by Jack Fuller
14
THE WORST PART OF OUR REVERSAL OF fortune was not that I had to adapt to it myself. My father had worked in the radio business, which had never given him much in the way of money, even when he served as the replacement man on the early-morning farm report. More than once an old gentleman in Abbeville told him that he brought the market to the town just as Grampa once had with his telegraph. I imagine that people wondered why such an obviously important man as my father drove such a rattletrap car.
So I knew I could make do with little. It was the effect on Julie and Rob that tore me apart. Even if I were to recover all our wealth and more tomorrow, I did not believe it would compensate for having to tell Rob that he would need to change schools.
“You can’t do this to me,” he said.
“New Trier is a fine institution,” I said. “One of the best in the whole country. Everybody says so.”
“I’ll be a nobody there,” he said, “just like I was before I transferred to Country Day.”
“That’s just not true, son,” I said, though his crushing feeling of inadequacy had been the reason Julie and I had decided when he was in the fifth grade to transfer him out of public school.
“I know those kids,” he said. “They’ll make me into a big joke.”
“You might be surprised at how much you’ve grown,” I said. “You are a different young man now than when you left public school.”
“What am I good at?” he said. “Name one thing.”
“You are a good person,” I said. “Start there.”
Rob looked at me as if I had confirmed the worst.
“The world needs all different kinds of people,” I said. “Not everyone has to be a star athlete or all-A student.”
“But everybody needs to be somebody,” he said, “which I am not, Dad. Let’s face it.”
He saw that I recognized the reference and almost smiled.
“Nobody knows more about movies than you do,” I said. “I’ve heard you recite whole scenes from It’s a Wonderful Life for your grandmother.”
We had encouraged him many times to do something with this gift. But he was terrified when we took him to the Piven acting school. He did not even last the first session. He was a strong swimmer who had qualified as a lifeguard. But he grew so self-conscious about his body that he would not try out for the swim team, let alone think about pursuing a job at the beach, where some pretty young girl might have taught him about himself the way Julie had taught me.
Then there were the music lessons, the terrible struggle to get him to dance class, where we had foolishly hoped he might learn to loosen up a little. At some point I began to think he was in agony over homosexual feelings. When I finally dared to mention this to Julie, she laughed.
“You haven’t seen the magazines he keeps under his mattress,” she said.
Lately, though, it was more than dirty magazines she was finding there.
“He’s smoking marijuana,” she said.
“Can you imagine anyone doing that?” I said.
“That was different,” she said. “It was never going to take over our lives. We had each other. But we know people who got hurt by it. They were the ones who were feeding an emptiness, the way Rob is.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I said.
Though it was awkward, I did.
“Look,” he said, “for a few minutes it makes me feel good, that’s all. You’ve got to know what I’m talking about. I mean, the ’60s and everything. It’s no big deal.”
“Your mother is concerned,” I said.
“I’ll be a lot more careful,” he said.
My fear was that the transfer in the fall would push him toward something stronger.
“If New Trier doesn’t work out,” I said, “we’ll move.”
The fact was that we might have to anyway, to monetize some of the equity in our home and step way down on the mortgage.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he said. “That I’m so lame that we may have to get out of town?”
“That you’re so loved that we will do anything for you,” I said.
“Anything but keep me in Country Day,” he said.
“Anything we’re able to do,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I seem to have dragged us all down. I feel terrible about it.”
“Join the club,” he said.
I kept going in to Bishop & Dodge every day. I don’t know why. Conference rooms that before the bubble burst had been booked weeks in advance now stood empty. A residue of disillusionment had settled over the board tables like dust. You could have written your name with your finger. But you didn’t have to. The disaster already had everyone’s name on it.
Some of my partners didn’t even come in to the office anymore, preferring to count their losses in swizzle sticks lined up along a bar. Others hustled in early each morning as if they were still in a hurry and stayed late into the night because they simply did not know how not to.
The only part of the enterprise that remained busy was the law department, where one day I was summoned. There men and women waited on the reception couch and chairs. Others stood reading grim business magazines or staring blankly at the Bloomberg as it blinked away the tears. Oddest of all, people had begun to wear suits and ties and white shirts again. Business casual was history. It was as if, with all the starch taken out of a man’s soul, he needed to have cladding in the cloth.
Solly Goldman’s secretary appeared in the waiting area and nodded to me. I followed her to where the lawyer sat behind an enormous stack of documents.
“Pretty imposing,” I said.
“If we get five cents on the dollar for any of the shit you guys bought they should hang my portrait in the foyer,” he said. “Meanwhile lawsuits are flying around like bullets.”
“Shooting the wounded,” I said.
He stood and pointed me to the only two chairs that were unencumbered by paper.
“I don’t know how to start, George,” Goldman said. “We’ve been neighbors how long?”
“At the office a decade,” I said. “In Wilmette even longer.”
“It may seem funny coming from an attorney,” he said, “but I basically believe in staying out of other people’s business.”
