A Dual Inheritance

by Joanna Hershon

  There was a buzzing in her head. She’d come back to the city, to construction on their neighbor’s apartment. But how could they begin construction so early in the morning? She imagined—through the buzzing—telling her father about the noise, and how he would rail against the co-op board for allowing such nonsense. It was time for school—time to wake up. She felt the buzzing in her teeth and she realized, with a start, that she was underneath the mountain of towels, underneath the Caribbean sun. But what was the drilling sound? The girls with the buried arms were up, fully restored, playing in the water as if the sound wasn’t there. The boy and the man were gone. Only the mound of churned-up sand remained. There was a path cut into the trees behind the beach and the awful sound took her up that path, to where sand turned into dirt and the temperature dropped. The path snaked alongside the house—it was maybe even on the same property—and the drilling grew louder. There was a shed shaded by trees.

  When she approached, she saw that Hugh was holding a chair leg in the teeth of a table saw, and wood chips were flying around him. He was wearing goggles. There were stacks of wood all around the room. One dark chaise with scrollwork on its sides was the only finished piece. Hugh looked up and turned off the machine. The silence was delicious, though there was ringing in her ears.

  “Christ—” he said. “You scared me.”

  “I did? I’m sorry. And I’m really sorry to bother you, but do you know how loud that is? Has anyone ever complained? I couldn’t figure out what it was, and I followed the noise.”

  He took off his goggles and wiped his brow on that same white linen shirt, which surely he would retire after today. “I’m sorry for the noise. These house projects of Kitty’s—she’s done four now—have allowed me to indulge my interest in carpentry. They’re usually half construction sites, and there’s always equipment lying around.”

  “Have you been here—to this house—before?” Rebecca asked.

  “Look at that piece.” He pointed to the chaise, without—it had not escaped her—answering the question. “Can you believe how beautiful? I want to meet the man who made that piece. God knows he probably isn’t earning what he should.” A sweating plastic tumbler had created a puddle of water on the worktable. He leaned over and picked up the tumbler, but he didn’t yet take a sip.

  Maybe she was being controlling and uptight, but wasn’t it just plain stupid to mix alcohol with amateur carpentry? There was a wall full of hanging saws, their sharp blades glinting in the shed’s low light.

  “Using my hands like this—it relaxes me more than any beach.” He smiled tightly. “A man working with his hands in order to feel real. Do you know about that cliché yet?” He took a long drink.

  She felt suddenly, painfully aware that she was dressed in nothing but a bathing suit. She stood up straight, as if posture might take the place of clothing. “I’m going to go back to the beach now,” she said. “When do you think they’re coming back?”

  “From the hazelnut hunt?” He put the tumbler down. “Anyone’s guess. But I’ll use the saw sparingly,” he said. “Almost done.”

  She went back the way she came; it seemed like a much shorter walk. On the way to the shed, she’d noticed nothing but trees and sand and dirt, but now there were two tiny orange butterflies, a wasp’s nest, and clusters of wetly red berries, or flowers that looked like berries. She wanted to know the names of things. She wanted to be … specific.

  On the beach, there was nobody left. She walked straight into the sea and swam underwater for as long as she could hold her breath. For her, this was luxury: no decision bigger than whether to be in or out of the sea. She kept her eyes open, and it was so clear—the tiny silver fish and the sandy bottom were the only reminders that she wasn’t in a heated pool. Out of breath, she burst up through the surface, panting harder than she’d expected.

  That’s when she heard the screaming. Though she had never heard a person being tortured, this sound conjured that word—torture—almost as if it were a memory.

  She raced out of the water, and even before she reached the shore, she knew exactly from where this noise was coming. This time—climbing the hill, the sand into dirt—it whizzed by like a view from a speeding car. Her heart was pounding, she was the only person in sight, her father didn’t know where she was, and, in the doorway, she saw Vivi’s father—she saw Hugh—holding up his hand: “I’ve cut off two fingers,” he said. He’d managed to take off his shirt and wrap it around his hand, and the white linen was already red. The cement floor was spattered with Hugh’s blood. His face was pale as he said, very evenly, “Rebecca, you need to listen to me. Go get me a cooler full of ice and some plastic wrap. The cooler is above the refrigerator. Plastic wrap in the drawer. You need to run, because I’m losing a lot of blood very quickly.”

