by Tom Corbett
“Fantastic, including your very astute observation about people needing to be bribed to want you.” Jules beamed.
“Don’t you dare gloat.” He scowled at her. “I’ve not decided yet. And I haven’t even broached the topic with Amar and Azita. They think I am just raising money for the international work. I rather hate going behind their backs.”
“When they see this, they will forgive you.”
“Truth is, the possibility of Madison is keeping this scheme alive. I don’t think I would go back to Chicago and be that close to all the memories. But I have always liked this place, a university town, liberal and cosmopolitan, yet small enough to be livable. Reminds me just a little of Oxford. And close enough to work with Kat on her crazy schemes.”
“And me,” Jules added.
“You should focus only on the positives.”
“Watch it buddy.”
“And you. Time to go. We are having dinner with several of the people I met with today. You won’t believe this, but they are excited to meet a real network star. But I told them I couldn’t get one of those, just you. Surprisingly, they didn’t cancel.”
“You do know that the way you are sitting there gives me a direct shot to your mid-section. Speaking of pain more generally, however, did you decide to meet with your father?”
“Yes, when we get back. I called Beverly while walking back over here, just to fill her in. She is arranging it. I hate the thought, but I need to get it over with. It must be done. Well, I suppose it doesn’t have to be done. I will admit to a form of morbid curiosity.”
Jules looked pensive, torn between being happy that this was happening and concerned about what this would mean to this man that she yet loved in her own way. The chasm between father and son was something she could hardly appreciate, way beyond her capacity to comprehend. She looked away in case this sudden swell of emotion translated into some visible sign of intense caring. Tears at this moment would have been hard to joke away. Why had she turned his marriage proposals down? Had she assumed they would keep coming, and that she might accept one at a more convenient time? Had she worried about all his casual relations with women even though they had never entered an exclusive relationship? Was it her drive for a career and worry that a husband or children would deter the realization of her deep obsession to succeed, to show the world that a girl from the ghetto could make it? Then an irritating thought intruded, she was a girl from the ghetto. Had she felt unworthy, or maybe held some residual bitterness based on the inescapable racism of her childhood. You don’t ever escape those scars, not entirely. She could not shake this insistent thought, she had rejected him because he was white. He was her brother’s best friend, her most intimate male or female confidant and she might have spurned him because of the color of his skin. Did she believe that accepting him as a formal partner as a betrayal of - something? She tried very hard to focus on the pastoral visage of water and the distant green countryside before her but that proved futile. She needed to say something, anything. “By the way, I made a reservation at the Edgewater Hotel, that nice place on the lake you suggested.” When Chris looked at her questioningly, she added: “Two rooms though - that killed me, to waste money that is.”
“Jules, it won’t be easy for me either, believe me. You were my 43rd favorite lover.” Her fist shot out and caught him right in the tummy.
“Shit, that hurt,” he wheezed.
“Good, now let’s go meet your future colleagues and then a cold shower for me.”
“On the way, you might drop me off at the goddamn emergency room,” he managed to get out as he struggled to his feet.
“You have not changed, Father.” The two men appraised each other from across the room of Beverly’s luxurious suite of apartments. In fact, Chris was being sincere. In his mind, his father had swiftly transformed from an energetic young man of frenetic energy to a stately prince generating an aura of power and invincibility. It struck Chris that there were very few interim steps in this miraculous transformation. Once he had arrived at the status of the all-powerful patriarch, time appeared to stop. The aging process was nullified. He seemingly looked the same as he did in his late 70s as he did in his late 50s. Chris knew this not to be true, that one’s perception could easily play tricks, and he was aware of all those visual tricks that Psych 101 textbooks covered. Still, he could well imagine that his father had entered into some pact with Satan himself: eternal life for his soul. “I hope you negotiated a good contract with Lucifer”, he murmured, surprising himself that his private thought had almost escaped him.
“What?” His father seemed unsettled.
“Nothing, Father, just a private joke. I am always trying to keep myself amused. Did you enjoy a good visit with my children?”
“Why yes.” The older man grinned in a way that made Chris’s skin crawl. “They are delightful. You and…what is your wife’s name again?”
“Amar…Amar Singh, as if you did not know.”
“Don’t be so harsh, my son. You must excuse an old man. After all, I was not invited to the wedding.”
“Well, dear Father, it was short notice and officiated in a war zone in Afghanistan. It was, by necessity, an intimate affair, as you might imagine.”
“Of course. I had assumed that the rushed affair involved an inconvenient pregnancy. Did she miscarry that one?” The forced grin seemed stuck in place.