“Am I in trouble, Solly?” I said. “Is one of those bullets heading my way?”
Goldman shifted in his chair.
“This is strictly personal,” he said. “I talked it over with Ginny for a long time last night because I wasn’t sure. It’s about Rob.”
He breathed out, and I breathed in.
“He’s been having issues,” I said.
“Don’t tell him this,” he said, “but Erin told me certain things that he said to her. I don’t know whether to believe them. Kids can exaggerate so.”
“We already know about the marijuana,” I said. “I won’t incriminate myself, but I have my reasons not to be all that bothered.”
“Erin told me you were going to pull him from the school,” he said.
“I don’t know what else to do,” I said. “I don’t have any cushion. The firm doesn’t need me the way it does you, so I don’t get any draw.”
Goldman was looking at me but not seeing anything. I was sorry I had gotten into money troubles. Everybody had those.
“I guess I decided that if Rob told you that Erin had spoken to him about hurting herself, I would want to know,” Goldman said.
He looked away. It took me a moment before I understood what he was telling me.
“What exactly did she tell you?” I said.
“Like I said, it’s hard to know how serious anything is at this age,” he said. “But if I held it in and something happened to Rob, I would never forgive myself.”
“Did she say how it came up?” I said.
“They won’t give you a straight answer, you know,” he said. “They’ll dance around everything that is important, then give you a blow-by-blow about how some girl dissed them in the lunch line.”
> “Solly,” I pleaded.
“She said he told her yesterday that sometimes he thinks everybody would be better off if he were dead,” Goldman said.
I heard the words, but I had a hard time connecting them to my son. I could not imagine what our lives would be worth if Rob took his. Suddenly I found myself in tears.
“I’m sorry,” I said, standing to leave.
“You’re going to need help, George,” he said. “Listen to me because I know. I haven’t told anybody else, but with Erin it was bulimia. Luckily we caught it early. You can beat this thing, George. Just don’t be proud and try to go it alone.”
“There’s not much chance of pride,” I said.
When I returned to my office, all I could do was sit at my desk and stare out the window at the empty sky. I had no idea how to reach Rob. I would, of course, insist that he see someone, but I couldn’t make him open up or recognize his worth any more than I could make the Bloomberg swing from red to blue.
“Mr. Bailey?”
I looked up and saw the receptionist in the doorway. Now that we had let all the secretaries go, she was handling everyone’s phone.
“Your wife is on the line,” she said.
I wasn’t ready to talk to Julie yet.
“I’ll call her back,” I said.
“She said it was urgent,” the receptionist said. “It’s not my place, but I think you’d better pick up the phone.”
When I did, she turned and left. I didn’t even have a chance to say hello before Julie started in.
“I just don’t know what to do anymore,” she said.
“I know the feeling,” I said.
“The school just called,” she said. “Rob never showed up for class this morning. I don’t get it. This is the school where he wants desperately to stay.”
“I’ll come right home,” I said. “I’ll find him.”
“You probably have other things,” she said. “We can deal with this tonight.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
I had made the drive north thousands of times, usually crawling up the Kennedy and Edens Expressways in the rush-hour snarl. Now at midday I was able to keep the speedometer at sixty nearly the whole way. As the billboards and warehouses of the city yielded to the lawns and trees of the suburbs, I asked myself over and over again: When a little boy is so totally lost, how can his father hope to find him?
First I drove to the school. Even on the North Shore, where so little changed over the generations and social rank was handed down like a title of nobility, Country Day was a place out of time. It always made me think of what Chautauqua must have been like. I got out of the car and walked the empty grounds. But I knew; Rob would not have hovered.
I cruised the streets of Wilmette in lengthening radii from Green Bay Road, looking, looking. Even if Rob had been nearby he would have hidden the moment he saw the car. After a couple hours of searching, I drove to Gilson Park along the beach. There I parked and gazed out over the fathomless gray lake.
I don’t know how long I had been there when in my peripheral vision I detected movement. I turned and saw a shadow walking in the distance among the trees. As it came closer, I told myself not to be foolish; it wasn’t him. And yet the gait was familiar, the defeated slouch. He emerged from the trees a hundred yards from the car. I prayed he would not see me and bolt.
He stepped up onto the rocks at the edge of the lake. This was not the place he would choose to end his life, was it? He was too much of a swimmer. He stood motionless, giving no hint of his intention or even whether he had enough emotional energy to have one, just staring out over the rolling waves.
When I got out of the car, I was careful not to make any noise the waves would not cover. I circled back into the trees and came up to Rob from behind. When I was ten feet away, I scuffed my feet a couple of times so as not to startle him. He turned, and a look of panic pulled at his face. He spun away from me back toward the lake.
“Don’t, son,” I said.
“What are you doing here?” he said to the water.
“Looking for answers,” I said, “same as you.”
He turned to me with a different face. It was exasperation, and I welcomed it.
“Who says that’s what I’m doing?” he said.
