Hugh gripped his shoulder then; he put his arm around Ed and held him tightly—a hold that belied his poor posture and bloodshot eyes. This was still a strong man, and his grip fell somewhere between aggression and affection.
Ed waited for Hugh to say something.
But he didn’t.
He just gripped Ed and looked out at the water; Ed didn’t rush to fill the silence then. Even if he’d had the urge, the hitch in his throat would have prevented it.
A boat floated across the horizon. The sun disappeared behind a skein of clouds. “We were friends,” Ed repeated.
Hugh’s grip lessened, and then he gave Ed’s back a pat. An unquestionably reassuring gesture. As if to say—I know.
But when Ed allowed himself to reconcile the fact that Helen might, in fact, be searching for him, when he finally turned toward the house and asked, “You coming?” Hugh shook his head.
“I’m going to stay out here a little longer,” he said.
“Okay,” said Ed, nodding.
“Okay,” said Hugh.
A minute must have passed before Ed walked away.
Helen wasn’t anywhere to be found. The porch, the house—it was all eerily quiet. “There you are,” he heard Rebecca say, as if she’d been looking for hours. She shivered. “It’s so much colder.”
“You want a ride?” he asked, handing over his jacket.
She shook her head but put the jacket on, pulled it close. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re leaving?”
He nodded. “Where’ve you been? I saw your friend the bride in the kitchen.”
By the way Rebecca nodded, Ed could tell that she knew the cause of Vivi’s distress.
“Weddings can be rough,” he offered lightly.
“Right.” She looked out in the distance. Ed saw water, sky, reeds, Hugh. He wondered what she saw.
“A group of us are supposed to stay an extra night,” said Rebecca miserably. “I took off from work and everything.”
“So you’ll stay. What—are you two in some kind of fight?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, of course not.”
“Well, I’m sure she’ll snap out of her mood.”
“I don’t know about that.”
His daughter seemed suddenly younger, as if she were a teenager and what she really wanted was for him to force her to leave. He realized just how long it had been since she’d looked at him that way: as if he had any kind of power.
“You’ll stay,” Ed said again. “You’ll enjoy yourself.” They walked around the house toward the driveway. Ed gave the valet his ticket.
“I want to tell you something,” Rebecca said. She still looked younger and scared—maybe tipsy, too—but there was also something else.
“What is it?” he asked. “You okay? You don’t have to stay an extra night, you know. Only stay if you want to. You might be done here. Whatever the problem is, I’m sure it can—”
“I went out with Gabriel,” she blurted.
Hallelujah. Baruch HaShem. Images of his own little grandkids running through—if not this very majestic lawn—the miracle of Central Park. Ed forced himself to merely nod.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Rebecca demanded.
“Is he—”
“He’s available,” she cut him off; boy, was she tense. “He’s available and he called.”
“How many times have you seen him?”
“Just once.”
“You gonna see him again?”
She nodded. “I really hope so.”
“Okay,” Ed said. “Okay, good.”
“Okay, good?”
He nodded.
“I thought you’d be upset,” she said, and her voice was trembling. “You’ve always told me to move on!”
While he did feel kind of badly that she’d anticipated such a response, he couldn’t help but also take pride in the evidently great job he’d done at hiding the fact that their breakup had been so personally devastating. “Well—” he started.
“He has a five-year-old son!” Rebecca cried.
“So?”
“So?”
“Do you think you’ll like the kid?”
She was nodding emphatically, bordering on maniacally. “Absolutely.”
“Will he have more kids?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“Well, then?” he said, inwardly beaming. “Okay, good.”
His daughter took a shuddering breath. “We’ll see,” said Rebecca, and now he couldn’t tell if she was shaking because of the change in the weather or if, in fact, she might just cry. “I mean—we’ll see,” she repeated. “Who knows?”
He gave her a good strong hug. “Nobody.”
Ed stood with his car keys in his hand, not sure what he was still doing there, lingering in the gravel driveway minutes after Rebecca had handed over his jacket. What was there left to say to anyone? He hadn’t said goodbye; he’d send letters instead, especially—he decided—to Hugh. He’d send Vivi and Brian the same glass bowl from Bergdorf’s that he gave every pair of newlyweds, plus an extravagant gift for each child. He might live like a pauper these days but, thanks to credit cards—the new debt-ridden American way—he’d never scrimp on these presents. He hadn’t figured out what he would do about Helen, but once he was finally behind the wheel, he found himself looking into the rearview, as if she might simply appear—the way she had in his hallway nearly fifty years ago at the Y and over an hour ago in the garden. So when he saw her walk out of the house onto the porch, it seemed, once again, no less than magical. He didn’t consider that maybe—just maybe—she might have simply made a decision to follow him.
She’d changed out of the sundress, and in the khaki pants, blue sweater, and colorful scarf, she didn’t look quite as youthful. She was wearing tennis sneakers and had dragged a carry-on with wheels down the porch steps, but due to the grass and the gravel, she was definitely having some trouble on the driveway.
He got out of the car. “Let me help you with that.”
