Sins of the Fathers

by Susan Howatch

  Now I was really in deep water. Flicking a speck of dust from the seat of the client’s chair, I sat down leisurely in order to give myself a few precious seconds to plan my strategy. Should I lie, stall, or tell the truth? I decided that the situation was so far beyond redemption that an outright lie would be pointless, but I could not make up my mind whether to tell the whole or the partial truth. Finally, unable to decide how partial the partial truth should be, I gave up any idea of stalling and resigned myself to unvarnished honesty.

  “Well, Neil,” I said with the smile one friend might reserve for another in very adverse circumstances, “don’t think I wasn’t tempted by your suggestion. And don’t think I wouldn’t normally do everything I could to help you, but I’m afraid that right now I’m not in a normal situation. I’m very much in love with Teresa—Kevin’s caretaker—and I’ve made up my mind to marry her.”

  He stared at me blankly. His delicate classical features might have been sculptured in marble. Then he tried to speak, but his asthma had worsened and the words were lost in his sporadic gasps for breath.

  To give him privacy, I moved to the concealed bar behind the bookcase and filled a glass of water from the little sink. I knew better than to show alarm or summon help. When the glass of water was in front of him, I moved to the window, and keeping my back to him as if nothing had happened, I said levelly, “I know you’ll have trouble understanding why I should feel this way about a penniless Polish-American girl from a coal-mining town in West Virginia, but my mind’s made up and I’d be lying if I let you believe that either you or anyone else could alter it. I’m fond of Vicky; she’s very pretty and very cute, but she’s not for me, Neil, and if I married her I wouldn’t be doing anyone a favor, least of all Vicky herself.”

  I stopped to listen. His breathing seemed fractionally better, as if the pills were already doing their work, and I decided to risk turning around. “Would you prefer that we continued this discussion later?” I said, giving him the chance to get rid of me and complete his recovery in private.

  “Yeah,” he whispered. “Later. Lunch?”

  “I’m lunching with Fred Bucholz of Hammaco.”

  Cornelius visibly revived. His breathing quietened, and as a barely perceptible color returned to his face he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Win that bid and we’ll forget about everything else. Even Vicky.”

  It was most unlike Cornelius either to give up so easily or to reverse himself for no apparent reason. The Hammaco bid was important but hardly crucial to the firm’s welfare, and as I eyed him skeptically he saw my suspicion and smiled. “You know me too well, Sam!” he said, all anger forgotten at last. “Yes, Hammaco’s just a side issue. The truth is, I’ve changed my mind about Vicky. Alicia succeeded in convincing me last night that (a) it’s a mistake for girls to marry too young and (b) it would be a mistake for Vicky to marry you, no matter how old she was. So we’ll forget all about it. I’m sorry if I put you in an awkward position.”

  I knew that Alicia had great influence over him, but I knew too that Cornelius tended to cling obstinately to his more perverse ideas, and I still could not quite believe he had abandoned the scheme. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s forget it.” I moved toward the door.

  “You’ll have to explain to me sometime about Teresa,” said Cornelius. “Maybe when you become officially engaged. I always enjoy your engagements. Do you realize you would have had at least three wives by now if you’d succeeded in coaxing all those fiancées to the altar?”

  I smiled back at him. “This time I’ve no intention of letting history repeat itself! I’ll check back with you later, Neil, to report on the Hammaco lunch.”

  “Good luck.”

  The door closed. The back lobby was dim and cool. I allowed myself a moment to savor my relief, and then, still aware of a weakness in the pit of my stomach, I returned to my office to recuperate from the interview. But the phone rang before I could relax. The representative of one of our syndicate’s leading investment banks was on the line.

  “Sam, I’m getting worried about this Hammaco business. With the price of zinc still falling, and steel showing no signs of recovery—”

  “I have inside information from the Treasury that there’ll be no slump in spite of all the talk of deflation.”

  After I had calmed him down, I got rid of him and summoned my secretary.

