A Dual Inheritance (63 page)

Ed watched Vivi drink a glass of water standing over the sink, obviously not caring that Ed had neither answered her question nor left the kitchen.

He wasn’t going to buy back his old apartment. He wasn’t going to start working on any risky new car enterprise in Brazil. He was going to take his fresh, still fairly meager capital and invest it conservatively, and he was going to set about ingratiating himself onto a board or two. He knew this in a way that was so suddenly, deflatingly obvious that he even thought of telling Vivi that
this
was what he was doing here: figuring out how to live.

“I’ll see ya, kiddo,” he said to Vivi. “Congratulations.”

Vivi gave him a dour wave.

The screen door banged too loudly behind him; autumn had crept into the air. A group of children finally played croquet, and a crowd of adults—mostly women, many shivering—gathered around to watch.

It occurred to him that, even though she’d sounded genuine in her intention of giving him something, Helen might have, in fact, ditched him yet again. It was time to leave this party.

And there was Hugh, down by the bar, even though the bartender had packed up and was hauling crates away. Before he took the time to consider it, Ed found himself walking down the lawn.

Ed’s heart was racing no less bombastically than when he’d faced Helen in the garden. He stood beside Hugh, who was watching the water, unwilling or unable to acknowledge his presence. They would be dead relatively soon. They lived on different continents. Ed cleared his throat. He kept clearing it and clearing it, and in that moment he knew there was no denying how much he sounded like his father. His hands were shaking; the salt air was bracing but not enough to stop this pitiful clarity. He knew what he had to say. “We were friends,” Ed found himself
saying. “We were.” Quiet, gravelly—he barely recognized his own voice. “I can’t leave here with you thinking that I used you. That I cared about the connections more than—” He couldn’t bring himself to finish.

Hugh gripped his shoulder then; he put his arm around Ed and held him tightly—a hold that belied his poor posture and bloodshot eyes. This was still a strong man, and his grip fell somewhere between aggression and affection.

Ed waited for Hugh to say something.

But he didn’t.

He just gripped Ed and looked out at the water; Ed didn’t rush to fill the silence then. Even if he’d had the urge, the hitch in his throat would have prevented it.

A boat floated across the horizon. The sun disappeared behind a skein of clouds. “We were friends,” Ed repeated.

Hugh’s grip lessened, and then he gave Ed’s back a pat. An unquestionably reassuring gesture. As if to say—
I know
.

But when Ed allowed himself to reconcile the fact that Helen might, in fact, be searching for him, when he finally turned toward the house and asked, “You coming?” Hugh shook his head.

“I’m going to stay out here a little longer,” he said.

“Okay,” said Ed, nodding.

“Okay,” said Hugh.

A minute must have passed before Ed walked away.

Helen wasn’t anywhere to be found. The porch, the house—it was all eerily quiet. “There you are,” he heard Rebecca say, as if she’d been looking for hours. She shivered. “It’s so much colder.”

“You want a ride?” he asked, handing over his jacket.

She shook her head but put the jacket on, pulled it close. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re leaving?”

He nodded. “Where’ve you been? I saw your friend the bride in the kitchen.”

By the way Rebecca nodded, Ed could tell that she knew the cause of Vivi’s distress.

“Weddings can be rough,” he offered lightly.

“Right.” She looked out in the distance. Ed saw water, sky, reeds, Hugh. He wondered what she saw.

“A group of us are supposed to stay an extra night,” said Rebecca miserably. “I took off from work and everything.”

“So you’ll stay. What—are you two in some kind of fight?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, of course not.”

“Well, I’m sure she’ll snap out of her mood.”

“I don’t know about that.”

His daughter seemed suddenly younger, as if she were a teenager and what she really wanted was for him to force her to leave. He realized just how long it had been since she’d looked at him that way: as if he had any kind of power.

“You’ll stay,” Ed said again. “You’ll enjoy yourself.” They walked around the house toward the driveway. Ed gave the valet his ticket.

“I want to tell you something,” Rebecca said. She still looked younger and scared—maybe tipsy, too—but there was also something else.

