A Dual Inheritance (34 page)

He instructed his secretary to organize the most over-the-top itinerary
possible. So when they arrived at the Polynesian Village and Rebecca didn’t beam like those kids in the advertisements, and when, in fact, she noted that everything was smaller than she expected, Ed suggested they head to the Tambu Lounge, where they spent more time than most families having their own special cocktail hour, ordering drinks that arrived in hollowed-out pineapples.

“Did you know,” Ed said, sucking down his big fat alcoholic drink through a straw, “that John Lennon officially broke up the Beatles right here?”

Rebecca shook her head.

“It’s true. He came here with his son, just like I’m here with you. And he signed the paperwork.”

“How do you know that, Daddy? Do you even own any Beatles albums?”

“Oh, y’know, I read it somewhere.”

“That’s kind of depressing, don’t you think? Imagining John Lennon doing that?”

“I guess,” Ed admitted. “Though there’s a saying: All great things must come to an end.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one. Anyhow, now he’s dead.” Rebecca was sitting perfectly straight. “I still can’t believe that man shot him.”

“I know, honey. It’s awful,” he said. What the hell was he doing—bringing up John Lennon not twenty-four hours into her first trip to Disney World?

Her expression was deadpan. It often was. When Rebecca was a baby, they’d worried about that poker face, her infrequent smiles and cooing, but when she hit toddlerhood and Manhattan’s private-school entrance exams for four-year-olds, she answered
every single question
correctly, and it was clear that all that time she had simply been watching. “Little Buddha,” Jill’s brother Mark called her, which Ed knew was meant kindly but which he still found profoundly irritating.

She’d inquired, not infrequently, when she was three years old:
Daddy, if there are seven days in a week, when do the days end?
And then, with that furrowed delicate brow:
When is the end of days?

“You okay, honey?” he tentatively asked now.

“Yeah. I was just thinking, my favorite fruit is now pineapple.”

“Pineapples are good,” said Ed; his sense of relief at the conversation’s downright jaunty turn was intense.

“You don’t eat enough fruit,” she said.

“I eat fruit. I eat plenty of fruit. Which one is your second favorite?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably an apple.”

“But you can get an apple all the time. Apples are boring.”

“Plenty of places an apple is special,” she said. “Plenty of places people are so poor there’s nothing to eat.”

“Well,” said her father, “that’s true.” He realized he felt ashamed and that she had, more than anyone—more than even his father ever had—the capacity to shame him. “But, sweetie,” he said quietly, “we’re at Disney World. I kind of thought that we could talk about stuff that wasn’t … y’know … so real.”

“Okay.” She nodded, then sat up even straighter and, assuming a pose that looked eerily like Jill’s, she said, “But you know what? I don’t really want a brother or sister.”

Ed sucked too hard on the straw and the cold liquor pierced his head. “How can you not want a brother or sister?”

He was hoping, of course, that she would say something like,
I don’t want to share you with anyone
, but instead she looked at him with quiet frustration and said, “I don’t know, I just don’t.”

“Well, would you like another virgin lapu lapu?”

She shook her head, then: “You’d better make up with Mom.”

“I know,” said Ed.

“Her work is very important.”

“Very,” said Ed.
This is what I get
, he thought,
for sending her to that school
.

Jill had been more flexible about (or less interested in) the details of Rebecca’s education, but Ed had felt strongly that they should send Rebecca to the
best
school in the city: a single-sex environment, a tradition of academic excellence, staffed with faculty that would challenge and ultimately mold Rebecca into the kind of Radcliffe girl who had so intimidated
him when he arrived at Harvard as a freshman. But now that his daughter was—at ten years old—well on the way to becoming that girl, Ed was a little afraid of his daughter’s self-possession and had the distinct feeling that the school’s philosophy actually boiled down to a staunchly feminist version of noblesse oblige.

Rebecca had her picture taken with dopey Minnie Mouse and conceited Snow White and self-righteous Cinderella, filling her head with all kinds of beautiful bullshit; Ed got buzzed and bloated on lapu lapus and piña coladas, and by the time they were back home he was less angry than sad and he apologized to Jill, who seemed awfully restored by her quickie trip to Madrid. She was clad in her white terry robe and, due to her post-flight skin regimen, her face was a mask of alien green.

