Inheritance (36 page)

"How old are you?" he asked as they walked across the broad lawn toward the marina. When she told him, he stopped short. "Twenty-three?"

"You thought I was younger? Older?"

"A little older." He fell silent until they reached the dock, where he and Clay selected a speedboat.

"I'm going to town to pick up the first batch of golfers," Clay told Laura. "Do you need anything?"

"Check with Kelly," she said and waved good-bye as Currier started the engine. The powerful boat leaped forward, trailing a long wake that furled out from the center and then smoothed out, leaving a faint feathery V on the surface that reflected the few puffy clouds in a brilliant sky. Laura thought of the ocean off the Cape, its swells crashing on the shore where she and Owen sat, or hurling themselves toward the dunes where she and Paul walked. She closed her eyes and put back her head to let the wind blow her memories away.

Judith Michael

Cunier steered the boat away from others on the lake. Wheo they were alone, he reduced the power and they shd slowly akng die shore, the forest almost within reach, birds wad wildlife visible among the trees. He glanced at Laura. She was pushing hex hair back with a precise movement of her hamd, as oontroDed as her voice and face, and he was aware again of the cfaaOeage she presented. He had never met ;, man or woman, who could calmly allow a silence to out for many minutes without bursting into nervous to fill it. She was silent now, and he reduced the power fimfaer, caltiiig down the noise so they could talk.

•*Db you ever make an effort to impress someone?" he

She looked surprised. "Of course. \^^at an odd question. I peopk 10 like me and admire me ... it makes it easier forrae to like and admire myself." She smiled, a little embar-lassed. TXm't you do that? I think most people do. Make odiezs a niBiQr, I mean, so that what we look like to ourselves OD how we look to them.*'

he said. "I like that. But I haven't seen any signs tfiatyondotfaaL"

She gave him a level look. "You mean, since I haven't tried to iiiypam. you, and since most people do—certainly most wQoien do—there must be something peculiar about me.**

**Soiiielhiiig urnqne,** he corrected with a laugh, though she had given him a moment of self-consciousness that was almost "But you're right about people trying to impress me their tricks, whatever they are; I didn't realize how much Fve come to expect it."

She saoled £untly. "You saw my tricks this mcMning." yoo did them for the lodge. And to satisfy yourself." Tcflected. "But I need that, too. Don't you? If you depended on other people to tell you how good you are, you wouldn't have enou^ pride in yourself to get past the times are cruel.** He was waidiing her closely. 'T>id it happen recently, that ■neooe was crael to you?"

"^fe an know cniel people.'' She caught a glimpse of a deer from the sound of their boat. "Don't even you their tricks to impress youT*

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Judith Michael

life, describing the university, mimicking her professors as she once had mimicked Jules LeClair for Paul, and talking about her part-time jobs as assistant concierge at the Boston Salinger and companion to an elderiy widower. "And then Clay and I came up here," she told him as they sat in a comer of the Post House in Jay's Landing. It was a small tavem with leather wing chairs, gas mantles hanging from the low, beamed ceiling, and prints of Revolutionary War battles on the walls. On a weekday afternoon in November, they were the only guests. "Kelly and John offered us jobs and it's a wonderful place for me to leam. I've been here a year and I've done everything from filling in as hostess in the dining room to managing the whole place whenever I'm able to convince Kelly to convince John it's all right for them to take a vacation."

Currier was watching her closely. "The elderiy widower— ^* "He was my friend," she said briefly, wondering what had made him pick up on Owen. Something in her voice or her face . . . Suddenly she felt a wave of revulsion at the lying that had become almost a way of life. She was so sick of picking her way through the mine fields of her own lies—and Currier was so sophisticated, she thought; surely he was beyond being shocked or censorious—that she almost told him everything. But the words never came; the habit of secrecy was too strong. "He died and I . . . miss him very much. I worked in his kitchen, too, with a wonderful woman named Rosa"—her voice wavered and quickly she took a sip of wine—^'*and learned how to cook. Do you cook? Somehow I can't imagine you in the kitchen."

"I have six cooks, one for each of my houses, but I make a wicked hamburger. I'll make one for you when you come to New Yoric." "I'd like that."

He gazed at her. "When are you coming to New York?" "Not for a while, but someday, I think. What else do you make besides hamburgers?"

"Martinis. Will you come to New Yoiic with me?" "Not yet," she said easily. "But I promise to eat hamburgers in your kitchen when I do. And I'll make dessert. What would you like?" 'Tarte Tatin."

Inheritance

"I make a wicked tarte Tatin." They smiled together, and he was surprised, during the following week, as he sat in meetings and flew across the country, how often he saw her smile and heard in his memory her promise to come to New Yoric. He was still remembering when he returned to Damton's the next Friday.

"Almost through?" he asked.

"Almost. Are you here for the weekend?"

"Just tonight. I'm sorry, but I have to be in Washington tomorrow."

"Fm sorry, too." She signed letters and folded them in their envelopes. "Ready. Shall we have a drink on the porch? It's been so warm today; it doesn't feel like November, does it?"

The weather was warm, but she was cool, as always, and Currier felt a flash of adolescent anger: didn't she appreciate what he was going through to see her—dragging himself to the Adirondacks ten times in three months? And what did he get for it? A lilting voice saying "I'm sorry, too." Fuck it, he tfiought as they sat on a cushioned sofa on the long front porch. I don't need her; the world is fiill of women.

"Laura," he said, "I want you to marry me."

The silence was sudden and complete. All around them, as the sun set, the sky was an ocean of flame streaked with islands of thin, purple-gray clouds. "How can you marry someone you've never slept with?" she asked lightly, then added quickly, "I'm sorry, Wes, that was foolish. I'm ashamed of myself. You took me by surprise."

