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by Lashner, William

  The Founders’ Room was decorated with old photographs of the club, pictures of golfers in their plus-fours posing poststrike, of fat men in overcoats and hats smiling next to a horse-drawn carriage, of the crowds on the course for the epic 1939 US Open. Here it was, the grand legacy of the club’s history, laid out as if an object lesson placed upon these walls just for me.

  The photographs vividly demonstrated the club’s primacy in the history of America’s aristocracy. And even from its immodest start in 1890, there had always been a Willing at its core. As I gazed at the photographs, one after another, I had no doubt that the pictures were populated with my ancestors, well fed and prosperous, blithely self-satisfied, at ease in their entitlement: William Willing and Montgomery Willing and Peter Willing and Montgomery Willing II, and my great-grandfather Edward R. Willing, and my grandfather Montgomery Willing III. But there would be no celebratory pictures of me. I might be Jon Willing in Patriots Landing, but here, at the Philadelphia Country Club, I was Moretti to the core.

  “Yes? Hello? You asked for me?”

  A man stood in the doorway, old and lean and ferocious, his gray cardigan buttoned, the pleats of his pants crisp. White hair well trimmed, eyes blue and clear, nose straight, lips thin and turned down in perpetual disapproval. I stared at him and felt my emotions rising. It was as if the knot that had been in my stomach the moment I walked into the club tightened, squeezing out the moisture in my eyes.

  “Who are you and what is this about?” the old man said, his voice a snap of impatience. “It better be important for you to disturb me with business at the club. Let’s get on with it. What is it that you want?”

  And then my ten-year-old self leaped up and grabbed me by the throat, raising the pitch of my voice even as it stifled my breath.

  “Grandfather?” it said.

  36. UnWilling

  I HAD BEEN waiting for him my entire life.

  I never expected that my father would save us when circumstances sent our lives spiraling down from our Gladwyne estate into Pitchford. My father was useless; my father would forget me as soon as he walked out the door each morning and look startled at my presence on the rare nights he came home. But my grandfather was made of richer stuff. He was a man of the world, a man of power. When we visited on those special Sundays he took more interest in me than my father ever did. Tall and stiff in his gray suit and black tie even on the Sabbath, he would stand with his hands behind his back and quiz me on my Latin studies at the same posh private school that he had attended. He was the heir and the patriarch, he was the Willing who mattered, the Willing who would rescue my mother and me.

  And so I waited for him. I waited for him to come for us after my father left and the pool grew green with algae. I waited for him in Pitchford to show up on our doorstep, tall and stiff in his gray suit, to sweep us out of our split-level hell and back to the playing fields of the Philadelphia Country Club, where we belonged. And after I took matters into my own hands in the basement of the Grubbins house, I still somehow found myself waiting for him. In Pitchford my last year, in Wisconsin during college, even during my life in Virginia. I had taken his name when I left Pitchford, I was easy enough to find. In some especially delusional part of my delusional brain, I was certain that someday he would come for me, pull me out of my life, hoist me into the very stratum I had been destined for as a youth. Is it any wonder, then, that in the deepest trouble of my troubled life, I looked to him to dig me out?

  And now, here he was.

  “Don’t be a fool, young man,” said my grandfather as he made his unsteady way to the board table, leaning heavily on his cane, and took his rightful place at the head. “Using the term grandfather as a rote appellation for an older man is rather impertinent.” He eased himself slowly into the chair. It was a shock to see him so old physically. His huge presence in my imagination hadn’t aged in thirty years; this man was like the shrunken-apple version. “Now, what is it you want?”

  “I’m Jonathon,” I said.

  “Jonathon?” said my grandfather.

  “Jonathon Willing.”

  “But I thought your name was Morelli or something. That’s what Denise told me.”

  “Moretti,” I said. “That was my mother’s maiden name. I thought it best to keep this between us when dealing with the help. But I’m still a Willing. Here is my driver’s license.”

  I took my license out of my wallet, placed it in front of my grandfather. He picked it up, held it far in front of him, squinted at it.

  “Edward Holt?”

  Sheepishly, I grabbed it back, found my Virginia license, and handed that to him. He looked at me as if I was an utter idiot and then squinted again.

  “Okay,” he said. “You have a license, one of at least two, that registers you as Jonathon Willing. Which proves what?”

  “That I’m your grandson. Long lost. You’re my grandfather.”

  “You’re either badly mistaken or a raving lunatic,” said my grandfather. “Based on the condition of your face, most likely the latter. But you are not my grandson. I have four grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren and that sum is quite sufficient. Now we are at the end of our business together and it is time to conclude this meeting.” With both hands on the table, he struggled to standing. “Good day.”

  “Preston Willing was my father.”

  “Preston? So that’s what this is, a con job.” He snorted. “Where did you meet up with him, in some casino? And now, all these years later, you’re making your move? Well, your research is thorough, Mr. Moretti, but not thorough enough. My son had no children.”

  “Of course he did. He had me. And another with his other family. Ask him.”

  “My son can no longer speak for himself. He died four years ago of a heart attack.”

  “I—I didn’t know.”

