The Family Fortune

by Laurie Horowitz

  “I heard it was supposed to snow,” Max said. He stood against the kitchen counter.

  “No, clear,” Basil said. They stared at each other. Basil looked pointedly at Max, then turned to me. “Jane, I’d like to show you my work.”

  I didn’t want to leave the comfort of the kitchen. Duke’s attention was now on another large pot on the stove; he looked up at the kitchen clock. “You’ve got twenty minutes before the stew is ready.”

  The other women followed Nora into the warmth of the living room while I was dragged away to Basil’s house. He took my arm when we got outside. The moon had slipped behind the clouds, so it was not only cold, it was dark.

  “The Franklins should really put footlights in,” he said, “so I can find my way home in the dark.”

  It had been a year since Cynthia died. Maybe they didn’t want him to find his way back.

  The Franklins’ house was hidden from Basil’s by a hill and some trees. Basil’s was a smaller version of the main house—a little gem. I could understand why he wouldn’t want to leave it.

  He showed me the first of two bedrooms, which had its own bathroom, complete with Jacuzzi. Basil called the second bedroom his “studio.”

  He led me in and turned on the lights. This man had been busy. His work was piled against the walls, hanging from ceiling hooks, and there were several pieces, unfinished—or so I assumed—on easels.

  “Well,” I said. “Well, well.” I put my hands on my hips and looked around with as much interest as I could muster.

  “I call them ‘the art of the word,’” he said, “which is why I think they are perfect for the Euphemia Review.”

  There were words everywhere—stenciled, painted freehand, crayoned, inked—words, words, words on canvas, on watercolor paper, on plywood planks.

  One said “L-O-V-E” in pink and green on a plank the size of a door. It reminded me of something I’d seen on a greeting card and I wondered if Basil was trying to make a reference to pop culture. I waited for something in that room to move me. Art is supposed to move you, isn’t it? I checked my emotional temperature—nothing.

  “That was the one I did especially for Cynthia,” Basil said, pointing to the L-O-V-E painting. “I was going to present it to her on our wedding day.”

  It occurred to me that an accidental death might be preferable to standing in front of all your friends and relatives to accept this gift with a straight face. Still, it was obvious that Basil was serious about his art. Art books and magazines littered the countertops, and I eyed the Euphemia Review sticking out from under an Artforum.

  Basil stared at the L-O-V-E painting. His shoulders drooped and his normal hangdog expression became even hangier and doggier. I thought he was overplaying his hand as the grieving lover.

  I looked at my wrist, though I wasn’t wearing a watch. I wanted to go back. I couldn’t bear the thought of everyone sitting down to bowls of hearty stew while I stood here looking at words. There were other words: U-N-I-T-Y, F-A-I-T-H, P-A-S-S-I-O-N. Many, many words. Trite, sappy words. Maybe I would have liked his work if he had chosen better words.

  “Jane,” Basil said, lowering his voice to a decibel level even lower than his usual key of grief.

  “Yes, Basil?” I tried to make my voice gentle, the kind of voice you might use when visiting a person who had just suffered a psychotic break.

  “I think you understand me.” He put a hand on my shoulder and we stood there together in awkward silence. Was the grief-man making a move on me? Would I recognize one if I saw one? “I want you to think about these pictures,” he said. “Think about adding art to the foundation’s work. I could be your emissary, your Evan Bentley of the art world.”

  Basil had heard of Bentley because, just as everyone interested in that type of thing knew about George Plimpton and the Paris Review, they knew about Evan Bentley and Euphemia. It was just as I had predicted all those years ago back at Finn’s.

  Though Bentley had always acted as the front man—he went to the writers’ conferences, gave speeches, and performed most of the public functions required of an editor of a successful literary review—my own reputation must have been greater than I knew, because it had preceded me here to this room full of words. I smiled and nodded at Basil. Because I stayed in the background most of the time, I was unaccustomed to being applied to in this way, and I didn’t know exactly how to behave. I’d been approached, of course, by the occasional writer who thought I might be able to publish him, but it somehow always took me by surprise. I never felt that I had the power these writers were so quick to give me.

