Inheritance (22 page)

He gestured toward the folders. "Well, it's all there; we've talked about most of it. I've added a few more ideas; Felix won't like them—too expensive and risky—but he won't like the whole project, which is why I've always kept my small corporation separate from the family one: he has nothing to say about what I do or don't do with those four hotels. Now, what else? Ah, Clay. I'd like him to be assistant to a professional manager for a few years; then if we both decide he's ready, we'll find a hotel for him to manage. Is that satisfactory?"

"You know it is. You*ie wonderful to both of us.** Laura

Judith Michael

walked around the desk and kissed his forehead. "I'll read through these later. You're having dinner with us, did you remember?"

"I never forget invitations from people I love. Is it just the three of us? Or do I need a tie?"

"You don't need a tie; it's just us; I'm cooking at Paul's apartment. And he's doing the dishes. We'll see you at seven."

"Laura." She turned at the different note in Owen's voice. "You haven't told Paul about these plans, have you?"

"No; you asked me not to until we were ready to start."

He nodded. 'There's a chance it might get to Felix; it will all be so much easier if he isn't trying to create obstacles. E>oes that bother you, to keep it secret?'*

"I'd rather tell him, but if it will please you I can wait."

**Thank you. And my dear—" He paused and pulled his sweater more tightly around him. He always felt chilled these days, even in June; he didn't know why. "I've written you a letter with all our plans—financing, renovation, everything— in one document, instead of four folders: a summary of them, really, and an explanation of some things that I've done, so everyone will understand. I want you to have it in case you have to handle the project yourself.'*

"But why would I? You can manage everything far better than— ** Her eyes widened and quickly she returned to his chair. "Is something wrong? Are you ill?"

"No. But neither am I yoimg. A wise man thinks ahead, and if I am not wise at eighty-ttuee, when will I be?" He held oat to her a long envelope with her name on it. *Take it; put it away somewhere for safekeeping. You may not need it but I want you to have it."

"Keep it in your desk," Laura said. "Do you mind? I'll always know where it is but I'd rather you kept it." / don't want to think about your dying; I don't want to have anything that reminds me I'm going to lose you. "It's yours until . . . until I need it.**

**If it makes you feel better.** He dropped the envelope into die top drawer of his desk. "Now Vm going to take a nap so I can be scintillating at dinner. Go cm, my dear; 1*11 see you at seven."

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Laura left the house slowly and walked down Beacon Hill, crossing the Arthur Fiedler footbridge to the promenade that ran alongside the Charles River. It was one of her favorite walks. On one side of the grassy, tree-shaded strip of land was the wide river dotted with sailboats; on the other was a narrow finger of the river; and just beyond glowed the soft red brick of old Back Bay houses. Their blunt shadows enfolded her in that special aura of sedate age and fixedness that was what she loved best about Boston. Nowhere else, she thought, would she have been able to feel so secure, with the past wiped out so completely. And nowhere else would she have felt protected enough to write to Ben about her engagement. He was still in Amsterdam—that job seemed to be lasting—and she had written to him about her graduation and her plans for marriage and a job in Chicago. She had told him most of it—but she had not told him Paul's name. There was plenty of time, she thought; once we're married, he'll keep his feelings about the Salingers to himself. Maybe he'll even change the way he feels. There's time for all of that.

Paul's apartment took up the third floor of one of the old four-story apartments in the Back Bay, a block from the river. He had taken the basement for his studio, and Laura found him there, reorganizing photographs; old ones, she saw; he hadn't made any new ones, except pictures of her, in months. He turned and kissed her. "I set the table this afternoon, but I regret to tell you that dinner is not ready."

She laughed. "I wasn't expecting miracles. Anyway, it's going to be simple: fish chowder and salad." She leaned against him within the circle of his arms. "I'm so grateful for you. For finding you and loving you, and knowing you love me.

"And whom do you thank?" he asked with a smile.

"The fates," she said gravely. *The three daughters of Zeus. They spin the web of life, and measure it, and cut it out."

"And brought you to our family four years ago?" She was oddly silent and he said, "Well, whoever did it has my deepest thanks. He or she or they changed my life. All our lives, when you think about it. We'd all be different in some ways if you weren't here."

