A Dual Inheritance (38 page)

This is when I was a baby and we lived with my grandparents in Connecticut—I’d been airlifted out; I almost died. Here’s the first time I had my hair braided. The lady couldn’t find rubber bands; with black hair they just burn the ends, so she tried to burn bits of rubber onto my ends. What a disaster. When I came home and my mother saw my hair, I was so afraid she was going to lose it—she loves my hair—but she just laughed. Here’s my mother with our best friend from Haiti. We became so close, but I always called her Madame. Her house looked like the one in
Scarface.
There were men with guns who patrolled her roof. Haiti’s poison, its corruption—it’s everywhere, you know?

Rebecca did not know. She did not know about Papa Doc or Baby Doc or the
Tonton Macoute
or the time that Vivi and her classmates had to go to school in secret because it was too dangerous to be anywhere except houses under embassy protection. She did not know that Haiti was the only country to have been born from a slave revolt or what it was like to have parents who thought nothing of flying in a single-prop plane over Lake Tanganyika to show their daughter 18 percent of the world’s freshwater supply.

It was unnerving the way Vivi never complained about her mother and father during any of her many anecdotes. Rebecca wondered if this was what happened when your parents did irrefutably cool things like move to Tanzania in the 1960s and Haiti in the 1980s. How could you roll your eyes at opening health clinics and ministering to the poor? You couldn’t. Or at least Rebecca couldn’t. Much of the time, Rebecca walked around thinking about other people’s pain. In European history class, Mr. Marshall started the last class by writing numbers on the board.
What’s with the numbers?
called out Sean Riggs, who still hadn’t
removed his well-worn baseball cap.
Death
, said Mr. Marshall, sitting on his desk.
First World War
. And though Rebecca didn’t think of herself as much of a cryer, she’d been suddenly overcome by those numbers and had felt as if she had a choice between breathing and crying or not breathing at all. Those numbers—they somehow made more of an impact than any books she’d read or photographs she’d seen. But what could it mean, other people’s pain? And what good was feeling for others if there was no way to actually contribute—forget about contribute—if there was no way to literally remove their pain? She’d excused herself to the bathroom and wept in a stall. Wasn’t all this endless feeling, those tears, weren’t they just another kind of consumption? If she ever met Vivi’s father, this was something she wanted to ask him. And had he chosen his work based on his inability to only
think
about pain anymore?

One of Vivi’s biggest themes of the evening was how her dad believed in forging one’s own path in the world; he believed in what he called
leaving the camp
. Evidently he had been expected to go into business or law and instead he’d chosen to serve the Third World. He’d made a career choice of setting up health clinics (he wasn’t even a doctor, didn’t even have that title to appease his family), and his work, these choices—it was all completely impressive.

“Hey,” said Rebecca, “it’s nine. I have to go sign in.”

“Okay,” said Vivi. “This was the best day.”

Rebecca was so surprised by this assertion that she just nodded. “Good night,” she said. “See you around.” As she was closing the door, she became convinced she’d somehow sounded rude. “Um, Vivi?” she asked, standing in the doorway. “Do you want to come to the city next weekend?” As soon as she’d asked, she instantly regretted it. “My dad’s going to be out of town.”

Sending Vivi to boarding school was, evidently, the most difficult thing Vivi’s father had ever done, because
he
had gone to boarding school—to
this
boarding school, in fact, before it was coed—and had hated it. He’d
agreed to let Vivi go only because she frantically wanted to and because the options in Haiti were—even he had to admit—pretty limited. Her father had warned Vivi about the kind of kids she’d meet at boarding school, the types of ostentatious houses to which she’d be invited. And since Rebecca knew that she was (at least on paper) one of those kids, and since she herself disapproved of her own upbringing (had she and most of her classmates really needed Louis Vuitton purses at the age of thirteen?), she was embarrassed for Vivi to see where she’d grown up.

Still, once she’d put together that Vivi’s grandparents were, in fact, most likely rich themselves (they lived in Connecticut and belonged to a country club that didn’t allow Jews), Rebecca often found herself searching for holes in Vivi’s stories, and the whole chronology confused Rebecca so thoroughly that she wanted to ask Vivi to write—along with the one Rebecca had suggested for Vivi’s European history exam—a timeline of her own life.

