The Family Hightower (15 page)

“He means sell everything and take the money,” Rufus says.

“Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that,” Henry says.

“I know. You didn't.” Rufus says.
You must love this,
Henry thinks.
So many opportunities to be clever.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” Rufus says.

Yes,
Henry thinks.
I mind. I mind a lot.
“Of course not,” he says.

“Well, first of all, how much is this house worth now?” Rufus says.

“Well,” Henry says, “we've done a few appraisals, and research into comparable properties, so how much the house is worth isn't as clear as I'd like it to be.”

“Ballpark,” Rufus says.

Henry gives him the number.

“That's more than one-fifth of the part of the estate we're dividing among us, right?” Rufus says.

“Yes.”

“So the first thing that happens under your equitable plan is that we—”

“Yes. Lose this house,” Henry says. He won't let Rufus say it, however he would have put it.
Sell out our sister. Put Sylvie on the street.
There's still time to salvage this,
he thinks.
Still a chance to bring it around.

“And the second thing is that this means you get as much as Jackie does,” Rufus says.

Henry glares at his brother, hates him now like he did when they were kids. Hates how Jackie's such a convenient proxy for himself.
At least Jackie has an excuse for being so down-and-out,
Henry wants to say.
She's insane. What's your excuse, Rufus?
It's the same shit all over again, he thinks. Henry always has to carry the burden, and there's Captain Kangaroo in his linen shirt, pointing and criticizing. Never bothering himself to help.

“Well, yes. That's what equitable means,” Henry says. “In this case.”

Rufus looks around the room, and Henry, in his anger, could swear he sees his brother smile, though it's not clear that's what happens.

“Raise your hand,” Rufus says, “if you think equitable doesn't mean equal, but fair.”

Muriel raises her hand. “I think we need to talk about this,” she says.

Henry tries one last move. “What do we need to talk about, Muriel?” he says.

“Why did you just say my name like that?”

“I'm sorry. What do you want to say?”

“That Rufus is right, it just doesn't seem fair somehow to split everything even-steven.”

“Why?”

“Because of how things are,” Muriel says.

“What do you mean?” Henry says.

“She means,” Rufus says, “that's it's very easy for you to say that everything should be even when you have so much more than everyone else. What's wrong with you, Henry? Don't you ever see regular people anymore?”

In that next second, Henry would do anything to go back to the beginning. To have them all sitting at the table, and him walking into the room, the papers under his arms. He would start everything over. Say different things. Maybe offer a different deal. No: He wants to go back even farther, to the days when he first started making serious money—not serious money by his father's standards, but by anyone else's standards, very serious. He wants to take his younger self by the hand and force him to be more generous. To send money to Jackie. To at least call, call more often. To ask after Rufus, let his brother know that if there's anything he ever needs, any way Henry can help, he's there. He wants to tell them he's sorry, he wants to try again, all of it, all over again. Because in the back of his head, he always knew this day was coming. That they would be at this table, slicing up what was left of their father's body, and there was no way it wasn't going to be bloody.

By the end of the night, it's all out. Things with Muriel and her boyfriend aren't going so great. They need money. Neither of them can think straight anymore. Sylvie doesn't say a word, but Rufus is doing all the arguing for her.
How can you take this house away from her?
Henry's not about to put up with any of that.
That's funny,
he says,
you talking about responsibility. Look at you, Pancho Villa over there.
You just traipse off to Africa, leave us all behind, without a shred of responsibility to anyone, and then come back here just in time to tell everyone else how wrong they are.
Henry's gagging on the superiority.
How dare you come in here and talk to me about regular people. When's the last time you even had a job?

He knows how to hurt his brother and does it.
I don't need to justify my lifestyle to you,
Rufus says, mustache quivering.
You don't?
Henry says.
Then why do I have to justify mine to you?
Their uncle is there, shaking his head, trying to calm them down, trying to stave off mayhem. But they're all way too far gone for that.

Later, nobody will remember how Jackie's pulled into the fight. Maybe it's Rufus who does it, or Henry, or Muriel. But before anyone knows it, Muriel is describing, in lurid detail, the state of Jackie's apartment in Tremont.
You should see the way she's living,
she says.
You should see it.
It smells like a garbage dump; any food that comes in there spoils. There is laundry everywhere. Underwear in the toilet. There's oil paint everywhere, some on a few half-finished canvases, of churches covered in soot and fire. But most of it's on the floor, on the furniture. There's some on the ceiling, on the sheets of her bed. A horde of cats; the last time Muriel visited, one of them was dead and Jackie had it in a shoebox under the coffee table, where it was starting to reek. Jackie yelled and moaned when Muriel told her she had to throw it away. And then there were the dirty dishes, piled in the sink, across the counter, in stacks on the floor.
When they get dirty, I just buy new ones,
Jackie told Muriel, though there was no evidence of that. Swarms of flies, hordes of maggots, ants, roaches. The kitchen was revolting.

“She can't live by herself anymore,” Muriel says.

“Yes I can! I'm an adult! And I'm right here! Stop talking about me like I'm not right here! Like I'm insane!” Jackie says.

Henry knows he shouldn't say what he says next, but to him, it's right across the plate.
What the fuck,
he figures.
This is the night where we're all saying the things we shouldn't say. Might as well say them all.

“But you are insane, Jackie,” he says. “Batshit crazy. You should be in an institution.”

And Jackie lets out a wail the likes of which no one in the room has ever heard. It's inhuman, a sound stripped of sense. The sound they imagine their mother might have made, had she been alive to see their father die. Full of heartbreak and rage, at herself and him. That she could have loved a man like that so much, that she let herself do it. That he could have let her, after everything he did, everything he did to them.

