A Dual Inheritance (13 page)

“You realize,” said Hugh, “we’re headed toward a special kind of nature preserve.”

Hugh had been talking cryptically and continuously since they’d boarded the boat half an hour before, and now Ed was barely listening. He preferred to look at all the mothers-to-be, at their tan calves and straw hats, and to imagine each one during their individual moments of conception. It certainly altered the view.

“Nature preserve?” Helen mumbled, from her prone state. She loved the sun; her eyes were closed.

Hugh lit a cigarette, looked out toward Fishers Island. “Sure,” he said, nodding at the four pregnant women. “We’re coming up on one of the last places left in the Northern Hemisphere where WASPs can successfully procreate without threat from outside forces.”

Helen sat up, fanned herself with the ferry schedule. “Okay,” she said. “That was funny. Now, are you almost done?”

“Sadly,” said Hugh, “no.” He stretched his arm around her.

“Hugh,” she said.

“Ed should really prepare himself.”

“I think I got the picture,” said Ed. “The man is not a fan of the Jews.”

“What did you tell him?” asked Helen, alarmed.

“Just the basic truth.” Hugh shrugged. “But your father knows Ed’s our friend. I imagine he’ll behave himself.”

“Yes,” said Helen, her voice tight, “I imagine he will.” She took a cigarette from her purse and Hugh lit it for her. “You know,” she said, “my father happens to have a deep respect for hard workers. And, say what we will about Ed”—she smiled brightly—“he’s a hard worker.”

“True,” said Hugh. Though he wasn’t finished with it, he crushed his cigarette, stripped it to bits, and threw it out to sea. “Fishers Island is kind of like a zoo. A beautiful, impeccably maintained zoo. And there’s a deep fear of having to live outside the zoo. Did you know that?”

“Really?” Helen asked. “And did you go and do all the necessary fieldwork with the monkeys and the lions? Did they reveal their deepest fears? Hugh, seriously. My father would be mortified.”

“I would have assumed it anyway,” Ed assured her.

“Well, that’s hardly fair.”

“But he
isn’t
—as you so nicely put it, Ed—a fan,” asked Hugh. “Is he?”

“Well, no,” said Helen. “If you mean as a group? No, he is not.”

“Maybe it’s more of a hothouse than a zoo,” Hugh persisted. “Everyone in their summer states of mind. The island mentality. Forgive me—and I
will
get this out of my system—but it’s crippling being sequestered. People form dependencies. They stop paying attention.” He shook his head, as if he was unable to shrug off his mood.

Two of the pregnant ladies looked up from their magazines. Ed caught one’s eye and smiled. He imagined how her husband was likely finishing his week on Wall Street in an old-money firm, where—if you
were from the right family—you could be a perfect idiot and somehow still, upon graduating, have a coveted position waiting.

“Please,” Helen said quietly. “You said you wanted to come.”

“Of course I want to come,” Hugh said, also lowering his voice. “I’m sorry. It’s your family. Of course I want to be with you if this is where you want to be. Plus, we’re going to show Ed a good time before he starts making his
real dough
and we never see him again.”

“It’s gorgeous,” Ed said, looking out at the horizon, heady from the saltwater, from other people’s problems. He pictured Fishers Island the way it looked on a map—a few dabs of land between Long Island and Connecticut; nothing to get worked up about. “I don’t care about any of this,” Ed insisted. “I just want to go swimming.”

“Sure you do,” said Hugh. “You do care.”

“Maybe,” said Helen, “he doesn’t care
right now
. Maybe we don’t have to care about the deeper aspects of our society twenty-four hours a day. Even Bobby Kennedy goes sailing with some regularity, you know.”

“Bobby Kennedy,” scoffed Hugh. “Bobby Kennedy’s a lightweight.”

“Again?” asked Ed. “We’re going to get into this again?”

“He was practically McCarthy’s right-hand man.”

“You know,” said Ed, deciding
not
to spend the rest of the boat ride arguing about degrees of liberalism, “I actually have plenty of sympathy for how people marry their own kind here and—”

“Sure,” said Hugh. “While playing golf and getting smashed and wearing their native attire, they’re simply carrying out their traditions. The Dani ritually kill other tribes, and our people just keep everyone at bay and
pretend
they don’t exist.”

“Don’t you think you’re sounding a tiny bit silly?” Helen asked.

Hugh grinned in his half-grinning way, blue eyes squinting into the sun even though he had a perfectly good pair of sunglasses on top of his head. “Of course,” he said finally. “Of course I am.”

As if she’d been reading Ed’s thoughts, Helen placed Hugh’s sunglasses gently on his face.