“What is it?” he asked. “You okay? You don’t
have
to stay an extra night, you know. Only stay if you want to. You might be done here. Whatever the problem is, I’m sure it can—”

“I went out with Gabriel,” she blurted.

Hallelujah. Baruch HaShem
. Images of his own little grandkids running through—if not this very majestic lawn—the miracle of Central Park. Ed forced himself to merely nod.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Rebecca demanded.

“Is he—”

“He’s available,” she cut him off; boy, was she tense. “He’s available and he called.”

“How many times have you seen him?”

“Just once.”

“You gonna see him again?”

She nodded. “I really hope so.”

“Okay,” Ed said. “Okay, good.”

“Okay, good?”

He nodded.

“I thought you’d be upset,” she said, and her voice was trembling. “You’ve always told me to move on!”

While he did feel kind of badly that she’d anticipated such a response, he couldn’t help but also take pride in the evidently great job he’d done at hiding the fact that their breakup had been so personally devastating. “Well—” he started.

“He has a five-year-old son!” Rebecca cried.

“So?”

“So
?
”

“Do you think you’ll like the kid?”

She was nodding emphatically, bordering on maniacally. “Absolutely.”

“Will he have more kids?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

“Well, then?” he said, inwardly beaming.
“Okay, good.”

His daughter took a shuddering breath. “We’ll see,” said Rebecca, and now he couldn’t tell if she was shaking because of the change in the weather or if, in fact, she might just cry. “I mean—we’ll see,” she repeated. “Who knows?”

He gave her a good strong hug. “Nobody.”

Ed stood with his car keys in his hand, not sure what he was still doing there, lingering in the gravel driveway minutes after Rebecca had handed over his jacket. What was there left to say to anyone? He hadn’t said goodbye; he’d send letters instead, especially—he decided—to Hugh. He’d send Vivi and Brian the same glass bowl from Bergdorf’s that he gave every pair of newlyweds, plus an extravagant gift for each child. He might live like a pauper these days but, thanks to credit cards—the new debt-ridden American way—he’d never scrimp on these presents. He hadn’t figured out what he would do about Helen, but once he was finally behind the wheel, he found himself looking into the rearview, as if she might simply appear—the way she had in his hallway nearly fifty years ago at the Y and over an hour ago in the garden. So
when he saw her walk out of the house onto the porch, it seemed, once again, no less than magical. He didn’t consider that maybe—just maybe—she might have simply made a decision to follow him.

She’d changed out of the sundress, and in the khaki pants, blue sweater, and colorful scarf, she didn’t look quite as youthful. She was wearing tennis sneakers and had dragged a carry-on with wheels down the porch steps, but due to the grass and the gravel, she was definitely having some trouble on the driveway.

He got out of the car. “Let me help you with that.”

She nodded thanks, as he brought her bag as far as his own car. She didn’t motion for the valet, so neither did he.

“Where are you going?” he asked, surprised that she was going anywhere.

“Manhattan,” she said. “Oh.” She reached into her pocket. “This is what I wanted you to have.” She handed over an envelope. “It’s just a picture,” she said.

And for some reason he was certain that it was the same picture he’d also held on to, the one in front of the round house, captured by Hugh’s Leica in the hands of an old man who’d been out walking an old dog, both of whom—by now—had to have been dead for decades.

He hadn’t actually seen the whole photograph in years. Soon after he’d read about the Shipley marriage, and in an act he’d immediately regretted, Ed had cut Helen out of the picture, so that the photo that lay in his desk drawer—in Midtown, right this very moment—was of only Ed and Hugh.

“Should I open it now?” Ed asked.

“If you want,” she said.

He didn’t.

“Can you give me a lift?” she asked. The fading sunlight shone on her face and he could see her lines, her damage.

He barked a kind of incredulous laugh, which came out strangely.

“What was that?” Helen asked.

Ed popped the trunk. He picked up her bag and hurled it—lower back be damned—into the spotless trunk.

“What
?
”
demanded Helen. “Why are you laughing at me?”

“Can I give you a lift
?
”
His voice was too loud, and he was breathing heavily from the exertion of lifting that deceptively small bag. He opened the passenger door for her and closed it once she was safely inside. He looked up, for a moment, at the darkening sky.