  I suggested we go back to the house. Basil turned off most of the lights, leaving one on as a beacon to guide him back. He shut the door behind us.

  “You don’t want to stagnate, Jane,” Basil said when we got outside. He was a head taller than I was and looked down at me in the dim light.

  You don’t want to stagnate.

  It felt like Basil’s words were ringing off the sides of the distant mountains—ominous words in a cheap horror film.

  “I don’t intend to stagnate,” I said. My voice sounded loud out there in the quiet of the night.

  “Don’t be angry,” Basil said. He took my arm. I wanted to shrug him off, but it wouldn’t have been polite. He was only trying to help me through the dark.

  When we came in, the men were still in the kitchen. Max looked up and smiled. If it’s true that passion dulls discrimination (and I’m sure it is), my feelings for Max, no matter how I tried to convince myself to the contrary, were still passionate. It didn’t matter what I learned about him or who he loved. When he was near, I still followed him with my eyes.

  When Duke announced that supper was ready, the women came in with bowls from the dinner table. Max followed me into the dining room to retrieve our bowls.

  “How was the art?” he asked when we were alone.

  “It depends on what you like,” I said.

  “Always the diplomat.”

  “Not always.” I looked up into his greenish eyes.

  “About last night,” he said. “It was all so awkward.”

  “It’s none of my business,” I said.

  Max chewed on his bottom lip. “Who was that guy on the mountain today?” he asked.

  “I told you. Old friend of the family’s.”

  “He seemed very interested in you.”

  “I don’t see how you could have seen that,” I snapped. I couldn’t tell him how much it hurt me to have him try to make a match for me. I picked up a bowl and he picked up the one beside it.

  Everyone started returning with their stew.

  “Where are you sitting?” Lindsay asked Max. He pointed to the place where his bowl had been.

  Lindsay sat down in what would have been my place.

  Chapter 22

  The run down Hazard Hill

  I met the group back at Max’s house the next morning. After Lindsay and Heather finished putting on their makeup and after Winnie changed twice, we finally got moving. With Winnie we were six, so I was no longer a single.

  Charlie and Winnie skied together, and after the second run we lost them. Winnie was a terrible skier. She had lessons when we were children like I did, but she wasn’t crazy about the cold and never took the trouble to learn.

  We stayed on the gentle runs all morning because Lindsay and Heather weren’t up to anything more difficult. I tried to appreciate the lack of challenge, to enjoy the fine weather, the snow, the trees, and the views of the valley.

  We all met up again at lunch, and that’s when Basil joined us. He was wearing a ski jacket and jeans. The jeans would get wet, and once wet they’d be frozen S-T-I-F-F.

  “Jane,” he said, “you look beautiful.” I was digging into a bowl of chili when he said it, which I doubt is the loveliest of poses. Max appraised Basil, then looked at me as if checking to see if Basil’s vision of me had somehow come to pass. “Don’t you agree, Max? Doesn’t Jane look great? The mountain air is g
ood for her.”

  “She always looks good,” Max said.

  “She looks much better than when she first came to stay,” Lindsay said.

  “I agree,” Winnie said. “You look like a different person.”

  I supposed that looking like a different person wasn’t such a bad thing—considering—but this kind of attention made me uncomfortable.

  Guy Callow came in through a far door. He banged snow from his boots and surveyed the room. When he caught my eye, he waved and came over. A smile brightened his too-handsome face.

  I introduced him to everyone. He seemed to be calculating the couples, to see who belonged to whom. Winnie vaguely remembered him.

  Our table was full and we were almost finished with lunch, so Guy didn’t sit down. He just said that he’d probably see us on the slopes and clomped away in his ski boots.

  “Handsome,” Winnie said. “Remind me. What happened to him? Miranda never talks about it.”