“Why else do people come to the beach when it’s too cold to swim?” I said.
“You know about school, don’t you,” he said.
“You must have realized they would call,” I said.
“I’m really fucking up big time here,” he said.
“You’re not going to hear that from me,” I said. “There’s trouble all over. We’re both trying to find our way through it.”
“It isn’t the same,” he said.
“Don’t you think I know that?” I said. “I didn’t have me as a father, and you don’t have me as a son. We’re different people. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to help each other.”
I thought for a moment that he was going to come forward. Everything in me wanted to take him in my arms the way I had done when he was little and crying afraid. But he did not move.
“I’ll take a ride home,” he said.
15
WHEN THE MARKET CRASHED IN 1929, Abbeville barely noticed. The crops had all been harvested and, through Karl’s magic, paid for. The proceeds were safe in Karl’s bank. The only stock anyone owned ate feed and shat.
As winter came on, though, folks started to talk. The news in the Trib kept getting grimmer. President Hoover was talking about balancing the budget as a way out of the Panic. Congress was slapping tariffs on foreign products, and Europe was responding in kind against American grain.
Banks failed in Chicago, then in Kankakee. The farmers planted in the spring, even though prices were so low that some said it might be smarter to rest the land a year. Then the prices fell even further, and Karl’s magic lost its power. Deposits dried up. Requests for credit increased. Farmers would have defaulted on loans if Karl hadn’t extended terms. To be able to do this, he had to start sending excuses in lieu of payment to his corresponding banks.
Still, Karl as much as possible kept doing business as usual. His uncle had taught him to stand firm and wait for the tide to turn. After all, Karl was a man of substance; his credit was still good. He kept up appearances, kept bringing new implements onto the lot, because the antidote to panic was confidence.
“This thing will turn around,” he said, “like they always have before.”
Fritz came to him tapped out. He was going to lose everything if he couldn’t get his hands on some cash fast. Karl looked at his brother for a moment, then went to the vault.
“Don’t I need to sign something?” Fritz asked as Karl handed him the money.
“You’re my brother,” Karl said.
Despite the burden of his own debt, he walked across the prairie to work every morning as jauntily as if he had something to gain from it. Then one day just before breakfast Cristina called to him from the parlor. Across the tracks it looked as if all of Abbeville was lined up at the bank.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“I’m going to finish my breakfast and coffee,” he said. “Then I’m going to give you a kiss.”
“Is there enough money for all of them?” she asked.
“I’ll stop by Rose’s,” he said. “I think she’s fallen ill.”
“Why, I saw her at the church just last night,” said Cristina. “She was fine.”
“She deserves some time off,” he said.
Betty, home from boarding school on a break, came down the stairs.
“Did you say Mrs. Stroeger is ill?” she said. “Should I bake her a cake?”
“You can’t take on the whole Panic, Karl,” said Cristina.
He buttered his toast and used it to push the last of the scrambled eggs onto his fork.
“I’m mighty slow at counting money,” he said. “You’ve seen me. One bill at a time.”
“It will take forever,” Cristina said.
“That it will,” said Karl.
He appeared at the bank a few minutes before opening time, wearing his newest suit. Cristina went with him, carrying in one hand a basket containing every cinnamon bun they had found in the store. From the other swung a canister of coffee to keep everyone warm.
“It will make them able to wait longer,” she said when he told her how to prepare.
“It will show that we’re not afraid of their waiting,” he said.
When he reached the bank, the crowd at the door parted.
“Looks like opening day at the county fair,” Karl said.
“You know why we’re here,” said Robert Schlagel, who was in arrears three months on the debit side for a tractor. What he had on deposit wouldn’t have paid for much more than the cinnamon buns.
“We hate to have to do it,” said George Loeb. He looked as if he might weep.
Karl took each customer inside, one by one. Cristina waited outside as the crowd strained to look through the windows to see what was happening. Small talk was difficult, but she tried. Occasionally peals of laughter would come from inside and a minute later a customer would emerge, grinning over the thin fold of greenbacks in his hand.
“He’s a good one, all right. I have half a mind to give this back,” said Will Hoenig.
“Nobody’s ever accused you of having half a mind, Will,” said Bernard Lampere.
“Go ahead, Hoenig,” said Prideaux. “It will just mean more for us.”
“You can have mine, too, Prideaux,” said old Henry Mueller. “I’m leaving.”
The day wore on. The buns and coffee ran out. Karl took longer and longer with each customer. The crowd became surly and grew in number. People from all over Cobb County had heard that they had better hightail it to Abbeville or risk losing everything.
“There ain’t enough to go around, you watch,” said Prideaux. “That’s why he’s dawdling so. Remember, everybody, I warned you.”
Suddenly Harley Ansel pushed his way to the front of the line, all the authority of the law behind him. He had kept a stake in Karl’s bank, and Karl had always wondered why. The county prosecutor entered the door as Robert Hesse came out empty-handed.