A Dual Inheritance (43 page)

“Oh, about noon, I’d say. Or nearly.” Mr. Shipley was chopping mint; the scent hit her when she inhaled deeply—which she did when she was nervous.

He looked up from his chopping, took a sip of water. “How’d you sleep?”

“Um—really well? I have never slept past nine,” she marveled, kind of proud of herself. “I mean never in my whole life. What are you making?”

“Sun tea,” he said, playing with the chopped mint as if it were a pile of sand.

“The kind when you let it brew in the sun? Did you sanitize the jar?”

“Did I—what?”

“Sanitize the jar. You can get poisoned if you don’t.”

“Yes,” he said. “I cleaned it thoroughly.”

“Well, that’s good.”

He took another sip of his water and looked at her for a moment. “Aren’t you funny.”

“How am I funny?” Her face burned, but all she felt was vigor.

“How many fifteen-year-olds know that kind of thing?”

“I don’t know,” she said, trying with all of her might not to sound defensive. “My babysitter taught me when I was little. She was from Haiti, too—not
was
, she’s still very much alive, thank God; she
is
from Haiti. I mean, not that you’re really
from
Haiti. Anyway, she moved back there. She lives there now. Her name is Solange.” As if he might go ahead and look her up? What was
wrong
with her?

“Is that right?” he asked, nodding toward the refrigerator. “Why
don’t you help yourself to some orange juice? Helen squeezed some this morning.”

Rebecca did as she was told, and the juice was delicious. She drank it all and poured some more. Mr. Shipley stirred his tea.

“I always make iced tea when I’m on vacation, but I never drink it otherwise,” he declared. “It’s one of those things.”

“Yeah, well, my father does that, too,” she said, “but he eats donuts.”

Mr. Shipley smiled, and it was a real smile, nothing like the tight grin that was, she’d noticed, usually skewered to his face. “There was this townhouse in Boston,” he said. “It was Helen’s cousin’s house. In the end, it’s a sad story, because Lolly later had a nervous breakdown, but during that time she seemed happy, or happy enough. She was so generous. And she made marvelous tea. It was always in the refrigerator. It was a reassuring sight, that pitcher full of tea. Who knows why? But I remember it better than any of the meals, and they were all excellent, too.”

“That’s so sad about Mrs. Shipley’s cousin.”

He winced. “You must call us Hugh and Helen.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I promise. My God, were you raised well, though.”

She blushed, finishing her juice.

There was the far-off sound of a squawking bird. Mr. Shipley mimicked the sound.

“So,” Rebecca continued, in lieu of squawking right back, “do you have a Thanksgiving dinner?”

“Of course.” He smiled. “We’re from New England,” he said. “Besides, I really am a fan of the yam.”

“Me, too!”

“Well, then.” He grinned. “We have that in common. And let’s see what else … Do you know what you want to do with your life?”

“Actually, I—”

“I had no bloody idea when I was your age. Or when I was older, for that matter. I thought I wanted to be a photographer.”

“I like taking pictures, too,” she admitted. And she felt his interest; she wanted to keep him interested, to keep talking, but she didn’t know what else to say. “But I don’t want to be a photographer.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s a very good thing to know.”

“I think what I like about pictures is that they’re proof.” She waited for him to interrupt, but he just watched her. “My mother took these three pictures when she was a little older than I am, and they always hung in our front hall. And I’d always look at them and think:
This is what she saw
. Do you know what I mean? This is
how
she saw. And I feel like that taught me more about who she was than most of the pictures where she’s smiling for the camera.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” he said.

“Plus she’s really photogenic, so there are a lot of those.”

“I’ll bet. Is she an artist?”

“Oh no. She’s a corporate lawyer.”

“Is that right?”

Rebecca nodded.

“And your father?” he asked, leaning back in his chair. “What’s he up to these days?”

“He was in finance, but he stopped doing that about five years ago. Now he sells cars—I mean, it’s bigger than that. He owns car dealerships?” She heard how her voice went up at the end of her sentence in the way that her father hated, and she felt the need to cancel out that whiny imploring tone. “He’s in China now. He’s not going to believe all this.” She gestured vaguely: to the two of them sitting in a kitchen, to the sunny world outside.