"Shall we take a walk before dinner?" Laura asked.

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"If you're up to it after a ftill day with Jules." Something had caused that sudden silence, he thought; something from her past. He wondered why she didn't understand that nothing mattered but the present and the future they would make together. He took her hand as they walked along Fairfield to the comer, coming upon the crowds of students from the colleges housed in the old buildings along Commonwealth. "Was it a good day?"

"It was a wonderful day; we pleased the Countess Irinia. I told you about her last year—the Romanian exile who wanted a yacht for a week, and we got the yacht and her favorite chef. This year she wanted ideas for a different kind of party, and I thou^t of a resort Jules had checked out about six months ago and raved about. It's called Damton's and it's on its own island in Lake Champlain, and I called the owner—Kelly Dam-ton; she and her husband run it together—and arranged a week for the Countess and her party, with entertainment, and tiien Jules leased a private train to take them there. She was so pleased, like a little girl who gets to show off for her friends; she kept telling me how wonderful I am."

"She's right." Paul put his arm around her shoulders. "Shall we go to Damton's for our honeymoon? Or would you prefer Africa?"

She smiled. "Are those the only choices?"

"I thought of London and Paris and Rome but everyone goes there— "

"I don't."

He stopped walking. "I'm sorry; you've never been to Europe; of course that's where we should go."

"No, you choose a place you want. I really don't care, but I would like to see Europe someday."

"You'll see everything, my love. I'll make everything yours." They walked on, silent in the hazy sun that made their shadows long, thin figures trailing lazily behind them. Clusters of students and young executives coming home from work filled the sidewalks, but they barely noticed; they walked in a circle of silence, golden and dreamlike, until they were once more at Paul's building. But as they climbed the stairs to his apartment, the telephone was ringing, and when Paul answered it Laura could hear Rosa's voice, crying, saying over

Inheritance

and over, "Mr. Owen . . . Mr. Owen ..." and she knew he must be dead.

"No," Leni said as soon as they arrived at the hospital. "Not dead. But he had a massive stroke, and Dr. Bergman thinks he might not last the—^" She bit off her words, as if saying them might make them true.

"Can we see himT* Paul asked. "We'll just look in the door . . ."

Leni was shaking her head. "They're not letting anyone in. Anyway, he's unconscious; he has been since Rosa found him . . ."

The waiting room was crowded with family members who arrived as they heard the news and then, as the hours passed, came and went, bringing food and coffee, trying to read magazines, murmuring about Owen and how frail he'd looked lately and how they should have taken him to the Cape early this year. Every hour, Dr. Bergman stopped by and said he had nothing new to tell them. But at midnight, he said Owen was stable. "We don't know the extent of the damage; we'll know better in a day or two. I think you should all go home and get some sleep. We may be in for a long stretch."

"I want to see him," Felix said flatly.

Leni put her hand on his arm. "We'll be back early in the morning. I'm sure we can see him then."

"Perhaps," the doctor said, and the next morning he did let Leni and Felix spend a few minutes beside Owen's bed. He seemed to be strung up with wires and tubes, and Felix kept repeating, "Terrible, terrible"; he could not believe this was his dominating father, this frail-looking figure lying like a puppet with strings hanging lax all around him. But part of Felix's shock was a dizzying wave of anticipation so powerful he felt he could barely stand up. He had been expecting his father's death for a long time—any son would, he told himself, with a father over eighty—but the years had passed and Owen had begun to seem eternal. Everyone still saw him as the head of the Salinger family and the head of Salinger hotels, though for years Felix had been president and fully in charge, even when his father appeared at the office and asked questions or participated in executive meetings. But now

Judith Michael

Owen was dying. Felix knew it; this time he was certain, and the certainty unleashed all his expectations with a force so overwhelming it was almost more Uian he could bear.

He could not show it; he had to share the others' fears and grief with a calm dignity befitting the head of a family. But inside him expectancy flowered and spread, dominating his thoughts. He was fifty-five years old and for the first time in his Uife there would be no shadow over him. Asa would do what he said; there was no one else to gainsay his decisions. Salinger Hotels Incorporated would at last bear his mark, and his alone. In every sense of the v/ord, it would finally be his.

