A Dual Inheritance (48 page)

“Hugh has devoted his whole life to caring for poor people.”

“That’s noble. I’m only saying there’s more to it. You have to understand, there always is.” What exactly was he so burned up about? Hugh—Ed did realize this—had not wronged him. He had never even judged him. So Hugh chose to live as if he was doing penance for his very existence—wasn’t that his prerogative?

“They care about helping people,” said Rebecca. “That’s it. Why can’t you admit that? What did they ever do to you, anyway? And also—” She scraped her hair away from her face, a repetitive gesture that seemed like it would hurt. She secured her smoothed hair with one of the many bands that encircled her wrist.

“Forget it.”

“Forget what?”

“Forget their politics, forget their values—”

“Their
values
?” Rebecca raised her voice. “You want to talk to me about Hugh and Helen and their
values
? What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Ed said. He could feel that bitter smile. “No, what? Tell me. You seem really pissed off about them, and it makes no sense.”

I’m really pissed off because Hugh never once paused to consider that Helen might actually have wanted me, that she might have wanted me badly enough to do something about it. And I’m pissed off because Hugh is a man who lives above it all, and nothing down here—down in the real world, the petty world, the world of fear and greed and bottomless desire—nothing seems to catch up to him and—

“I’m really pissed off because you and your mother didn’t tell me that you weren’t going where I thought you were going, and the reason you didn’t tell me was because you knew I’d never let you go away with
people like that. Even before you knew they’d been friends of mine—you knew that I’d make sure to talk to them on the phone and ask all my questions and there would have been no way.”

“Because you don’t trust me.”

“Trust has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. I can’t get over when I hear parents saying that.
I trust my kid
. Jesus Christ. There are forces that are beyond our control, Rebecca, and it is my job—
my job
—to control how vulnerable you are to these forces. In a couple of years that’ll be your job. Nothin’ I’ll be able to do about it. You can go live in Africa, too, if you’d like. Knock yourself out. But goddamn if I’m going to be the sucker who looks the other way while you get yourself into trouble before then.
I trust my kid
. No, forget it. I’m sorry.”

“Dad—”

He was pacing now, holding his hands together. “I bet you and your friend had no curfew, and I bet you were drinking and maybe smoking marijuana on top of it, and I don’t even want to
think
about you having gotten in a car with Hugh Shipley on vacation. People don’t change. I’m not an idiot, Rebecca.”

“Daddy, I never said you were.”

“You want to know why I’m pissed off? I’m pissed off because you’re not even sixteen years old and you got on a plane and I had no idea about it. And who is
Vivi
, anyway? Why haven’t I heard anything about her?”

“Probably because you are so judgmental about my friends that I tend not to say much about them.”

“Oh, please lighten up, Rebecca. Will you please?”

“Also probably because you haven’t exactly been easy to talk to these days.”

Was she right? Fine, she was right. But one day he would explain it all. He’d explain it and she would understand it. She was smart, incredibly smart. He was always proud of her. Even right now, when she was being impossible.

“So—what?” he continued, trying to gain back his momentum.
“Was it cocktails for breakfast on this island getaway? Catching fresh fish on sailboats and all that?”

“Oh, now you have a problem with vacations? With
fish
? What are you talking about?”

“I just know how they are,” he muttered.

“They’re
married
. Okay? Vivi’s parents are married. Which is a lot more than I’m able to say.”

“Give me a break, Rebecca. This isn’t a goddamn movie. I did not want to get divorced,” he yelled. He went ahead and yelled it again. “You know I didn’t want to.”

“Also? Vivi’s parents don’t live their life thinking that the worst thing is about to happen at any given moment.” She walked over to the window and put her face right up to it. He watched her there, fogging up the glass, for what seemed like a very long time. “I am so sick of thinking that way,” she finally said. “And I do, you know.” She turned around to face him. “I think just the way you do.” Her eyes were brimming with tears and her nose was running; she didn’t even bother to wipe it.

He was ready to ground her for keeping this trip from him. He was prepared to keep her in this apartment and out of that goddamn mistake of a school for an extra few days. That would be the right thing to do. Not the easy thing but the
right
thing.

Instead, he took a deep breath, the way his doctor had shown him. He sat down on the couch, took another breath, and stood up once more. He went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of water. He returned with the water and they both drank up.

“Did you have a good time?” he asked.

She wiped away her tears and her snot and took a deep, shuddering breath. “I did,” she said. “Okay,” he said.

Rebecca was crying—weeping, really—and he found himself sympathizing with the fact that she was cursed with a father like him. He put his arms around her, and when she didn’t shrug him off, he tried not to feel surprised.

“Why are you crying?” he asked. “I’m not even grounding you.”

“I had such a good time,” she sobbed.

He kissed her head. He remembered how her hair used to smell like sugar and strawberries, and now it smelled like hair. They stood by the window, and the sun shone weakly in the sky. Ed held his daughter and looked out at the park and so many barren trees.

Part Four

1989–2010

Chapter Seventeen

Columbia and Beyond, 1989–2004

Rebecca and Vivi were both shocked by Vivi’s acceptance at Columbia. They each cast about for how this could have happened and agreed it must have been Vivi’s final project in her creative writing class that had convinced the admissions committee. During Vivi’s senior spring, everyone had to present his or her collected works in some kind of portfolio. Most kids had written them out neatly or used a word processor, stapled the pages together, and called it a day; there had been one girl who’d done hers in purple calligraphy and bound the pages with ribbon. But Vivi had found an old Sunfish at someone’s garage sale, rigged up the sail, spray-painted the whole boat gold, and scrawled her poetry on the boat with neon paint pens. Everyone loved it; she’d won some kind of award. And, during Rebecca’s senior year at boarding school, each time she walked by the “Poetry Boat,” which had acquired a semipermanent position on the Arts Center lawn (Vivi having ignored all requests to come collect it), Rebecca considered how the admissions board of Columbia University must really be studded with suckers.

