Walter Falls

by Gillis, Steven;

  I was born in Palgree Falls, 300 miles west of Renton. My parents, Katherine and Charles, provided me with a pleasant childhood, were doting and protective, instructive and supportive; my days filled with football and paper routes, schoolwork and vacations, dates to dances, minor mischief and rites of passage marked by cigarettes, Penthouse magazine, and cans of Bud. I dated local girls, losing my virginity late one summer night hunkered down in a plush field of corn, as a classmate, more experienced than I, rode my hips while—for reasons never clear—singing the words to our high school fight song: “Oh hail to thee, oh hale perse knight of Palgree High!”

  I was a good student—more sedulous than bright—and graduated near the top of my class. The genesis of my diligence was my parents, who in their work—my father was a banker, my mother a surgical nurse—adhered to a strict protestant ethic and instilled in me, their only child, a nose-to-the-grindstone orientation; the credo “Toil, Triumph, Rule!” introduced several generations before as the Brimm’s family mantra and weaved its way deep into the pith and marrow of every heir.

  I tried to take such familial cheers to heart, though the religion of my soul did not emerge from heeding anyone particular hoot and whistle, but came instead as a consequence of bearing witness to my parents’ conduct. I was inspired by their industry, their assiduity, and the intensity of their being, how well they displayed a willingness to follow their own personal ethic. My father’s steady hand coupled with my mother’s grace of spirit filled me with a firm sense of purpose, order, and focus, and imagine then my surprise when during my first semester of college my father was arrested on charges of fraud, his assets frozen, his bank put into receivership; photographs of his being booked at the county courthouse printed in large color shots on the front page of the Palgree Gazette.

  The indictment, brought separately under State and Federal statutes, accused Charles Brimm of swindling hundreds of clients out of their life’s savings through the sale of unsecured junk bonds. (Upon further investigation, my father was also found to have embezzled more than a million dollars from his own bank, syphoning off the interest from savings accounts while stashing the cash in overseas deposits.) As shocked as we were, everyone still expected my mother to stand steadfast at my father’s side, but she surprised us and immediately distanced herself from her husband. With charges of complicity waved in her face, she pled ignorance to each illegal transaction, and on the advice of her lover, Dr. Mark Batelle (another bombshell exploding!), accepted an offer of immunity in exchange for testimony against my father.

  Charles Brimm was sentenced to twelve years in prison. My mother filed for divorce, and working with several prominent attorneys to recoup what little was left of the family money—before civil suits drained every last dime—she lost the house and took an apartment near the hospital. Abandoned then by most of her friends, she relied on the help of barbiturates to sleep and amphetamines to wake, managing to get through her days with the solitary and sullen deportment of a proud queen cast into exile.

  Life went on, though in a way which was so altogether altered and fundamentally foreign as to make even the simplest undertakings onerous. Six months after my father entered prison, my mother added morphine to her mix of drugs, and suffered a fatal coronary while assisting on the bile duct surgery of an overweight Armenian woman, dying instantly and with her face smeared and splattered atop a newly perforated duodenum.

  I grieved each new disaster with disbelief, ruing the annihilation of my family with such initial horror that rallying myself from bed in the morning took all my strength. After missing a year of school, I transferred back in state to the University of Renton where I paid my way with student loans and the cash earned from an assortment of odd jobs, graduating four years later with a degree in business. I obtained my broker’s license that summer, began taking classes two nights a week toward my Master’s in finance, and was hired in the fall at Porter and Evans as a junior broker and financial advisor.

  Clueless and with neither sufficient experience nor connections—hired because I seemed earnest and the sort of young associate Ed Porter could easily force to dance beneath his thumb—I chose to cut my teeth in uncharted fields, and invested in a series of upstart computer companies, privatized utility and telephone services, new biotechnology advances, wireless communication, and cable and Internet futures. Through a process of much hard work and a few missteps along the way, I parlayed my plan for favoring virgin firms into a doubling and redoubling of my assigned clients’ funds. (My own portfolio now—and as given over to Gee—is three file cabinets thick and reeks of good fortune.) I was promoted two rungs up the ladder, invited to power lunches and a dinner given once a year where Ed Porter shook the hands of his minions and encouraged us to “Make me rich!”

  A young man with money in his pockets is a particularly arrogant creature, and, filled with hubris, I thought about my parents and how far I’d come from the early shock of their betrayal. As a consequence of their crimes, I developed a severe distaste for the slightest form of deception. (Hyperbole, let alone prevarication, turned my normally kind eyes cold, while harmless charades brought me to the brink of choler.) I gained a reputation among clients, colleagues, and peers as a man of utmost honesty and frankness and, until the time I met Tod and all such virtue went to hell, maintained my rank with pride.

  Shortly after my father was released from prison, he moved into a small apartment on the border between Palgree Falls and Shady Hill. We didn’t speak often, though I sent him a monthly check, and he surprised me one night by calling, half drunk and alone in his room. “I owe you an explanation,” he said, the only time he extended me such an offer. In trying to make sense of his crimes however, he wound up rambling about the vagaries of the human soul, denouncing avarice and envy, desire, susceptibility, and temptation, warning me (“You, too, Walter.”) until I couldn’t listen any more and hung up the phone.

