A Dual Inheritance (56 page)

He was fine with the fact that his daughter was only half-listening. Because Ed’s actual thoughts were about the mother of the bride-to-be, who had (according to Rebecca) been
spending time in Europe
.

Rebecca now explained over the phone, “I haven’t seen it yet, because, obviously,
I’m still at work
, but, Daddy, I’m betting the invitation looks that way because the paper is recycled.” She was using
the voice
, which advertised that were she not at work, in the presence of other earnest, hardworking professionals, she would surely be saying something
like,
Enough
. Like,
What do you care? The voice
let him know she felt she ought to be congratulated for not acting as impatient as she felt.

“Recycled,” he scoffed. “I do know about recycling, Rebecca. And I support it—though you know the only ones really profiting from the recycling industry are the goddamn Mafia—”

“Please let’s not start about that right now, if you don’t mind.”

“I’m not saying anything about recycling. What I’m saying is that this invitation has an intentional look. Grubby. And if they’re so concerned about the environment,” he asked his daughter, “why didn’t they just send out an email? You should see this thing. It’s a sad excuse for a wedding invitation.”

“That’s surprising,” Rebecca said, obviously unconvinced.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s surprising because Vivi has great style. It’s kind of her thing.”

“Style over substance?”

“I’m not saying that,” she said evenly. “Daddy, I really have to go. I’m going to be here all night to begin with.”

“All I’m saying is that it’s embarrassing, and I doubt I’m the only one who feels this way.”

“I doubt you are.”

“That’s all I’m saying.”

“And I hear you. But I have to go.”

“Fine,” he said, pissed. And then, more pleasantly: “Go get ’em.”

“How are you?” she asked, suddenly sounding a little guilty. “You’re okay, right? I mean, aside from being horrified by Vivi’s brunch invitation?”

“I’m okay,” he said, “I am. Things are looking up.”

“Do I want to know the details?” she asked, though she kept her tone light enough. She had a habit of insinuating that she still considered him a crook, and this had ceased to bother him, because he believed she made these insinuations only to make herself feel better. He could tell that her continued belief in him annoyed her, made her feel too soft and too tenderhearted
for the kind of person she had become: the dogged, Ivy League–educated kind of person who toils away in a windowless community justice center on behalf of the accused who don’t have the dough to be white-collar criminals.

“We’ll ride up together,” he announced. “We’ll ride up to this thing.”

“Oh, so you
do
want to go?”

“Sure,” he said, knowing full well she never doubted he would. “Why not?”

“Oh,” said Rebecca. “Well, that’s great.” She wasn’t doing much to hide the fact that she would have been happier if he’d declined.

“But?”

“I’m going up a day earlier. I’m actually going to be at the ceremony.”

“I thought it was only family.”

“It is,” said Rebecca.

“What—are you a Shipley now? Are you an Ordway or an Avery?”

“It’s—you know—family and me. Those are my godchildren.”

“Of course,” he said, feeling oddly jazzed. He glanced out the window, where the cars were shooting down Ninth Avenue now that rush hour was over. “Hey,” he said, “that divorce finally go through?”

“It did,” she said. “Vivi’s still in shock.”

“Is that right?” And, to calm his sped-up heart, he sank into the couch. He grabbed a kilm pillow he’d bought on a whim while on a second date in SoHo over ten years ago. He’d had to sell most of his belongings. How was it that he’d held on to this pillow? Lying flat on his back, he gazed up at the cheapo drywall ceiling, at the inert ceiling fan with the lamp in the middle, which never failed to light up when he wanted air or to start whirring when he wanted only light.

Where, he wondered, did Helen lie down at the end of yet another day?

“You read about Hugh, right?” asked Rebecca.

“Read what?”

“The award,” she said, obviously annoyed that he somehow hadn’t already known this. “Use those prison skills and Google him. It’s prestigious.”

“Good for him,” he said quietly. He still bristled each and every time she mentioned prison. “Hugh won something big?” he asked, surprised at the pleasure he felt in hearing this.