Chris so wanted to lash out at this man, as he had done the last time they had met. Why the gratuitous insults when they were so unnecessary? Perhaps it was true that you couldn’t take out what God puts in a person, even a deep pool of unnecessary evil. At their last meeting, Charles Senior had struck his mother in a fit of pique. Chris, in that moment and fresh off the news that his own father had raped his two sisters when they were young and defenseless, smashed his fist into his father’s face. Every sensible instinct within him was needed to restrain himself. Now, similar urges erupted deep in his stomach and roiled upward throughout his body. He had prepared for this moment, though he now questioned whether any amount of preparation would be enough.
“Just the urgency of love, and the desire to take Azita to England with us.” Chris fought to keep his composure. “Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the concept of love, that human sentiment being denied to you.”
His father chose to ignore the obvious insult. “Ah, yes, that Afghan orphan, or young woman by now.”
“Hardly merely an orphan, Father, top of her medical class at Oxford.” Chris enjoyed throwing that in, even though his father must be aware of that fact since Beverly was the conduit to him for all things Crawford in her role as a secret mole.
The patriarch’s smile spread a bit wider. “Of course. I expect no less of anyone raised as a Crawford, or by a Crawford I should say. Though I must admit to being just a bit surprised at her success absent the proper, what shall we say, genetic material?”
Chris’s voice hardened. His words emerged sharp and uncompromising. “She is a Masoud, daughter of Pamir and Madeena Masoud. Her father fought his way from poverty in the Panjshir Valley of northern Afghanistan to graduate from England’s premier medical school. He might have done anything, but he went back to help his people. He died in the effort. If anything, Azita reflects her parents, the very best of…genetic material, as you put it.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Charles issued in a dismissive tone. “But I have given this much thought. It is my belief that the traits we often desire in our offspring often skip a generation, like color-blindness or hair loss or even common sense. That can be such a tragedy.”
Beverly had been increasingly uneasy at the direction of the conversation. “Listen, why don’t you both sit, and I will get us drinks after I’m sure the girls are settled.” She left the room, silently saying a prayer that when she returned there would not be a prone body on the floor.
The two men appraised one another for a few moments in silence. Neither wanted to be the first to look away. Charles Senior first br
oke the silence. “Of course, Christopher, I do know that you detest me. And I don’t mind admitting that this knowledge upsets me. What father does not wish for the admiration of his offspring, does not want his son to look up to him and follow in his footsteps? I thought I had a chance with Junior, I really did. I am aware the rest of you did not share my optimism, you have all made that sufficiently clear. Still, I had such hope for him. I suspect the father always believes the best of his first-born son. They have always been the natural heirs, by convention and tradition. But he was soft, so soft. I still think if the rest of you had not been so negative and had supported him…”
“Father just cut the bullshit. Yes, I have one regret about not supporting Chuck enough. Out there, on Navy Pier one day,” Chris nodded in the general direction of Lake Michigan, “I begged him to come to England with me, begged him. But I guess I did not grovel nearly enough. What I should have done was drug him into a stupor and simply kidnapped him. I should have forced his silly ass on to the plane with me. But it was like he was imprisoned in a cult. Leaving him in your clutches was as good as putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger.”
“The boy simply was soft. I did try my best…”
“To do what, kill him?” Chris spit out. “Well congratulations, you did a fucking swell job of doing just that. You could have had the decency to make his death spiral quicker, just a bit less agonizing.”
“Chris - always with the dramatics.” The older man apparently decided to shift direction just slightly. His voice now sounded almost sincere. “Tell me, honestly, do you think of me as such a monster?”
Chris did not answer right away. He looked over the view of the lake out of a panoramic window. The sun, now in its western descent, had developed its daily burnt-orange glow that managed to cast its reach back over the waters to the east, touching the clouds that had formed just above the horizon. That scene always refreshed him, water always refreshed him. As a child, he would come down to Oak Beach when troubled, sit and look over the water. It truly was one of God’s more special gifts to His ungrateful progeny. Then, he forced himself to snap back to the present. “Let us skip over your perversions, that would not lead to any productive dialogue.” He saw his father open his mouth. Chris raised his hand to stop him. “I think, at least in your head, that you are a unique blend of an Ayn Rand character who worships selfishness along with a caricature of Nietzsche’s notion of superman. Oh, and let us not forget that a healthy dose of Calvinistic predestination which must be thrown in, just to give a spiritual imprimatur on the master-race panache that so blinds your vision. After all, you need some way to identify the select, to satisfy yourself that you are among them.”
His father betrayed no emotion whatsoever. “Very perceptive, son. I am gratified that all those years of schooling were not totally wasted. And all this time I had thought you majored in basketball with a minor in sex. But I have another question for you. Why are you here?”
Beverly appeared at that moment with the drinks, relieved at the seeming calm that prevailed. “Here,” she said and handed the drinks over to the two. “I am going to check on the girls.”
Chris toyed with being relatively honest, at least to the point of indicating that he might return to the States for an academic sabbatical at Wisconsin. But why be even that honest? Perhaps evasion might reveal what his father knew or thought he knew. “I am just here to raise money for my international work, see my sister and some friends. Amar and Kay and Azita are gone for several weeks. With no teaching commitment now, it seemed like a good time. Beverly was kind enough to help out.”
