A Dual Inheritance (60 page)

“You’re angry with him,” said Vivi. “Look,
I
know he’s an alcoholic. No one’s ever come out and said that, so there you go. It’s said.” She turned to Hugh with exaggerated formality. “Papa, you’re an alcoholic and not easy to live with. And, Mom, I know it was worse for you. He
wasn’t
easy, but—”

“Rebecca,” said Helen sharply. “Look at me.”

But Rebecca was looking at Hugh; though still standing, his head was in his hands.

“Was my ex-husband hitting on you just now?”

Rebecca swallowed the shame. At this moment she imagined it would remain a part of her always, something like her very own inoperable growth—permanent if not cancerous—to carry around forever. This was, without a doubt, all her fault. “No,” she answered. “No, of course not.”

Rebecca could feel Helen assessing her. She understood that Helen wasn’t sure whether or not she was telling the truth. Maybe Helen even suspected she had done something to provoke Hugh’s attentions or—worse—that something had actually happened between them, but Rebecca could also see that Helen was going to hedge her bets; she was going to use this as an opportunity.

“Vivi, your father …” Helen started.

Vivi wouldn’t acknowledge she was speaking.

“Just—Vivi, please—”

She remained impassive, her gaze far away.

But when Hugh simply walked away, down the stairs of the side porch and—predictably—toward the bar, Vivi didn’t follow him.

“Think about it,” Helen said gently, after they all watched him go. “For one second. How can you not already know?”

“How can I not
already
—what kind of bullshit is that?”

Helen repeatedly ran her hands through her hair but didn’t have an answer.

“Answer me,” cried Vivi.
“What are you even talking about?”

“Your father was never faithful,” Helen blurted. “Ever.”

“What?”

“Your father—”

“Well, were
you
?”

Helen looked briefly insulted but quickly recovered. “Once we were married, yes. I certainly was.”

“What do you mean,
once we were married?
”

“What I mean is that, once your father and I were married, I was faithful to him.”

“But there was someone else?” Vivi asked.

Rebecca could swear she saw the slightest smile pass across Helen’s face, but it was gone in an instant. “Yes,” she said. “But I chose your father. For all kinds of reasons, that’s the choice I made.”

“Look, do you mean he had an affair? Or affairs?” asked Vivi, obviously grasping. “Because—I mean—over the course of a long marriage, a lot of people do.”

“That’s true,” Helen said, obviously trying to control her mounting frustration with Vivi’s insistence on incomprehension. “But this wasn’t—” Helen stopped abruptly, as if to remind herself to keep it simple. “This was something of a different order.”

“Okay,” Vivi relented. “Okay, fine. But why are you telling me this now? I mean right
now
? At my
wedding celebration?
”

“I shouldn’t have,” said Helen, her voice cracking. “I’m so sorry.” She went to take Vivi’s hands, and Rebecca was surprised to see that Vivi did not, in fact, yank them away.

“Wait—earlier—did you say you were
leaving?
”

Helen nodded. “I decided to head back a bit early.” She sounded defeated, but when she put her arms around Vivi, it was clear she wasn’t. Her grip was strong.

“I’m so sorry,” Helen whispered over and over; she continued to hold Vivi tightly.

Rebecca left them like this, before heading out on a search of her own.

Chapter Twenty-one

Fishers, 2010

Mrs. Ordway was ancient, gnarled and positioned in a wicker chair on the wide porch, looking out to sea. Ed took her frail hand in his, but of course she didn’t remember him. She’d grown nicer. He loved when that happened. Since his own father was always so mean, it had been shocking—disturbing, even—when, near the end, the home-care attendant noted that his father was
such a sweet and gentle man
. And Ed did not think she was simply angling for an excellent tip, because—amazingly—he’d witnessed it. In the last few months of a life consumed by fighting, Murray Cantowitz had finally gone docile, as if dying alone in that same miserable tenement in a neighborhood that was finally finishing up a decade-long crack epidemic was all that he’d ever really wanted.

You won
, Ed told him, minutes before the very end.

You better believe it
is what he thought he heard, but he couldn’t be certain; his father’s speech had been slurred for a long time by then.

“I remember your garden,” said Ed now.

“What’s that, dear?” said Mrs. Ordway.

