A Dual Inheritance (17 page)

“Shut up,” said Helen sharply.

“Easy,” said Hugh.

“You just shut up about that,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Ed said. “I didn’t …”

They drove in silence.

The swollen moon lit up the roads and the lawns, and as they approached the darkened Ordway home, Helen decided it was time to play tennis. Hugh knocked over several golf bags in the mudroom while looking for rackets, and Ed tossed a tennis ball between his hands.

“Catch,” he said to Helen, and she caught it. They tossed the ball back and forth. “I’m sorry,” Ed said again. But she ignored him.

“You know,” said Ed, “I still haven’t seen your mother’s garden. That’s what I’m going to do right now.” He started walking. “See you in the morning.”

“Helen,” Ed heard Hugh say, his voice laced with both impatience and contrition, “he said he was sorry.”

Ed turned around, already in the middle of the lush green lawn. He looked at his friends. They stood together holding tennis rackets; it was two o’clock in the morning. Ed held up his arms as if he was surrendering.
I give up
, he mimed. But what, and to whom, was he conceding?

Mrs. Ordway’s garden was unexpectedly wild. It was as if she had put her every last unacted-upon urge down into that soil. Every square inch was planted, there was little in the way of borders, and as Ed tried and failed to name most of the flowers, he felt those plants competing, acting out some kind of horticultural survival of the fittest. The garden was the opposite of peaceful, but he’d almost fallen asleep right there. The scent of something like rich white wine sent him down to the grass, before he picked himself up and made his way inside the house, feeling like a burglar. Though a hedge obscured the tennis court, the court lights were on, and Ed wondered if Hugh and Helen were keeping score or simply lobbing the ball back and forth, carrying on a conversation. Ed noticed the lights in the library, too, and wondered if Mr. Ordway—like his own father—prided himself on not needing to sleep. Ed needed sleep. Although he rarely admitted to doing so, he liked to nap daily; he was convinced it made him a more effective thinker.

It was still hot; he stripped, and after carefully hanging his clothes on the back of a wicker chair, he lay down in bed next to an open window, below a rotating ceiling fan. It was hotter inside than it had been all day. He closed his eyes and heard the ball bouncing back and forth on the clay court, the fixed and fretful rhythm. He thought of the garden and
remembered—hydrangea!—the name of those fragrant purple blossoms. Somehow being able to identify that powder-heavy scent released him into the kind of slumber he hadn’t had in days.

When Hugh shook him awake and tossed him his still-wet bathing suit, Ed said, “Let me sleep,” but before he knew it his feet were in the grass, damp from the sprinkler, and he was back outside, in the dark. “What time is it?” he asked, but Hugh ignored him. Helen was ahead of them both, already down at the water’s edge amidst the reeds and below the dock, where low tide revealed the shore.

“Come on,” she said, and when Ed saw she was in her panties and brassiere, he pretended not to notice.

“Nah,” Ed said, as Hugh dove in. “No thanks. I’ll stand guard. I’ll make sure you two stay safe.”

When Helen laughed, he laughed, too, but it didn’t feel like laughter. It felt like acute discomfort and awareness, and though he pretended not to notice the slope of her stomach, the high hipbones and thighs that were even more exciting than her breasts, he did nothing but notice. Those thighs held up her ample behind, a lushness that was always somehow unexpected on such a coltish frame. He was reminded of a giraffe; Helen the giraffe, passing through the African savanna. He had to close his eyes.

“Bye!” she called out, before diving under.

And when he opened his eyes to bright light and a bedside clock that read nearly 7:00
A.M.
, he knew he’d dreamed the late-night swimming and also Helen’s body in her bra and panties, which would remain—as well it should—one of life’s great secrets.

His pounding headache and unquenchable thirst notwithstanding, he gently showered, shaved, put on his clothes, and was looking forward to a moment alone. If coffee was available, that would be all the better, but mostly he wanted to sit on that porch, to be awake before the others, before the day—before his life—began.

But of course he wasn’t alone. Of course Mr. Ordway was seated at the head of the dining room table, four different newspapers spread before
him. Ed chose to say nothing, and this seemed like a sensible choice. When he went into the kitchen, Mrs. Mulroney was listening to a transistor radio, smoking a cigarette.

“What can I get for you?” she asked. But Ed could tell she wasn’t about to exert herself for someone like him. She must have become practiced, over the years, in making such assessments.

