A Dual Inheritance (14 page)

“J.K. and Susannah,” Kitty’s voice suddenly boomed. “I mean it.”

The two children poked their heads out from under the blankets. The girl had wide-set dark eyes and black hair, and the boy was a freckly blond. “Aunt Helen,” they cried, and when they emerged, crashing toward Helen in wet bathing suits, Ed realized they were younger than he’d thought.

“Start cleaning up,” said Kitty. “Your granny is going to lose her mind.”

“But we’re cozy,” said the boy.

“How old are you two these days?” Helen asked, in a vaguely disapproving tone, as if she thought she was supposed to help her sister but she wasn’t sure how. She seemed shy with them, Ed noticed, and he wondered if Helen liked children, if she and Hugh had talked about such things. It was difficult to imagine Hugh and Helen outside the context of this past year, and he realized that when he imagined their life together he couldn’t conjure up much more than train stations, airports, and good restaurants.

Even now, with their bags left lying in the entryway that was bigger than Ed’s father’s living room and kitchen put together, they were dawdling. They were talking to the children about the ins and outs of a morning spent at the very club that Hugh and Helen claimed to have no interest in returning to, without any eye toward the fact that the sun would be setting soon on this glorious day. Ed was anxious to take his bag upstairs and unpack and make the most of the hour or so allotted them before they were evidently expected for dinner. He wanted to dive into the sea immediately, but Hugh and Helen didn’t seem to be in any kind of rush. When he imagined their life together, he pictured it just like this, and he wondered if limbo wasn’t the state they both most appreciated.

“Who are you?” asked the girl.

“This is Ed,” said Helen. “Ed Cantowitz.”

“Go on, both of you,” said Kitty. “Introduce yourselves.”

“I’m Superman,” said the boy.

“You?” asked Ed. “I thought I was Superman.”

“No,” said the boy, “you’re not.”

“Oh,” said Ed. “Jeez. Look at you. Look at those muscles. My mistake.”

“I’m Susannah,” said the girl. “I’m going to be six.” Hugh shook the little girl’s hand, and Ed was the only one laughing when Susannah said to her mother, “Hugh’s not wearing rags.”

“What
?
”
said Kitty. “Why ever would you say that?”

“You said he was a—”

“Mother,” shouted Kitty. And the children hid under the blankets again. “Mother,
please
come down here. The children want to apologize, and Helen and Hugh and Ed are here. They’re
waiting
!”

When Mrs. Ordway entered the room, there was no question who it was, because not only did she command a remarkable authority while wearing a floppy hat and dirt-covered trousers but it was like looking at Helen a few decades on. Mrs. Ordway took her time removing her hat and placed it on an ottoman, one of the only surfaces not covered with blankets. “Helen,” she said. And Helen gave her mother a kiss on the cheek before presenting her fiancé and their friend. “No girl for you this weekend, Mr. Cantowitz?” Mrs. Ordway inquired, with what seemed like naked suspicion.

“No, ma’am, I’m afraid not. Thank you for having me, nonetheless.”

“Kitty dear,” said Mrs. Ordway, in a tone that somehow managed to be both breezy and pointed, “with children it really is all about control.”

“Yes, Mother,” Kitty said, her effusive manner now replaced by something equally childlike but defeated.

“I’ll see you gentlemen for dinner, then?” She offered a smile that Ed realized was so practiced that it approximated warmth without actually being warm.

“Where’s Father?” Helen asked.

“Who knows?” Mrs. Ordway said.
“The Shadow knows.”
She smiled with that same almost-warm smile, picking up her garden hat but not putting it on. She began strolling off but turned around just as she hit the threshold. “Little monsters,” she said in a singsong voice, “I know where you are hiding,” which precipitated squeals and shouts as the
children threw off their blankets to run after her, but she had already gotten away.

As it turned out, their bags hadn’t been languishing in the hallway after all. They had been whisked away to their respective rooms and unpacked. Someone (who?) had unrolled Ed’s two shirts and one pair of trousers and hung them in the armoire, and they seemed to have been steamed as well. His shoes and tennis sneakers (he’d never played tennis) were lined up under the bed. His swimming trunks were hanging on a jaunty nautical-style hook near the bathroom. Genius!

