Inheritance

Ben didn’t sleep well the night before accepting the inheritance. The morning was grey, rainy, and windy, and the raindrops ran down the car’s windshield, mingling and untangling in endless patterns. He sat behind the wheel, unremittingly fidgeting with the key in his hand as he stared out into the gloominess of the city. The trees hung with the weight of the rain, and the few people who were out on the streets were hidden behind brightly patterned umbrellas that covered their faces. It was still early, the clock on the dashboard showed 7:40 am, and Ben sighed and ran his hands over his eyes in an attempt to shake the tiredness from his mind, the weariness he felt at the prospect of taking the drive. The reflection of his face in the rear-view mirror startled him as he lowered his hands, the dark circles underneath his eyes, the tangled hair that slowly began to fade along his forehead. The death of his mother made him stare into his own accelerating maturity, and he averted his eyes. He turned the key and the engine started, with the radio turning on automatically. “So, it looks like we have another rainy day ahead of us today, the sun won’t be coming out until the weekend, it seems,” the voice of the newscaster announced, and Ben stifled an exasperated yawn. He slowly backed out of the parking spot in front of his apartment building while intermittingly looking down on his phone where he opened the chat with Michelle, copied the address she had sent him the day before, and pasted it into the navigation app. The cool electronic woman’s voice informed him that the drive would take approximately fifteen minutes, and he propped up the phone between the dashboard and the cupholder with his right hand while turning the wheel with his left. Ben felt like he should know the way to his sister’s apartment, but the building in front of which he eventually stopped seemed unfamiliar, the radiant white paint and the large windows reminding him of the new, well-paying job in human resources Michelle had told him about the last time they had spoken on the phone. It must have been a few weeks ago, they hadn’t spoken since the call from the lawyer, only communicated via email because she had been away on a business trip in Canada. Michelle had gone to university, graduated summa cum laude with her management degree, and had found her first job only weeks later, leaving her older brother feeling like he’d failed to remember when she had grown up so suddenly. But he still recognized the woman who closed the door to the building behind her, Michelle’s slim and tall figure, her dark coat, and the large brown bag that she carried over her shoulder. She held up her hand over her eyes to shield her view from the rain, took quick steps towards the car and hastily opened the door to the passenger’s side. “Hey,” she said, sat down, and swiftly closed the door before the rain could leave traces on the seat. Ben extended his arm over her shoulder, and they hugged awkwardly, her right hand still holding onto the bag, his left hand gripping the steering wheel. When Ben moved away after a second, he studied his sister’s face and found new lines in it, but the startling brightness of her blue eyes and the prominence of her cheeks were charmingly framed by a short haircut. “You cut your hair,” he remarked, and Michelle smiled with her lips closed. “Yeah, I did that a while ago though. Too much work to take care of the mob I used to have,” she said, her tone business-like as she leaned back into her seat. Ben nodded, unsure of what to respond, and picked up his phone. “Do you have the address?” he asked, and Michelle pulled out a black binder from her bag, a collection of neatly sorted documents. She read out an address to Ben, who typed it into the app and then pressed Start route. “Approximately one hour and ten minutes,” the female voice announced, and Ben put the car in first gear, led them down the main road, and then followed the signs towards the highway. The radio was still on, now playing a pop song in which the singer insisted on turbulent vocal ornamentations, and they listened in silence, Michelle’s eyes averted towards the road. Ben cleared his throat. “So,” he asked, “How are you?” Michelle glanced at him. “Good, I’ve been good,” she said vaguely, “I’ve been talking with the lawyer again, he said he’d meet us at the house at around ten, so we still have plenty of time to get there.” Ben nodded, his eyes skimming over the road sign ahead, then he turned onto the highway that would lead them southwards. “Thank you for taking care of everything,” he said while merging the car into the lane to their left, “You’re much better at organizing this whole thing than I would have been.” They sat in silence for a few minutes before Michelle said: “Well, I do think I have more to gain from this than you have, so it was only reasonable.” Her tone was factual, removed, and Ben pressed his lips together before responding. “Sure, I guess you two were a bit closer in the end.” The silence expanded between them again, and Ben kept his eyes fixated on the road ahead. He hadn’t spoken to their mother in a few years now, not since their last meeting on Christmas, when he had left her house with his then-girlfriend Tracy on Christmas Day in a furious haze. He had been cursing all the way back to their apartment which Tracy had left a few days later, leaving Ben to spend New Year’s alone with their dog Nacho. 

