The Family Fortune

the dusk. It was four-thirty and soon everyone would be rushing home.

A skinny Salvation Army Santa rang a bell outside the Harvard Coop and I dropped several bills into the receptacle that stood beside him.

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

“And to you,” I answered, and smiled. I always liked Christmas and New England winters, especially evenings when the air was so crisp it felt like it might break from the sky like an icicle from a tree.

I went into the Harvard Coop to look for a gift for the Bentleys. I settled on a book of photography that showed writers in their natural habitats—like animals. Max was in the book. The caption might have read: “A native of suburban Boston, this exotic beast has found a home in the industrial-style lofts of Tribeca located in downtown New York City. Tribeca attracts some of the most successful of his species.” Instead, it just said: “Max Wellman, Tribeca Loft.”

With gift in hand, I walked toward the Bentleys’ house. Bentley’s wife, Melody, answered the enormous oak door. She took a brief look at me, then pulled me into her ample chest. She smelled of wet clay. She always smelled of wet clay. When Bentley had finally gotten married, he hadn’t chosen from his plethora of worshipful students. Instead, he had chosen a woman he met at a party, a woman several years older than he was, a woman who had retired at forty after making her money in fashions for plus-size women. Bentley called it “fashion for fatties.”

“Darling, you look horrible,” Melody said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I didn’t mean it like that. Well, you know what I mean.”

I didn’t know really, except perhaps that the stress was beginning to show. Melody led me into the kitchen, where Bentley was grinding coffee beans. Since he had given up drinking, he’d become a coffee connoisseur. He gave coffee the same attention he once gave to his brand of scotch.

He asked if I’d prefer Kona, French roast, or a special Brazilian blend.

“I wouldn’t know one from the other,” I said.

“Jeez, Jane,” Bentley said, “you don’t look too well. Are you sick?” He looked closely at my face, which was, as usual, devoid of makeup. Melody offered me a plate of Christmas cookies. I took two and sat in a bentwood chair at their pine table.

“I’m not sick,” I said. “I’m perfectly well.”

“I like your new haircut, Jane,” Melody said. “Evan, you didn’t say anything about Jane’s new haircut.” Melody always looked polished. She wore a flowing artistic shirt and slim pants. She was one of those women who always knew how to do the best with what they had, probably a necessity in her former business. Her brown helmet of hair was straight and smooth, and to the untrained eye it looked as if she wasn’t wearing makeup. Because of Miranda, my eye was trained. What I was looking at in Melody was not the lack of makeup, but rather the skillful application of it.

Bentley put a cup of coffee in front of me. “Nice haircut,” he said. “Try the Kona.”

The coffee tasted like sludge. I added several inches of cream from a pitcher on the table.

“He’s back,” I said. I used an ominous voice and tried to be funny, but it was lost on them. Everything I said or did was lost on someone these days.

“Who’s back?” Bentley asked.

“Max Wellman,” I said. “I already told you that his sister and her husband ended up renting our house. Bad enough. But it turns out he was a college friend of my brother-in-law’s. Charlie—the brother-in-law—is helping him find a house, some perfect place for him and some nymphet to settle down.” I took a bite of the cookie in my hand. It was a homemade Christmas cookie, but it was shaped like a Star of David. Melody was Jewish. I think she forgot to add sugar to the batter, but it would have been rude to spit it out, so I kept eating.

“Is that the Max Wellman you’re so jealous of?” Melody asked Bentley.

“I never said I was jealous of him,” Bentley said.

“You did too. You said he stole the girl you wanted.” Bentley turned toward the sink, and when he turned back his face had the flush of a sunburn.

For a few months after Max left, Bentley and I had dated, or I suppose you could call it that. I always thought he was too old for me, and besides, if Max still resided in my heart all these years later, you can only imagine how many rooms he inhabited then. The real difference between my dates with Bentley and our meetings in connection with the Review was that on our dates Bentley paid. He kissed me a few times, drunkenly. I hadn’t liked the taste of him and his kisses were too wet.

“It wasn’t just the girl,” Melody said. “I think if Evan were to admit it, he’d like to have the career Max has.” Melody sat heavily in the chair beside me.

Bentley had broken out of his writer’s slump after the Review started to get him attention. He had written two more novels, both to critical acclaim, but neither of them had made much money. It wasn’t that he needed money, but if you took money as a sign of the world’s appreciation, the world hadn’t valued him enough.

Melody sipped her coffee. She took it black, which was either a sign of true love or of a complete absence of taste buds.

“Who wouldn’t envy Max Wellman?” Bentley asked. “That hardly makes me unique among writers. Anyway, things always work out for the best. If I got that girl, I wouldn’t be here with you.”

Though the words were kind, the tone was not. He probably wasn’t thrilled to have Melody hanging out his dirty laundry in front of me. And what was more awkward was that she didn’t realize that the girl she was talking about, the memory of Bentley’s she had to expose in order to save herself from its shadow, was me.

I didn’t know that I’d become a piece of Bentley’s mythology. He never acted unhappy after I told him I’d rather that we remain friends, yet he had created a story, an imaginary lost love, a struggle between himself and Max Wellman for the love of a woman. The truth was that Max was long gone by the time I started to date Bentley.

This lost love of his was all in his head, a part of the stories we create about ourselves that become our histories. After we tell our stories enough times, they become true for us, and maybe that’s all that matters. I had done it with Max, written the role of jilted lover, then played it with the finesse of a Shakespearean actor. Perhaps my suffering was my own creation just like Bentley’s was his.

“It’s hard to watch him move on with his life,” I said.

“When you haven’t moved on with yours?” Bentley asked.

“I have,” I said, though I didn’t feel like I had.

“She certainly has,” Melody said. “Look at the work of the foundation. You told me that when you started on it, no one had ever even heard of it. Now, there isn’t a bookstore or newsstand in Boston and probably other cities, too, that doesn’t carry the Euphemia Review. Because of Jane, you get asked to speak all the time.”

“I would hope that it has something to do with my books,” Bentley said.

“Of course it does,” I said, but we both knew that on the strength of his books alone, Bentley would not have the career he had today.

“So what’s Jack Reilly like?” Bentley asked. He knew how important it was for me to discover a new talent, especially now.

“I haven’t found him yet.”

“I guess you’ll have to move on to the next one,” Bentley said.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s the next great thing.”

“And you know this how?”

“From the story.”

“It’s a good story, Jane. A very good story, but it’s just a story.”

“I’m going to find him,” I said.

“I’ve never heard of a writer applying for a fellowship, then disappearing. There must be something off about him. Maybe he’s a criminal. Maybe he’s in jail.”

This would fit my fantasies about the man from Lynn, the city of sin. But even if he was in jail, he could still be my next great discovery. Literary inmates were all the rage.