When Mr. Shipley—Hugh—took another sip of water, Rebecca suddenly realized that he was drinking vodka. And his ease with her, his smile, it all seemed a little different now. He was drinking straight vodka and it wasn’t even lunchtime. But this was a vacation, wasn’t it? And didn’t he work under stressful and emotionally draining conditions? She thought:
If I had that job, I’d probably drink all day long, too
.

“Where’re Vivi and … her mom?”

“You can say it, Rebecca, I know you can.”

“You’re teasing me.”

“I’m sorry, but please. You can do it.”

“Fine. Where are Vivi and Helen?”

“They went to St. Maarten to go shopping. They’re on a mad quest for hazelnuts.”

Rebecca realized that she was a little bit relieved. “Do you need help with anything? Any cooking?” she asked.

What she really wanted was to walk down to the beach by herself, and when Hugh shook his head, that’s what she did. She put on her bathing suit and was grateful for the emergence of a big fat cloud, which kept the heat at bay. There were other people on the small beach today. Two girls lay in the wet sand on their bellies, and each one had an arm buried up past the shoulder so that, at first, they looked as if they were each missing one arm. One boy held a large shovel and finished burying a man’s body completely; only his head was visible. It struck her suddenly that beachgoing—the ritual lying out with eyes closed, the burying of bodies—was a clear practice round for death, complete with the beckoning sea. She waded in; it was as warm as bathwater. She floated until she was salty and pruned, until she was once again so tired that she didn’t have the energy to go back to the house for sunblock. She wrapped herself in a protective cocoon of towels and thought of her favorite children’s book,
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
. The caterpillar eats his way through the journey—pickle, plum, salami, cake—never stopping long enough to see how anything tastes. Never stopping until he hides himself away, until he looks so remarkably different that, when people look at the caterpillar, they see only a butterfly; nobody sees the caterpillar anymore. This book was her favorite despite the fact that she was always aware how the next step for that butterfly was death. How there was nothing else left to become.

There was a buzzing in her head. She’d come back to the city, to construction on their neighbor’s apartment. But how could they begin construction so early in the morning? She imagined—through the
buzzing—telling her father about the noise, and how he would rail against the co-op board for allowing such nonsense. It was time for school—time to wake up. She felt the buzzing in her teeth and she realized, with a start, that she was underneath the mountain of towels, underneath the Caribbean sun. But what was the drilling sound? The girls with the buried arms were up, fully restored, playing in the water as if the sound wasn’t there. The boy and the man were gone. Only the mound of churned-up sand remained. There was a path cut into the trees behind the beach and the awful sound took her up that path, to where sand turned into dirt and the temperature dropped. The path snaked alongside the house—it was maybe even on the same property—and the drilling grew louder. There was a shed shaded by trees.

When she approached, she saw that Hugh was holding a chair leg in the teeth of a table saw, and wood chips were flying around him. He was wearing goggles. There were stacks of wood all around the room. One dark chaise with scrollwork on its sides was the only finished piece. Hugh looked up and turned off the machine. The silence was delicious, though there was ringing in her ears.

“Christ—” he said. “You scared me.”

“I did? I’m sorry. And I’m really sorry to bother you, but do you know how loud that is? Has anyone ever complained? I couldn’t figure out what it was, and I followed the noise.”

He took off his goggles and wiped his brow on that same white linen shirt, which surely he would retire after today. “I’m sorry for the noise. These house projects of Kitty’s—she’s done four now—have allowed me to indulge my interest in carpentry. They’re usually half construction sites, and there’s always equipment lying around.”

“Have you been here—to this house—before?” Rebecca asked.

“Look at that piece.” He pointed to the chaise, without—it had not escaped her—answering the question. “Can you believe how beautiful? I want to meet the man who made that piece. God knows he probably isn’t earning what he should.” A sweating plastic tumbler had created a puddle of water on the worktable. He leaned over and picked up the tumbler, but he didn’t yet take a sip.

Maybe she was being controlling and uptight, but wasn’t it just plain stupid to mix alcohol with amateur carpentry? There was a wall full of hanging saws, their sharp blades glinting in the shed’s low light.