It's almost one in the morning by the time they shout themselves out. They all go to bed, try to sleep, get up after they fail. Sylvie makes them eggs and sausage as if she were a short-order cook. They eat without looking at each other, speak just enough to move the salt, pepper, and coffee around the table. Then Henry goes upstairs to take a shower. Through the bathroom window he can see Sylvie and Rufus walking side by side in the garden, their hands behind their backs. Now and again Sylvie crouches down and Rufus crouches too. She's showing him plants, the things she's been growing. They're out there for a long time, and it occurs to Henry that maybe Sylvie's saying goodbye to this place, taking the farewell tour, and there in the bathroom, he feels dirty for watching. Closes the curtains and starts the water. He's in there a long time, takes even longer to dress. His mind working the problem over and over, trying to see a new way into it, because he can't see any way out.

When he comes back into the dining room, they're seated almost like they were before; Muriel tells him before he has a chance to see it for himself.

“Rufus left,” she says.

“What?”

“Yup. Gone out to the airport.”

“When did he leave?”

“Just five minutes ago.”

It's too much. He almost laughs. “That's ridiculous.”

“He didn't say goodbye to me either,” Muriel says. “But here's this.” She hands him an envelope, a letter. To Henry, from his brother. Signing over, in almost perfect legalese, his portion of his inheritance, for Henry to execute, with the intention that half is to go to Sylvie, so that she can keep the house; the other half is to go toward Jackie's care.
I trust this will resolve the problem,
the letter's final sentence says,
that our father's unjust equality created.

You bastard,
is all Henry can think. Detests himself for not being grateful, or grateful enough. He can't tell the difference yet. Can't tell how much is about Rufus and how much about their father. He sees his brother only once in the next decade, and then never again. But after Sylvie's wedding, when he knows Rufus has a son, he keeps sending them money, as often as he can, his own money on top of the trust fund disbursements; after a while, just his own money.
It's all for you and your boy,
he writes, and thinks to himself but doesn't write:
He shouldn't be cheated by your financial drama
. Rufus is gracious and writes back, thankful for the money. Always takes it. But he never tells Henry what he's doing with it. And he never tells Henry when he's moving, or why. A couple years in, Henry risks an annoyed note—
just tell me when you're switching cities so I know where to wire, is that so hard?
—and Rufus almost stops communicating altogether. Months go by where Henry's money just piles up, waiting to be collected, and Henry worries, then, that something's happened to them both, to Rufus and his boy. He starts skimming the international section of
The New York Times
for news of coups, wars, riots in Africa. Things to feed his anxiety. Then the money disappears from the account with a two-word reply,
thanks, Rufus,
and Henry sleeps better. Though he doesn't know how to get Wyatt Earp to say more, either. Or how to get him back.

It's been like that for years, now, Sylvie thinks. It's
1995
again, and Peter's been gone for hours; the afternoon's turning into evening, but the memories of
1966
are brighter than ever. The family was a handful of seeds that night, Sylvie thinks, tossed into a hurricane that howled through the house. Now Henry and Rufus are far away. All the girls still in town, but they almost never see each other. And Jackie's been put away for so long now, she might not know who she is anymore, let alone them.

But all their children. If Sylvie concentrates hard enough she can almost feel it, the way the past is blowing them all in again, forcing them to come together. The shape of the thing is there, in her head. The storm is still out there, maybe worse than ever, but she understands that maybe, if she closes the right doors, opens the right windows, they might all whirl in again, roll across the floor, then wake up, blinking and smiling, as if they've come out of a long dream. She can hear her father spit then—
people always do what they want, Sylvie, never forget that—
and she knows, she does. There's no telling what any of them will do. But she can begin to move them all, and all she has to do is make a couple calls. Because she knows, she knows, what happened to Curly. And she knows what she has to do to fix things.

Kosookyy sounds groggy on the other end of the phone. She says his real name, and at once he's clear.

“Sylvie,” he says. “It's late.”

“I know. I'm pulling out my investments, Kosookyy. As soon as you can do it. And I'll need it in cash. Something portable and liquid that the FBI can't also trace, at least not right away.”

There's a long sigh. Then: “You're sure.”

“Yes. I'm liquidating everything. Cutting it loose.”

“Everything? That's a lot of money you're going to end up with.”

“I'm aware of that. But there won't be too much of it left when I'm done.”

“What are you planning on doing?”

“I'm going to bring down the Wolf.”

“Because of Petey.”

“That's right. Petey and the rest of my family.”

“You're crazy,” he says.

She says his real name again. “I have the money.”

“Your father would disapprove,” Kosookyy says.

“My father's been dead for almost thirty years. Things have changed since then.”

“That's weak, Sylvie. Your father would understand today better than either of us.”

“So what. He's still dead.”

“A lot more people are going to join him if you do what you say you're going to do.”

“A lot of them deserve it.”

“A lot of them don't,” Kosookyy says.

“Name one,” Sylvie says.

“How about me?”

“You think you're one of the good guys, now?”

“Don't be so cold. It doesn't suit you.”

“Duck and cover. It's all coming down. And besides, I think I can rig it so they don't touch you.”

“You think you can. What if you're wrong?”

“It's a calculated risk,” Sylvie says.

“You're not being fair,” Kosookyy says.

Sylvie laughs. “Fair? You know what my father would say to that.”

Kosookyy sighs again. “Yeah, I know. But he would never do what you're doing. He'd just let his grandson hang.”

“Two grandsons?”

“Without thinking twice.”

“Like I said. I'm not him.”

“One more thing,” Kosookyy says. “I'll be amazed if you live through it yourself.”