The Heirs

by Susan Rieger

  After the service, friends and family stopped by the Falkeses’ apartment. Mrs. Cantwell and Louisa arrived in the first wave. Mrs. Cantwell settled herself in the middle of the living room, in a large wing chair, and prepared to receive her comforters. Louisa brought her mother a glass of wine, then flitted restlessly around the room, picking up photographs and putting them down in different places. She was dressed in full mourning: a black stiff satin suit that crinkled when she walked, black hose, black gloves, a large black hat, and a black draping veil. Spotting Eleanor by the kitchen, she sprung at her. Eleanor had not seen Louisa since her wedding fifteen years earlier, when she’d been all in white. “It’s strange we never meet,” Louisa said. “Mum used to say she didn’t like mixing apples and oranges. I never knew which family was apples. She didn’t want to share your father with you. You were the other family.”

  Eleanor stared at her. “Your mother rarely came round to us, perhaps once a year,” she said. “They liked to keep to themselves.”

  “I saw him at least half a dozen times a year. My mother liked to bring him and me together.”

  “I think they were happy together,” Eleanor said.

  “Your father had a gift for happiness,” Louisa said.

  “Did he?” Eleanor said. “I shall think about that.”

  “This place is huge,” Louisa said. “Mother said it was a wedding present from your father. What are you going to do with his place? It’s very nice for a West Side apartment.”

  Eleanor started to back away. “No plans yet,” she said. “Thank you for coming. It must be a comfort to your mother.” She turned to speak to another guest.

  Louisa caught her arm and leaned into her ear. “I think I’m your sister,” she said in a loud whisper. “I think your father was my father.” Eleanor turned back to her. Louisa was smiling a death’s-head grin.

  “I’m sorry. This is terrible of me,” Louisa said. “It’s been stewing for years, this feeling I’ve had. My mother never denies it.” Her eyes glistened.

  “I’m sorry for your pain,” Eleanor said, falling, without thinking, into thoughtfulness. “It’s too hard to talk here. We’ll meet for coffee sometime. Soon. Yes. Soon.” Louisa nodded. Eleanor turned from her and walked down the hall toward her bedroom.

  Rupert, who’d watched the two talking, followed her. “You’re white as a sheet,” he said.

  “I’d like fresh air,” she said.

  They stepped out the rear door of the apartment and went onto the roof. Eleanor told Rupert what Louisa had said. Rupert put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. “It could be true,” he said. “Edward told me he had an affair with her mother when he was in his early forties. The timing would be right.”

  “Did my father think Louisa was his daughter?” Eleanor asked.

  Rupert gave a flicker of a shrug. “I don’t think so. Marina wanted him to believe it, without lying to him. She was always pushing them to spend time together, ‘to discover their common bond,’ she’d say.” Rupert kept his hold on Eleanor. “He resisted. ‘We each have a daughter,’ he’d say to her. ‘Aren’t we lucky in them?’ ”

  “Are you saying this to keep my spirits up?” Eleanor said.

  “No, your father, whatever his faults, was incapable of false feeling. You know he loved you. Louisa knows he didn’t love her.”

  “I don’t know that I would mind, in theory, if he had another daughter,” Eleanor said, “but I don’t want a sister, not that sister.”

  “What does she want?” Rupert said.

  “Do we throw money at her?” Eleanor said.

  “If that will do it, yes,” Rupert said.

  “My father had dreadful taste in women,” Eleanor said.

  “Do you want to go back in? Do you want to rest? I can send them all home,” Rupert said.

  Eleanor straightened her shoulders. “No. I shan’t be done in by her.”

  Will came out on the roof. “Are you all right?” he said to his mother. “I saw you leave.”

  “I miss Granddad,” Eleanor said.

  Louisa and Eleanor met for coffee two weeks later at E.A.T. on the Upper East Side. Eleanor had asked to meet on the Upper East Side, outside her catchment area. “You must think I’m a wretch,” Louisa said, “accosting you like that at the funeral.” She was smiling overbroadly.

  Eleanor sat down. “I did think, I do think, you might have chosen a better moment.”