After he’d hung up the phone and watched the sky go as dark as it could while drowning in a sea of lights, Ed considered how Rebecca knew nothing about his current state of affairs. Besides that it was simpler not to tell her anything, she had more than made clear her disinterest in the rise and fall of his fortunes. It wasn’t as if she was some kind of Marxist, but she genuinely seemed to be content with what—at least to him—wasn’t much. Although she might have been accepting her mother’s money from time to time, it seemed just as likely that she wasn’t. She rarely traveled; she worked hard. She happily lived in one of those neighborhoods in Brooklyn that boasted some
New York Times
press clippings about well-lit bars and charming bistros but still basically looked like crap.

She didn’t even know that he’d bumped into his old friend Hy in the lobby of the St. Regis, where—post-prison—he’d sometimes spring for a cup of coffee just to make an appearance, to see who was meeting whom for breakfast. Even though years had passed since his release, it was the first time he’d seen Hy since his life had fallen to pieces, and, while saying goodbye, Hy had gripped him in an ungainly hug. Hy had not said,
I’m sorry, Ed
, or
I’m sorry I screwed you
, as Ed had so often envisioned he would.

Instead, Hy had said one word:
Brazil
.

Brazil
, Hy had repeated as he’d pumped Ed’s hand. Hy knew exactly how unlucky Ed had been. He also knew how smart Ed was and that he would figure out the rest from there.

And because Hy had become (it was Ed’s worst source of vexation) literally one of the most successful investors on Wall Street, and because
if guilt was not the single most motivating factor Ed didn’t know what was, and because the market had utterly crashed and he actually
hadn’t
lost his shirt (the scraps that were left of it), and because he’d always had the good sense to never—even when he could have easily have gotten a seat at that table—invest with BadForTheJews Madoff because he had just never believed the guy, Ed said goodbye to Hy, went straight to his aesthetically offensive studio apartment, and for a solid week he filled his every waking moment with research. He barely slept; he stopped bothering with his weights and his walk and, instead, indulged his love for Chinese takeout. For the first time since prison, he even stopped shaving and then, on the following rainy Monday, he showered and shaved and called a housekeeping service. Up until then he’d been cleaning the place himself—he’d become a pro on the inside—not wanting to spend the money. While two women named Teresa and Marisol cleaned, he walked around the Central Park Reservoir, and when he returned—soaking wet—the apartment smelled like ammonia; he tipped and said
muchas gracias
. Then he began to sell much of his then-measly portfolio and buy Brazilian stocks.

And now—he still couldn’t quite believe it—after watching those stocks rise, he had sold many of them and, after having almost no liquid assets for more than five years, he had liquidity. He had some actual capital. No one would know this by the way he lived: If he was good at anything now, it was saving money. It had become a game:
How little can I spend?
He saw nobody but Rebecca. He walked everywhere. After an awkward moment in a café near her office when she had offered to pay, they usually met in City Hall Park and not during mealtimes. Sometimes she brought her little Tupperware containers anyway and—when he offered to take her to a late lunch, an early dinner—insisted that she preferred her own food: her greens, her grains.

He knew his daughter thought he had changed. She thought that he’d realized he could live with far less, and he
had
, but truthfully he still hated living this way. He had plans to export cars to Brazil. The plan was in its initial stages, but though the concept was not without risks (not only the historical precedent of Brazil’s growth preceding dramatic
collapse but also—obviously—his own previous failure importing BMWs to China), he thought the risks were worth taking in exchange for the possibility of his golden years (ha!) spent with good tables and overpriced wine and what he remembered as the sense of having traction in this city. He never complained but absolutely dreamed of buying back his old apartment, craved the day when he’d never again have to lay eyes on the pathetic exile of these crappy digs with the gypsum board and exposed 1970s radiators and tacky black linoleum countertops and could return to the walnut-paneled hush, the Carrara imported marble, the trees.

On his colossal loss of income, Rebecca often said:
I think this could be a good thing
.

But Rebecca didn’t have children yet. And didn’t even the most ascetic sorts of people change their tune about money and personal comforts when children came along? (
I’m not remotely ascetic!
she’d yelled at him once.
Where do you come up with these insane ideas? Have you taken a good look at my shoes? Loeffler Randall, Daddy! I’m not proud, but, believe it or not, I have a clue what it’s like to live beyond my means
.) Even though she’d remained stubbornly unattached for years now, Ed allowed himself to picture his daughter coming to her reclaimed childhood home with her own children one day.

