by Ian Woollen
His birdwatcher binoculars hung nearby on the wall. He peeked down again at Anthony. Oh, for chrissakes. Were those tears? Was his son crying?
It became a habit. Anthony stood in the park, gazing up at the vast State Department building with too many questions in his eyes, while an invisible He Who Remains Classified gazed down on his own flesh and blood with too many questions in his weak, pacemaker-regulated heart. It was as if each man was waiting for the other to make the first move.
Chapter 61
Half Brother Debacle
A misty, diesel-scented dawn, after a party at Everett’s pad. Anthony and Trip quietly exited their friend’s apartment and strolled by the Omni Shoreham Hotel. A porter pushed a cart laden with baggage toward an airport limousine. A group of yawning, wet-haired travelers followed.
“Look!” Trip pointed, “Is that Duncan and Kathryn?”
Anthony squinted through the fog. Yes, no, yes. They were both clad in Indiana cream and crimson. Anthony instinctively scurried toward his brother. No, his half-brother. Now that Duncan was technically only a half-brother, maybe he should feel differently. Anthony slowed and waved.
“What are you two doing here?” Trip said.
“Oh, hi,” Duncan said, flatly. “Kathryn had a concert last night at the Folger with a group from I.U. I just came along for the ride.”
“We sang a premiere of a George Crumb piece,” Kathryn announced. “There’s going to be a review.”
“Why didn’t you let us know?” Trip asked.
“We weren’t sure if you had a telephone. We heard you were living on a boat,” Kathryn explained.
Anthony said, “We’ve got an answering service. Mom has the number.”
“It’s too early in the morning to go into this.” Duncan yawned. “We have a plane to catch.”
“Go into what?” Anthony insisted.
Duncan ignored the question, in order to extract his billfold from his back pocket, pull it open and stare inside. Exactly the same gesture as Ward’s wallet-handling.
“Go into what?” Anthony asked again.
“What you did to them,” Kathryn interjected. “Listen, fellas, we don’t care if you’re gay. Hey, half the members of my ensemble are gay. But Duncan explicitly advised you not to tell your parents, especially with them so upset about Rob.”
“What I did to them?” Anthony echoed, incredulous.
Trip stepped in to defend his partner. “You’re right. It’s too early in the morning for this kind of horseshit. In fact, the time is never right for it.”
Duncan swelled up and pointed a finger, as if issuing a ruling. He said, “We can discuss it when we see you, Anthony, at Christmas.” The implication was that Trip would not be invited.
Duncan and Kathryn climbed resolutely into the limousine.
Duncan was big on resoluteness, ever since his decision to follow Kathryn to college in Bloomington, Indiana. He became resolute about all things home-turf, including the miserable Hoosiers football team. Kathryn spread the story that Duncan had turned down Yale to attend I.U., because he wanted an undergraduate degree in business. Duncan resolutely embraced other moribund family traditions, including the fifty yard line season tickets and French poodles.
Duncan and Kathryn bought a puppy and named it ‘Chip.’ They rented a house with a fenced yard near Bryan Park.
Duncan also resurrected his grandfather’s habit of voting Republican. It was his coming-of-age rebellion. Along with so many voters pulling the presidential lever for the first time in 1980, and wanting to make an impact, Duncan and Kathryn jumped on the Reagan bandwagon. They didn’t just jump on it; they leapt and strutted. Like most conversion experiences, it was annoying to people around them, especially to both sets of parents. The parents tried to accept it as a typical generational swing, as carving out their own space within each family’s sphere. At their weekly dinners in Indianapolis, Duncan spouted an avalanche of supply-side data and trickle-down promises.
