A Dual Inheritance (33 page)

“Mmm,” her mother said, closing her eyes. “I let Kitty take me all over town to these different places that she’d wanted to try. I kept thinking:
This will be the last place, this will be the last song
, but I didn’t go home. I couldn’t, somehow.”

“Because you were having so much fun.”

Her mother reached under the covers and held Genevieve’s hand. “So much fun.”

“And you missed the flight and Papa was waiting and waiting and he got so worried, and by the time you got word to him that you were coming but it was going to be another day or so, he had decided you’d thrown him over for another fellow.”

“He was jealous,” she said. She kissed Genevieve’s hair, her eyes, her nose, her cheeks. Then she brushed Genevieve’s bangs off her forehead until Genevieve began to feel sleepy.

“When you arrived in Nairobi he picked you high off the ground, which isn’t easy because you’re so tall, and when he finally put you down,
you
said, ‘Let’s just get married here,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, okay.’ ”

“Right,” her mother said, laughing, “just like that.”

“And you got married in a garden.”

“We did.”

“That priest did it—”

“—Father Emile.”

“But neither of you was a believer.”

“That’s right, bunny,” her mother said; she always smiled when Genevieve said that. “Your father liked Father Emile, though; he listened to your father and helped him figure out what he wanted to do with his life. And he was a really good cook. For both of these things, I was truly grateful.”

“Papa decided to take that job with the Peace Corps.”

“Mmn.”

“But first you went to Lamu for a honeymoon.” Her mother was nodding and stroking her hair, watching her fall asleep.

But she wasn’t going to fall asleep. She wasn’t even thinking about her parents in love on some faraway beach, an image that usually made her happy.

Genevieve was thinking of this afternoon and how of course those kids had all grabbed for the five-gourdes note and of course the meanest boy had gotten it. He muttered something before picking up his bucket, and they’d all shot off, laughing—of course they did—but Genevieve had burst into tears anyway, not even having had the satisfaction of understanding
what the boy said. What she’d really wanted, what she had always wanted, was for them to stay; she wanted them to like her.

Her face went hot, even as her mother continued to stroke her hair, and she thought of the clinic here, where her father worked and where her mother also volunteered. How before each of Genevieve’s visits, her mother spoke quietly about what Genevieve might see. It was worse here, in Haiti. She knew her mother tried to steer her away from the worst sights, but there was no way to do this, and this was what her mother eventually said, in a tone that conveyed that
this
was the point of Genevieve’s visits, the fact that there was no way to protect her. Genevieve was thinking about how she’d gone from dreading those trips—the open sores, ever-present flies, the saddest smiles she’d ever seen—to craving them. What Genevieve wanted, what she always wanted now, was to see. Last week at the market with Maude, she’d seen a goat’s head severed from its body. Maude tried to shield Genevieve’s eyes, but she’d shaken off the smooth, pliant arm and drawn closer to the sound of the bleating and of course the sight of blood, spraying into the air and trickling through the ground, touching the tip of her left Tretorn in a stain that she was convinced would never bleach out. But it did bleach out. And now those Tretorns looked the same as before, which was much scarier than the stain.

She wanted to see everything. She thought if she could really look at it all and not turn away, if she was able to never flinch from the orphans and the crowds that mobbed them in the streets anywhere outside their home or the embassy or the hotel, then she might understand it somehow, and the severed goat head, the blood, the orphans, and the crowds—they would become a part of her, and maybe if they were a part of her, then she could somehow conquer the god that had created all of this misfortune. She imagined there had to be two gods. Because the other god had somehow—up until now—kept her not only safe but lucky. It’s not that she wasn’t grateful.

But she knew that wasn’t how it worked. At least according to her father, there was no counting on God—her father had made that very clear when she’d made friends with some missionary kids in Dar es Salaam
(Father Emile aside, he thought religion was
a load of crap
)—but, still: She couldn’t help wanting to believe. She wanted the suffering to be a part of her like blood, not separate like a view, like
the
view from this house—her house now—that overlooked the mountainside. The gates protected her, but they also did not. She was, as Maude often told her, a clever girl.

