The Inheritance (Volume Two) (7 page)

Neal has to be one of those, a man modeled after my father who viewed women as party tricks, something to pull out to entertain his friends.
Look at this one, she can fit her whole fist in her mouth.

I wouldn’t play his games and he would tire of my refusal quickly: No, I don’t want to go to dinner with those men; No, I would rather not spend my afternoon shopping with those women; No, another dress will not make me shut-up and smile.

This is for the best. I belong in Baltimore and Neal belongs here, navigating the world of Chicago finances and politics, dirtying his hands with other people’s money and blood.

He’ll have no problem finding another woman. Someone pretty and stupid who won’t question his actions and will silently allow him to fuck her over. Someone like Gina. Someone like Darlene. Someone like Suzanne. Someone like Ashleigh. But never someone like me.

______

Martin calls and asks me to meet him at the office. It’s Saturday afternoon and the building is nearly barren, no secretary at the front desk, no cubicles filled with employees, no Neal waiting for me behind his office door, just Martin behind his desk, flipping through a thick file of papers.

He slides a small pile of receipts across his desk, my father’s fortune divided into four parts. Twenty-five percent to my personal bank account, twenty-five percent to one off shore, twenty-five percent to my savings, and twenty-five percent for investments. He prattles on about stocks and the market, assuring me that I won’t have to worry about losing money – “I know that’s a primary concern when people first start investing, especially after the market crashed a few years ago, but you must trust me Miss Wheeler, I know what I’m doing.” – but I can only focus on my swollen bank account. Previous balance: $3,000. Current balance: $675,000.

What do you do with that sort of money? Buy an island? Spend a whole year on vacation? I can buy back my classroom with this sort of cash. Hell, I can buy the whole school.

“Miss Wheeler,” Martin says, snapping his fingers. “Are you listening to me?”

“No,” I say, looking up at him. “I’m sorry. I’m a little overwhelmed.”

Martin nods. He stands and heads to the opposite side of the room where between two short bookcases is a fridge full of water. He grabs a bottle and hands it to me.

“This is all very sudden,” he says, taking his seat. “For the both of us.”

My eyebrows furrow as I take a drink. “My mother said my father was sick.”

Neal gives me a tight smile. “Of course he was. He suffered from the same illness as my son.”

His outstretched finger points to the corner of his desk, where a photo of Gilda and Francis sits in a gold frame. They’re in Rome or Italy, Mediterranean ruins decorating the background, Gilda’s cheek pressed into her son’s hair, Francis grinning despite his crossed arms. I feel strange for thinking it, but Francis is very handsome. The same shade of brown hair as Martin, his features stolen straight from his mother. Soft, wide eyes, thin mouth, sharp cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” I say, taking another drink. “Your wife told me he passed away.”

“A little over a year ago,” he says.

The pair of us drift into silence, Martin staring off in the distance, his eyes cloudy with the memory of his son. His eyes are perfectly tilted down, his mouth set in a genuine frown. The ultimate face of mourning. I wish I could steal his expression and slip it on like a mask whenever I thought about my father. It would make me look more compassionate, more likeable. Less like the stone-faced daughter who’s indifferent to her father’s death.

“How did he die?” I say.

“I’m sorry?”

“You said he suffered from the same illness as my father. How did they die?”

Martin fills his chest with air, his shoulders pushing back against his chair before he exhales and deflates. Shoulders rounding forward, he folds his hands and stares at me, eyes peering over his glasses, lips set in a serious line.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable answering that question.”

I sit up a little straighter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to --”

“What do you remember about your father?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s a very simple question. What do you remember the most about your father? What stands out when you think about him?”

I don’t have to dwell on the question for long. “He was always working. I don’t remember ever really seeing him relax.”

“Because he was consumed by his work. Your father was one of the hardest working men I’ve ever known. But this business,” Martin pauses. “You can’t allow yourself to get too deep into it because soon, you start opening trap doors and stumbling into things you weren’t meant to.”

My mind flashes to the memory of me in my father’s bedroom, clutching his white shirt covered in blood. A trap door he’d set for no one, especially me to find.

