A Dual Inheritance (9 page)

And then the door opened.

His father stood still, without greeting them. All that was missing in this initial exchange could be found in his yellowing undershirt, in the little hair left on his olive-skinned head springing up in peppery tufts, and in the plentiful hair that was everywhere else—erupting from under his shirt collar on his still-broad chest, springing from big knuckles and meaty forearms.

When his father leaned forward, peering through the screen door to make sure it was Ed, there was the unmistakable smell of alcohol seeping out of not-young skin, and Ed nearly said,
Sorry, Pop, sorry, but we gotta run. Just wanted to make sure you’re still alive
.

But instead he pretended that he was happy to see his father; instead, he grabbed him in a hug—clearly aggressive in the strength of the grip but a hug nonetheless. Ed thought if he acted affectionate, then perhaps he might feel affectionate, and maybe all this affection wouldn’t allow
for Hugh to perceive his home to be as repellent as it really was. But hadn’t he
wanted
Hugh to see it all, to see and understand?

Hugh Shipley shook Murray Cantowitz’s hand, and Ed couldn’t help but admire Hugh’s confident handshake and imagine his father rating it the way he knew his father habitually did, though he hadn’t shared these ratings with Ed since he was fifteen, when he’d rated Ed’s handshake a five (“at best”) and Ed had shouted at his father, who in turn had not spoken to his son for nearly three weeks.

Ed knew Hugh had scored high on the handshake test because, instead of proceeding right back to his spot in the living room and letting Ed and his friend fend for themselves, Murray Cantowitz shuffled in to the orange kitchen, and Ed and Hugh followed close behind. The refrigerator was nearly empty, but after a few moments of painfully awkward silence, wherein Ed avoided looking at Hugh by examining the refrigerator’s contents, his father asked Hugh if he liked chopped liver.

“I can’t say I’ve ever had it, sir,” said Hugh. “I’m curious.”

“It’s like pâté,” Ed explained, and his father gave a snort before emptying a half-empty box of crackers onto a plate, surrounding the plastic container of chopped liver—a plastic container that never would have made the journey from kitchen to living room, had his mother been alive. Hugh would never have been allowed into the kitchen at all. She would have carefully scraped the chopped liver into a glass bowl; she would have offered Hugh more and more until Hugh would have had to laugh and say thank you too many times, until it became a joke between them.

They followed Murray Cantowitz into the living room.

“What’s with the shuffling, Pop?” Ed muttered, despite knowing nothing good could come of such a question, which his father, in any case, either didn’t hear or chose to ignore.

Hugh sat down on the filthy amber couch, his legs splayed to the sides like a basketball player’s, as his hands gripped the couch in between. Ed saw that Hugh was trying his best to sit up straight, but the couch sank so low that he was unable to do so.

Ed claimed the green armchair and dipped a stale cracker in chopped liver, which tasted kind of spectacular.

Murray Cantowitz didn’t sit. He produced a bottle of rye and two glasses. “I know Eddie won’t drink.”

“Really?” asked Hugh, as Murray Cantowitz gave him a generous pour. Hugh reached immediately for his full glass, clearly pleased to have something in the way of common ground. “Nice to meet you,” Hugh said in the way of a toast, before taking an eager sip. “I’ve heard a great deal.”

“Shit, I hope not,” said Ed’s father, who still didn’t crack a true smile. Murray Cantowitz hadn’t looked terribly surprised that Ed was there, or that he’d brought a friend. He only set his drink on the mantel after all that shuffling back and forth. Maybe his father had quickly sized up Hugh and was attempting to appear more tragic than ever. Maybe his father wasn’t immune to the fantasy of the wealthy stranger. The one who appears on an ordinary doorstep and turns shit into gold.

Hugh must have inspired that fantasy every time he left the house; he must have appealed to all the poor suckers who crossed his path, because Hugh just looked rich. No matter how earnestly he strived toward egalitarianism, no matter how threadbare his sweaters or how hard his living might ever get over the years to come, he exuded privilege. Ed could feel his father softening, sucking up to Hugh before he even realized he was doing it.

“What’s doing, Pop?” Ed asked. His knee was bouncing up and down, with no end in sight. He knew that his twitch was forthcoming and that his father could not stand the twitch. “You getting outside?”

“Getting outside? You already forget how hard I work?”

“Of course not. Did you get an injury on the job?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” his father said mockingly.

“I thought you were limping or something.”

