A Good American

by Alex George

  In the late summer of 1986, I arrived home one afternoon to discover a small package resting against the back door of the house. Rosa’s name was printed on the label in small, no-nonsense capitals. There was a New York postmark. I frowned. Rosa had never mentioned knowing anybody on the East Coast. I picked the box up and carried it inside.

  I had no compunction about opening the thing. Rosa had been gone for two years by then, and I had gotten quite used to reading her mail and responding when necessary. I sliced open the tape and peered inside. On top of a stack of papers there was a black velvet bag and a small white envelope, with Rosa’s name written in the same neat handwriting. I opened the letter.

  Dear Ms. Meisenheimer:

  It is with deep sadness that I write to inform you that my father Stefan recently passed away, after a mercifully brief fight with cancer. After his death I discovered these items in a locked box that he kept in a drawer of his bureau.

  I confess that my father has never mentioned your name to me. He was a man of many gifts, and I suppose many secrets. However, I am sure that he would have wanted these things to be returned to you. I hope that they will bring you a measure of comfort.

  Sincerely,

  David Kliever

  I sat down and read the letter again. Over the years Joseph had occasionally mentioned Stefan Kliever as we worked side by side at the grill, so I knew about his desertion all those years before. I opened the velvet bag. The medal that the Kaiser had pressed onto my great-great-grandfather’s chest fell into my hand. It had been almost fifty years since it had been stolen. I held it up to the light and inspected it, wondering what its return meant. Then I reached into the box and took out the remaining papers.

  There were letters, scores of them, all beginning in the same way: Dear Stefan. The elegant flamboyance of my aunt’s penmanship was unmistakable. Tucked in between the pages were hundreds of photographs.

  Of me.

  FORTY-FIVE

  I flicked through the pictures, watching the years accelerate beneath my fingertips as I morphed from cherubic infant to lankily awkward youth.

  Ever since I was a baby, Rosa had regularly written to this man I did not know and delivered news about me. My progress through childhood was faithfully charted. Mostly Rosa kept to the facts, but occasionally she would allow herself some editorial comment. Her opinions betrayed her fondness for me, but also her inability to pass judgment without some measure of criticism.

  He seems so very shy.

  That’s James—always eager to please.

  At least he tries his best.

  Unable to turn away, I read on through the years, watching my childhood unfurl through the sharp prism of Rosa’s waspish commentary. The letters ended soon after I had settled into my job at the diner.

  He’s grilling burgers now, she wrote in her final letter. Standing where you used to stand.

  I sat at the kitchen table, staring into space, as the truth steamrollered over me.

  Joseph was not my father. Cora was not my mother. Rosa was not my aunt. A lifetime of warm, carefree assumptions lay in tatters.

  Finally, all of the special treatment that Rosa had lavished on me over the years began to make sense. Her fondness for me had nothing to do with the plight of being the second born. I thought back to the countless games of chess, our shared love of P. G. Wodehouse, all those long evenings together. Our intimacy had been real enough, but it was based on a lie. My family had closed ranks and sought to make me someone that I was not. Everybody was guilty: Joseph, Cora—and Rosa most of all. I believed that I’d known her better than I knew anyone, but she had gone to her grave with her secret. My lingering sadness over her death was suddenly laced with anger and a fresh sense of loss. Now I had been cheated out of not one mother, but two.

  Even Jette, I saw miserably, had not been innocent. She must have known as much as anyone. At least, I thought bitterly, she was still my grandmother. I remembered the unreadable look in Jette’s eye when Rosa had brought me home for my first chess lesson. She hadn’t been worried about me, as I’d always imagined. She’d been worried about Rosa, wondering if her daughter would be able to maintain my family’s long conspiracy of silence.

  I sat back in my chair. I had always assumed that Joseph and Cora had named me after Lomax, but now a new theory presented itself. What if Rosa had been allowed that privilege, before she gave me up? I remembered her stories of Mr. Jim, the raccoon she had adored so fiercely when she was young. I stared at the ceiling, and wondered if in fact I had been named in tribute to her beloved childhood pet—the animal that my father had shot.

  I knew nothing.

  That night I lay in bed and surveyed the unfamiliar landscape. We cannot exist without our histories; they are what define us. But my history was a lie. All of a sudden I was rootless, cut adrift from everything that I thought I knew, an immigrant in a land where I did not belong.

  At two o’clock I climbed out of bed, unable to sleep. After Rosa’s death I had put her old correspondence into cardboard boxes and stored them in the spare room along with my manuscripts. I carried the boxes to the kitchen table and began to work my way through the mountains of paper that accumulate around a life. I was hoping to find Stefan Kliever’s replies to Rosa’s letters. Surely he would have had questions about me, some words of encouragement or advice he wanted to pass on. But there was nothing, not even a postcard. Rosa had covered her tracks well.

  I had reached a dead end. I stared out the window into the night. All I could see was my own dark reflection in the glass. I looked at the stranger gazing silently back at me. I no longer knew who I was. All I knew about my father was a handful of anecdotes, half a century old. It wasn’t enough. I needed to know who Stefan Kliever was.

