The Price of Inheritance (16 page)

I put the Bible down, realizing I hadn't held one in my hands since college, and shut my computer. I was making this bowl into the Rosetta Stone. Was it because, like William, I really thought there was something to it—or was I just enthralled with it because I now associated it with Tyler, who I was very quickly falling for?

After going out with him on Friday, Sunday, and Monday and kissing him standing up, lying down, and with my legs wrapped around his waist, I decided to call Alex. I needed to rip off a few shreds of honesty for Alex because what I was craving right now was to see Tyler every single day, and I wanted to do it with a clear conscience. I had asked Tyler on Sunday if he knew that the bottom of the bowl said “first and the last” in Hebrew and he gave me what felt like an honest no.

“You might find this surprising, but there aren't that many Jewish marines. And the few I knew were not manhandling my pottery. Also, we were in Iraq, not exactly Jewish Disney World.”

I'd let out an almost-forced laugh and he didn't ask me how I knew what the base said. If my researching it bothered him, he didn't let on. And if he liked me doing it, he didn't give it his stamp of approval.

Before I got up the courage to call Alex, I drove down Ledge Road, where he had grown up and where his parents still lived. I knew the Blake house before I knew who lived in it because Newport was small enough that you had driven past every house worth remembering hundreds of times. It was a newer build, newer meaning 1915, but now had enough age on it that it fit right in. I remembered going there with Alex while we were at St. George's and liking it immediately. It had things like seashells in it and cookies made by his actual mother, and paintings by artists who weren't featured prominently in the Met. It was lived in and comfortable, but it was still a seven-million-dollar house. It had a wooden porch that jutted onto the thick green lawn and it was so close to the water that we had once tried to do a running leap from his living room window. Turns out it wasn't quite that close.

Alex was the youngest of four boys, though he was frequently asked if he was an only child, a question that both annoyed and flattered him. All three of his brothers worked in finance in New York and were very good at their rather boring, high-profile jobs. Everyone expected Alex to follow suit, so he did. He was what Newport considered new money, which meant his family hadn't started summering there in the nineteenth century. In fact, his family only had a normal amount of money until his father turned a small family investment firm in North Carolina into a huge international investment firm in New York. He did so well in the nineties that he put himself on the Forbes
500, for a year anyway, in 1997. It was a year the family really enjoyed bringing up and when Alex and I were in high school, that particular issue of
Forbes
was glued to his nightstand. I knew he'd done the same thing at Dartmouth. Alex's father, Morris Blake, had had his last son when he was fifty-five. He was semiretired when I first met him, happy to trade the office buildings of New York for Newport year-round. “I love the North, and the more north the better. I grew up in the Carolinas but southern money doesn't feel real,” he had said to me once. “You have to bring it up north for it to really matter.” His son, northern to the core, definitely agreed.

I had loved spending time with Alex in that house as we went from teenagers acting like grown-ups to grown-ups acting like teenagers. His parents hadn't spent their lives on the water, but Alex more than made up for it. He looked and acted exactly how a rich prep school kid from New England was supposed to act. When we turned sixteen, and he had the car and enough of an allowance to back it up, he got so good at it that he even surprised himself. Alex Blake was exactly the person I thought I'd start and end with.

I called Alex on Thursday night after work and caught him as he was heading back to his apartment. The sounds of the city—the car horns, the sirens, the voices, people talking loudly to each other and into their phones as they walked past him—made me nostalgic for my old life. I used to love walking down the street with Alex, proud that he was so successful and that I worked for Christie's New York. I had wished for my old life every day that I'd been in Newport, until I'd met Tyler.

“Carolyn Everett,” said Alex after he answered the phone. “I miss you.”

“Do you?” I asked, trying not to sound surprised. Alex could be very sweet when he was in the mood to be.

“How is our hometown treating you?”

“You know, it's home, it's nice.”

“Mmm, I couldn't live there now. Way too boring. What would I do, shuck oysters and become a docent?”

