A Dual Inheritance

by Joanna Hershon

  She asked if he was sorry, and he told her how sorry was irrelevant when it came to such matters, especially after so much time.

  “Even so,” said Rebecca. “Are you?”

  “Of course I am,” said Hugh. “Jesus.”

  “I don’t mean to press you on it,” she said quickly.

  “Sure you do,” said Hugh. “And I deserve it.”

  But he excused himself soon after that. And the following evening, he had his dinner—and presumably his after-dinner drinks—elsewhere.

  One night, on the shore, she sat with Hugh atop an overturned boat. Behind them, on the terrace, a birthday dinner continued: clinking bottles and laughter; Carol the RN was sixty.

  “So what happened with you and my father?” Rebecca finally asked him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean why did you lose touch?”

  Hugh didn’t answer immediately; he took a drag of his cigarette. “Your father cut me off.”

  “He—what? No, he didn’t.”

  Hugh shook his head, as if this fact surprised him, too. “Over some pointless conversation about the goddamn nation of Israel.” He added, “No offense.”

  She found she was unable to look at him, out of something like embarrassment on everyone’s behalf. “But, really? I mean, I know he can be … forceful on the subject, but he never mentioned anything like that. He only said you drifted apart.”

  “There was no drifting. Have you ever known your father to drift? In any way whatsoever?”

  When she turned to look at him, he was staring out at the water.

  “Hugh?”

  “Look,” he said, and pointed. And while at first she was irritated with his shifting focus, she saw that, in the distance, there was an unmistakable glow.

  He slowly stood up as a ship came into view. “There she is,” he said. “The only passenger and cargo ferry for the entire lake. She’s it, and she’s extraordinary, so make sure you get a good look.” He called out to the tableful of people behind them, “The Liemba, ladies and gentlemen!” He gazed across the water, as if this ship were, in fact, his new romance. “Just watch,” he whispered. Before he sat back down, he held up his hand, as if marking the location of the boat. For a moment he looked almost infirm, and then it dawned on Rebecca that Hugh was exceptionally drunk.

  The table quieted; someone blew out the candles so they could get a better look, and within moments the dark lake erupted with small kerosene flames, lanterns shining from small wooden skiffs laden with sacks. Rice, Carol explained. Sugar. Pineapples. Cassava. Rebecca could see the glinting silver of what Hugh identified as piles of dried fish. He explained with peculiar reverence how the goods were transferred from the bobbing wooden boats up onto the Liemba’s deck. Most goods were going to the Congo, he explained, which was larger than the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, and Germany combined.

  If Rebecca strained, she could hear passengers crying out to one another in the universal language of impatience. She could imagine the crowds, determined to find their place on the ship for the night. She took out her camera and aimed it toward the ship, so regal and glittery from where she was sitting, though she could only imagine the foul-smelling chaos of so many people and their belongings.

  Weeks later, after the swollen-headed baby (whose name, she’d learn, was Abasi) had made it through a successful surgery, after he’d returned to his family with bright eyes and a tiny scar, and after Rebecca was back in her own apartment, which looked out on a row of brownstones and one ancient cigar shop, she would log hours staring at her laptop screen in the midst of an unavoidable job search. One day when she was particularly discouraged, she distracted herself by downloading this particular series of photographs: the Liemba, all blurry glows and traces of sparkle on a background of solid black. And there was another picture. She realized that she must have aimed slightly to the right, because, just for one mistake of a shot, there was no Liemba, no blur of light—only the edge of Hugh in flash-blighted profile, with the tail end of his cigarette dangling from his lips, as if he’d forgotten about it.

  Soon after, she got a phone call in the middle of the night—Hello? she asked, breathless, assuming it was Vivi, gone into labor. But it was Hugh—so odd to hear from Hugh—and he didn’t even say hello. You won’t fucking believe this is how he started, and he explained how Abasi—sometime after the follow-up visit—ran a high fever. He relayed how the baby was admitted to the hospital, the same national hospital where he’d had the successful surgery, and how, there in the hospital, the nurses determined—without a blood test, he shouted, without administering antibiotics—that there was nothing to be done.

  The mother would have been there, too, of course. The mother would have been there in that hospital in Dar es Salaam. Rebecca had learned her name but would always think of her just this way: the mother. She would think of her when Vivi’s healthy baby was born. And years after that, when her own children made their way into this world: the mother.

  They talked for hours that night, Hugh and Rebecca, their disembodied voices rising and falling. About an hour into the conversation it came to her again: She was talking on the phone with Hugh. Even stranger: Whatever spell she’d been under for lo those many years—it had evidently lifted. And so she kept talking to him: She lay on her bed, wandered to the kitchen; she cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder and felt such tremendous relief because, my God, what a mess she’d almost made.

  Toward the end of their conversation, some three hours later, toward dawn, Rebecca lay down on her bed and closed her eyes. She was abruptly back on that single-prop plane, flying over Lake Tanganyika. The propeller whirred loudly, sweat was drying on her skin, and before she remembered to be terrified, she found herself looking out the window and thinking: what a view.

  “A few what?” asked Hugh. “Did you just say a few?”

