A Dual Inheritance (35 page)

Outside, the day had changed. As they disembarked, the wind slanted the tall dry grass and Ed could smell a fickle sky. How it was, in fact, getting ready to rain.

“Listen,” Hy said, shaking his head as he planted his feet in the dirt. “I’m not supposed to tell you yet. Not for a month at least. But I can’t take it.”

“You’ve been acting strange all day.”

“I’m telling you, I can’t take it.”

“Hy?”

“We put it to a vote.”

Ed’s stomach lurched.
“What vote?”

Hy faced him now, mitts on his hips, looking Ed straight in the eye. “As you say,” he adjusted his stance, “there is no consensus. This is because there’s no concrete leadership.”

“I agree.” Ed nodded. “I agree completely.”

“I think you’ll also agree that only two among the four of us have leadership potential.”

“Of course,” said Ed. “You and me, Hy, like Rockefeller said—”

“An extrovert and a driver.”

“That’s right, and don’t kid yourself, Hy—we can do it. We need to stop hedging and begin to truly use our resources. We need to restructure and pare way down. Shift the focus, I’m telling you. Deals like the one I’m working on.”

“Even though I told you—we all told you—it was too great a risk.”

“I’m telling you, Hy—”

“And I’m telling
you
.” At first Ed thought he was imagining it, but by the time Hy said, “You’re out,” the sky had turned dense and gray.

“What are you talking about?”

“We have different philosophies.”

“What different philosophies? What the hell are you talking about?
You already put it to a vote?
”

“Listen—”

“WHAT.”

“There can only be one leader. Ed, with you, nobody ever knows what they’re going to get.”

“That’s bullshit!
Everyone
knows what they’re going to get. That’s exactly why we’ve made the money we have. That’s WHY. Because I tell people the goddamn truth!” He turned away.

“Ed,” said Hy, “you are a remarkable salesman. Phenomenal. The best I have ever seen. But you are not a manager.”

“Right,” he said. A
salesman
? “Fuck it. If it’s over, it’s over. That’s one thing I know.”

Ed noticed, abruptly, that the field was littered. He’d never noticed the litter until now—beer cans and cigarettes, what looked like torn-up work clothes. He imagined the strips of those work clothes and those empty beer cans all mixed up in the landing, blown up and caught in the tail. He wanted to turn around and tell Hy about the litter, to warn him for the next time, but he knew there wouldn’t be a next time, and this knowledge prompted him to want to promise Hy they would all suffer horrible losses if they went through with this and that they’d better believe Ed would fight it. Instead, he just turned away and started walking, then running, until he was sprinting through the grass so fast he had shooting pains in his chest and calves, and still he didn’t stop. The rain was falling now, but it was a light rain, so much lighter than the dark sky had suggested, and shouldn’t the sky split right open? Shouldn’t it all fall down?

By the time he burst through the door to his house, he let himself imagine that it was Helen he was searching for, Helen he had married, and that it was—in fact—Helen who was the one always angry at him for petty reasons and that his real wife—dazzling mother of his only child—was someone he admired only from afar, someone he’d passed by one night off Fifth Avenue and fantasized about over a lifetime while having sex with Helen, his wife. He could even imagine Helen’s clothes—
increasingly plain over time: pastel shirts, khaki skirts—strewn on the bathroom floor, clothes that Jill would never wear, let alone throw on the bathroom floor; he could see Helen’s cheeks, flushed—and they were always so pink in his mind, so heightened, embarrassed, amazed.

“What happened?” cried Jill. He grabbed his real wife and she said, “Watch it.”

But he didn’t watch it. He pressed her onto the eggshell-colored living room wall, held her there until he got himself aroused and he couldn’t stop himself from yanking off her tennis skirt, tugging the elastic from her long thick hair.

“What’s with you?” she demanded.

“You’re sexy,” he muttered.

“I’m what?”

Ed shook his head. “Can’t you just let something happen?”

“Yes,” she said pointedly. “I can.”

