Inheritance

Prologue

They were twelve that summer, playing ball in the batting cage their father had built them. Joe pitched low and fast and too far inside. Daniel jumped back and the ball hit the chain-link fence. “Ball three!”

“No way, that was a strike!” Joe yelled. “You swung.”

“That was reflex, you moron. You almost hit me!” Daniel tossed the ball back and Joe caught it easily, grinning.

“If I’d wanted to hit you, I would’ve,” Joe said, chuckling, and waited for his fraternal twin to step up to the plate.

“Yeah, right. Give me your best shot.” Daniel, blonde, blue-eyed and Joe’s complete opposite in looks, hunkered over the plate and screwed up his face in a way that always goaded Joe into the foolish.

Hot and thirsty, Joe pitched the ball and popped Daniel on the backside. He went down writhing in pain. “Ow, my leg!”

“I hit you in the butt, moron, not your leg,” Joe said, skeptically.

“You hit my tail bone. I can’t feel anything in my legs.” Joe waited and then Daniel did something Joe never saw him do. He cried.

“Daniel?” Joe ran and dropped to his knees putting his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Stay right here, I’ll go get—”

Daniel grabbed him, threw him down in a headlock and gave him a pink belly.

Joe struggled with him and finally pushed him off. Daniel rolled over on his back, laughing, and Joe tried to scowl, but his brother’s laughter was contagious. “Moron.”

“Pussy.”

Joe pounced and they kicked up dust beneath the oak trees while they wrestled.

Later at the dinner table, scrubbed and in fresh shirts, they said grace with their mother and older sister Kate. Mrs. Taylor served the rolls Joe had made earlier in the week.

“These are good, Joe,” she said, beaming. “You’re going to be a great chef someday, aren’t you?”

Joe ducked his head. He loved to cook, but it came with a price.

Daniel and Kate suppressed snickers. Joe shot them both a look of warning. He hated when his mother singled him out like this.

“Everybody has a talent,” she continued. Daniel is good at baseball. Kate is a straight-A student and, Joe, you cook very well.”

“Like a girl,” Daniel teased with a falsetto voice. Joe beaned him in the head with a cloverleaf roll. “I’m good at baseball, too!” he said.

Kate squealed and ducked as Daniel flung a roll back.

“Boys!” Mrs. Taylor’s voice was sharp, but it was a harmless warning. Joe took one more shot at Daniel and then they settled down. Their father walked in the door then and without a word Mrs. Taylor got up to make him a plate.

“Hi, Daddy!” Kate greeted him.

He hung his hat and suit coat on the stand by the door and kissed Kate on the top of her head before he sat at the table with them. It was the first time they’d seen him in three days, which was not unusual and part of his job as a salesman. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief. His dark pinstriped slacks were creased from much sitting and he smelled of cigarettes and fresh cologne. Mrs. Taylor served him his dinner and then busied herself at the sink.

“So what have you boys been up to today?”

“I hit five home runs,” Daniel said.

“That’s my boy!”

“Joe struck me out just as many times, too.”

“Really?”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said.

“Sounds like you’ve been practicing. Keep it up and you’ll be as good as your brother some day.” He took out his wallet and gave twenty dollars to each of the children. “Why don’t you kids go to the movies this weekend?”

“Cool!” Daniel said.

“Thanks, Dad,” Kate got up and kissed him. Their mother made a choking sound behind them.

“What was that, Margaret?”

Mrs. Taylor didn’t answer and Kate and Daniel distracted their father with talk about school, dances, baseball and whatever else they could think of. Joe took his dishes to the sink and saw his mother’s tears before she could hide them.

“You know what I did today?” Mr. Taylor said to all of them. “I closed the deal on two accounts that I have been negotiating for months. You know what that means? I can take your mother on that cruise she’s been dreaming of and you three can each have a five hundred dollar allowance for school this year.”

“That’s great, dad!” Daniel said.

“Kate, you’re going to look real smart in all those new clothes this year when you start high school.”

“Thanks, Daddy.”

“Can I help wash and wax the 1950?” Daniel asked. Their father collected Chevrolets and kept them in the extra large detached garage.

“Do a good job and it just might be yours someday.”

“Cool!”

He gave Joe a long glance. “I suppose I’ll give you your grandmother’s old bread board,” he said with a laugh.

“That’s enough, Joe,” their mother spoke to their father and the three kids quieted and left the room. Joe and Daniel went out on the back porch steps. They each sat against a rail post and stared up at the stars. Undertones of hate drifted out from the kitchen.

Joe said, “Who do you think would win if they got into a fight? Shazam or Superman?”

Daniel stared at him as if the answer were obvious. “Superman, of course.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s been around a lot longer. Hey look, there’s the Big Dipper.”

Joe studied the sky. “Do you think there really is a God?”

After awhile Daniel said, “Yeah. I think so.”

“Really?”

“There has to be.”

“What if there isn’t?” The answer was mysterious and frighteningly unknowable.