  “Do I look like your father,” Louisa asked, “or anyone else in your family?”

  “No,” Eleanor said. “You’re nothing like anyone in the family.”

  “My father, my mother’s husband, was much older than my mother. He died when I was nine,” Louisa said. “I barely remember him.”

  “What do you want from me?” Eleanor said. She was tired of Louisa and her feelings.

  Louisa looked startled. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Do you want an inheritance?” Eleanor said.

  Louisa’s face fell, then turned blotchy. Eleanor couldn’t tell if she was enraged or embarrassed.

  “Do you think I’m doing it for money?” she said.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing it for,” Eleanor said. “I don’t know you.”

  “That’s not my fault,” Louisa said.

  “I can’t help you,” Eleanor said. She reached for her wallet.

  Louisa stopped her hand. “I’ll take care of this. I don’t want your money.”

  “You need to take this up with your mother,” Eleanor said. “She knows, if anyone does. I haven’t a clue.” She stood up. “Good-bye.”

  Eleanor hadn’t been so rude to anyone since she had snubbed Jim’s parents at his wedding. People can be so annoying, she thought. Next time I’m asked to meet with a putative relation, I’m sending my regrets.

  That evening, after supper, she told Rupert about her conversation with Louisa. “I’ve forgiven my rudeness. She ruined my father’s funeral. I thought people only ruined weddings.”

  “People generally make the most of their opportunities,” Rupert said.

  “I’m going to be sixty on my next birthday,” Eleanor said. “I’ve decided it’s time I stopped smoothing over the rough patches. Rudeness is sometimes the only proper response.” She smiled at him. “But you, of course, know that.”

  Rupert laughed. “So long as you don’t give me a hard time.”

  She gave him a long look. “Too late to start tangling with you.”

  “No tangling,” he said. “I’ve always relied on your willingness to let things slide.” He took her hand. “Your dad too. He let things slide. Differently. I miss him.”

  “At least he didn’t marry Marina,” Eleanor said. “Do you think any more shoes will drop?”

  Rupert reached out and touched her cheek. “No more shoes will drop.”

  —

  Susanna thought Sam was crazy to pursue the matter with the Wolinskis.

  “But what if they are our brothers?” Sam said. “Shouldn’t they get some of Dad’s money?”

  “Is that what this is about? Money?” Susanna said. “If it is, just give it to them. I’m with your mom.”

  Harry was having third thoughts. “I haven’t time now to think this through,” he said to Sam. “And I’ve pretty much come around to Mom’s point of view. I don’t want to see the Wolinskis again. I don’t want to know.”

  Sam was startled. “Of course you want to know,” he said.

  “No, I don’t,” Harry said. “I’ve got to go. We’ll talk another time.”

  Sam was disappointed in Harry but not, as he thought about it, surprised. He had always felt that Harry, like most lawyers, had at best an arm’s-length relationship with the truth. He was coming round to Will’s position. Will said truth was irrelevant to lawyers. “Justice in America,” he said, “is politics, and trials are elections. Two lawyers argue different versions of a story and then ask a dozen ill-informed citizens to vote on the one they like best.” W
hen the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore, Will felt vindicated. “How is this different from a stuffed ballot box?” he said to Harry. “Your ox was gored this time,” Harry said. “Next time, it will be someone else’s.” He looked at his oldest younger brother with affection. “Who knew you were an idealist?”

  Harry’s balkiness troubled Sam. He decided he should talk to him in person, drop by his office, late in the day. He wouldn’t call first; Harry would put him off. They could go for a beer. Harry might even invite him home afterward to have dinner with Lea and the girls. He’d like that. Susanna was pregnant. She was having a girl. He didn’t know anything about girls who weren’t Susanna. “Will your daughter be like you?” he had asked her. “Are you like your father?” she said.

  Late, on a snowy February afternoon, Sam took the subway up to 116th Street. Walking across campus, he wondered if Harry would be unhappy to see him. He had been cranky ever since their DNA conversation, distracted and short-tempered. He cut short phone calls. He didn’t have time for lunch. He broke their squash dates, and not because he regularly lost. Harry always went into combat thinking he’d win. Afraid to ask Lea, Sam asked his mother what was up.

