No Relation (40 page)
Authors: Terry Fallis
In the three weeks that followed, life returned to at least a semblance of normal, whatever that means. I’d pretty well moved in by then. It was nice. Life was good.
One night at about 7:30, while I was cleaning a few cake pans in the kitchen, a text arrived from Sarah.
“You didn’t pick up an hour ago. Dad and I just landed and are on our way to your place. Be there.”
I checked my phone and sure enough, there was a missed call from two hours earlier. Marie and I had been out running a few café-bakery errands and I’d left my phone on the counter.
I texted back and turned to Marie, who was already drying the cake pans I’d just washed.
“I gotta head home for a while. Dad and Sarah are on their way.”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I have no idea. I’ll be back afterwards, so leave this, and I’ll finish up then.”
“You’re very good with a scouring brush.”
“Yes, I know,” I replied. “I’ve worked hard at it. It’s one of my great assets.”
They arrived at 8:15. Dad was through the door first, with Sarah trailing, wearing an odd expression on her face. Neither had any bags.
“I’ve been a damn fool and I’m sorry,” Dad said as he collapsed on the couch.
I looked at Sarah. She just shrugged.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I settled in the chair facing him. Sarah stood leaning on the bookcase.
Dad said nothing but handed me a clear plastic sleeve enclosing a document. I saw the University of Chicago Library label on the front.
“What is it?”
“Read it, please,” was all he said in reply.
I looked again at Sarah. She just moved her hand to second the motion that I read the document.
The official archivist’s notation on the label read:
“Letter from EH1 to EH2, June 1945, immediately prior to EH2’s return to Chicago from the war in Europe.”
I looked yet again at Sarah and then at my father.
“Read!” they said in unison.
The letter was on my great-grandfather’s personalized stationery. I read.
June 12, 1945
My dear son,
You’re coming back to us. Praise be. It seems a miracle that you should have escaped the deadly maw of this terrible, terrible war. The Japanese front is still open, but we’ll close that soon enough.
You asked me often about the grandfather you never knew. Over the years I’ve employed various subterfuges to avoid responding in any detail. Well, your safe return from Europe and the prospect of working side by side, as the song goes, at long last supplies the impetus to tell you the story. I share it in the sincere hope that your
decision
to join the company is solely fuelled by your
desire
to join the company.
My father desperately wanted me to continue the family tradition and become a missionary in China. While I was born stateside, I spent almost my entire childhood in China. I loved it, but I grew restless as I grew older, and
far less certain of my future. The pressure he put on me was immense and it drove a great divide between us. The more he pushed me to enter the seminary, the more he pushed me away. Life in China was hard, but I credit my exile there in my youth with guiding me toward the rag trade. The richly coloured and embroidered textiles of the Far East were simply stunning. And I found China’s silk operations utterly fascinating. The Hemmingwear seed was sown when I was very young.
When I turned sixteen, we were back in the U.S. for a brief turn. Matters came to a head. I was expected to enter the seminary in Boston while my parents were to return to China to continue the mission. I refused to go to the seminary. I just flatly refused. Then they said I had to come back to China with them. Again, I refused. There was a huge and emotional family conflagration. My parents, I believe out of a sense of abject helplessness in the face of my steadfast opposition, left me in Boston with my uncle, as a last resort. Mother cried when she said goodbye. My father refused even to see me. Such was the depth of my alleged betrayal.
I snuck down to the pier and watched from afar as they climbed the gangway onto the ship, my mother still crying. I was crying a little, too, though my resolve never weakened. Not once. My father appeared grim, stoic, and he disappeared into the ship without so much as a backward
glance. When the horn sounded and the ship cast off, I felt a great weight lift from my shoulders. It was an even mix of sadness, regret, determination and freedom.
You know the rest. I bolted for Chicago later the same month. My uncle was not happy, but I stayed in touch with him so he knew I was safe and well, though I was occasionally neither. I loved my father, but after I escaped to Chicago and landed my first position in the rag trade, he never spoke to me again. I never laid eyes on him again. Over the years, I tried to reach out after my company was well established and I was doing well. I sent him letters, and birthday and Christmas gifts, with long rambling recitations of my success, and lamenting what still lay between us, but they were all returned unopened. My mother and I kept up a private correspondence that she kept from my father. She was proud of me, but her first allegiance, of course, was to her husband. I understood, yet the void my father left in me remains even now. Some years later, my father, weak with a fever when he boarded a ship in China to return to New York, died on the crossing. So much left unsaid. When I met the ship, I met only my mother. He had been buried at sea. Having a body on board a ship packed to the gunwales with passengers, whose constitutions were already weak from the voyage, was simply not permitted. The health and hygiene of the living outweighed all else.
I pledged that I would never repeat my father’s folly.
You say you want nothing more than to work by my side manufacturing our quality products for the masses. I welcome you, but insist that you do it only so long as it sustains your interest. I would have you do whatever it is in life that fulfills you, that excites you, that makes you feel most alive. But you must promise that if the bloom ever falls off this rose, away you’ll go in search of yourself, in search of your calling, in search of your dream. If you promise me this, you’re welcome to start whenever you please. You’ve only just returned, so take some time to recover from the last three years of Hitler’s hell, and confirm your path.
The choice of where to be and what to do is always in your hands. To me, this principle is paramount and sacrosanct. It is inviolate. That freedom is what you’ve just fought to preserve. That freedom is what all fathers owe their sons and their daughters. They deserve nothing less.
