“Don’t come too early,” he said. “It’s a waste of your time. And you need your rest. You look more tired than I do.”
“Don’t be so bossy,” she said. He smiled at her. She squeezed his hand, then left the room.
My father said to me, “Good night, Son.”
“Night, Dad. See you in the morning.”
As I started to walk out he said, “Al.”
I turned back.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too.”
Nicole was waiting for me in the hallway. “Want to get some dinner?” I asked.
“I’m glad you asked,” she said. “I’m starving.”
“Good,” I said. “I know a place.”
CHAPTER
Seven
Over dinner Nicole asked about Falene, which spoiled my meal as effectively as if she had poured the entire shaker of salt on it.
Alan Christoffersen’s diary
DiSera’s is an authentic little Italian restaurant with a wood-fired pizza oven, red checked tablecloths, paper menus, and centerpieces made from candles melted over empty wine bottles. There were black-and-white, framed photographs of pretty Italian girls on vintage Vespa scooters and a series of pictures of a young Sophia Loren.
The food was cheap and good, and even though my father and I didn’t eat out much, we had eaten here more times than I could remember. I had taken McKale here at least a dozen times on dates.
After the waitress had left with our order, Nicole asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m all right.”
“It must be hard seeing your father like that.”
I nodded. “When you’re young you think of your parents as omnipotent—like Oz the Great and Powerful. Seeing him like this is like seeing the little man behind the curtain.”
“I know what you mean. I think every son or daughter eventually experiences that.”
“He’s been writing his family history.”
Nicole nodded. “I know. He told me a few weeks ago.”
I thought it peculiar that he’d tell her but not me. “I asked him why he was doing it. He said something was just drawing him to it. Mortality.”
Nicole shook her head. “He has plenty of life left in him.”
“I hope you’re right.” I took a drink of ice water. “How long are you going to stay?”
“As long as he needs me.”
“That could be a while,” I said.
“I know. I have the time.”
A few minutes later our waitress brought out our food, and we ate awhile in silence.
Nicole suddenly asked, “Did you find Falene?”
I looked up at her. “Just a few days ago.”
“How is she?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her yet. I’ve been too worried about my father.”
Nicole didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Fortunately, she didn’t say anything more about Falene. After dinner I drove Nicole back to her car in the hospital parking lot.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said.
“My pleasure.”
She looked sad as she lifted her purse. “Where did I put my key?”
“Why don’t you just stay at the house?” I said again. “It will get expensive staying at a hotel.”
“You sound like your father.”
“Is that bad?”
“No,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”
From the way she said it I was pretty sure she had already made up her mind not to. She rooted through her purse until she found her car key. “Found it. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good night,” I replied.
She waved as she drove off to her hotel.
I suppose it was no mystery why she didn’t want to stay at the house. I couldn’t give her what she wanted. I loved her, but I wasn’t in love with her. I don’t know why. She was beautiful, kind, loving, and fun to be with. In spite of Falene, part of me wished I were in love with Nicole. It would certainly have made things easier. Unfortunately, the heart rarely takes requests.
CHAPTER
Eight
The roots of a family tree are oftentimes more twisted than what we see above ground.
Alan Christoffersen’s diary
It was a little after ten when I pulled into the driveway. There was a package on the porch about the size of a shoe box. It was from someone named Pam. As I unlocked the door, I noticed another package lying sideways in the bushes. I practically had to climb over a bush to lift it out. There was a card on top. It was from another woman. Margie. I grinned. Pam was ruthless.
I walked into the kitchen and set both of the women’s packages on the counter, then went to the laundry room. I moved my underwear, socks, and T-shirts to the dryer and put in another load to wash. Then I walked to my father’s room and retrieved his family history, carrying it back to my own room. I lay on my bed and began to read.
INTRODUCTION
The history of a family begins with a name. Throughout history the name Christoffersen has been recorded in more than seventy different derivations, including Cristofori, Kristofer, and Christof. One might easily conclude that the Christoffersen name is of Christian origins, but that is incorrect. Christoffersen is of pre-Christian origin, derived from the Greek word kristos, which literally means “leader.” The Roman Christopherus is also from Greek with the added pher, which means “to follow.” So Christoffersen literally means “leader to follow.”
While the name did not originate with Christianity, it was adopted by the Crusaders, who gave their children biblical names. Our surname, Christoffersen, is a variation of the Danish Kristoffersen.
I
Jon Kristoffersen/Finn Christoffersen
My great-grandfather, Jon Kristoffersen, was born in rural Denmark in 1882. He was the fourth of seven children and (as far as available records show) the only one in his family to emigrate.