  “I think he’s having what is commonly referred to as a midlife crisis,” she said. “He’s turned forty, the age of disappointment.”

  “What does that mean?” There was a querulous edge to Sam’s question, creeping disappointment already getting the jump on him.

  “Men at forty are often disappointed with their lives and with themselves, not because they haven’t achieved what they wanted to, but because they have and it tastes like ashes.”

  “Did Dad have one?” Sam asked.

  “Why would Dad have one?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you ever answer a personal question?” Sam asked.

  “You wouldn’t want to know the answer once you knew it,” Eleanor said. “I’ve always thought curiosity was jealousy in sheep’s clothing. The will to possess or control or annihilate.” Sam stared at his mother.

  As he stood outside Harry’s office, Sam could hear two voices inside, Harry’s and a woman’s. He knocked before he could hear what they were saying. “What do you want,” Harry called out, his voice deep and brusque, a judge’s voice. “I don’t have office hours today.”

  “It’s me, Sam,” Sam said.

  There was no response for several seconds. “What are you doing here?” Harry said.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Just a minute. We’re winding up,” Harry said.

  After three or four minutes, the door opened and a young, redheaded woman came out. She looked as though she’d been crying. Harry called after her.

  “We can review this again tomorrow,” he said. He turned to Sam. “She wrote an execrable paper and now she’s crying about the grade.”

  Sam met his brother’s gaze. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You’re messing around.”

  “What are you saying?” Harry said.

  “Don’t mess with me, Harry. I saw it all.”

  “Christ,” Harry said. “Come on in.”

  “Just tell me she isn’t pregnant,” Sam said. “No more bastards in the family.”

  “Her husband found out.”

  “How?”

  “She told him,” Harry said.

  “That’ll do it,” Sam said.

  Harry was silent.

  “Didn’t you take the course? Can’t she get you for sexual harassment?” Sam said.

  “Goddammit,” Harry said. “You’re a real son of a bitch.”

  “Don’t go high-minded on me. You’re the asshole here.”

  “She’s faculty, a historian. We team taught the last few years.”

  “Is she pregnant?” Sam asked.

  Harry didn’t answer.

  “So this is why you’re no longer interested in the Wolinskis,” Sam said. “Identifying with Dad, are you? He’d have been about forty then?”

  “You’re preaching to me?” Harry said. “What about Andrew?”

  “I didn’t get anyone pregnant until we’d broken up.”

  “What do I do?” Harry said. His face crumpled.

  “You tell her it’s over. You tell her if she has the baby and the baby is yours and not her husband’s, you’ll pay child support, but that’s it. You’ll tell her you won’t be in her life or the baby’s. Don’t suggest abortion; if she brings it up, tell her it’s her decision and it may be the right one for her. Tell her you’ll pay for it, if she wants it, so she doesn’t have to use her insurance. Tell her you made a mistake, tell her you love your wife and children, tell her you’re not going to leave them. Tell her you won’t see her anymore.”

  Harry didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t tell me you’re in love with her,” Sam said.

  Harry shook his head. “She’s so young, so undemanding.”

  “She looks like Lea. Except the red hair.”

  “She looks like Lea? She looks nothing like Lea.”

  “What were you thinking? Bartenders, waitresses, secretaries, trainers, never your colleagues, never your colleagues’ wives.”

  “Do I tell Lea?” Harry looked like he might cry.

  “No blurting to clear your conscience. And if Lea asks, you lie to her too unless your historian says she’s going to tell her. If you do wind up telling her”—Sam shot Harry a squint-eyed look—“tell her you were at a party and drunk and stupid and careless. It meant nothing to you, it means nothing to you. She and the girls are your world.”

  “How do you know all this?” Harry said.

