Sam called Susanna to give her the good news. “An early Christmas present, of sorts,” he said. The reports from the genetic counselor showed no “recessive disorders” percolating in their genes, no AIDS or HIV antibodies steeping in his fluids. Sam wondered why his doctor had insisted on the screenings—probably to scare him. Neither family had a history of genetic diseases, not counting alcoholism and adultery on the Goffe side; nor were they overly inbred for pre-revolutionary whites. The predominant strain in both families was British, but there had been enough German, Scandinavian, French, and Dutch intermarriage to water the stock. Susanna’s mother insisted that her grandmother, Susanna’s great-grandmother, was an Italian opera singer. “Her name was de Campo,” Prudence said. “They changed it to Van Camp to purge the Wop.” Susanna didn’t believe her. She had never known her mother to tell the truth when a lie was more satisfying. Her father, ashamed of his regicide ancestor, claimed his mother was descended from Ivanhoe. She had said so. “Don’t you mean Walter Scott?” Susanna had asked. Her father insisted it was Ivanhoe. “My great-grandfather was Wilfred,” he said. On the Falkes side, Rupert was the only wild card, the secret ingredient in their genetic gumbo. “Probably to the good,” Susanna said. “I hope the baby has your Arctic eyes.”
The report presented a problem, not thought through at the time Sam filled out the forms. At the last minute, he had ordered a DNA test for himself. He wouldn’t have taken the test on his own, at least he didn’t think so, but it had struck him as skulking and mean not to have asked for it when every other body part was being genetically scrutinized. Harry was incredulous. “Why would you do that?” he said. “You chewed me out for even thinking about it. It would be humiliating to our mother and insulting to our father’s memory.”
“It doesn’t tell us anything about Dad, you told me that, only about us and the Wolinskis,” Sam said. “The test can’t prove Dad is their dad, or even our dad.”
“Right,” Harry said. “We’ll find out we’re all brothers but Dad isn’t our common father. Mom and Vera had, between them, seven children with the same man who we don’t know.” He paused. “Or maybe we’re not related to them and none of us are Dad’s sons.”
Sam stared at his brother. “I was curious,” Sam said. “Aren’t you?”
“What do we do?”
“We meet with them, or one of them, and talk about it,” Sam said.
“Do we tell Mom we’re doing this?” Harry said.
“Mom thinks they’re Dad’s, I’m pretty sure,” Sam said.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I think we have to,” Sam said.
“Report back to me after you’ve talked to her,” Harry said. “I’m not getting burned again.”
Eleanor didn’t show surprise when Sam told her he’d been tested. “I would have guessed Tom, in a paroxysm of extreme altruism, to be the one to get the test and then push for a meeting with the Wolinskis. It doesn’t matter. I understand that you would want to know. I prefer not knowing, and doing what I want about them.”
“Do you want to know what we find out?” Sam asked.
“I suppose so,” Eleanor said. “After you’ve gone to so much trouble.”
“Why aren’t you curious?” Sam asked.
“Dad never said anything to me about Vera or the boys. Either it happened and he didn’t want me to know or it didn’t happen. I trusted him, I continue to trust him. We were on a need-to-know basis.”
“But if it did happen, don’t you think he might have said something at some point, before he died?” Sam said.
“Dad and I weren’t confessional, not with each other, not with anyone. We took cues from each other.”
“You didn’t want to know his secrets?” Sam said.
“No. And I didn’t want him to know mine.”
“When do we learn yours?” Sam asked.
Eleanor didn’t answer.
“Weren’t you upset by Vera’s claim?” Sam asked.
Eleanor shook her head. “It came after,” she said. “It didn’t change the life I had with your father.”
“I don’t understand you at all,” Sam said.
“It’s the angle,” Eleanor said. “You can’t see me from where you’re standing.”
—
Edward Phipps lived to be eighty-four. He died three years before Rupert, a blessing. The loss of Rupert would have pierced his armored complacency. He died at Mrs. Cantwell’s, in her bed. “He said he had a bad headache and went to lie down,” Mrs. Cantwell told Eleanor. “When I went into the bedroom, he was gone.” She wanted his death notice to say he died in her apartment. Rupert told her that wouldn’t be possible.
Mr. Phipps’s widower years were happy ones. He had Eleanor, Rupert, and the boys down the street on the Upper West Side and Marina Cantwell across the park on the Upper East. He was too early for Viagra but he lost weight, worked out with a trainer, and walked with a springy step. Marina was kind to him, admiring and affectionate. She always laughed at his jokes. She had little use for any of the Falkeses, a boon to all of them. She thought Edward might marry her if Eleanor and the boys were out of the way. She kept lobbying him to move “back to the East Side with all your good friends.” When she complained that the Falkeses always came first, ahead of her, Edward would pat her hand. “Now, now, kitten,” he’d say. “Let’s not ruin a lovely evening.”
The funeral was at St. Thomas. The boys took over the planning. Rupert and Eleanor were heartsick. Harry, who had become a serious churchgoer in the hopes of making Christians of his daughters, made all the burial arrangements. Sam planned the service and chose the music. Tom read the Old Testament portion. Will read e.e. cummings’s untitled poem that begins “Buffalo Bill’s defunct.” Eleanor had asked for it. Jack played taps, surprising the priests by reducing most of the mourners to tears. “Danny Boy,” with bagpipes, was usually the reliable weeper. Rupert sat at the far end of the front row so as not to be observed.
After the service, friends and family stopped by the Falkeses’ apartment. Mrs. Cantwell and Louisa arrived in the first wave. Mrs. Cantwell settled herself in the middle of the living room, in a large wing chair, and prepared to receive her comforters. Louisa brought her mother a glass of wine, then flitted restlessly around the room, picking up photographs and putting them down in different places. She was dressed in full mourning: a black stiff satin suit that crinkled when she walked, black hose, black gloves, a large black hat, and a black draping veil. Spotting Eleanor by the kitchen, she sprung at her. Eleanor had not seen Louisa since her wedding fifteen years earlier, when she’d been all in white. “It’s strange we never meet,” Louisa said. “Mum used to say she didn’t like mixing apples and oranges. I never knew which family was apples. She didn’t want to share your father with you. You were the other family.”