Ed cleared his throat. “A cup of coffee would be swell.”

She put out her cigarette but kept on the radio. It sounded like some kind of liturgy.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said.

She waved him out of the kitchen.

When he approached the table, Ed decided to sit as far away from Ordway as possible. He didn’t take a section of the paper, nor did he look at his host, but after Mrs. Mulroney appeared with a cup of coffee, Mr. Ordway pushed
The New York Times
in Ed’s direction.

“Thank you,” said Ed. He took a sip of coffee—weak but hot.

Ordway nodded. He was hunched over
The Wall Street Journal
, which was spread atop the table like an architect’s drawings, secured at one corner by a silver bowl of ketchup.

Ordway cleared his throat. “When I come to Fishers, I know the paper delivery is unreliable. So I bring the whole previous week’s worth. Do you know what was invented over a century ago Thursday?”

Ed prepared himself for a discussion on any number of potentially difficult headline-inspired topics: civil rights, the separation of church and state, the communist threat in Southeast Asia.

Ed shook his head. “No idea, I’m afraid.”

“The donut.”

“No kidding.”

“Some son of a bitch made a fortune. Can you imagine? All because he had a craving, I presume.” He shook his head. Ordway’s plate of food—a poached egg and potatoes—was untouched.

From upstairs, Ed heard the muffled voices of Kitty’s children and their footsteps followed by what must have been their mother’s slower
gait. “Get ready,” said Mr. Ordway, “here they come.” He folded up the paper and took a bite of eggs. “What are you eating?”

“Oh,” said Ed, “I don’t know. That looks awfully good.”

“I eat it every day.”

“Really?”

“Every day.”

“Huh.”

“One less decision.”

“I see what you mean.”

Mr. Ordway grinned tightly. “Listen—and I don’t want to talk about this any further, not with my grandchildren bouncing around—but you’ll come to work for me this summer.”

“Sir—”

“It’s done.” He began stacking up the papers.

Ed thought of how, as far as he knew, no Jew had ever worked at Ordway Keller. But it wasn’t a commercial bank (
No Jews
, his favorite economics professor had cut him off, laughing darkly, when Ed had broached the question of working for one), so he supposed it was technically possible. Then he thought of how his own father would react when Ed relayed this offer. “I—I’m afraid I have another obligation, sir.” Murray Cantowitz had demanded one last summer as payment for Ed’s (despite the scholarship) pricey undergraduate degree. “But thank you, sir. Thank you so much for the offer.”

“Change it,” said Mr. Ordway, as he drowned a fried potato in a golden yolk.

“But why would you want—”

“It’s done,” he said.

By the time the others made their way to the table, Ed was long gone. He was sitting in what was—at least for the next several hours—still his room. He tried, unsuccessfully, to knock his father’s desolate face out of his mind. He’d made the bed even though he didn’t have to, and he was sitting on that bed, with his suitcase packed.

Ed was thinking of something Hugh had told him soon after they’d met, not even a year ago:

People like my father—and I know this makes no sense—they actually have no respect for their own. The money gets passed down, and, with it, a deep mistrust. The money undermines every decision you make. They give you the money so they can say: What would you do without it?

Ed had not believed him. They’d argued about it, of course.

He looked out the open window; the sun was already blazing. He watched Mrs. Ordway lug a watering can clear across the lawn, and, recalling her garden (although it, too, felt like part of his unshakable, unspeakable dream), he could see why she would be motivated to water those plants on her own, day after day. He heard a tennis ball getting going again. Hugh’s muffled baritone; Helen’s silvery laugh. Back and forth, back and forth. New day, new game.

Chapter Six

Summer, Ethiopia

Dawn in Ciengach was muted, the sky not overhead but everywhere. It was like being deep down under the sea, and when Hugh opened his eyes, he was caught in a net,
just
able to make out the surface above—the silvery promise of light. For these first moments and before the true sunrise, Hugh could still see the previous night and its faded constellations. He was unaccustomed to such a view but also to this particular type of exhaustion. Sleeping on the hard desert floor was not entirely familiar, but he’d camped enough as a boy in New England that it wasn’t entirely
un
familiar, either. Stranger still was that, after a lifetime of never remembering his dreams, for these past several nights one dream was more vivid than the next; they went on and on and were almost exclusively populated by his mother.

