Read Online A Dual Inheritance by Joanna Hershon - Free Book Online

long arms around herself, kept them there and shrugged. He wondered what was so familiar about her stance, why it made him want to say: You remind me of someone . Maybe it was that she reminded him of herself, her old self, which at this point felt like part of him, so often had he thought of her every gesture. “Secretary. My father got me the job,” she said. “Shocking, I know.”
    “What part?”
    “You know—of course he got me the job. Of course I’m a secretary—even though I can’t type—positioned in a place to meet so many of our brightest, most eligible young men. Everyone is really hoping the best for me, everyone’s just—you know— hoping ! I think my father would settle for an old geezer professor at this point, he’s so nervous.” She was still smiling, but she no longer looked untroubled. “Hugh.” She shook her head. “What is it you want me to say?”
    She let her arms drop. And, as soon as she did, he realized who she’d reminded him of: a child in Case’s footage. He couldn’t have been more than six. When his playmate was killed with arrows shot by the neighboring clan, he wrapped his arms around himself in the very same way that Helen had.
    Hugh stood up and put out his cigarette. He took her by the shoulders. “I want you to tell me what happened.”
    “Why?”
    He didn’t take his hands from her shoulders and she didn’t shrug him off. Not until he started to yell, “Because I fucking need to know.”
    She shook her head. “Don’t speak to me that way.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
    “That’s for me to do,” she said darkly. She looked around as if she suddenly realized that they were in public and that she was not comfortable with being looked at, not comfortable with being talked about, although she was very much accustomed to both. “You knew,” she said.
    “What do you mean I knew?”
    “I mean you knew. You knew I was pregnant; you knew it was yours.”
    “Well, I sure as hell didn’t know because you had the decency to tellme. Do you want to know how I found out? I found out because Edith Billis was at my father’s table and she was drunk. Does that constitute knowing? Should I have believed her? And how was I—” He was yelling again and he stopped himself, lowering his voice. “How was I supposed to help you if you never answered my letters or my telephone calls? And don’t tell me you didn’t receive any letters or messages.”
    “No,” she said, “I did.”
    “Then … how?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “It was stupid. I’m stupid. I have to get back now.”
    “Helen,” he said, and he knew he had to ask right then or somehow he never would. “Did you have it?”
    She bit her lip. “No.”
    He opened and closed his hands. “Okay.” He felt less relieved than he thought he would.
    “In France they call them angel makers . My friend got one done there. Isn’t that poetic?”
    “No,” he said. A stray hair fell into her eyes and he was grateful for it, grateful to have a concrete lead on touching any part of her, to feel her fine straw-colored hair as he smoothed it away from her face, to smell her perfume, which she once told him was made from tobacco flowers.
    “I wanted you to be worse off.”
    “I feel terrible,” he whispered, moving closer.
    “Good,” she whispered back.

Chapter Three
    Winter
    Ed knocked on Hugh’s door. He knocked until the knocking turned into banging, which turned into sloppy bashing until Hugh finally opened up. “Fucking Cantowitz.”
    “Righto,” Ed said. “Get up and get dressed.”
    “Because?”
    “Because it’s already afternoon! Get moving!” He sat in the walnut chair with the wine-colored cushion where he always sat before morning classes, with a view of the miserable swollen sky. It hadn’t snowed all winter, and it was like the atmosphere was bloated and in need of relieving itself. As Hugh buttoned his shirt and struggled with the same moth-devoured