Jon was born into a time of economic turmoil. Throughout the mid-1800s the Danish population had grown dramatically due to what some historians referred to as “the danger of peace, prosperity, and population.” Peacetime, combined with the introduction of vaccinations and the abundance of potato crops, drastically decreased mortality rates, creating a population surge that the country’s economy could not support. While these advances had many positive effects on the Danish people, they also created economic hardship for families like the Kristoffersens, who supported themselves through farming. Family farms could only be passed on to one child (typically the oldest son), which created a predicament, as most Danish farming families had many children.
Children from families like the Kristoffersens knew there was little hope that they would ever gain the capital needed to buy their own farms, and jobs outside of the family farm became scarce as more and more children of farmers became adults and sought to make their own way in the world. When Jon came of age, he found work as a farmhand for a very low wage and kept his eye open for something better.
Around this time a wave of Danes began immigrating to the United States. Their letters home described a land of opportunity where the government sold large tracts of land and a man could become successful so long as he worked hard. Danish newspapers began publishing the letters, and although many of their claims were exaggerated, they were effective in catching the attention of young men like my great-grandfather, who decided to immigrate to the United States.
At that time most immigrants traveled by steamship, and although the trip would take only ten days, it took Jon more than a year to save up for the journey. He left Denmark through the port of Copenhagen on July 7, 1901. He was nineteen years old, and it was the last time he would ever see his homeland. Two weeks later he landed at Ellis Island. It is unknown whether the spelling change of Kristoffersen to Christoffersen was initiated by my great-grandfather, immigration inspectors, or mistakes in the ship’s manifest, but the immigrant logs show that Jon’s name was recorded as Jon
Christoffersen.
Jon followed the example of many other immigrating Danes and made his way to the Midwest, where he found work in Minnesota as a farmhand for another Danish immigrant, Poul Johansen, who raised cattle and hogs. Jon earned double the amount he had in Denmark. His plan was to work the ten years necessary to earn the money for his own farm, but his plans changed when he fell in love with Johansen’s daughter, Lena, who was seventeen when Jon began working for her father. Just a year later they were married. They lived on Johansen’s farm, where Lena gave birth to their first child, Finn, in 1903.
Once again, Jon was swayed by promises of a new and better life farther west. He left farming behind for good when he and Lena decided they would travel nearly one thousand miles west to Butte, Montana, to start a new life. They had heard that several major mines had recently struck gold (true) and that all the miners were getting rich (not so true).
In 1908 Butte was a bustling Western town of more than sixty-five thousand inhabitants, where, as Will Rogers wrote, men “still wore ten-gallon hats and red neckerchiefs.”
While gold was what drew men to the area, copper was what kept them there. Jon got a job at the Anaconda Copper Mine and worked there for the rest of his life.
Shortly after their arrival in Butte, Lena gave birth to two more children, another boy, Lars, who died from fever at the age of three, and a girl, Hanne, who was stillborn. After the loss of two children, Lena was so heavily grieved that some thought her “touched.” The family’s surviving child was sensitive to his mother’s pain, as observed by his father:
Finn is a sensitive and melancholy child. He is much endeared to his mother and seeks to earn her love, which she withholds not out of spite, but because her broken heart has none to give.
—Diary of Jon Christoffersen
Finn was a hardworking and enterprising young man. At the age of twenty-one, he opened his own grocery store, which prospered. That same year he married Genevieve Crimmons, a young woman from a second-generation Butte Irish family. While he was looked down on by Genevieve’s parents, Finn was lauded by his own family for marrying into an established local family. Finn seemed to have realized the American dream. A year after they married, Genevieve gave birth to their first child, a girl whom they named Paula. Genevieve was a demanding woman and wanted more than her husband could provide. She convinced Finn to abandon the business, although Jon counseled against it. Finn and Genevieve extended the family’s western migration to the larger city of Seattle, Washington, where her aunt and uncle lived. Here, they thought they could have greater income, and they opened a new store.
I found it interesting that I was not the first Christoffersen to go to Seattle looking for greater opportunity.
Less than a year after Finn’s family moved, Jon contracted yellow fever and passed away. He was followed only a week later by his wife, Lena. Finn was unable to return to Butte for his own parents’ funerals, as the store was highly demanding—almost as demanding as his wife. In spite of his best efforts, the store did not do well. In the meantime Genevieve gave birth to two more children, both boys: Peter and Thomas.
In October 1929, just four years after their relocation to Seattle, the Great Depression hit. As was the case with thousands of enterprises, Finn’s store failed. Creditors demanded payment or took back their wares, sometimes both. Genevieve’s complaining became intolerable, and she blamed Finn for their family’s suffering. According to Finn’s journal, he was kicked out of their marital bed. Genevieve was cruel.
Genny was at me again tonight. I long for her affection but am utterly alone in my failure.