Ed sat down in the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition. “Can I give you a lift?” he repeated, softly now, or—at least—softer. They both fastened their seat belts. “Please, sweetheart,” Ed said. “As if you don’t already know.”

Epilogue

Clinking glasses and muffled conversation, gravel from the driveway crunching underfoot, the blending scents of perfume and grill smoke and fertilizer—it all floated up through the floor and the windows of Rebecca’s room at the Ordway house. She took in the stillness after so much turmoil and wondered how much Vivi would want to know about what had happened on the porch. Would she end up blaming Rebecca? It was not inconceivable. She looked around: the dying light; the embroidered bedspread; her favorite oval mirror. She didn’t know if she’d be back.

And maybe it was because what happened with all three Shipleys that day did, in fact, eclipse most of her other memories of Vivi’s wedding, but what Rebecca would always remember, with exquisite detail, from that strange and joyful and terrible weekend was the sensation of packing her clothes. She folded silk and cotton and balled one pair of running socks and stuck her high-heeled sandals in the side pocket of her bag. She cleaned her long hairs and smears of toothpaste from the sink, wanting to remove every trace of herself. She sat down on the edge of the bed and hyperventilated. And then she walked from the bed to the window to get some air, feeling uncertain of everything. Of what could possibly come next.

Rebecca might have been able to guess how gracefully Vivi would, in fact, forgive both of her parents their foibles, but she never could have guessed how and in what context Vivi and she would talk about not only this day but also this moment. How in kitchens and bars and while walking down city streets and once in the woods and twice by the ocean, Vivi and she would talk about it. Until it was inseparable from every other fact of their shared history. Until it was together that they remembered Rebecca’s walk from the bed to the window as if it were in slow motion—the chill of the hardwood floor on Rebecca’s bare feet, the curtain straight ahead, slightly undulating.

Did you really see it happen
? Vivi Shipley asked Rebecca Cantowitz, so many years in the future that it—the whole day—scarcely seemed possible, if only because of everybody’s youth: even—or especially—their parents’.

From the window
, Rebecca always answered.
At first my father was just sitting in his car
.

This exchange—first confused, then overwhelmed, and later gleeful—had become merely a wistful one. Their personal stories were so intertwined by then that the details of how they’d gotten there—though entertaining for younger generations—just didn’t seem to matter anymore.

For Derek, Wyatt, and Noah

Acknowledgments

Huge thanks first and foremost to my uncle Marshall Cogan, whose brilliance and patience were essential to this project. Also to the amazing Robert Gardner and all of Robert Gardner’s work—specifically the wonderful films
Dead Birds
and
The Nuer
, and the inspiring book
The Impulse to Preserve
. Tildy Lewis Davidson was tremendously generous not only with her time and memories, but also with her insights.

I’m indebted to Florence Phillips, Maureen Cogan, Walker Buckner, Jonathan Eisenthal, Gregory A. Finnegan, Sarah and Robert LeVine, Shefa Siegal, Daria Levin, John Lewis, Sarah Gay Damman, Dr. Stephen Gluckman, Jesse Drucker, Robby Stein, Rob Gifford, Sara Mark, Alyse Liebovich, and Dr. Amy Lehman and the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic website (
www.floatingclinic.org
).

To my stellar crew of writer/readers who provided inventive suggestions, excellent edits, and fierce support along the way: Ellen Umansky, Sarah Saffian, and especially Lizzie Simon and Jennifer Cody Epstein, who hung in until the final chapter. It’s impossible to imagine where this novel would be without all of your voices.

To Jen Albano, Ondine Cohane, Tanya Larkin, and my husband, Derek Buckner, all of whom read the first draft and in their own inimitable ways, knew how to make it better.

Thanks to my talented editor, Susanna Porter; her assistant, Priyanka Krishnan; the excellent Dana Isaacson, Kathleen Lord, Lisa Barnes, Rachel Kind, and
everyone
at Ballantine; thanks also to Gretchen Crary. And to my treasured agent, Elizabeth Sheinkman, your early support of this project made all the difference. Also to Dorian Karchmar, whose arrival feels, indeed,
beshert
.