And Rebecca could never quite tell if Vivi truly shared her father’s disdain for ostentation. She seemed awfully interested in every detail of Rebecca’s former Manhattan-bred classmates—their clothes and country houses and vacations—but every now and then she’d make some kind of cutting comment about unnecessary displays of wealth. Rebecca couldn’t tell if Vivi might not be more than a little covetous along with being disapproving or if she simply enjoyed reveling in the fact that her father was right. That people really did live this way.

They rode Amtrak through Connecticut, through industry swathed in green. At Penn Station they bought cigarettes and giant salty pretzels, that they ate during the cab ride to Park Avenue. When they arrived at the familiar awning, Sal, Rebecca’s favorite doorman, was on duty. She was so happy to see him that, though she’d never done it before, she gave him a hug.

“This,” said Vivi, “is swank.”

Sal laughed. “Oh man,” he said. “Right?”

“Sal, this is my friend Vivi.”

He gave Vivi’s hand a good shake. “I’ve known this one—what?” He nodded at Rebecca. “Ten years? Since she was practically a baby. You girls be good, you hear me? Your father know you’re here?”

“Of course,” Rebecca lied. “You know me, Sal. I’m the last good kid on Park Avenue.”

He said, “I’m telling you.”

Though it had been only a couple of months, Rebecca had the feeling that when she opened the apartment door everything would be changed, but she was wrong. Nothing was different. The wall of Picasso sketches, the red Rothko, the gray Knoll couch, the white Eames kitchen table where she’d done her homework for years—all there. The photographs in their silver frames still stood staring on the piano. And the view from the fourteenth floor—overlooking the trees of Central Park, the way she always knew the beginnings and endings of seasons—the view was intact.

Vivi took off her blue cowboy boots, slid in her socks across the dark-wood floors. She touched the couch, the dove-colored cashmere throw, a row of leather-bound book covers, three crystal vases, the Giacometti on the end table. And then, looking suddenly kind of raggedy, as if she could use a shower, Rebecca’s friend pressed her face against the thick glass windows. Vivi stood like that, frozen, looking out over the treetops. After what felt like the longest silence that had passed between them aside from that day at the Tree, Vivi asked, in a near hush, “Why didn’t I come here sooner?”

Rebecca laughed and—with a distinct feeling of relief—collapsed onto the gray wool couch. She kept her eye on Vivi, who, after continuing to pick things up and put them down, finally sat down at the piano to play. When Rebecca immediately recognized Vivi’s piece as the only one her mother ever played, she almost told her to stop. She could picture her mother tugging off her rings and saying,
Chopin Prelude Fifteen
, as if Rebecca should pay attention. But Vivi played the piece faster than her mother ever did, and Rebecca had to fight the urge to tell Vivi to slow down.
Think of a dark and wooded path
, she wanted to say,
a cool stream of water in the shade
.

“That was nice,” Rebecca said instead, after Vivi had finished. “Who taught you to play?”

“My father,” said Vivi. “There was this old hotel with a piano.” She seemed less proud than sad. She stood up and started to look at the pictures, zeroing in on the coarse-looking man and smiling plump woman standing in front of a tenement—

“My grandparents,” Rebecca said.

“Which side?”

“My father’s,” said Rebecca. “Dora and Murray. Never met Grandma Dora. Really wish I could have.”

“And old Murray?”

“Tough customer.”

Vivi looked silently at Pigtailed Rebecca, Ballet Rebecca, Awkward Bat Mitzvah Rebecca, Beach Rebecca held by her very tan father in swimming trunks, shielding his face from the sun. The pictures of her mother were gone.

“You were a seriously cute kid,” she said.

“Thanks,” Rebecca mumbled.

“Your dad looks kind of tough himself.”

“My dad? Yeah, I guess. A lot of people say that. But, y’know—he’s a businessman. He’s not
that
tough. Hey, what are we doing tonight? We have to do something.”

“Of course we do,” said Vivi. “Who’s showering first?”

“There are four showers,” Rebecca said, laughing. “Here.” She walked Vivi through what she still thought of as her parents’ bedroom, into the art deco bathroom that opened into what used to be her mother’s dressing room, which was now her father’s study. “You can have the nicest one.”

When Rebecca returned, wearing outfit number one—black REM concert T-shirt, black miniskirt, black combat boots—to get Vivi’s assessment, she found Vivi, still in a towel, sitting on her father’s desk chair, reading one of his many yellow legal pads.

