“Ha-ha,” said Vivi, with a bit of edge. “You’re hilarious.”
“We didn’t do it,” Rebecca told them.
“Not even a little?” Vivi insisted.
Brian said, “Honey, what are you asking? How could they do it a little?”
“We kind of did,” she protested. “That first time we met up again.”
“Okay,” he admitted. “This is true.” He looked a little wistful as he took a swig of Mountain Dew, which he claimed he drank only when he was on a boat.
Rebecca sat back on the wooden bench, closed her eyes to the gentle sun. Vivi and little Sabine—who’d perked up—began their habitual fiddling with Rebecca’s rings, which were all stacked on her left pointer finger. The seven rings had originally belonged to her mother’s grandmother, who’d evidently loved clothes and jewelry. When her mother had—with uncharacteristic tears—given her the rings at her college graduation, they’d been too large to fit on any other finger. Rebecca had intended to have them all sized and wear one at any given time, but Vivi had convinced her otherwise. Now she couldn’t imagine her own hands without them.
“Puppy,” Vivi said to Sabine. “You’re looking a little green around the gills. Bri, give her some of that odious drink.”
“What does odious mean?” asked Sabine.
“It means terrible,” Vivi answered. “But, you know, sometimes terrible odious corn-syrupy soda makes us feel better when we’re a little seasick.”
“Are you seasick?” asked Rebecca—her eyes wide open—recalling one hell of a car trip with Sabine the previous summer.
Sabine nodded somberly at Rebecca, then happily chugged Mountain Dew before attempting to climb into her lap. Rebecca—not without slight hesitation—passed Gisella to Vivi, who waved to Lukas, who didn’t even see her; he was sitting next to his father, still focused on the sea.
“Do you think there is something we’re all wired with,” mused Vivi, “the three of us—or maybe the four of us, if we can count Gabriel, which you know I am dying to do—that tells us we must recycle people, that, after the age of, say, twenty-five, there is literally nobody new?”
“I don’t love the idea of recycling people,” said Rebecca. “Not crazy about how that sounds.”
“Me, neither,” agreed Brian.
“But I don’t mean it in a bad way.”
“Of course you don’t.” Rebecca gestured at the two of them as if she were presenting a brand-new car! She took them in, this couple whose marriage was more familiar in many ways than that of her own parents. She had seen Vivi and Brian dewy-eyed with each other and also fighting bitterly—especially after Lukas was born—and she knew far too much about their sex life, due to Vivi’s relentless—and often unflattering—disclosures. She knew them so well and yet sometimes she still had no idea what made them happy or unhappy with each other. Sometimes she’d think Vivi was angry with Brian, and then Vivi would blurt out how much she loved him. Sometimes Brian seemed to dote on Vivi and she’d complain—as soon as he left the room and with total conviction—that he was doing it only to make her feel bad. But Rebecca couldn’t imagine them not together. To this day she still wasn’t sure why they’d waited so long to get married.
“I just think,” Rebecca attempted, “that it’s so unusual to connect with somebody. Or rather—I think it’s unusual to want to spend more than a limited time with somebody. And because it is so … so … cosmically unusual—”
“Rebecca, you just used the word cosmic!”
She realized she was playing to Vivi the way she’d always done—the way they both had always done—as if they were performing for each other in their own private piece of theater. “And because it is so cosmically unusual, you have to follow through sometimes more than once in order to get it right.”
My God, did she want to check her phone. The desire had plagued her for every moment of this pleasant ferry ride, but she had sworn to herself—and out loud to Vivi and Brian—that she wouldn’t. She’d made a vow to wait until she was in “her room” at the Ordway house, where the sheets were the softest and the floorboards creaked, and the white-painted oval-framed mirror was the best place she had ever found for applying makeup in natural light. She could almost taste the privacy and the delicious buzz of checking her phone after a significant spell.
They were getting close to sailing into the harbor now, and she felt the full extent of her exhaustion—recalling, once again, the previous and seemingly impossible night. “Oh, and listen,” Rebecca told them, “I might be in danger of getting verrry sentimental during tomorrow’s long-awaited ceremony.”
