No Relation (12 page)

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 price 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?”