He backed away from her. Her impatient tone was so familiar. Why? What had he done? “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means—Jesus, Ed—you’re out of breath, you’re slamming me into walls. It means,
what happened?
”

He turned from her, and as he sat down on the couch, tugging at what thankfully remained of his own hair, as he continued to think of a way to phrase it, all he wanted was for Jill to sit beside him, to ease this moment of telling her what Hy—whom she had never trusted—had told him.

The rain fell onto the roof, patterning the windows and the skylight.

As Jill looked at her watch, his mind cast about for comfort, and there was Provence when Rebecca was one—it had rained then, too. There they’d seen the French countryside through rain on windshields and windowpanes. But his most vivid memory was not of the rain, or of any châteaus or excellent wine, but of sitting with Jill in a rented Peugeot on the side of an ordinary road. On the way to a Michelin-starred restaurant, Rebecca had fallen asleep in the car, and rather than try to move her inside and cope with the potential consequences of her interrupted nap, they’d both agreed to let the Michelin star go, and, instead,
they bought sandwiches at some kind of gas-station café. He remembered the slightly soggy baguette, the ham and cheese and butter, and how they’d eaten in silence. Only it wasn’t the same as silence, because they were listening to Rebecca sleep.

Then, over the sandwiches and lemon soda, Jill had told him more about her late grandparents, whom—up until then—Ed had mostly heard lovingly described as cunning enough to have (on limited funds) bribed their way out of Vichy France and into New York at precisely the right time. As the rain fell in sheets, Jill told him about these grandparents, a pair of Russian peddlers who’d made it to Paris on sheer dint of will, who’d spent summers on Lake Gérardmer selling embroidered linens to tourists, and who—later—loved to see their granddaughter dressed beautifully; how they’d enjoyed sitting on park benches and telling her these stories; how neither of them had ever seemed bored.

“Ed?” Jill demanded now. She was gripping her car keys and the heavy Cartier key chain he’d once given her for Mother’s Day.

He wanted to say,
Please come here
, but instead he said, “I wonder where Rebecca is.”

“She’s eleven,” Jill said. “It’s rain.”

“That’s what everyone said when she was a baby. When she and Solange were caught in the park.”

“You weren’t crazy to worry then, okay? Is that what you want to hear? You were not crazy to worry. Do you want to hear that not only should you worry now but that I should worry, too? That we should all be just as worried as you?”

“Her fever was so high she had to be hospitalized. All I’m saying is that I wasn’t overreacting.”

“All you’re saying is that you were right.”

Please sit
, he wanted to say.
I’m in real trouble here
.

But she didn’t sit; she was late for a doubles game. He knew without asking that she assumed the rain would clear.

And so he didn’t tell her.

Part Three

1988

Chapter Thirteen

The Woods and the World

Forget about her dorm—small white clapboard house, quiet roommate from Ohio—and forget about her classes (excellent, she had no complaints): Rebecca met everyone through smoking. The Pines. The River. The Mountain. The Tree. The Watertower. The air growing cooler; sunlight streaking through the black-green trees. There was a place called Canfield, a clearing in the forest. Kids sat around, facing an ancient Pepsi can nestled in the dirt, as if it were a mesmerizing bonfire. Dan, her best friend from home, had warned her to stay away from DHs (
Dirty Hippies
, he’d deadpanned; his older sister, Adina, had spent four years on this very campus and then chose to attend Santa Cruz, based on the “clothing optional” clause in the literature), but there was Rebecca, one month into boarding school, sitting on a log. There she was accepting a light from Brian, the Dirty Hippie King.

There was Rebecca Cantowitz chatting with Ariel, fat and beloved, who ate green apples while she smoked. There she was with a girl named Merry (weirdly pronounced Murray, like Rebecca’s grandpa), who was frequently tripping on acid; Merry took Rebecca’s hand and said,
Your lips are like a baby’s lips
, and Hassan laughed because Rebecca so clearly had no idea what to say. Hassan was six foot five and perpetually slouching; it was hard to see his eyes through the thick glasses and mass of
black hair. He hung around Stephan, Mike, and Josh, who each wore flannel shirts and had more or less sandy hair, more or less lanky good looks. They laughed without making much noise and rarely spoke to anyone besides one another and Chris Huang, who, for some reason, was referred to only by his full name.