  “I must have been dreaming,” said Rebecca, disoriented. “I must have fallen asleep.”

  “You should be asleep,” he said.

  “No, no, I’m awake,” she reassured him. Her heart was suddenly racing. “I’m awake now.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  An Invitation, 2010

  Vivi and Brian are getting hitched.

  (Only family)

  Won’t you come celebrate the very next day?

  Sunday, September Twenty-Sixth, 2010

  Eleven o’clock in the morning.

  Veuve Clicquot and brunch.

  Grandmother Ordway’s house on Fishers Island.

  Circle YES PLEASE or NO THANK YOU and send this paper back to us!

  XOXO

  Vivi, Brian, Lukas, Sabine, and Gisella

  The invitation looked as though someone had scrawled the information with a Sharpie, while in a rush, on a paper bag. It came with an accompanying “Travel Information Kit” and a picture of Vivi and Brian and their three blond children, who had presumably kept the couple so damn busy that they’d never found the time—up until the very second when someone had scrawled this pathetic invitation—to consider getting married.

  Despite his early suspicions that she was a bad influence on Rebecca, and despite the exceptionally strange fact of who her parents were, Ed was fond of Vivi and always had been, ever since the moment she’d shaken his hand at JFK, looking like the spawn of Bo Derek, after Rebecca (still a shocking fact) had snuck off to Anguilla with the Shipleys. But this was ridiculous. If Guy Ordway had lived to see this invitation, trusts might have been revoked.

  And what kind of schmuck did they take him for? Evidently one who would travel all the way to an island off the coast of Connecticut for a day trip, for a glass of bubbly and some bacon.

  Though he did wonder which one of them had come up with the idea of inviting him. Was he simply Rebecca’s father now? Rebecca’s father, who had been morally and financially gutted? Or was he Hugh’s old friend? And, most relevant, what was he now—if anything—to Helen?

  This shoddy and affected invitation,
which had been waiting for him when he’d returned home that muggy evening, was the ostensible reason for his daily phone call to his daughter. He sat at his desk, in his crappy Hell’s Kitchen (Midtown West) rental, looking over the view of buildings upon buildings, the nothing-special view of bright lights and traffic to which he’d never grown accustomed, and he complained. He ranted about how nothing was taken seriously anymore. How nobody had any respect for life’s rituals, life’s ceremonies. Forget about how people were swearing on television and joking about every last thing—not that he didn’t have a sense of goddamn humor, but did every last thing need to be a joke?

  He was fine with the fact that his daughter was only half-listening. Because Ed’s actual thoughts were about the mother of the bride-to-be, who had (according to Rebecca) been spending time in Europe.

  Rebecca now explained over the phone, “I haven’t seen it yet, because, obviously, I’m still at work, but, Daddy, I’m betting the invitation looks that way because the paper is recycled.” She was using the voice, which advertised that were she not at work, in the presence of other earnest, hardworking professionals, she would surely be saying something like, Enough. Like, What do you care? The voice let him know she felt she ought to be congratulated for not acting as impatient as she felt.

  “Recycled,” he scoffed. “I do know about recycling, Rebecca. And I support it—though you know the only ones really profiting from the recycling industry are the goddamn Mafia—”

  “Please let’s not start about that right now, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’m not saying anything about recycling. What I’m saying is that this invitation has an intentional look. Grubby. And if they’re so concerned about the environment,” he asked his daughter, “why didn’t they just send out an email? You should see this thing. It’s a sad excuse for a wedding invitation.”

  “That’s surprising,” Rebecca said, obviously unconvinced.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s surprising because Vivi has great style. It’s kind of her thing.”

  “Style over substance?”

  “I’m not saying that,” she said evenly. “Daddy, I really have to go. I’m going to be here all night to begin with.”

  “All I’m saying is that it’s embarrassing, and I doubt I’m the only one who feels this way.”

  “I doubt you are.”

  “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “And I hear you. But I have to go.”

  “Fine,” he said, pissed. And then, more pleasantly: “Go get ’em.”

  “How are you?” she asked, suddenly sounding a little guilty. “You’re okay, right? I mean, aside from being horrified by Vivi’s brunch invitation?”

  “I’m okay,” he said, “I am. Things are looking up.”

  “Do I want to know the details?” she asked, though she kept her tone light enough. She had a habit of insinuating that she still considered him a crook, and this had ceased to bother him, because he believed she made these insinuations only to make herself feel better. He could tell that her continued belief in him annoyed her, made her feel too soft and too tenderhearted for the kind of person she had become: the dogged, Ivy League–educated kind of person who toils away in a windowless community justice center on behalf of the accused who don’t have the dough to be white-collar criminals.

  “We’ll ride up together,” he announced. “We’ll ride up to this thing.”

  “Oh, so you do want to go?”

  “Sure,” he said, knowing full well she never doubted he would. “Why not?”

  “Oh,” said Rebecca. “Well, that’s great.” She wasn’t doing much to hide the fact that she would have been happier if he’d declined.

  “But?”

  “I’m going up a day earlier. I’m actually going to be at the ceremony.”

  “I thought it was only family.”