She nodded thanks, as he brought her bag as far as his own car. She didn’t motion for the valet, so neither did he.
“Where are you going?” he asked, surprised that she was going anywhere.
“Manhattan,” she said. “Oh.” She reached into her pocket. “This is what I wanted you to have.” She handed over an envelope. “It’s just a picture,” she said.
And for some reason he was certain that it was the same picture he’d also held on to, the one in front of the round house, captured by Hugh’s Leica in the hands of an old man who’d been out walking an old dog, both of whom—by now—had to have been dead for decades.
He hadn’t actually seen the whole photograph in years. Soon after he’d read about the Shipley marriage, and in an act he’d immediately regretted, Ed had cut Helen out of the picture, so that the photo that lay in his desk drawer—in Midtown, right this very moment—was of only Ed and Hugh.
“Should I open it now?” Ed asked.
“If you want,” she said.
He didn’t.
“Can you give me a lift?” she asked. The fading sunlight shone on her face and he could see her lines, her damage.
He barked a kind of incredulous laugh, which came out strangely.
“What was that?” Helen asked.
Ed popped the trunk. He picked up her bag and hurled it—lower back be damned—into the spotless trunk.
“What?” demanded Helen. “Why are you laughing at me?”
“Can I give you a lift?” His voice was too loud, and he was breathing heavily from the exertion of lifting that deceptively small bag. He opened the passenger door for her and closed it once she was safely inside. He looked up, for a moment, at the darkening sky.
Ed sat down in the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition. “Can I give you a lift?” he repeated, softly now, or—at least—softer. They both fastened their seat belts. “Please, sweetheart,” Ed said. “As if you don’t
already know.”
Epilogue
Clinking glasses and muffled conversation, gravel from the driveway crunching underfoot, the blending scents of perfume and grill smoke and fertilizer—it all floated up through the floor and the windows of Rebecca’s room at the Ordway house. She took in the stillness after so much turmoil and wondered how much Vivi would want to know about what had happened on the porch. Would she end up blaming Rebecca? It was not inconceivable. She looked around: the dying light; the embroidered bedspread; her favorite oval mirror. She didn’t know if she’d be back.
And maybe it was because what happened with all three Shipleys that day did, in fact, eclipse most of her other memories of Vivi’s wedding, but what Rebecca would always remember, with exquisite detail, from that strange and joyful and terrible weekend was the sensation of packing her clothes. She folded silk and cotton and balled one pair of running socks and stuck her high-heeled sandals in the side pocket of her bag. She cleaned her long hairs and smears of toothpaste from the sink, wanting to remove every trace of herself. She sat down on the edge of the bed and hyperventilated. And then she walked from the bed to the window to get some air, feeling uncertain of everything. Of what could possibly come next.
Rebecca might have been able to guess how gracefully Vivi would, in fact, forgive both of her parents their foibles, but she never could have guessed how and in what context Vivi and she would talk about not only this day but also this moment. How in kitchens and bars and while walking down city streets and once in the woods and twice by the ocean, Vivi and she would talk about it. Until it was inseparable from every other fact of their shared history. Until it was together that they remembered Rebecca’s walk from the bed to the window as if it were in slow motion—the chill of the hardwood floor on Rebecca’s bare feet, the curtain straight ahead, slightly undulating.
Did you really see it happen? Vivi Shipley asked Rebecca Cantowitz, so many years in the future that it—the whole day—scarcely seemed possible, if only because of everybody’s youth: even—or especially—their parents’.
From the window, Rebecca always answered. At first my father was just sitting in his car.
This exchange—first confused, then overwhelmed, and later gleeful—had become merely a wistful one. Their personal stories were so intertwined by then that the details of how they’d gotten there—though entertaining for younger generations—just didn’t seem to matter anymore.
For Derek, Wyatt, and Noah
Acknowledgments
Huge thanks first and foremost to my uncle Marshall Cogan, whose brilliance and patience were essential to this project. Also to the amazing Robert Gardner and all of Robert Gardner’s work—specifically the wonderful films Dead Birds and The Nuer, and the inspiring book The Impulse to Preserve. Tildy Lewis Davidson was tremendously generous not only with her time and memories, but also with her insights.
I’m indebted to Florence Phillips, Maureen Cogan, Walker Buckner, Jonathan Eisenthal, Gregory A. Finnegan, Sarah and Robert LeVine, Shefa Siegal, Daria Levin, John Lewis, Sarah Gay Damman, Dr. Stephen Gluckman, Jesse Drucker, Robby Stein, Rob Gifford, Sara Mark, Alyse Liebovich, and Dr. Amy Lehman and the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic website (www.floatingclinic.org).
To my stellar crew of writer/readers who provided inventive suggestions, excellent edits, and fierce support along the way: Ellen Umansky, Sarah Saffian, and especially Lizzie Simon and Jennifer Cody Epstein, who hung in until the final chapter. It’s impossible to imagine where this novel would be without all of your voices.