“There are a few other things to do. I haven't eaten an oyster or been to a mansion, besides the Dalbys', since I've been here.”

“Well, you should, it's oyster season. So besides hanging out with Jane and that what's-his-name, what are you doing?”

“Carter. You know his name, Alex.”

“Right. Carter. That's a fake name. It's a last name. So besides hanging out with them, what is it that you do up there?”

“I told you, I'm working at William Miller's.”

“Oh, wait, you were serious? Didn't you do that in high school? What are you going to do next, get an internship?”

“I didn't call you just so my self-esteem could fall even lower.”

“I know, I'm an ass,” said Alex, laughing. “I'm sorry. I had a long day. I need a distraction. I need you. Why don't you come to the city for the weekend? We can eat out; see a play or something. I'll buy you presents. Whatever you want.”

That sounded really nice. I missed swanky New York restaurants and going to the theater with Alex, who always bought us tickets right in the middle with perfect views, but I was already heading home in less than a week. And Alex. Could I really just run back to him and his nice-when-I-want-to-be ways?

“I don't think I can handle coming back to the city yet,” I replied. “I planned to stay until March fifteenth and I'm going to stick to it.”

“You can't handle the city or you can't handle seeing me? It's been a while since you've seen me.”

“The city.”

“Okay, then,” he said. “But I feel obliged to say one thing. People don't wait for each other forever. I know I haven't exactly been perfect, but I've been here for you through all this mess you made. And I do love you. I know sometimes we break up and see other people and get back together and all that, and I'm sure it's a pain in the ass for you, but it's also just us, you know. And we've been us for a long time. I like us.”

I liked us, too, some of the time.

“Anyway, we're both almost thirty now and you're going to get your career back on track and be the star that you are. So maybe it's time to be a little less flighty and a little more committed to each other.”

Alex was the one who wanted this now? Alex? I had been subtly begging him to be exclusive for years, but all of a sudden, I leave and don't want to see him and he wants to sew me to his hip. It was always when you stopped caring.

“I'd like that. A lot,” I said, though for the first time since I had known Alex, my whole heart was not behind my statement.

“But not starting this weekend?”

“Right.”

“Okay, Carolyn. It's just your job, you know. You'll get another one. But it would probably help if you left that crappy store, came back to New York, and looked for work. Something that pays you more than ten bucks an hour. What are you going to be, the girl who hangs out with the Dalbys and makes welfare wages? I think you've retired from living in their backyard.”

Alex always knew how to hit me exactly where it would slice me open slowly. I had been happy growing up. I tried to be nice to everyone; I was smart and pleasant-looking and was friends with all the right people. But everyone also knew that the money my family once had was gone, and I wasn't a girl just like the Dalbys, I was the girl who slept in their carriage house. But not in boarding school. When I got to St. George's, it was the great equalizer, until we all went home for the summer.

I had walked around St. George's a few times since I'd been home, but I hadn't been able to stay long. The sentimental way it made me feel almost hurt, bringing back the emotion of a time when I thought everything was possible. When I thought I was going to marry Alex and be a big success.
I was going to be
that
girl, and no one would remember who grew up on the edge of the ocean, and who grew up just behind it.

After three weeks in Newport, I was beginning to feel like me again. I didn't know exactly what that meant, but there was an element to it that I had lost when I moved to New York. Up here I wore my long hair in a braid. I had gained a few pounds from eating three meals a day and I didn't care if my sweaters were made in China. Even Jane, who was everything that all those New York girls wanted to be, was nothing like those New York girls, which is why she was in Newport, barefoot, with her husband, waiting for spring to come. Jane worked when she wanted to, and played when she was in the mood, but she never rubbed it in your face that she had the choice. She was good at being rich, and many people weren't.

I hung up the phone with Alex and wondered how I had put up with his yo-yoing since I was fourteen years old. I didn't want to be someone's safety blanket.