  I took a walk through the neighborhood and tried to dismiss my father’s babble, only his caution stayed with me. The idea of the world laying traps to trip me up appealed to my vanity, the thought of snares set and lures unsprung, and how I might wake up tomorrow and be tested by what my father called “the chronic consequence of being as we are” aroused my interest. Convinced I was immune to my parents’ nonsense, resilient to and stronger than whatever temptation caused them to crumble, I challenged the gods to “Come and get me!” and bayed at the moon, “The delusion that took down Katherine and Charles is in no way clever enough to cozen the son!”

  For several weeks I dared fate to find me, eager to prove I was a firm and honest fellow. I concentrated in this way much more than I should, and when no cruel provocation overtook me, I beamed with conceit and great satisfaction, certain I’d won. So convinced was I, that in the middle of all such self-congratulatory hubbub and grand hurrah, I failed to heed the warning tick inside my head, as steady and foreboding as a bomb fused and set to go off.

  Until eventually it did.

  Jack finished his story about Atlantic Groceries, slapped me on the arm, and went off to freshen his drink. I turned toward the house and stared back through the sliding glass doors where I spotted Gee beside a man in jeans, a somewhat faded blue cotton shirt, and brown leather sandals. His face was narrow, his coloring fair, his features angular and finely drawn. His hair was dark and a bit long, his shoulders loose and legs straight, his mouth cast in the midst of a smile with lips roundly parted. He was sharing hors d’oeuvres with my wife from a single plate, Gee tossing her head back and laughing at something Tod said, turning further away from me and as she did so her body in the shadows was briefly lost.

  I went inside. Gee glanced up as I drew near and said my name as if surprised to see me. I was introduced to Tod, “Pleased to...” “Delighted, sir...” shaking hands and all the rest. “We saw you outside,” Gee noted, “talking to Jack Gorne.”

  “You should have come and said hello.”

  Gee looked at Tod. “Actually,”
she smiled.

  “What?”

  “Jack and Tod.”

  “What about them?”

  “I understand you two are friends,” Tod said.

  “We’re acquainted. I do some work for him from time to time.”

  “Involving Renton?”

  “That’s right, why?”

  “Jack and I have had our differences over the years about what’s best for Renton as a community.”

  “Anything specific?”

  “Melstar Clinic.”

  “You mean Wintmore Towers?”

  “That’s right,” Tod’s eyes, a deep autumnal blue, opened wide as I mentioned Wintmore. “Are you familiar with the sale?”

  “I reviewed the final papers.” Two years ago, Jack purchased Wintmore Towers and forced the closing of Melstar, then a free mental health clinic on the north side. There was much to-do in the news for a time, before interest waned and the majority of complaints disappeared. I cleared my throat, and without thinking—an example of my clumsiness—fell at once into the enemy camp. “It seems the property Jack developed has worked out quite well.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” Tod shifted closer to Gee, his tone congenial enough, and yet there was an inflexibility about him, his casual appeal belying an intractable side. “The people who relied on Melstar feel differently. You say you reviewed the documents?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Mr. Gorne’s intentions didn’t interest you?”

  “I was paid to go over the papers, not impose social commentary.” I meant my statement as harmless tripe. I was not confrontational as a rule and preferred to terminate all debate with a show of good will but something in my voice stiffened, and even as I tried to laugh the sound I made came out strained.

  “Perhaps if you read Tod’s article, Walter,” Gee made reference to a piece Tod had written at the time.

  “I’d be happy to.” I tried to demonstrate my willingness to be accommodating, and in reference to Tod’s article, said, “I’m sure there are points I’ve not considered.”

  Tod acknowledged my comment with a quick nod as Gee placed her right shoulder even closer to his. (I experienced my first real shock of jealousy—a jolt quite sharp and clear—altogether unlike me and yet the signals were all there.) “I appreciate that,” Tod said, then added, “What troubles me is the way Jack thinks having enough money to buy a building automatically gives him the right to alter the landscape of an entire community.”

  “You object to how a man uses his own property?”

  “I object to a man of wealth believing himself free to affect the interests of all.”

  “But what of capitalism, Tod?” I continued to suffer the physical challenge of his presence, the way Gee tilted her head nearer to his, her hip angled and right hand made available should he choose to reach for it. “As someone who owns a business,” I found myself unable to resist, “how is it you feel Jack Gorne should not be permitted to operate Wintmore Towers as he sees fit? How would you react if someone came along and told you what pieces you could publish in your Review?”

  Tod placed his drink down and folded his arms in front of him. More than I, he seemed to enjoy defending his views, though he didn’t bother answering me directly. “I would like to think the rich recognize their responsibility to the community. Refusing to renew the lease of a mental health-care facility housed in Wintmore Towers for over twenty years, a clinic that served hundreds of patients in the neighborhood, the location of which these people depended upon for their very survival, represents a form of social genocide.”