“I’m confused,” I say, shifting in my seat. “What did he die from?”

I want a straight answer. He died from cancer of the lungs or he was hit by a bus crossing Lakeview Drive but I can see in Martin’s eyes that he’s a man of riddles.

“You remind me of my son,” he says. “Plagued by curiosity. Unwilling to take a hint,” he says this without malice, voice light and wispy with a smile. “He was never able to properly swallow the truth and I think, excuse me if this sounds forward, I
know
neither can you.”

A wave of frustration runs beneath my skin. I gnaw at the inside of my cheek. “What are you talking about?”

Martin smiles. “I’m talking about the truth and how you think you want to know it, but in actuality, you do not.”

“I just want to know how my father died.”

Martin reaches beneath his desk. He pulls up my father’s urn. Bathed in black and gold, its simplicity manages to carry the weight of gaudiness. I can’t imagine how much my father must’ve spent on it.

“Your father would’ve wanted you to have it,” he says, pushing the urn towards me.

I have no use for my father’s ashes. Can you imagine? Me sitting in my living room, staring up at the urn with wide, tear filled eyes, speaking to it as if my father is trapped like a genie. Or how about me passing the urn to my children, their fingertips brushing against mine as I describe my father’s rigid silence, the constant swell of his stomach, his signature scowl. I place it in my lap. I’ll get rid of it later.

Martin stands and I follow his lead, crossing the shimmering brown tile to his office door.

“The condo,” I say as his hand wraps around the knob.

Martin raises his hand. “I’ve already called a realtor. She’ll be by this weekend to take care of everything.”

“I’ll be gone by then.”

“Not a problem. I’ll coordinate a time with Miss Ashleigh.”

A small smile plays across my lips. “Thank you.”

Martin opens the door. “It’s no trouble at all.”

I step into the hall, my heels reverberating against the floor. Two steps away, I turn to Martin who’s closing the door behind him. “I’m never going to find out, am I?”

His head peeks out of the crack. “I’m sorry?”

“How my father died.”

A small sigh moves through him, his shoulders dropping further down, eyes cast towards the floor. “The decision to know or to remain ignorant is entirely in your hands.”

“You can just tell me.”

Martin smiles. “I’m not the only one who knows how your father died,” he says, closing the door.

______

Outside of the office four newspaper kiosks stand near the sidewalk. Yellow for The City Paper; blue for The Chicago Business Journal; black for the real estate ads; and red for The Chicago Times. I snatch the Times and the City Paper, tucking them beneath my arm as I head for Millennium Park.

I can’t stand one more moment of sitting in my father’s condo, sucking down bourbon as I try to gather the courage to invade his bedroom, to pick through his things, sorting out what I want to keep (nothing) and what can be given to charity (everything).

I find a bench away from the clusters of families, holding hands as they wander around aimlessly, chins craned towards the metallic skyline, soaking in the height of the buildings.

My mother picks up on the second ring. “Where are you?” she says. The television’s on in the background, looped laughter heightening after a zinger.

“I’ve gotta stay for a few more days. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.”

“Jesus,” the back door opens and slams shut. “I thought maybe this was all some joke and Gina called you out there to kill you.”

It feels good to let out a laugh, my head tipping back, my hair brushing against the bench. On the other end of the line a chair scrapes against concrete and I can see my mother now, propping her leg on her knee, sliding her cigarettes from beneath her magazines on the backyard table, shoving one in the corner of her mouth as she lights up and inhales.

“Dad left you some money,” I say.

She clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “You can have it.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Well, I don’t want it either. It’s guilt money, that’s all it is. A couple thousand to make us feel validated, loved, so we don’t run off and write a tell-all. But that’s easy. Like throwing crumbs to park pigeons. Apologizing and admitting you were wrong? That’s the only thing I’d ever accept from your father.”

My father’s urn rattles in my purse. “It’s a little too late for that.”

My mother laughs. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t holding my breath.”

A comfortable silence stretches between the pair of us, the soft summer wind brushing against my phone, the sound of Baltimore sirens blaring in my ear. My mother’s flipping through the magazines in front of her. Architectural Digest, Interior Design, Lawns & Gardens, magazines made for creative, older women.