  “It is,” said Rebecca.

  “What—are you a Shipley now? Are you an Ordway or an Avery?”

  “It’s—you know—family and me. Those are my godchildren.”

  “Of course,” he said, feeling oddly jazzed. He glanced out the window, where the cars were shooting down Ninth Avenue now that rush hour was over. “Hey,” he said, “that divorce finally go through?”

  “It did,” she said. “Vivi’s still in shock.”

  “Is that right?” And, to calm his sped-up heart, he sank into the couch. He grabbed a kilm pillow he’d bought on a whim while on a second date in SoHo over ten years ago. He’d had to sell most of his belongings. How was it that he’d held on to this pillow? Lying flat on his back, he gazed up at the cheapo drywall ceiling, at the inert ceiling fan with the lamp in the middle, which never failed to light up when he wanted air or to start whirring when he wanted only light.

  Where, he wondered, did Helen lie down at the end of yet another day?

  “You read about Hugh, right?” asked Rebecca.

  “Read what?”

  “The award,” she said, obviously annoyed that he somehow hadn’t already known this. “Use those prison skills and Google him. It’s prestigious.”

  “Good for him,” he said quietly. He still bristled each and every time she mentioned prison. “Hugh won something big?” he asked, surprised at the pleasure he felt in hearing this.

  After he’d hung up the phone and watched the sky go as dark as it could while drowning in a sea of lights, Ed considered how Rebecca knew nothing about his current state of affairs. Besides that it was simpler not to tell her anything, she had more than made clear her disinterest in the rise and fall of his fortunes. It wasn’t as if she was some kind of Marxist, but she genuinely seemed to be content with what—at least to him—wasn’t much. Although she might have been accepting her mother’s money from time to time, it seemed just as likely that she wasn’t. She rarely traveled; she worked hard. She happily lived in one of those neighborhoods in Brooklyn that boasted some New York Times press clippings about well-lit bars and charming bistros but still basically looked like crap.

  She didn’t even know that he’d bumped into his old friend Hy in the lobby of the St. Regis, where—post-prison—he’d sometimes spring for a cup of coffee just to make an appearance, to see who was meeting whom for breakfast. Even though years had passed since his release, it was the first time he’d seen Hy since his life had fallen to pieces, and, while saying goodbye, Hy had gripped him in an ungainly hug. Hy had not said, I’m sorry, Ed, or I’m sorry I screwed you, as Ed had so often envisioned he would.

  Instead, Hy had said one word: Brazil.

  Brazil, Hy had repeated as he’d pumped Ed’s hand. Hy knew exactly how unlucky Ed had been. He also knew how smart Ed was and that he would figure out the rest from there.

  And because Hy had become (it was Ed’s worst source of vexation) literally one of the most successful investors on Wall Street, and because if guilt was not the single most motivating factor Ed didn’t know what was, and because the market had utterly crashed and he actually hadn’t lost his shirt (the scraps that were left of it), and because he’d always had the good sense to never—even when he could have easily have gotten a seat at that table—invest with BadForTheJews Madoff because he had just never believed the guy, Ed said goodbye to Hy, went straight to his aesthetically offensive studio apartment, and for a solid week he filled his every waking moment with research. He barely slept; he stopped bothering with his weights and his walk and, instead, indulged his love for Chinese takeout. For the first time since prison, he even stopped shaving and then, on the following rainy Monday, he showered and shaved and called a housekeeping service. Up until then he’d been cleaning the place himself—he’d become a pro on the inside—not wanting to spend the money. While two women named Teresa and Marisol cleaned, he walked around the Central Park Reservoir, and when he returned—soaking wet—the apartment smelled like ammonia; he tipped and said muchas gracias. Then he began to sell much of his then-measly portfolio and buy Brazilian stocks.

  An
d now—he still couldn’t quite believe it—after watching those stocks rise, he had sold many of them and, after having almost no liquid assets for more than five years, he had liquidity. He had some actual capital. No one would know this by the way he lived: If he was good at anything now, it was saving money. It had become a game: How little can I spend? He saw nobody but Rebecca. He walked everywhere. After an awkward moment in a café near her office when she had offered to pay, they usually met in City Hall Park and not during mealtimes. Sometimes she brought her little Tupperware containers anyway and—when he offered to take her to a late lunch, an early dinner—insisted that she preferred her own food: her greens, her grains.

  He knew his daughter thought he had changed. She thought that he’d realized he could live with far less, and he had, but truthfully he still hated living this way. He had plans to export cars to Brazil. The plan was in its initial stages, but though the concept was not without risks (not only the historical precedent of Brazil’s growth preceding dramatic collapse but also—obviously—his own previous failure importing BMWs to China), he thought the risks were worth taking in exchange for the possibility of his golden years (ha!) spent with good tables and overpriced wine and what he remembered as the sense of having traction in this city. He never complained but absolutely dreamed of buying back his old apartment, craved the day when he’d never again have to lay eyes on the pathetic exile of these crappy digs with the gypsum board and exposed 1970s radiators and tacky black linoleum countertops and could return to the walnut-paneled hush, the Carrara imported marble, the trees.