A Dual Inheritance by Joanna Hershon

reason—felt the need to do that, I would at least try my best to warn him to behave in front of you. That’s what I would do.”
    Ed just nodded and kept his eyes on the road. He couldn’t imagine he’d be able to look at Hugh after the car was long parked, after they were back in their world, which, it seemed to him now, was as fake as the ivory sailboat in his father’s house. “You’re right,” he said.
    “I know.” Hugh rolled down the window and the air came rushing in.
    “But you would never invite me to meet your father.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    Ed willed himself to slow down and shut up, to stop plunging this day into an even greater decline. But though he managed to ease off the gas, this fake temperate voice did not stand a chance. “Because,” he answered, “you won’t even tell me the name of a girl you are obviously sleeping with.” He saw the lights on the river, the familiar blur that was Cambridge, and felt a crushing nostalgia for the day he’d set out to have.
    Hugh emitted a hollow laugh. “Are you saying I was lying to you earlier, when you asked about her?”
    “I’m saying you’re not interested in honesty.”
    He thought of how Hugh seemed somehow too eager to step into his father’s house and to engage in a conflict that belonged to Ed and hisfather, a conflict—so many conflicts!—that was ugly and embarrassing and theirs , and how Ed could not imagine Hugh ever allowing any conflicts of his own to go anywhere beyond the realm of storytelling.
    “I’m saying,” continued Ed, “that with or without that Leica around your neck, you’re a voyeur.”
    Ed parked, and—to his amazement—Hugh made no move to get out of the car. He didn’t speak or look at Ed but sat finishing his cigarette. Finally—when they were back on the sidewalk, when they started walking the short distance toward their houses, before they would need to decide whether or not to split ways—finally Ed came out with it.
    “I’m going to be blunt,” Ed said. “What’s the big secret?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I can’t handle secrets. I’m too suspicious by nature and I’m too tense.”
    “No, really ?”
    “Listen—”
    “No,” Hugh said calmly, “no. You listen.” He looked up for a moment at the evening sky. “You put me through some kind of test today, and I didn’t appreciate it. You’re impatient and aggressive—and that’s not the same as being Jewish.”
    “I didn’t put you through a test,” Ed argued.
    “Why did you want me to meet your father like that?”
    “I wanted you to see where I come from.”
    Hugh shook his head. “Not really. You were just using me.”
    “Using you? You think I’m using you ?”
    “Sure. Isn’t that what friends do?”
    “No, not in my book. I don’t want that kind of friend. I told you, I don’t have any time for it.”
    “I see,” said Hugh.
    Some jerk honked his horn in one steady blare in the distance, and Ed saw Hugh wince.
    “Come on,” said Ed, giving Hugh a gracious punch on the shoulder. “The rest of them are the secret-keepers.” He looked out on the Yard,where people were climbing steps and walking in clusters toward dinner on Mass Ave. “Not you. You’re different.”
    “Is that right?”
    “You know you are. Listen to you. You’re taking me to task! You are so disappointed in me right now. You are disappointed in everything and everyone, and it kills you. That’s why you’re different. Because you can’t stand it. And also, although you have shown nothing near your potential and you are in some ways—let’s face it—kind of lazy, you want to save the world.”
    Hugh looked down at the sidewalk and, despite himself—Ed could tell—he smiled. “And you’re going to help me do that?”
    “No,” Ed said, “of course not.”
    They started to walk again, and when Ed suggested they eat dinner, when he said he was starving and Hugh expressed little surprise, because Ed was always