The Family Hightower

by Brian Francis Slattery

  Peter gives Caroline a good, long look, like a favorite uncle.

  “Your brother’s friends are missing out,” he says. Looks at his watch. “Be good, all right?”

  He lets it slip and she catches it. “Be good? That’s something the kids on the South Side would say.” But he’s back in character by the time she’s done talking.

  “And how would you know what the kids on the South Side sound like?”

  “I go downtown,” she says. “I’ve got ears.”

  “You’re onto me, Caroline,” he says.

  She doesn’t see him again for two years. She doesn’t see much of her brother, either, because he’s busy. She’s not interested enough in Cleveland’s business world to follow a lot of what he says to his parents when he comes by, but she notices other things. His new suits, the cut, the fabric, the colors. The way he combs his hair. The cuffs on his shirts. The big one: his shoes. You can always tell a man by his shoes, and William’s got some beautiful ones. Soft, light brown leather, an elegant curve of stitching up the side. Almost like a slipper, a lady’s shoe, except for the strong block of a heel, the wider taper at the front. The shoes of a man who’s not stepping in anything he’ll regret; a man who’s doing better than he expected, who knows he’s getting away with something. He’s bought a house a few blocks away from them, bigger than the one he grew up in, though he lives in it by himself. Someday when it all goes south, he might have to sell that place and the car he bought to go to work from it. Might end up in the same kind of apartment he was in just a few years ago. But he’ll still have those shoes, and when he puts them on, they’ll remind him and everyone else where he was at. When times were good, I was a player. When they’re good again, I will be, too.

  But Peter. Well. When Caroline sees him, she can tell that Peter puts her brother to shame. He’s not flashy like William is. His hair is the same as before, his manner just as forward and subdued. He’s not letting anything go to his head; if anything, it seems like he’s trying to hide how much he has. She hears that he lives in an apartment somewhere—downtown is all he’ll say, and she’d believe anything. That he lives in a tiny, tidy little flat in an unassuming building, almost ascetic, so every cent is going into something productive, every dollar’s making three more. But it’s also possible to imagine that he means the word apartment like Louis XIV meant it: There’s a place in downtown Cleveland somewhere that looks like an office building, but the top three floors are taken over by parlors and libraries, a grand ballroom, bedrooms with crystal skylights, a staff of seven just to keep the place in shape, all invisible from the street. But he can’t hide everything, because when Caroline looks him over, one word enters her head: flawless. In the last year and a half, several boys have been interested in her, and she’s returned the favor to one or two—isn’t that teenage girls everywhere? It’s as if they’ve got everything figured out and don’t know it—but in the back of her mind, she can’t get away from the straight fact that those boys are boys. Kids. Peter’s not a kid, and she can still remember how he didn’t treat her like one, either.

  “You must be close to graduating now,” Peter says.

  “In June,” Caroline says.

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know.” She doesn’t have to tell him what he already knows: college, because she’s done so well in school, but then it’s either teaching, or nursing, or being a secretary, or nothing. Caroline isn’t like her sister; she’s not angry about it. Cecily’s giving her father lectures at the dinner table these days about how she’s at least as smart as some of the men her father works with. She’s met some of them and isn’t impressed. Her father sits there and takes it, at least for a few minutes. He knows she’s right, but also has the luxury of not caring. When he decides he’s had enough, he stops it with a single sentence: What are you going to do about it? Or: You could always just get married already. That makes her even angrier, because it’s so easy for her father to shut her up. Reminding her that what she thinks are her rights are an extension of his privilege. One of these days, she wants to have the real talk, cut right down to the bone: What are we to you really, Dad? Mom and Caroline and I? Are we people or just meat? But she has to be ready to leave the house after that one, and she isn’t.

  Caroline’s more subtle; she sees how futile it is to be direct. To Caroline, Cecily’s taking a hammer to a wall that won’t come down. But there might be a way around it, or as Caroline likes to think, over it. She imagines herself standing next to her sister, who’s swinging over and over again, sweat running down her arms, crying out at each blow. Meanwhile, Caroline collects balloons, one after the other, until there are enough to carry her off. She checks the wind, and over the wall she floats. Then she lets a few of the balloons go, comes to a gentle landing in another country, where she’s free.

  “It’s a waste, isn’t it?” Peter says.

  “What is?” Caroline says.

  “That you’re so bright. You’re smarter than your brother. Smarter than your sister, too.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Caroline says.

  “But you must have thought of it.”

  “I don’t like saying mean things about my family.”

  “It’s not mean if it’s the truth,” Peter says.

  “Yes it is. And besides, what makes you so sure it’s true?”

  Peter laughs. “You’re right. It’s just a hunch. But it’s a hunch I’ve had for a while and nothing I’ve seen in your family has led me to believe otherwise.”

  “You haven’t seen me for years.”

  “I’ve seen enough.”

  “You’re a very interesting man, Peter Hightower.”

  “And you have become a very interesting young woman, Caroline.” He manages to say this without setting off alarms, a warning that Caroline might be prey. She hears only admiration, the beginning of affection. Decades later, when her life is unraveling all around her and she fights with Peter for a solid year, she’ll wonder if he ever meant any of what he said. If even then, he was playing hard, gaming her and her family for as much as he could get out of them; or if he was telling her the truth when he said he loved her.