She had found them all on the very first day of school, because she’d followed a tall girl with white-blond cornrows, in an electric-blue dress, across a covered bridge. When the girl turned around, she looked Swedish or vaguely elfin. Her eyes were light green.

Rebecca took a calculated risk. “I’m looking for a place to smoke.”

“Oh, Lord,” she said, in a way that made Rebecca want to laugh. There was suddenly nothing Swedish or elfin about her. “You freaked me out. You look so serious. I thought you were going to start reciting poetry or something.”

Rebecca kept silent but finally said, “What are you talking about?”

“You’re new, aren’t you?”

Rebecca nodded.

“I’m Vivi,” the girl said, more as an explanation than introduction. She’d resumed walking and led Rebecca into the woods.

When they’d arrived at a thick cluster of pine trees, Brian was playing hacky sack with particular flair, as a tinny recording of what Rebecca was pretty certain was a noodling Grateful Dead guitar solo played from a boom box. And even though Rebecca disliked hacky sack and thought “Uncle John’s Band” was profoundly grating, she couldn’t take her eyes off Brian’s glossy brown hair, his almond eyes, his skin so freckled it looked tan. Vivi approached Brian, who didn’t stop
hacking
, and for a second Rebecca locked eyes with her and saw that Vivi was seriously pissed. Whether she was pissed because Rebecca had been staring or she was just that angry with Brian had been unclear.

“Where are you from?” asked Ariel, while lighting Rebecca’s cigarette. Her nails were bitten down to the quick.

“New York.”

“City?”

Rebecca nodded.

“I’m jealous,” she said sweetly. “Stephan’s from Manhattan, too.” She took a big bite of her green apple. “If I lived there? No way I’d leave. You have a good summer?”

“Uh-huh, sure.”

“What’d you do?” asked Stephan, who had evidently been listening.

“Um,” said Rebecca. She was unreasonably nervous. “I went to Greece? My dad took me.” She looked at some leaves in the dirt, looked back up at Stephan. “It was beautiful.”

“I bet,” he said, and she could tell she’d sounded too serious. “I bet it was.” Stephan didn’t look like he was from New York, or at least her New York. He was (as her mother would say) rough around the edges. He was smiling maniacally.

Rebecca reminded herself that he was no real renegade; none of them were, because they, too, were students at this very same prep school, which counted among its alumni not only two U.S. presidents but (more excitingly) not one but two stars of
Fatal Attraction
. They, too, had written those essays and been interviewed. “How about you?” she asked Stephan. “What did you do?”

“I sold acid in Washington Square Park,” he said.

“Oh.” Rebecca nodded, trying not to look unsettled. “How was that?”

“I’m just kidding,” said Stephan. He was laughing.

“I know,” she said. “I know you are.”

“I was a camp counselor in Mount Kisco.”

“Right,” she said, “okay.” She smiled vaguely. “Thanks for the cigarette.”

“Where are you going?” somebody asked, but she was already gone—shoes shuffling through the dirt, heart in her throat.
Relax
, she scolded herself,
please oh please—for the love of a perfectly nice place to smoke—would you please learn to relax!

She
would
relax. It would take about a month and a half. She spent at least a small part of each of those days in the Arts Center courtyard. Though “aggressively modern” (as her mother had observed), the building reminded her of the ancient amphitheaters she’d seen with her
father in Greece. Their hosts, the Barkopolises (who, according to her father, “owned Athens”), brought Rebecca and her father to their summer home near Delphi for a weekend. Rebecca was the youngest guest by a good thirty years. And yet, as she’d watched her father drink ouzo among the men and women, who must have smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, as she’d watched them all dancing nightly, often with underwear atop their heads, she’d felt much much older than any of them. She’d also spent most of the trip trying to discover if her father was having an affair with someone and so approached every remotely attractive, raspy-voiced woman as a potential enemy. Rebecca not only listened with spylike intensity to every phone call but also scanned every story her father told for innuendos. She finally decided that it really was only her mother who’d done the cheating. Which hadn’t made her feel any better.