Inheritance

by Judith Michael

"You look tired, and you've lost weight. And why are you so glad to see me?"

  "Because you're a smart, beautiful lady who likes me even when I'm a bad boy." He closed his eyes for a moment. **A'course you're right, sweetheart: I've lost weight and I'm tired. But there's nothing wrong! Everything's fine! I've been working like a drone; you wouldn't beheve it: the tour and the movie . . . Did you know I've been making a movie? Not me, you know, I'm not making it, but I'm it —^I'm the movie —how about that?"

  "It's wonderful, Britt."

  "And I want you to meet the genius who thought of it; he's here somewhere—^" His bright, fixed eyes scanned the crowd and found Paul. "Hey, friend, here's my sweetheart Laura, the lady I told you about." He turned, bringing Laura with him. "Laura, this is the genius who got me in my own movie."

  Laura's eyes widened in shock. The crowded room wavered before her, like a picture seen through a rainy window, and she swayed against Farley's arm.

  He never noticed. "You two are the only ones who don't bullshit me, you know that? Means a lot to me. A lot of people act like I'm dumb, but you don't and I like that. So you oughta be friends. Paul, you want to get this lady a drink?"

  Paul had already moved to her, his hand outstretched. "I'd be very pleased to get Miss Fairchild a drink."

  Laura took his hand.

  "Great," said Farley; he was already distracted by someone who was beckoning to him, and he dr^d away.

  The noise level rose higher. Paul and Laura stood still, their hands clasped. He looked so much older, she thought: the

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  lines in his face had subtly deepened, making it look narrower and harder. But he was more handsome than she remembered, and taller; his hair more unruly, his skin darker. His hands— the long tense fingers holding hers—were as familiar as her own.

  "Do you want a drink?" he asked.

  She shook her head.

  *Then let's find a quiet place."

  She took her hand from his. "Fm not sure that's a good idea."

  "I am." He put his hand on her arm. "Laura, please."

  At the sound of his voice saying her name, she began to tremble. It isn't fair; everything was fine. Vd forgotten him. Involuntarily, she smiled.

  "What is it?" Paul asked. And she remembered he'd always done that: wanted to share whatever it was that made her smile.

  "I was thinking I'd forgotten you. And that was absurd."

  His hand tightened on her arm. "We can go upstairs. They won't serve dinner for another hour."

  He looked for Emily; she was happily surrounded by her own crowd, and he knew he would not be missed. His hand still on Laura's arm, he led the way, and together, they moved through the crowd, prying guests apart so diey could squeeze through.

  Laura was almost unaware of the party. Her arm burned where Paul's hand held it; their bodies pressed together in the crush of people. And then they were on the stairs, finee of the crowd. But when they reached the dining room that took up almost die entire third floor of the mansion, everything was confiision as tables were still being readied for the four hundred guests. "Upstairs," Paul said again, and they climbed another wide, carpeted stairway to the ballroom. It was eerily quiet, the bandstand chairs and music stands awaiting the orchestra, the flowering trees shadowed in the half-li^t. Paul led Laura to one of the couches along the wall, and she sat in the comer, curled up with her legs under her, like a young girl.

  He sat in the other comer, and they were silent. "I'm sorry," he said at last. "I've thought of so many things to say

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  to you over the years, and now none of them seems right. Except . . . Fm sorry. I behaved badly toward you, we all did, and Tve wanted to tell you how sorry I am, for all of it.**

  *Thank you."

  They were silent again. "I've wanted to congratulate you, too,** he said. "It*s wonderful that you've bought those hotels. And I understand the one in Chicago is very fine; Ben told Allison it's—"

  Laura's head snapped around. "Ben," she said flatly.

  **Oh, of course, you don't know him. Ben Gardner, Allison's husband. So much has happened ... my God, so many years . . . Ben's a good man. I like him, though for some reason we're not as close as I hoped we'd be. He's a vice president of the company, and Allison gives me his news when she thinks I'd be interested. He says your Chicago hotel is one of the best in the country.**

  "He's right," she said coldly. She was trembling again. Ben and that family, together, talking about her. She took a deep breath and looked around the room, away from Paul. "And you're married," she said at last.