"And you said the first thing you thought of.'*

"I apologize. It was crude."

"But you aren't crude, and I know it. And I did indeed take you by surprise, so I apologize, too. As for my sleeping with you— *'

"Please, I've said I'm sorry. It's not important."

"It's very important, at least to me; I've wanted you in my bed for a long time. But I'm a patient man, Laura, and I always get what I want. And I'm not worried. Are you? One of these days, as soon as you vanquish your demons, you'll want more from me than companionship and my presence at conferences and then—"

^That's unfair." Her face was flushed.

Judith Michael

I

"It was and I apologize." He held her face between his hands and kissed her lightly. *This is the damnedest proposal; all we're doing is apologizing. Laura, I want to marry you and take care of you. I don't want you to look the way you did when you told me about the old man you took care of when you were working your way through college, the one who died—"

"How did I look?"

"Brokenhearted," he said briefly. "Not for long—you have a remarkable spirit—but I don't want you to feel any sadness, ever again. You deserve happiness and luxury and a life free of worry, and I can give you that. I can give you everything. And I want you with me wherever I go; I'm even going to ask; your help in some of my work. You have a way of striving for order that I admire, and you're very precise in what you say. and what you don't say. In a marriage that might be a problem, but in business it's invaluable."

She smiled. "You mean you'll take the lumps in marriage; because the business will prosper."

"That's unfair." He studied her face. "You won't always be so careful with me; if we love each other—^"

"Love," Laura murmured. "Does that enter into itT*

He laughed. "Yes. I should have said that first, not last. But I'm not always sure whether my love may not be suspect Three times it's ended in divorce. I thought you might prefer a simple proposal without the fluff of an emotion that might sound a little frayed around the edges."

Laura laid her head briefly on his shoulder. "A girl likes a little fluff now and then, even if she has to say no."

He hesitated only a fraction of a second. 'Then I'll use more of it next time."

They were silent. The sky had darkened to a deep bronze so rich it turned to orange the shadowed grass and tall pines in front of the lodge. Currier put his arm around Laura, his fingers caressing the short springy hairs at the back of her neck. Vanquish your demons, she thought. Of course I will. I've stopped missing Ben, except when I'm really lonely, late at night, and then I wonder what kind of life he has in Amsterdam and if he ever thinks of me anymore. And it's just a matter of time before I forget Paul and stop having dreams

Inheritance

about Osterville and Boston, Leni and Allison, Paul's parents, even the cousins who were always in the background, making everything seem more alive, more like a storybook family.

It will all seem like a story if I wait long enough; like something I read once and put away. And then maybe I'll be able to make love to Wes Currier instead of knotting up inside every time he kisses me.

"Still," he said musingly, as if continuing a conversation, "you're not as brittle as you were four months ago. You may be breaking out of this cage you've made for yourself."

She stirred. "What does that mean?"

"I'll tell you a story. When I was twenty-five, a year after I'd made my first million, my wife left me. I fell into a funk that wouldn't go away. Something I cared about, something that was safely mine, had been stolen from me. All I could think was that some vicious mythical beast was punishing me for having everything I wanted." He paused. "I think someone took something away fix)m you, something very precious, and you've been feeling like a victim ever since, with the forces of nature and mythology stacked against you. The logical reaction to that is anger, and building a thick shell around yourself, and no sex."

She smiled. "Probably." But her eyes were focused inward. "You think a shell is like a cage."

"It was for me. I was locked into my anger because I'd been robbed, and I was determined to defend myself so no one could rob me again. That was my shell and that was my cage." They were silent. Within the circle of his arm. Currier felt Laura's taut muscles, and he spoke quietly but with an intensity that struck to the heart of her memories. "I'd earned what I had—that was what made me angriest. I'd worked hard and I'd given love, and I deserved the good things I had. Other people got what they wanted; why shouldn't I? I was as good as they, maybe better. But in a way that was the worst of all: I'd known what it was to have the happiness I wanted and then it was taken from me before I could enjoy it. So I locked myself in even tighter, like a besieged general."

"And how did you break out?" Laura asked after a moment.

"Oh, that's the dull part of the story. I remembered what I'd always known: that life isn't fair and we're never promised

Judith Michael

that it will be. Too many people spend their time looking for someone to promise them happiness or beauty or wealth, instead of fighting to carve out their own. I'm still fighting, but I'm almost there; I have most of what I want and I'll get the rest. I told you, I always do."

The last faint hues vanished from the sky. The first star flickered just above a grove of pine trees; amber lanterns lined the curving driveway and front walk. Behind them, Laura and Currier heard the chatter of guests gathering in the Great Hall for cocktails, and the soft strains of classical guitar from the tape John Damton had just put on. **Wes," Laura said thoughtfully, "if I asked you to back me in buying a hotel, would you consider it?"

He masked his surprise and the instinctive refusal which sprang to his lips. He wanted a wife, not an entrepreneur. But he was patient, and he knew the advantages of having someone in debt to him. "If you knew what you wanted, of course I would. Do you have a specific hotel in mind?"

*The Chicago Salinger," she said.

Myma's legs were clamped around Clay's hips and he thrust deep inside her. He heard her litde kittenish cries that meant she was coming, and then let himself go. The surge tore through him like a torrent bursting through exploding floodgates. He couldn't see, he couldn't hear, for that incredible instant when everything in him felt free and absolutely perfect, and even when he heard Myma's voice murmuring, "So lovely. Clay, you are a lovely lover," and opened his eyes, he still felt the tremors all through him and her warm wetness clinging to his penis. He lay flat on her surprisingly cushiony body to stay inside her as long as he could, and reached back to pull the sheet over them; in the midnight air, his skin suddenly felt chilled. "Lovely lover," Myma whispered, turning her head and flicking her tongue deep into his ear. "My wonderful lover ..."