I.O.U

by Nancy Pickard

  Greenstreet didn’t seem to hear the ironic contradiction of his own explanation: Blame pollution on the one hand, and then blame pollution control on the other. That, I thought, is called having your excuse and eating it, too.

  “But,” I said, “if the bottom dropped out of the shellfish market a whole year before Dad planned the addition, he had time to trim his expansion plans accordingly. Why did he try to go ahead with it, in the face of so many negative economic indicators and a down market?”

  “I’ll admit that I argued against it at the time, Jenny, but as I also said, in retrospect, I think your father was right—it was just his timing that was off.”

  “I think that was my point, Cecil.”

  “Well, look, the market came back up within eighteen months.”

  “You call that slightly off?”

  He cleared his throat. “It was a tough call. He had the drawings, he had the contractors and unions lined up to do the job, and he had the loans in place. It was go or no go, and we went, based on your father’s best judgment, which I respected then and I continue to respect to this day. I think the proof of my contention that your father had the right idea is that after PFF took over, they went ahead with your father’s expansion plans, and look where they are today.”

  “Yeah, catching golden fish with golden bait. But Cecil, Pete Falwell didn’t proceed immediately.”

  “Well, no, not for a couple of years.”

  “Not until the market improved?”

  “That’s true.”

  “So you might say his judgment was considerably better than my father’s.”

  “His luck was considerably better.”

  “My dad is certainly fortunate in one way, Cecil.”

  He looked curious. “How’s that?”

  “To have a loyal friend like you.”

  He smiled, all the way up to his cheekbones.

  I said, “I guess Pete’s a pretty good friend of yours, too?”

  He cleared his throat again. “Who’s that?”

  “Pete Falwell,” I said. “The retired president and present chairman of the board of Port Frederick Fisheries. Didn’t I hear that you and he were pals?”

  “No, I hardly know the man,” he said, with every appearance of honesty. “I’m not even sure I ever met him.”

  “Oh, well.” I smiled away the “misunderstanding,” and stood up, holding out my hand. “One other question. I’m trying to send thank-you notes to everybody who attended the funeral and there are a couple of signatures in the guest book that I can’t read for the life of me. You didn’t happen to notice who was standing in front of you before you signed it?”

  “No, sorry, must not have been anybody I knew.”

  I waved the subject away. “Thanks so much, Cecil. For your time. For lunch. And for being so kind to my father.”

  Greenstreet stood, too, and grasped my hand in both of his, pulling me a step closer to him. “I’m not just being kind, Jenny.”

  “But you lost your job, too.” I allowed him to hang onto me as I gazed sympathetically into the intensely focused coldness of his eyes. Frozen pond scum? “It must have been rough. Where’d you land after Cain’s folded, Cecil?”

  He smiled ruefully as he finally released me. I stepped back out of range of the heaviest cloud layer of his cologne. “I’m a little embarrassed to admit that one of the benefits of being a devil’s advocate is that you see the writing on the wall before it’s even written. As I told you, I argued against the expansion. When I saw your father was hell-bent on going ahead with it, I started socking some of my salary away.”

  “You thought you might soon need your savings?”

  He nodded, so that his well-fed jowls met his shirt collar. “Yes, even though I still say that I think your father was right. But it is true that the financial cushion that I provided for myself gave me the luxury of looking around before I took a new position.”

  I smiled, and opened my arms wide to encompass the spectacular view of Boston and the harbor outside his windows. “And now you can look around in every direction.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I’ve had good luck.”

  An unusually modest man, I thought wryly, as I rode the elevator back down to the first floor. I knew that psychological studies indicated that most men ascribed their success to their own talent, while women tended to credit their success to luck. And yet Cecil Greenstreet… he of the green carpet and the green linens and the green food and algae eyes… humbly attributed his rise in the shellfish industry to good fortune.

