Bitter Business (11 page)

He bought all the property at the end of the Depression for pennies on the dollar.”

“When Daniel told me that you were a close-knit family he wasn’t kidding.”

“After today it’s beginning to feel like a variation on a Sicilian knife fight. You know, where they take two guys who want to kill each other, tie them together by their left hands, and give them each a very long dagger for their right. We’re having some problems with one of our chrome plating lines. I spent the whole afternoon locked in the conference room with my father and brothers. Right now we’re very long on blame and very short on solutions. Anyway, enough about that. Come on in and meet the gang and I’ll get you a drink.”

The house was very pretty, with floors of polished oak and beautiful woodwork that had been meticulously stripped and refinished. There was a gorgeous stained glass window that I glimpsed at the top of the stairs.

“When I said Mount McKinley Expedition I wasn’t kidding,” Dagny declared as we came to the end of a long hall. “I don’t know how I got talked into taking a bunch of juvenile delinquents on a climbing trip this summer, but that’s what I’m going to do—provided the three of them can figure out how to read a topographical map between now and then.”

In the large, open kitchen three teenagers pored over a set of maps that had been unfurled on a central island. An oval rack hung with gleaming copper pots was suspended above them.

“Meet the next generation of Superior Plating and Specialty Chemicals,” Dagny announced jovially.

“Oh please, Mom,” complained a pretty girl of sixteen. “Kate Millholland, this is my daughter, Claire Gil-christ. I’d also like you to meet my niece, Mary Beth Cavanaugh—she’s the oldest of my brother Eugene’s brood. And this is Peter McCallister, my sister Lydia’s son.”

I pronounced myself happy to meet them all. Claire and Mary Beth seemed to be about the same age, though Dagny’s daughter was obviously the livelier of the two. Peter was a good-looking, but sullen young man of fifteen.

“We’re planning a technical ascent of Mount McKinley as soon as school’s over,” Claire explained while her mother went over to the stove to give something a stir. “We’ve been planning it for months. We even did some technical climbing in Arizona over Christmas break and we didn’t do too badly.”

“If you don’t count the crevasse where Peter slipped, got tangled in the rope, and practically hanged himself,” teased Mary Beth, beginning to roll up the maps.

“If you had been keeping your mind on the belay and not drooling over that French climber that passed us...” whined Peter, sharply reminding me of Lydia.

“Come on, guys,” Dagny admonished. “We’re a team, remember? We all make mistakes. Remember all the equipment we had to leave on top of Flatiron because you insisted that you’d figured out a way down, Mary Beth? Or how about the time I made you all get cleaned up in that lake when we were in Quantico and it turned out that the water was full of leeches?”

The Mount McKinley Expedition shuddered in unison at the recollection.

“That smells very good,” I said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No. It’s all done. It’s my home-cured corned beef. I make it from my grandmother’s recipe. I told you, I’m having my dad and Peaches for dinner tomorrow night, so I’m using you guys as guinea pigs. Kate, why don’t you just go ahead and have a seat over there?”

I did as I was bidden, taking my place with the rest of them at a round table of well-worn oak.

“If you’ll just hand me your plates, I’ll serve everyone. This platter is too heavy to pass,” said Dagny.

“Aren’t we going to say grace, Aunt Dagny?” Mary Beth inquired reproachfully. I remembered what Babbage had said about Eugene and his wife being deeply religious.

“Give me a break!” groaned Peter.

“Why don’t you say the blessing, Mary Beth,” Dagny replied equably.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” she said as Dagny and Claire bowed their heads and crossed themselves. Peter shot an angry look at Mary Beth, truculently bent his head, and began a minute examination of his fingernails.

“Bless us, O Lord for these, thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ the Lord,” intoned Mary Beth. “And please speed the soul of Cecilia Dobson to thy safekeeping. Amen.”

“Who the hell is Cecilia Datsun?” Peter demanded, reaching for the breadbasket.

“It’s Dobson, you dope,” Claire replied. “A Datsun’s a car. For your information Cecilia Dobson was Mother’s secretary—the one who dropped dead at the office.”

“My dad said she died of a drug overdose,” reported Mary Beth in an awed whisper.

“That’s not the worst part,” Claire chimed in. “Her family won’t even pay for her funeral. Can you imagine?”

“So what’s going to happen to her?” Mary Beth asked.

“She is going to have a very nice funeral tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock at St. Bernadette’s Cemetery,” Dagny informed her. “We’ve even persuaded your grandfather to close the office early so that the people who worked with her can attend.” She handed me a plate of corned beef and cabbage. “I was wondering whether you might want to come, Kate.”

“Of course,” I said, my good manners getting the better of me.

“Is the company paying for it?” Peter demanded unpleasantly.

“No. I’m paying for it myself, not that it’s anybody’s business,” Dagny replied tersely. I don’t think she was annoyed with her nephew. It was just that there was something in the way that Peter had asked the question that once again brought his mother very sharply to mind.

“They seem like nice kids,” I said, once we’d taken our coffee cups into the living room. A fire burned merrily behind the grate, the flames reflected in the polished surface of the baby grand piano. On the low table in front of us was a spray of dendrobium orchids in a crystal vase and a plate of chocolates. I helped myself.

“These are wonderful,” I said, taking a bite.

“They’re from Belgium. I have a climbing friend who sends them to me.”

“I can’t believe you’re really taking your nieces and nephew up Mount McKinley.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about the kids. In some ways they’re better technical climbers than I am. They’re certainly in better shape. Of course, the sport’s changed so much since I was their age. Now they all go to the climbing gym and work out on the wall—they feel like they can climb anything. I’m just going along to slow them down.”

“Claire seems like a neat kid. She looks like you.”

“Do you really think so? I always imagine she looks like her dad.”

