The Cousins

by Rona Jaffe

  “What about?” Olivia asked. She was already cold with anxiety. He always managed to do this to her, and knowing he did it on purpose didn’t make it any less frightening.

  “I’m upset about what you did,” Uncle Seymour said. “I’ll discuss it later.”

  “I think you should tell me now.”

  “No.”

  “Please?” She knew she would not be able to eat a bite and wished this dinner were over so she could flee.

  “Later.”

  “You’re making me too nervous,” Olivia said. She glanced across the table at Aunt Iris chatting graciously with the betrothed couple and knew that even though she was staying out of it as usual, Aunt Iris was aware of everything that was going on. She cast a desperate glance at Roger, who was oblivious.

  Uncle Seymour took a sip of his water and patted his lips with the damask napkin. “I understand you used your own lawyer for your new will,” he said.

  She nodded. How did he find out these things anyway?

  “We all used Barney Pashkin and then you went and got someone else to redo yours. Who is this guy anyway? I never heard of him.”

  “He’s good,” Olivia said. She was beginning to get a tension headache, but at least she now knew what he disapproved of.

  “You don’t know anything about business,” Uncle Seymour said. “Why do you always do everything on your own? Why can’t you be a member of the family?”

  “I am one.”

  “That other lawyer you used before I got you to use Barney Pashkin—Price English,” Uncle Seymour said, his voice rich with contempt. “I knew Price English when we were all growing up in Brooklyn. His family changed their name. Of course he was a good deal older than I was. But he was always an idiot.”

  If he was older than you were he’d be retired, Olivia thought. The idiot part she ignored. “I’m sure he wasn’t older,” she said. “He’s in his sixties.”

  “That’s what he says. So now you have this new one you found by yourself.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Who is your executor?”

  “Charlie,” she said. She and Roger at that time didn’t know if their relationship would last long enough to get involved in each other’s wills. At the mention of his son, Charlie the Perfect, Uncle Seymour nodded. “Does he know that?” he asked sternly.

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “You’d better.”

  “Okay.”

  He turned then and dismissed her, focusing on his roast lamb and his guests, leaving her shaken and gulping down her wine.

  Afterward she tried to figure out what was bothering him. The only thing she could think of was that Uncle Seymour, the eldest son of a powerful man, was still trying to run all their lives the way his father, her grandfather, had run his children’s. The fact that her elderly father, always something of an outsider because he had only been married to a Miller, had brought in a new wife, definitely an outsider, might have set Uncle Seymour off. Perhaps he was afraid that Olivia, who had not done so well with men, would leave her shares of stock in Julia’s to some stranger they might have problems with. Maybe even to Roger. But she couldn’t, not the way her grandfather had set Julia’s up.

  Many, many years ago, old Abe Miller, who wasn’t old when he did it, had created the family business with the legal stipulation that no one could give or leave a piece of it to anyone outside the Miller family, which of course included their spouses and children. They couldn’t even leave their stock in Julia’s to charity, because nonprofit institutions were run by people they didn’t know, who might butt in. If she married Roger she could leave him her share, but if they continued to live together until they were very old and she died first, she could leave him no part of Julia’s, only what money she had made herself and of course what income had come to her from Julia’s in her lifetime. She could specify one of her cousins as the recipient, or else it would all go back and be divided among the family, making the rich richer. It made no difference whom she used to draw up her will—no one could change that.

  She remembered her mother, years ago, telling her: “Stay close to the family; we’re all tied together in business.” At the time it had seemed heartless. Surely a family stayed together because they loved each other. What did she know about those other things? She was a veterinarian.

  Uncle Seymour gathered them into the fold when they were loving and good, and pushed them away when they misbehaved. She remembered how pleased he was when Kenny, the bon vivant good catch of Santa Barbara, had started flying in to New York more often, and coming to see him. “I think Kenny wants to get closer to the family,” Uncle Seymour had announced, and suddenly they all felt sorry for orphaned, divorced Kenny and tried to be nice to him.

  As for herself, she had apparently misbehaved. A year later, at Passover at Uncle Seymour’s apartment, he had drawn her aside almost immediately and said, “I understand you want to sell your piece of Julia’s.”

  “Where did you ever get that idea?” she had asked, astonished.

  “Your accountant called me and wanted to know some figures.”

  “Because he’s doing my income taxes,” Olivia said.

  “If you want to sell your piece,” Uncle Seymour went on, “we’ll buy it from you.”

  “I don’t want to sell it.”

  “I thought you did.”

  “I don’t.”

  “We’ll be glad to buy it.”

  “I don’t want to sell it. It’s a good investment. I’d only have to look for another.”

  “Let me know if you want to sell it back to us. Any time.”

  She had walked away. She felt as if he was trying to get rid of her, and it hurt.

  “Why am I so afraid of him?” she had asked Roger later.

  “I don’t know. You shouldn’t be.”

  “I’m afraid he won’t love me.”

  “He’s probably afraid you don’t love him,” Roger said.

