Sunset brought them back to the yacht club’s dock, and he almost hoped to see Helen’s jackass uncle. But instead of a sailboat, instead of competitive Larry with his sweaty tennis whites, a long shiny boat with a second story of varnished wood awaited. Ed stepped onto it, and when a fellow in a white jacket offered him a cocktail, he almost said to Hugh, Now, this is more like it, but he knew better; of course he did. He’d had to be more careful ever since they’d stepped off that ferryboat. It was as if the more superficial the environment, the more seriously Hugh took every last thing. What surprised Ed was that he didn’t feel like pointing it out. He was always the one to push Hugh into talking about anything remotely personal, but for the past twenty-four hours he’d been less inclined to do so.
It might have been that there were too many stimuli here for such discussions. This boat had an elevator. He thought of that boy with his brand-new bicycle, the excitement in his voice. Ed wanted to ride this elevator up and down one more time and memorize the slight dip in gravity that occurred before the doors opened up to the staterooms. Instead, he followed his friends to an already crowded party. He listened as Helen explained how seven summers ago her great-aunt Mary had given a party right here and how everyone had arrived full of morbid sentiments, as it was generally understood that Great-Aunt Mary wasn’t long for this earth. And yet she seemed to be going nowhere except Palm Beach each winter. She was one hundred and three and drinking champagne in a deck chair.
“All the women in my family are addicted to champagne,” continued Helen, making her way through the crowd. “Aunt Mary claims my grandmother put it in my mother’s baby bottle and that she did the same with us. Aunt Mary,” Helen shouted. “This is my fiancé, Hugh Shipley.”
The old lady stuck out her clawlike hand to Ed.
“Oh no,” said Helen, “this is our friend Ed Cantowitz.”
Ed took her hand. It was surprisingly warm.
“This is Hugh,” Helen repeated.
Aunt Mary looked up and smiled. She’d lost her eyebrows, in addition to whatever tautness her skin had once possessed, but her cheekbones were prominent, her eyes bright green. Hugh gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“For a moment I thought you were marrying the Jewish fellow.”
“Oh,” said Helen, trying to laugh it off, “no, I’m afraid not.”
“I’m sure you’re a fine young man,” the old lady said to Ed. Her voice was shaky, vaguely British. She was not remotely out of it, nor did she seem cruel. She only wanted to get it straight. Somehow, this was worse.
“I need another drink,” said Hugh, leading Ed away. “I’ve about reached my limit,” Hugh added. “I think there’s a two A.M. ferry to New London.”
But just as Ed was about to reassure Hugh that he was fine, just fine, he realized that Hugh might not be. That Hugh looked genuinely uncomfortable. Just as Ed was about to start in about the benefits of lightening up, Helen’s father stepped off the elevator, and Ed watched Mr. Ordway say hello to each and every person, ghosting along the surface of the crowd like some kind of seriously skilled professional, more prophet than politician.
“Look at you,” said Hugh. “You like him.”
“I don’t,” said Ed.
“I think we may have come across the one thing we cannot beat to death with conversation,” Hugh said. He lit a cigarette, and the heavy lighter fell closed with a snap.
“It’s not about whether I like him.”
Hugh took an unpleasantly long drag. “I know,” he said as he exhaled. But he walked off anyway, halfheartedly shaking his empty glass.
Ed looked past the women with their newly suntanned arms and charm bracelets and the men with their starched crisp shirts. He looked past Helen in coral and Kitty in pink, and there was the water, so blue it looked black, with the sun about to offer up its last green flash. He found the moon full to bursting, but the sky remained light; it was, Ed remembered, the longest day of the year. The moon was closer than ever and there they were, right this moment, tilting toward the sun.
“You wouldn’t know to look at it,” said Mr. Ordway, who was suddenly right beside him, “but this place has been shaped by disasters.”
“Sir,” Ed said, shaking Ordway’s hand. “Good to see you.”
“All the trees on this island were destroyed by a hurricane. It was over a century ago.”
“Is that right?”
“Can you imagine a force that strong?”