“Don’t talk like that, Joe.”

“All right.”

“Don’t talk like that ever.”

Joe gazed up at the stars and the unanswered question sat heavily between them. “Do you think God hears when people are in trouble?”

“He’s supposed to.”

“How do you know for sure?”

Daniel sounded irritated. “I just do.”

Joe didn’t say anything for a while. Then, he said, “If Dad and Superman were in a fight, who do you think would win?”

“Be quiet, Joe.”

“Do you think Superman would win because he’s older?”

“Age doesn’t matter in this case. Superman isn’t real. Dad is.”

“God is both.”

“What?”

“God is real and make believe.”

“What are you talking about?”

“God doesn’t hear us.”

“He hears us. Mom says God hears everyone, but he doesn’t always answer the way we’d like.”

“Why not?”

“Because he knows better.”

The disappointment overwhelmed Joe, but he didn’t say anything. How could God ignore people he loved? Why didn’t he help them? Why doesn’t he answer me? But Joe didn’t share any of this with Daniel. It was the kind of thing he knew would upset him. Some thoughts were best left unsaid, especially when they left you feeling older than you really were and all alone.

Soon Daniel drew him out of his solitude and they took to bantering again, moving effortlessly from topic to topic: movies, baseball, girls, cars and baseball again. But Joe could not ignore the very real scene unfolding in the kitchen. The hushed and angry voices of their parents filtered out through the screen door.

“That’s not good enough for you, is it?” he heard their father say.

“Don’t make this about money, Joe. It’s not about money.”

“You’re never going to trust me again, are you?”

“You haven’t given me any reason to trust you!”

Mr. Taylor stepped out on the porch and stood there furious for a moment, turning over the loose change in his pocket. He stared at the boys without really seeing them. “Don’t ever get married, either of you. It’s not worth the hell.” He left them abruptly and walked toward the car, pulling the keys out of his pocket, and then he tripped over something in the yard.

Joe knew immediately what it was and tensed.

“Jesus Fucking Christ! Who left this lying around?” he said, holding a bat.

Joe winced. His father came and stood before him using the bat to punctuate the air for emphasis while he yelled, “How many times have I told you to put this away when you’re finished using it?”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough—just ask your mother. Sorry is never good enough!”

Mrs. Taylor stepped out on the porch. “Don’t start taking it out on the kids!”

“Who said I’m taking it out on the kids? I’m just doing my fatherly duty. Isn’t that what you want? You want a real man around the house! You want your sons to be real men, don’t you?”

Then, Joe said, “You don’t know what a real man is.” It seemed to him that his voice came from somewhere outside his body and he didn’t know why he had said it. He was just tired of the fighting. There had been peace while his father was away. He wanted that peace again.

He was caught in his father’s glare. “What did you say?”

He said nothing in return and cringed when his father jerked him to his feet by the neck of his t-shirt and shoved him toward the garage.

“Dad, wait! I’m the one who forgot to put the bat away!”

“Stay out of it Daniel. Your brother needs to be accountable for his mistakes, isn’t that right, Margaret? A real man—something Joe seems to be an authority on—is accountable for his mistakes, no matter how many times he says he’s sorry, he still has to pay for them.”

She tried to protest, but he cut her off. “He doesn’t need you to coddle him, Margaret! Didn’t you hear him? Joe already knows all there is to know about being a real man!”

“Don’t take it out on him. He’s just a boy!”

“You can’t have it both ways. You can’t baby him and expect him to grow into a man. And he knows what it takes to be a real man, so butt out, Margaret!”

Joe ran for the garage. His father followed. “So you want to make a fool out of me do you, boy?”

Later, he crawled into the bottom bunk and was careful to lie on his side.

“Joe?” Daniel whispered. “Are you all right?”

Joe didn’t say anything. He wasn’t ashamed and he wasn’t humiliated; he refused to be. He hadn’t given into his father. He hadn’t cried out; he’d taken it like a man. And it had been worse because he hadn’t made a sound, but that was all right. For the first time he saw hurt in his father’s eyes. He knew now how to get back at him.

Joe closed his eyes and willed dark emptiness, anything but feeling. As far as he was concerned, both Superman and God were dead and so was he.

Chapter One

For the first time in years, Joe Taylor left the bar and grill he owned before closing. The impending solitude of the house that waited for him in the California foothills near Salinas, though, made him question his sobriety and self-imposed celibacy. He found himself taking deep concentrated breaths. For Joe Taylor there was never much compromise, it was all or nothing. He either acted on his feelings or he bottled them up.

Joe pulled up beside the postbox on the road near his house and reached in for the mail, sifting through it for a birthday card. He saw nothing. He tossed it all on the passenger seat. The darkened country cottage that was hidden in the California foothills between Salinas and Monterey looked as empty and isolated as Joe felt. He parked the Jeep.