  "Yes. I didn't know you knew."

  "Ginny Starrett is a friend of mine."

  "I don't know her," said Paul.

  "She knows Uni."

  All the nanoes, all the events: unshared. They were strangers.

  "You're very beautiful," Paul said, trying to find a way back. "You were always lovely, but now you're more . . .'* He wanted to say she looked more polished, more distant, colder, but he could not. Instead, almost helplessly, he said, "You cut your hair.**

  She sniiled faintly at the obviousness of his comment. "A long time ago. I wanted to look different.**

  "You are. You're—"

  "I wanted to be different."

  *Time does that"

  She nodded. "I didn't know that when I cut it. I was leaving Boston and everybody I loved had turned away from me, and I didn't want to be me. It hurt too much.**

  "My God.*' Paul leaned toward her, his hand reaching out;

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  he wanted to take her in his aims and hold her to him. It was not a sexual desire, not yet: he wanted to comfort her for the pain behind her level voice. He could almost feel her body in his—the idea of holding her was so real—but she ignored his reaching out.

  "Britt says you've made a movie about him. I never knew you were interested in— " She bit off her words; she would not refer to their years together. "Is that what you're doing now? No more photography?"

  **I may go back to photography sometime, but right now filnunaking fascinates me. It has a freedom and an aliveness I've never known before, a way of creating whole worlds in such a brief space, and creating lives. . . ." She was looking at him, and he remembered how good it had been, long ago, to tell her his thoughts and know he would be understood. **Creating lives, Laura, that's the extraordinary thing. Movement and stillness, dialogue and silence. It's not obvious—at least it wasn't to me until I learned it—the use of opposites to show different sides of a person or a scene, the wonderful, crazy logic that people create as they go along, the irrational way they act when they think something that touches them deeply is true or false. . . ."

  A long silence fell. Laura was looking at him in wonder, at the fervor in his voice, the passion for creating that she had never seen in him in all the time she had known him. Owen would have loved it, she thought; he would have said, "I was right about that boy; he just needed time." But then she heard the echo of Paul's last words; they hung in the air between them. It seemed they could not get away from the past: it kept curving back to them, no matter what they talked about.

  *Tell me about your hotels," he said. "How did you buy them?"

  "With other people's money."

  "One of Owen's first lessons," he smiled. "Do you like it?"

  "Being in debt?"

  He chuckled. "Owning hotels; running them."

  Laura's smile had met his. Quickly, she looked away, then, her face calm, turned back to him. "I love it. It's as if I owned four wonderful homes—well, they're not all wonderful yet, but pretty soon they will be."

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  "You're renovating all of them?"

  *1 couldn't do anything else. There isn't much to save except the exterior and the magnificent lobbies. And the corridors: they're much grander than anything built today. All the rest . . . Owen had plans, you know; we worked on them for years . . ."

  "I know," he said quietly. />
  "And they're wonderful. I've expanded them a Uttle"—she gave a small laugh—^''a lot, sometimes, but I get carried away by the excitement of it."

  "Expanded how?"

  She told him about the hotels, about making them as much like private homes as she could, and then she talked about the people she hired and how they worked together. It did not matter that he was a member of the Salinger family and the staffs she was talking about ran hotels that had been partly his: she found herself talking easily, even about Gerard Lyon and the special school she had found for his son in New Yoik. And then, in answer to another question, she told him about the small house she had rented in Grove Court.

  "Do you like New York?" he asked then.

  "I think I will. It's akeady changed me." She smiled at him and he had a glinq)se of Uie mischievous smile he remembered. "I walk faster, I talk faster, I even breathe faster; I walk sideways down the street to get past people, especially at noon when everybody's out for lunch; and every once in a white I find myself thinking if something didn't happen in New York it didn't happen. Period. That's when I look for a reason to go to Chicago for a coiq)le of days."

