It was he who hadn’t slept in a dangerously long while and who probably stank on top of it, he who had the same dual urges to both deck his old friend Hugh and throw his arms around the handsome bastard (who was cradling an oddly bandaged hand and looking more exhausted than he would have imagined after what had been, after all, a trip to the Caribbean). It was he, he, he, who was in danger, when—out of breath—
Ed heard himself cry out, “Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on here?”
“Oh my God,” said Rebecca.
“Yup,” said Ed.
“Daddy, what are you doing here?”
Helen—who, should she and Hugh go on to celebrate their golden anniversary, would always be Helen Ordway to him—started to laugh. Or she started something that began as laughter and descended into suppressed giggling.
“That’s ours,” Helen said, but reached for the bag too late.
“It’ll come around,” said Hugh, rather daftly, or so Ed couldn’t help but think. His was a face and bearing that would never change, not really, but there was no mistaking the broken capillaries and the shadows under the eyes. There was no mistaking the smell of vodka as Hugh silently embraced Ed in lieu of saying more, at least for now. Ed felt strange embracing Hugh before hugging his own daughter, but as he felt Hugh clap his back with his one good hand, Ed swallowed down on his anger—they had spirited his daughter away!
“Daddy, what are you doing here?”
“Ed?” asked Helen, though he wasn’t sure if she was echoing Rebecca’s question or trying to start her own.
Ed pulled away from Hugh and looked at Helen.
“Ed,” she repeated, “this is Genevieve—Vivi—our daughter.”
Vivi looked like the type of girl he’d encountered on ferryboats while traveling through Greece—chronically unwashed, inevitably Scandinavian, up to nothing good. Her hair was done like Bo Derek’s in 10, which told Ed just about all he needed to know about the Shipley parenting style.
“We’ve actually met,” she said, politely shaking his hand.
“We have? I don’t think so.”
“On the phone,” she said, with a smile that reminded him so much of Helen he felt a twinge in his lower back.
“Right, right, good to meet you again,” Ed said, trying not to wince.
“Helen,” he managed. He kissed her tawny cheek, the bone beneath still sharp. Even after the years and the airplane and the reputed bad turn—even after all of this—Helen smelled like flowers and smoke, absolutely the same.
His daughter stood by her duffel (Jill’s old mauve LeSportsac, the one she’d taken the first time they’d gone to Caneel Bay) and looked at him brutally, as if she might prefer to relinquish him as a father than be humiliated by what was sure to come out of his mouth at any second. As if galvanized by her fears about his gruff, possessive, chronically uncool, capitalist, paranoid, insensitive, square self, he repeated, “Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on here?”
Helen said something about talking to Jill, about coincidence—
Yes, right, added Hugh. Who would believe?—
“I should have been told,” Ed said. “Your mother should have consulted with me before you jetted off to Anguilla,” he said.
Rebecca stared at those bags on the carousel, and Hugh and Helen gave empty apologies—because what did they know about Jill and the divorce and her sketchy relationship with telling the truth—and Ed nodded, nodded, he shook his head, but really he was just watching them, watching Helen, her wrists, her fingers threading through her necklaces. He was watching Hugh—what was with his bandaged hand?—and he caught their daughter nudge his own daughter, then smile a troublesome smile. He watched them as if all his future successes and failures were pinned to these tanned people, all far more beautiful than he, all differently ill at ease. And the baggage went around and around, some repeats, some new additions, some battered, one no more than a broken box held together with string, and as their fellow passengers retrieved these bags and double-checked and dialed pay phones and searched out cabs at the curb, and as people came and went and fluorescent lights flickered overhead, he saw Hugh lean down and say something to his daughter. He saw her shake her head mildly but say nothing back.
“Rebecca,” Ed said, picking up the mauve LeSportsac, “let’s get moving.”
He realized he’d been braced for her refusal to go with him, and when she simply nodded and hugged her friend and smiled at Helen, Ed took a radically different turn. “Hey,” he heard himself say affably, “how long are you all in town, anyway?”
“Not long,” said Helen. He looked on with amazement as Helen gave his daughter a hug.