  * * *

  On Christmas Eve she and Roger lit a fire in the fireplace, opened a bottle of champagne and gave each other presents. She had bought him a very expensive Ralph Lauren bathrobe and he gave her an even more expensive gold bracelet from Cartier. It was indulgent, but they didn’t have anyone else in their immediate family to give nice things to, except his mother and the dogs, the former unaware two minutes later, the latter satisfied with anything they could chew. She and Roger had written loving cards to each other, and she put the one from him into a scrapbook she kept with everything he had ever written to her.

  On Christmas Day they stood on line to see a movie, with what seemed like the rest of the world, and then they went to a friend’s party. On New Year’s Eve they stayed at home, as they always preferred to do, with smoked salmon and champagne by the fire, and watched the ball fall down the tower on television from their bed. Roger was asleep five minutes later. Olivia was a little disappointed, because she was aroused from his closeness and the champagne, and watching him snoring was not what she’d had in mind. But she was also glad she didn’t ever have to go to another New Year’s Eve party again with its frantic pretense of joy. She decided that her New Year’s resolution would be to get Roger to be interested in sex more often.

  After the holidays were over, winter pulled its bleak and dismal curtain over the city. The wind cut, and dark came early. Aunt Myra called to say she was going to Florida to spend February with her brother, Uncle David. Aunt Myra and Uncle David had both married late, and before they settled down to have families of their own they had often taken trips together and were very close. Uncle David had been much more sweet-natured and fun-loving than his older brother, Uncle Seymour, with whom he worked side by side, and who always wanted to make all the business decisions himself. After decades of arguing and trying unsuccessfully to be listened to, Uncle David had decided to abdicate to a more conge
nial climate and have a pleasant old age.

  Aunt Myra also reported that Grady had had an unusual stroke of luck in finding a buyer for Aunt Julia’s apartment, although, she added, he had been forced to accept less than he and Taylor had hoped for. It was the recession; real estate was so bad everywhere. But he said they were both relieved to have that responsibility off their minds. He was apparently still trying to get permission to finish building his deck, and was very upset about the situation. Olivia wished he would get a job so he would have something else to think about.

  One day she walked past Aunt Julia’s apartment and looked up at the windows. The new owners had put up what looked like a mirrored wall and new window treatments. Did they ever wonder about who had lived there before, about that long and vivid and finally tragic life, or did they just feel pleased that they were starting a new chapter of their own? She supposed the latter. It had been only a year since Aunt Julia died, and already she was fading away with her blue grasscloth walls.

  Her New Year’s resolution about more sex with Roger had not gotten her anywhere. He was as affectionate and cuddly as ever, but when it came to passion he treated her like an afterthought. She wondered if she should say something about it, and if so, what she should say. She was afraid that making an issue about it would only make things worse. He seemed so vulnerable. At night he had bad dreams, and tossed and turned and mumbled, but in the morning he claimed not to remember. It was the season, she thought. It was trying for everybody. Even the dogs, reluctant to play long outside in the cold, were restless, and twitched in their sleep with dreams of their own.

  It was only she, apparently, who slept well, hiding, awakening from time to time to notice Roger’s distress and then hiding again—her way of escape, biding her time.

  It was a Sunday afternoon. She was blow-drying her hair, getting ready to go to a movie with Roger, when the phone rang. It was Taylor’s husband, Tim, from California.

  “I have bad news,” he said.

  She froze. Something’s happened to Taylor. “What is it?”

  “Grady killed himself.”

  10

  GRADY KILLED HIMSELF. Olivia felt numb. At the same time, the thought came into her mind that she wasn’t entirely surprised. He was the unhappiest person she knew—but she would never have thought that he would do something like this so soon, so young. His life was ahead of him; he was practically a child!

  Not any more.

  How angry he must have been, and none of them had suspected.

  “When?” she asked. “How?”

  “This morning. He was supposed to be in a motorcycle race with some friends, but he called one of them and said he didn’t feel like going. He was very drunk. And then he said: ‘Goodbye.’ His friend got scared from the tone of his voice and drove over to Grady’s house, but Grady was gone. There was a suicide note. He took his motorcycle off the top of Mulholland Drive.”

  The way Stan did, she thought.

  “The police found him,” Tim said. His slow voice was grave and calm. Thank God for Tim, Olivia thought; he’s Taylor’s rock.

  “How is Taylor?”

  “She’s full of tranquilizers. She’s also in shock, but functioning. She’s sorry she couldn’t call any of the family herself.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t talk to her. What did the note say?”

  “Well, the police have it, but Taylor and I read it. He said he was going to kill himself because he couldn’t build his deck. He said his house meant everything to him, that it was his home and his peaceful refuge. Yes, those were the words he used: peaceful refuge.”

  “I can’t believe he killed himself over a deck,” Olivia said.

  “Well, there were a couple of pages of recriminations against the people who sold him the house, and he wanted them to be sued.”

  “Even in our family, nobody’s crazy enough to kill themselves over a deck. It had to be the last straw.”

  “Well,” Tim said, “the deck was what the whole note was about. Except at the end he added that if his mother wondered why he cut her out of his will she could ponder about it while she remembered how she had treated him as a child.”

  “Oh, poor Grady,” Olivia said.

