No Relation

by Terry Fallis

  It was a hassle to race from my business classes in the Chicago Loop, where Driehaus was situated, up to my English lit and writing courses at the Lincoln Park campus. But I would not have survived an undergraduate business education any other way. I had what you might call a binary college experience. There was no middle ground. I hated my business courses. I loved my artsy electives. My emerging passion for the latter ensured my survival in the former, but just barely. Writing had always lurked in the back of my mind. But my English lit and writing courses shoved it front and centre, where it has remained. I also played intramural softball. Modesty aside, I was a reasonably solid player. I roamed the outfield for three of my four years at DePaul. I could swing the bat, too. It was a welcome distraction from my heavy business course load.

  After I graduated, my father was interested in having me join Hemmingwear to kick-start the business apprenticeship that would ultimately see the reins of power passed from EH3 to EH4, a.k.a. me. Did I say my father was interested? More like obsessed and possessed. But I had other plans. When I told him I wanted to pursue graduate studies, he was initially quite happy.

  “Well, if you don’t want to join me in the business right now, an MBA will serve you well when you eventually take over here. Yes, I think it’s a fine idea,” he said.

  Given that I’d just graduated with an undergraduate degree from a respected business school, I understood why he’d naturally assumed I’d meant an MBA. When I explained that I wanted to do an MFA instead of an MBA, still, he was tentatively pleased. Ignorance sustained this pleasant misunderstanding for a few more minutes.

  “So it’s a master’s in finance and administration?”

  I shook my head. When I finally clarified that I intended to pursue an MFA in creative writing, he was no longer “tentatively pleased.” And his displeasure certainly wasn’t at all tentative. In fact, he started vibrating just a little and had to sit down.

  “Tell me it doesn’t stand for a master of fairy arts,” he grumbled, maintaining remarkable enunciation through grinding teeth.

  Fairy arts. Good one, Dad. My father has never been celebrated for his enlightened thinking or his sparkling wit.

  “Master of fine arts, actually,” I explained.

  “Well, it’s not fine with me!”

  But somehow I’d been resolute throughout the great MFA debate, now more than seventeen years behind us. My desire to write helped me endure that difficult waltz with my father. It made it easier that Dad was still in his prime as a business leader. He hadn’t been anywhere near ready to give up his position at the top of Hemmingwear. So what did it matter if I carried on studying while he carried on running the company? Seemed like a win-win to me. So in the end, my father picked his battles, too.

  When we’d finally agreed that I’d move to New York as a creative writing graduate student at Columbia, he’d poked my sternum with a stiff index finger and simply said, “Paramount and sacrosanct.” It had been difficult to keep my head from nodding in agreement when he’d said it. Nodding, or worse, repeating the phrase to him, seemed a natural reaction at the time. But with all my strength, I’d kept my head fixed in space, like it was stuck fast in an invisible vise, and just let the silence hang between us.

  I loved my time at Columbia, each and every minute. Two whole years to concentrate completely on literature and writing without ever even giving passing thought to the fortunes of The Hemmingwear Company. It was a gift. Okay, a gift from my father, I guess. When I started, I wasn’t convinced I could actually learn to be a better writer. I feared that crafting timeless words, sentences, and stories might only come through pure alchemy. While dashes of alchemy certainly help, by the end, I really did feel I’d become a better writer. Those around me even agreed. I had learned from, and been inspired by, wonderful faculty and classmates alike. I truly wished the program had been five years.

  Though we never spoke openly about it, I’m convinced that my mother had a hand in getting me to Columbia. She was always there for me, without betraying her husband, of course. She was the buffer, the mediator, the great ameliorator. She seemed to have a sixth sense about when and how to intervene to stop my relationship with my father from careening off the rails. I don’t think I really understood the quiet but pivotal role she played throughout those years until she was no longer there, no longer alive, to play it. More than anyone else, she understood our family’s complex chemistry, and how to render the explosive inert. I missed her. I’m sure my father missed her. He must have. It’s just hard to tell. Without her, his edges hardened. There was no need for pretense any more. After she passed away, for my father, it became all about the family business. Who am I kidding? It was always all about the family business. Paramount and sacrosanct.

  My flight landed on time at O’Hare around eleven. I picked up my rental and drove. The Hemmingwear Company was located where it had always been, since 1916, out on the industrial lands adjacent to the rail yards. It took me only about forty minutes to drive there. I parked in a designated visitor’s space, hyperventilated briefly, and walked in to reception.

  “Welcome, EH4. Good to see you. You’re expected upstairs. Your father is waiting,” said Abby, the long-time Hemmingwear receptionist and an old friend.

  “Do I really have to go right up, Abby?” I implored. “Couldn’t I visit with you for a while, or with my sister, or with that person I’ve never seen before watering the plants over there?”

  “That’s Kyle. He’s an outside contractor. He talks to the plants, but he doesn’t talk to anyone else around here.”

  “Well, there you go. I’ll take that challenge!”

  “Hem, the big man is waiting for you. Better go on up. Besides, his office overlooks the parking lot. He probably saw you drive in and is wondering what’s keeping you.”