Your father
I lowered the letter to my lap. My mind was awash in conflicting thoughts, emotions, and questions. But I just couldn’t seem to assemble them in any logical fashion, let alone enunciate anything. I just breathed for a minute and looked through the wall of my own apartment. Neither Sarah nor my father said anything, allowing me at least to begin to process what I’d
just read. I picked up the letter and read it again, more slowly this time. The words “paramount and sacrosanct” hit me again with no less force than on the first time through.
“Where did this come from?” I said when I felt I could rejoin the moment.
“You know that EH1’s papers and letters, along with those of his sons, were donated to the U of C Library …” Sarah began.
“Of course I know that. They call me regularly to donate any letters and papers I might have,” I cut in.
“Well, Dad sends a few boxes each year, as did EH2 and EH1. There are thousands of artifacts, loads of business correspondence, even a few speeches. Plus, there are some private letters that are only available for family members to peruse, or in certain circumstances, for certain researchers, provided we give our approval.”
“I know all this. But where did this letter come from?” I persisted. “You would have found this in your visits to the archives if it had been there.”
“Yes, I would have. But it only just arrived,” Sarah explained as Dad just stared at the floor. “For a few years now, I’ve been reading these old family letters to gain insight into the job of running the company. While I was in there recently, an archivist was working on annotating a new batch of letters that had just been secured from an auction of the estate of EH1’s housekeeper, whose daughter has just died. You emailed me about them when you were in Paris. They are the carbons of letters EH1 sent, this one to his first-born son.”
“Do we have any of EH2’s correspondence?”
“We do, but his letters in the archive are only about the company, not the family. They’re actually kind of boring,” Sarah said. “It seems EH2 did not want family letters left to the archives.”
Dad roused himself.
“Knowing my father, he was certainly not a fan of the philosophy his own father espouses in that letter. He even had the temerity to twist a phrase I now understand was coined by EH1, but intended to convey the opposite meaning. Then my father built decades of momentum behind a tradition that his father clearly rejected. It’s an outrage of the first order and it consigned me to a path I felt honour-bound to pursue. As you well know.”
My father was looking right at me during this. I held his eye contact throughout. It was a bit uncomfortable, but seemed the only respectful course.
“Your sister gave the letter to me a week ago and I’ve only now begun to recover from the shock of finding my grandfather’s words so deviously twisted by my own father. The letter is so eloquent, so simple, so pure, and yet so true. It has turned my understanding of our family history on its head. If the philosophy the family patriarch presents in this letter had passed through and governed all succeeding generations, my life, our lives, may well have been quite different.”
He hung his head and turned it slowly, back and forth, in what could only have been deep regret.
“He’s barely slept or eaten these last few days,” Sarah said as if the patient were unconscious. “And now we’re here.”
“I’ve been a fool, blinded by a tradition that should never have existed,” Dad said to no one in particular.
“So what does it mean?” I asked. “What does this change?”
“What does it mean?” Dad parroted. “It means our family is built on a lie, driven by a false belief, all created by my father. In a way, it means that we now have our liberty. It means that the principle of self-determination to which your great-grandfather was obviously so committed can now be restored to its rightful place in our family. It means I will never, ever, ask you to come back to Chicago. Of course you’re always welcome, but it is no longer a family edict.”
He paused for a moment before continuing.
“I deeply regret the pressure I’ve put on you for nearly all of your life. It was well intended but, as this letter reveals, clearly built on a false foundation.”
“It’s okay, Dad. We’re both viewing it all in a different light,” I said. “Does this also mean that Sarah has as good a shot as any at taking over when you retire?” I asked.
“Ha! If what I’ve seen of your sister’s leadership in the last three weeks is any indication, she’s got a better shot than anyone else,” he replied. “I’ve been a fool and I apologize to you both.”
“Dad, it’s fine. We all bought into the family lore,” Sarah said. “Well, Hem didn’t exactly buy into it, but we all knew what we were facing.”
“So how are you feeling, Dad?” I asked, changing the subject. “And when’s the big day, again?”
“I feel fine, but I’ll be glad to have this blighted bit out of me. The surgery is next Thursday, hence our little trip tonight. This couldn’t wait.”
“I don’t really know what to say,” I mumbled.
“No worries. It took Dad three days before he knew what to say. Take your time.”
Over the next hour, we actually had a real conversation that meandered through several different topics. I couldn’t ever remember the three of us in the same room, talking so freely, so comfortably. I thought I could feel something shift inside me. It was as if decades of tension just relaxed a little. Yes, it was actually a physical feeling.
“So how go the big changes at the company?” I asked. “Have you got Hemmingwear for women under those jeans?”
“Well,” said Sarah, “as it happens, I’m wearing the prototype, not the production model. Next week the new templates and line adjustments will be ready and we can start the inaugural production run.”
Dad just sat back and smiled as she spoke.
“And?”
“Do you even have to ask? They feel amazing. I never want to take them off,” Sarah said, performing a mini-pirouette. “These are going to fly off the shelves.”
“Any word from our friend Henderson Watt?” I asked.
“Not a peep,” Sarah replied. “But I think he’s gone back to Europe to avoid the shrapnel should we ever decide to go public with his stunt.”
“Europe can have him,” our father said.
I then spent about twenty minutes recounting the tale of my travels. I decided not to describe my mad run to escape the ferocious Chihuahuas. I did have my dignity, after all. But it did trigger a question.
“Dad, can you think of any reason, perhaps something in my childhood, to explain why I would still have a completely irrational fear of small dogs?”