Murray Cantowitz took a slug of rye and shifted his weight. “I hope
you don’t forget what hard work is.” He shook his head. “I know you think I should pick up and leave with the rest of them. I just hope you don’t forget how many years I been working here—right here—and coming home right there to where you’re sitting.” He gestured at Hugh.

“I can move,” Hugh said, and Ed had to laugh.

“Stay where you are,” said his father.

“Stay right there,” said Ed.

“You planning on sitting down with us, Pop?”

Murray Cantowitz shook his head. “I like standing.”

“Okay, then,” said Ed. “Well.”

A shard of light pierced the closed curtains, and Ed was overcome with the urge to go lie down on his old bed, to sink into a fast, hard sleep. He even closed his eyes for a moment, only to open them and understand exactly where he was and how infrequently he’d sat here since the twelfth grade. During summers, he’d worked so hard during the day that, by the time he made it home, he went straight to sleep, and in the morning he went from bed to door, drinking coffee with the guys on the job.

But here he was, surrounded by the same fake-wood paneling, the same fake-crystal bowls filled with decades-old lemon sours gathering dust on the shelf; here was the same fake-ivory sailboat surrounded by real faded seashells that his mother had collected during summers at Nantasket.

“Is that you?” Hugh asked, pointing to the portrait—oil on canvas—done by a neighbor when Ed was nine years old.

“That’s Eddie,” said his father—as if all American citizens were, by law, forced to hang portraits of their children on their living room walls and, were it not for such a senseless law, he would have never been trapped into hanging such sentimental nonsense.

“It’s a good likeness,” said Hugh.

“You think so?” asked Ed’s father, in a manner that was unsettlingly natural.

“Yes,” said Hugh. “Who painted it?”

Murray Cantowitz shrugged. “A neighbor kid.”

“Huh,” said Hugh, and, as Ed’s father topped off Hugh’s glass, “thanks.”

“I wonder what ever happened to that kid,” said his father.

“You never know,” said Hugh. “That painting might be worth a mint someday.”

Here were Hugh and his father conversing with ease. Here was his father with a not-particularly-bitter smile, and Hugh eating chopped liver with evident gusto, and it occurred to Ed that he was, in fact, the only problem here.

He was the one unable to see anything besides the closed windows and drawn curtains that had, for most of Ed’s life, been opened each morning by his mother, who had once broken up the marital spat of a couple of strangers by offering her unsolicited opinion through the open window. He was the one seeing the dust coating the television, which surprisingly was turned off and facing Hugh, offering a dark mirror.

Ed imagined that he had switched places with his friend and that he was the one faced with his own reflection at that moment. That he had the legitimate right to be the one thinking:
What the hell am I doing here?

His father coughed wetly. Finally he said, “You people almost finished with school?”

“That’s right,” Hugh said. “Ed sure is going places, isn’t he?”

Among the spectrum of possible replies, Ed knew, there would not be anything close to a
yes
or an
oh yeah
or even a noncommittal nod.

“That depends on whether he does or doesn’t,” said Murray Cantowitz. “I’m not holding my breath—it’s only winter. Lot can happen before the ink is dry on that diploma.”

“That’s true,” said Hugh, indulgently, Ed thought. “We can’t take anything for granted. At least I can’t.”

“A fellow like you!” his father exclaimed, as if he was a person who made pleasant comments from time to time. “Oh, I’d say you’ve got it in the bag.”

Hugh shook his head with infuriating modesty. Ed’s father was nodding.

What the hell was happening here?

“Take it from me,” said Hugh, “no one has a better shot than Ed.”

Why did Ed want to punch Hugh right then? Why? When he was saying nothing but what Ed had always wished someone might say to his father on his behalf?

Murray Cantowitz still hadn’t sat down. He’d been leaning on a side table and was now shuffling to the breakfront cabinet.

“Pop,” said Ed, “you don’t see how you’re walking?” Even as he said it, he knew it was not concern that motivated him. And as his father chose to ignore his line of questioning yet again, as he opened the cabinet and took out a new bottle of rye, a voice rose up outside the window:

“All right now. AW-RIGHT! I am BACK. And see here: Ain’t no one goin’ home till this nigga gets some goddamn heat. You hear me, old man? You hear me?”

“Pop?” Ed asked, as his restless leg finally stopped bouncing. “Who the hell is that?”

His father only gestured, as if he was swatting at fruit flies.

“I am HERE!”
the man shouted.
“On MY goddamn Sabbath!”