  Joseph was the sole surviving perpetrator of this elaborate hoax. I knew this wasn’t all his fault, but by then there was nobody else left for me to blame. I didn’t have the stomach to confront him. Besides, he was an old man by then. I did not want to resurrect old, painful ghosts for him. I would have to look elsewhere for answers.

  Then I remembered that there had been a return address on the package that had been waiting for me by the back door. I rummaged through the trash can, and two minutes later I was looking at an address in Eastport, New York. I went to find Rosa’s road atlas.

  Every map in her tattered Rand McNally bore evidence of intense scrutiny. There were doodles in the margins, smudged fingerprints, rings from the bottom of coffee cups. I turned its dog-eared pages, perplexed. It looked as if Rosa had run her finger along every highway in the lower 48. I wondered if she, too, had been planning her escape.

  Eastport was on the south coast of Long Island, one of a string of villages in the Hamptons. I looked at the map for an age, wondering what on earth to do next.

  After two days I realized that I could no more forget about the address in Long Island than I could cut off my own arm. It was an itch that would have to be scratched, sooner or later. I decided that there was no point delaying the inevitable. I began to pack.

  One of the advantages of Frank and Darla’s astounding fecundity was that their family provided a steady supply of manpower to work at the diner over school holidays and weekends. Clyde and Todd were my principal helpers that summer. They were industrious and competent, and I knew I could trust them to run the place in my absence. I called Freddy at the funeral parlor and asked him to check in on Joseph while I was gone. I didn’t even tell Joseph that I was going away. I didn’t trust myself to talk to him. His betrayal gnawed away at me, scraping me hollow.

  I decided to drive. The journey by road would take me two days, and I needed the time to think. I pointed my car east and drove all day, marking my progress by the fading in and out of radio stations. When a song died I would twirl the dial until I found something new. I listened to country, jazz, and rock and roll, but m
ainly I listened to pop. All those vapid synths and drum machines didn’t sound much like music to me, but it filled the car with noise, and kept me company as I slowly edged back toward my past.

  By early evening I was exhausted. I stopped at a shabby motel on Interstate 70, outside Hebron, Ohio. Dinner was a dried-out turkey sandwich that I had bought at a service station earlier that day, washed down with a warm can of soda from the vending machine outside my door. There was no ice. I lay on the bed and watched Cagney & Lacey as I ate.

  I was still unsure exactly what I was hoping to achieve with my pilgrimage. My day of solitude behind the wheel had not clarified much. I wanted answers, but I still didn’t know what the questions might be. Perhaps I just wanted to get a glimpse of Stefan Kliever’s second act away from Beatrice, to see what might have been. I was pretty sure that no good could come of it, but that no longer mattered. There was no turning back, not now. I did not sleep well.

  The next morning I climbed back into the car and continued my journey east. Pennsylvania went on forever. Finally Interstate 78 escaped into New Jersey. As the roads became busier, traffic began to move faster, jigging and jagging between lanes. At Newark I turned north onto the New Jersey Turnpike, humming Paul Simon. Vehicles screamed past me on both sides. To my right, New York City shimmered in the afternoon sunlight. It was all I could do not to pull over and stare. I took 95 across the Hudson and through the Bronx, before turning south and hitting the Long Island Expressway. I had been driving all day, but didn’t feel tired. I was electrified by the city’s skyline. It was delicious, to be so tantalizingly close to the place I’d dreamed of for so many years. I decided that once I’d finished my business in the Hamptons, I would treat myself to a day or two among the skyscrapers. It had been a long time coming.

  I drove east along 495, watching Manhattan retreat in my rearview mirror. Finally I turned south off the highway and arrived in Eastport. I had assumed that I would find somewhere to stay in the town, but it was the height of the summer holiday season, and everywhere was full. I finally found a bed-and-breakfast in Westhampton, a few miles down the road. The landlady was very nice. She saw my Missouri license plates and asked me what I was doing such a long way from home. Visiting family, I told her. She smiled approvingly.

  The following morning I drove back into Eastport. On the way I noticed a sign for Remsenburg. The name struck me as familiar, but I couldn’t remember why. Eastport was a tiny place, but I still managed to get lost as I drove up and down quaint tree-lined lanes that all looked identical. After twenty minutes I finally found the address I had copied down from the package. I pulled over, and left the engine running—either for the air-conditioning or so I could make a quick getaway, I was not sure which. The house was an Italianate villa, set well back from the road. A wide drive swept elegantly up to a grand, double-fronted entryway. There was a well-maintained garden populated by mature trees and perfectly trimmed topiary. A man in blue overalls was laboring in the shade of a lushly foliated elm. A pair of sprinklers hissed at each other, sending parabolas of water dancing through the still air. I switched off the ignition and walked up the driveway. I waved at the gardener. He did not return my salute. I rang the doorbell.

  After a minute or two the door opened. A man about my height stood in front of me. His hair was shot through with gray, and his eyes creased into small deltas of wrinkles as he squinted at me in the morning sunlight.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  “David Kliever?”