  “Get me the Treasury.”

  I wanted a drink, but it was only ten o’clock. I lit another cigarette instead, but five minutes later, with the inside information from the Treasury no longer a figment of my imagination but a trump card firmly embedded in reality, I felt sufficiently cheered to call Teresa.

  “Hi,” I said when she picked up the phone. “Tell me right away if I’m calling at a bad moment, but I just wanted to know how you are.”

  “I’m okay.” But she sounded uncertain. “I’m sorry I was so mean to you last night, Sam. It was just that I was so depressed.”

  “Sure, I understand. That’s okay.” Since it was a medical fact that women were moodier than men, I made a big effort to be considerate. “I’d sure like to get together with you tonight or tomorrow,” I said, “but why don’t I give you a little more time to straighten out those work problems of yours? However, I’m going to come and get you on Saturday night even if I have to carry you off by force! I’ve got tickets for South Pacific.”

  “Oh, great.”

  There was a pause while I tried to suppress my baffled disappointment.

  “Sorry, Sam, did you say South Pacific? Gee, that would be wonderful! How did you ever manage to get tickets? What a great surprise!”

  I felt much better. “We’ll make a big evening of it,” I said, “an evening to remember.” Then I blew a kiss into the phone, replaced the receiver, and feeling in excellent spirits, summoned Scott to resume the battle of the Hammaco bid.

  II

  “Sam, I’m out of my depth,” said Scott. “The other side are definitely still in the running, so I called Whitmore at Bonner, Christopherson, but he refused to talk to me, and it’s hard to squeeze someone till the pips squeak when they have their secretary perpetually geared to say they’re in conference.”

  “The son of a bitch! And to think I helped put that bastard where he is today when I let Bonner’s in for a slice of that railroad pie back in ’35—he’d never have got to marry his boss’s daughter without that kind of success under his belt! Okay, get on the extension, Scott, and take a lesson in how to fillet a fickle fish.”

  There followed one of those conversations with which I had become all too familiar during my years as Cornelius’ right-hand man. In fact, the technique of bending an opponent gracefully into an ally was so familiar to me that I might have conducted the conversation in my sleep. I called the offices of Bonner, Christopherson. Whitmore again tried to hide behind his secretary, much to my disgust. I despise cowardice in businessmen who should have the guts to make at least a token attempt to brazen their way out of a tight spot.

  “Tell Mr. Whitmore,” I said to the secretary, “that I’m calling to do him a favor. I’ve just received information from the SEC.”

  He came gasping to the phone.

  Leaning back in my swivel chair, I idly watched the sunlight playing on the mellow mahogany furniture and listened to myself talking very soothingly in a steady stream of clichés. When I had been young and had fallen back out of sheer nervousness on the use of ingratiating clichés, I had noticed with surprise that my opponents nearly always wilted beneath the hypnotic cumulative effect of so many banal phrases uttered in a honeyed voice. It was a lesson I had never forgotten.

  “Why, hello there, Frank! Long time no see! How are you doing? How’s your wife … and children … gee, that’s just wonderful! I’m real happy to hear it. … Say, Frank, I’m calling because you’re one of my oldest, dearest friends and I want you to know that I can do you a favor. I never forget my friends, Frank. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a man
who forgets his obligations to his friends. …”

  I went on like this for some time. Briefly translated from the crap, I reminded him that Bonner, his father-in-law, wanted Van Zale’s to include his firm in the next Pan-Pacific Harvester syndicate. I reminded him that Van Zale’s was always besieged with firms who wanted to participate in a syndicate where the pickings were guaranteed to be opulent, and that inevitably some firms had to be disappointed. I reminded him that even though the relationship between Van Zale’s and Bonner, Christopherson had recently improved, I could imagine circumstances in which it could go rapidly downhill again, with the result that Bonner’s would be excluded from the new syndicate.

