A Family Affair

by Mary Campisi

  But when the funeral director contacted them to say the body had arrived, she went with Uncle Harry, praying for a mistake, a miracle, anything. But even at the entrance of the room, some thirty feet away, she recognized the straight nose, the silver-gray hair, the high cheekbones.

  Her father was dead.

  Her mother refused to see him that first day, spent most of her time sequestered in the master bedroom, coming out only once when Dr. Leone brought over a bottle of pills for her. Valium. Your mother will need these, he’d said. This is going to be very difficult for her. He was right, of course. She’d depended on her husband, to keep life even, and her daily dose of Vicodin to keep her arthritic back under control.

  Now what? Christine rubbed her temples, trying to ease the dull ache in her head. She could step in, take care of money matters and the daily inconveniences that always seemed to overwhelm and upset her mother. But what about the rest?

  No one could replace Charles Blacksworth.

  He was the one person she could count on for honesty and direction. Hadn’t she carried the sealed letter from Wharton’s around in her briefcase four days, waiting for his return so he could share the joy or torment of its contents? Wasn’t he the one who helped her shop for a condo and then, fought the real estate company when they tried to renegotiate the terms?

  And how could she ever forget the day he promoted her to Vice President? They’d been eating chicken burritos at El Charro’s when he reached in his pocket and pulled out a single key, the one to the large corner office, next to his. The reception six days later was a lavish, formal affair, with two roomfuls of colleagues and friends in attendance, but it could not compare to the afternoon in the corner booth of that dark, Mexican restaurant.

  I’m so proud of you, Christine.

  Thanks, Dad. That means a lot to me.

  You remind me of myself at your age.

  I’m only doing what you taught me.

  And you do it very well.

  I’m going after Granddad’s pocket watch next.

  It’s only a watch, Christine.

  We both know that’s not true, Dad. It’s so much more than a watch.

  And it’s caused more harm than good in this family. I’d just as soon toss it out.

  In that case, I’ll take it now.

  Your grandfather meant well but he rewarded the wrong things. I earned it because I practically lived at the office. Is that what you want?

  I want to be the best, Dad, like you.

  You are the best, Christine, right now, just the way you are and no father could ever be prouder than I am of you.

  And now he was gone and she was sitting across from Thurman Jacobs’s gigantic cherry desk with Uncle Harry squeezed into a Queen Ann wing chair next to her. Thurman Jacobs had gone to M.I.T. with her father, then on to Georgetown before joining his father at Jacobs & Jacobs, one of the most prestigious law firms in Chicago. The firm handled all of the legal issues for Blacksworth & Company and Thurman himself took care of her father’s personal matters, including his will.

  It was the matter of the will that brought them to see Thurman this afternoon. She’d hoped to hold off at least another week before dealing with the business side of her father’s death. Who cared how many stocks and bonds he had, how many unit trusts, the value of his investment property? Who cared? None of it would bring him back; most of it would just be a brutal reminder of his death. Death. A horrible word. But Uncle Harry had insisted. It’s best to get it over quickly, deal with it, straight up. It was an odd piece of advice from someone like Uncle Harry.

  She’d come, though, to appease him and immerse herself in the emotionless distribution of assets, anything to stop thinking about her father’s face, pale and wax-like against the satin lining of the ebony coffin.

  Thurman Jacobs entered through a side door, his tall, lean frame slightly stooped, like a sapling whose weight isn’t sturdy enough to hold it erect. His gray suit hung from his shoulders, the excess material drooping at the sides. He was bald on top with a trim edge of dusty brown rimming the sides and back of his skull. The round, wire frames he wore made his nose seem a bit too long, his face too narrow and that coupled with his gangly, bent stature, gave him an Ichobod Crane appearance. At fifty-eight, he looked a full ten years older, yet when he spoke, the rich, timbre of his voice blurred the outward visage and the listener forgot about the awkward homeliness encasing the man, forgot the stooped shoulders, the too long nose, forgot everything but the pure eloquence spilling from Thurman Jacobs’s thin lips.