In the kitchen he grabbed a bottle of water that fit into his hand just like a bottle of beer. Joe took a long, hard swallow. “Red, if you only knew,” he said, thinking of the woman he’d turned down at the bar and grill.

He hit the ‘play’ button on the answering machine on the kitchen counter, turned up the volume, shrugged out of his brown leather jacket and tossed it on the sofa, then stepped into the adjacent bedroom to change. A few old messages played that he hadn’t yet deleted including one in particular that he’d forgotten that tempted him now.

“Hi. I’m calling for Joe Taylor—the Joe Taylor that Trish knows. If this is the right guy, I just wanted to let you know that you’ve been missed at the parties. Come see us sometime.”

Joe tensed when he heard the familiar voice. He’d forgotten that he hadn’t deleted the message. It was over a month old and he hadn’t been to one of Trish’s parties in four years. He’d been thirty then—a big day.

He looked at himself in the mirror above the bureau and ran his hand back through his hair. Now, at thirty-four, he looked an awful lot like his father. At thirty-four he was the same age his father was when he’d committed suicide.

He could see his father slumped on the steering wheel, head pressed against the column, his eyes open and vacant.

He knew that’s what his mother and sister expected of him. He thought that was the reason they were ignoring his birthday this year.

“Joe, hi. We’ll be by earlier than usual tomorrow...” His sister droned on about one of her rental properties. Joe finished changing into a pair of favorite sweats and sat in the middle of the sofa and tried to relax, downing a long swallow of water. Kate had made no mention of his birthday.

“This is your mother, Joe. Will you be joining us for Sunday dinner this weekend? I wouldn’t ask, but it seems that you no longer remember where home is.”

Joe smiled bitterly. “Yeah, I do, Mom. Home is where the heart is.” He crossed the lawn to the house and saw his mother through an open upstairs window folding laundry. Then he heard the shot. Joe swilled the last of the water and wished for something stronger, something numbing, something he couldn’t have.

“Maybe you can think of someone besides yourself for a change. You know it’s your step-father’s and my anniversary this weekend.”

“He’s your husband, not my father.” Joe sneered.

“Hutch and I are getting married.”

“This weekend? But Mom, I’m graduating from high school. It’s my birthday.”

“Maybe you can think of someone beside yourself this time, Joe.”

“I won’t beg. Just try not to act like your father, Joe. Show up for a change.”

The answering machine clicked off and Joe stared at the ceiling pain stricken. “Yeah, Joe. Happy birthday, you selfish son of a bitch.”

He could see his father, slumped on the steering wheel. “I ought to be exactly like my father just to piss her off. I ought to be dead, too.”

Joe looked down at himself, at his lap. “Hell.”

The line between pity and pleasure was infinitesimal and the relief would be short-lived. In about fifteen or twenty minutes, he’d be feeling worse than he did right then.

“Do you have a girlfriend, son?”

That was the important question. That’s what the whole afternoon was about. His father should have said, “What’s the difference between you and your brother?” They didn’t talk about Daniel anymore.

“Yeah. There’s this girl I was thinking of asking to the prom...”

Joe thought of the redhead at the bar and grill and thought of what he could have done to prove to her just how much interest he had. It didn’t matter how much guilt or frustration it would cause him. He reasoned that at least he wasn’t drinking or sleeping around again.

He thought about the redhead and her girlfriend some more and he thought about hot tubs. He thought about Trish’s parties and women he’d been with and a myriad of sexual experiences he’d had. He thought about Trish, about her bedroom, about the last time he’d been with a woman, about all the women at once, watching and wanting him.

He thought himself right into a state of arousal without even touching himself. The tension was high tonight. The release would be well deserved.

He thought about it some more weighing the pleasure against the guilt.

“Hell, with it,” Joe finally said, standing up. He headed for the shower. “Hell if I’m going to waste my birthday with a little hand jockeying.” If Joe Taylor was breaking rules tonight, he was going to break them all.

Joe sat in the Jeep for a moment staring at the Pebble Beach estate. It alone made coming to the party worth it. The variety of contrasting architecture made it a glamorous spectacle, one that not even his mother had the power to veto. The bottom line was that Trish had more money than Hutch, his mother’s second husband. And money made all the difference.

He hadn’t been to a party in years and yet it carried on as if time had not. Only the slightest part of Joe tried to argue him out of the plan. He knew the trouble he would get into, but that wasn’t enough. All he had was his restaurant and he didn’t care too much about it right then. He’d done what he was supposed to do, he’d lived the right way and he still felt nothing. Tonight Joe Taylor was going to feel something again.

He carried the corsage to the door, trying hard not to sweat on it. He knew what Tina expected tonight. She’d made that clear. He knew that he wanted it too, but still some small part of him wished he had asked Stephanie to the prom, instead.

Joe walked alone through the cobblestone courtyard, past the fountain and climbing rosebushes, ignoring his pleading conscience. When he rang the doorbell, he expected Trish to answer, but another woman, predictably model perfect, answered the door.