  “In Las Vegas. At an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and strangely, sadly, I was. Orphaned, and not for the first time, I blinked and I saw him there, my father, standing in the corner of the Founders’ Room, trying to stuff his life to make up for something, stuff it with wives, with lives, with food. The image of him dying at a seedy all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet with its piles of barely warmed-over crap was heartrending. And I was shocked at the bitterness revealed by my grandfather’s volunteering of the information to someone he considered a stranger.

  “Now, this is a private club, Mr. Moretti,” said my grandfather. “Leave the premises forthwith or I’m calling the police. I’ve heard of this con, long-lost children coming to claim their inheritance. But I’ve been around the block, I’ve dealt with my share of scoundrels, and I know one when I see one.”

  “I used to visit your house every Sunday,” I said, still seeing my father’s image in front of me. I wasn’t arguing anymore, I was remembering, in a reverie for my dead father and all he failed to mean to me. “The big white house with the pillars. The long red dining room. Gloria the maid. Jelly beans in the silver bowl in the living room. Tulips in the spring. The tennis court. Your fruit trees with their branches growing straight across. Roast beef and potatoes. Crystal goblets for Sunday dinner. Your weekly toasts to Nixon.”

  The old man stared at me. “How could you know all that?”

  “I’m Jonathon,” I said. “You called me Jon Boy. I was put in the family prep school. I used to have dinners by myself at this very club, swim in the pool out back. I’m your grandson.”

  And then something happened to him, my grandfather: the cast of certainty on his face, like a plaster death mask that had been affixed there for the whole of his life, suddenly cracked—just a bit, true, but still it cracked. And he collapsed back into the overstuffed leather conference chair. And I could see him trying to remember, trying to remember me. I thought for a moment that it was a dementia of some sort, some failure of his synapses, a spongiform encephalopathy that had burrowed through his brain like a swarm of termites. But then it came, the recognition, it was there in th
e widening of the eyes, the tremble of the jaw. I was in there all the time, just suppressed, like one suppresses the memory of a motor vehicle accident, the stray hand of a smiling priest, an unwanted child.

  “Hello, Grandfather,” I said.

  This was the moment when the violins would swell and his eyes would grow moist, the moment when the old man would stand and stagger forward into my arms. This was the moment when I would be welcomed back into the bosom of my family. This was the moment.

  “You’re a fraud,” he said, his eyes suddenly clear again and now hard as slate. “My son Preston never married.”

  “How can you say that? He married my mother. There was a ceremony, a party after.”

  “There was surely no such affair.”

  “I’ve seen pictures of the wedding. I’ve seen pictures of you at the wedding.”

  “Pictures,” he said with disdain. “Stalin knew what to do with pictures.”

  “My mother was not a Stalin.”

  “Preston had no children, which was a blessing, because Preston was a great disappointment to me. He failed at everything he put his hand to, and not just feebly, but disastrously, and the offshoots of his failures continue to threaten our family’s prosperity to this very day. We remain ever vigilant to weed out his errors. So I can say, uncontrovertibly, that you are not a Willing.”

  “I didn’t come for your money.”

  “Then you won’t be disappointed.”

  “My God,” I said, my voice wide with a sort of amazement. “Of all the scenarios for our first meeting after thirty years, I never imagined you’d sit there and deny me to my face like this. I thought I might get an apology, or an explanation, or even a tearful embrace, but not this. What is it with you people?”

  We stared at each other for a moment, him in his determination, me in my shock. Which was a joke, really. How on earth could I have been shocked by anything that old man did? He had thrown me out of his life three decades before and now here he was, lying baldly about who I was to my very face. How could I have expected any other result? If anything, this journey into my past was really a journey into my naïveté. Something had caused me to stop emotionally dead in my tracks, and I had a good idea what the hell it was.

  “I don’t need to sit here and be insulted by riffraff,” he said, struggling again to rise.

  “Oh, you’ll sit,” I said, standing now, towering over him. I slapped hard on the table and the sound caused him to drop back into his chair. Then I took out my hunting knife.

  It opened with a sharp click and my grandfather drew back at the intimation of violence, drew back yet let himself smile at the same time, as if all his prejudices against me were being justified in the glint of the blade. His smile disappeared when I cut a slash in my palm. Blood welled from the wound and dropped onto the table.

  “Here’s your proof,” I said. “Enough to provide a whole new set of heirs to vie with your precious great-grandchildren for the Willing estate.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Not totally, but I am your grandson, so I’m probably halfway there.”

  “What are you after, Mr. Moretti?”

  “I came here to ask my grandfather for a favor, but it’s not a favor anymore. You want to be rid of me, you want Preston’s heirs to remain erased from your life and the life of the Willings forever? Then this is what you must do. You were the friend of senators and cabinet secretaries, you drank with Nixon, you donated huge gobs of money to both parties, you are more connected than a switchboard. And what you can’t get by connections you can get with your lawyers and your money.”

  “I knew you were after something,” said my grandfather.

  I took a folded piece of paper out of my pocket, smoothed it out, slid it across the table so it sopped up the blood I had spilled.