  “You’re being facetious, of course. Social genocide? Is that Lenin or Trotsky?”

  “Trotsky rejected socialism, Walter,” Gee pointed out to me. I pretended to remember as much, and replied, “That’s right. Universal revolution, a constant churning of the waters. It’s important to keep the rich from consolidating too much of their power, is that it, Tod?”

  “A society is judged by how it takes care of its less fortunate.”

  “But I disagree. A society is judged by how best it operates. If a society is inefficient, everyone suffers from bottom to top.”

  “Stalin was efficient.”

  “Stalin was myopic. His efficiency eventually collapsed. He was also a madman and a murderer, and certainly you aren’t accusing Jack Gorne of committing these sort of crimes.”

  “You can’t defend Gorne,” Gee argued, “or even suggest that he was at all concerned about the people of Renton when he turned Wintmore Towers into exclusive condominiums and put hardworking lower middle-class families out on the street.”

  “I can, in fact, suggest just that when you look at the end result,” I said with a certain confidence and leaned forward then in order to snatch the last eggroll from Gee’s plate, a gesture intended to reestablish—in some ill-defined way—the connection between us, but to my surprise, Gee moved the plate out of reach. (A second later, she realized what she had done, and extended the dish back to me, but by then it was too late.) I withdrew my empty hand and shoved it deep into my pocket. Wounded, I said, “It’s nonsense to judge a deal only by the minor inconvenience it caused while dismissing in turn its overall good. Sure, Jack was looking to make money when he converted Wintmore Towers into an expensive high-rise. And yes, a mental health clinic was closed, and it’s true a handful of families had to find new accommodations, but let’s examine things objectively. First, the city ran the clinic. The mayor’s office had six months’ notice of Jack’s plans to not renew their lease, and yet the city failed to find a new space and let the clinic close. This is hardly Jack’s fault.”

  “Objectively,” Tod’s voice remained calm, “everyone knew going in that the city was looking for an excuse to shut the clinic down. Jack Gorne took full advantage of this information when negotiating to purchase Wintmore Towers. He received preferential treatment from the city in their support of the deal. How hard would it have been for him to find another site for his project? Wintmore Towers wasn’t the only property on the north side up for sale. By purchasing the building, Jack helped the city facilitate precisely what public policy would not have permitted them to do on their own.”

  I had no response to such an argument and could only shake my head. (Gee frowned as I did so and I felt instantly contrite.) For a moment I thought I might simply shrug my shoulders and let everything go with a submissive sort of laugh—for such was more in keeping with my nature—but even I could sense the situation demanded more, and I wound up countering with, “What about Jack being the only developer at the time willing to put his money into upscaling the north side of town? Look at the north side now. How many people do you think benefited from Jack’s vision? The entire city was revitalized by his decision to renovate Wintmore Towers. Before there was no upper middle-class living downtown. Now everyone’s hurrying back. A dozen buildings have been refurbished. Businesses are returning, restaurants and shops. There are new jobs and opportunities Jack Gorne’s money helped seed. His effort should be applauded not condemned. A few people were displaced, it’s true, and that’s unfortunate, but a minor trade-off given how well things turned out.”

  “Even better,” Tod wasted no time responding, “if Jack had purchased a different building and left Melstar alone.”

  “But why?” Once again, I shook my head. “What would you have Jack do, ignore the best deal available simply to forestall the inevitable and force the city to find another way to shut the clinic down?”

  “That’s right,” Tod answered.

  “I agree,” Gee joined in, her elbow now in contact with the middle three fingers on Tod’s right hand.

  “Well then.” We had crossed over into the sort of debate where everything rational was sacrificed and no clear victory could be had by either side without someone first committing a serious false step. “You’ll have to excuse Walter,” Gee chose to tease me then and hurried once more to Tod’s defense. “It’s part of his job. If Walter had his way
, the entire world would be in a constant state of refurbishment and reinvestment,” she smiled and squeezed Tod’s arm.

  The last vestiges of my composure collapsed on me, and even as I laughed at Gee’s joke, I felt myself losing hold. For years I’d prided myself on maintaining a level of prudence and clearheadedness which kept me from making rash decisions, and—save for falling in love which I did hopelessly and totally, like a stone plunging downward into a warm puff of sand—I managed to keep my emotions in check. Here however, I was thrown off my mark, and the only thing worse than the way our conversation relegated me into the role of insensitive ass was witnessing my wife’s determination to align herself with Tod. (“Come on, Brimm!” I heard Ed Porter’s voice in my head, challenging me to “Get with it, man!”) In my role as senior associate at Porter and Evans, I was required to think fast on my feet, to be agile and firm and shrewd enough to recover even when I blundered, but in my capacity as husband to Gee, I was never so clever nor confident. I tried to imagine myself at the office then, where the world was ever so much more finite and clear, and was able at last to say, “Tell me, Tod, do you own a house?”