  “Christine, Harry,” he held out his hands to them from across his desk, bony hands, traced with thin, blue veins. “Thank you for coming so quickly.” He eased his hands away, took a seat behind the massive cherry desk and opened a black portfolio. “Christine, your father and I went back a good many years,” he bestowed a sympathetic smile on her, “since our days at M.I.T. I wasn’t just his attorney, I was his friend.” He cleared his throat and when he spoke again, the richness of his voice filled the room. “Which makes this whole situation that much more difficult.”

  “Thank you, Thurman. I know my father held you in very high regard.”

  “Yes,” he nodded, rubbing his right eye from under his spectacles, “and I him. We had an understanding, Charles and I, one that went well beyond business.” He flipped open the black portfolio, pulled out a thick document, leafed through several pages. He rubbed his eye again, coughed, shifted in his chair. “Christine, I wish there was some way to say this, some way to prepare you. . .”

  “Thurman, she’s a big girl. Just say it.” Harry reached over, grabbed her hand.

  Thurman Jacobs cleared his throat again, tugged at his shirt collar, his skinny neck inching out like a chicken. “The estate’s been apportioned into an equitable distribution; one part, including assets, real and otherwise, to you, one part to your mother,” he paused, “and one part to a third party.”

  “A third party? Who Thurman? M.I.T.?”

  “No, it wasn’t M.I.T.” His voice turned quiet, unfamiliar.

  “What then? Or who? Maybe it’s you, Uncle Harry.”

  “It isn’t Harry.” Thurman’s strong voice deflated, the air spilling out in one long, slow whoosh.

  Uncle Harry squeezed her hand tight, but his gaze remained on Thurman. “Just tell us, so we can be done and get the hell out of here.”

  Thurman’s thin lips moved with effort. “One part has been left to a Ms. Lily Desantro.”

  The words were out, forming a complete sentence and yet they made no sense. Who was Lily Desantro? She didn’t even know anyone named Lily. The pressure from Uncle Harry’s fingers dug into her flesh. She stared at their hands, locked together; her nails pressed into his tanned skin, leaving small, red moons on the back of his hand.

  “Jesus,” Uncle Harry swore under his breath, “What the hell was he thinking?”

  Christine dragged her eyes from Uncle Harry’s marked skin to the man behind the desk. “Thurman? Who’s Lily Desantro?”

  Thurman Jacobs was a man possessed of great eloquence, the one chosen by colleagues and corporations to represent, to present, to speak, about matters great and small, at conventions and rotary club dinners. And yet now, he sat staring at Christine, speechless, his bony fingers rubbing the sides of his protruding temples.

  “Thurman?”

  “Lily Desantro.” The name fell out between half-closed lips as though he struggled between duty to tell, loyalty not to.

  “I don’t . . . understand.”

  “Do you have an address?” This from Uncle Harry.

  Thurman Jacobs picked up a pen, scribbled something on a piece of paper and held it out. Harry snatched it from him. “Thanks.” Then he stood up, still clutching Christine’s hand. “Come on, kid, let’s go.”

  ***

  The whole world was one great big screw up. Harry sat in the lounge at the Ritz, waiting for Christine to come out of the restroom. He’d decided to take her here for a drink b
efore he told her the truth. Actually, he was the one who needed the drink, several, to give him the guts to carry it out.

  Why couldn’t people just be who they were, womanizers, drinkers, liars, manipulators, instead of pretending around it all, hiding the secrets like dirty laundry stuffed under a bed, and then dying, so the grieving got whammed with two losses; the flesh and blood bodies and the images they thought they knew.

  Charlie should have told him he had something on the side. Harry would have understood; Gloria was a pathetic piece of flesh and bone, a real martyr, served up super-size. How much pain and self-pity should a man have to take? Charlie should’ve gotten rid of her years ago. So what if she was Christine’s mother? No woman would’ve pulled that clinging crap on Harry. He’d never get married. Marriage was nothing but a primitive form of torture; women strapping their hands around a guy’s balls and yanking. Move too far to the left, yank, one extra step to the right, yank. Breathe too hard, yank, not hard enough, yank, breathe at all, yank, yank, yank!

