A Dual Inheritance

by Joanna Hershon

  “May I have a volunteer?” the Upper Volta expert asked, back on his feet once again, and of course Hugh shot up from his seat near the door, towering above the professor and grinning like a dedicated fool.

  “If you’re greeting your equal,” the expert explained, reaching out his small hand for Hugh to shake, “you simultaneously drop to the ground as you are shaking hands.”

  Hugh shook the professor’s hand and they kept shaking and lowering, shaking and lowering, until it felt like dancing the twist with no Twist. He realized he was drunk when he lost his balance and fell to the floor, but no one appeared to care. In fact, his falling seemed to make everyone happier, as if he had proved some point for them. When Hugh cursed himself aloud and worried over the damage done to his camera, Raoul Merva helped him up and ruffled his hair. His hand lingered there, and Hugh had the distinct sensation that his head was a basketball for Raoul to palm idly while waiting for a game to begin.

  All of these gentlemen had traversed the globe, and Hugh, for that one moment, didn’t mind that his connections were the only reason he was invited. He was too grateful to sit and listen and shoot rolls of film that he’d possibly never develop. And—miracle—he got to sleep with Helen afterward.

  They lay in Helen’s bed, staring at the ceiling, regaining their breath.

  Months had passed since their meeting at the Peabody, when they’d taken right back up again, even keeping each other secret out of habit until Ed forced Hugh to admit he was hiding something. And when Ed finally forced the truth, Hugh had been left to wonder not only why he’d kept Helen a secret but why Helen had kept him a secret as well. This was something he always wanted to ask her about, along with the details of the abortion. But somehow he never did.

  He didn’t miss their tree. He liked taking her to dinner and meeting her on campus and introducing her as his girl. He liked watching people watch her. Sometimes, if they were meeting in the Yard or on a street corner, he would glimpse her waiting for him and stop for a moment or two, admiring not only Helen but also how other people responded to the sight of her. She seemed to inspire goodwill and good posture. He would feel the initial tinges of jealousy, only to remind himself that she was actually waiting for him.

  Helen was funnier than he’d ever properly understood and a skilled conversationalist with nearly everyone. At first, this realization was disappointing. He’d always imagined that Helen suffered being misunderstood as distant and even (he was embarrassed to admit this) not very bright, due to her decidedly blond beauty and a sometime forgetfulness, and that he—Hugh Shipley—was the person who was uniquely suited to appreciate not only her outer self (absurd to imagine a personal claim to something so obviously appealing) but also her unique and complicated inner self. He now understood that she came across as distinctly nuanced and that any idiot would be able to see that.

  But if, as she was fond of saying, he was her favorite person, well, then, he ought to feel a good deal better about himself than he was used to feeling.

  He was starting to. Especially when he slept here at the townhouse. Especially when Helen crossed her ankle over his as if it were her own.

  “Why do you think she does that?” Hugh asked, looking up at the ceiling. On the floor above them, Lolly’s footsteps created a diversion; she liked to clean in the middle of the night.

  Helen said she thought the act of cleaning during the daytime felt—for Lolly—too damningly bourgeois and depressing, but she somehow still couldn’t bring herself to hire help around the house. “I’m sure she talks about this with her analyst.”

  Hugh laughed without averting his gaze from the ceiling. “I see you’ve given this some thought,” he said.

  “Tell me, Lolly,” she intoned in her best Viennese accent, “you like ze broom?” Her narrow shoulders and small breasts moved up and down, and he had to kiss her again.

  “I think we should go on a double date with Ed,” said Helen. “I’ll set him up.”

  “You mean it?”

  She nodded, running fingers through his damp hair.

  The only two times Ed and Helen had spent an evening together, Helen answered Ed’s questions perfunctorily—with little to no warmth—until Ed had stopped asking, and it had fallen to Hugh to break the awkward silence, which was not exactly his forte. He was too surprised at their not getting along to have any idea what to do. When Hugh had asked Ed what he’d thought of Helen, Ed had countered, “Do you really want to know?” And of course Hugh didn’t. Not really. Not if it meant Ed saying that Helen was cold and snobbish and all of the things that Hugh knew she wasn’t. Though Hugh had to admit she had maintained a surprising remove when they’d all drunk bad coffee together at Hayes-Bickford.