“You?” mocked Vivi. Or, that is, Rebecca thought she was mocking. She wasn’t entirely sure.
Rebecca had always thought it was funny how even the least yogic types of brides always seemed to want to get in some quality poses on their wedding day, but here, on the Ordway lawn, though the grass poked up around their mats and there were several persistent flies, Rebecca was grateful that this was what Vivi had wanted to do. Staying away from her phone was not easy. The urge to check for any messages from Gabriel was disturbingly strong and felt no less than a physical dependency. And so here they were. No distractions. Hugh had been dispatched to pick up a few items for the party being held the following day; Mrs. Ordway’s “girl” had helped the great lady retire to her room, Brian had taken the kids to his grandparents’ house (they, too, had a home on the island), and Helen—who had apparently been quietly practicing yoga since the late 1970s—led Vivi and Rebecca.
Aside from their horselike breaths, there was total silence, which was virtually unprecedented for Vivi and Rebecca while in each other’s company. There was the breeze, the buzzy insects, infrequent motorboats, and the somewhat incessant ringing of the telephone from inside the house. The house phone only served as a reminder of her own fuchsia-encased cell, lying on the oak nightstand, switched on to vibrate so that even if it was in fact ringing at right that very moment she’d never be able to hear it. Besides, she reminded herself, Gabriel wasn’t going to call her. He knew where she was, that she was busy with Vivi’s wedding, and he’d mentioned he wasn’t much of a texter. He was probably with his son, consumed with playing soccer or buying a bagel or any number of weekendy, parenty activities that prevented him from making contact. But if he was thinking of her, if he was unable to stop himself, wouldn’t he just go ahead and send a little text? He’d always been at least slightly compulsive. Had he really changed that much?
When Helen suggested they close their eyes, Rebecca tried, but all she saw was Gabriel, and not in a peaceful, visualize-your-future kind of way but just—there he was—caught in the egregious act of not attempting to make contact, which was maddeningly easy to do these days. The whole wireless 3G network seemed to be a conspiracy to prove exactly how little anyone actually cared to be in touch.
How would Helen handle Gabriel? Helen would be cool. Were it not for her concern for the environment, she’d probably toss her cellphone into the water and go get an upgrade on Monday. Rebecca marveled at how Helen had managed to retain not only her sanity and composure but also her sense of humor while living for so many years in such close proximity to poverty and suffering. Not to mention how she’d seemingly dodged any outwardly stressful effects of the long marriage to Hugh. Maybe, Rebecca considered, while stretching toward the sky, Helen was becoming lighter and lighter as she aged. Maybe she had started out under a dark portion of the mythic Ordway cloud (Vivi loved her grandmother, but, though Rebecca couldn’t quite put her finger on it, there was something frightening about Virginia Ordway) and was moving steadily out from beneath its shadow.
“All right,” said Helen, “let’s find our way to corpse pose.”
“Can’t you call it savasana?” asked Vivi. “I like it a whole lot better in Sanskrit.”
“Sweetheart,” said Helen simply. “We’re all going to die.”
“But not today,” said Rebecca uneasily.
“Not today,” H
elen said, but she was already lying down, arms out to her sides.
Before any semblance of relaxation could take place, “For Christ’s sake,” came a booming voice—unmistakably Hugh’s. Rebecca opened her eyes to see him walking down the lawn, cigarette in hand. “I’ve been calling and calling,” he cried. “On the telephone,” he added, as if resorting to telephone usage was somehow more than he could take.
Vivi bolted upright. “What is it?”
“Well, nothing,” he said. “I was just worried when nobody answered, so I came back.”
“You were worried?” asked Helen, more dumbfounded than angry, but anger was certainly in the mix. “You?” she repeated. “Did you pick up the drink order?”
He shook his head. “I’ll go back,” he muttered. “But, Vivi,” he said, “I did get the lobsters.”