“Yep,” Ed said, nodding, “I think I can.”
“Another one blew through in ’38, spreading seeds, returning all the trees.” Mr. Ordway put his hands in his pockets. He shook his head.
Ed realized Ordway wasn’t drinking anything, not even water, and that this was somehow unnerving.
“Is that right?” Ed asked. “After so much time.”
“That a martini?”
Ed nodded again.
“Have them wave vermouth over the top of the glass. It’s the only way.”
Ed almost spilled his drink. “Wave the vermouth. I’ll have to remember that.”
“I get the feeling you’re taking some notes.”
“Maybe,” said Ed, laughing. “Maybe I am. Did you grow up here, sir?”
“Oh no,” Ordway said.
Ed waited. He knew better than to ask.
Ordway looked at him and then looked away. In that one small look, Ed knew he’d decided something.
“I grew up all over this country,” he said, as if he was offering proof of something, but of what Ed had no idea. “My father was an itinerant sort. Minister. Bet you can’t believe that.”
“Well, it’s not what I would have expected, but, sure, I can believe it. I can believe all kinds of things.”
“My poor mother played the organ in one church after the other and never bothered making any friends. My father was a tough actor, if you want to know the truth.”
“Mine, too,” said Ed, and instantly regretted it.
“Is that right? Well, seems like you did fine to me.” He shrugged angrily, as if speaking ill of one’s father was his exclusive right. “My old man died at forty-seven, but before he died he also happened to teach me several things. Among them was this: It is just as easy to love a rich girl as a poor one, and if you’re going to meet a rich girl, you have to learn how to dance. So I became a great dancer.” He grinned. “And that’s how I met Helen’s mother.”
Ed was sorry he’d interrupted. He wanted more than anything for Mr. Ordway to keep talking. “And where was that?”
“A woman like my wife doesn’t wander into a church social in some Podunk town, now, does she?”
“I’d imagine not.”
“I tell you, I was walking along the same miserable dirt road I always walked each morning to my miserable school and, on my life, a man offered me a ride. This man was wealthy and generous, and I owe my good fortune to him, God rest his soul. Was he idiosyncratic? Was he impulsive? You bet he was. But he was also shrewd. You’ll think I’m pulling your leg, but by the time he left me in front of my miserable school, he’d decided to send me to boarding school.”
“He was a quick study.”
“Don’t I know it.” Ordway nodded. “So, you see, that’s how I met my wife. Not directly, not at the school—which wasn’t even on the East Coast, by the way, but on an island off the Washington coast—but it was through that one chance meeting. Mr. Ivry. I must have impressed the hell out of that man, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’d love to know what you said in that car.”
“I don’t remember a thing, son. And don’t think I haven’t wondered.” Mr. Ordway smiled at someone across the deck. His face lifted for a moment.
When a waiter offered a tray of cheese puffs, Ordway declined, and so—with a heavy heart—Ed did, too.
“So you made your way east?”
“Mmn,” said Ordway, “something like that.”
“Well, that’s some story,” Ed said.
“I also made my
share of mistakes before I fully turned to God. Gambled my first earnings away like an idiot, and those were some significant earnings.”
“Are you a religious man?” Ed asked, already knowing the answer.
“Of course I am,” said Mr. Ordway. “Aren’t you?”
“I—”
“Take my advice: no gambling.”
“No,” said Ed. “That’s not for me.”
“I didn’t think so. You fellows are good with money. You don’t part with it easily.”
Ed forced a laugh.
“Unlike all the guests at this party except for that fellow over there, right there.” He gestured with his drink toward the distance. “I didn’t inherit my money. My wife’s trust is not the bulk of my fortune and I know about work, so don’t go thinking otherwise.” Mr. Ordway’s voice went cold. “Got it?”
“Got it,” said Ed.
Mr. Ordway nodded. Then he walked away. Ed watched him greet a woman with a brooch pinned to her chest—a dazzling jewel-encrusted insect.