To Jen Albano, Ondine Cohane, Tanya Larkin, and my husband, Derek Buckner, all of whom read the first draft and in their own inimitable ways, knew how to make it better.
Thanks to my talented editor, Susanna Porter; her assistant, Priyanka Krishnan; the excellent Dana Isaacson, Kathleen Lord, Lisa Barnes, Rachel Kind, and everyone at Ballantine; thanks also to Gretchen Crary. And to my treasured agent, Elizabeth Sheinkman, your early support of this project made all the difference. Also to Dorian Karchmar, whose arrival feels, indeed, beshert.
The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy by Sandy Weill and Judah S. Kraushaar, The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs by Charles D. Ellis, and especially The Year They Sold Wall Street by Tim Carrington were all helpful books. Also: Boston Boy by Nat Hentoff, The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions by Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon, and the exquisite Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski.
I’m grateful to my parents, Judy and Stuart Hershon, for—well—everything.
And finally to Derek, Wyatt, and Noah Buckner, who make my daily life so compelling that it’s a wonder I ever managed to write this book.
BY JOANNA HERSHON
A Dual Inheritance
The German Bride
Swimming
The Outside of August
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOANNA HERSHON is the author of four novels: Swimming, The Outside of August, The German Bride, and A Dual Inheritance. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, One Story, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and the literary anthologies Brooklyn Was Mine and Freud’s Blind Spot (among other places), and was shortlisted for the 2007 O. Henry Prize Stories. She has taught in the creative writing program at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, painter Derek Buckner, and their twin sons.
A TALK WITH JOANNA HERSHON
AUTHOR OF A DUAL INHERITANCE
On the surface, your novels are quite different from one another. Swimming is a coming-of-age story; The Outside of August chronicles a young woman’s search for her elusive mother; The German Bride, hailed as a best book of 2008 by Vogue, NPR and the Washington Post, is a work of historical fiction about a German Jewess who marries into the American West. What links your books together? In what ways does A DUAL INHERITANCE mark a departure for you?
I write about what unsettles and interests me; and very often those two things overlap. I started my first novel when I was about twenty-three, and it has been a while since then! My interests have evolved, as have my worries and concerns.
That said, I do think there are many links in all of my novels. I’m primarily interested in character, in observing how and when people lie and tell the truth. Siblings featured prominently in my first three novels, as well as a preoccupation with memory. But A DUAL INHERITANCE is not only a big departure for me, it feels like a big leap as well. It’s a far more sweeping story with a larger cast of characters than I’ve ever tackled before, and has a greater scope in terms of time and place. It’s also (if I’m allowed to say this) much funnier.
Tell us a little bit about Ed and Hugh, who meet at Harvard and become fast friends despite coming from such different backgrounds. What drew you to them as central characters, and what draws them to each other?
I’ve always been fascinated by distinct places and periods of time in which unlikely friendships are possible. This is true of ex-pats (which I explored a bit in The Outside of August) and it was certainly true of frontier living in the American West (which I explored in The German Bride).
Ed and Hugh become friends in a more prosaic way—going to college—but Harvard in the early 1960s has its considerable charms and challenges. Ed is working-class Jewish from Dorchester and Hugh is a Boston Brahmin. Class and money and questions of identity certainly fuel their friendship, but more important is how both of them feel like outsiders. What happens to a bond like that over time? How much do their different backgrounds continue to matter?
My father attended Harvard in the late 1950s, and when I was in middle school he had his 25th reunion. This was the first time I’d seen what’s known as Harvard’s Red Book, in which graduates write about what they’d done since graduation. As a seventh grader, I read it cover to cover; and what always stayed with me was how wildly different all their lives had turned out. The Red Book, in all its mystery, inserted itself into my imagination and I suppose it never left.
W
hat is their relationship to Helen, and how would you describe her?
Without giving too much away: Hugh and Helen are in love. They’re from a similar world and share a similarly troubled response to that world. Ed is their appreciative audience… until he isn’t. To describe Helen is to describe that beautiful woman you always notice just outside your orbit who seems frosty, unapproachable; but then you see a crack in her exterior—she’s lost her keys or you can tell she’s been crying. She’s vulnerable somehow. And now you cannot take your eyes off her—not because she’s beautiful, though that is certainly in the mix—but because of that surprising vulnerability.
Once they graduate, Hugh and Ed also embark on divergent career paths—Hugh battling disease by opening and operating clinics in Africa, Ed engaging in a very different kind of struggle in the go-go environment of Wall Street. Did you do any special research into these areas?
Yes, I did a great deal of research. That was one of the pleasures (and difficulties) of writing this book.
The most indispensable research was conversation. What a privilege to be able to sit down with smart people in vastly different fields who were not only open to questions but also able to offer spontaneous, genuine answers.
To give you an example: I went to high school with an extraordinary woman, Dr. Amy Lehman. She is dedicating her life to creating a floating health clinic on Lake Tanganyika, bringing care and support to the large rural lakeside population. When I learned what she was doing, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I read up on her process and sought her out, and her project—however loosely—made its way into my story.
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