  Yeah. Right. Maybe

  11

  BY ONCE AGAIN SKIPPING THE SCENIC CIRCUITOUS ROUTE, AND keeping to the expressways, I managed to make it back to Port Frederick and to Pete Falwell’s office by the appointment time of four-thirty. I was feeling awfully tired by that time, the consequence of too many difficult days and nights in a traumatic row. I felt like a Vermont maple tree in the fall after its sap has run out.

  With luck, I thought as I hauled one foot after another on the sidewalk leading up to the front door of Port Frederick Fisheries, with any luck, Pete will pat me on the shoulder and say, “We understand perfectly, Jennifer; you take all the time off you need.”

  Two years, Pete? Would you go for three?

  I was smiling wearily to myself as I walked past Ms. Lorimer, who waved me into the inner sanctum.

  “Come in.” Pete stood up behind his mahogany desk and gestured to a green leather library chair in front of it. He had a fancier office now, as chairman, than he’d had even as president. “Sit down.”

  In his semiretirement, he favored golf attire like the black and white checked trousers he wore on this afternoon, with a white Polo shirt topped by a yellow golf cardigan. Pete’s thinning white hair was slicked back over his deeply tanned and liver-spotted skull, and his neck and hands displayed par-5 tans, as well. His casual attire contrasted strongly with the peremptory tone of his words and with the stern, unsmiling expression on his rather good-looking face. My own smile wavered as I got the first inkling that this interview might not proceed as amiably as I had imagined it.

  Of all of my trustees, Pete Falwell came the closest to being exactly what he appeared to be: a country club capitalist who was so Republican and conservative that he made William F. Buckley look like Cesar Chavez. Pete and I could talk business with ease, but we tiptoed around each other’s politics. I liked Pete all right, and I respected his business savvy, but of all of my bosses, he was the one with whom I had the coolest, least personal relationship. And, judging by his demeanor, it was getting cooler and more impersonal by the second. Feeling some trepidation, I crossed the red and green plaid carpet and sat down. Should I take the lead, I wondered, or wait for him to—

  “I’ll tell you up front,” Pete began even before he was fully seated again behind his desk, “that the other trustees are amenable to your request for a leave, but I am not. I hope to convince you that it would be a serious mistake for you and a disservice to the foundation, as well as a disservice to Mrs. Basil, who is not experienced enough to handle the projects you have on deck.”

  I attempted to give every appearance of listening respectfully, but I was thinking: Four votes to one, he can’t make me stay.

  Pete picked up a brass paperweight made in the shape of a tennis racquet and tapped it on the edge of the desk as he made each of his points. “I know you’re upset about your mother’s death, and I sympathize. I’ve known your mother and father forever. Once upon a time, I was even in love with your mother…” He smiled a little. “Bet you didn’t know that, did you? It was in eighth grade. She was the sweetest girl in the class, and of course I was smitten.” The smile vanished and he tapped the paperweight again. “So, of course I sympathize. We all do. But dropping out is not the way to deal with your problems, Jennifer; you’ll be much better off if you keep yourself busy with familiar things, especially your job. Go to work every morning. Concentrate on your responsibilities there. Wear yourself out in
that sort of good and proper way so that you can sleep more easily at night. That’s the way to deal with grief. Quitting, thinking too much about your mother, that’s not the way. If you do that, you’ll only depress yourself. Not healthy. Not at all. Stay on the job, Jennifer, that’s the ticket.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Pete,” I said, leaning forward, “and while I agree that might be good advice for some people, I don’t think it is for me. I know what I’m doing. I know that what I need is to step back from my usual responsibilities for a while. And then, I hope, I’ll come back to work rejuvenated, and ready to go again.”

  Liar, I thought, shocking myself with the truth: You’ll never be ready to go back.

  From the skeptical expression on Pete’s face, I saw that he recognized bullshit when he heard it, too. He didn’t say it in so many words, but his tone proceeded to get tougher, and his arguments escalated into ones that were harder and harder for me to rebut.

  “Mrs. Basil isn’t ready,” he said, bluntly.