“Yes, Beverly, she is…so helpful.” His smile widened just a fraction for a moment. “And this trip to Madison? Surely, that was not fund raising? Perhaps a little sight-seeing, I seem to recall you running up there as a teenager. You would call it Mad City. Personally, I always thought that place infested with communists and juvenile revolutionaries, but that is where we differ.”
Chris sensed that he was not directing the conversation, his father was in control. That, he concluded, needed to be changed. “Speaking of communists, what is left of them, are you celebrating their demise, or have you found a new outlet for your, shall we say, energies? Odd, is it not, how old enemies can so easily switch sides.”
Now his father’s smile turned from a grimace to a sneer. “Please don’t be so disingenuous. You don’t do coy well. You of all people should know of my unending work to save society from itself. Yes, you labor to save the world in your way and I in mine. You see, we are very similar people, not so very different.”
Chris felt his face flush a bit. Had that shown? What did his father know about Kat’s work, about his discussions with his younger sibling? Maybe his comments were innocent, merely referring to Chris’s philanthropic and service initiatives. Yet, Kat had implied danger, mentioned using burner phones for some conversations. What might he have been getting into here? Was his father just guessing about why Chris was here? If not, how did he know anything about what was going on? Several possibilities flooded Chris’s mind. “No, I have no idea what you are up to these days. Please enlighten me.” Chris hoped his own smile was equally enigmatic.
Charles Senior paused while he brought his fingers together in front of him. He looked at his hands for several moments, obviously calculating what to reveal and what not to reveal. “I think, son, that you have always misunderstood me.” Christopher made a note of the fact that his father referred to him as his son and not by his name. “You have always thought of me in the simplest of terms, that I am some greedy capitalist only concerned with acquiring great wealth. But that is just a tool, not an end.” Chris momentarily thought of challenging that statement but held back. “I am a far different person. In truth, we are very much alike. I know, I know so very well that you do not see that, which pains me deeply. But we are, drawn from the same genetic material, the same historical roots. You are way too intelligent not to see that.” He paused, apparently waiting for Chris to provide some affirmation or denial.
“Go on, I am listening.”
“We are both idealists. True, I did not appreciate all your work in the hell holes of the globe but, eventually, I did understand. It was just your - how should I put this? -your early and perhaps immature way of finding meaning in life. And that, right there, is where we are alike. It took me some time to determine what is important for a man to pursue. And yes, yes, you were right about Chuck, I was mistaken about him all along, and I hate making mistakes. Fortunately, I do it so infrequently. But you, you are my true offspring. We both want one thing, the same thing: a better world and better future.”
“However,” Chris said and breathed slowly, “the devil, as they say, is in the details.”
“True indeed. You want to bring everyone up by their bootstraps, save the unwashed masses and permit them to participate in some mass delusion about a global society and democracy. All that, I admit, is very well intended but, I am afraid, it is a hopeless fantasy. Not even the founding fathers of this great country believed in democracy. That is why they built in layers of protection against the will of the people like the electoral college and appointed senators and limited voting rights, but I am preaching to the choir now, am I not? After all, I have read many of your written works, perhaps all. Some of those wise protections were eroded but we are slowly putting them back in place.”
“We…?” But Chris could not finish his thought, still puzzled that his father might have read his books and articles. What did that mean?
“Not important now. What is important is that we gather together those people born to lead. Plato, it turns out, was right. Society is best led by philosopher kings, those, who by breeding and training, can see the future clearly and identify what we need to do to get there. Let me anticipate your concern.” Now Charles Senior leaned forward, warming to his topic. Chris decided not to interfere. “There really is no safe word for what we have in mind. I hate the terms master race or the select or
the predestined. Semantics aside, even you must admit that the messiness of democracy is no way to run things in a complex and interdependent world. Society needs guidance. I have even backed off from my unfettered free-market views. In fact, government, or perhaps we best call it leadership, can be a necessary tool, a useful partner.”
Chris wanted to respond by saying his father was giving a classic definition of fascism but instead said, “Go on, I find this is interesting.”
Charles was not always easy to read but his body language seemed more relaxed. “Son, you are the student of history. Even I know that both empires and ideas wax and wane over time. Yes, I am capable of larger thoughts not related to making money. Are you shocked?” Chris was but kept silent. “The thing is, I have been convinced we are on the threshold of big changes, this singularity that the computer nerds talk about.” Now Chris was openly surprised, such a concept seemed way beyond his father’s ordinary concerns. “The thing is, having my financial empire stolen from under me, and thank you for that by the way, has been a blessing in disguise. Now I have an opportunity to read and think about things. That would not have been possible before. We all cannot while away the hours doing nothing productive in some ivory tower, living off our parents’ largess.”