Rebecca said goodbyes to Helen and then to Hugh, and Ed saw that Rebecca was sulking and that she probably didn’t realize this made her seem oddly cold to them, even rude.
“That’s too bad you’re leaving so soon,” Ed said expansively. “It would have been nice to have dinner.”
“The next time,” said Hugh. “Absolutely.”
“What happened to your hand?” asked Ed.
“Long story,” Hugh replied, as if he’d returned from a particularly wild college weekend.
“Thanks again,” Rebecca muttered.
“It was a pleasure,” Hugh said.
“Absolutely,” said Helen. “We’ll do it again.”
Ed knew he was the cause of Rebecca’s rudeness. He could feel her tension; he could sense everyone’s discomfort at his presence. He had ruined this, the last part of their perfect trip, their intimate, heartfelt goodbye.
“Well,” he said, “bye, then.” He gave a stupid salute, his hand landing on Rebecca’s back, and together they walked away.
Ed’s driver, Manny, was waiting, and after telling Ed and Rebecca about the storm they’d missed, about the traffic on the Belt Parkway, he turned up his classical music and there was nothing but the drive, gray and ugly, from Queens to Manhattan.
“I don’t even know where to start,” said Ed.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Rebecca, with her head against the window. “Not right now.” She turned her attention to the Van Wyck Expressway, to a bland sky between seasons. You embarrassed me, he could tell she wanted to say. You always ruin everything.
After bidding Manny goodbye and bidding Sal the doorman hello, after the requisite chitchat about weather and mail, Ed was finally alone with his daughter, finally home.
“Now, you listen to me,” he said, before even taking off his coat. “Those people—”
His daughter started to laugh.
“Don’t you laugh at me.”
“Dad,” she said, shaking her head, as if to say, Stop. “Those people are Vivi’s parents, and they are my friends now. They’re nice, and they’re fun, and they’re interesting.”
“Is that right?” His face burned.
“Yes.”
Ed took off his coat. He draped it over the closest chair. He barely stopped himself from yelling. “What makes them interesting?”
She didn’t sigh or roll her eyes. “They care about other things besides money.”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
She raised one eyebrow. She’d known how to do this since she was a little kid, claimed to have taught herself.
“I heard what you said. They care about other things besides money. Meaning I only care about money.”
She said, “Just tell me what you want to tell me. I’m tired. You must be, too.”
“Maybe,” Ed continued, “they don’t care about money because they grew up with money. Lots of it. Piles of it. You do know that, don’t you?”
“What would that matter?”
“Because, sweetheart, not caring about money when you come from it? That’s easy as pie. You, for instance, don’t care about money. And I love that about you. But don’t confuse things.”
“No, you don’t,” she said. “You don’t love that I don’t care about money. Give me a break.”
“Yes,” he
said, “I do. You’d better believe it.”
“The Shipleys—who cares if they come from money! That doesn’t make any sense! Plenty of people have plenty of money and they just want more of it.”
“Of course,” he said, “but all I’m saying is—”
“Hugh has devoted his whole life to caring for poor people.”
“That’s noble. I’m only saying there’s more to it. You have to understand, there always is.” What exactly was he so burned up about? Hugh—Ed did realize this—had not wronged him. He had never even judged him. So Hugh chose to live as if he was doing penance for his very existence—wasn’t that his prerogative?
“They care about helping people,” said Rebecca. “That’s it. Why can’t you admit that? What did they ever do to you, anyway? And also—” She scraped her hair away from her face, a repetitive gesture that seemed like it would hurt. She secured her smoothed hair with one of the many bands that encircled her wrist.
“Forget it.”
“Forget what?”
“Forget their politics, forget their values—”
“Their values?” Rebecca raised her voice. “You want to talk to me about Hugh and Helen and their values? What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Ed said. He could feel that bitter smile. “No, what? Tell me. You seem really pissed off about them, and it makes no sense.”