  Their laughter rang out in the huge, empty room, and for a moment they were joined.

  But then Laura looked away again until, as before, her face was calm. "I haven't had a chance to find out if I'll like it or not; I haven't had time to get to know it. I grew up here, yoa know*'—there was a note of challenge and defiance in bar vcnce, but he seemed not to notice it—^"and now everything is so different for me that it's as if I've never been here. Someday I'll take the time to explore it. Right now, I spend most of my time at my woik."

  "And it's what you hoped it would be? When Owen was

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  teaching you about hotels, and you wanted one of your own, is it everything you hoped?"

  "Much better. There's something so special about it, Paul: feeling that they're my houses, where the door is always open, and watching people enjoy them, knowing I can make them comfortable and happy and give them what they like and what they'll remember, and then seeing them come back because they did remember me and want to come . . .*' Embarrassed, she put a hand to her face. "I think we should go back downstairs."

  "Is someone waiting for you?"

  "No." Then, not wanting him to know how much she was alone, she added, "Not tonight. There is someone I see a great deal; he's out of town this week . . . But your wife will wonder where you are."

  "She probably won't miss me until it's time to sit down for dinner."

  Laura gazed at him, her face impassive. "What does she dor

  "She's a model. Magazines, mostly. She's very good."

  "I've probably seen her, then, without knowing who she is. How odd that seems. E>o you have children?"

  "No, Emily doesn't want . . ." He paused, reluctant to sound as if he were complaining. "She's concentrating on her career for a few years. I thou^t it was a good idea. Laura, there are some things I'd like to say— **

  "Ibll me more about your films," she said. "Is there someone you wwk with?"

  Ife made a gesture of impatience. "I have a partner, Larry Gould—"

  "Gould? Didn't you know him in coDege?"

  Tes, you're amazing to remember that."

  Sbt shoc^ her head. She hadn't meant to let him know that she remembered anything of their past. "IbU me about him."

  "Ife makes television conmiercials, but we fnmed a separate conqMuny for documentaries ..." He told her all of it, from the time be had first talked to Lany about getting out of society photography in New York, to the faUuie of iSsii first fifan, and dien to the idea for a film cm Britt Parley. "He's perfect fcR- what I want to do; show the secret face we aU have

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  behind our public one, or the hidden scene behind the one everybody sees . . ." He talked on, easily, as Laura asked questions, and they leaned toward each odier on the couch, absorbed in each other. "And Los Angeles?" she asked. "Do you like itT' "I don't know. I feel the way you do about New York: I haven't taken the time to make sense of it. It's beautiful and ugly aiKi everything in between. It's fascinating and deserves exploring, but I haven't done it because I've been too busy and Emily isn't interested. I've thought a lot about the way you and I used to explore the Cape; I'd like to do that in Los Angeles."

  Iliere was a pause the length of a heartbeat as Laura saw the surprise in his daiic eyes; he hadn't meant to say that. But he had, and she drew back. "That's hardly fair, is it? Or is it all right to fool around with a thief and a fortune hunter now that you're safely married?"

  "God damn it—!" he exclaimed. "I told you when we sat down—^I said I was sorry— " "You didn't say you'd been wrong." "I don't know if I was wrong. You told me— ** *Then what were you apologizing for? Damn it, if you and your whole family can't admit you were wrong— **

  "You told me Felix was right! Or don't you remember that? I asked you if he was telling the truth, and you said yes. I've never forgotten that; it's very convenient if you have—^"

  "I haven't forgotten." Her voice was like ice. "But you didn't wait to find out what that meant. Just now you told me you want to find the secret face behind the public one, and the hidden scene . . . Doesn't that mean the hidden story, too? Or isn't that important with people you know? You couldn't have thought it was very important with me; you took Felix's story at face value and helped your family force me out. Force me away from my home."