  “Yes? Who are you?”

  “My name is James Meisenheimer.”

  He looked at me steadily for a moment. “You’re the boy in the photographs,” he said. I nodded. He looked down at his shoes and sighed. “My wife said this would happen. She told me not to send those letters back.”

  “Is there somewhere we can talk?” I said.

  “There’s nothing for you here.”

  “You don’t know what I want yet,” I said. I didn’t know myself.

  He shook his head. “I should have listened to her. It’s not as if my father would have cared. He’s dead, for God’s sake.”

  “I’ve driven halfway across the country to see you. At least give me a few minutes.”

  He sighed, and closed the front door behind him, unwilling to grant me entry to his home. “A few minutes,” he said. He led me down a gravel path to a shaded patio with a wrought-iron table and two chairs. A long, perfectly manicured lawn stretched away from the house. At the far end I could see a swimming pool, shimmering blue in the morning sun. We sat down. He did not offer me anything to drink.

  “Did you say you drove here?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I needed time to think.”

  “Look, I’ve spoken to several lawyers about my father’s estate. It’s all in trust. Watertight wording, they tell me. You’ve no chance—”

  “I don’t give a damn about his estate,” I interrupted. “I just want some answers.”

  “Answers?”

  “Of course. I’ve just discovered that I’m not who I thought I was.”

  “Your mother never told you?”

  “I thought she was my aunt.”

  “Is she still . . . ?”

  I shook my head. “She took her secret to her grave.”

  “Dad never said a word about you, either, not even when he knew he was dying.”

  We contemplated the web of silence that our parents had constructed.

  “You can’t prove a thing,” said David after a moment.

  I ignored him. “Do I have any other brothers? Or sisters?”

  He looked at me as he weighed his options. “A sister,” he replied finally. “Her name’s Elizabeth, although everyone calls her Betty. She’s an ob-gyn in Connecticut.”

  “Older or younger?”

  “Four years younger.” David paused. “We had another sister. She died when she was seventeen. Leukemia.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Amy. She was two years younger than me.”

  The second child. I wondered whether Amy had suffered the same tribulations that I had. Then I realized that she wasn’t the second child, not really. She was the third. I felt an acute pang of loss and longing for this sister whose existence I hadn’t known about a minute before.

  “Losing a sister is hell on earth,” said David quietly. “It destroyed my mother. She started drinking heavily after Amy died. One night she’d spent the evening at a bar in Mastic. She came off the road on her way home. Smashed into a tree. She died on the way to the hospital.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “After that, we hardly saw my father. He just buried himself in his work.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He had an idea, took it, and made it grow. Worked hard, got rich. The American Dream.”

  “What was the idea?”

  “You’ve heard of Delish-a-Burger.”

  A bark of disbelief escaped me. There were two Delish-a-Burgers in Jefferson City, three in Columbia. I had eaten in all of them—clandestine expeditions to spy on the competition. Their secret signature sauce, a phosphorous orange gunk, couldn’t camouflage the gristled awfulness of the pale gray meat, but there were always lines going out the door. Every time a new Delish-a-Burger opened, there was a downtick in my business. “Stefan founded Delish-a-Burger?” I blurted.

  David Kliever nodded. “He always said that when he left Missouri, he could only do one thing well, and that was cook cheeseburgers. So he decided to carry on doing exactly that. He saved up some money, and opened his first restaurant in Newark. In ten years he had dozens of stores in New Jersey. Then he started franchising restaurants across the country. Of course, he lost control of the company years ago, when it went public, although the family retained a decent holding.”

  I looked ag
ain at the elegant garden and enormous house. “Wow,” I said.

  “You really didn’t know?”

  “David, a week ago I didn’t know you existed.”

  I could see the suspicion behind his eyes. “But now that you do—”

  “I told you, I don’t want your money.”

  He leaned back in his chair, sizing me up. “So what do you want?”

  “I want you to tell me more about him.”

  David pulled a face. “Well, let’s see. He was an old-fashioned guy, you could say. Pretty conservative at heart.”

  “Must have been quite a surprise when you found those letters.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Actually, David, after this week, I believe I do.”

  He gave a wry smile at that. “My father always did play his cards close to his chest,” he said. “He wasn’t given to huge displays of emotion. He loved us, but he was always happiest when he was working. After Mom died, he never remarried.”

  “What else?”

  “He was a very stubborn man. Always believed he knew what was best, and not much inclined to listen to the opinions of others. There was nothing anyone could do to make him change his mind, once it was made up. I don’t believe I ever heard him apologize for anything in his life.”

  “He never set eyes on me, not once,” I said quietly. “He never tried. Not even when he knew he was going to die.”

  David got to his feet and turned to look down the garden. “Let me tell you one thing, James. My father was the most careful man I ever met. He never did anything by accident. If he left those letters in that drawer, it was because he wanted me to find them.” He was silent for a moment. “That’s why I sent them to Missouri, despite my wife’s protests. It was what he wanted. He never could admit that he’d made a mistake, but that was the closest he ever came to expressing regret about anything.”