—Diary of Finn Christoffersen
Genevieve moved in with her aunt and uncle while Finn, with a thirty-five-dollar loan from Genevieve’s uncle, returned to Butte to attempt to resurrect his former store. Unfortunately, the Depression had affected Butte even more than Seattle, and rebuilding his store was more difficult than Finn had hoped. He was lonely and wrote Genevieve daily, entreating her to bring the children and come and be with him, but only once did she answer his letters. She wrote,
Do not think to win me back until you are man enough to support your wife and children.
Finn lived in the direst of circumstances, sending what little profit the store generated to Genevieve and the children. In the cold Montana winters he slept on the potatoes to keep them from spoiling. After eight months of loneliness he met a woman, the widow of the town’s constable. She would come to the store daily, sometimes just to talk. Both were hungry for affection. They had an affair, and the woman became pregnant with Finn’s child.
Around that same time Genevieve’s aunt and uncle grew weary of their demanding niece and sent her back to Butte to be with her husband. When Genevieve learned of her husband’s infidelity, she did what she could to punish him. She made him sleep at the store and would not allow him to eat with the family. During this time, Peter, now eight, and Thomas, seven, worked with their father at the store. As much as Finn begged for his wife’s forgiveness, it never came.
I must wonder if I am to ever have Genny’s love again. I have despaired of it. If I were a dog I would receive more affection.
—Diary of Finn Christoffersen
After several difficult years of Genevieve’s cruel treatment, Finn, struggling with guilt, loneliness, and despair at not being able to adequately provide for his wife and family, decided that they all would be better off with the insurance money from his death. He shot himself in the head. His body was found by his oldest son, Peter.
Because Finn had committed suicide, his body was not allowed to be buried in the cemetery near his parents but was buried by Peter and a neighbor in a nearby wooded area. A wooden cross was constructed, but it has been lost to time and no one today knows for certain where my grandfather’s body lies.
I set the book down, both disturbed and fascinated by what I had read. Like my great-grandfather, I had gone to Seattle to seek my fortune. And, when things turned, I had also considered taking my life. I now better understood my father’s interest in discerning and recording this history. It was a way to understand himself. In a way, I had walked thousands of miles for the same reason.
I looked over at the clock. It was late, and it had already been a long day. I turned off the light, then lay back in my bed, my thoughts drifting from the past to the present and the future. I thought about Nicole asking about Falene. Then I thought about Falene and wondered what she’d been doing since she’d left me in St. Louis. Most of all, I wondered what McKale would think of it all and, if she were here, what she’d tell me to do. But that was nonsense. If she were here to tell me what to do, there would be no question of what to do.
“Why did you leave me, Mickey?” I said to the darkness. I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
CHAPTER
Nine
I now remember why I stopped playing chess with my father. I feel less like a sparring partner than a punching bag.
Alan Christoffersen’s diary
The first thing my father said to me the next morning was, “I had a dream last night.”
I sat down in the chair next to his bed, expecting him to tell me about it, but he didn’t. I had brought with me my father’s chess set, a heavy walnut inlaid board with carved wooden chessmen with felted bottoms.
“You brought my set,” he said.
“The other one was too flimsy.”
“Are you saying that’s why you lost?”
“No, I take credit for that,” I said. “Are you going to tell me about your dream?”
“It was about your mother,” he said. “And McKale.”
This piqued my interest even more. “Tell me about it.”
“We were in this garden. It was big. Miles and miles of the most beautiful flowers and plants. It reminded me of the arboretum, but with more flowers. Thousands of them.”
“Where McKale and I were married,” I said.
“Right,” he said. “It rained.”
“It typhooned,” I said.
He nodded. “We got wet. Anyway, in my dream, the girls were in this garden sitting on the bank of a brook. As I walked up to them they both looked up at me.” My father paused, and his voice took on a faraway tone. “She was so beautiful. They both were. It was as if light was coming from their skin.” He looked into my eyes. “It seemed so real.”
“Did they say anything?”
“Your mother asked why I was there. She said I wasn’t expected yet. Then—” He stopped abruptly.
“Then what?”
“Nothing,” he said. “It was just a dream.”
I looked at him curiously, wondering what he was holding back.
“Get out the chessboard,” he said. “Time to take you to the woodshed.”
“Really, you’re trash-talking?”
I set up the chessboard on his table and pushed it toward him.
“You go first,” he said.
“You’re a gentleman,” I said. I moved a pawn.
“You always move the same piece,” he said.
“It works for me.”
“What do you mean by works? You always lose.”
“Always is a bit strong.”
“When was the last time you won?”
“Never.”
“Exactly.”
“You should let me win sometime,” I said.
“Then it wouldn’t be winning.”
After a few moves I said, “There were more offerings on the porch last night. They were from Pam and Margie.”
He just nodded.
“Margie’s gift was in the bushes. I think Pam threw it there.”
“Pam’s a determined woman,” my father said. “She calls too frequently.”
“How many women do you have chasing you?”
“I don’t know.”
Walking on Water: A Novel Page 4