  “There’s no chance I could see you again, is there?” Peter says.

  “In the next three years?” she says.

  “I’d like it to be sooner than that.”

  “Well, Mister Peter Henry Hightower,” she says, “you know the rules.”

  They start seeing each other at parties, because they’re running in the same circles now. Each one acts surprised to see the other one, when each of them showed up hoping the other would be there. Then it’s a night out to the Allen Theatre, with William and his current girlfriend—by the 1920s, girls are dating, or at least these girls are. The intersection at Huron and Euclid in 1925 is all hazy light, one sign for the Allen vertical over the sidewalk, the other high above their heads, the sign for the Loews State just a few doors away. The streetlights making stripes all the way down to Public Square while cars zip over the tracks for the trolleys. They watch The Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney. Before and after, the Allen Theatre Orchestra plays, Phil Spitalny conducting. Spitalny was born in Odessa in 1890, was a prodigy on the clarinet, and he’s all about jazz now. He conducts a dance band in the city that cuts records for Victor, good ones; by the 1930s he’ll be out of Cleveland, doing the Hour of Charm for radio in New York with his All-Girl Orchestra and Evelyn and Her Magic Violin. He’ll marry Evelyn in 1946, retire in 1955 to Miami Beach, where he’ll write music reviews for a local paper. Cancer will get him in 1970, and though he’ll have worked with Gus Kahn and gotten a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he’ll be buried back in Cleveland, to be close to his family. By then, Peter Henry Hightower and Caroline Anderson, watching him now from the balcony, will both be gone, too, though they were born after him. But we’re getting ahead of things.

  There
are only a couple more dates with other people before they’re going out alone, just the two of them. A lot. She hasn’t seen where he lives—she’s more cautious than that, still has a sense of propriety—but they’re starting to develop their own language, the things every couple have that they almost never let anyone else see. Nicknames for each other, certain words given bigger meanings than they have for other people. They’re quiet about it, discreet, but they can’t stop everyone from noticing, and the Andersons are talking about it.

  “We like Peter,” the mother says, “but we don’t really know anything about him. Can we trust him?”

  “Mom,” William says, “Peter is the straightest shooter I know.” Which, for all of Peter’s fabrications, might still be true. But William has no idea that, before Peter talks to Caroline’s father, he needs to talk to Lou Rizzi, who sighs.

  “We’ve all been very happy with you, Pete. We’ve all done so well by you. You know that.”

  “Yeah,” Pete says. He’s playing the gangster now, though he’s been doing it less and less. Like I said: It’s so much more lucrative when you’re on the right side of the law.

  “You haven’t made a mistake yet,” Rizzi says. “I just wonder if this isn’t your first.”

  “Because I’m making my business personal?”

  “Of course not. We don’t care about that. It’s more that the closer they get to you, the easier it’ll be for them to figure out that you’re not who you say you are. You have to think hard about that. About what you’re going to do about that.”

  “I have, Lou. I have.”

  “You’re sure? There are so many things to think about. You got to be ready.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Lou Rizzi gives him a long hard look. Frowns, rubs his chin. Pete can tell he’s thinking about killing the whole plan. Then he shakes his head, not in denial. More like, ah, fuck it.

  “I’m trusting you that you know what you’re doing,” Rizzi says.

  And then Peter has to talk to Caroline herself. We have some things to discuss, he tells her, with an intensity she’s never seen in him before. All right, she says. They go for a drive. He picks her up at her parents’ house and they head toward the lake, out of the greenery of Cleveland Heights, through Forest Hills, until they’ve arrived in Bratenahl, turn onto Lake Shore Boulevard. Its walls, its dark trees, its wide lawns. They pass a couple pieces of land where houses are being built, grand things that are still skeletons with no flesh on them. It must be business, she thinks. A real estate development deal he and William are involved in, maybe, though he’s talked about business so little with her; just vague conversations about money and loyalty. She’s never been sure if he’s serious or just making small talk. William and her father talk about money all the time, with an air of precision that suggests that they think it’s all very important. Peter’s talk is different, somehow lighter and heavier at the same time. A tone of voice, she’s thought to herself, that you might use to tell jokes at the bedside of someone who’s very sick, and you’re trying to cheer them up. The substance of the conversation seems so light, but there’s no denying the real conversation happening below it, as if big decisions are being made.

  “Why are we here?” Caroline says.

  “I need to show you something,” he says.

  They slow down before a long stone wall with iron spikes driven into the top, turn into the curving driveway. Wind their way through large trees, a broad expanse of ivy, because the owners—rail barons who made good enough that they’re moving to New York, and all the way into finance—aren’t half the gardener Caroline or Sylvie will turn out to be. She thinks maybe they’re in a park until she sees the house. Its garrets, its long windows, the lawn rolling down to the lake. It’s so grand it’s hostile; it makes the central myth of our country’s founding seem like the longest, biggest con of the past two hundred years. Because if we’re all created equal in this country, then how does a place like this come to exist here? It’s beyond luck and wealth, beyond privilege. It’s the building of a new aristocratic class. You go in there and shut the door behind you.