  “… and your wonderful father-in-law—how is he, by the way? Great! … Yes, your wonderful boss would be real disappointed, and if there’s one thing that makes me feel sad, Frank, it’s the thought of a nice guy like Mr. Bonner being disappointed …”

  And so on and so on.

  “… so I thought maybe you and I could get together, you know, nothing official, just a quiet little drink someplace this evening …”

  “Six-thirty at the University Club?” said Whitmore faintly.

  “The Metropolitan Club,” I said, “and make it six sharp.”

  I hung up and went on watching the sunshine streaming through the window. Presently Scott returned to the room.

  “Congratulations, Sam!” he exclaimed with enthusiasm. “You nailed him cold!”

  I looked at him. There was no reason why I should doubt his sincerity, but I did. The doubt existed for no more than a second, but I immediately recognized it as a symptom of that uneasiness which I found so hard to explain. As usual my uneasiness was followed by guilt that I should distrust him, and to make amends for my inexplicable suspicion, I was careful to spend a minute being nice to him before I sent him back to his desk.

  When he was gone, I was about to recall my secretary when a glance at my calendar told me Good Friday was only a week away. To underline his Episcopalian upbringing, Cornelius gave his employees a holiday on both Good Friday and Easter Monday, and I always took advantage of the long weekend to visit my mother in Maine. I decided to call her to confirm that I was coming, and automatically as I picked up the receiver I pictured her in the hideous little frame house which I had bought for her after my father died. It was not the kind of home I would have chosen for her, but my mother had been insistent. She did not want a new house on the outskirts of town with a view of the sea. She wanted a property within walking distance of the stores and the church. She did not want a car. I gave her presents for the house, but afterward she put them away because she felt they were too good to use. I had given up inviting her to stay with me in New York because I had now accepted that she would never come. The idea of air travel terrified her, she disliked trains, and she regarded my offer of a chauffeur-driven limousine as too intimidating to be seriously considered, while beyond this fear of travel was the unswerving conviction that she would be either robbed or killed if she were ever to set foot in New York City. My father, much more adventurous, had been proud to visit me once a year, but neither he nor I had ever been able to prise my mother loose from Maine.

  During my visits home I saw little of my mother, since she spent all day in the kitchen cooking me my favorite dishes. Usually I would go walking on Mount Desert. If I happened to meet anyone I knew, I would at once invite him to join me for a beer so that no one could complain to my mother that I was now too grand for my old friends, but otherwise I made no attempt to be sociable. I was willing enough to listen to an old acquaintance complaining to me about his wife, his mortgage payments, and how hard it was for him to get by on a salary of three thousand a year, but unfortunately there was little I could say about my own life without arousing my companion’s incredulity, envy, and resentment.

  My mother and I watched television together in the evenings. Television was a blessing because it demanded both visual and aural attention. In the old days we had felt obliged to make some comment whenever our glances met during a radio program, but now we could watch the screen secure in the knowledge that no comment was needed until the program had finished. My mother was proud of her television, which I changed for her every year, and I was relieved that I had at last found a present she could use as well as appreciate.

  “Hi,” I said as she picked up the phone. “How are you doing Down East?”

  “Good. The weather’s terrible, so cold. My rheumatism’s bad again, but the doctor just says take aspirin—five dollars he charges, and all he can say is take aspirin. Mrs. Hayward died, and they had a nice funeral. Marie Ashe and her husband split up—drink—I always said he was no good. The TV’s still going nicely. There’s no other news. Are you coming in next week? What do you want to eat?”

  We discussed food. Finally my mother said in a brisk voice to hide her excitement, “It’ll be nice to see you. How’s New York?”

  “Just fine.”

  “Good.” My mother never asked about girlfriends, never suggested I should get married, never complained that she had no grandchildren. Once long ago she had asked me about my private life, and my father had been furious. “Don’t you persecute that boy with goddamned women’s questions!” he had shouted at her. “Don’t you realize that if you make him uncomfortable he won’t come back and see us anymore?” And when I had protested, he had been equally furious with me. “Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I don’t understand?”