  “The funeral is Wednesday morning, at the church. He’s going to be cremated, that’s what he and Taylor both wanted for themselves. She’s got to scatter his ashes in Mexico. Some little place, apparently very pretty, on the Sea of Cortez. He did a movie there once, and he liked to go back there by himself. But she’ll do that when she feels up to it, maybe in the spring. Are you coming to the funeral?”

  “Of course,” Olivia said. “Please tell Taylor how terrible I feel for her.”

  “I will.”

  She had to ask him what she had on her mind, even though it was difficult for her. “Tell me, Tim . . . do you think he had AIDS?”

  “We don’t know. It’s something we wondered, too. They’re doing an autopsy. I’ll see you at the funeral. I’ve got to call some more people now.”

  He hung up and she tried to cry. But all she felt was a strange pain somewhere in the area of her heart, as if it had been scraped. She had cried at Aunt Julia’s funeral, and even at Jason’s bar mitzvah, she choked up when very sick, old animals had to be put to sleep, but not today, not now. She caught a glimpse in the mirror of her white and distorted face and looked away. She felt sad and in pain and horribly angry. What had Grady expected, if not this feeling of rage? Didn’t he know how angry everyone who had loved him would be that he had left without ever giving any of them a chance? He must have been so terribly lonely, but except for that one long drunken lunch with her, he had presented them only with the pleasant, rigid facade he wanted them to see.

  Why hadn’t he let any of them know what he was really like? All those years he hadn’t even trusted them enough to let them know he was gay. He had denied it, and after that she hadn’t asked again, waiting for him to tell her. She and the cousins wouldn’t have cared. Aunt Julia wouldn’t have cared. On some level Aunt Julia probably knew. All her excuses, her friends-from-school myth—she had been an intelligent woman, not a fool. They had been Grady’s excuses to her, and she had gone along with them because that was what he wanted. Grady and Taylor were all Aunt Julia had.

  The picture rose in her mind of Grady when he had been very young, just discovering the miracle of words. They had been at Mandelay, and he was being held up high in his father’s arms, trying to touch the leaves on a tree. His little face was stubbornly intense. “Dat?” he had asked, again and again, pointing at each new object, as Earlene and Julia and Olivia and Lila stood there admiringly.

  “Dat?”

  “A leaf,” Stan said.

  “Dat?”

  “A tree.”

  “Dat?”

  “The house.”

  “Dat?”

  “Daddy’s shirt. And who is that?”

  Grady had grinned. “Olivia.”

  He had been such a bright, eager little kid, doing what little kids did at that age, discovering the world. It had seemed at that moment he could become anything, anybody. But it was not even possible that he could be what should have been his most basic of rights: happy.

  She went into the living room where Roger was watching some financial program on television. He took one look at her and was alarmed. “What happened?”

  “Grady’s dead,” Olivia said. She sat close to him and he encircled her with his arms. After a while she told him all about it.

  Uncle Seymour called then to tell her that his travel agency would order the plane tickets to California, and that they were all to go together on Tuesday afternoon and stay overnight. “It’s too late to get a Super Saver,” Olivia said, “but I want to go Coach.”

  “We’re going First Class,” Uncle Seymour said. “Don’t be silly. This is no time for you to scrimp on money.” Thou
sands, she thought. Now she was angry at Grady again for killing himself, and annoyed about how much the plane tickets would cost for them to arrive with their solidarity and respect to his ashes that he had not let them give to his person.

  Roger had decided not to go. She didn’t try to persuade him. She thought about Kenny in Santa Barbara, and suddenly felt the need to be closer to him, the way they used to be when they were young. She called him, and luckily he was in and already knew all about what had happened.

  “Kenny, I don’t want to stay in a hotel at a time like this,” Olivia said. “I’m too depressed. Could I stay with you?”

  “Sure,” he said. “You can sleep in Jason’s room. He’s away at school.”

  Aunt Myra called. “I guess you heard about Grady?”

  “Yes. Why do you think he did it?”

  “He was upset about his deck.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “That’s what he said,” Aunt Myra said. “Now, how are you getting to the airport? Do you want to pick me up on the way, or should I go to Seymour and Iris’s and you pick us up there?”

  “I’ll meet you at the airport.”

  “How can we find you?” Aunt Myra said, sounding panicked.

  “We’re on the same plane.”

  “No, I think we should all take a cab there together. We’ll get a big one. I don’t suppose Roger’s coming. That’s all right; he’s busy. Maybe we’ll use Seymour’s car service. I’ll call you back.”

  As it turned out, none of them even spoke to one another on the long plane trip. They read and ate and slept, and when they were awake they looked grim.

  Good-natured Kenny picked them up at the airport and drove the others to their hotel; then he took Olivia home with him.

  “Awful thing,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  After that they didn’t talk about Grady at all. When she got to Kenny’s he made her a sandwich and showed her his view of the ocean, all silver in the moonlight. The house was full of things he had collected on his various trips, but it was too neat and looked as if no one lived there. She supposed that was what a house started to look like when the children—or the child, in his case—had gone. Jason was in his first year of prep school, and then he would be off to college and after that would probably get an apartment of his own.