  Silenced, Paul gazed across the ghostly expanse of the baUroom. "You're right, I didn't try." He gave a bitter laugh. "My ego was hurt. I thought I'd been loved for my fortune instead of myself."

  "You couldn't have believed that. Not after what we had." "I didn't want to believe it. You didn't give me any reason to believe anything else."

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  "Why wasn't it enough that I'd loved you, and been yours, for two years? How many times did I have to prove that?"

  "Only once," he said coldly. "But you were too arrogant. You'd come there to rob us and God knows what else, but we were supposed to say that wasn't important, nothing was important but Laura Fairchild's saying she loved us. E>oes it occur to you that you might have told us your story instead of waiting for us to beg you to tell it? We'd made you one of us for a long time; my family had loved you and sheltered you, given you an education, a home, friendship . . . and I'd given you my love. But you didn't trust me—^"

  "And I was right! I couldn't trust any of you!"

  "You didn't know that. You walked out; you couldn't be bothered to try to straighten things out, help us when we were confused and feeling betrayed."

  "I was the one who was accused," Laura said angrily. "You can't make your family sound like victims!"

  "In a way we were, as much as you. You were accused of something; so what? A lot of people are accused of one thing or another, and most of them fight back, but not Laura Fair-child! What was it? You were too good for that? We were supposed to take you at your word, and never doubt you, because you were you? No other reason? I loved you! Didn't I deserve some explanation?"

  "You mean that was your right?"

  "All of us, including you, had the right to understand what was happening to us."

  "And that was more important than trust? If you couldn't trust me, what good would an explanation have been? You still don't trust me; you still don't believe your family was wrong and unfair—^"

  *They're my family, Laura; 1 can't call them liars— *'

  "I was going to be your wife, and you called me one."

  He paused. "I would have believeid you if you'd told me I was wrong."

  'Trust," Laura said furiously. 'Trust. Remember? I didn't expect my future husband to— " She stopped abruptly. "It doesn't matter. It was so long ago; what difference does it make? We've each found our own lives; why can't we let the past go?" She stood. "I'm going downstairs— "

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  "No, wait a minute. Laura, I'm sorry; I didn't mean
any of that. We should have trusted each other, you as much as I. Maybe we were too young—God knows we were young, both of us—but it shouldn't matter now, it shouldn't prevent us talking, and knowing how we feel about each other— *'

  "I don't want to Imow! What good would it do? We'll never be free of the past, and, anyway, you have a wife, and I'm very busy—^I've made my own life—^I have friends, I have a brother, and a man who wants to many me: I have a family, too!"

  She bit her lip. She was shaking and her voice was unsteady. Paul had stood, too, and was facing her, and she could feel herself swaying toward him, wanting him, feeling his arms around her, his lips on hers, remembering that dark look in his eyes that embraced her and made her feel safe forever. False! Foolish! She was never safe with one person, only with her own achievements. Her feelings weren't important; she could learn to master them. She was ashamed of her weakness with Paul; she should be in complete control of herself and her life; that was the only way to get rid of the past. She'd made such a good start; it would just take a litde longer than she'd thought.

  She put out her hand. "Good-bye," she said, and heard only the smallest waver in her voice. "Good luck with the film on Britt and . . . everything else you do."

  Paul took her hand and held it. He wasn't sure he wanted to be free of the past. It was as if someone had played a huge joke on him: the past stood between them, yet that was their time together and he didn't want to forget it. "My dear . . ." he began, and then stopped. He wanted to say they owed it to each other to find out what they still had together, but the words did not come. He did not understand her, neither the girl she had been nor the woman she was now, and he saw no way back to her. He would not ask her, while he was married to Emily, to have a trial friendship to discover if they could trust each other; he was sure she wouldn't do it even if he had the bad taste to ask her. And whatever he felt for Laura, he could not walk away from Emily. He'd married her, he'd taken her into his life, and he wouldn't drop her because he thought he might be in love with someone from his past—or

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  just caught up in memories and guilt and a longing for a simpler, more youthful time.