Eating lunch at Bear’s Place across from the music school on her first day in Bloomington, Kathryn overheard two conductors debating how to handle the hardest movement in all of Tchaikovsky, the second movement of the Pathetique, a waltz in five. She heard someone in the next booth describing a final exam question, why does the “Sanctus” of Bach’s Mass in B-Minor split into six parts? Because the seraphim who sing it in heaven have six wings. Kathryn knew she had come to the right place. Fourteen hundred performances a year. Round the clock scales and glissandos echoing in the practice building. Hallway debates on intonation, phrasing, conducting, orchestration. The sign on the stage door of the recital hall said, “Tune It or Die.” She was warned about the competition. She was warned that the fabled voice program “eats its young.” If someone were to compose an opera about the I.U. Music School, it would be as tragic and extreme and full of costume changes and phony sword fights as anything in the repertoire.
Kathryn came well prepared for the survival-of-the-fittest hothouse at the corner of Third Street and Jordan. Her success with the Rob-Duncan fuss toughened her. Nearby, on Third Street, stood a different kind of conservatory: the biology department’s greenhouses. Kathryn often took refuge in the steamy jungle room to plan her next step. Astutely realizing that the studio accompanists knew the real ins and outs, and with the help of a carton of Sobranie cigarettes, she managed a quick reassignment from a junior faculty studio to the prestigious harem of Maestro Gusev. The music world, even more than science, doted on teacher-student lineages and Kathryn could now claim a direct connection all the way back to Glinka.
Maestro Gusev was the world’s leading proponent of a vocal technique that had its roots in the abrasive hawing of the Slavic choral tradition. He required Kathryn to practice an hour of high-pitched snorting warm-ups each morning that scared her dog and sent it hiding under the bed. Maestro Gusev claimed that Kathryn’s cranial bone structure and wide nasal passages were well-suited to his style. Her sound was not beautiful, but it was unique. Kathryn became known as the “human bag-pipe.”
She soon began winning coveted roles. Kathryn staked out her own booth near the front of Bear’s Place. Every passing music student had to notice her marking up scores. Boasting that she could “sight-read fly shit,” she waved a ten dollar bill at a faculty conductor in a rehearsal and asked to buy a downbeat.
Duncan, meanwhile, invaded the business school. He established a new degree track, a dual major in computer science and business. He was also making his resolute mark at Wangert Public Relations.
Rusalka teased, “Hire teenager, while still know everything.” Twice a week, Duncan drove the fifty miles up to Indianapolis and commandeered his father’s office. In meetings, he rejected other opinions without discussion, fiercely shaking his head, like a pitcher staring off the mound, shaking off a catcher’s signals. He pushed his father to invest in an expensive computer system, despite Ward’s concerns that its benefits were unproven. Moonlighting at the I.U. computing center, Duncan produced a client database and direct mail program that Ward was forced to recognize as far superior to Rusalka’s cluttered file cabinets.
Duncan and Kathryn were not typical undergraduates. They did not live in a dorm or visit discos anymore. Socially, they were inseparable. They were in bed by eleven and up at six. Their relationship deepened in the sense that they had fundamentally thrown in their lot with each other. Passion shifted to mutual basking. They supported each other in the acquisition of name-brand clothing, accessories, electronics.
They ‘checked in’ with each other. Their conversations became parallel monologues: “I’ve got to figure out a way to make Father see the light on Rusalka. She’s a worthless welfare case. It’s ridiculous for the business to be supporting her, just because she happens to be a family friend. And Vincent just gets worse and worse. He claims to be into computers and boasts about hacking into his father’s system at the Greene Weapons Base. Last week he showed up at the office and tried to get his mother to give him money o
ut of our petty cash box.”
Kathryn said, “I don’t know why bitchiness gets such a bad rap. Sometimes it’s the only way to get anything done in this world. Can you believe that silly costume they want me to wear in Love for Three Oranges? I told them I’d rather go on in a bathing suit. And by the way, I heard that the casting director for the Indianapolis Opera attends your parents’ church. I think we should start running up there on Sundays. We can go out to lunch afterward. It would be an opportunity for you to make more contacts. The Episcopal Church here in Bloomington is really too small. Especially for a wedding. Eventually, when we can clear our schedules, the Indy church would be better for a wedding.”
