A Dual Inheritance

by Joanna Hershon

  “Bonjour,” said a familiar voice.

  “Oh my God,” he cried. Very polished, very suave.

  Helen stood beside his desk in a yellow suit, holding a white leather purse with both of her hands.

  “What are you doing here?” he marveled.

  “I had lunch with my father.”

  “Look at you!” He sprang to his feet and—poking his hand in the air as if halfheartedly hailing a cab—initiated the most ungainly hug in the history of the embrace.

  “What happened to you?” she giggled.

  He was laughing now, too, and not quietly. He was especially cognizant of two things: that they had an audience, and that if he didn’t get to the john soon, he was going to cause even more damage to himself than a broken finger. “C’mere,” he said. He ushered her away from the desks and toward the flowers. “You look great,” he said, “really great.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m too skinny.”

  “How was Paris?” he asked. The pressure on his bladder was terrible.

  “Paris was awful.”

  “Only you could possibly say that and still make it sound like you had a ball.”

  “No, really. My boss was always trying to feel me up, my apartment was so hot I couldn’t sleep, and when I can’t sleep, I lose my appetite. Can you imagine being in France with no appetite? Oh, and Hugh never arrived. He’s evidently on to relief work. Says he’s done with being an observer, which I suppose might be a very good thing. But what about you? That pretty secretary told me you went to the emergency room. I think she likes you, by the way—”

  “Shh—”

  “Don’t worry, she can’t hear me. I’m telling you, she seemed awfully concerned.”

  “I slammed my hand in a car door.”

  “Oh for God’s sake. How?”

  “Helen—”

  “Was it a taxi?”

  “No—Helen—”

  “Were you drunk or something?” Her eyes widened. “Were you with that secretary?”

  “Listen—I’m so sorry—but I have to excuse myself.”

  “Oh,” she said, “oh, of course.” She pushed the elevator button, and he realized she thought he was trying to get rid of her.

  “Helen,” he whispered, “I have to use the bathroom.”

  She smiled as if he’d just told her his biggest secret. “Well,” she said, with a flourish of a throat-clear that—for a brief moment—reminded him of her father, “as it happens, I have to run to an appointment uptown. Let me buy you a drink later. Seems like you kind of need one. There’s this new place that I read about. Or, actually, my sister read about. She’s always reading about places in The New Yorker and telling me to go. Poor Kitty.”

  “Kitty reads The New Yorker?”

  “Will you meet me at Grand Central?”

  “Where are we going? I do have to get up for work in the morning, you know.”

  “The bar is at the station. Apparently it’s done up like an old train car. Edwardian.”

  “Nifty.”

  “Just be there, okay?”

  “See you at seven,” he said, before nearly sprinting down the hall.

  The Grand Central joint was too dainty, the lace curtains and delicate glasses made him feel even more ungainly than he already felt with his broken finger, and by the time the check had arrived and Helen waved it toward her, Ed was antsy as hell. “I’ll let you pay this one time,” he said bitterly.

  “Of course you will. I already insisted.”

  “But no more after this.”

  “We’re not on a date,” she said, finishing off her sidecar, ice clinking in the glass.

  “I know,” he said.

  “So you don’t have to impress me.”

  “It’s not about that. Just—”

  “What?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Come on, you hate when I do that,” she said. “Ed?”

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m going to stop being a pill.”

  She looked a bit too relieved to hear it. Though she’d repeated how excited she was to have a real adventure, how Paris had been a disappointment and didn’t count, and how wonderful Hugh had sounded during their one phone conversation, how inspired, Ed knew she was anxious about her current plan to meet him in Nairobi, a plan she had yet to tell her parents about (though she was booked on a flight leaving in less than one week’s time), and he knew that it was somehow up to him to reassure her, when of course he couldn’t possibly do that. Even if they’d finally set a date (this January; winter wedding, Connecticut), they still weren’t married, and, besides which, what was Hugh really doing over there? And what was Helen Ordway going to do in Nairobi?