  “This is a name and a number,” I said. “The number is my phone. The name is of a murderous motorcycle thug who turned on his gang and was put into the government’s witness protection program. Now, because of something that happened many years ago, he’s threatening me and my family with serious bodily harm. I’m a Willing, I will do anything to protect my family. I’m sure you understand. I need to make this thug stop, but I can’t do that if I don’t know where he is. I need his address.”

  “That’s impossible. Even if I wanted, I couldn’t do—”

  “Nothing is impossible,” I said, “if you’re a Willing. I’ll be waiting, but I won’t be waiting long. I’m so excited to meet the rest of the family, to tell them everything. About my father and his secret lives and the way you weeded my mother and me out of the family as blithely as you weed your tulip garden. Oh, the reunion will be so gay.”

  My grandfather looked at me for a long moment, a ripe anger in his eyes. That anger had terrified me as a boy, and it would have terrified me even as an adult up until five minutes ago. Now I just stared back. When I tilted my head just a bit, he recoiled. Then he took hold of the paper.

  I closed the knife, put it in my pocket, sat down, took a tissue from my pocket, and placed it on my bleeding palm. “Good. Now, Grandpop, do you want to know how I’m doing in my life without you?”

  “I certainly do not.”

  “Fine, thank you for asking. I have a beautiful wife and two miraculous children. Shelby is lovely and smart and fully engaged in the world. I don’t know what she’ll do with her life, but she’ll do it with passion and style. She has your blue eyes. And Eric, he’s a pistol. Funny and self-assured. Not so good at baseball, but a whiz at video games. You ever read Ender’s Game? He’s my Ender. A pretty decent harvest, if I must say so myself.”

  “Are you finished, young man?”

  “Yes, I’m finished. Get me what I need and then, lucky you, you’ll never have to deal with the Moretti side of your family again. But isn’t it funny, Grandpop, how sometimes we throw away the most valuable things in life just to safeguard our crap?”

  I couldn’t get out of that room fast enough. I brushed brusquely past Denise as I climbed the stairs. My skin itched as if I had been infested with lice. When the valet brought the car I left him a hundred-dollar tip—fuck their no-tipping policy—and I shot out of there as fast as the RX10 would take me.

  Listen, I’m no Pangloss who believes everything that happens in our lives is always for the best. I happen to think that most of what happens in our lives is for the absolute worst, and my life has pretty much proven that over and again. But racing down the long lovely road, away from the Philadelphia Country Club, when I thought of all that had happened because of my father’s leaving, my being defenestrated from that club, being disowned by the Willings, being plunged into Pitchford, all I could think of was that pale-faced golfer and his plaid pants.

  Life springs its blessings in the most surprising of ways.

  37. Unsafe at Any Speed

  MY INTERNAL COMPASS had always been aimed toward Philadelphia; that had been my heart’s magnetic north. In Wisconsin, I pined for the East. In Virginia, I always considered the sprawl between DC and Boston the center of the world while I lived willingly on the periphery. Whatever place I found myself was always a substitute. And in grade school as in life, no matter how pretty or merry the substitute, it is never the real thing.

  But now, as I headed out of the rich western suburbs of Philadelphia, out of my grandfather’s domain, it felt as if my compass had been reset. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there, I couldn’t wait to head back to my home. And my route home didn’t anymore lead to Virginia, it led through Virginia.

  “Harry?”

  “Johnny? Is that you?”

  “It’s me, all right.”

  “What’s been going on, boy? We been worried about you.”

  “Nothing to worry about,” I lied. “Just revisiting some old memories, renewing family ties, that sort of thing. But I’m done up here and coming home. Any news?”

  “None that you’ll like.”

  “Then tell me what I won’t like.”
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  “Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “About what, Harry?”

  “My sister. She don’t approve of them kids of yours.”

  “What’s wrong with my kids?”

  “She says they’re not godly enough and so she’s taken as her mission to save them.”

  “Oh, Harry.”

  “Things have gotten testy.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “My sister says your wife’s language is a bit salty, too.”

  “Taking the Lord’s name in vain, no doubt.”

  “Not His, yours.”

  “But other than the clash of cultures, are they still safe?”

  “They’re talking about going home, with or without you. Are you almost done?”

  “I think so, but they have to stay put for a bit. Look, I’m coming down right now to see them. I’ve got about seven hours of driving left. I want you to meet me there.”

  “Do I have to? I told you how my sister gets with me.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on. If your sister has your soul to worry about, she might not worry so much about the collective soul of my family. How’s your truck running?”

  “Pretty good, now and then.”

  “Which is it?”

  “More then than now.”

  “Do you have a mechanic that will do some work quickly?”

  “I knows a guy what knows a guy, I suppose.”

  “Do me a favor, Harry, and use some of the cash I gave you to get the thing running as smoothly as possible. Change the oil, lubricate the pistons, maybe a tune-up, change the battery, check the brakes. And how are your tires?”

  “Still got plenty of miles on them, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Who was president when you bought them?”

  “Bush.”

  “So they’re about five years at least?”

  “The first Bush.”

  “Get four new ones for me, all right? And not retreads.”

  “What’s up, Johnny?”