  “He married a Dutch supermodel named Ooh-Lala.”

  “So where is she?” Winnie asked.

  “Maybe she caught her finger in a dyke,” Basil said. He laughed at his own joke.

  “That’s so disgusting,” Lindsay said, but she laughed too.

  Max shook his head.

  “Oh, Max. You don’t have to be all high and mighty. It was funny,” Lindsay said. “Don’t be so boring.” She kissed him on the cheek.

  It was on the first run of the afternoon that it happened. I wondered how all seven us would stay together throughout the afternoon. I could be a single again if I maneuvered it properly, but not on that first run. On that first run, Heather was a single because Basil insisted on taking it with me. Basil and I were the first of the group. As we came off the chairlift, Basil fell and I had to pull him away from the path of skiers before they ran over him.

  “You are so good at everything, Jane,” he said. I was beginning to think that being capable wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. A good nurse was capable, but was that the kind of efficiency to which I aspired?

  “We don’t have to tell anyone I fell,” he said.

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  “Of course you weren’t. Discretion is probably your middle name.”

  “It’s Euphemia,” I said.

  “What?”

  “My middle name.”

  “Like the Review?” he asked.

  “Like my great-grandmother,” I said.

  We looked up and there was Heather standing under a tree.

  “Hey, guys,” she said.

  “You think she saw me?” Basil whispered. How could she have missed this six-foot collection of arms and legs taking a tumble at the foot of the chairlift?

  “I’m sure she didn’t,” I said. Basil seemed satisfied.

  The others came off the chairlift in couples. First came Max and Lindsay, then Winnie and Charlie. Winnie’s nose was running. I handed her a tissue. The problem with skiing with so many people is that you spend half your time waiting around in the cold. And while it was a sunny day, December is still a cold month on a mountain.

  “I think if no one minds,” Max said, “I’m going to try Hazard Hill. You want to come, Charlie?”

  “But it’s a black diamond,” Heather said. “It’s too hard for us.”

  “We can meet at the bottom,” Charlie said.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said.

  “If she’s going,” Lindsay said, “I’m going too.”

  Max put his hand on Lindsay’s arm. “Lind, you can’t make it down an expert slope. Heather’s right. Why not meet us at the bottom?” He stroked her cheek as if trying to placate a little girl.

  “I can do anything you can do,” she sang, and before any of us could stop her, she took off.

  “Goddammit,” Max called after her. “Lindsay, stop.”

  He was frozen in place.

  “We’d better go after her,” I said. I pushed at his shoulder and we rushed away with Charlie following behind. Lindsay was wearing a red ski suit, and as I charged on, I focused on that dot of crimson as it receded and eventually disappeared.

  We got to Lindsay just in time to see her fly over a large mogul and slam into the mountain. Before she fell, parts of her disappeared into the snow that rose into a wave as she tried to gain control of her skis. Then an arm appeared, a leg. She was a red dot flying into the air. She landed with a bounce and a thud and lay there, a spot of red on the white snow.

  She didn’t get up. Max reached her first. He knelt in the snow and touched her head. He was afraid to move her. He kept calling her name, but she was out cold. The fall was so bad I thought it might have killed her, but she was still breathing. Charlie came up behind us.

  “Holy mother of God,” he said.

  Lindsay was as white as the snow she was lying on.

  “Jane, go for the ski patrol,” Max said. “Please. You’re the fastest.”

  I took off. I had never skied so fast before. The hut for the ski patrol was at the bottom of the hill and I skied right through the door. I was breathing hard and could barely speak. I didn’t know if my breathlessness was from the speed with which I’d taken the hill or from being scared out of my senses.

  “There’s been an accident,” I said.

  Chapter 23

  The vigil

  “It’s my fault,” Max said as I followed him toward the waiting ambulance.

  “It is not. Don’t say that.”

  “If she wasn’t trying to impress me, she wouldn’t have done it,” he said.

  “If she wasn’t spoiled and obstinate, she wouldn’t have done it,” I said.