  Ed looked around. This room was full of ladies. He had a feeling he was sitting in a place popular for resting after the exertions of shopping, for sipping while waiting for husbands. One husband walked in the door just then and tapped a woman’s shoulder. She let her crisply folded newspaper fall to her chair as she stood to kiss him.

  “Have you thought about what you’ll do once you get there?”

  Helen shrugged and stood up. “Let’s go,” she said. Sometimes she was so decisive, and it was always a surprise. “And no more talking about money. I want to see you plenty before I go. We can’t let Kitty down, now, can we? This is the greatest city in the world and you’re my favorite friend in town, and you have a broken finger. Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Ed. “Hey, okay.”

  From different bars, every evening that week, they wrote postcards to Hugh. They wondered if he’d ever receive them. Ed discovered that a brandy Alexander was nectar of the gods. How embarrassing, they both agreed; he couldn’t exactly take a girl out and order himself a brandy Alexander. They ate Chinese food for dinner, little dumplings and noodles and cold, weak beer. They walked and walked, earning the understanding of how each neighborhood in Manhattan fit together.

  Helen: “If you could live anywhere, where would it be?”

  He pointed at an apartment on Park Avenue—limestone adorned with a broad navy awning, white-gloved doorman standing by.

  Helen: “Typical.”

  But he could tell she wasn’t disappointed.

  And then their last night, Friday: something called lobster fra diavolo, someplace in Greenwich Village, his mouth afire but, for the first time, not minding such a kick, in fact suddenly understanding why people liked, even loved, spicy food. Bottles of Chianti: first to toast to Helen’s trip, to her reunion with Hugh, and then to dull the diavolo, and then because the owner brought them a dusty bottle they had to try and also some kind of pastry exploding with cream. Next door down a narrow stairwell: horns, a snare drum, and a tall regal woman, her big eyes closed, singing, Ill wind—sequins over skin like sparkles on tar, those glitter-city streets—ill wind, no good.

  Helen nudged him awake when the set was over, with a touch that knew unexpected sleep called for tenderness. As she took a cigarette from a familiar silver case, Ed reached for the matchbook between them. He struck a match and she leaned forward; he’d never found a ritual so reassuring.

  “To be honest,” she finally said, “I was a bit nervous that we’d run out of things to talk about.”

  “When?” He was tired and finally felt it, all those long days, all that working and not sleeping enough; he just wanted to put his head down on a cool dark surface, this table between them, the floor at Helen’s feet, or maybe the singer’s bare shoulder in the corner; she was having a drink and smiling like there was no trouble, never had been.

  “We’d never spent any time together. Without Hugh, I mean.”

  “I think we’ve done okay,” said Ed, still looking at the singer.

  “Then,” she said, “would you mind looking at me while I’m talking?”

  He twisted up his mouth and tipped his chair back precariously. He did what she asked. Her lipstick was worn off and she looked mussed up and radiant, like it was dawn already and everything had already been
done, every last shameful thing, and these terrible constricting necessary clothes were strewn across an anonymous floor. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “One,” she said, biting her lip.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” There was a green light above the doorway next to the stage, and when the singer passed through it Ed wondered about what went on behind that door. He also realized that he didn’t care nearly as much about anything else as he cared about Helen. Ed looked at her through the cloud of smoke.

  “I’m worried,” Helen said. “I guess I’m worried.”

  “Okay,” said Ed. “What about?”

  “I want to tell you something.”

  “So tell me.”

  “I’m not sure I should.” She glanced up at the low ceiling. “But now I have to. Don’t I?”

  “You don’t.”

  “Thank you.”

  They sat in silence while the voices all around them grew louder, anticipating a second set.

  She stamped out her cigarette. “I had an abortion.”

  When she found a suitable lack of anything judgmental in his expression, she continued. “It was when Hugh and I were, you know, it was in boarding school. Or right afterward, at any rate. I had an abortion.”

  “Does he—”

  “Of course he knows.” Her face and neck flushed so quickly, it was as if—by his asking that question—Ed had lit a flame.