  “Why are we here?” Caroline says.

  “I’m buying this place,” Peter says. Takes a breath; that was the easy part. “And I want you to be in it with me. My partner, in life and in business. But I need to know something first. Can you keep secrets?”

  “You know I can,” she says.

  “How many?”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Well,” Peter says. “To begin with, I am very, very wealthy.”

  “You and William have been doing very well the past few years.”

  “You’re right, William has done well. But I’ve done much better than he has.”

  “I thought you were partners.”

  “We are. More or less. First more. Lately, less. Because there are certain investments I’ve decided to make without him.”

  “Since when?”

  “A couple years ago. I decided to branch out.”

  “I see,” Caroline says.

  “And some of these deals, I made with people who William introduced me to. I wouldn’t ever have been able to meet them without him. But, as it turns out, business couldn’t move forward with him.”

  “And does he know this?”

  “No,” Peter says. “If he found out, he would be right to accuse me of using him.”

  “How much more do you have than him now?”

  “It’s hard to say, because I don’t know how much he has.”

  “Take a guess,” Caroline says. An edge to her voice that makes her sound much older, much wiser. Peter has already learned to love her for that.

  “Ten times as much at the very least,” he says. “Maybe as much as fifty times.” He reconsiders. “Could be a hundred.”

  “A hundred times as much?”

  “As I said, it’s hard to say.” But he lays it all out for her: the way he moved from real estate and small business investments into larger construction concerns. Then railroads; he’s got a small piece of the empire the Van Sweringens are building. But more, too. Cars. Steel. Shipping. The stock market. Some foreign investment, most of that in Europe, but some in India and Latin America. A bender across the financial world but so much of it is still in Cleveland. She has no idea how he’s done that and still kept such a low profile in this town. How he’s had time to see her, when William’s been so busy.

  “Where did all this come from?” Caroline says.

  “One investment led to another.”

  “But what was the first one?” she says. “It couldn’t have been my brother. It can’t all be my brother.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he says. Both frightened and delighted that she’s smart enough to ask the question.

  “What was it?” she says again.

  “Illegal.”

  “How do you mean illegal?”

  “I mean that I borrowed from one of our fair city’s most illustrious crime operations.”

  “How much?”

  “A lot.”

  He waits to see if she’ll run away at that. She doesn’t.

  “I’ve been paying them back, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says, “almost in full, though there are kickbacks involved all the time. Pretty high, in fact, but not compared to how much I have. And, now and again, there’s the occasional dubious venture that can’t be passed up.” Peter smiles. “The ties that bind, still bind. But I don’t think they always will. Someday I’ll be clear of them. I’m just not sure when.”

  She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t give him any sense of what she’s thinking.

  “You’re not going to turn me in to the police, are you?” he says.

  “No. I just don’t understand how on earth you ever got involved with them.”

  Now Peter doesn’t say anything. Fo
r a few seconds, she thinks maybe she’s overstepped. He’s going to open the car door for her, gesture for her to get in, drive her home. Then she’ll never see him again. But he doesn’t do any of that.

  “I’m not from Connecticut,” he says. “I have no family there. I didn’t go to Cheshire, or to Yale. And my name isn’t really Peter,” he says. “Not strictly speaking.”

  She can see the transformation before he says a word. It looks like magic, like voodoo, her husband-to-be possessed by another man.

  “I’m also Pete the Uke,” he says. “A gangster, a bootlegger, a criminal.”

  Then it happens again.

  “But, but,” he says, now with an accent she’s only heard from the people from the South Side, the newsboys, the ragpickers, the women who look in the windows of the stores downtown and never buy anything, “before I was any of them, I was Petro Garko. My father and mother came here from Ukraine, before I was born. They met on the South Side at a dance. My father died when I was a boy. My mother and brother are still alive. I almost never see them, but I never stop thinking about them.” He becomes Peter again, in the blink of an eye. “For almost five years, I have been giving them enough money to live on. More than live on. Live well. They could move out of Tremont if they wanted to, but my mother doesn’t want to.”

  Caroline’s just staring at him. Her mouth is open, just a little bit.

  “What are you?” she says.

  “To be honest,” he says, “that’s one of the few things I don’t think about that much. I’m just who I need to be to get what I want.”

  She doesn’t know what to say to that.

  “I’ll understand,” he says, “if this is too much for you. I won’t blame you if you walk away. But I very much hope you’ll stay.”

  It is too much. At first, she wants to run. But she looks at the man again, and sees under the surfaces—all the surfaces—to the person beneath. A man who can cage his thoughts in the name of his ambitions, who protects and cares for his family. And in the last few words he says, she catches a glimpse of the boy. Petro Garko, age seven, on the sidewalk in front of his house. It’s sunset on a Saturday night, and he’s watching his parents sashay down the block, on their way to a dance. They’ve left him in the care of a neighbor. He doesn’t want them to go. He wants to go with them. He just wants them all to be together, even though he can’t make that happen, because he’s just a kid.