A Dual Inheritance (16 page)

“Can you hear me?” she asked.

“Don’t worry,” said Ed. “Clear as a bell.”

“I’m sorry about my uncle,” whispered Helen. “I’m really sorry.”

Ed was struck mute by her obvious and touching concern.

“Did you hear what I just said?” she asked.

But Ed didn’t answer, and she didn’t ask again.

They went next door to a house full of pallid cousins, one thinner and paler than the next. They lunched on ham, olives, and not much else, before changing into their swimming suits and heading down yet another dock.

Kitty’s children chased them, and before Ed quite realized what was happening, the cousins had pushed him, Hugh, Helen, and Kitty into the water. When Ed surfaced, he was startled, until he realized that Kitty was laughing and calling out, “Well done, you got us this time!”

Here was yet another tradition of which he hadn’t been warned. He watched Kitty’s children scream with laughter and run up the lawn.

“We’ll see them over at the country club,” Helen explained, a bit breathless from treading water. “Mother will take them.”

“Are we swimming there?” asked Hugh. “God, this water feels good.” And he dove under, a plodding crawl leading into a preposterously flawless butterfly.

“Just follow us,” said Helen. “It’s about a mile.”

“I didn’t know you were such an athlete,” Ed cried.

“I told you we’d keep you busy!” And off she swam.

Ed followed at a distance with bursts of swimming, surfacing all too frequently to orient himself, to make sure he wasn’t going too far out of the way. The water was bracing and he was grateful for it, pleased to do something that required nothing but skills he already possessed. He pictured his mother at Nantasket, in a worried stance with her hands on her hips, watching him from the shore. But right as he began to see what looked like a beach in the distance, he found himself tangled in what he was sure were water snakes, and he began to scream. He fought to get out, but they were everywhere. Ed had followed the others, so why wouldn’t someone have called to him, warning him to turn back or at least to swim farther out to sea instead of hugging the coast? As he cursed the others and cursed himself, he bore his way through the slimy mess of snakes, hollering and splashing, only to realize that the snakes were not snakes, of course. They were seaweed. And as the seaweed stroked his cheeks and twined itself with his calves and thighs, he promised himself that, when he finally made it to that beach club, he would keep to himself just how deeply he disliked this swim.

By the time he broke free, his heart was pumping as if he’d come face-to-face with a shark instead of a goddamn underwater plant, but there he was, feet on warm sand, before a scattering of lithe men and women lounging on chairs or watching their children or reading the newspaper, and there were Kitty’s children cheering (they were chanting his name!), and a brunette offered him a towel. There was beer, so much beer, and the beer tasted better than beer had ever tasted, even better than after he’d done nothing but lay pipes in the ground for eight hours straight in terrible heat, and by the time they all piled into someone’s
convertible, Ed had no idea what time it was, but the light had softened and Kitty and her children were all in the backseat with him, and he was drunk. He was drunk already and it wasn’t even dusk. He would have thought four years at Harvard would have prepared him for this kind of pace, but at Harvard he hadn’t been asked to swim at least a mile—most of it through seaweed—only to sit next to Kitty Ordway James and her damp red hair.

“What?” Kitty was smiling, her breasts
right there
, barely restrained under a navy one-piece, a towel wrapped around her waist.

“I didn’t say anything,” said Ed.

He sobered up long enough to take a bath in his room, long enough to manage with his cuff links and a tie, long enough to realize, with something of a shock, that he was having a really good time. He wondered if Hugh was having even a fraction of the fun he was having, and he realized that it deeply mattered to him whether Hugh was having fun.
I’ll make a point to let him know this
, Ed thought, and then it occurred to him that he was not, in fact, yet sober.
Fifty-Fifty
: The boat that passed them earlier popped into his head. Was the boat jointly owned? Or was it a comment about odds? He realized that he was starving.

Sunset brought them back to the yacht club’s dock, and he almost hoped to see Helen’s jackass uncle. But instead of a sailboat, instead of competitive Larry with his sweaty tennis whites, a long shiny boat with a second story of varnished wood awaited. Ed stepped onto it, and when a fellow in a white jacket offered him a cocktail, he almost said to Hugh,
Now, this is more like it
, but he knew better; of course he did. He’d had to be more careful ever since they’d stepped off that ferryboat. It was as if the more superficial the environment, the more seriously Hugh took every last thing. What surprised Ed was that he didn’t feel like pointing it out. He was always the one to push Hugh into talking about anything remotely personal, but for the past twenty-four hours he’d been less inclined to do so.