They were the last guests to leave Great-Aunt Mary’s party. There were more martinis, and, at Ed’s insistence, they rode the elevator up and down until he felt sick and agreed to leave. Hugh drove Kitty’s convertible. “Where’s your sister?” asked Ed. “She didn’t say goodbye.”
Helen extended her hand out the passenger side, stretching into the night. “Careful,” Hugh said.
“My sister was bored,” Helen said. And Ed had the distinct feeling that Helen wanted him to think Kitty was bored specifically with him.
“Oh,” said Ed, looking up at the trees. “That’s too bad.”
“She gets very motherly out of the blue when she’s bored at parties. As if her children have never stayed with a sitter before. I have to go home to the children. It bugs me.”
“I think you’re jealous,” said Ed lightly. “Watch out, Hugh,” he teased. “Helen wants a baby.”
“Shut up,” said Helen sharply.
“Easy,” said Hugh.
“You just shut up about that,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Ed said. “I didn’t …”
They drove in silence.
The swollen moon lit up the roads and the lawns, and as they approached the darkened Ordway home, Helen decided it was time to play tennis. Hugh knocked over several golf bags in the mudroom while looking for rackets, and Ed tossed a tennis ball between his hands.
“Catch,” he said to Helen, and she caught it. They tossed the ball back and forth. “I’m sorry,” Ed said again. But she ignored him.
“You know,” said Ed, “I still haven’t seen your mother’s garden. That’s what I’m going to do right now.” He started walking. “See you in the morning.”
“Helen,” Ed heard Hugh say, his voice laced with both impatience and contrition, “he said he was sorry.”
Ed turned around, already in the middle of the lush green lawn. He looked at his friends. They stood together holding tennis rackets; it was two o’clock in the morning. Ed held up his arms as if he was surrendering. I give up, he mimed. But what, and to whom, was he conceding?
Mrs. Ordway’s garden was unexpectedly wild. It was as if she had put her every last unacted-upon urge down into that soil. Every square inch was planted, there was little in the way of borders, and as Ed tried and failed to name most of the flowers, he felt those plants competing, acting out some kind of horticultural survival of the fittest. The garden was the opposite of peaceful, but he’d almost fallen asleep right there. The scent of something like rich white wine sent him down to the grass, before he picked himself up and made his way inside the house, feeling like a burglar. Though a hedge obscured the tennis court, the court lights were on, and Ed wondered if Hugh and Helen were keeping score or simply lobbing the ball back and forth, carrying on a conversation. Ed noticed the lights in the library, too, and wondered if Mr. Ordway—like his own father—prided himself on not needing to sleep. Ed needed sleep. Although he rarely admitted to doing so, he liked to nap daily; he was convinced it made him a more effective thinker.
It was still hot; he stripped, and after carefully hanging his clothes on the back of a wicker chair, he lay down in bed next to an open window, below a rotating ceiling fan. It was hotter inside than it had been all day. He closed his eyes and heard the ball bouncing back and forth on the clay court, the fixed and fretful rhythm. He thought of the garden and remembered—hydrangea!—the name of those fragrant purple blossoms. Somehow being able to identify that powder-heavy scent released him into the kind of slumber he hadn’t had in days.
When Hugh shook him awake and tossed him his still-wet bathing suit, Ed said, “Let me sleep,” but before he knew it his feet were in the grass, damp from the sprinkler, and he was back outside, in the dark. “What time is it?” he asked, but Hugh ignored him. Helen was ahead of them both, already down at the water’s edge amidst the reeds and below the dock, where low tide revealed the shore.
“Come on,” she said, and when Ed saw she was in her panties and brassiere, he pretended not to notice.
“Nah,” Ed said, as Hugh dove in. “No thanks. I’ll stand guard. I’ll make sure you two stay safe.”
When Helen laughed, he laughed, too, but it didn’t feel like laughter. It felt like acute discomfort and awareness, and though he pretended not to notice the slope of her stomach, the high hipbones and thighs that were even more exciting than her breasts, he did nothing but notice. Those thighs held up her ample behind, a lushness that was always somehow unexpected on such a coltish frame. He was reminded of a giraffe; Helen the giraffe, passing through the African savanna. He had to close his eyes.