  I heard a faint buzz as a light flashed on the complicated-looking telephone console that could have passed for the space shuttle’s instrument panel. She pushed the lit button and swung the headset microphone closer to her mouth.

  “Yes, sir,” she answered while frowning at me. “Yes, sir, he has indeed arrived. He’s just tying his shoe and he’ll be right up.”

  She smiled but pointed up the stairs to the executive suite.

  “Dead man walking,” I said as I shuffled down the corridor toward the staircase. Abby smiled.

  Just at the top of the stairs, Sarah was peeking around a door jamb.

  “Sarah, just the person I wanted to see,” I said.

  She grabbed my arm and dragged me into a rather small and spartan office as far from the action as one could be while staying in the same zip code.

  “This is your office?”

  “Yeah, what about it? It’s fine,” she replied. “Have you seen Dad yet?”

  “Nope, just on my way up. But give me two minutes on MaxWorldCorp. Dad had someone email me our financials and some other noise about the competition, but I didn’t have a chance to read it. Rather, I forgot to read it. Rather, I didn’t want to read it. What’s up on the competitive front?”

  “You’ve got no time, so just listen. You already know that MaxWorldCorp has been trying for years to acquire Hemmingwear to consolidate their global leadership. Their mercurial CEO, Phillip Gainsford, is obsessed with us. He wants Hemmingwear and he wants it bad. MaxWorldCorp has grown significantly in recent years through aggressive acquisitions. They’re big on most other continents, particularly Europe, but they’re having a tough time gaining much of a foothold in the North American space, largely because we’re in the way. So they’d love to make a play for us. They actually have a pretty good underwear line here in the U.S. now, but with nowhere near the market penetration we have. So they’re hungry to swallow us, whole.”

  “Let me guess. Dad won’t even let the conversation get out the gate. Right?”

  “Right. He shuts it down every time.”

  “And?”

  “So lately MaxWorldCorp has taken a different path. They’ve started a p
rice war but only on those products that we manufacture. They’re trying to weaken us, drive our margins and profits into the ground, separate us from the herd, run us down, and then pounce on their struggling prey.”

  “Wow, quite the graphic metaphor. Do you watch the National Geographic Channel a lot?”

  “Focus, Hem. He’s waiting,” she said, guiding me back out into the hall. “MaxWorldCorp has us locked in a war of attrition. But because their product line is so much broader than ours, they can afford to suck up price cuts on those few products that compete against our line, but it really hits us hard. Now, go. And don’t forget why you’re really here.”

  I knew why I was there. I may not have read the stuff my father had sent me, but I had spent a few sleepless nights figuring out what I was going to say. I just didn’t know how he was going to react.

  As I approached, I could see him standing in the doorway of his large corner office, no doubt in search of his AWOL son. His long-time secretary, Irene, an older, heavy-set woman, waved at me as I passed by.

  “Dad.”

  “Ah, EH4 has finally arrived.” He stepped forward and shook my hand as if we were meeting for the first time.

  “Dad, when you call me that, it sounds like you’re referring to a fighter jet or a sports car. ‘The EH4’s rack and pinion steering and sport-tuned suspension make it a driver’s dream.’ ”

  Not even the hint of a smile. So much for breaking the ice. He just waved me into his office and closed the door behind me. He pointed to the two ugly mismatched chairs in front of his desk. I sat in the one that looked marginally more comfortable and instantly, for the first time in days, was reminded of my badly bruised tailbone. But the empty chair beside me was worse. Like a machine gunner in a concrete pillbox, my father took his power position in an elevated chair behind a massive oak desk.

  I looked around the office. Sarah was right. The wood panelling. The wooden desk. The small board table. The green blotter. The thin-cushioned couch and spindly end tables. The coffee table. The ashtrays, yes ashtrays! The artwork. The carpet. The complete absence of any electronic device more advanced than an early Touch-Tone telephone. Yes, she was right. I seemed to have slipped through a slit in the space-time continuum and emerged in 1962.

  “Welcome home. I’m heartened you’re here,” he began.

  Who says “heartened” in everyday conversation?

  “Well, it’s been a while since I’ve visited. How are you, Dad?”

  “The business is plodding along. Phil Gainsford is a thorn in my bloody side, but we have corporate longevity and customer loyalty going for us – ”

  “Not the business, Dad. Not just yet,” I interrupted. “I meant, how are you? You know, as a member in good standing of the human race.”

  “I don’t really understand the question. My legs work. My hands work. A bowl of Bran Buds keeps me regular. Everything is working just fine, if that’s what you mean,” he replied. “We just have to keep those bastards from eating our lunch. They seem to be able to respond very quickly to whatever moves we make. They are sharp. So we need to be sharper. Faster and sharper.”

  The silence that followed was one part uncomfortable, two parts awkward.

  “Okay, then. We might as well get to the point. Dad, I have an idea that I think just might end the impasse you and I reached about fifteen years ago. You may have been ignoring or avoiding our little stalemate, just as I have been, but we’re not getting any younger, and the elephant in the room is just growing bigger.”

  Dad said nothing and was staring at his green blotter as if salvation might materialize right there on his desk.