By the breakfast fire, Charlie Case stirred a pot of beans, and his codirector, Etienne Marceau—who had importantly secured funding from French television for this excursion—indicated with his pointy chin the coffeepot, the cups.
“Café
?
”
he asked Hugh, with what was either (Hugh could never tell) trepidation or disinterest.

“Oui,”
said Hugh gamely. He was nothing if not polite.
“Bonjour.”
And then he was full of questions for Charlie Case, who—in addition to
being his filmmaking, world-exploring fearless leader—also happened to recently value morning conversations about dreams. Charlie had met and loved a Jungian in Los Angeles during his essentially unproductive meetings with the Hollywood producers, and well in advance of when the cows here began their daily bellowing and moaning (their eagerness to reach temporary freedom out on full display by precisely 10:30
A.M.
), Hugh took Charlie (and, inadvertently, Etienne) through his previous night’s mystery.

He could never relay his dreams without imagining Ed taking in Charlie’s nodding and Etienne’s furrowed brow, how Ed’s wiseass face would surely twist into a grin comprised equally of disdain and good humor. Ed would have changed the subject by the time the god-awful coffee had brewed.
Boring
, Ed would say with a laugh.
Do you people hear yourselves? Other people’s dreams?
Then he’d proceed to balk at the ensuing insulted response:
What. What?

“They should have let you go to your mother’s funeral,” said Charlie, repeating his primary refrain before dipping a precious cracker in his bowl. He was a quick eater, always the first one finished, but somehow this seemed efficient instead of greedy.

“Probably,” said Hugh, “because what I remember instead is a clown putting a bird on my head. That’s probably where all those feathers are coming from—don’t you think?—the feathers in the dreams?” He took his first bite of watery beans and tried not to wince.

“Ze bird on ze head!” cried Etienne, who loved this detail as if it were a famous scene from Truffaut. “And your nanny, Meez Peg?
Mon Dieu
.”

“She’s what you call cold comfort,” said Charlie.

“She was all right,” said Hugh.

“They should have let you go to the funeral,” Charlie repeated, squinting into the already blazing sun. “We’re all so damn scared of death in the West.”

“Well,” Hugh said, squinting at Charlie, “that’s because it’s so damn scary.”

On the way toward here, when the road looked downright tenuous
and Hugh’s head was pounding from dehydration so forcefully he couldn’t even smoke, when his eyes were stinging with sweat and he was certain they’d made a wrong turn, they had—each of them—witnessed a lion rip off an antelope’s head. Hugh had felt an icy fear that both surprised and shamed him. In all of his fantasies of coming to Africa, he’d never considered the
animals
.

“Although,” Hugh continued, “a magic show seems an awfully macabre alternative to a funeral. When I thought about my mother afterward, I always pictured her being sliced in half. Do you know I pictured her in a box with the blade sawing through her?”

“Goddamn,” said Charlie. He put down his bowl and spoon; he actually looked as though he might be sick. “You ever tell anyone that?”

“You mean when I was a kid?”

“I mean ever.”

Hugh looked at Charlie—his bloodshot blue eyes and thinning brown hair—and he could tell that Charlie cared about him, about what he was going to say. And when Hugh shrugged and shook his head, Charlie put his hand on Hugh’s back for a brief but certain pat.

With their tails swishing back and forth as young men ushered them to pasture, the Nuer’s cows commanded their full attention. As the volume of the village rose in a specific drone of young men singing and beckoning and cows frantically baying, Hugh stepped on the embers, put out the breakfast fire, and followed Charlie and Etienne toward the cattle. He noticed how Charlie walked quickly and said nothing now, as if the conversation had finished hours ago. Charlie walked as if he wanted nothing more than to shake off not only Hugh but also Etienne, whose most oft-used expression was:
I wonder, Charlie
. Etienne said this the same way each and every time, with the very same puzzled pitch, as if asking a question was, in itself, a terribly novel idea. He was also fixated on dancing. On the Nuer dancing. Preferably at night. Preferably by firelight. The Nuer were known for dance, and it was dance he wished
to film. From the time he met Hugh and Charlie at the airstrip in Gambela and throughout their blighted inferno-hot ten-hour ride in the loathsome Land Rover, Etienne never stopped his wondering:
if they will dance without rain, if it will be different, better, less filmic, more expressive
. Hugh wrestled between crazed laughter and the urge to holler,
WHY DON’T WE WAIT AND SEE?