He exhaled audibly and glanced over at his sister. “Do you think she’ll leave you the house, then?” he asked, copying her distant tone. Michelle shrugged, but Ben knew he had hit a nerve. She had never been skilled at hiding her emotions. “Well,” he went on, talking faster without meaning to, “It’s a nice house, I’m sure you could sell it to some desperate family for a good price.” Michelle looked over at him now, her eyes dismissive. “That’s such an insensitive thing to say, Ben,” she said coldly, “But I’m honestly not surprised, with the way you treated her.” He grimaced and tightened his hands around the steering wheel. He knew exactly why he had been unhappy at the prospect of driving up to the house together when it was so obvious his sister would bring up the mistakes he had made in her eyes. He took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice down. “Look, she wanted money from me that I didn’t have, and I refused. I don’t understand why you’re still so caught up on that.” Michelle rolled her eyes in exasperation and irritably tapped her fingers against her leg. “She’s your mother!” she said, her voice insistent, “She’s our mother, and I can’t believe you still think this way after everything that’s happened.” Ben let out an aggravated sigh. “Well, you win. You had money to give to her, and now you get to keep the house and her cats and whatever else she passed onto you,” he said, his voice raised. “And you can sell the house and make more money from it while I’m still living in that damn one-room apartment, coming home after formulating consumer-friendly insurance policies all day. Great, that sounds just great!” Michelle didn’t respond for a while, and they sat in silence as they passed by a few road signs advertising the next exit, the air tense between them. When Michelle spoke again, her voice was softer than before. “I don’t want to sell the house, Ben.” She hesitated before she went on, “I want to live in it.” He stared at her, perplexed, and then let out a short laugh that was almost genuine. “In that house, all by yourself?” Michelle faltered. “No, not all by myself. I… I’m seeing someone. And we want to move in together,” she said, and her eyes were nervous when she watched her brother, who looked back at her in disbelief. “You’re in a relationship? I thought you didn’t care about that stuff. You’ve never even mentioned a guy in high school or during university, and you always seem so busy with your career and making more than any of those men in suits.” He smiled bitterly, but the tone of his voice was approving. Michelle didn’t respond, and seemed to be deep in thought before she jerkily ran her hands over her thighs. “What’s his name, then?” Ben pressed and his sister let out a restrained, indecisive sound. “Mhm,” she began, and searched her brother’s gaze when he looked over to her. “Holly,” she said with quiet desperation, “Her name is Holly, and we’ve been together since last summer.” The silence in the vehicle was amplified to its extreme, and Ben stared at her for a few long seconds, trying to find the credibility of what she had just said in her face before he turned his eyes back on the road, moving his hands so hastily that he accidentally hit the indicator. The car behind them honked when he corrected his mistake, and the abrupt sound seemed to bring him back. “You’re gay?” he asked incredulously, his eyes quickly moving back and forth between the road and his sister. She nodded hesitantly at first, then more confidently, still running her hands over her legs as if to calm herself with the continuity of the movement. “Mm,” Ben uttered inconclusively, and Michelle looked at him irritably before speaking, her voice accelerating. “I’m not telling you this for you to make more mean comments about your family, Ben. Frankly, I don’t care what you think as long as you let me have whatever mom has given me,” she said hoarsely and ran her hands over her forehead, closing her eyes for a minute. Deep down, Michelle knew how slim the chances were that her mother had left anything to her brother after their confrontation that Christmas, and since meeting Holly, she had tried to convince her to leave the house to the more responsible, more sensible, more mature child. She had done everything right, had pursued the career her mother had approved of, had called her every Sunday, and had even tried to fall in love with men she met at the bar downtown just to make her happy. But there was no way of telling if her efforts had been enough, if the drive down to the old house with its worn-down furniture and the pebbly driveway would be worth the argument with her brother over whom she had fallen in love with. Ben still didn’t say anything and looked out to the road ahead. “I’m sure she’s nice,” he finally said without conviction and vaguely smiled at Michelle before turning his attention back to the phone’s navigation. She briefly reciprocated his smile but felt the discrepancy between them like a physical barrier. “Another half hour,” he remarked, his voice as detached as the female computer. They both looked ahead, following the passing trees, distant houses, and the grey clouds with their eyes. It had stopped raining, but a few raindrops were still running down the windshield, chasing each other, briefly intertwining, and liberating themselves from the other. Neither of them knew what was waiting for them down by their mother’s house, and the hopes they had entangled with the worries that what they had done had been too much or too little.