“Mommy?” Genevieve called out, as the window banged. The room was pitch dark and her mother was gone.

Mwen genyen match la
.

That’s what the boy said when she’d handed him the five gourdes. When she’d reached through the gate and he’d grabbed it.
Mwen genyen. Match la
. His eyes were bright and his fingers were filthy.

I won the game
.

No, you didn’t
, she wanted to say.
Look at you
.

And now, as the wind rattled the broken window that she knew Arvede would end up fixing, she heard someone else’s voice; whose? Hers. It said:
You can’t just pay them off
. And also:
You can’t just let them in
.

Chapter Twelve

New York City, 1982–1983

Ten years later, Ed, Hy, Steve, and Marty were still equal partners.

The financial system was changing, and CBOR–Ordway Keller had to either be at the forefront of change or perish.
End of story
, thought Ed.
The. End
. The future was not about retail and the individual investor but about complex conglomerates. But for all of his meticulous research, for all of his powers of persuasion, none of his partners was entirely convinced. They were all wealthy men now, each of them argued. Why topple this improbably strong, once-scrappy boat? This boat that had managed to sail—without ever (more or less) hitting a squall—all without one official captain? They had remained an egalitarian firm, had maintained their open floor plan. Hy often told Ed that—although they’d more than made it through the grim years of the early 1970s—they should always limit financial risk and never put net worth on the line. Which, Ed argued, was at best too conservative and, more accurately, a total failure of imagination.

When employees complained several times about not being able to follow Ed’s increasingly complicated and risky trading positions, Ed tried and finally failed to remain calm.
You can’t follow my positions well enough to sell them to our clients?
he yelled.
Take a night class, okay? That isn’t my problem
.

Despite the warnings from his partners, despite their firm belief that what he was after was nearly always too risky and hopelessly complex, he continued to seek out the highest of all high-profile conglomerates, many of whom he knew from his earliest days while working for Guy Ordway and whom he’d carefully cultivated over the years. He began to sit down these top men, one by one, poised to underwrite a new venture. Through polite brunches in Greenwich and drinks at the Racquet Club, he maneuvered.

And Jill was this close to making partner.

The Cantowitz family did not see one another terribly often.

One autumn weekend, Jill and Ed headed out of town for separate meetings, and Solange—the Cantowitzes’ workweek live-in from Haiti—along with Solange’s vast extended family, hosted Rebecca, now almost ten, in Brooklyn. On Sunday night, after Ed and Jill made a point to come home and have sex before venturing over the FDR and the pitted BQE (
you’d think New York was a Third World country
, they agreed), they arrived at Solange’s run-down Victorian, which would—Ed noted—look great with a new coat of paint. He’d send over their painter; Jill repeatedly told him that he insulted people by making such gestures, but he’d been poor once, too, and was more than willing to take that chance.

Solange answered the door and Jill nearly jumped into Solange’s arms. She could be so unexpectedly affectionate. “How did she do?” Ed asked.

“Mr. Cantowitz,” said Solange, “she an angel.”

They followed Solange to the basement, where a pack of children was navigating boxes and broken toys, in the throes of what looked like a fairly organized soccer game.

Rebecca called out, “Hi, Mom! Hi, Daddy!” She was dribbling. She was also wearing a see-through synthetic pink dress; her hair had been elaborately styled and she was wearing bright lipstick.

“Hi, honey!” cried Jill. Then she whispered, “She looks like a hooker.”

“A very athletic, very happy hooker,” Ed whispered back.

They stayed for coconut cake—it was Solange’s cousin Antoine’s birthday—then they made the trip home to their classic six on Park. It seemed awfully quiet in the car.

“Rebecca was happier in that house,” Ed said later in their dark bedroom, while lightly scratching Jill’s back.

“Solange and her family are from the Caribbean,” Jill said. “Don’t you know they are a naturally happier people?”

“I’m serious,” said Ed.

“So am I.”

“No, you’re not,” he said, kissing her neck.