“I was here many years ago, and I remember your beautiful garden.”

“Oh yes,” she said, “beautiful.” She smiled. “And what a bitch to maintain.”

“But you enjoyed it,” he insisted.

“Well, of course I did,” she said, and he realized she hadn’t entirely changed. “Who are you, did you say?”

“My name is Ed.” He smiled, too. “Ed Cantowitz.”

He looked out across the lawn and saw Hugh; he was heading for the bar. While preparing for this day, Ed hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on how he’d ignored several letters and messages from Hugh over the years, even two during the very last five. After Rebecca had left Tanzania, Hugh sent him a brief note in prison just to let him know what a fine person she was. Ed had told Rebecca about the note (she’d seemed oddly flat in her response), but he hadn’t replied to it. Then Hugh sent another note comprised of two sloppily written lines:

Dear Ed
,

What, exactly, did I ever do to you?

Helen’s left me
.

—H
.

He’d written back that time, but it was something equivocating and empty. As he saw Hugh now—in person, at a distance—he sustained what were today’s first—though surely not the last—stirrings of serious shame. And it occurred to him that maybe, in fact, he owed Hugh more than he could ever offer, more than he could possibly explain.

“Daddy!” he heard, and there was Rebecca, flushed and urgent in the way she was about greetings.

Hugh suddenly looked up in Ed’s direction but turned away before Ed could offer so much as a wave. But—Ed tried to reassure himself—he also wasn’t sure whether or not Hugh had even seen him.

“You made it,” Rebecca said, and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“This is my daughter,” Ed told the old woman, who nodded.

“Hello, Mrs. Ordway,” said Rebecca. “Do you have everything you need?”

“Every last thing,” she said. She clasped her hands together as if a game were about to begin.

Rebecca led Ed down to the lawn, where croquet was set up but no one was playing. Under a tall oak tree, two dapper fellows were playing a banjo and an upright bass; a woman was singing along.

I’ll see you in my dreams. And I’ll hold you in my dreams—

They seemed like ghosts from another party, one from before even Ed was born. The woman’s lipstick was bright red, and she was pretty and plump in the way women so seldom were anymore. She was wearing a lacy white sundress and what looked like high-heeled orthopedic shoes.

Someone took you out of my arms. Still I feel the thrill of your charms—

“How was the ceremony?” Ed asked.

“Lovely,” said Rebecca, and Ed could tell she meant it. “There was a lot of crying.”

“Hugh cry?” Ed asked, looking out to where a sailboat glided across the water.

“Big-time.”

They walked toward the bar, which was set up in the reedy place where the grass became the shoreline, and there was Hugh, accepting a drink from the bartender.

“Hugh,” said Rebecca. “My dad’s here.”

Hugh turned around and said, “Well, hello there.” He took a step back and shook his head. “Christ almighty, hello.” Then he stuck out his hand, which Ed ignored, opting for a hug instead. He clapped Hugh on the back several times.

“Hugh,” said Ed, “congratulations.” The setting here was so pastoral, and the scent of sea air and lavender was so particularly
clean
, that Hugh Shipley’s own scent was just that much more of a contrast. There was the alcohol, of course, but also tobacco, which was so rare to catch a whiff of these days in civilized company that it immediately reminded him of prison, and he felt briefly revolted. But something besides alcohol or tobacco was even stronger, and Ed couldn’t place it. When he drew back and got a good look at his old friend—his friend from another life—Ed had his first surprise.

Hugh did not look great. He didn’t even look good. His eyes were
the same—a little bloodshot, though still they had the same leonine gaze—and he wasn’t pot-bellied or bald, but somehow he looked different. Was it bloat? Maybe he was sick and on some kind of god-awful medication? Or maybe, Ed thought—as Hugh looked bemused, mumbling about Vivi and Brian’s expensive taste in spirits, while indicating his drink, which he then spilled on his tan lapel—maybe Hugh had become a drunk. And not the functioning kind that proliferated on this island and in the halls of Shipley family homes dotted along the East Coast, or even his own father’s kind of boozing, which had seemed aggressive and grief-stricken, but rather the kind that qualified for the title when Ed and Hugh were children in the 1950s:
a drunk
—someone who pretended not to be and for whom the common practice of ignoring and pretending didn’t work anymore.