“Pop? You gonna answer the man?”

“That
schwartze
isn’t talking to me,” said his father, with an expression that could only be described as revulsion, and Ed had the feeling that it wasn’t the man outside the window who was the subject of his father’s deepest scorn.

“Sure sounds like it,” Ed replied. He could hear the panic in his own voice.

“He isn’t talking to me,”
repeated his father. “You think I don’t know?”

Ed felt the surge of heat, the particular heat that results only from the shameful words and actions of one’s own family. Then he parted the curtain and looked for himself.

A Negro in a pair of brown trousers and a button-down shirt was raising his fist and hollering,
“You hear me, old man, I know you hear me. Make some fuckin’ improvements on your goddamn building.”

“Goldblatt,” said his father, pointing toward the top floor, where
their landlord had lived for all of Ed’s life. “He hasn’t left yet, either. This
schwartze
keeps after him, I’ll give him that.”

“Quit using that word,” Ed spat out, still looking through the window.

The man shook his head over and over.

“Schwartze?”
asked his father. “You want me to stop with the Yiddish? In front of Johnny Harvard here, I’m embarrassing you with the Yiddish?”

“It’s not the Yiddish,” Ed said. “Just stop.”

His father picked up one of his mother’s seashells, a scallop. He fingered the ridges and held it in his hand. “You want to go to shul again? Have a heart-to-heart with the
rebbe
? You can mull it all over. You can talk about your beloved
schwartzes—
”

“Christ—”

“Sure, him, too—why not? You and Rabbi Steuyer and Jesus Christ can talk over how you and the
schwartzes
should create a new holiday. Why don’t you go and do that? You can serve sweet potatoes with matzoh for the Seder. You’re so fuckin’ smart—we know all about that—so why not write up a Haggadah full of our slavery stories, because we really have so much in common. That’s what Rabbi Steuyer wants to do, did you know that?”

“When’s the last time you stepped foot in a shul?”

“Don’t you worry. My information is good. Goldblatt upstairs gives me updates. You and Rabbi Steuyer—you could have long
satisfying
discussions. And then, when you’re finished with your big discussions, when you’re done with your bullshit about
tikkun olam
, when you’re done with your important and noble plans, you can step outside and get your wallet stolen and your ribs kicked in for good measure.”

It was all Ed could do not to take the yellowed undershirt in his fist and slam his father up against the bookcase and watch it all come down on top of him, every last disintegrating lemon sour.

“What’s
tikkun olam
?” asked Hugh, predictably.

“It’s an obligation to heal the world,” said Ed.

Hugh nodded before standing up slowly. “Mr. Cantowitz,” he said.

“My son should not have brought you,” Ed’s father nearly whispered to Hugh, so suddenly soft and low was his voice.

“No,” said Hugh. “No, I’m glad he did.”

“Everyone’s gone,” Murray Cantowitz said. “Everyone. You don’t understand,” he said, ostensibly to Hugh. “Nobody’s even callin’ me up to guess how little these houses will be worth in one year’s time. Whole neighborhood’s gone or leaving.”

“What about the slumlord upstairs?” asked Ed.

“Yeah, he’s here. Him and me. We’re just alike, right? That’s what you think?”

“Why don’t you leave, too, then?” Hugh asked, in a fake-helpful tone that Ed heard as masked disgust. And Ed, though he knew he had no right to be, was irritated. He was annoyed with Hugh for speaking up, for acting as if he understood anything about this neighborhood.

“Fuck ’em,” his father said. “Can’t drive me out.”

“Fine,” said Ed, “fine.” But still he didn’t turn the knob on the front door. “Listen, let me ask you something: Why do you suddenly care about the
rebbe
? I’ll tell you the last time you stepped foot in a shul, because I know. And you haven’t even said kaddish. Nothing. Not even for her.”

“You watch,” said his father, clearly not listening to any of it. “You watch how Rabbi Steuyer leaves his devoted congregation of slumlords and working-class racists. Sure,” he said, “he’ll go somewhere morally superior, but watch how he will also conveniently leave the
schwartzes
. He’ll go someplace far away, where he can cry about civil rights with the rest of the rich and deluded
mishpocha
out there in the suburbs, who are sending all of their money to Christian charities in Alabama while their own people—” He faltered for a second, and Ed and Hugh watched him do it. Neither interrupted, and when he noticed this, he just stood there, seemingly uninterested in finishing.