  “I’ve never been faithful, not since I left Princeton. I didn’t love Andrew, not ‘truly madly deeply,’ but even if I did, I don’t think I could be faithful. I don’t like being tied down. Susanna is the only person outside the family I love and I can’t marry her. All very self-serving, I know. I think Will is the only one of us capable of being faithful to the end. Maybe Jack. His trumpet comes first.”

  “Is Tom messing around?” Harry asked.

  “No, but he could. With Dorothy Day or Mother Teresa. He’d say he was furthering the cause. Caroline might believe him. A woman born to suffer.”

  “You don’t think well of any of us, do you?” Harry said.

  “I’d die for you, for any one of you. Isn’t that enough?”

  —

  Jim Cardozo died six months after Anne moved out, in early February 2003. He died at the kitchen table. He’d been reading the Times. When he didn’t show up for his afternoon appointments, his secretary called Anne. Anne was distraught and at first blamed herself. Mrs. Lehman, canny as always, offered consolation. “Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love. Shakespeare.”

  The autopsy showed three of the arteries to his heart were blocked. “He should have had open-heart surgery,” Dr. Schwinn told her. “Didn’t he ever have an EKG? A stress test?”

  Anne shook her head. “He never went to a doctor, not even for a flu shot,” she said.

  Nathan was bereft. He too blamed himself. “I shouldn’t have told him to stop doing surgery. That’s what he lived for,” he said to his mother. “That and, of course, us.”

  “No,” she said. “He should have gotten checkups.”

  “His colleagues should have seen how ill he was,” Nathan said.

  “I think he knew he had a blockage,” Anne said. “He gave up at some point, with himself, with me.” She smiled at Nathan, a small, sad smile. “Never with you. You were the bright spot always, the best thing that ever happened to him and me. You must know that.”

  “Why didn’t I notice? His color was so bad,” Nathan said.

  “There was nothing you could have done,” Anne said. She wondered if Nathan knew about his father’s drinking and drug taking. They’d never spoken about it. “He had set his course. You couldn’t have saved him.”

  Nathan looked as if he might cry. He was supposed to save people. It was his job. “I didn’t try,” he said.


  “Oh, Nathan,” Anne said. “He was beyond saving.”

  Nathan stared at his mother, rattled by the ambivalence of her remark. “Don’t you care that he’s dead?” he said. “Don’t you miss him?”

  “I’m sad for him,” Anne said, “and sad for us.”

  “I wish I knew him better,” Nathan said.

  Going through Jim’s papers, Anne found a sealed envelope addressed to Eleanor. Her first impulse was to read it; her second, to toss it. She resisted both. She felt surprised, then disappointed, then slighted that she hadn’t received a sympathy note from Eleanor. The omission seemed out of character for someone overbred. Perhaps Jim’s letter explained its absence. His death had been, once her feelings of guilt dissipated, a relief to Anne. The letter to Eleanor was unsettling, igniting old feelings of envy and jealousy, feelings that shouldn’t have outlived Jim. The Wolinski lawsuit had given no satisfaction. Anne decided to deliver the letter in person.

  When Jim died, Eleanor was in Los Angeles, visiting Will and Francie and their infant daughter, Mary Phipps Gore Falkes, who, everyone agreed, was the spitting image of Rupert, with her white fuzz and pale eyes. “Dad would chide me for gene packing,” Eleanor said to Will, laughing. “He’s getting his own in the next generation. And all girls.” Francie liked her mother-in-law and allowed her to hold the baby. She even agreed to go out to dinner one night and let Eleanor babysit. “I shall deliver her as I found her, I promise,” Eleanor said. “Oh, it’s not you,” Francie said. “It’s me. She’ll be fine without me. I might die.”

  Eleanor had begun reading the obituaries and death notices in the Times when Rupert was dying. Her father’s death, three years earlier, had been painful but expected. He was old. Rupert’s death at sixty-six was unexpected, unnatural, unfair. She had counted on them living into their eighties, downsizing to three bedrooms, perhaps moving to the East Side, a West Sider’s idea of assisted living, where everything could be ordered by phone and delivered to the door. With Rupert gone, she felt trapped in their huge apartment. Anyone might die at any time. So long as I don’t outlive the boys, she thought.