  “There’s a girl from my typing class I think Ed would like,” Helen said.

  Hugh wondered how Helen could possibly have any idea of whom Ed would like—Hugh certainly didn’t—or exactly what kind of girl she not only imagined might be interested in Ed but also of whom she’d approve. He was curious. “You were not exactly … nice to him.”

  “I was chilly,” she acknowledged, “I know.”

  “Was it all his questions?”

  “I found him off-putting,” she admitted. “But, for whatever reason, he’s your friend. I’ll find something to like. I usually do.”

  “You do?” Hugh rolled onto his side and Helen nodded, turning her back to him. He folded himself around her, and when he was once again nesting in her softest place, he was all excited.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Is that right?” He put his hand on her hip.

  “Or I pretend.”

  “Ah,” he said, starting to rock back and forth.

  “I pretend until it’s true.”

  They stood outside the Casablanca on the kind of spring evening that makes anyone want to get along. The girl’s name was Connie Graff, and she was petite and dark, and though she was dressed in a kilt and a cashmere twin set, the effect was somehow hard-edged, as if she was proving a point. She also spoke with a strange but compelling authority, and moments after the introductions, Hugh, Ed, and Helen became immediately and mysteriously cowed by her opinions. She assured them that it wouldn’t be long before the Casablanca would be too crowded to enjoy a decent drink, because everyone—everyone—was out tonight.

  “Connie just came back from New York,” Helen said. “From job interviews on Madison Avenue. Isn’t that right, Connie?”

  Helen was, by anyone’s account, a sophisticated girl who’d gone to all the right schools and had appropriated most of the accompanying cynicisms; however—and Hugh always forgot until moments like this one, and each time he was newly puzzled and charmed—she’d been kept somehow sheltered from New York City. So paranoid was her father about its corrupting influences, one had to wonder what he did over the course of each workweek. Mr. Ordway liked for the family to stay in Connecticut or preferably on Fishers, and Helen had been kept busy at boarding schools and clubs, and then there was the situation (as Hugh still could not help thinking of it, so haunted was he by that gossip’s voice), when she was sent to live with the aunt in Stonington, so with the exception of certain approved balls, annual visits to her father’s office, and maybe the ballet or the symphony, New York had remained a mystery. In any case, while Helen was not particularly mystified by someone as eccentric as Raoul Merva (so comfortable had she become living on the fringes of academia, where eccentricity held sway), she seemed genuinely awed by what Hugh’s father somewhat derisively referred to as normal life, so long as the setting was the island of Manhattan.

  “How were your interviews at Grey and BBDO?” Helen asked. “I haven’t even had a chance to find out.”

  “Oh, fine,” said Connie. “It was just fine,” she said, as if there was clearly more to the story and that it wouldn’t disappoint. But before anyone could ask anything, she continued. “Have you been to New York on a Friday afternoon? When all those cars pull out of town? Where are they all going?” s
he asked, as if she really wanted to know. “I mean, don’t you want to see the inside of every single country house? Not that they’re all so magnificent, of course, but some … Oh—” she said, peering into the dim light of the bar. “Goody. I think I see that big crowd heading out.”

  “After you,” said Hugh. When Connie smiled, he was grateful to think: nice smile. He knew that later he’d be able to point out this feature to Ed, without having to think about it. When Hugh had proposed the evening, Ed had instantly agreed to come. He had been undeterred by the lack of information, had relied solely on Helen’s recommendation. But now that they were all here together, it was embarrassingly transparent why Helen thought Ed might like Connie: She was Jewish.

  But after they sat down and ordered their drinks, Ed started laughing.

  “What’s so amusing?” asked Helen.