  “The fluke of my birth and the burden of my name means that I’m supposed to succeed you in the company. You remind me of that, well, often. I get that. I understand how important ‘family tradition’ is to you. For me, I try to separate those two words. Family is important. That goes without saying. But I’m less convinced about the tradition part of the equation. Honouring a tradition founded on the serendipity of birth order seems almost, um, arbitrary.”

  “You think three generations of family leadership in an iconic American success story is ‘arbitrary,’ ” he almost whispered. He always spoke this way when he was livid. It was a measure of his self-control that he could lower the volume while approaching detonation.

  “Okay, okay, I can see that’s not quite the right word. Hold on. Let me reframe the question,” I skated. “Is family tradition important enough to ruin someone’s life? To make someone miserable? To prevent them from pursuing what they truly believe is their path to happiness and fulfillment? And just to clarify any confusion, I am that someone. Is the family tradition really worth all of that?”

  “You, son, were a post-war baby. Is that why the concept of duty seems so foreign to you?”

  “Dad, you were also a post-war baby,” I countered. “I have a sense of duty to my family. That’s actually why I’m here. But I have to balance it with duty to myself, and to my own dreams.” I laughed when I heard my own words. “Wow. I sound like a Hallmark greeting card.”

  I stood up not because I wanted to add some drama to my next point but because the pain in my ass really gave me no other choice.

  “Dad, let’s be practical for a moment. I think there’s a way to let this cup pass me by while preserving the family tradition you hold so dear. And I say that with great respect.”

  “Impossible. That makes no sense, unless you’ve discovered a long-lost twin brother I knew nothing about.”

  “No, Dad, but there is a first-born daughter.”

  In one swift motion, he swivelled in his chair to put his back to me, folded his arms across his chest, and shook his head. His alacrity was impressive. He shut me down in half a breath without even saying a word.

  “Hear me out, Dad, please,” I said in plaintive mode. “Just listen. Sarah finished first in her business undergrad. She finished first in her MBA class at Northwestern. I repeat, in case that didn’t register, she placed first at Northwestern! You may not have noticed, but she turned down the world so she could come back to work here. This is where she wants to be. This company is as important to her as it is to you, if you’d just take a moment to notice. She’s twice as smart and three times as tough as I am. She is driven to succeed, to make Hemmingwear succeed. She just needs you to give her a chance. Why not give her a shot in finance, let her spread her wings a bit. I think you’d be impressed with what she can do.”

  “Hem, she’s got all she can handle in, in …”

  “Marketing, Dad. She’s in marketing.”

  “I know where she is. I put her there! And she’s being pushed to the edge of her capabilities already. She needs more time before she can tackle anything more challenging.”

  “Come on, Dad. She’s a marketing expert. You know that. And she’s already developed a detailed analysis of the competitive landscape and mapped out a vision for the future of company.”

  “How presumptuous. How precocious,” he said while gargling sarcasm. “I can only imagine what she’s come up with.”

  “You shouldn’t have to imagine it. She gave you a copy. Have you not read it? It’s quite an impressive document.”

  “Look, son, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, as you should know. I gave it to Henderson to review. That’s the more appropriate reporting line and a more effective allocation of resources.”

  “You didn’t even read it?”

  “Well, what did you think of it?” He hurled the question at me like it was a lawn dart.

  Great. Pinioned by my own lawn dart. Of course I’d never seen the document. I do have my limits. But since he clearly hadn’t read it either, escape seemed possible.

  “Well, I found it to be thoughtful, enlightening, informed, and very creative. It effectively balances respect for how we’ve always operated with the innovation these competitive times demand.”

  Not bad, I thought.

  Dad just sighed.

  “She’s
just so young!” he snapped, swivelling back to face me.

  “She’s twenty-seven! You were already a VP by her age, according to family lore,” I said, getting a little heated. “Dad, is it the ‘young’ part or the ‘she’ part that sticks in your craw?”

  I was getting close to the line, or perhaps had already crossed it.

  “You have not presented a viable option. Sarah as a future CEO is not in the cards. That is not the plan. That has never been the plan!”

  “Dad, please. Think about what I’ve said. Think about Sarah and what this means to her. Besides, testicles are overrated.”

  Dad winced at the genital reference, but I just barrelled ahead.

  “Not having them isn’t a good enough reason to pass over Sarah’s skills, brains, knowledge, and drive. Not nearly a good enough reason. I implore you to think this through. Not only is this a viable course, it’s a much better plan than yours,” I insisted. “I’m not CEO material, family tradition or not. So, Dad, if your plan includes me coming back here, then I’m sorry, you really don’t have a plan at all.”

  My heart was pounding. With all the resolve I could muster, I kept my eyes fixed on his. He looked like he was about to say something. He opened his mouth a couple of times, but closed it again before any words escaped. He finally turned away. I stood up. My work there was done, for now.

  “Um, I gotta go. I’ll see you at home later, Dad,” I said as I left the room. I wanted to discourage him from coming after me, so I closed his door on my way out.

  A good-looking youngish guy, dressed in a dark blue suit with an open-neck light blue Oxford button-down, was heading into the office next to my father’s. I pegged him at mid-thirties. He stuck out his hand.