Chapter 62
Professional Privilege
Ward read each successive draft of Mary’s master’s thesis and gently teased her about claiming expertise on the subject of family secrets, while still harboring a big secret of her own. “Yes, but it takes one to know one,” Mary shrugged.
Ward said, “In business, in my father’s day, that was called ‘professional privilege.’ The use of hypocrisy for gain.”
Initially, Mary and Ward welcomed Duncan’s return to Indiana. They were flattered that he and Kathryn demonstrated an interest in weekly dinners and joint church attendance. Ward especially was relieved that Duncan wanted to join the family business. It helped reduce their anxiety about the deepening gulfs with their other sons, both of whom took to boycotting the holidays. Although no wedding date had been set, Mary enjoyed flipping through bridal magazines and catalogs with Kathryn. Ward savored the feeling of still having something to teach Duncan, as the upstart came to realize that golf was a requisite skill for a businessman.
But Duncan’s return created its own set of challenges. Ward and Mary privately admitted to Rusalka and Ruby that they felt some resentment about the interruption of their empty-nesting pleasures. No more Saturday morning farmers’ market outings, because that was Duncan’s preferred tee time. No more yoga on Thursday, because that’s when the kids wanted to come up for dinner.
At tai-chi class, Ward and Mary conferred with Rusalka and Ruby on the delicate matter of how to have conversations without mentioning certain people. “I don’t like it when Kathryn tries to talk to me about Rob and Anthony,” Mary complained.
“Same here,” Ward said.
“Not her place,” Rusalka agreed.
“She claims that Anthony and Trip are adopting her parents at Swanset, now that she’s spending more time with us.”
“Is that where they went for Christmas?” Ruby asked.
“They told me they were too busy on a deadline for their latest story,” Mary said.
“Are you really happy Duncan is not at Yale?” Rusalka asked.
“Yes, well … it’s just I don’t quite understand the changes that have come over him.”
Mary said, “What happened to our little troublemaker?”
“And how did he get so churchy? Is that his new conservative thing?” Ruby asked.
Ward sighed, “I don’t know. He’s starting to remind me of my grandfather.”
“The governor?” Ruby asked.
“Yes, and that fellow was one hard sonofabitch,” Ward said.
In public, among his Columbia Club coterie, Ward boasted of his son’s prowess with computers and his business studies. He enjoyed his friends’ well wishes and their admiration for the future of Wangert Public Relations. The firm would now continue for another generation under family control. In public, Ward was proud of that prospect too. He may not have been the best boss, but he had kept the place afloat long enough to pass the torch to an eager successor. His current contribution was normalizing the chewing of gum in board meetings. Always supplied with a packet of nicotine gum, Ward handed it out freely to fellow executives.
In private, he struggled with how the torch was being passed. It wasn’t being passed. It was being grabbed from his irrelevant hands. The city’s Indy Dome project was a prime example. In order to attract a pro football team, the city planned to demolish a few old buildings near the Statehouse, including the Wangert Building, to construct a stadium. The affected building owners approached Ward to lead a campaign against this plan. Ward wanted to accept the job. It would be full-fee, and with public concern over huge tax abatements, they might even win.
Duncan felt differently. “Some problems, all you can do is throw money at them, and this is one of them,” Duncan insisted.
“That sounds very un-Republican,” Ward observed.
Duncan shrugged. “Yeah, but, what was that phrase that Gonga used?”
“Professional privilege.”
“The stadium is unstoppable. I’m also pushing them to give abatements for installing fiber optic cable,” Duncan said.
Casting unsentimental aspersions on the dowdy Wangert Building, Duncan insisted that they cooperate with the Indy Dome planners.
“What about Fat Man and Little Boy?” Ward asked.
“I’ve made arrangements to donate them to the American Legion,” Duncan said. “We’ll get a deduction. The business of sports is the future for Indianapolis. In exchange for supporting the deal, we get state-of-the-art offices in the commercial wing of the new complex.”