  Helen took up another cigarette and Ed took up the matchbook. How he wished he enjoyed smoking.

  “At the time, I didn’t tell him. I guess I disappeared.”

  “You did?” said Ed, suddenly angry on Hugh’s behalf. “He must have been devastated.”

  “I guess,” agreed Helen. “That’s what he’s said.”

  “But …?”

  “It’s hard to picture Hugh devastated. Isn’t it?”

  He had to nod. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I mean I’m sorry that you were … in that position.”

  Her face softened considerably. “Thank you.”

  “Helen,” Ed asked, “are you pregnant?”

  She shook her head. Then she inhaled softly, the red cigarette tip barely drawing.

  “Then …?”

  “I’m afraid that Hugh doesn’t—that he doesn’t really need people around him. Does that make any sense? Sometimes I imagine being with him and he isn’t there somehow. I’m afraid,” she admitted. “I’m afraid of being alone.”

  “Well, then, you won’t be,” he said.

  “You think that’s how it goes?”

  “I do. You’ll get what you need.”

  She smiled. “I love that about you.”

  “What.”

  “You are just the most convinced person.”

  “Not the most convincing?”

  She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, as if she were trying to see right through him, and for one disorienting moment he was afraid she could. “That, too,” she said. “You are mighty convincing.”

  “See,” Ed said, leaning forward, “you’re feeling better already.” Her neck and cheeks were still hot, still pink. “I can tell.”

  “D’you want to know something?”

  He nodded slowly, unnecessarily.

  “That summer when it happened, I went to stay with my aunt for a while. She lives in this old harbor town in Connecticut; austere and completely depressing. Or maybe it was just my mood.” She laughed tightly. “Anyway, black mood or no, you can stroll into the town square and see not a soul, even in the middle of the day. There was a man who I imagined was a war veteran—he had one leg and the rest of him was very upright, but he seemed like a vagrant somehow. I would always pass him everywhere—in the morning when I went to buy bread, in the evening, along the shore, he was always there, and do you know what? Even though he had to have been at least forty years old and he was half decrepit, really unkempt, he looked just like Hugh, like Hugh gone mad and lame. I kept trying to avoid him, but there he was wherever I went.” Helen was looking past him, and he imagined her gaze traveling past the door to those narrow stairs, up the stairs, out into the streets, over the bridge, and onto the expressway, right onto that hulking jet plane.

  “Hugh’s fine,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  “He’s fine.”

  She nodded. “He never told you about his mother, did he?”

  “Well, I know that she died, if that’s what you mean. I know that he barely remembers her.”

  “And do you know how she died?”

  Ed shook his head. He realized he had no idea.

  “She drank herself to death. Or at least that’s what they told him. Who even knows how she did it. Who knows. That family somehow manages to keep everything very very quiet.”

  “All he’s said is that he can’t remember her. And that his aunt May was there.”

  “Well,” she said, “that may well be true. His aunt is a lovely person; I’ve met her several times. But think about this: His mother drank so much for the first five years of Hugh’s life that she died from it. Granted, she’d had a long head start—she was forty-three when she had Hugh, you know—but those first five years of Hugh’s life: Those were the years that did her in.”

  Ed heard clicking, and it was as if, for a moment, he was back in Adams House, waiting for Hugh. There was the familiar sound of the record player in the background—click and pause, click and pause, the moment before Hugh took time to change the record, no matter what kind of rush they were in. Ed recalled not so much the music, though the choice almost always surprised him, but the silent moment before hearing a brand-new sound. Debussy, Ravel, Bill Evans, Roy Orbison; Ed remembered names but at that moment could conjure nothing but the clicking. Then he realized his own jaw was clicking, over and over again.

  Helen’s stem wrists and lily hands lay on the table and he touched them, covered them up, as if this was a test and he was hiding his answers—his precious answers—as if all he needed was right here, and there was his breath, fast and tight, then rushing forward.

  “Hugh’s fine,” he said. “You both are.” But Jesus is what he thought. Jesus Mary and Joseph.