I called Jane's sister, Brittan, in New York to tell her about the conversation. You called Jane when you needed to feel better, but you called Brittan when you wanted to curse.

“So now he wants to marry you,” she said, laughing.

“Yeah, I don't think marry, but be serious. More serious. I think it was his way of saying he was going to stop breaking up with me and cheating on me.”

“That kid is really lucky he's so cute and that his dad is so minted. Because if not for those two qualities, he would have gotten beat up a lot.”

“Yeah, deservedly.”

“I don't know what to tell you, Carolyn,” said Brittan. “If you think he'll change, really think he'll change, then go for it. But we grew up around men who were once Alex. You remember Anna Harbisher's dad? Yeah, he didn't change. Or Kate Van Stricklen's dad? Remember that Siberian model he married who was younger than her?”

“Serbian.”

“Whatever, Carolyn. She was twenty.”

“Yeah, I have my doubts,” I admitted after Brittan finished listing every father we knew in Newport who had dumped their wives during some midlife crisis or another.

“It's socially acceptable polygamy,” said Brittan. “That's why I'm never getting married.”

“But everyone wants to marry you.”

“Well, then it's a good thing I love to say no. And now I'm saying no to you. No Alex. Move on. Let someone else in your pants, for God's sake. He does not deserve your faithfulness.”

“Well, I'd be more worried about it than I am, if I didn't have a bit of a distraction happening here.”

“What? No way.” I could hear Brittan getting up and closing her office door. I knew she would sit back down and turn in her dove gray leather chair to look at the expanse of Central Park twenty floors down.

“It's about time. Fuck Alex. Who is your distraction?”

“He's a marine actually. His name is Tyler Ford and he's nothing like anyone you or I have ever met. He's kind of amazing.”

“Amazing? A marine? Does Jane know? Of course not. It's Jane.”

“Not yet, but I need to talk about him with someone.”

“Listen to you! We've been talking for thirty minutes and you wait until now to confess your scandal. I'm glad you chose me to dish to. I want to see all this for myself. I'm coming to Newport. Friday night. Tell Jane.” Brittan paused and thought about it. “Never mind, I'll tell Jane.”

And that was how I ended up at the Blue Hen again. I got to the bar early, to make sure Brittan didn't have to spend any time in there alone, and headed toward the back, but I was stopped by a smiling face.

“Do you remember me? Greg LaPorte.”

“Sure I remember you,” I said, smiling back. “Greg LaPorte. It's nice to see you. Thanks for helping me the other day.”

“We told Ford about you. Did he find you?”

“Yeah, he did. I talked to him about the bowl. He seemed surprised that it was worth anything at all.”

“I mean, there's a lot of chintz to buy over there. He probably thought it was just some piece of crap. Probably bought it from a kid for two bucks or something to get him to go away.”

Greg walked me to the bar and bought me a beer.

“Remember when I told you I was a really nice guy?” he said, watching me drink.

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, I'm still a really nice guy. I've probably only gotten nicer since you met me. I'm a captain in the United States Marine Corps, I love America, and I've got three sisters and a little brother who I never beat up. Wait, and look, here's a napkin on the floor that I'm going to pick up.”

“No, gross!” I said, stopping him before he contracted hepatitis. “I believe you! You're a nice guy. Don't pick that up.”

“Okay, good,” said Greg, smiling. Greg was cute in a wholesome way, and he was definitely younger than me.

“So, let me guess one thing. You're dating Tyler Ford,” he said as the band played Journey covers.

I didn't answer and Greg started to laugh. “Of course you are. They always do.”

“Who is ‘they'?” I asked, trying not to think of Tyler as some sort of Lothario who bedded every woman in town, swooning over his chiseled body and the stars and bars.

“You know, girls, pretty girls like you. They love Captain Ford.”

“Oh yeah? But let me guess, things never get serious.”

“Tyler Ford and girlfriends do not go together,” said Greg. “If they did, he wouldn't be Tyler Ford, and trust me, sweetheart, he really likes being Tyler Ford.”