I’m really pissed off because Hugh never once paused to consider that Helen might actually have wanted me, that she might have wanted me badly enough to do something about it. And I’m pissed off because Hugh is a man who lives above it all, and nothing down here—down in the real world, the petty world, the world of fear and greed and bottomless desire—nothing seems to catch up to him and—
“I’m really pissed off because you and your mother didn’t tell me that you weren’t going where I thought you were going, and the reason you didn’t tell me was because you knew I’d never let you go away with people like that. Even before you knew they’d been friends of mine—you knew that I’d make sure to talk to them on the phone and ask all my questions and there would have been no way.”
“Because you don’t trust me.”
“Trust has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. I can’t get over when I hear parents saying that. I trust my kid. Jesus Christ. There are forces that are beyond our control, Rebecca, and it is my job—my job—to control how vulnerable you are to these forces. In a couple of years that’ll be your job. Nothin’ I’ll be able to do about it. You can go live in Africa, too, if you’d like. Knock yourself out. But goddamn if I’m going to be the sucker who looks the other way while you get yourself into trouble before then. I trust my kid. No, forget it. I’m sorry.”
“Dad—”
He was pacing now, holding his hands together. “I bet you and your friend had no curfew, and I bet you were drinking and maybe smoking marijuana on top of it, and I don’t even want to think about you having gotten in a car with Hugh Shipley on vacation. People don’t change. I’m not an idiot, Rebecca.”
“Daddy, I never said you were.”
“You want to know why I’m pissed off? I’m pissed off because you’re not even sixteen years old and you got on a plane and I had no idea about it. And who is Vivi, anyway? Why haven’t I heard anything about her?”
“Probably because you are so judgmental about my friends that I tend not to say much about them.”
“Oh, please lighten up, Rebecca. Will you please?”
“Also probably because you haven’t exactly been easy to talk to these days.”
Was she right? Fine, she was right. But one day he would explain it all. He’d explain it and she would understand it. She was smart, incredibly smart. He was always proud of her. Even right now, when she was being impossible.
“So—what?” he continued, trying to gain back his momentum. “Was it cocktails for breakfast on this island getaway? Catching fresh fish on sailboats and all that?”
“Oh, now you have a problem with vacations? With fish? What are you talking about?”
“I just know how they are,” he muttered.
“They’re married. Okay? Vivi’s parents are married. Which is a lot more than I’m able to say.”
“Give me a break, Rebecca. This isn’t a goddamn movie. I did not want to get divorced,” he yelled. He went ahead and yelled it again. “You know I didn’t want to.”
“Also? Vivi’s parents don’t live their life thinking that the worst thing is about to happen at any given moment.” She walked over to the window and put her face right up to it. He watched her there, fogging up the glass, for what seemed like a very long time. “I am so sick of thinking that way,” she finally said. “And I do, you know.” She turned around to face him. “I think just the way you do.” Her eyes were brimming with tears and her nose was running; she didn’t even bother to wipe it.
He was ready to ground her for keeping this trip from him. He was prepared to keep her in this apartment and out of that goddamn mistake of a school for an extra few days. That would be the right thing to do. Not the easy thing but the right thing.
Instead, he took a deep breath, the way his doctor had shown him. He sat down on the couch, took another breath, and stood up once more. He went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of water. He returned with the water and they both drank up.
“Did you have a good time?” he asked.
She wiped away her tears and her snot and took a deep, shuddering breath. “I did,” she said. “Okay,” he said.
Rebecca was crying—weeping, really—and he found himself sympathizing with the fact that she was cursed with a father like him. He put his arms around her, and when she didn’t shrug him off, he tried not to feel surprised.
“Why are you crying?” he asked. “I’m not even grounding you.”
“I had such a good time,” she sobbed.
He kissed her head. He remembered how her hair used to smell like sugar and strawberries, and now it smelled like hair. They stood by the window, and the sun shone weakly in the sky. Ed held his daughter and looked out at the park and so many barren trees.