  The fragility of our relationship terrified my mother and made me think often of the ordeal of parenthood. How could parents endure to labor for years, to sacrifice themselves so that their children should have nothing but the best, and to discover in the end that it had all been for so little, for a quick visit on national holidays and a few hours spent in front of the television set in a silence neither side knew how to break? I wished my mother could enjoy all the presents I wanted to give her to assuage the guilt I felt. I wished there were some magic words I could use to alleviate our constraint. After my father died I did manage to say to her: “Has it all been worth it?” but she had not understood, and when I had tried to explain she had said simply: “Of course. If you’re happy.”

  “I’m glad you’re happy, Hans,” my mother was saying on the phone as I watched the sunlight slanting across the carpet of my office. The German name had been slipping out more often since my father’s death. “I’m glad everything’s going well for you in New York.”

  “It’ll be good to get home again,” I said, and immediately the words were spoken, I felt a great sadness, for of course, as my parents and I had known for years, I could never go home again. I was a victim of that classic dilemma which probably exists in other countries but which I always thought of as peculiarly American: I had left my home to pass through the looking glass into the land of milk and honey, only to find later that the looking glass was a one-way mirror and that no matter how hard I tried, I could never go back again to the country I could so clearly see beyond the glass wall. The milk might go sour and the honey might run out, but the glass would never crack. I was an exile in the world I had chosen for myself, a prisoner serving a life sentence which no one could cut short.

  It was a subject Teresa and I had once discussed. “You must amputate your past,” she had said firmly. “You’re falling into the trap of all exiles and looking back at home through rose-colored glasses. At least I’m not tempted to make that mistake! I can remember my home town all too well—the coal dust and the filthy shacks and the mean streets and the children without shoes and my father getting drunk and my mother always being pregnant …”

  “But it was home, wasn’t it?” I had said. “It’s still part of you.”

  “I amputated it,” she had insisted. “It’s gone.”

  I had wanted to ask her more questions, but she had changed the subject and it never arose again. Yet I often wondered how successful her amputation had been, particularly since I could see that despite her bitterness she still
clung to the symbols of her early life, the little gold cross which represented the church she had long since left, the Polish cooking which she favored whenever she had not volunteered to produce a creole dish for a special occasion, the frugal habits acquired during years of poverty, and finally, most important of all, the blend of pride and dignity which prevented her from living off men and stooping to pick up any financial favors that came her way.

  Eventually it occurred to me that her belief that she had amputated her past was an illusion. The past was still with her, and she was still on the other side of that looking glass. She was living far from home, but somehow, through some process I could not guess, she had managed to maintain contact with her early life. Although she had blended into the background of New York, she had remained untouched by its corruption, and when I realized this, I realized too why it was so necessary for me to win her. I had this deepening conviction that Teresa could lead me back through the looking glass; I felt increasingly sure that once I had Teresa, I could at last go home again.

  The sunlight was still slanting onto the carpet of my office. “There’s just one more thing,” I said impulsively to my mother.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve met this girl and I’d like to bring her with me next weekend to meet you. Her name’s Teresa. She’s twenty-five. She was brought up as a Catholic but she doesn’t practice anymore. She’s only been in New York for a few months. She’s just spent seven years in New Orleans, but she comes from West Virginia. She likes to cook.”

  “Oh!” My mother sounded in despair for fear she should say the wrong thing. Huge excitement battled with the knowledge that she must remain calm to avoid annoying me. “Teresa, you said?” she murmured tentatively. “Would that be Italian?”

  I had been prepared for this question and had decided to be frank from the start in order to give her time to adjust to the idea. “No,” I said. “She’s Polish.”

  There was a silence. “Well,” said my mother rapidly at last in a frantic attempt to repair the gap in the conversation, “I’m sure there are a lot of very nice Polish people in America. Yes, do please bring her here. I’ll … I’ll spring-clean the guest room for her … and get out those new sheets you gave me—the ones which were too good to use …”