  “Shouldn’t I call—”

  “Go now,” he said firmly. “Hurry.”

  She ran in a way that felt as if what she’d previously called running, up until this moment, had in fact been something else. She hoped Vivi and Helen had returned, but they hadn’t, of course they hadn’t. Of course it was only her, in a bathing suit, no time to change, no time to pull on anything else but Vivi’s pink shirt with black roses, which she found draped over a kitchen chair, the chair she’d stood on to take the cooler down. After a slight hesitation (Vivi loved that shirt), Rebecca pulled it on; she slammed all the ice trays until the cooler was as full as it was going to be, which was not very full at all. She ran fast and awkwardly—holding the cooler and the plastic wrap—back to the shed, where Hugh was now sitting on a bench with his hand over a metal bucket. The sound of blood hitting the bucket was all she could hear. Hugh was even more pale; he looked as if he was getting ready to throw up, and she was shaking now, shaking and saying, “What do I do now, Hugh? Tell me what to do.”

  “Is there ice in the cooler?”

  She nodded.

  “Good girl. The fingers,” he said. “I’m going to need you to pick them up. They are under the table saw. Do you see them?”

  She did: half curled. Pale.

  “You’re going to gently put them on ice and wrap the ice in the plastic wrap. You hear me?”

  She nodded. She crouched down and picked up Hugh’s fingers and she did not throw up. She did not drop the ice or the fingers, nor did she have difficulty tearing sheets of plastic wrap. She closed the cooler. “Now what? Hugh?”

  “I need that shirt.”

  “Vivi’s?” she asked, lifting the hem.

  He nodded.

  She took it off, and she was once again wearing only a bathing suit. Hugh let his bloody shirt fall to the floor and she quickly turned her eyes away before seeing any gore. When she looked back, Vivi’s pink shirt was turning red.

  He rose to his feet. “Thank you, Rebecca. Can you do something else for me? I know you can. In fact, I’m positive you can. Because you are tough.”

  I’m not, she wanted to say. You’re wrong.

  “Pick up the cooler,” he managed, and she did.

  He was stumbling, leading her out of the shed, outside toward the road, where the garage was empty because Helen and Vivi had gone looking for hazelnuts. “You’re going to have to drive,” he said, leaning on the garage.

  “There’s no car,” she said moronically, because he was, in fact, pointing to a motorcycle. “Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry, but, no. I can’t.”

  “Come on,” he said, nodding to a hook just inside the garage. “There is the key. There is a helmet. Come on,” he said, more impatiently. “I can’t drive. I am starting to feel faint. But I can tell you exactly what to do.”

  “I’ll call the ambulance.”

  “Forget it,” said Hugh, “this is the way we’re going to do this. We are not waiting for a bloody fucking ambulance—excuse me. Not here. Not going to happen. Come on now.”

  The motorcycle—amazingly—had a milk crate strapped to its back and had likely been used up until now for transporting cases of liquor. She put the
cooler in the milk crate. She grabbed the helmet and the keys. “This is stupid—” She realized she was yelling and it felt good to yell. It felt right. “This is totally stupid. I can’t drive a motorcycle. We are both going to die.”

  “You listen to me,” he said gravely. “We are not going to die. Idiots can drive motorcycles, and you are a smart and able girl. It’s all going to be fine.”

  “Fine? Are you kidding?”

  “You need,” said Hugh, quietly now, “to get on that motorcycle and drive me to Dr. Branford’s clinic. It’s a straight shot and he’ll know what to do. If he isn’t there, we need to get him there. And this is important: If I pass out—do not let anyone give me any blood. Do you understand me?”

  There were vines crawling around a drainpipe. Gravel crawling with ants.