“Gardenia’s,” she says, testing the word on her tongue.

“What about them?”

“You know,” she says, nothing more.

“When Gina called did she mention what Dad died from?”

“I told you, it was a cold or something.”

“Yes but did she tell you that or was that something you made up?”

I know my mother. I know her elbows are on the glass table and she’s pinching the bridge of her nose, eyes close as she realizes: “I don’t think I was paying much attention after she told me Julian was dead.”

A small smile tugs at my lips. “So he could’ve died of something else. Something that wasn’t a cold or cancer?”

“Correct,” she says. Then, “You’ll find out won’t you?” She says it in a bored tone, thumb sliding over her wet tongue, flipping the magazine from one page to the next.
I don’t care if you do, but please don’t forget.

“Of course,” I say.

“Good.”

My mother hangs up. No good-bye, no, I love you, though I know she does. It’s just her way. When the conversation is over, there’s nothing more to say.

I lay the newspapers on my lap and flip through The City Paper. It’s a mess of sex shops, apartment, alternative boutiques, tattoo parlors, and restaurant advertisements, squeezed between nuggets of articles pertaining to underground bands, perverse literature, and local artists craving the mainstream. It’s the sort of paper my mother loves and my father would never read, the artwork crude and unattractive. Rejecting conformity. The sort of magazine I hoarded in college, desperate to transform into the opposite of my father’s approval.

I head straight to the Finance section of The Chicago Times, my eyes skirting past stocks and chunks of text, to the page dedicated to Neal’s dinner.

The largest photo is of him, standing on the stage, pointedly gazing at Anthony Serafin as he’s dragged out of the room. The crowd in the foreground stares, open mouthed, Ashleigh and I blurry specks in the background. So, there was another journalist in the room. I’m clearer in the next photo down, smaller and pushed to the right, Neal and I standing outside the building with Chris and Ashleigh, right before I took Ashleigh’s hand and stormed off. I don’t need to read the article to know it’s full of slander. The pictures and the headline – Neal Dietrich Gets off to a Rocky Start – indicative enough.

The article in the corner, tucked away like bills folded in a wallet, has no photo but a small headline: Lee Geon Speaks Out.

He isn’t angry. He says he “understands the need for professional growth” and he’s glad “Mr. Dietrich has found it somewhere”, he just wishes “it wasn’t with someone as vile as Julian Wheeler”. There’s a bite to his words, menacing even in print.

I feel like I’m being watched.

I look over my shoulder. Behind me tourists trapeze over the bridge, pointing across the street, towards the Museum Campus. A group of teenage boys carrying soccer balls and bright orange cones head down to the wide field, where they’ll play a game or four to the awe of passerby’s.

I’m being paranoid when I see him. A journalist lurking in the bushes – The bushes! I never thought they actually did that. – his camera hoisted to his eyes, snapping a photo as I gaze his way. He drops onto the ground, out of my line of sight and into the foliage, the bush rustling around him.

It stills, the camera disappearing within the leaves, the children rushing by undisturbed.

I wait for his head to pop back up –he can’t stay down there long – but like a boat submerged in water he sunk beneath the foliage and remains.

______

I drop my father’s urn on the coffee table. How did they managed to fit so much of him into such a tiny confined space? He was a larger than life character, demanding attention, stealing glances and ears, always the biggest personality in the room. It’s different, seeing him so small.

I fix myself a drink and Ashleigh makes her way out of the guest room. Dressed in sweat pants and a t-shirt, those famed red rings remain around her eyes. She spots the urn immediately.

“Martin gave that to me,” I say, plopping down on the couch. “You can have it.”

She cranes her head in my direction, eyes deer-in-the-headlights wide. “You…You don’t want it?”

I shake my head.

She wanders over to the coffee table, feet sinking into the now stained rug. She takes a seat on the floor, crossed legs and arms out as she pulls the urn towards her. She’s speechless, staring at it as if she can hear it whispering to her, my father speaking beyond the grave.