“Where does he live?”

“We’re not divorced. He died in a climbing accident before Claire was born.”

“I’m surprised you still climb.”

“I didn’t for a long time. When Claire was little I was afraid. But when she got older she got interested. She’s a lot like Jeremy, her dad, that way. I guess from time to time everybody has got to feed the rat.”

“What’s feeding the rat?”

“It’s a climbing expression. The rat is that voice inside your head that whispers, ‘Go for it. Take the risk.’ Claire hears the rat loud and clear, just like her dad. You know, there were times when we were climbing in Arizona this winter, when I’d look up the rope at her and swear I was seeing Jeremy. There’s something about their climbing styles that’s very similar.”

“It must be nice to be able to remember him that way,” I said, feeling jealous.

“Daniel told me that you’d lost your husband to cancer. Was it long ago?”

“Four years this past November. We weren’t married very long.”

“Any kids?”

“No. There wasn’t any time. He got sick right after we were married. You know, when he was first diagnosed I ]0iew that it would be terrible—his illness, his death. In some ways these last years have been worse. At least during the crisis you have the crisis to deal with. I was completely unprepared for... the emptiness that followed.”

“I understand completely. It was the same way after Jeremy died. A numbness sets in. I was five months pregnant when he died and everyone kept talking to me about the baby—telling me that that’s what I had to live for. They were right, of course. But at the time the baby was still an abstraction. Only my loss was real. I remember I used to go to the mailbox and there’d be mail for him— come-ons, solicitations, just junk. I’d stand there with grocery circulars in my hands and cry.”

“I still wear Russell’s old shirts sometimes when I’m just bumming around at home. I know it’s crazy, but they’re all that’s left.”

“Do you still keep in touch with his family?”

“His mother and I go to the cemetery together every year. She’s this old Polish lady who doesn’t speak any English, but we go and lay flowers on his grave and cry together. I know it doesn’t do either of us any good, but we can’t stop going. Everybody tells me that I have to move on....”

“You already are, you know. You don’t know it but you are. You take one breath and then another. You get up and you go to work. You eat and you sleep and you do what you have to do. It’s not the life you planned, but it’s a life. And in a while you’re going to look back and realize that it’s not so bad. It just takes time.”

“And you never married again?” I asked.

“No.”

“Ever tempted?”

“Not really. Well, maybe once—the Belgian who sends me the chocolates. We still climb together once or twice a year.”

“But that’s it?”

“I’ve gotten used to doing things my way, making my own decisions, having my freedom. I have my work, my house, my daughter.... I have enough family for four lifetimes. I couldn’t really see how I was going to be able to make a relationship work with a man who lives four thousand miles away in another country. In the end it turned out to be not as important as I thought.”

“And are you happy?”

Dagny thought a minute before answering.

“Yes,” she said finally. “I am happy. And who’s to say what life would have been like with Jeremy? For all I know he might have turned out to be a womanizer or a drunk. Maybe I’d have come to resent having a globetrotting rock climber for a husband once I had a house full of kids. That’s the problem with being widowed young. You mourn not just the man, but the ideal of the life you were going to share together. You never had a chance to find out if your Polish mother-in-law would have driven you crazy or if you and your husband would have fought like cats and dogs. In the beginning everything is perfect. You look at your life and it seems complete... and then in an instant, it all gets taken away.”

9

The fire had died down. The bottle of wine and the plate of chocolates were empty. Mary Beth and Peter had been gotten home safely and Dagny’s daughter, Claire, had long since gone up to bed. Outside, it had started to snow.

“What can I tell you about my family?” Dagny sighed. “They’re my family and I love them. But that doesn’t make me stupid. I think I can see them for what they are. My father is a stubborn son of a bitch who has been getting his way for so long that he’s come to believe that if he wants something to happen, it will. And you’ve got to hand it to him. The number of things he’s accomplished and overcome just by sheer force of will is staggering— his alcoholic father, a fire that leveled the plant the first year he turned a profit, an all-out war with the Teamsters—I’ll never forget it. I was still a teenager. They blew up Dad’s favorite Cadillac in front of our house but he still wouldn’t give in. In all those years there’s only one thing that’s ever defeated him.”

“What’s that?”

“My brother Jimmy’s death. Did Daniel tell you we had an older brother? He died when I was thirteen.”

“Daniel told me about what happened.”

“Losing Jimmy is the one thing that Dad can’t change or fix, and every time he looks at my brother Philip you can see the disappointment in his face.”

“How sad for Philip.”

“Yes. He’s spent his whole life being the good son who’s never been good enough. I’m the first one to admit that Philip is not an easy man to get along with. He’s petty and humorless and has a mean streak like the stripe down a skunk’s back. But I don’t think there’s been a day since the accident that Philip hasn’t wondered if he’d just been able to swim a little faster, if he’d just been a little stronger, tried a little harder, Jimmy would still be alive. The irony of it is that of all of us, Philip and my dad are the most alike. But Philip’s been in Dad’s shadow for so long it’s robbed him of his self-confidence. After more than twenty years of working together Philip is totally unable to communicate with Dad. He’s actually very accomplished. Did you know he has degrees in chemistry and mechanical engineering?”

“I had no idea.”

“He’s done incredible things with our specialty chemicals division over the last ten years. It’s been his baby. Last year specialty chemicals accounted for more than twenty percent of revenues.”

“That should make your father happy.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t. It makes him feel threatened. Plating is what he knows, and dammit, what’s good enough for him should be good enough for his son. It doesn’t help that Philip’s biggest successes have been new compounds that have nothing to do with plating—a solvent for industrial cleaning, a special lubricant for pumping equipment, and a new surfacing agent for a large specialty market.” She sighed. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but nobody ever said that families are logical.”