  He slept later than he’d wanted to, almost late enough to miss Ira’s ride to East Hampton. He’d been looking forward to this day out of town for weeks. A beach still sounded great—less so a party—but he was focused on the sea, how (despite having to keep his bandaged finger dry) it would clean him up, clear out his head, and offer some perspective. He knew he needed distance: from his room and the familiar innards of the city—the underground sausage smell and nuts for sale and soda sweating into flimsy napkins discarded underfoot; that subway going and going and going—but most importantly from this past week; the nights had felt too important. He had climbed that narrow stairwell behind Helen before the second set. He had memorized her as if she were yet another piece of crucial information, and—after Helen tried and failed to light a cigarette, sending them both into drunken peals of laughter—Ed had hailed her a cab. What a rushed and completely (could there be any other kind?) anticlimactic goodbye.

  “What’s eating you?” asked Ira, during a stretch of no traffic on the expressway. “You were the one who was late. You should be groveling.”

  “I’m working on it. I’m getting ready to grovel.”

  “Okay, then. Wouldn’t want to rush you. Wouldn’t want to be vulgar.”

  “What the hell d’you mean by that?”

  “You spend nearly all of your time around a bunch of tense WASPs.”

  “And?”

  “You’re not afraid of it rubbing off on you?”

  “No,” Ed said. “Christ, Ira, no, I’m not. I’m trying to work a goddamn job is what I’m trying to do.”

  Ira nodded, focused on the road.

  “What.”

  Ira shook his head.

  “Just say it.”

  “I only wonder how you can stomach it.”

  “Stomach what.”

  “It doesn’t bothe
r you that they see you as—well, you know—that Harvard Jew that Ordway hired in order to make his company some real Jew money?”

  Ed shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. Not for a second. Now would you please back the fuck off?”

  Once they’d made it past the many houses and gas stations and outcroppings of stores and new construction, they were surrounded by farmland, and it was calming him down.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” Ira said.

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s just that you’ve been an ass since you got in the car.”

  “Yeah, well.” Ed put his good hand out into the air, feeling the speed, the hot breeze. “An old friend was in town this week. I’m afraid I’m paying.”

  “I thought you never went out during the week.”

  “It was a really good friend.”

  “From Boston?”

  “That’s right,” he said, watching the fields, orderly green rows of crops about which he knew nothing, “an old pal from Boston.” He thought of how he’d accused Hugh of keeping Helen a secret, and now here he was doing the same. What is it about her? He put this question to himself, downright resentfully, and came up with only this: She made him feel strongly that there would never be enough of her. What crumbs there were inspired the most basic of impulses: to hoard.

  “Okay, let’s get ourselves together, man,” urged Ira. “Do you think Dick and Sarah go inviting everyone to their house?”

  “To be honest, I guess I did.”

  Ira laughed and drove faster, but it still wasn’t fast enough. It was good, Ed knew, that he wasn’t at the wheel.

  As they approached the house, Sarah—the sassy broad from the ball game—and Dick waved them into a field where a shingled farmhouse had been freshly painted white. It was an all-American vision corrupted or perhaps made more spectacular by the sight of their hosts, clearly eccentrics (he’d somehow missed this at the ball game—Dick had been wearing a baseball cap at the stadium, and now his hair, revealed, was a white nimbus, a true Einsteinian spectacle). “Welcome,” they cried, offering booze and snacks and inflatable balls and towels and girls out back. He’d never been in such a house. Paintings and sculptures covered every available surface. Abstract oils hung beside seashore watercolors, wire and metal sculptures sat beside enormous bowls of lemons (they had a thing for lemons), and books and books were not only on shelves but stacked on the floor and tables. There were collections: Hotel ashtrays, fountain pens. A bright yellow telephone. He wanted to call Helen just to hear her breathe, just to hear her shout, Who is this? into the silence of the telephone line. But Helen was on the way to Idlewild, on her way to the other side of the world, and instead of calling Helen he was telling Sarah how pleased he was to be here.