But then, during her first week at Columbia, while searching for her contemporary civilization class, something finally clicked when Rebecca ran across a lecture hall bearing Vivi’s grandmother’s maiden name.

One month into Rebecca’s freshman year, Vivi was “tapped” for St.
A’s, the most exclusive social club on campus. Vivi told Rebecca while they were crossing Broadway, and Rebecca had used the noisy traffic as an excuse to shout.
“What are you talking about?”

“They asked me.” Vivi shrugged. “I want to see what it’s like.”

She’d been chosen by half-British, half-Texan Marion Childs, who had—according to rumor—recently been sleeping with Ethan Hawke. When Rebecca pressed, Vivi described the most exclusive club on campus as if it were a group of civic-minded students, interested not in black tie or blue blood or (at its most interesting) defying the thriving culture of political correctness but rather in earnest matters of community responsibility and the fostering of close friendships.

“It’ll be like a social experiment,” said Vivi.

“A social experiment in what? Snobbism? Why would you—you, of all people!—why would you want that?”

Vivi looked away and picked up her pace, as if speed could get her through this conversation. “I tried to join the African Student Club and the members laughed at me. Like in unison. I looked ridiculous to them, of course I did. It doesn’t matter that I was born in Africa and that I lived there until I was ten. If I didn’t know that before, I definitely knew it when I was standing there looking like a freakin’ missionary.”

“You might not be a missionary, but—”

“What?” Vivi was a little out of breath.

The light turned red and they stood on the median, smack in the middle of Broadway.

“What?” repeated Vivi. Cars whizzed by.

It was still surprising to see Vivi without cornrows. Her long, layered hair blew away from her face with a sudden gust of wind.

“You’re starting to sound like an elitist.” Rebecca said this loud and clear, though inside she was nervous.

Vivi looked downright flinty; her eyes might have actually narrowed. “These people from St. A’s are interested in me, Rebecca. I like them. They’re fun. Some of them are smart—like, smarter than you. They’re definitely not a bunch of jackasses.” Vivi turned her attention to the
passing cars, obviously impatient to get away from Rebecca. “You need to let this go.”

Rebecca remembered previously thinking:
Why is there a bench on a median smack in the middle of Broadway?
And then it became perfectly clear: It was as if someone had created seating specifically for those who, while in the midst of arguing, couldn’t make decisions—whether or not to keep walking, to keep fighting, whether or not to go on.

As Rebecca’s sophomore year began, Vivi spent more and more time at St. A’s. Rebecca attended one party there, which was perfectly fine. It was a beautiful building; twinkly chandelier. No people in ascots, no burning crosses, and yet she never returned. Though Vivi had never once acknowledged any family fortune or any legacy besides one of social service and borderline alcoholism, now that she’d joined a club known for issuing invitations based on old-money origins, Vivi’s nondisclosure about her own increasingly evident old money had started to seem less like a desire to follow in her father’s earnest footsteps and a genuine by-product of having grown up in Africa and Haiti and more like straight-up hypocrisy. Rebecca did not want this to be true for so many reasons, not the least of which was, of course, that this would vindicate her father’s cynical point of view. Rebecca never returned to St. A’s because she felt that, within such a context, she didn’t know very much about her closest friend.

So she hung around the Hungarian Pastry Shop with Francisco, the self-described asexual heir to a Puerto Rican shipping empire. She studied and talked with Francisco about politics, philosophy—everything except anything resembling popular culture or living breathing humans. Francisco had also gone to boarding school but had been kicked out due to the fact that he’d (having never seen
Harold and Maude
) faked his own death. He had a unibrow, a contagious laugh, and excellent knife skills. One Saturday night he made osso bucco on his dorm stove for Rebecca and Bob—a wiry, unsmiling, self-described liberation theologian
from Troy, Michigan. Bob smoked Pall Malls and drank Jägermeister and did a weekly night shift at a Bronx soup kitchen. He got straight A’s, played cards with old men in Riverside Park, and seemed to have read every book ever written, and when, two weeks later—at her suggestion—he relieved Rebecca of her virginity, his crucifix dangled in her line of vision and she didn’t even close her eyes.

And to whom did Rebecca place a call, the morning after her deflowering?

“What do you mean a crucifix?” asked Vivi. “It’s probably just a little cross, no?” Vivi had befriended several Italians on campus and had already absorbed their expressions and inflections.

“No. It’s a crucifix. It’s Jesus. On a cross. With blood.”

“Blood?”

“Approximation of. It’s all silver.”

“Bet your dad will love that.”

“I doubt my dad will meet him.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because he wears a crucifix?”

“No!”

“You’d better be careful,” Vivi said. “Don’t start lying to yourself.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You know.”

“I don’t know.”

“All I’m saying is that it wouldn’t be the worst thing to piss your father off again. You can do that more than once in a lifetime.”

“Coming from someone whose father thinks everything she does is downright dreamy.”

After that, she saw less of Vivi. In the winter they met while it was still dark out, swam laps in the university pool. They were at their best when they weren’t talking, when they were—like the toddlers Rebecca read about in her psych class—doing something like parallel play. Outside, with their hair still wet, they drank café con leches and ate sweet rolls; their hair froze in the snow. When they hugged goodbye, Vivi was
the last to let go.
I miss you
, she sometimes said, as if they weren’t living not only in the same city but also attending the same school.