  So, what was he going to tell Christine? He didn’t like being left to clean up messes, he wasn’t good at them. Creating the mess, now that was his specialty; trash it and duck out, move on to the next catastrophe. Nobody ever expected him to stay around, and certainly not to figure a way out of something like this. Hell, no. But Christine was the one decent human being in this screwed up world. Should he lie and buy a little time, maybe make her think this Desantro woman was some do-gooder out to save the world or some other bullshit?

  “Uncle Harry?” Christine slid into the booth beside him. “Are you all right?”

  “Just thinking.” He eyed the drinks on the table. “I must be thinking way too hard if I didn’t see the waitress bring these drinks.” He let out a half-hearted laugh, picked up his scotch and swallowed.

  Christine sipped at her wine. “Uncle Harry, what’s going on?”

  “It’s tough, Chrissie.” He stared at the scotch in his glass. Three more of these should do it, mellow him out enough to get the words out.

  “Uncle Harry, who’s Lily Desantro?”

  Harry polished off his drink and set it down. “The first time I heard the Desantro name was the night your father died. The phone call,” shit, he did not want to do this. “Remember that? There was a man on the phone, he was the one who told me about Charlie, said he hit a guard rail and flipped over.” He didn’t mention the part about it taking three hours to pry Charlie from the car. “Anyway, this guy said not to come, he’d have the body sent home. I asked him who the hell he was and that’s when he told me about the woman, said she was in the car with Charlie.” He paused, pinched the bridge of his nose. “She was his mother.”

  “Is she alive?”

  Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess so. He didn’t say she died but I didn’t ask.”

  “So, this woman, what exactly was she to Dad?”

  This was the part he’d wanted to avoid; the uncertain, almost fearful look on her face, speckled with the tiniest glimmer of knowing. People played games with themselves all the time, asked questions to answers they already knew deep in their gut, yet couldn’t admit, or didn’t want to admit. He saw it every day, with his married friends who bought their wives bracelets and two carat rings stuffed with diamonds and rubies. All signs of romance, love, affection, devotion, whatever in the hell you wanted to call it, and yet, it wasn’t that at all, it was duty, and ninety-eight percent of the women had picked out the piece, designed it, ordered it, and then, told their husbands where to pick it up. Happy Friggin’Anniversary. These same men followed every piece of ass, every short skirt, tight shirt, screwing them with their eyes, sometimes with their dicks, but if you asked any one of them if they loved their wives, they’d say of course, not even a second’s hesitation, which always told Harry they were lying and they knew it. That was the knowing part. They knew whatever love they’d felt in the marriage had been reduced to trips to Tiffany’s and their Gold Card, and if they had found something on the side, they knew too, that it would stay right there, on the side, because they weren’t giving up their homes, their country club memberships, their right to see their kids every night, their 401K’s . . . their life. They weren’t giving up their life, and yet, none of them realized they’d already done just that.

  It was pretty sad that he could see this when none of the others could. His women were the same way, all thinking they’d change him, love him so much that he’d want a wife, a family, a child . . . an SUV. And then came the mothering. That’s when they had to go.

  And now, Christine was staring at him, not wanting to believe what her gut must be telling her. Shit. He reached for another scotch, swallowed, let the burn fill his throat, consume his lungs.

  “You know, this is really hard, Chrissie, especially for me.”

  “That’s why I’m asking you, Uncle Harry. You’re the only one who’ll tell me the truth.”

  She was relying on him for the truth. Now that was just damn sad. “If I were a betting man, and I’ve been known to be that in my lifetime,” he said, covering her hands with his own, “I’d say your father was . . . involved with this Lily Desantro.”

  “You mean an affair?”