“Give Mom her present,” said Rebecca.

Jill opened up the chocolate-covered coconut patties that Ed had remembered she’d told him about—how she’d loved them as a kid, how they’d been a once-a-year special treat when the Solomon family vacationed in Miami. Ed and Rebecca had searched at five separate stores. “Wow,” Jill said, upon seeing the candy box. “Thanks, you two. Did you have a great time?”

“We did,” said Ed. “Didn’t we?”

Rebecca nodded, still watching Jill. They both were.

Jill smiled as if something smelled bad. “What?”

Ed tried to keep it light. “I think we’re both just wondering if you recognize the significance of your gift.”

“Of course I do. I ate these as a kid. It’s so sweet of you. But I ate so much in Madrid—I’ve never eaten so much meat—that right now I also need these like I need a hole in my head.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say,” Ed shot back. He felt his throat constrict and his face go hot; his back begin to sweat, and he thought he might actually cry. He knew he was being overly sensitive and that her humor had always been on the dark side, but that expression?
A hole in my head?
In response to his attempt to fulfill one of her childhood desires? “How can you say that?”

“What?” said Jill. “I really do appreciate the thought.”

“Funny way of expressing it.”

“All I’m saying is that they’re fattening. That’s all I’m saying.”

He swallowed, hard. “Right.”

“Ed,” said Jill. “Please don’t do this. We’re all home, together. Thank you for the candy.”

“They’re the exact same chocolate-covered coconut patties that you loved when you were Rebecca’s age. You told me you loved them and I remembered. I remembered the brand.”

“And I’m thanking you,” said Jill, as if he had turned some dangerous corner and she wasn’t going to let him take the two of them along. “Rebecca,” said Jill, “let’s get ready for bed.”

“I wish you could just be a little more sentimental,” said Ed.

“I know,” she said. “I know you do.”

Rebecca’s eleventh birthday: a sleepover party at the (Jaffe designed) East Hampton house. By Sunday morning, Amanda Cohen was recovering from an evidently upsetting outburst; every minute or so Rebecca asked her if she was okay. Danielle Alfano and Eleanor Bliss had seemed like nice enough girls, but apparently, according to Jill, they’d stopped speaking to poor Jennifer Moore, whose steady work as a child model (in addition to a partial scholarship) helped her single mother pay for the private girls’ school where these alliances had been formed. Danielle and Eleanor had accused Jennifer of “being conceited,” which (again, according to Jill, who seemed concerned but also kind of jazzed) was perceived to be among the worst accusations among girls this age. Then there was Lauren Sealove, who didn’t go to their exclusive school but who was Rebecca’s best friend from Hebrew school and whose parents Ed pictured as sanctimonious if not socialist. Though the kid had done nothing but wear torn jeans and ask Ed if he liked his job, Ed didn’t trust her. The first time Rebecca went to Lauren’s, Ed asked his daughter how the apartment was, and Rebecca said:
You wouldn’t like it
.

Eleven years old and already full of subtle implications.

Ed had forgone his Sunday ritual of reading all of his papers in order
to make the girls chocolate chip pancakes, but as the girls were barely speaking, due to the evidently rigorous and emotional demands of a slumber party, they were each (aside from polite Jennifer Moore) sulking over the pancakes, and it was all Ed could do not to shake every one of them.

Jill had become their translator. “This is totally normal,” she whispered to Ed, while he was getting dressed and puzzling over what had gone wrong with his daughter’s party. “And believe me,” said Jill, “it’s only going to get worse.”

“Are they leaving soon?”

“The parents are picking up in twenty minutes. Rebecca’s going over to Lauren’s for the day.”

“The socialists have a house in the Hamptons?”

“Renting,” she said. “Sag Harbor.”

“Ah.”

Ed emerged from the bedroom. “Girls,” he said, planting a kiss on Rebecca’s head, “it’s been a pleasure.”

“Have fun, Daddy,” said Rebecca.

“Have fun, Mr. Cantowitz,” echoed several of them, and they ceased being mysterious and frightening and returned to being children.

“Hey, thanks,” said Ed. “I’ll try.”

