No Relation

by Terry Fallis

  I snuck down to the pier and watched from afar as they climbed the gangway onto the ship, my mother still crying. I was crying a little, too, though my resolve never weakened. Not once. My father appeared grim, stoic, and he disappeared into the ship without so much as a backward glance. When the horn sounded and the ship cast off, I felt a great weight lift from my shoulders. It was an even mix of sadness, regret, determination and freedom.

  You know the rest. I bolted for Chicago later the same month. My uncle was not happy, but I stayed in touch with him so he knew I was safe and well, though I was occasionally neither. I loved my father, but after I escaped to Chicago and landed my first position in the rag trade, he never spoke to me again. I never laid eyes on him again. Over the years, I tried to reach out after my company was well established and I was doing well. I sent him letters, and birthday and Christmas gifts, with long rambling recitations of my success, and lamenting what still lay between us, but they were all returned unopened. My mother and I kept up a private correspondence that she kept from my father. She was proud of me, but her first allegiance, of course, was to her husband. I understood, yet the void my father left in me remains even now. Some years later, my father, weak with a fever when he boarded a ship in China to return to New York, died on the crossing. So much left unsaid. When I met the ship, I met only my mother. He had been buried at sea. Having a body on board a ship packed to the gunwales with passengers, whose constitutions were already weak from the voyage, was simply not permitted. The health and hygiene of the living outweighed all else.

  I pledged that I would never repeat my father’s folly.

  You say you want nothing more than to work by my side manufacturing our quality products for the masses. I welcome you, but insist that you do it only so long as it sustains your interest. I would have you do whatever it is in life that fulfills you, that excites you, that makes you feel most alive. But you must promise that if the bloom ever falls off this rose, away you’ll go in search of yourself, in search of your calling, in search of your dream. If you promise me this, you’re welcome to start whenever you please. You’ve only just returned, so take some time to recover from the last three years of Hitler’s hell, and confirm your path.

  The choice of where to be and what to do is always in your hands. To me, this principle is paramount and sacrosanct. It is inviolate. That freedom is what you’ve just fought to preserve. That freedom is what all fathers owe their sons and their daughters. They deserve nothing less.

  Your father

  I lowered the letter to my lap. My mind was awash in conflicting thoughts, emotions, and questions. But I just couldn’t seem to assemble them in any logical fashion, let alone enunciate anything. I just breathed for a minute and looked through the wall of my own apartment. Neither Sarah nor my father said anything, allowing me at least to begin to process what I’d just read. I picked up the letter and read it again, more slowly this time. The words “paramount and sacrosanct” hit me again with no less force than on the first time through.

  “Where did this come from?” I said when I felt I could rejoin the moment.

  “You know that EH1’s papers and letters, along with those of his sons, were donated to the U of C Library …” Sarah began.

  “Of course I know that. They call me regularly to donate any letters and papers I might have,” I cut in.

  “Well, Dad sends a few boxes each year, as did EH2 and EH1. There are thousands of artifacts, loads of business correspondence, even a few speeches. Plus, there are some private letters that are only available for family members to peruse, or in certain circumstances, for certain researchers, provided we give our approval.”

  “I know all this. But where did this letter come from?” I persisted. “You would have found this in your visits to the archives if it had been there.”

  “Yes, I would have. But it only just arrived,” Sarah explained as Dad just stared at the floor. “For a few years now, I’ve been reading these old family letters to gain insight into the job of running the company. While I was in there recently, an archivist was working on annotating a new batch of letters that had just been secured from an auction of the estate of EH1’s housekeeper, whose daughter has just died. You emailed me about them when you were in Paris. They are the carbons of letters EH1 sent, this one to his first-born son.”

  “Do we have any of EH2’s correspondence?”

  “We do, but his letters in the archive are only about the company, not the family. They’re actually kind of boring,” Sarah said. “It seems EH2 did not want family letters left to the archives.”

  Dad roused himself.

  “Knowing my father, he was certainly not a fan of the philosophy his own father espouses in that letter. He even had the temerity to twist a phrase I now understand was coined by EH1, but intended to convey the opposite meaning. Then my father built decades of momentum behind a tradition that his father clearly rejected. It’s an outrage of the first order and it consigned me to a path I felt honour-bound to pursue. As you well know.”

  My father was looking right at me during this. I held his eye contact throughout. It was a bit uncomfortable, but seemed the only respectful course.

  “Your sister gave the letter to me a week ago and I’ve only now begun to recover from the shock of finding my grandfather’s words so deviously twisted by my own father. The letter is so eloquent, so simple, so pure, and yet so true. It has turned my understanding of our family history on its head. If the philosophy the family patriarch presents in this letter had passed through and governed all succeeding generations, my life, our lives, may well have been quite different.”

  He hung his head and turned it slowly, back and forth, in what could only have been deep regret.

  “He’s barely slept or eaten these last few days,” Sarah said as if the patient were unconscious. “And now we’re here.”

  “I’ve been a fool, blinded by a tradition that should never have existed,” Dad said to no one in particular.

  “So what does it mean?” I asked. “What does this change?”