"Felix," Leni said. Her hand was on his arm and she was leading him out of the room, thinking he was frightened or crushed by the inescapable fact of his father's mortality.

"I'm going to the office," he said. "I'll come back later." He left, almost scurrying, before she could respond. He had to get out of those long corridors lined with grotesque equipment, patients in wheelchairs, carts loaded with medicines, television screens with green lines peaking and undulating to show heartbeat, brainwaves, whatever they measured in that antiseptic hell. Felix was always healthy; he prided himself on his strength and energy and the force of his will that kept him calm, never losing his temper or feeling fear or panic. But he was almost running as he reached his car, and diat afternoon he called Leni at the hospital and told her there was no way he could return that day; too much depended on him at the office.

Asa knew Owen's illness changed nothing in the daily business of the hotels, but he also stayed in the office: someone had to keep an eye on Felix.

So the women kept vigil: Leni; Asa's wife, Carol, and their daughter, Patricia; Barbara Janssen, Allison, Laura, and, frequently, Rosa. Thomas Janssen was on an inspection tour of Salinger hotels in the Nfidwest and flew in to Boston on the weekend, but the rest of the time Paul was the only man who sat with the women in the waiting room, bringing coffee, snatching meals with them in the cafeteria, and finally, after a week, walking beside the gumey as Owen was wheeled to a private room. His uncle could not speak or move his left arm or leg, but he was conscious and not about to die.

Two weeks later they brought him home. "As long as you

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have twenty-four-hour nursing, he might as well be there," Dr. Bergman told Leni. "There's nothing we can do that all of you can't do, and he's probably better off in his own home. Make sure Laura spends a lot of time with him; he responds best to her."

Laura would have been with Owen anyway: she didn't want to be anywhere else. She took an unpaid leave from her job and spent her days beside Owen's bed, reading to him, talking to him even when he made no response, describing the sunrise and the sunset, the hummingbirds in the garden, nannies who pushed baby carriages and strollers along Mount Vernon Street, boys on skateboards, young girls on bicycles, their hair flying behind them, couples with clasped hands and rhythmic footsteps on the cobblestone walk.

And one day, in the middle of July, Owen smiled. And a few days later he began to talk.

At first only Laura could understand the slurred and misspoken words. Then, as he grew angry at his clumsy tongue, Owen tried to form each word separately, and others were able to decipher much of what he said. Still, it was easier for Owen and the rest of the family to let Laura repeat his words in her low, clear voice, as if she were translating a foreign language. And so when he suddenly asked for a lawyer, it was Laura who called Elwin Parkinson and greeted him when he was shown to Owen's room.

She stood up from her chair beside Owen's bed. "E>o you want me to leave?"

"If you don't mind," Parkinson said.

"I'll be glad to stay and help you understand— "

**No, no. We'll get along just fine." He closed the door behind Laura and then sat in her chair and put his head near Owen's.

"Will," Owen said. He went on, one wrenching word at a time. "Meant to change it. Didn't. Do it now."

Showing no surprise, the lawyer took out a pencil and a pad of paper. "We can write a codicil; is that what you want? You're adding a new bequest?"

Owen told him what he wanted. Parkinson frowned deeply, but he wrote it down; then he moved his head so he was directly in Owen's line of sight. 'This is a radical decision to

Judith Michael

make on short notice. It would perhaps be prudent to give it more thought; wait until you're better, more yourself— ''

A harsh sound came from Owen's mouth and it took a minute for Parkinson to realize it was a laugh. "Don't have time. You fool. I'm dying. Last chance . . ." Suddenly his words burst out, clear and firm. "Do it!"

"Yes, of course, if you insist. I can have it for you to sign —can you sign it?" Owen nodded. "I can have it in a week—^"

"God—!" His face contorted with rage, Owen tried to raise himself in the bed, and Parkinson, terrified that he would die and everyone would blame the lawyer who was with him, said quickly, 'Tomorrow. Is that all right? I can have it for you tomorrow."