  “Rebecca,” he shouted. “Look at me. Do not let them give me any blood. Now get on.”

  She did. He sat behind her.

  “Put the key in the ignition.”

  As she turned the key, he put his arms around her. The blood was all over her right away; Vivi’s shirt was ruined. His concern over not having any blood transfusions, she reasoned, surely meant that he did not, in fact, already have AIDS. She felt the warmth, Hugh’s warmth, his heaviness—she’d never felt anything so heavy—as he fell against her, as he clutched her, as he gave her precise instruction after precise instruction: brake pedal, clutch, ignition switch, choke. She thought, He’s right; I can do this, and that thought lasted until she was driving. They were bobbing and swaying and Hugh was yelling at her to straighten, to relax into it, but the sound of the motor was drowning him out, and at some point she ceased to hear anything aside from the fuzz in her head, flosslike, an underwater silent hum. And then: Cruising. As if she’d been driving all her life. As if she’d grown up with a dad who, instead of forbidding her to ever ride a motorcycle, had fixed them up in the driveway—the fantasy driveway, the existence of which she could, right now, almost recall. As if she were really that girl, speeding up now, despite Hugh’s yelling not to, speeding on a motorcycle to get where she needed to go.

  She thought about AIDS, how her chorus teacher from the city was dying. She thought about how Hugh worked in a clinic in Haiti. How his blood was pouring out all over the place, and who knew if she had any small cuts, any open wounds. She did not ask if Hugh was all right. She was too afraid to do anything besides keep her eyes on the road and listen for instructions. The wind whipped at her hair, her eyes teared, but somehow she kept her focus. Hugh shouted directions, but it was straight, mostly flat, until a sharp turn took them off the main road (Lean left, growled Hugh, really LEAN) and up an unpaved path to a blue cement building. It looked more like someone’s tacky house than any kind of clinic. There were a few cars out front, and she did her best to park beside them. She scraped her ankle, but it didn’t matter; she couldn’t feel anything. It took her a moment to realize that Hugh was leaning on her, trying his best to walk.

  What happened next she would think about for years to come, but no matter how often she thought it over, she’d never remember what happened with any more clarity, any more sense or specificity. The doctor told Hugh to lie down on a table. Your daughter can stay with you, he said. Then he closed the door. The door was closed. It was a white room. It wasn’t terribly clean. She stood across the room, leaning on the door.

  The pain is really kicking in, he said.

  I’m sorry, she said.

  No, he said, I am. I can’t believe I made you drive.

  I won’t tell my father, she said. And then she smiled.

  Christ almighty, this hurts.

  She came toward the table, stood behind his head. He looked up and said, in a strained voice: You’re an angel.

  Ha, she said.

  You have a light coming out of the top of your head.

  Hugh?

  I never understood it, he said.

  Understood what?

  He started to cry.

  Understood what, Hugh, understood what?

  She put her hands on his bare shoulders. They were burning hot.

  It’s freezing in here, he said. You know, your father always did love cars. Why cars and not motorcycles? Tears leaking out his eyes, dripping into his sweat; his hand submerged in yet another bucket. Where oh where was the doctor?

  What did you never understand?

  He was my friend, Hugh said. Then he reached up with his good hand and touched her cheek. I can’t believe you’re here.

  By the time Rebecca and Hugh arrived back at the villa, it was well after dark. She stood as Vivi and Helen embraced Hugh in the entryway. Vivi was hysterical. Rebecca stood there watching, until it felt unseemly to watch anymore.

  She retreated downstairs, past the lumpy bed, past the patio, and down the stone steps. She stepped out onto the sand. She waded into black water.

  The fingers couldn’t be reattached. The way he’d sliced them had made this impossible. Hugh had managed—on Thanksgiving Day—to get a Boston surgeon on the phone, who, after talking with Dr. Branford, had confirmed it. There was no rush to be airlifted.

  I’m such a fool, he’d said, when she came back into the room after the doctor had cleaned him up as best he could.

  It was an accident, she said.