  “I think she is, Pete.”

  “She has neither your experience nor the confidence of the entire board.”

  Meaning him, I guessed.

  “However,” I countered, “she has the advantages of greater maturity and fewer personal problems to distract her. She can handle it, especially for only a month.”

  “Not situations like this, she can’t.” He tossed me a thick, white, business-size envelope. I withdrew from it a wad of paper, folded over twice to fit inside. Each page featured a photo of a famous painting of men at war—except that on top of the muscular, masculine bodies of the victors, somebody had pasted photos of women’s heads snipped out of magazines. They stood arrogantly—their swords bloodied, their pistols drawn (depending on the particular painting)—over slain bodies of vanquished men. The whole thing had a title page: “What Women Really Want.” And there was a credit: Morality in Our Arts Committee. MOAC. It was all as neatly and painstakingly executed as the placards in the gallery windows had been. The exception that proved the rule of this little exhibit was an untouched photograph of a painting of Salome being offered on a silver platter the bloody, decapitated head of John the Baptist.

  I responded in the only appropriate way: by laughing and tossing the envelope back across the desk to Pete. “Faye will know how to handle this—by refusing to take it seriously.” I spoke with more confidence than I felt, since it did appear that MOAC was escalating its protests; this one was still quiet and relatively low-key, but it displayed a level of paranoia that the plain letters MOAC, lettered onto cardboard, did not. If the letters to my office were step one in their campaign, and the signs at the gallery were step two, then this was step three, and I had to admit to myself that I was a little worried about what steps four and five would be, and whether it was fair to teach Faye to swim by throwing her into his pond. “You don’t take it seriously, do you, Pete? In a couple of weeks, the exhibit will be over anyway.”

  “You got us into this, Jennifer.”

  “And Faye will get you out of it.”

  You, I had said, not us.

  “I must say I’m disappointed in your attitude.”

  Well, I thought, you’ll get over it.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Pete.” I spread my hands in a show of openness and sincerity. “But you see? I’m distracted. I’m disappointing you already. I’d be better off taking a leave of absence, for the good of the foundation.” Nicely done, I congratulated myself: Throw his own arguments right back at him.

  But then the old golfer hit a clean, straight, fair one right off the tee and into the bucket.

  “Your contract forbids it,” he reminded me.

  I stared at him, not believing what he was doing.

  “Perhaps you have forgotten, it’s been so long ago, but your original contract of employment forbids any unpaid leaves of absence. So I regret to tell you that regardless of our sympathy and regardless of the kind intentions of the other members of the board, you have no alternative but to stay on the job.”

  “You would hold me to that, Pete?”

  He nodded. “For the good of the foundation, I will, yes.”

  “No matter what the other trustees say?”

  “A contract is a contract, and yours is quite clear.”

  I didn’t even feel angry at him, but only exhausted, as I said, “There is an alternative, Pete, and I guess you’re going to force me to use it.” I breathed deeply, let it out. “I quit.”

  “No. You can’t. Your contract says—”

  “So sue me,” I said, wearily.

  Pete’s reply to that was frozen silence, which continued as I got up from the chair and made my way back across the plaid carpet to the door.

  But there were a couple more questions, which I turned around to ask—

  “Pete, why’d Cain Clams go under?”

  He was in no mood to spare my feelings. “Because your father was a poor businessman.”

  “Pete, what if… what if he hadn’t tried to build that addition to the plant? What would have happened to Cain Clams then?”

  “It might have held steady, but without any growth.”

  “That would have been fine,” I said softly, more to myself than to him.

  But he brought my head up with his sharp retort. “No, it wouldn’t. Not for this town or the state or the industry. Look how we’ve expanded and grown with it since then, Jenny, look how we’ve diversified, look how we’ve increased shareholders’ profits, employment and wages, and you tell me, which outcome was better for Port Frederick in the long run?”

  “Maybe. How long have you known Cecil Greenstreet?”