“That’s great.” She beamed. “Really great. Thanks, Papa.”
“I’m going,” he said, trudging up the hill once again.
“You don’t have to give him such a hard time,” Vivi whispered.
Helen lifted her head. “You do realize he just interrupted this one half hour of yoga, which the three of us have been planning for a good six months, to tell us he managed to do an errand,” said Helen. And then she started to laugh—still in corpse pose, on the ground.
At five o’clock they all gathered on the porch. Grandmother Ordway’s hair had been teased and set and—as if she’d actually planned it—was the exact color of the pale-lavender mums that had been cut for the vase in the entryway. The Ordway kitchen staff presented trays of champagne, and everyone happily accepted. Brian’s parents and sisters and grandfather—a pleasant, well-mannered bunch—talked about the club and people Rebecca didn’t know, and as the kids climbed all over Vivi, who looked exquisite and happy, with a yellow silk flower in her hair, the sun hovered above the Long Island Sound. Hugh was perched (a bit precariously, Rebecca couldn’t help notice) on the porch railing, as if he wanted to be closest, above all, to the sunset.
“No rain,” said Vivi. “And it’s the magic hour.”
“The mosquito hour,” echoed both Hugh and Rebecca in tandem—a vaguely amusing and awkward moment that, in years prior, would have felt no less than electric. Now, as Rebecca looked at Hugh, who grinned and nodded back at her, she felt only vague warmth.
Brian’s Buddhism professor from Wesleyan asked everyone to make a circle around Vivi and Brian, and everyone set down their glasses.
“This is a beginning,” said the professor. “It might seem like the middle, because here you are, already a family, but this is a beginning and you need to know that. Do you?” he asked, and Rebecca could tell that Vivi, who was slightly pursing her lips, was about to cry.
“I do,” Vivi managed.
“I do,” said Brian, with conviction.
And, at that moment (truthfully, throughout much of what followed: the vows and Hugh’s e. e. cummings reading; Brian’s sister’s lovely yet strangely depressing Celtic love song), Rebecca cried. She cried openly (trying to stop the force of her tears only made her sound stifled and disturbed), because whenever she saw Vivi tear up, she was somehow incapable of not doing so herself. She cried throughout the ceremony because she loved Vivi and Brian as a couple and she was moved by this act of commitment. She also (mostly) cried because of how badly she wanted to run upstairs and check her phone and how the strength of her desire to do so was actually terrifying. Because after many years of not feeling this way, she felt, acutely, how her sense of well-being seemed absolutely tied to—and, yes, dependent on—another. The same other. And because she regretted how during the last year of their relationship she’d rebuffed Gabriel’s mostly thoughtful suggestions and begun to blame him for everything, and finally because—not long afterward—she’d behaved so carelessly with Hugh. She’d come dangerously close to removing herself from Vivi’s life, making certain she’d miss being on this porch for the Buddhist-Lite, Universal Church of Life–sanctioned ceremony that Vivi surely would not have been able to have on this property (and Rebecca took an odd pleasure in knowing this) if Grandfather Ordway had been alive.
Hugh was crying, too. Rebecca looked at him briefly—seeing him like that felt too intimate—and right then she was assaulted with how changed he looked, how old: puffy eyes and age spots and a shocking slackness to his carriage. There was simply no connecting with the truly painful desire she’d felt for him for more than half her life. And there was also this: the nearly unbearable gratitude for how he’d prevented her erasure from this moment.
Later that night, after lobsters and white wine, Helen called everyone outside. A sheet was hanging down from the second-floor windows, and she began projecting a video. As the images started to roll—little Brian, little Genevieve—Rebecca couldn’t help but remember sitting in Vivi’s dorm room and looking at her photographs. She’d never known anyone her age who talked about her parents like that—not only with unmitigated affection but with such dramatic flair.
She’d always been a talented storyteller.
As the images flashed, Rebecca noticed that Hugh was standing beside her. “Look,” he said, pointing up at the screen. There was Vivi—many years before Rebecca had met her—standing, like an acrobat, atop her father’s shoulders.