“Bye!” she called out, before diving under.
And when he opened his eyes to bright light and a bedside clock that read nearly 7:00 A.M., he knew he’d dreamed the late-night swimming and also Helen’s body in her bra and panties, which would remain—as well it should—one of life’s great secrets.
His pounding headache and unquenchable thirst notwithstanding, he gently showered, shaved, put on his clothes, and was looking forward to a moment alone. If coffee was available, that would be all the better, but mostly he wanted to sit on that porch, to be awake before the others, before the day—before his life—began.
But of course he wasn’t alone. Of course Mr. Ordway was seated at the head of the dining room table, four different newspapers spread before him. Ed chose to say nothing, and this seemed like a sensible choice. When he went into the kitchen, Mrs. Mulroney was listening to a transistor radio, smoking a cigarette.
“What can I get for you?” she asked. But Ed could tell she wasn’t about to exert herself for someone like him. She must have become practiced, over the years, in making such assessments.
Ed cleared his throat. “A cup of coffee would be swell.”
She put out her cigarette but kept on the radio. It sounded like some kind of liturgy.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said.
She waved him out of the kitchen.
When he approached the table, Ed decided to sit as far away from Ordway as possible. He didn’t take a section of the paper, nor did he look at his host, but after Mrs. Mulroney appeared with a cup of coffee, Mr. Ordway pushed The New York Times in Ed’s direction.
“Thank you,” said Ed. He took a sip of coffee—weak but hot.
Ordway nodded. He was hunched over The Wall Street Journal, which was spread atop the table like an architect’s drawings, secured at one corner by a silver bowl of ketchup.
Ordway cleared his throat. “When I come to Fishers, I know the paper delivery is unreliable. So I bring the whole previous week’s worth. Do you know what was invented over a century ago Thursday?”
Ed prepared himself for a discussion on any number of potentially difficult headline-inspired topics: civil rights, the separation of church and state, the communist threat in Southeast Asia.
Ed shook his head. “No idea, I’m afraid.”
“The donut.”
“N
o kidding.”
“Some son of a bitch made a fortune. Can you imagine? All because he had a craving, I presume.” He shook his head. Ordway’s plate of food—a poached egg and potatoes—was untouched.
From upstairs, Ed heard the muffled voices of Kitty’s children and their footsteps followed by what must have been their mother’s slower gait. “Get ready,” said Mr. Ordway, “here they come.” He folded up the paper and took a bite of eggs. “What are you eating?”
“Oh,” said Ed, “I don’t know. That looks awfully good.”
“I eat it every day.”
“Really?”
“Every day.”
“Huh.”
“One less decision.”
“I see what you mean.”
Mr. Ordway grinned tightly. “Listen—and I don’t want to talk about this any further, not with my grandchildren bouncing around—but you’ll come to work for me this summer.”
“Sir—”
“It’s done.” He began stacking up the papers.
Ed thought of how, as far as he knew, no Jew had ever worked at Ordway Keller. But it wasn’t a commercial bank (No Jews, his favorite economics professor had cut him off, laughing darkly, when Ed had broached the question of working for one), so he supposed it was technically possible. Then he thought of how his own father would react when Ed relayed this offer. “I—I’m afraid I have another obligation, sir.” Murray Cantowitz had demanded one last summer as payment for Ed’s (despite the scholarship) pricey undergraduate degree. “But thank you, sir. Thank you so much for the offer.”
“Change it,” said Mr. Ordway, as he drowned a fried potato in a golden yolk.
“But why would you want—”
“It’s done,” he said.
By the time the others made their way to the table, Ed was long gone. He was sitting in what was—at least for the next several hours—still his room. He tried, unsuccessfully, to knock his father’s desolate face out of his mind. He’d made the bed even though he didn’t have to, and he was sitting on that bed, with his suitcase packed.
Ed was thinking of something Hugh had told him soon after they’d met, not even a year ago:
A Dual Inheritance Page 13