  “Nothing,” said Ed. “Forget it.”

  “Oh, that’s awful,” said Helen, clearly meaning it. “That is the most awful thing you can do to a conversation.”

  “Helen,” said Ed, “you really need to stop with the compliments. You are too nice.”

  “She’s right, though,” said Hugh, lighting the two girls’ cigarettes before his own. “Fewer habits—even of yours—are more unfortunate.”

  “It’s only that, just because we’re under the Brattle Theatre,” asked Ed, “does everyone have to think they’re Orson Welles or Ingrid Bergman? Look around. Everyone is mentally on their way to Europe, in the fog, with a tragic past.”

  “But not you,” said Helen, rather pointedly.

  “No,” he said, “not me. Not you, either, Connie Graff. Am I right?”

  “Ingrid Bergman is the end,” said Connie.

  “The end?”

  “The most gorgeous,” Connie continued, “the most chic. Do you disagree?”

  Ed shrugged.

  “Are you kidding? When David Selznick signed her for her first Hollywood picture and told her to pluck her eyebrows, cap her teeth, and change her name, she told him she wouldn’t consider it. She speaks five languages. Her return after the scandal was triumphant. Truly. Who wouldn’t want to be Ingrid Bergman?”

  “Me,” said Hugh, unsmiling. “I would not want to be Ingrid Bergman. I think such a sudden change would be very confusing for everyone.”

  None of the three (two of whom certainly knew he was trying to elicit a laugh) seemed entertained.

  “It’s chic to be sad, isn’t it?” Ed said.

  “I suppose it is,” said Connie, leaning forward with a hint of conspiracy. “Why is that, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ed, “but it’s irritating. When I look around, I’m irritated.”

  “We see that,” said Helen. “Maybe you need to get some air.”

  “No,” said Ed. “I’ll stop.”

  “Well,” said Helen firmly, “that would be nice.” Then she gave Ed a surprisingly generous smile, a look that was almost … complicit, which Hugh noticed was all it took to make Ed relax. Hugh, too, was temporarily silenced by Helen’s assertion, and he would always use that night as an example of how—contrary to popular belief—one can never predict the direction of an evening within the first five minutes.

  Because not only was the “Ingrid Bergman night” (as they all eventually referred to it) fun—and so much more fun than the beginning had promised—but after Ed got over the fact that Helen had obviously set him up with Connie solely because they were both Jewish, it became clear that Ed did like Connie and Connie liked Ed, and Hugh liked everyone and Helen approved, and for a month or so they all hung around together. Friday evenings, they dressed up and had drinks in the Brattle Street townhouse (the Mervas had once again set off for the Dordogne), which led to dinner and—for Ed, Hugh, and Helen at least—eventually breakfast. Connie always returned to her dormitory and was never late. She was a proud virgin, and Ed’s varied attempts at persuading her otherwise (at turns comic, pleading, and downright lewd) often punctuated these evenings. Connie didn’t seem to mind and even relished the attention, as they drank bottles of wine from Raoul’s fine collection and Hugh looked through his camera lens, as if they really were—Ed and the two girls—subjects as worthy as members of the Nuer tribe, the Dani, or—at the very least—a few melancholy film stars.

  By the time Connie Graff’s high school sweetheart showed up in the middle of the Thursday typing class with a ring that proved he wasn’t playing around, the Friday night routine was so firmly established that the absence of Connie Graff (who wasted no time in moving back to New Rochelle) mattered less than any of them would have guessed. Ed continued dressing for Fridays and driving Helen and Hugh around in his convertible on Sundays. They returned to the Big Deep and ate egg-salad sandwiches and drank many bottles of beer. Helen filled the empty bottles with pond water and wildflowers, lining them up, week by week, along the water’s edge. They drove to Somerville to see a big house that was completely round. While Hugh was aiming his lens at Helen in front of it, and while she was trying to pretend she didn’t notice him doing so, an old man shuffled by, walking an equally old Labrador. “I always figured my life would be better if I lived in that round house,” he said. “Go on,” he told them, “go on and I’ll take your picture.”