He happened to hate unpacking more than packing, more than doing his own laundry or dishes, which was really saying something, as—left to his own devices—he peeled and ate hard-boiled eggs over sinks rather than—God forbid—involve a dish. And he now had one more reason to make money, because he naïvely hadn’t even realized that having someone unpack one’s bags was something that was, in fact, possible. Would he be expected to tip the staff at the end of his stay? He hadn’t the faintest idea and was hesitant to rely on Hugh for answers, because he knew that Hugh would prefer to pretend that he wasn’t benefiting from such services.

Ed took a shower and shaved very very carefully. He combed his hair and tried not to think about all of the rooms—especially the many important boardrooms on Wall Street that Mr. Guy Ordway walked in and out of on any given weekday. He tried not to think about how Ordway, by the time he was thirty, had single-handedly built a Depression-shattered investment firm into a legendary Wall Street powerhouse. Ed had promised his father one last summer of laying pipes in the ground, but in the fall he would be attending Harvard Business School and, after that, he knew there’d be no need to ever do physical labor, unless (in the hopefully-not-so-distant future) he was overcome with the urge to plant a tree on the lawn of his own second home. He’d never gone so far as to imagine what that fantasy might look like, but standing in this bedroom,
with the rich wood floors creaking ever so slightly when he shifted his weight before the white-painted oval-framed mirror that hinted at the decades of guests who’d stood right where he stood while dressing for dinner, he saw this as a perfectly fine example of the direction his life might take.

As he often did when he was nervous, he repeated his father’s creed in order to focus, in order to get himself in gear:

Don’t fuck up. Don’t fuck up, don’t fuck up, don’t fuck up. Don’t. Fuck. Up
.

He headed down the stairs, toward muffled conversation and clinking glasses, only to find two maids in white uniforms putting the finishing touches on the dining room table. When Ed wandered in, clearly lost, the older one directed him—brusquely—to the porch. Ed imagined Mr. Ordway was the type to pour his own drinks, the type who didn’t limit industriousness to the workplace. He imagined this was a house where remarkable people often arrived for drinks at six. As he headed toward the porch, a brilliant orange sunset cut through the windowpanes and Ed’s eyes went teary with allergies and terrific expectations, but as he mentally prepared a solid handshake for Mr. Ordway, the sun’s glare subsided and he found the pink-cheeked children on Kitty’s lap, Helen on Hugh’s lap, and a cat snoozing atop Mrs. Ordway’s. Rocking chairs faced the water. Nothing in the way of libations.

“We’re waiting for Father,” Kitty explained.

“I see,” said Ed. He had the sensation that they were all simply playing a trick on him and that, at any moment, laughter would break out with a pop of champagne. He held his breath and looked around. Helen stood up and leaned against a porch rail. Hugh lit a cigarette.

“Beautiful evening,” Ed offered.

“Isn’t it?” said Mrs. Ordway. “I never tire of this view. Did you spend summers on the beach as a child?”

“Sometimes,” said Ed, remembering noisy and crowded, beloved Nantasket. He fought the urge to smirk. “Sometimes I did.”

Nobody moved. Sailboats bobbed in the silver water.

“So—” Ed began, but J.K. and Susannah hopped off their mother’s lap and called out, “Captain!”

“Captain?” Ed asked.

“My husband,” Mrs. Ordway explained, and she seemed half delighted and half perturbed by his entrance and its accompanying fanfare. “Darling,” she called out, “you have broken your rule.”

“What’s the time, then?” he wondered, looking at his watch. He was shorter than Ed had imagined. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” He scowled, as if not he but everyone else was late. J.K. and Susannah took turns hugging their grandfather. They each received a nickel and a pat on the head. “Well, then,” he said, “go on.”

The children were whisked away for their dinner by the frowning Mrs. Mulroney, and, as they all made their way to the dining room, Ed came up behind Hugh and Helen and whispered, “It’s ten after seven. What happened to cocktails?”

“Father doesn’t believe in cocktails,” Helen whispered back. “Thinks it’s a waste of time. I’m afraid he doesn’t even drink. One martini a season—or so he says.”

“So what’s his rule? The one your mother said he broke?”

“If everyone isn’t assembled on the porch or living room by seven
P.M
., dinner starts anyhow.”

“Mr. Ordway,” said Ed Cantowitz as they approached the table, before he lost the nerve, “I want to thank you for having me.”

“Who are you?”

Everyone sat down—pulling out chairs and taking up napkins and muddling the sound of Ed’s name.