“I’m a product of this place,” Hugh said, by way of explanation.

“As am I,” Helen said. “And guess what? Last time I checked”—she
held up her finger, where the late Mrs. Shipley’s engagement diamond sparkled so brightly Ed imagined it could start a fire—“you and I are getting married. We are marrying our own kind.”

Hugh shrugged. “Sarcasm is my only weapon.”

“You hardly need a weapon,” Helen said. Ed had thought she was angry, but he was evidently wrong. She was smiling, even laughing, now that Hugh was done with being funny.

Ed Cantowitz peered around the ferry deck. Everyone seemed friendly enough. He looked forward to sleeping on good cotton sheets and drinking gin from crystal. He’d graduated from Harvard summa cum laude. His father had wept. This was going to be a great summer.

As the ferry docked, Ed noticed the redhead in the yellow Mercedes convertible immediately, but he was surprised when she started waving wildly in their direction, for, although Kitty was a beauty, too, she looked nothing like Helen. Besides the lavish red hair, she had great big breasts and (he noticed upon closer inspection, as he shook her soft hand) explosions of freckles across her fleshy chest. She was smiley and chatty and without a trace of self-consciousness about talking nonstop from the moment she said hello. “Come on now,” she said. “I promised Mother we wouldn’t run late. We need to dress for dinner, et cetera. You sit in the front, Hugh.” She tied a scarf around her head and started the car. “Have you noticed she always thinks we’re going to be late and we never are?”

“Where are J.K. and Susannah?”

“Left them with Mother,” she said, backing out of the small lot. “Ooh, give me a cigarette, will you? Last time I left them with her it wasn’t pretty—Mother was crying when I returned, muttering something about J.K. taking after Johnny, and then she said that there was a reason people came east for an education. I’d only gone out to buy my kind of coffee, because Mrs. Mulroney won’t buy any of the ‘fancy kind,’ on principle. Even if I give her twice as much as she needs when she goes to the store! By the way, be sure to offer your condolences; as you might
imagine, she’s
distraught
about the pope’s passing. Anyway,” Kitty said, lighting up the cigarette, “let’s get going.”

Over a bumpy road, through a tunnel of trees, Helen’s sister never paused for breath.

“Look at all the bunny rabbits!” she cried. “Do you see them? Ah, gee whiz,” she muttered, as she swerved to miss hitting one. “And look up. See the osprey? Where did they build their nests before telephone poles? Helen, look, oh, look—do you remember how we got sick on blackberries right over there? Or was it oysters? I do remember getting awfully sick in that cove. Oh, and there’s the Winston house. Hugh, you must remember Mrs. Winston from spending time here? You must. I adore her. She’s still alive but you know her children don’t summer here anymore. Just quick visits. Like me! Terrible!
I’m
one of those children now. I have to convince Johnny to let me bring the children for the whole summer next year. Don’t you think? They’ll be old enough to start sailing? Helen, do you know he wants to teach them to sail
on a lake
?”

She asked this as if it did not merit a response, which apparently it did not.

“As if there is any comparison!” Kitty continued, swerving again so as not to hit another bunny.

As the car swerved, Helen nearly fell into Ed’s lap, and he felt a twinge of sadness when she composed herself, taking away not only her body but also her distinct scent, which was something he could never quite place.

“I’m just not a lake person,” Kitty explained, ostensibly to Ed and Hugh. “I tried. Didn’t I try, Helen? The lake is too still. I’m sorry, Ed—that’s your name, right? I’m miserable with names; ask Helen. I was about to call you David. Anyway, you must think I’m terribly rude, I haven’t explained what I’m talking about, and, knowing my sister, she didn’t say anything—so, ready? I went and married a Californian.”

“Really,” said Ed.

“Seven years ago,” said Helen. “It’s not exactly breaking news.”

The road was narrow, and Kitty had to pull over in order to let an
oncoming Cadillac pass by. She waved to the old lady behind the wheel. “That was Mrs. Winston!” she explained triumphantly, as she continued on the road. “I swear! Her ears must have been burning. I just love how small this island is. I
miss
it. Although, as you might imagine, Ed, these narrow roads can make for some particularly awkward encounters. I swear, Helen, I
swear
to you I can’t
tell
you how many times I’ve come face-to-face with Mouse since I’ve arrived.”

“Mouse?” asked Ed. He had to.

“My ex-fiancé,” said Kitty. “I met Johnny,” she offered, as if Johnny was the end of more than simply her engagement.

“His name is
Mouse
?” Ed asked.

“Mouse is six foot six,” said Kitty, explaining the evidently ironic nickname, as she made a sharp right turn.