  Hugh handed over his Leica somewhat reluctantly, but the old man backed up and was nothing if not nimble as he fiddled with the lens. Hugh stood next to Helen, taking her hand.

  “No need for any funny business,” said the old man, though they were doing nothing but standing still. “That house is as regal a backdrop as you can ask for.”

  Ed made no move to join them—out of, Hugh imagined, respect—but the man nearly growled at Ed, “Time’s a wastin’.”

  Ed—squeezed in the middle—made up for his reticence by throwing his arms around the two of them, the force of which caused Hugh and Helen (who were, Hugh knew, king and queen of the miserably stiff photo smile) to offer up something genuine. They each hated having their picture taken, but when the old man was gone, Hugh sheepishly asked Ed to take one of just Helen and him, if only to prove to himself that they could appear relaxed and happy without Ed’s arms around them.

  As for Ed: Each week he joked less and less about being a third wheel. In fact, it became evident that he enjoyed it and that Hugh and Helen enjoyed—after such secretive beginnings—maybe not a fawning audience but certainly a witness, and one who was not shy about making his presence known.

  At Ami Henri, sunlight poured into the small pleasant rooms, and for a brief moment Hugh felt so contented that he thought there was something wrong with his head and that maybe he was confusing a positive sensation with a negative one, like when hot water is so hot it actually feels cold. He was jolted out of his blatant neurosis by the French proprietress, Mrs. O’Hagen—so named because of the American G.I. she’d married and promptly divorced after their arrival in Boston. Her name was at odds with her Gallic charms, and when Ed insisted on telling her so (this being his first time here), she leaned over the table, emitting the scent of onions and butter and something distinctly more earthy, and said, “Merci,” pointedly—Hugh couldn’t help but notice—not to Ed but to him.

  “My,” said Helen, fanning herself with the worn yellow menu, “someone never warmed to American habits of bathing.”

  “She’s phenomenal,” said Ed. “I’m going to sleep with her.”

  “Is that right,” Helen said, reading over the menu before placing it on the table.

  “What’s your fancy?” Hugh asked her.

  “Snails, I think,” said Helen, while looking at Ed.

  “What?” asked Ed. “What’s that look for?”

  Helen started to laugh.

  “Helen Ordway, are you saying I don’t have a chance with Miss Bardot over there?”

  “She’s hardly Brigitte Bardot. Besides,” Helen took her voice down, “she must be at least forty years old.”

  “Well, golly gee,” said Ed. “Ever hear of a May–December romance?�
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  “You have to admit, your confidence is staggering,” Hugh said.

  “And?” countered Ed.

  Mrs. O’Hagen approached the table again, and Hugh ordered a bottle of wine.

  “I’m suddenly so hungry,” said Ed, all the while looking at Mrs. O’Hagen as if she were a filet mignon. When Helen laughed, Mrs. O’Hagen shot her a withering look before sauntering off once again.

  “You have to admit,” said Helen, offering her cigarette to be lit, which Hugh did without missing a beat, “you are constantly on the make. I’m just not sure it’s altogether healthy.”

  “And why not?” Ed asked, as Mrs. O’Hagen approached once more with an open bottle—an undeniably lovely sight. “Why not aim high?” he said, drawing out his words, watching madame pour and then leave. “Hugh, don’t you think I should aim high?”

  Hugh nodded, shifting in his seat as he watched an older couple order briskly after kissing Mrs. O’Hagen on both cheeks. He had a passing thought that the man looked like his father. But this man was shorter, balder, and his father was in the middle of the country, attending a Union Pacific shareholders’ meeting; he was spending a week on a luxury train car, a high point of his year.

  “I admit,” Hugh said, “I don’t understand how you can be so blindly confident despite—I’ll go on and say it—a few rejections. You don’t exactly take it in.”

  Ed knocked back some wine. “Take what in?” he asked.