It might have been that there were too many stimuli here for such
discussions. This boat had an
elevator
. He thought of that boy with his brand-new bicycle, the excitement in his voice. Ed wanted to ride this elevator up and down one more time and memorize the slight dip in gravity that occurred before the doors opened up to the staterooms. Instead, he followed his friends to an already crowded party. He listened as Helen explained how seven summers ago her great-aunt Mary had given a party right here and how everyone had arrived full of morbid sentiments, as it was generally understood that Great-Aunt Mary wasn’t long for this earth. And yet she seemed to be going nowhere except Palm Beach each winter. She was one hundred and three and drinking champagne in a deck chair.

“All the women in my family are addicted to champagne,” continued Helen, making her way through the crowd. “Aunt Mary claims my grandmother put it in my mother’s baby bottle and that she did the same with us. Aunt Mary,” Helen shouted. “This is my fiancé, Hugh Shipley.”

The old lady stuck out her clawlike hand to Ed.

“Oh no,” said Helen, “this is our
friend
Ed Cantowitz.”

Ed took her hand. It was surprisingly warm.

“
This
is Hugh,” Helen repeated.

Aunt Mary looked up and smiled. She’d lost her eyebrows, in addition to whatever tautness her skin had once possessed, but her cheekbones were prominent, her eyes bright green. Hugh gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“For a moment I thought you were marrying the Jewish fellow.”

“Oh,” said Helen, trying to laugh it off, “no, I’m afraid not.”

“I’m sure you’re a fine young man,” the old lady said to Ed. Her voice was shaky, vaguely British. She was not remotely out of it, nor did she seem cruel. She only wanted to get it straight. Somehow, this was worse.

“I need another drink,” said Hugh, leading Ed away. “I’ve about reached my limit,” Hugh added. “I think there’s a two
A.M
. ferry to New London.”

But just as Ed was about to reassure Hugh that he was fine, just fine, he realized that Hugh might not be. That Hugh looked genuinely uncomfortable. Just as Ed was about to start in about the benefits of lightening
up, Helen’s father stepped off the elevator, and Ed watched Mr. Ordway say hello to each and every person, ghosting along the surface of the crowd like some kind of seriously skilled professional, more prophet than politician.

“Look at you,” said Hugh. “You
like
him.”

“I don’t,” said Ed.

“I think we may have come across the one thing we cannot beat to death with conversation,” Hugh said. He lit a cigarette, and the heavy lighter fell closed with a snap.

“It’s not about whether I like him.”

Hugh took an unpleasantly long drag. “I know,” he said as he exhaled. But he walked off anyway, halfheartedly shaking his empty glass.

Ed looked past the women with their newly suntanned arms and charm bracelets and the men with their starched crisp shirts. He looked past Helen in coral and Kitty in pink, and there was the water, so blue it looked black, with the sun about to offer up its last green flash. He found the moon full to bursting, but the sky remained light; it was, Ed remembered, the longest day of the year. The moon was closer than ever and there they were, right this moment, tilting toward the sun.

“You wouldn’t know to look at it,” said Mr. Ordway, who was suddenly right beside him, “but this place has been shaped by disasters.”

“Sir,” Ed said, shaking Ordway’s hand. “Good to see you.”

“All the trees on this island were destroyed by a hurricane. It was over a century ago.”

“Is that right?”

“Can you imagine a force that strong?”

“Yep,” Ed said, nodding, “I think I can.”

“Another one blew through in ’38, spreading seeds, returning all the trees.” Mr. Ordway put his hands in his pockets. He shook his head.

Ed realized Ordway wasn’t drinking anything, not even water, and that this was somehow unnerving.

“Is that right?” Ed asked. “After so much time.”

“That a martini?”

Ed nodded again.

“Have them
wave
vermouth over the top of the glass. It’s the only way.”

Ed almost spilled his drink. “
Wave
the vermouth. I’ll have to remember that.”