  Yes, he said, with the kind of smile she’d only seen in movies, the smile of a man on painkillers. But I’m still a fool.

  You are not, she said, and her voice, she realized, was fierce. You’re the opposite of a fool.

  The opposite of a fool? He laughed. Well, how about that?

  She was a skinny furnace of a nervous girl. She broke out in hives with some regularity.

  But once she’d gotten going on that motorcycle, she’d been in control. And not the kind of tense control she was accustomed to feeling, the kind where she held everything together by sheer effort and willpower. Even the doctor had been impressed. Your daughter is extremely self-possessed. Rebecca had waited for Hugh to correct him, to say, She’s not my daughter, but he hadn’t. He’d hardly been in his right mind, after all, and so it was Rebecca who had pointed out: He’s not my father. And the doctor’s expression had changed. It had gone from approval to … bemusement. It was only as she floated in the ocean now, as she looked up at the half-moon, that she realized why.

  She woke up, shaking, in the middle of the night. At first she thought she was cold, but she was underneath two blankets and the air was warm. She thought she had a fever, but she felt fine aside from the shaking. And then she knew why she was shaking. She knew in her bones that Hugh was outside that door, and that he was there for her. She could imagine him sitting by the pool, his eyes bloodshot but focused. She knew he wouldn’t come up to the sliding door—he would never—but she knew, if she wanted to, that she could go outside and he would be waiting. Her heartbeat was thundering inside her chest; it obliterated everything except her need to retrace the steps of the evening. She remembered that Vivi still hadn’t come to bed by the time she’d fallen asleep. She remembered that she had fallen asleep thinking of three Shipleys locked in their embrace, which had been—for some reason—an unsettling image. She knew that Hugh would never come for her; she knew that he was there. That she thought so was outrageous; she knew that, too. She wasn’t used to this kind of certainty, which followed not one shred of sense. Vivi was snoring faintly now from the other bed, and though seeing Vivi offered real relief, the shaking didn’t stop.

  She shook off the blankets and crept up the stairs. One light was on in the living room. She could see onto the veranda, where the table was still set for the Thanksgiving meal, and she walked out onto it, up to the railing, where she leaned as far as she could, farther than she probably should have—out toward the pool, the sea, the moon, the lights, into the warm night air.

  She looked down, of course. There was no one out there. Or at least not anymore.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Shenzhen

  Charcoal Armani suit and tie, buffed Gu
cci loafers, lucky briefcase from Milan, and yet Ed Cantowitz felt like no one so much as his daughter’s old Paddington Bear. Watching Chinese pour onto the train with a seeming singularity of purpose that made his New York stride feel like amateur hour, he couldn’t stop thinking of sad-sack stuffed ol’ Paddington as the Hong Kong train pulled out of the station and blasted toward a former fishing village that had—evidently, before Deng’s reforms—boasted not much more than some rice paddies and duck farms.

  Shenzhen. Tax-free special economics, smog-ridden pit full of immoral engineers—that’s what he was here for. He’d read on several leaflets in his Hong Kong hotel how Deng’s opening-up policy was creating not only fresh air (ridiculous even as a metaphor) but also earthshaking changes. The Chinese, for all of their environmentally destructive, innovative, technological savvy, sure did cling to their time-honored images of nature.

  As he looked out the window at a countryside of rubble, at one shockingly beautiful flash of painted aluminum fences—teal and yellow and orange and blue—at skinny trees and ghosts of mountains and streetlights under smog, he patted the thin sleeve underneath his shirt, which contained not only his passport and his visa and several thousand dollars and francs and not enough yuan (he would have to exchange right after clearing immigration) but also a notecard that the Hong Kong concierge had written out for him. You need, the concierge had muttered sternly, while inking Chinese characters. And not that Ed would know if the characters said otherwise, but apparently Mr. Ed Cantowitz in addition to the address of the Shenzhen Golden Canopy Hotel was printed there, in case he became lost (poor fat dazed Paddington) and nobody at this border crossing understood a word of his rudimentary Mandarin.