  “Jane, how can you say that? Especially now.”

  “Because it’s true. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

  “It was selfish of me.”

  “That’s not such a crime. All you wanted to do was take a run on your own. So did I. If you’re to blame, then so am I.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not the same.”

  “You’re not thinking straight,” I said, and it was the last thing I said to him before he and Charlie climbed into the ambulance with Lindsay.

  I didn’t know where to find the others, so I started looking in the lodge on the off chance they might have given up skiing, and that’s where I found them. After one run, Winnie had complained that she was tired, and they all followed her inside for a cup of hot chocolate.

  “Jane,” she said when she saw me, “where have you been? I think I sprained my ankle.”

  I pulled a chair up to the table.

  “What’s the matter?” Winnie said. “You look all white.”

  I took Winnie’s hand, since she was the one most likely to become hysterical. “Lindsay’s had an accident. They took her to the hospital.”

  “In an ambulance?” Heather asked. Her voice was soft.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh God,” she said.

  “Look, everything could be fine. Let’s not worry too much until we find out how serious it is. Let’s just stay calm.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, Jane,” Winnie said. “You’re not related to her.”

  “Neither are you,” Heather said to Winnie.

  “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way,” Winnie said. “I think of you girls as my sisters. I’m sorry you don’t feel the same way about me.” She continued to drink her hot chocolate.

  “Let’s calm down,” I said. “I have Charlie’s keys. I think we should go to the hospital.”

  “Of course,” Heather said. “Let’s go.” Heather started taking off her ski boots. Her shoes were in a bag under the table.

  “I’d take you girls,” Basil said, “but I don’t want to leave my car here. Why don’t I go back to the Franklins’ and let them know what happened, then meet you at the hospital?”

  We didn’t need Basil. He hardly knew Lindsay, but it wouldn’t be right to tell him that. Besides, the grief-man appeared to thrive on disaster. He was full of purpose. He gave us dir
ections to the hospital, then told us to be careful because it was beginning to snow. “You wouldn’t want to be killed yourselves,” he said.

  At the word killed, I thought Heather was going to faint. I squeezed her arm through her thick sweater and she smiled at me. It was a weak and unhappy smile.

  Winnie put her arm around Heather.

  “Now, sweetie, let’s not get hysterical.” Winnie liked to reserve hysteria for herself.

  On the way to the car Winnie leaned heavily on me and groaned about her ankle. I carried her equipment and mine and stowed our skis on the roof of Charlie’s Navigator.

  The snow wasn’t heavy, but the car was unfamiliar, so I drove carefully.

  “Can’t you hurry, Jane?” Winnie asked.

  “Let’s just try to get there in one piece,” I said.

  “Let Jane do what Jane does, will you, Winnie? For God’s sake. She’ll get us there,” Heather said.

  The ride to the hospital took forty-five minutes, and although it wasn’t as long a distance as it might have been, I would have felt more hopeful about Lindsay’s prospects if it were shorter.

  By the time we reached the hospital, the snow was falling heavily. Heather’s eyes were puffy and her nose was running. I pulled out my tissues from an inside pocket and passed one over to her. She tried to smile. As soon as we parked, Heather ran into the hospital. I couldn’t run because Winnie, with her pronounced limp, insisted on leaning on me.

  We walked into the emergency room. Max and Charlie were sitting on a Naugahyde sofa in the waiting area.

  “They took her right into surgery,” Charlie said. His eyes were shiny, but he was trying to hide his distress. Max wore such a haunted expression I could barely stand to look at him. Winnie pushed her way into a small space between Charlie and the edge of the sofa.

  “Charlie, I think I broke my ankle,” she whined. He looked at her but didn’t say anything. He turned away. “Did you hear me?” she asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “Charlie!” Her voice was sharp. She got up and hobbled to the counter. A nurse was manning it. “I need to have my ankle seen to immediately,” she said. She glanced back at Charlie with a haughty expression.