Part Four
1989–2010
Chapter Seventeen
Columbia and Beyond, 1989–2004
Rebecca and Vivi were both shocked by Vivi’s acceptance at Columbia. They each cast about for how this could have happened and agreed it must have been Vivi’s final project in her creative writing class that had convinced the admissions committee. During Vivi’s senior spring, everyone had to present his or her collected works in some kind of portfolio. Most kids had written them out neatly or used a word processor, stapled the pages together, and called it a day; there had been one girl who’d done hers in purple calligraphy and bound the pages with ribbon. But Vivi had found an old Sunfish at someone’s garage sale, rigged up the sail, spray-painted the whole boat gold, and scrawled her poetry on the boat with neon paint pens. Everyone loved it; she’d won some kind of award. And, during Rebecca’s senior year at boarding school, each time she walked by the “Poetry Boat,” which had acquired a semipermanent position on the Arts Center lawn (Vivi having ignored all requests to come collect it), Rebecca considered how the admissions board of Columbia University must really be studded with suckers.
But then, during her first week at Columbia, while searching for her contemporary civilization class, something finally clicked when Rebecca ran across a lecture hall bearing Vivi’s grandmother’s maiden name.
One month into Rebecca’s freshman year, Vivi was “tapped” for St. A’s, the most exclusive social club on campus. Vivi told Rebecca while they were crossing Broadway, and Rebecca had used the noisy traffic as an excuse to shout. “What are you talking about?”
“They asked me.” Vivi shrugged. “I want to see what it’s like.”
She’d been chosen by half-British, half-Texan Marion Childs, who had—according to rumor—recently been sleeping with Ethan Hawke. When Rebecca pressed, Vivi described the most e
xclusive club on campus as if it were a group of civic-minded students, interested not in black tie or blue blood or (at its most interesting) defying the thriving culture of political correctness but rather in earnest matters of community responsibility and the fostering of close friendships.
“It’ll be like a social experiment,” said Vivi.
“A social experiment in what? Snobbism? Why would you—you, of all people!—why would you want that?”
Vivi looked away and picked up her pace, as if speed could get her through this conversation. “I tried to join the African Student Club and the members laughed at me. Like in unison. I looked ridiculous to them, of course I did. It doesn’t matter that I was born in Africa and that I lived there until I was ten. If I didn’t know that before, I definitely knew it when I was standing there looking like a freakin’ missionary.”
“You might not be a missionary, but—”
“What?” Vivi was a little out of breath.
The light turned red and they stood on the median, smack in the middle of Broadway.
“What?” repeated Vivi. Cars whizzed by.
It was still surprising to see Vivi without cornrows. Her long, layered hair blew away from her face with a sudden gust of wind.
“You’re starting to sound like an elitist.” Rebecca said this loud and clear, though inside she was nervous.
Vivi looked downright flinty; her eyes might have actually narrowed. “These people from St. A’s are interested in me, Rebecca. I like them. They’re fun. Some of them are smart—like, smarter than you. They’re definitely not a bunch of jackasses.” Vivi turned her attention to the passing cars, obviously impatient to get away from Rebecca. “You need to let this go.”
Rebecca remembered previously thinking: Why is there a bench on a median smack in the middle of Broadway? And then it became perfectly clear: It was as if someone had created seating specifically for those who, while in the midst of arguing, couldn’t make decisions—whether or not to keep walking, to keep fighting, whether or not to go on.
As Rebecca’s sophomore year began, Vivi spent more and more time at St. A’s. Rebecca attended one party there, which was perfectly fine. It was a beautiful building; twinkly chandelier. No people in ascots, no burning crosses, and yet she never returned. Though Vivi had never once acknowledged any family fortune or any legacy besides one of social service and borderline alcoholism, now that she’d joined a club known for issuing invitations based on old-money origins, Vivi’s nondisclosure about her own increasingly evident old money had started to seem less like a desire to follow in her father’s earnest footsteps and a genuine by-product of having grown up in Africa and Haiti and more like straight-up hypocrisy. Rebecca did not want this to be true for so many reasons, not the least of which was, of course, that this would vindicate her father’s cynical point of view. Rebecca never returned to St. A’s because she felt that, within such a context, she didn’t know very much about her closest friend.
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