They stood outside the Casablanca on the kind of spring evening that makes anyone want to get along. The girl’s name was Connie Graff, and she was petite and dark, and though she was dressed in a kilt and a cashmere twin set, the effect was somehow hard-edged, as if she was proving a point. She also spoke with a strange but compelling authority, and moments after the introductions, Hugh, Ed, and Helen became immediately and mysteriously cowed by her opinions. She assured them that it wouldn’t be long before the Casablanca would be too crowded to enjoy a decent drink, because everyone—everyone—was out tonight.

“Connie just came back from New York,” Helen said. “From job interviews on Madison Avenue. Isn’t that right, Connie?”

Helen was, by anyone’s account, a sophisticated girl who’d gone to all the right schools and had appropriated most of the accompanying cynicisms; however—and Hugh always forgot until moments like this one, and each time he was newly puzzled and charmed—she’d been kept somehow sheltered from New York City. So paranoid was her father about its corrupting influences, one had to wonder what he did over the course of each workweek. Mr. Ordway liked for the family to stay in Connecticut or preferably on Fishers, and Helen had been kept busy at boarding schools and clubs, and then there was
the situation
(as Hugh still could not help thinking of it, so haunted was he by that gossip’s voice), when she was sent to live with the aunt in Stonington, so with the exception of certain approved balls, annual visits to her father’s office, and maybe the ballet or the symphony, New York had remained a mystery. In any case, while Helen was not particularly mystified by someone as eccentric as Raoul Merva (so comfortable had she become living on the fringes of academia, where eccentricity held sway), she seemed genuinely awed by what Hugh’s father somewhat derisively referred to as
normal life
, so long as the setting was the island of Manhattan.

“How were your interviews at Grey and BBDO?” Helen asked. “I haven’t even had a chance to find out.”

“Oh, fine,” said Connie. “It was just fine,” she said, as if there was clearly more to the story and that it wouldn’t disappoint. But before anyone could ask anything, she continued. “Have you been to New York on a Friday afternoon? When all those cars pull out of town? Where are they all
going
?” she asked, as if she really wanted to know. “I mean, don’t you want to see the inside of every single country house? Not that they’re all so magnificent, of course, but
some
 … Oh—” she said, peering into the dim light of the bar. “Goody. I think I see that big crowd heading out.”

“After you,” said Hugh. When Connie smiled, he was grateful to think:
nice smile
. He knew that later he’d be able to point out this feature to Ed, without having to think about it. When Hugh had proposed the evening, Ed had instantly agreed to come. He had been undeterred by the lack of information, had relied solely on Helen’s recommendation.
But now that they were all here together, it was embarrassingly transparent why Helen thought Ed might like Connie: She was Jewish.

But after they sat down and ordered their drinks, Ed started laughing.

“What’s so amusing?” asked Helen.

“Nothing,” said Ed. “Forget it.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” said Helen, clearly meaning it. “That is the most awful thing you can do to a conversation.”

“Helen,” said Ed, “you really need to stop with the compliments. You are too nice.”

“She’s right, though,” said Hugh, lighting the two girls’ cigarettes before his own. “Fewer habits—even of yours—are more unfortunate.”

“It’s only that, just because we’re under the Brattle Theatre,” asked Ed, “does everyone have to think they’re Orson Welles or Ingrid Bergman? Look around. Everyone is mentally on their way to Europe, in the fog, with a tragic past.”

“But not you,” said Helen, rather pointedly.

“No,” he said, “not me. Not you, either, Connie Graff. Am I right?”

“Ingrid Bergman is the
end
,” said Connie.

“The end?”

“The
most
gorgeous,” Connie continued, “the most chic. Do you disagree?”

Ed shrugged.

“Are you kidding? When David Selznick signed her for her first Hollywood picture and told her to pluck her eyebrows, cap her teeth, and change her name, she told him she wouldn’t consider it. She speaks five languages. Her return after the scandal was triumphant. Truly. Who wouldn’t want to be Ingrid Bergman?”

“Me,” said Hugh, unsmiling. “I would not want to be Ingrid Bergman. I think such a sudden change would be very confusing for everyone.”

None of the three (two of whom certainly knew he was trying to elicit a laugh) seemed entertained.

“It’s chic to be sad, isn’t it?” Ed said.

“I suppose it is,” said Connie, leaning forward with a hint of conspiracy. “Why is that, do you think?”