The food was not good. The servants went around the table, ladling chilled leek soup, doling out overcooked beef and potatoes, green beans gone gray. When Mr. Ordway needed something, he never called out yet, within moments, one of three dour Irish women would bring whatever he needed. Ordway loved ketchup. It was brought out twice, each
time in a silver bowl with an accompanying tiny spoon, until Ed began to crave it himself. He didn’t know if he’d somehow be acting offensively by asking for the ketchup, but finally he came up with the idea that at least he would get the man’s attention.

“Excuse me, sir,” Ed said, after taking what he hoped was a tasteful sip of wine. “Would you mind passing the ketchup?”

“You’re a ketchup man, too, eh?”

Ordway made no move to pass the ketchup, but then a strange thing happened. One of the dour Irish trio sallied forth with a little silver bowl and spoon evidently just for Ed. He imagined that acquiring a job position in the Ordway household not only involved extensive hearing examinations and a willingness to press one’s ears against doors but an acute understanding that every desire, no matter how small, no matter how barely articulated, was desire nonetheless.

“Thank you,” Ed said, and the maid ignored him. “What a beautiful spot,” said Ed. “I can’t get over it.”

“We enjoy it,” said Mrs. Ordway, before taking a child-sized bite of beef.

“The house really ought to be reshingled,” mused Kitty.

“Well, yes, it
ought
to,” said Mrs. Ordway, “but it’s too ghastly expensive. Tony told me what it would cost last season, and I tell you I nearly fell off my chair.” She raised her eyebrows, as if to implicate this Tony. “Just ghastly.”

“Kitty gave us a heck of a tour from the ferry dock,” said Ed, “but I’d love to see more of the island.”

“Oh, we’ll have a busy day tomorrow, don’t you worry,” said Helen. “Ed likes to be busy,” she teased.

“Nothing wrong with that,” said Mr. Ordway, and, from the way Hugh’s smile tightened, Ed could tell he wasn’t enjoying himself.

“How old are most of the houses here?” Ed asked quickly.

“Old,” sighed Kitty, who was seated to his left, “terribly old.”

“End of the nineteenth century,” piped up Hugh. “So not that old, really. It’s all relative.”

“True,” Kitty said. “California-old, then. I absolutely love the houses here.” She was drinking what looked to be a tumbler of scotch and seemed to be teetering right on the edge of wistful. Ed didn’t know her well enough to know what might be coming next—whether wistful, in Kitty’s case, preceded melancholy or hysteria or even glee. “I absolutely love the houses here,” she repeated. “I wish I could get away with having a shingle-style house in California, but it would stand out in all kinds of terrible ways. We have a neighbor who has a true stone castle—don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a fun house, but in Southern California?”

“What does your house look like?” Ed asked. She was, he thought, practically begging to be asked.

“I tell you, there is nothing like these houses,” Kitty continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Though you can’t see much from the road, of course. Some people turn up driveways to look, but, I don’t know, I think it’s vulgar to just go into other people’s backyards.”

“That’s what sailing’s for,” said Mrs. Ordway, “seeing other people’s houses from the water. Heaven knows it’s not good for much else.”

“I take it you’re not much of a sailing fan?” Ed asked.

Mrs. Ordway regarded him. “I like sailing just fine,” she said.

“Oh,” said Ed, confused.

“But you prefer your garden,” said Helen helpfully.

“And your birds,” added Kitty.

Mrs. Ordway raised an eyebrow that seemed to signify agreement.

“Mother’s an avid birder.”

“Do you know the cranes have nearly taken over the salt marshes this year?” Mrs. Ordway declared with what sounded like sudden and wild enthusiasm. “I’m
very
pleased about this,” she said. “The past few summers they were dying at an alarming rate. I said to Dr. Bernard, ‘Those birds need an
autopsy
,’ and don’t think he didn’t agree. One just had to wonder what the devil was happening.”

Ed cleared his throat. “But they’re back,” Ed tried, “the cranes. That must be … a relief.”

“Mmn.”

Entering a conversation with Mrs. Ordway was like jumping into a professional game of jai alai, with the ball flying from every which way.

“Mrs. Ordway,” Ed ventured, “I would love to see your garden tomorrow.”

Mrs. Ordway answered with not much more than a faraway “Of course,” and he could tell this bothered Kitty. It bothered her that Mrs. Ordway was preoccupied with what was happening at the other end of the table, where no one was smiling and Mr. Ordway was doing all the talking.