Ed’s second surprise was when he realized just how fervently he didn’t want this to be the case. He didn’t want to feel sorry for Hugh Shipley. This was something for which he was completely unprepared.

And so he started to talk. And once he started, he found he couldn’t stop. “I read about the prize, Hugh. Congratulations. Really. Congratulations on that.”

“Thanks,” Hugh said.

“I mean it.” Ed clapped him on the shoulder. “Very goddamn impressive. I read all about it.”

“Did you?”

“All the articles. I got to see what you’ve been up to. I mean, I knew you’d been up to a hell of a lot—I always knew you’d been productive—but it’s another thing to read all about it. See it in print. Do you know what I mean? Even though these days you can read pretty much anything in print. Do you remember when print really meant something? All the bullshit publications on the Internet these days make it that much harder to see the genuine articles—so to speak—but not with your work. That was easy to find. I’m telling you …”

Rebecca drifted away; the 1920s band stopped playing; Ed had yet to see Vivi and her husband; he’d yet to see Helen; but still he continued to stand on the lawn with Hugh.

“Seen any good films lately?” Ed asked, pleased with himself on account of how he’d remembered the perfect way to start Hugh talking and save them both from Ed’s inability to stop. Ed prepared himself for a long diatribe about an obscure tribal practice in a country rarely traveled to—if such places even existed anymore. But:

“I haven’t seen a real film in years” is all Hugh offered.

“No?” Ed felt unreasonably disappointed. He waited for Hugh to clarify.

But Hugh only shook his head. “When I do, it’s on an airplane and I find myself looking forward to the ones about spies and the future, that sort of thing.”

“But what about those—y’know …” He was at a loss, both to describe the films properly and on seeing Hugh’s blank expression. “What about those films you loved? Anthropological? Ethnographical?”

“Ethnographic. I always disliked those terms.”

“I do recall they all seemed to be either over three hours or under five minutes.”

Hugh shrugged. But he finally grinned.

“The one about the violent tribe?” Ed probed. “You loved that film. You loved all of them.”

“Like watching paint dry,” said Hugh.

“But what about your mentor? Charlie? That was his name, right?”

“You got it, Ed. You got it.” Ed was suddenly aware of a distinct angry sarcasm. “That mind’s still a steel trap.”

“What happened to Charlie?” Ed asked, attempting to sound unperturbed.

“What happened to Charlie,” Hugh said. “Sounds like a play, doesn’t it?”

“You’re thinking of the play
Charley’s Aunt
,” Ed corrected him. “Or the musical
Where’s Charley?
Two Oxford lads and their cross-dressing hijinks.”

“Right again.” Hugh raised his glass in acknowledgment.

“Rebecca was in the musical—eighth grade. ‘Once in Love with Amy.’ Don’t you know that song?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Hugh.

“Everybody knows that song.”

“Everybody except me,” said Hugh.

Ed wasn’t sure why he was so convinced of this, or why it even mattered, but he was certain that Hugh knew that sweet, romantic song and simply wouldn’t admit it. “So tell me,” he pressed on, “what
did
happen to him?”

“Charlie Case made a terrible picture in Hollywood about ‘cave people.’ He’s taught at Harvard for several decades—beloved by his students, ignored by the rest of the world.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that he’s ignored by the masses, but being a beloved Harvard professor hardly sounds like a tragedy. You know who should have been a professor?”

“Who?”

“Me,” said Ed. “That’s what I should have done. A professorial life.”

“Ha,” said Hugh.

“No, really,” said Ed, but he was aware he was actually only trying to get another smile out of Hugh.

“Charlie and I fell out long before the Hollywood picture.”

Hugh’s tone was so bitter and even mournful at the idea of falling out with a friend that Ed had to look away. Because though it was true that time and geography—as he’d always claimed—certainly served to distance even the most diligent and closest of friends, Ed had always known that it had been he who’d cut Hugh off, and he’d cut him off without warning. He also knew that Hugh had done nothing to deserve this contempt, aside from the fact that he’d gone ahead and married Helen. Which should not have come as any kind of surprise. And though Ed could not abide the marriage—at least not up close—how the hell was Hugh supposed to have been expected to understand this?