  He was already staring at me, so his expression didn’t change when he said, “Years. Why?”

  “He told me today that he doesn’t know you.”

  Pete didn’t hesitate. “That was stupid of him.” His voice held a controlled but intense anger that I suspected was really aimed at me.

  Outside of Pete’s office, I stood for a moment behind Ms. Lorimer’s back, while she talked on her phone, and I took it all in. Here was the elegant front office that was located in just about the same spot where line workers used to stuff seafood into cans for Cain Clams, here were the high walls that rose on the site of my family’s business, here were the plush carpeting and muted telephones, the indirect lighting and music floating out of hidden speakers. And of course, the maritime gimcracks: the figureheads from old ships, the glass cases filled with scrimshaw, the collections of ship’s porcelain, and all of the rest of the seafaring memorabilia that made my heart ache with longing for what might have been.

  I was filled in that moment with a bitterness and a regret so sharp that I tasted it as bile on my tongue. What a funny child I’d been, that clever girl who thought she’d get to run the “ancestral firm” one day. What a laugh, how I’d kept on pedaling, through my prebusiness courses, then through an advanced degree in business, long after the object of all of that ambition was gone, but still acting as if there were some point to all of that specialized learning. And look where it had led me: back here, to the company I would never run, being pressed to the wall by the man who took it over, and finally facing the fact that it wasn’t business I’d loved at all, it was the business. This business. Old salts and salt air and salt water. The business that was ours, the one where I cared about the welfare of the people who worked for it, the one that gave our family pride of place in the community, the one that I had fantasized about perpetuating into a fourth generation.

  The rush of exhilaration I’d felt the moment I quit faded, leaving behind it a hollow fear—now I didn’t have either this business or my job. Now what?

  It wasn’t money that worried me. Between Geof and me, at least one of us still had a job and we were both among the lucky ones who had family money to fall back on. No, it wasn’t the money, it had never been the money, except in the sense of wanting to earn it instead of just inherit it. It was: What now? Without the foundation, what
would I do? My life revolved around my job. What would I do, literally do, with the hours of my days and the days of the weeks? Who was I without it? Ready or not, it looked as if I was going to have to find out.

  I walked on past Ms. Lorimer as she talked on the phone. She smiled and winked at me. A second red button lit up on her console, and I wondered which of the other trustees Pete was calling first to report the news of my resignation. From a coffee table, I picked up a copy of the latest Port Frederick Fisheries annual report. I stared at the cover, which was a cartoon of a fat, smiling, prosperous-looking clam peeking out of its shell, and I thought: What the hell, the wound’s already raw, I might as well grab this salt and rub it in. I carried the annual report with me back out to my car.

  It was five o’clock.

  I was supposed to see Sam Hayes at The Times at five-thirty.

  Instead, I drove to The Buoy Bar and Grill and went inside.

  I got lucky and snagged one of the old wooden booths just as another couple abandoned it. I thought about the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch in Boston, and it had been pretty light food, but I ordered a Beck’s beer anyway. So what if my head got fuzzy? So maybe I’d take a cab home, or call Geof to come meet me. So I didn’t have to be at work the next day, or any day from now on, so who cared?

  “Cheers,” I said to the empty place opposite me.

  As I slowly emptied my beer, more than a dozen people I knew waved or nodded hello to me, but nobody came over to sit down and chat. Recent death’ll do that, I’ve found; it’ll shoot your charisma all to hell. I figured people were afraid they’d say the wrong thing or, worse, that they’d walk over to ask, “How are you, Jenny?” and I’d tell them.

  I peeled strips off the label on the Beck’s bottle, like pulling petals off a daisy: My dad was an idiot who mismanaged the company and made it possible for Pete Falwell to benefit from his mistakes; my dad was a victim of circumstances beyond his control; my dad was both an idiot and the victim of circumstances, or possibly even of collusion between his old friend and my boss, Pete Falwell, and his old employee, Cecil Greenstreet. I preferred the second scenario.