“I get the feeling you’re taking some notes.”

“Maybe,” said Ed, laughing. “Maybe I am. Did you grow up here, sir?”

“Oh no,” Ordway said.

Ed waited. He knew better than to ask.

Ordway looked at him and then looked away. In that one small look, Ed knew he’d decided something.

“I grew up all over this country,” he said, as if he was offering proof of something, but of what Ed had no idea. “My father was an itinerant sort. Minister. Bet you can’t believe that.”

“Well, it’s not what I would have expected, but, sure, I can believe it. I can believe all kinds of things.”

“My poor mother played the organ in one church after the other and never bothered making any friends. My father was a tough actor, if you want to know the truth.”

“Mine, too,” said Ed, and instantly regretted it.

“Is that right? Well, seems like you did fine to me.” He shrugged angrily, as if speaking ill of one’s father was his exclusive right. “My old man died at forty-seven, but before he died he also happened to teach me several things. Among them was this: It is just as easy to love a rich girl as a poor one, and if you’re going to meet a rich girl, you have to learn how to dance. So I became a great dancer.” He grinned. “And that’s how I met Helen’s mother.”

Ed was sorry he’d interrupted. He wanted more than anything for Mr. Ordway to keep talking. “And where was that?”

“A woman like my wife doesn’t wander into a church social in some Podunk town, now, does she?”

“I’d imagine not.”

“I tell you, I was walking along the same miserable dirt road I always
walked each morning to my miserable school and, on my life, a man offered me a ride. This man was wealthy and generous, and I owe my good fortune to him, God rest his soul. Was he idiosyncratic? Was he impulsive? You bet he was. But he was also shrewd. You’ll think I’m pulling your leg, but by the time he left me in front of my miserable school, he’d decided to send me to boarding school.”

“He was a quick study.”

“Don’t I know it.” Ordway nodded. “So, you see,
that’s
how I met my wife. Not directly, not at the school—which wasn’t even on the East Coast, by the way, but on an island off the Washington coast—but it was through that one chance meeting. Mr. Ivry. I must have impressed the hell out of that man, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d love to know what you said in that car.”

“I don’t remember a thing, son. And don’t think I haven’t wondered.” Mr. Ordway smiled at someone across the deck. His face lifted for a moment.

When a waiter offered a tray of cheese puffs, Ordway declined, and so—with a heavy heart—Ed did, too.

“So you made your way east?”

“Mmn,” said Ordway, “something like that.”

“Well, that’s some story,” Ed said.

“I also made my share of mistakes before I fully turned to God. Gambled my first earnings away like an idiot, and those were some significant earnings.”

“Are you a religious man?” Ed asked, already knowing the answer.

“Of course I am,” said Mr. Ordway. “Aren’t you?”

“I—”

“Take my advice: no gambling.”

“No,” said Ed. “That’s not for me.”

“I didn’t think so. You fellows are good with money. You don’t part with it easily.”

Ed forced a laugh.

“Unlike all the guests at this party except for that fellow over there,
right there.” He gestured with his drink toward the distance. “I didn’t inherit my money. My wife’s trust is not the bulk of my fortune and I know about work, so don’t go thinking otherwise.” Mr. Ordway’s voice went cold. “Got it?”

“Got it,” said Ed.

Mr. Ordway nodded. Then he walked away. Ed watched him greet a woman with a brooch pinned to her chest—a dazzling jewel-encrusted insect.

They were the last guests to leave Great-Aunt Mary’s party. There were more martinis, and, at Ed’s insistence, they rode the elevator up and down until he felt sick and agreed to leave. Hugh drove Kitty’s convertible. “Where’s your sister?” asked Ed. “She didn’t say goodbye.”

Helen extended her hand out the passenger side, stretching into the night. “Careful,” Hugh said.

“My sister was bored,” Helen said. And Ed had the distinct feeling that Helen wanted him to think Kitty was bored specifically with him.

“Oh,” said Ed, looking up at the trees. “That’s too bad.”

“She gets very motherly out of the blue when she’s bored at parties. As if her children have never stayed with a sitter before.
I have to go home to the children
. It bugs me.”

“I think you’re jealous,” said Ed lightly. “Watch out, Hugh,” he teased. “Helen wants a baby.”