“Using my hands like this—it relaxes me more than any beach.” He smiled tightly. “A man working with his hands in order to feel real. Do you know about that cliché yet?” He took a long drink.

She felt suddenly, painfully aware that she was dressed in nothing but a bathing suit. She stood up straight, as if posture might take the place of clothing. “I’m going to go back to the beach now,” she said. “When do you think they’re coming back?”

“From the hazelnut hunt?” He put the tumbler down. “Anyone’s guess. But I’ll use the saw sparingly,” he said. “Almost done.”

She went back the way she came; it seemed like a much shorter walk. On the way to the shed, she’d noticed nothing but trees and sand and dirt, but now there were two tiny orange butterflies, a wasp’s nest, and clusters of wetly red berries, or flowers that looked like berries. She wanted to know the names of things. She wanted to be … specific.

On the beach, there was nobody left. She walked straight into the sea and swam underwater for as long as she could hold her breath. For her, this was luxury: no decision bigger than whether to be in or out of the sea. She kept her eyes open, and it was so clear—the tiny silver fish and the sandy bottom were the only reminders that she wasn’t in a heated pool. Out of breath, she burst up through the surface, panting harder than she’d expected.

That’s when she heard the screaming. Though she had never heard a person being tortured, this sound conjured that word—
torture
—almost as if it were a memory.

She raced out of the water, and even before she reached the shore, she knew exactly from where this noise was coming. This time—climbing the hill, the sand into dirt—it whizzed by like a view from a speeding car. Her heart was pounding, she was the only person in sight, her father didn’t know where she was, and, in the doorway, she saw Vivi’s father—she saw Hugh—holding up his hand: “I’ve cut off two fingers,” he said. He’d managed to take off his shirt and wrap it around his hand,
and the white linen was already red. The cement floor was spattered with Hugh’s blood. His face was pale as he said, very evenly, “Rebecca, you need to listen to me. Go get me a cooler full of ice and some plastic wrap. The cooler is above the refrigerator. Plastic wrap in the drawer. You need to run, because I’m losing a lot of blood very quickly.”

“Shouldn’t I call—”

“Go now,” he said firmly. “Hurry.”

She ran in a way that felt as if what she’d previously called running, up until this moment, had in fact been something else. She hoped Vivi and Helen had returned, but they hadn’t, of course they hadn’t. Of course it was only her, in a bathing suit, no time to change, no time to pull on anything else but Vivi’s pink shirt with black roses, which she found draped over a kitchen chair, the chair she’d stood on to take the cooler down. After a slight hesitation (Vivi loved that shirt), Rebecca pulled it on; she slammed all the ice trays until the cooler was as full as it was going to be, which was not very full at all. She ran fast and awkwardly—holding the cooler and the plastic wrap—back to the shed, where Hugh was now sitting on a bench with his hand over a metal bucket. The sound of blood hitting the bucket was all she could hear. Hugh was even more pale; he looked as if he was getting ready to throw up, and she was shaking now, shaking and saying, “What do I do now, Hugh? Tell me what to do.”

“Is there ice in the cooler?”

She nodded.

“Good girl. The fingers,” he said. “I’m going to need you to pick them up. They are under the table saw. Do you see them?”

She did: half curled. Pale.

“You’re going to gently put them on ice and wrap the ice in the plastic wrap. You hear me?”

She nodded. She crouched down and picked up Hugh’s fingers and she did not throw up. She did not drop the ice or the fingers, nor did she have difficulty tearing sheets of plastic wrap. She closed the cooler. “Now what? Hugh?”

“I need that shirt.”

“Vivi’s?” she asked, lifting the hem.

He nodded.

She took it off, and she was once again wearing only a bathing suit. Hugh let his bloody shirt fall to the floor and she quickly turned her eyes away before seeing any gore. When she looked back, Vivi’s pink shirt was turning red.

He rose to his feet. “Thank you, Rebecca. Can you do something else for me? I know you can. In fact, I’m positive you can. Because you are tough.”

I’m not
, she wanted to say.
You’re wrong
.

“Pick up the cooler,” he managed, and she did.

He was stumbling, leading her out of the shed, outside toward the road, where the garage was empty because Helen and Vivi had gone looking for hazelnuts. “You’re going to have to drive,” he said, leaning on the garage.