He wasn’t sure when he’d transferred wanting more children into wanting grandchildren, but he knew he’d made the leap—he wasn’t delusional about his age, not to mention his current precarious situation—somewhere along the way. He tried not to nudge Rebecca about any of it—the going on dates, the
getting out there
, the unconceived babies—but he was also acutely aware of the fact that his only daughter was closer to forty than thirty. How was this possible? Even though he was no less than stern with her if she ever waxed nostalgic about Gabriel (if he said anything on the subject, it was how she needed to snap out of it and get over him), Ed was certain that he and his daughter shared an unspoken understanding that letting Gabriel get away had not been her finest moment.

The truth was,
he
was crushed when they’d split. Ed had really liked—even loved—Gabriel, who was raised in Belfast until he was twelve and was fiercely ambitious, who was of the opinion that since there was no way in hell he was going to remain a Catholic, he’d be happy to raise any future kids Jewish, if that’s what Rebecca really wanted. Gabriel didn’t approve of religion, but he loved the law and liked the tradition of the Talmud. He liked how Ed’s rabbi had told him that should he choose to convert to Judaism (he did not intend to) and still not find a way to believe in God, then he would find himself in good company, because theirs was a religion based on the act of doubting. Ed loved that Gabriel was happy to say such things aloud and that he had a genuinely photographic memory and so could easily discuss articles Ed felt the need to foist upon him about Israel or the stock market, even though Gabriel wasn’t all that interested in either topic.

It had, in fact, taken every last reserve of Ed’s self-control not to call Gabriel when he moved out of the apartment he’d shared with Rebecca for several years (another source of bitter fighting with Rebecca:
Why hadn’t they gotten married
before
they’d moved in together?
). It had taken all Ed had not to tell Gabriel he’d never find a better woman than his daughter, who was brilliant and gorgeous and loyal and who needed—Ed agreed!—to get her head on straight and figure out what she wanted out of life. But Ed was being sued by the justice department at the time and thus had
not
gotten involved. And after quitting her highly coveted, well-compensated position at a top-tier Manhattan law firm because she’d been (she claimed)
anxious every minute of every day, and for what, and for whom?
, Rebecca sulked around for a while before going off to Africa to work with—or rather
for
—Hugh Shipley.

Had he worried? He had worried. But his daughter had returned seeming, if anything, nicer. Also, she had a renewed—if gravely altered—sense of purpose. She’d immediately started to apply for fellowships and internships, dead set on working with the most underserved populations in the city. Ed hadn’t allowed her to visit him in prison—seeing her there would have been worse than not seeing her for
a year—but during a rare phone call, when Ed had brought up how she could likely do more good taking on pro bono work at one of the bigger firms and had braced himself for a furious response, she’d only responded—with remarkable composure—that she was certain now, absolutely certain, about the work she wanted to pursue.

So Ed had
not
gotten involved about Gabriel, he had
not gotten involved
, and shortly after the breakup Gabriel had taken up with someone else and—though never marrying (what was it with this generation?)—immediately had a baby. Which Ed knew only because, during another precious phone call, Rebecca had cried, and when he asked what had happened, she told him, but only after he agreed not to ever mention Gabriel again. He’d stuck to this and never did mention Gabriel, or not unless Rebecca did so first. It wasn’t like he didn’t know a thing or two about holding on to someone long after they’d—to put it politely—let you go.

Over the telephone, an expression he loathed:
I’m going to let you go now
. Not:
I have to go
. Not:
Holy shit—look at the time!
No:

I’m going to let you go
.

Once, in an attempt to make his daughter feel better, he’d almost told her everything about Helen—how he’d never wanted anyone or anything as
clearly
ever again, how he’d felt the loss of Helen like a physical blow that was truly not unlike being punched in the gut during one of the few times he’d entered a real boxing ring, before becoming a Harvard man. Ed had almost told Rebecca about the night at the Y, how Helen had just
been there
, sitting in the dank, hot hallway, but thankfully he’d come to his senses about this kind of storytelling once he realized that his particular experience could impart neither wisdom nor comfort.