“Easy on the wheel,” said Hugh. “Please, Kitty,” he added.

“You’d better get used to some windy roads, isn’t that right? God knows what kind of roads they have where you’re going. Remind me where you’re going? Nairobi?”

“I wish,” said Helen.

“Ethiopia,” Hugh explained, “a village called Ciengach.” As if he knew he’d be repeating this many times throughout the weekend and it was his sincere wish to remain patient. “I’ll be assisting my mentor, Charlie Case, and another filmmaker from Paris.”

“Well,” said Kitty,
“c’est magnifique.”

“C’est magnifique?”
Helen asked, rather bitingly.

“Oui,”
Kitty replied, as if to say:
Go climb a tree
. “Though I’m sure you’ll miss my sister, Hugh. It’s too bad you aren’t getting married before you leave.” There was an unprecedented moment of silence as they watched what looked like a turkey take its time crossing the road.

“You know what they say,” said Helen. “Better pheasants than peasants.” And they coasted down a hill.

“They don’t say that,” said Ed.

“Oh, but they do.”

“I’ll miss her very much,” said Hugh.

“And how long will you be gone?” Kitty asked.

“Yet to be determined, actually.” Hugh looked out at the passing trees. “One of the main things written about the tribe we’re filming is that they’re particularly visually striking, so … It sounds very promising.”

“Mmn,” said Kitty. “I’ll say.”

“Hugh is going to meet me in Paris when he’s finished,” said Helen. “Did I tell you? Raoul Merva set something up for me at the Sorbonne? Typing, yes, but typing in Paris.”

“How nice for you,” said Kitty. “I hadn’t realized your French was that good.”

“Oh, it isn’t,” said Helen. “But my accent is apparently excellent. And, besides, I’m sure I can find work in one of the fashion houses. They’re always looking for tall girls.”

“It’s funny,” Kitty said. “When you’re driving around here you don’t really realize how easy it is to make wrong turns,” she continued. “You just think to yourself,
Oh, I’m going a bit over here
, but in reality—”

Ed noticed how Kitty tried to catch Helen’s eye in the rearview and how Helen didn’t look back.

“In reality,” repeated Kitty, “you’re going wildly out of your way.”

The house was natural gray shingled with marine-blue shutters, as if whoever chose the color had sought to match the seemingly endless stretch of white-capped sea that lay beyond its windows. It was also in need of a paint job. At the bottom of a vast green lawn, the beach was rocky and the dock needed tending, but the sea was a perfect expanse, and it was hard not to believe that anyone who was lucky enough to live in such a house might be a little more perfect because of such a view.

“Hello?” cried Kitty, when no one greeted them at the door. “They’re here! Mother?”

A worried-looking woman appeared from what Ed imagined as a warren of endless rooms. “Helen dear,” she said, briefly taking Helen’s hand and nodding toward Hugh and Ed.

“Mrs. Mulroney,” said Kitty, “where are the children?”

“Your mother’s thrown up her hands,” said Mrs. Mulroney.

“Mother?” Kitty cried out. “For the love of God, I was gone not twenty minutes!”

There was the sound of pans crashing to the floor, and Mrs. Mulroney excused herself.

“J.K. and Susannah, if you don’t come and give your aunt Helen a proper hello right now—” But Kitty was already advancing through the rooms, and the three of them followed.

In the library, the children were giggling under what might have been every blanket in the house. The couches had been robbed of their pillows and were strewn about the room. Kitty sat down behind the large mahogany desk.

“How can you do that?” asked Helen. “Just sit there like that? I still can’t sit there,” said Helen.

“Oh, he’s a pussycat,” said Kitty.

“Father is a
pussycat
?”

“Funny, that was not my impression, either,” said Hugh.

From what Ed could gather, it was a point of great contention that Hugh had not asked for Mr. Ordway’s permission before proposing to Helen. That, in addition to the various reasons Mr. Ordway found Hugh objectionable, beginning with his lack of serious employment and ending with the fact that he was “running off” to Africa without even having the decency to marry Helen first. When Ed had asked why he was, in fact, running off to Africa without marrying Helen first, Hugh had declared something vague about not succumbing to outside pressures. And though Hugh’s family and Helen’s family belonged to the same clubs, Mr. Shipley thought Mr. Ordway stiff, and Ed could only imagine what Mr. Ordway thought of Hugh’s father, who was evidently known for donating unknown sums of money to the country club each summer in order to keep the bar open just one hour longer each night. When Hugh
had
met the Ordways, at a graduation dinner held by the Mervas in their townhouse, it had evidently not gone well.