When it came to the eventual acquisition of a professional football team, Duncan stealthily circumvented his father entirely. Using his I.U. football booster contacts, Duncan insinuated himself into the hush-hush effort to relocate a team from another city. Duncan took it upon himself to approach a trucking company that had once used Wangert Public Relations to represent them before a state regulatory commission. Out of those meetings came the plan for the infamous midnight relocation of the Baltimore team.
Duncan became an instant celebrity in the business community. But he refused to take any credit. He gave it all to Ward, who personally abhorred the crassness of the operation. Duncan paradoxically denied his effective takeover of the family firm. Whenever Ward attempted to bring up the ‘passing of the torch’ topic—on the golf course or after church—Duncan said that he was only trying to streamline the business and that Ward’s role was as important as ever.
During pillow-talk Mary theorized, “Maybe he’s torn between wanting the power and also wanting to keep you as a father-figure.”
“Why can’t he just say that to me? Why can’t he admit it? I don’t mind handing over the reins. I simply want us to be up front about it.”
“These can be hard things to talk about.”
“I sense it’s more calculated. He doesn’t want me to hand it all over now. He doesn’t want me to retire, because he thinks the business needs a figure-head. And he wants to effect certain changes that he thinks are better enacted by me than by him.”
“Like what?” Mary asked.
“Firing Rusalka. He’s setting it up perfectly. He had me offer to send Rusalka for computer training, and you know how she scoffs at computers. He had me offer to redesign Rusalka’s job duties, and you know how possessive she is about that.”
“Oh, no,” Mary groaned. “He wants you to fire Rusalka, to preempt her appealing to us, if he were to do it.”
“You may have to add another chapter to your paper,” Ward said.
“I’ll try talking to him,” Mary said.
At the next meeting of their women’s encounter group, Rusalka and Ruby led the discussion on breaking out of gender roles to discover one’s true being.
Rusalka had shaved her head. She wore no makeup. Her face was still exotic and striking. They met in the basement of Ruby’s midtown foursquare, in a large, incense-clouded room full of giant pillows and rugs. Ruby’s house was newly air-conditioned, a fact which Rusalka trumpeted. But she had forgotten to open the basement duct vents. The gathering of perimenopausal women fanned themselves in a circle, unable to muster a comment about the heat, each afraid it was just a hot flash.
Rusalka boasted, “I am Enlivener! My role is enliven existence of those around me!” She pranced over to Mary and gave her a hug.
Mary tearfully returned her embrace, and Ruby misinterpreted the tears as confirmation of Rusalka’s original point. “You see how the tentacles of gender identity continue to squeeze a deep grief from us.”
Indirectly offering Rusalka an advance explanation, Mary spoke to the entire group about the Duncan situation. “My prodigal son is testing us in unexpected ways.”
Like Ward with his Columbia Club cohorts, Mary and the women’s group had previously only spoken about Duncan’s return in appreciative terms. Mary revealed her resentment of the time infringements and the pressure she felt from Duncan to restructure the family business. Mary did not make eye contact with Rusalka. She did not go into specific detail. She was still holding out hope that a private, heart-to-heart with her son could change Rusalka’s fate.
She invited Duncan for a walk along the canal towpath, a site that held sentimental value, or so she hoped. In her mind it was hard to reconcile the image of the little boy with the suit-and-tie man striding impatiently beside her. “Do you remember feeding the ducks?” she asked.
“Sort of.” He shrugged. “I remember Kayla eating dirt.”
Duncan glanced down at his watch. It was a very complicated watch with several dials. A buzzer went off. He poked at a button. “What did you want to talk to me about?” he asked.
“It’s a sensitive topic,” Mary said, “that affects the entire family.”
“Yeah, the situation with Anthony and Rob,” Duncan nodded. “I figured that was what you wanted to discuss. Those guys are just going to have to learn to grow up.”
“Actually, I wanted to talk about Rusalka,” Mary said.
“What does she have to do with this?”
Mary slowly explained, “Way back when, during a very difficult time—when a lot of families avoided us because parents didn’t want their children playing with you and Rob—my friend Rusalka stuck by me.”