  “What does it mean?” Dad parroted. “It means our family is built on a lie, driven by a false belief, all created by my father. In a way, it means that we now have our liberty. It means that the principle of self-determination to which your great-grandfather was obviously so committed can now be restored to its rightful place in our family. It means I will never, ever, ask you to come back to Chicago. Of course you’re always welcome, but it is no longer a family edict.”

  He paused for a moment before continuing.

  “I deeply regret the pressure I’ve put on you for nearly all of your life. It was well intended but, as this letter reveals, clearly built on a false foundation.”

  “It’s okay, Dad. We’re both viewing it all in a different light,” I said. “Does this also mean that Sarah has as good a shot as any at taking over when you retire?” I asked.

  “Ha! If what I’ve seen of your sister’s leadership in the last three weeks is any indication, she’s got a better shot than anyone else,” he replied. “I’ve been a fool and I apologize to you both.”

  “Dad, it’s fine. We all bought into the family lore,” Sarah said. “Well, Hem didn’t exactly buy into it, but we all knew what we were facing.”

  “So how are you feeling, Dad?” I asked, changing the subject. “And when’s the big day, again?”

  “I feel fine, but I’ll be glad to have this blighted bit out of me. The surgery is next Thursday, hence our little trip tonight. This couldn’t wait.”

  “I don’t really know what to say,” I mumbled.

  “No worries. It took Dad three days before he knew what to say. Take your time.”

  Over the next hour, we actually had a real conversation that meandered through several different topics. I couldn’t ever remember the three of us in the same room, talking so freely, so comfortably. I thought I could feel something shift inside me. It was as if decades of tension just relaxed a little. Yes, it
was actually a physical feeling.

  “So how go the big changes at the company?” I asked. “Have you got Hemmingwear for women under those jeans?”

  “Well,” said Sarah, “as it happens, I’m wearing the prototype, not the production model. Next week the new templates and line adjustments will be ready and we can start the inaugural production run.”

  Dad just sat back and smiled as she spoke.

  “And?”

  “Do you even have to ask? They feel amazing. I never want to take them off,” Sarah said, performing a mini-pirouette. “These are going to fly off the shelves.”

  “Any word from our friend Henderson Watt?” I asked.

  “Not a peep,” Sarah replied. “But I think he’s gone back to Europe to avoid the shrapnel should we ever decide to go public with his stunt.”

  “Europe can have him,” our father said.

  I then spent about twenty minutes recounting the tale of my travels. I decided not to describe my mad run to escape the ferocious Chihuahuas. I did have my dignity, after all. But it did trigger a question.

  “Dad, can you think of any reason, perhaps something in my childhood, to explain why I would still have a completely irrational fear of small dogs?”

  “Small dogs?” He looked a little troubled by my question.

  “Yeah. You remember when I was a kid, whenever we’d be at the park and there was a small dog within a hundred yards of us, I would crawl up your leg until you’d lift me up onto your shoulders? You must remember. It happened pretty well every time we ventured outside the house.”

  “You’re not telling me that you’re still terrified of little mutts, after all these years?” he asked, leaning forward. “I thought you’d certainly have outgrown that by now.”

  “The fear is as strong as it ever was. Why?”

  Dad looked around the room and started to wring his hands a bit.

  “You’ve been scared of small dogs your entire life?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Did you ever speak to your mother about this?”

  “Well, not since I was a teenager. But back then, she said it was just the petless adolescent’s standard fear of dogs, and that it was perfectly normal,” I replied.

  “Well, that was the agreed-upon line in such situations,” Dad said, a tad sheepishly.

  “Dad, what do you mean? I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of this for years, and my psychiatrist is taking bushels of my money on this very question.”

  Dad did not look well. He cast his eyes to the ceiling for a moment or two and then exhaled long and low.

  “Dad?”

  “Your mother never wanted you to know this. She felt so guilty about it. It haunted her for the rest of her days. But I’m sure if she were here and knew you were still affected by it, she’d tell you herself,” Dad said.

  He looked over at Sarah.

  “Carry on! Inquiring minds want to know,” she said, leaning in.

  Dad turned back to me.

  “Well, I wasn’t there when this happened, but when your mother told me about what would forever be known as ‘the incident,’ she described it in excruciating detail. I’m not sure she ever got over it. But she made me promise never to tell you.”

  “But you’re going to, right?” I asked.

  “Well, if she knew you’d been suffering and there would be a therapeutic benefit, I think she’d forgive me,” he replied. “Your first summer, when you were about seven months old, Mom had just changed your diaper one morning. You were lying on your blue blanket on the living room floor enjoying yourself, playing with your set of little coloured plastic rings. They made a rattling noise I can still hear in my memory.”

  “I get it, Dad,” I interrupted. “I was having happy plastic ring time on my blanket. Go on.”

  “Right. Well, a neighbour came to the door to visit. You remember Mrs. Pollard from down the street?”

  I nodded. I never liked Mrs. Pollard. She reminded me of the witch in The Wizard of Oz.