Hy not only knew how to fly his own helicopter from Westchester to East Hampton and back, but he’d always been an on-time guy, a guy who even Ed, who counted on no one, could count on. But now, with a perfect blue sky for today’s third flying lesson, Hy was late and hadn’t called this morning to confirm their weekly appointment. Ed waited for Hy in the empty lot (a barren potato farm), which was walking distance from Ed’s home. Ed did forty push-ups in the tall dry grass, and after Hy still hadn’t arrived, he did an additional forty sit-ups; he threw in some jumping jacks (God knew he could use them). But as the sun inched behind the clouds and the morning turned to afternoon, the air grew hotter, the sky went dull, and Hy still didn’t appear.

When Franny had bought the lessons for Hy’s fortieth birthday five years ago, Ed thought his friend an unlikely candidate for piloting. Ed assumed he’d take a few lessons and leave it to the professionals, but Hy took to the skies and went on to get his license. He also became an enthusiast—donating flying lessons to every auction that asked, extolling the wonders of floating through the clouds, the virtues of bypassing traffic. By the time Ed asked Hy for flying lessons, Ed was so deeply troubled by the management of their company, by their collective inability to agree on most matters, that unfortunately these lessons were little more than an excuse to align himself with Hy, with whom Ed had every interest in continuing to work. He believed that—despite their frequent disagreements—it was Hy and he who were silently loyal to each other. Osheroff was so smooth that if he had any brains he’d be dangerous, Rabb knew the numbers but lacked any creative vision, but Hy still inspired him—there he was in the air! The man was flying his own chopper!—and Ed had every intention, during today’s third lesson, of making this clear.

After the initial windswept chaos and the handshakes and good-to-see-yous, Ed strapped on his helmet and seat belt and they were both ready for takeoff.

“Remember,” said Hy, over the
budda budda budda
of the blades, “acceleration, elevation. Deceleration, descent.”

“Got it,” said Ed, as his legs began to sweat.

“What else?”

“You never stop flying a helicopter until you land.”

“Good boy.”

“What are you doing?” Ed asked.

“Accelerating.”

“We’re going up?”

“We’re
accelerating
.”

“Not sure I’m ready.”

“Sure you are. Pull up on the collective.”

Ed took the throttle between them and did as Hy instructed. “We’re rising,” said Ed.

“Elevating,” said Hy.

Ed looked out over the flat planes of Long Island, at the green farmland and blue ocean, at the patterns of how they came together and how they stayed intact. Suddenly he knew that it was time to speak his mind. He felt the sense of urgency that was his comfort zone, and he also felt that if he didn’t say it now, he somehow never would, or that if he waited, the sense of urgency would turn inward and become something else, something depressing.

“Hy,” Ed hollered, “I’m terrified.”

“Don’t worry, I’m right here. I’m not gonna let you fuck it up. You think I want that?”

“I’m not talking about the helicopter. I’m not talking about the lessons. I’m terrified about our operation. Our lack of shared vision.” Ed shouted to be heard above the din of the propeller. “Do you know what I mean?”

Hy might have nodded; Ed wasn’t sure. The only thing he was sure of was that Hy was, in fact, going in for a landing—
deceleration
—and Ed asked, “Is there a storm coming?” but he knew there was no storm even before Hy shook his head.

“Are you okay?” shouted Ed. He should have waited until Hy had a plate of clams in front of him before bringing up something like this. Last time, they’d landed near a clam shack they both appreciated, where Ed bought Hy all the fried seafood he wasn’t supposed to touch after his heart scare the previous year.

“I don’t think you’re ready for this,” said Hy. “I thought I’d teach you the basics of hovering, but it really is the hardest part.”

“Sorry,” said Ed. “I’ll be more focused next time.”

“Sure,” said Hy, “of course.”

Ed knew better than to talk anymore. Hy was focused on landing.

“Feel that? That’s where you feel the urge to pull way up on the collective,” said Hy. “Don’t,” he said.

“What happens if you do?”

“You don’t want to know.”

They made contact with the ground, and Hy rolled the throttle to
idle and the engine spooled down. Neither of them spoke as Hy’s hands remained on the controls until everything stopped moving completely.

“Baruch HaShem,”
muttered Hy.

“
I’ll
say. I can’t believe you have the stomach for this.”

“Y’know what?” said Hy, almost severely. “Neither can I.”