  Christ. “Looks that way. Charlie loved you, Chrissie. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “And my mother?” Her voice wobbled. “Did he love her?”

  “I’m not the one to ask about love, you know that.”

  “Is that where he was going every month? To see her?”

  Jesus. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I’m going to find out.”

  “Chrissie, let it go. It’s over. Charlie’s dead. Finding out isn’t going to bring him back.”

  “I need to know.”

  “Sometimes it’s better not to know. Nothing can change what is or what happened and digging around in the past is only going to make you miserable.”

  Her eyes were bright, shiny. “I don’t care. I have to know.”

  Harry shook his head, reached for his drink. “Remember Pandora’s Box? This is the same thing. Don’t open it.”

  “How can you expect me to forget what you just told me?”

  “I said she probably was.”

  She threw him a disgusted look. “Uncle Harry, I’m not twelve years old. She was his mistress.”

  Harry shrugged, took another drink.

  “And knowing that changes everything.”

  “It doesn’t change the fact that he loved you.”

  “But everything he told me, about honor and integrity, was it all a lie?”

  “Of course not.”

  “And this woman, who was she? What kind of woman could make him leave his family to be with her?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I can’t live my life with this lie. I have to find out.”

  “So, what do you plan to do, just pack up and take off on an excursion? Close up shop? Charlie wouldn’t like that.”

  “Phil’s a perfectly capable CEO. He’ll be fine with me leaving for a week or two. Besides, no one expects me back in the office so soon after the funeral.”

  “And your mother?” This would send Gloria over the edge. She’d be popping those Vicodin like Sweet Tarts.

  “This would kill her.”

  “She doesn’t have to find out.”

  “She can’t find out.” She rubbed her temples. “She just can’t.”

  “Relax. She won’t.”

  “Uncle Harry, you have to help me. We’ll say I went to clean out Dad’s place in the Catskills, which is part true, and I’m taking care of a business deal he started up there, which is also part true.”

  “What business deal?”

  “A few months ago, he told me he put up the collateral for some machine shop. I guess the guy was having a tough time making his payments and Dad was going to help him out, set up some alternative financing or something and he wanted me to get involved. I could check that out while I’m up there.”

  “Chrissie, we don’t eve
n know if this Desantro woman is still alive. She could’ve been killed with your father.” Jesus, why couldn’t she just let it go? The most she could hope to gain was a piece of the truth and that would end up haunting her for the rest of her life. He should know; thirty-two years ago he’d begged for the truth and it had almost destroyed him.

  “I have to know. Don’t you see that, Uncle Harry?”

  The damn, sad fact was that he did see. He knew exactly how she felt, how she needed to search out the truth so she could understand the pieces of her life that no longer made sense.

  “I think you’re making a mistake.”

  “I have to know.”

  “And if what you find out is worse than not knowing? Then what?” He felt it all rushing back, the words, the lies, the pain. “Then you’ve got a face, a voice that will haunt you for the rest of your life, Chrissie. It could friggin’ destroy you.”

  “I know. But if I’m going to end up hating the man I loved most in the world, then I want everything about that woman, her face, her voice, the color of her fingernails, embedded in my brain, so every time I think of my father, every time I wonder why I can’t forgive him, I’ll think of her and I’ll know I have a reason to hate him.”

  Chapter 3

  “So why exactly, are you going away?”

  Christine folded another sweater, a tan cashmere, zip in the back, placed it in the open suitcase on her bed. “Connor, I told you. I’m going to the Catskills to close up my father’s place.” She turned away so he wouldn’t see her face, not that Connor had ever been able to detect anything she hadn’t wanted him to. When she’d called him the night her father died and he offered to come over, she told him no, it was late and he had to get up early; he’d left it at that, hadn’t insisted on coming, or better, hadn’t just showed up on her door step, pulled her into his arms and held her the way she’d needed him to.

  “I don’t get it,” he said, crossing his arms under his head and stretching his long body on the bed. “I guess I just don’t get this whole trip thing. Why’d he go there every month, anyway?”