“What are you doing?” Rebecca snapped.

“Relax,” said Vivi, “I wasn’t snooping.”

“What are you doing, then?”

“Um,” she laughed in that sudden way of hers that seemed to indicate contrition, “snooping?”

“Get dressed, okay?” Rebecca said, not bothering to ask Vivi’s opinion of her clothes. “I want to get going.”

“Are you wearing that?” asked Vivi.

It was a good two hours before they went anywhere, which didn’t matter, because the club where Vivi’s friend was DJ’ing was way downtown and didn’t even open until eleven. It was in a warehouse, the music was rap, and there were shared urinals and people much older than Rebecca and Vivi, one of whom was speaking French to Vivi, shrieking happily over the music. There was a silver flask of tequila, proferred by (according to Vivi) Suzanne Vega’s brother. There were bottles of beer drunk quickly and the relief that she was finally—at fifteen—drunk for the first time. They met a guy, a friend of the shrieking French woman, named Jean-Loup Wolf, who was American and tall and so untouchable that Rebecca found herself laughing hysterically over his name out of sheer awkward desire. His lips were full and his hair was so thick and so gloriously unwashed and he was wearing some kind of silky shirt that looked … elegant. Loup
means wolf in French!
she whispered dumbly, and,
Jean-Wolf Wolf
, she kept saying to Vivi, but Vivi wasn’t beside her anymore. Vivi was standing in front of Jean-Wolf Wolf, and then, within seconds, she was perched on top of a railing, her legs wrapped around his waist. They were kissing and Rebecca was watching. She thought,
What is she doing with her hands? I have to remember to do that
.

Vivi and the wolf walked over; his arm encircled her shoulder. “We’re going to Jean-Loup’s.” She said his name with a strong French accent.

Rebecca followed them outside.

“I’ll give you rides on my bike,” he said, pointing to a gleaming motorcycle. “One by one.”

“Thanks,” said Rebecca, quickly sobering up. “But I can’t ride on a motorcycle.”

Vivi quickly took her aside. “You’re kidding,” she spat.

“I am definitely not kidding. They are death traps,” she muttered back. “Besides, look what you dressed me in!” Rebecca yanked down the black Lycra minidress that Vivi had found in a ball at the bottom of her closet, which Rebecca had previously worn only once, in the sixth grade, when she was a cat for Halloween. “There is no physical way.”

“You have to relax,” said Vivi.

Rebecca shook her head. “Just give me the address and I’ll meet you. That is,” she hesitated, “if you want me to.”

“Of course I want you to.” Then, in a brighter voice, meant for Jean-Loup: “It’s no big deal. She has a thing about motorcycles.”

That night in Jean-Loup’s apartment was the first time Rebecca saw a bathtub in a Lower East Side kitchen. It was the first time she smoked pot and sat outside a bedroom talking to a sexually ambiguous guy, while Vivi was inside a bedroom, making time. The friend, Tad, was nice. He was even kind of old-fashioned, dressed in a clean white button-down shirt and black trousers. He offered to make Rebecca a cup of hot chocolate. He asked her if she’d seen any John Waters films, and when she said no, he popped in a VHS tape and they watched
Pink Flamingos
, which was, without a doubt, the most disgusting thing she’d ever seen. He told her that trash could be beautiful, even violence could be beautiful. She told Tad that she was feeling a little freaked out and he said sweetly,
Okay, I understand—you are a lovely girl
.

By the time Vivi emerged from Jean-Loup’s room, the light outside the window was silver.

“I must have fallen asleep,” Rebecca whispered. She was lying on the couch, still in the Lycra dress, covered with a soft blanket. She looked around, but Tad was gone.

Vivi knelt beside her; her face looked red and raw. “Are you okay?” Vivi asked.

She nodded. “Are you?”

“Absolutely.” Vivi smiled. “Let’s go.”

They walked to a diner and had coffee ice cream sodas for breakfast. Vivi didn’t tell her any details and Rebecca didn’t ask. They watched the sun rise over the East River—gray and platinum, blue and gold—until it was a new day.

In November, in the Arts Center, Vivi showed Rebecca a series of self-portraits.

“You have no face,” said Rebecca.

“It’s supposed to symbolize my shyness.”

Light poured in through the skylights of the painting studio even though it was wet and rainy. “Okay … but you’re not shy.”