“Okay,” she said, sitting up. “For God’s sake, of course I’m not.” She flipped on her reading light. “Listen. You need to listen to me, please. I do not want to have another child.”

Ed turned on his reading light, and the room was shockingly bright. “I just don’t understand,” he said, launching them into this, their most consistent fight:
How Could You Not Want to Give Her a Sibling?
The consistency of their positions was almost comforting. They could argue for hours. “You love your brothers,” said Ed, as if this was a new insight. “You love Mark more than you love your parents.”

“How can you say that?”

“Well, isn’t it true?”

“Do you want a boy?”

Funnily enough, she’d never asked this before, and he couldn’t help being impressed with her new line of questioning.

“Is that why you are so insistent?” She could tell he was impressed and she relaxed against the headboard, looked up at the ceiling. “If you want a boy,” she said with striking serenity, “just admit it, and this will all go a whole lot easier.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Who are you? The Godfather? What are you talking about? Jill, I just want another baby. A
sibling
.”

She crossed her arms and shook her head.

“Do you know what I did in Switzerland this weekend?” he asked, while looking up at the ceiling. “Do I want to know?”

“Stop it. Do you?”

“Sure. What did you do in Switzerland this weekend?”

“I had dinner with a billionaire at his house.”

“Nice?”

“There was a tiger—a real live tiger—roaming around the property, like a guard dog.”

“That’s completely bizarre.”

“It was, it really was. And that’s how I spent my Saturday night. Away from you. Away from Rebecca. And I do sometimes have to wonder, Jill—I mean, I do sometimes wonder exactly how it is we’re spending our time. How we’re spending our lives. In the big picture. Because Rebecca’s going to be a teenager before we know it, and—”

“So did it work? Did the tiger intimidate you? Why else would someone do something so crazy?”

Ed shook his head. He wasn’t giving up, but for at least a few minutes he’d try to let it go. “I felt sorry for the guy.”

“Maybe that’s the point of the tiger—to lower the guests’ defenses.” She faced him, lying sideways, her head propped up by her hand. “Were your defenses lowered?”

He shook his head while fingering her nightgown strap, sliding it off her shoulder, then back up again.

She looked at him and was about to say something. Then she changed her mind.

“What?”

“I just would have assumed, with the way you dote on Rebecca, that she’s more than enough for you.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“No, I’m not.”

“But you’re implying it.”

“Exactly who is going to be here to take care of this sibling?”

“Well.” He sat up. “You, at first.”

“Aha. Me. I don’t know if you noticed,
honey
, but I’m working to make partner. And I’m very very close.”

“And then Solange. Solange will. She told me she will.”

“What do you mean she told you? You
asked her
?”

“I asked her hypothetically.”

“Hypothetically.”

“Hypothetically.”

“Good night,” said Jill. She flipped off the light and arranged herself in a tight little ball, the way she seemed to do only when she was furious. On other nights she sprawled out, leaving him very little space.

“Jill,” he said. “Jill, please.”

She sat up; then she looked at him piercingly. He realized it had been a good long while since he’d had that kind of attention from her. “I want you to listen to me,” she said, and he could see her tawny chest rise and fall. “I do not believe that the sun rises and sets with you.”

“I—”

“Do you hear me? That was your mother, Ed. Your mother was a selfless woman. And that is not me.”

He was too stunned by her control, by her heavy breathing, to say much of anything.

“Do you understand?” she asked. “Does that shock you?”

Whether it was her message or her sheer intensity he couldn’t parse out, but he kissed her and she didn’t stop him.

And then one day, not long after Rebecca turned ten, Jill announced that she’d had her tubes tied, and Ed was so angry that he insisted on taking Rebecca to Disney World for the long Presidents Day weekend without Jill, who relented far too easily as far as Ed was concerned. “You get to go on a special trip with Daddy,” she exclaimed, and Jill’s secretary booked her a separate ticket so quickly to visit her brother Mark, now living in Madrid, that Ed was convinced his wife had already planned that trip to Spain, even before Ed’s Big Disney Revenge.