Free A Dual Inheritance by Joanna Hershon Page B

mother’s face and then the face disappearing. It used to seem like a memory I’d invented, but now I think it might be a real one, because I would have been outside in the cold and she would have been inside and the window would have fogged from her breath against the glass. And she would have been smoking, too. She’s smoking in almost all of the pictures. So—there you have it—a memory.”
    “It wasn’t for me to ask,” Ed said.
    Hugh gave a noncommittal nod.
    “Even I know that,” Ed admitted.
    “Please, tell me something else so I don’t have to be stuck with my one image of the window all day long.”
    “What do you want to hear?”
    “I don’t know,” muttered Hugh. “Something.”
    Ed thought about how, as a little kid, he’d been terrified—petrified—of the dark. His mother had taken him into the windowless bathroom next to the kitchen, in order to get him over his fear. She shut off the lights and stood with him. At first he’d cry and then he’d settle down and then they’d just stand there, talking in the dark. He remembered herlaughter and how she loved to talk and that she was truly good at it. When any conversation went off the rails, she could always, seamlessly, steer it back.
    Ed had always thought of this as a happy story, and he considered relaying it to Hugh, but he realized it wasn’t a happy story; it wasn’t even a story. It was a mother and son talking in a dark bathroom, and that seemed kind of weird.
    “Well?” said Hugh. “Give me something . What kind of kid were you?”
    “Nosy.”
    “Big surprise.”
    “I asked my fourth-grade teacher—Mrs. O’Connor, a widow—if she’d ever had sex with her husband before he died. I’d just gotten a handle on the birds and the bees, and since she didn’t have children I was confused. I was sure I was going to get a beating, but she nodded. And of course I couldn’t leave it alone,” Ed said, surprised at how embarrassed he actually felt with this memory fresh in his mind. “I asked her what it was like. What was it like? Jesus, what a mouth I had. Again I expected to get a beating, a bad one, but instead she looked very calm and still and—I’ll always remember this—she said: Lovely .”
    “I can’t believe she didn’t kick you out of class.”
    “ I would have kicked me out of class.”
    “No, you wouldn’t have.”
    “That’s true. Who knows what I would have done. Probably would’ve given me a smack. God help my future kids.”
    They were standing on the banks of the pond. The water, to Ed’s relief, wasn’t frozen after all. It looked black in patches, and the sun had gone behind the clouds. Hugh just shook his head.
    “You hungry?” Ed asked.
    “I could eat.”
    There was a place on the road. Inside was nothing special. When Ed ordered raw sirloin, Hugh looked at him askance.
    “Trust me. I know meat. My uncle’s the supplier here.”
    When the raw sirloin arrived, Ed split it in two, seasoned it with salt and pepper, cut it up in small pieces, and—voilà!—steak tartare. He’d had steak tartare for the first time on a date last year with a Radcliffe girl who proclaimed it her favorite dish, and he’d figured why not make it himself for a fraction of the cost? He was so proud when Hugh tasted it and declared it as fine as any he’d ever had. They drank scotch and ordered more raw sirloin and ate more steak tartare.
    Ed could not stop talking about money. “For instance,” he said, making an effort to keep his voice lowered, as he knew that the subject—not to mention the drinking—would raise his voice automatically, “this check. If you pay it, I feel bad; if I pay it, you feel bad.”
    “I don’t feel bad if you pay it,” said Hugh, laughing.
    “I just hate splitting tabs. I feel like a communist.”
    Hugh kept laughing, drained his last drink. “You’re generous,” he said. “I get it.”
    And it was Hugh’s dismissive sarcasm in that moment (the same laconic sarcasm that