Ferguson wanted to explain it to her, but he knew how difficult it would be to delve into the thousand nuanced particulars of the long twilight struggle that had lasted the better part of his life, so he boiled it down to one simple and comprehensible statement:
I was waiting for him to contact me, he was waiting for me to contact him, and before either one of us was willing to budge, time ran out.
Two stubborn fools, Ethel said.
That’s it. Two fools locked in their stubbornness.
We can’t change what happened, Archie. It’s over and done with now, and all I can say is I hope you won’t go on tormenting yourself about it any more than you already have. Your father was an odd man, but not a cruel or vindictive man, and even though he made things hard on you, I believe he was on your side.
How can you know that?
Because he didn’t cut you out of his will. As far as I’m concerned, it should have been a much larger amount, but according to what your father told me, you have no interest in being the co-owner of a chain of seven appliance stores. Is that right?
None whatsoever.
I’m still convinced he should have left you a lot more, but one hundred thousand dollars isn’t too bad, is it?
Ferguson didn’t know what to say, so he went on sitting in his chair and said nothing, answering Ethel’s question by shaking his head, meaning no, one hundred thousand dollars wasn’t too bad, even though he wasn’t sure at that point if he wanted to accept it or not, and now that there was nothing more to be said, Ethel and Ferguson went back upstairs, where he called his stepfather and told him he was ready to be picked up. When Dan’s car appeared in front of the house fifteen minutes later, Ferguson shook hands with Allen and Stephanie and said good-bye to them, and as Ethel walked him to the door, she told her dead husband’s son that he should expect a call from Kaminsky the lawyer about his inheritance sometime within the next week or two, and then Ferguson and Ethel hugged each other good-bye, a hard, fervent embrace of solidarity and affection as they promised to stay in touch with each other from now on, even though they both knew they never would.
In the car, Ferguson lit his fourteenth Camel of the day, cracked open the window, and turned to Dan. How was his mother doing? That was the first question he asked as they made their way to Woodhall Crescent, the peculiar but necessary question about his mother’s state of mind after learning that her ex-husband and spouse for eighteen years and the father of her son had abruptly and unexpectedly left this world, for in spite of their angry divorce and the uninterrupted silence that had existed between them since the divorce, it must have come as a jolt to her just the same.
The word jolt says it all, Dan replied. Which accounts for the tears, I think, and the astonishment, and the sorrow. But that was two days ago, and by now she’s more or less come to terms with it. You know how it is, Archie. Once a person dies, you start to feel different things about that person, no matter what trouble there might have been in the past.
So you’re saying she’s all right.
Don’t worry. Before I left, she asked me to ask you if you knew anything about your father’s will. Her brain is working again, which suggests the tears are finished. (Momentarily turning his eyes from the road to look at Ferguson.) She’s a lot more concerned about you than she is about herself. As am I, for that matter.
Rather than talk about the deadness and confusion in his own brain, Ferguson told Dan about the one hundred thousand dollars. He assumed the six-figure number would impress him, but the normally unriled and devil-may-care Dan Schneiderman was distinctly unimpressed. For a man of Stanley Ferguson’s wealth, he said, one hundred thousand was the bare minimum, and anything lower than that would have been obnoxious.
Still and all, Ferguson countered, it was a hell of a lot of money.
Yes, Dan agreed, it was a veritable mountain.
Ferguson then explained that he still hadn’t decided what he wanted to do about it, whether to accept the money for himself or give it away, and while he was thinking it over he wanted Dan and his mother to hold on to it for him, and if they should ever want to use some of it for themselves while he was still making up his mind, then they should feel free to do that, with his blessings.
Don’t be an ass, Dan said. The money’s yours, Archie. Put it in your own account and spend it on yourself — any way you want. Your war with your father is over now, and you don’t have to go on fighting it after he’s dead.
You could be right. But I have to make that decision myself, and I still haven’t made it. In the meantime, the money goes to you and my mother for safekeeping.
All right, give us the money. And when we get it, the first thing I’m going to do is write you a check for five thousand dollars.
Why five thousand?
Because that’s what you’ll need to live on for the summer and your last year of college. It used to be four thousand, but now it’s five. You’ve heard of inflation, haven’t you? Not only is the war killing people, it’s also starting to kill the economy.
But if I decide I don’t want to keep the money, it won’t be a hundred thousand anymore, it will be ninety-five thousand.
Not after a year it won’t. Interest is at six percent these days. By the time you graduate from college, the ninety-five thousand will be a hundred thousand again. It’s what we call invisible money.
I never knew you were such a schemer.
I’m not. You’re the schemer, Archie, but unless I do a little scheming myself, I won’t be able to keep up with you.
THE NEXT BIG blow that spring was losing Celia.
First Cause: By the time Aunt Mildred pulled Ferguson out of the burning house and found him new shelter at Brooklyn College, it had been one year since he and Celia had put their arms around each other and ventured their first kiss. Love had followed from that kiss, a big love that now dwarfed all other loves from the past, but in that year he had also learned how complicated loving Celia could be. When it was just the two of them alone together, Ferguson felt they were mostly in harmony, mostly able to overcome the differences that sometimes flared up between them by shedding their clothes and crawling into bed, and the bond of copious, lustful copulations kept them united even when they were at odds about how to live or what they imagined they were living for. Ferguson and Celia both had strong opinions on the matters that concerned them most, but those matters were often different matters in that Ferguson was preparing himself for a future in art and Celia was preparing herself for a future in science, and even though they both professed to admire what the other did (Ferguson had no doubt that Celia was enthusiastic about his work, Celia had no doubt that Ferguson was in awe of her immense academic brain), they couldn’t be all things to each other all the time.