  “Well, she had her little dog in her arms. My goodness, your mother loved that dog, at least until that morning. They went into the kitchen to make coffee or something, and to talk. You were happy as a clam gurgling away in the living room. Well, at one point, Mrs. Pollard put her dog on the floor so she could doctor her coffee or grab a cookie. The dog started sniffing around the kitchen. They paid no attention to it. Then, a moment of two later, you started screaming bloody murder from the living room. Mom rushed out to find you all the way out in the hall. That tiny little vicious dog had sunk his teeth into your right leg and dragged you across the living room and toward the front door. That mutt was absolutely possessed. There was quite a bit of blood. It took the two of them some time to pry open the pup’s jaws and liberate your leg. Your mother sent Mrs. Pollard packing and called me at the office. I rushed home and we took you down to the hospital. You needed six stitches to close the four puncture wounds in your calf.”

  My hand shot to the spot. I pulled up my pant leg and looked at the four little symmetrical scars that I knew so well.

  “You told me I’d had four small moles removed when I was baby!”

  “Well, we fudged that a bit,” Dad explained. “Your mother was distraught. She thought the doctor might call in Child and Family Services because she’d been negligent. It was silly, but she was very scared and racked with guilt. We agreed on the mole story and we stuck to it. In her defence, she didn’t want you growing up terrified of little dogs.”

  “I see. So instead, I’ve grown up terrified of little dogs,” I replied. “That worked out well.”

  “I’m so sorry, Hem. Your mother would be mortified if she were alive. I honestly had no idea that your fear had persisted for so long.”

  “It was a Chihuahua, wasn’t it?”

  Dad just sighed and nodded.

  “They called the little critter Chi Chi Rodriguez, as I recall. Sorry, son.”

  “Well, no wonder the dog was psychotic. They screwed up his name,” I noted. “If I know my golfing legends, the real Chi Chi Rodriguez is Puerto Rican, not Mexican.”

  “What happened to the little guy?” Sarah asked.

  “He’s still alive and lives in Puerto Rico. I think he’s been inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, too,” I said, taking modest pride in my ability to retain useless information.

  “Not the golfer, the Chihuahua.” Sarah sighed.

  “Oh.”

  “He bit another small child a few months later, so they returned him to the breeder,” Dad replied.

  “Bye-bye, Chi Chi,” Sarah said.

  They left half an hour later to catch the shuttle back to Chicago. Sarah hugged me. Dad shook my hand, but still, it felt like more than a handshake. I was exhausted. It was one thing to have my life returned to me, and my family history rewritten, in a single night. But it was quite another to hear the story that so clearly explained a phobia I’ve endured for forty years.

  I was drained when I arrived back at Marie’s. I gave her the highlights of my evening. She held me for a while and then made me show her my scars. I slipped into bed beside her and turned out the light. Despite how tired I was, I just could not fall asleep. At 12:30, I padded out to the little kitchen in Marie’s apartment, in our apartment, and sat down at the counter. There was a pad of paper next to the phone and a cup filled with pens beside it. I turned to the first clean, pristine sheet of paper on the pad and started to write. I didn’t stop until sunlight angled into the room and I could just hear the faint sounds of the morning traffic below on Bleecker.

  CHAPTER 17

  ONE YEAR LATER

  My apologies for what I think they call in movie parlance the “jump cut” to twelve months later. I guess it is kind of a cheap writerly trick but it seemed to make sense in this case. Change in our lives can seem incremental, modest, inconsequential, when examined continuously. You sometimes don’t even notice it. But cut away for a year and then come back, and you’ll get a better sens
e of growth, of progress, of change. The passage of time offers perspective. And in the span of a lifetime, twelve short months flash by.

  Marie and I made our way to our seats in the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It was early August, and the New York Jets were about to tangle with the Buffalo Bills in their first pre-season game. They were great seats, midfield, just twenty rows up from the turf. We were right on the aisle. The seat next to us was empty, despite the sellout crowd. I leaned against Marie, just to have contact. It was nice. She pointed down to the group clustered at the end of a red carpet that had been rolled out from the sidelines onto the field.

  “There they are! Next to the guy with the clipboard and the bad green jacket.”

  I followed her finger and found the New York Jets official. Next to him and his clipboard I could see Hat holding hands with Diana Ross, who had donned a New York Jets jersey. She was bobbing from foot to foot.

  “She seems a little nervous,” Marie said.

  “Well, it might have something to do with the 82,000 fans jammed into this place. You never know.”

  Hat and Diana Ross had been seeing each other for three months by then. She had a remarkably calming effect on him. He still carried butterscotch candies with him at all times, but more often than not he ended up eating most of them himself. Somehow, Diana had lengthened his notoriously short fuse. I don’t know how she did it. She claimed not to know, either. All the good in Hat was still there, and even stronger. But the all-too-swift anger had ebbed. Some thought she was brave to take him on, but she needed Hat, too. He was good for her. Relentlessly supportive and kind, he gave her a daily boost of confidence. She had moved directly to the centre of his universe, and she thrived there.

  I felt my cellphone vibrate. “James Moriarty” flashed across the screen. I leaned away from Marie and into the aisle to answer.

  “Hi, James.”

  “Hem, I just had to call you. You were the one I wanted to tell first,” James said in an excited tone I’d never heard in his voice.