“Beautiful,” said Rebecca.
“And melancholy,” he said. “Most good images are.”
Less than a decade ago, she would have agreed with him, but right now she was simply annoyed that he couldn’t look at these home movies and pictures and just watch. Just watch and maybe get tearful all over again. Like everybody else.
“Are you okay?” he nearly whispered.
“Am I—Yes.” She nodded, obviously spooked by his intimate tone. “I’m definitely okay.” And then, a bit contrite: “How about you?”
He shrugged. “Jury’s out.”
“Oh,” she replied, softening. “I’m sorry.”
They watched the rest of the presentation in appropriate silence. When it was over, and the migration inside toward dessert began, they both hung back. They watched the house and its golden light from the distance of the lawn.
“You want to know something?” he asked. “I’m pissed at your father.” He gave his twisted-up smile, slowly shaking his head. “I’m still angry at him.”
“But, Hugh …” She hesitated, because she of course understood how irrelevant this line of reasoning was. “It’s been so long.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said. He was staring up at the blank white sheet, as if waiting for another image to appear.
A door slam woke her up the next morning, and for a moment Rebecca’s stomach pitched. This was the same irrational moment she’d had for years now, in which she imagined that Vivi knew that Rebecca had—oh yes, she had—made a pass at her father. This type of dread popped up infrequently, so distanced was she from the original impulse, but each and every time it did, she felt an urge to throw up. As she fled to the bathroom, she suddenly realized that she’d slept late—light was blasting the floorboards—and by the time she splashed her face with cold water, the need to vomit (if not the fear) was thankfully gone. She rushed to pull herself together and marveled at how she’d managed to sleep late with so many people in the house. She was even a little hurt that no children had come to wake her. Surprise! Lukas and Sabine had been known to cry out in unison, well before seven A.M.
In the kitchen: the same wicker basket on the counter that she’d come to expect; the same slightly stale donuts and muffins.
“Oh, good, you’re up,” said Vivi, who was holding a pink-frosted donut.
“What time is it? You should have woken me.”
“Listen to this: My father screwed up. I knew I should have just had my assistant place the order, but he wanted to be useful and now there’s not enough. My mother is quietly fuming.”
“Not enough …”
Vivi started to laugh, and Rebecca was alarmed to see that her best friend, who had a career, three chi
ldren, threw impromptu parties, and who—as a rule—did not sweat the small stuff, seemed atypically unhinged. “I asked him to order booze.” Vivi gestured for emphasis, and Rebecca was surprised the donut didn’t fly right out of her hand. “Wouldn’t you have thought I could trust him with that one?”
“I would have.” Rebecca nodded, poured the dregs of the coffee. “So, what can I do? Do you want me to call my dad? He can go buy booze somewhere. He’ll have plenty of room in the car.”
“It’s a Sunday! Liquor stores are closed!”
“No, they’re not. Not in New York. That law changed.”
“It did? Excellent! How did I miss that? Anyway …” She finally took a bite of the donut. “My dad’s on the way to the country club. His plan is to beg them to sell some of theirs. Although—”
“See? Okay, then.”
“He’s not exactly beloved there.”
“It’s going to be fine.”
Vivi took another bite of donut. “This is disgusting,” she said.
“Hand it over,” said Rebecca, who took a bite. Though she agreed, the sugar made her feel more settled.
“This was supposed to be a simple daytime brunch thingy,” Vivi moaned. “So casual, so—whatever. My stupid invitation was supposed to make this perfectly clear.”
“I liked the invitation.”
“Thank you. This day is not supposed to be a big deal.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to kill my father if there is nothing to drink at my simple, casual thingy.”
“Listen,” Rebecca said, “why don’t you go take a bath?”
“I can’t take a bath!”
“Why not?”
“I can’t take a bath.”
“Where are the kiddos?”
“Watching something—who knows what—with Brian. They’re all lying on our bed, eyes glued to the TV screen. Total clueless relaxation.”
A Dual Inheritance Page 45
