The Family Hightower

by Brian Francis Slattery

  They’re married on May 15, 1926. A hasty calling of an engagement. A ceremony in St. Alban Episcopal Church. Only the bride’s side of the family is represented; the groom’s family is nowhere to be found. Shouldn’t we at least have invited them? Caroline’s mother says. But you’re my family now, Peter tells her. Says it in just such a way as to imply that he hasn’t spoken to them in years, hopes she’ll leave it at that. She does, at least to him.

  “Aren’t you at all worried?” she says to Caroline.

  “What do you mean? You said you liked Peter.”

  “We do like Peter. And we know he can take care of you,” her mother says. “But what kind of man doesn’t keep in touch with his family? Doesn’t even tell them he’s getting married?”

  “You don’t know that he hasn’t.”

  “Well, he hasn’t invited them.”

  “He has his reasons,” Caroline says.

  “Do you know what they are?”

  Caroline, right then, makes the biggest decision of her life. She already can feel the way Peter’s deceptions pull at her, force her to choose, between him and her family, him and an honest life. That wall in front of the house in Bratenahl might be the most important thing about it, she realizes. It means most people will never see how they live, never be in a position to ask them any questions they don’t want to answer. But they can’t stay in the house all day, or keep everyone out. Being with Peter means dancing around a line for the rest of her life. She can see it all coming, the millions of tiny lies she’ll tell, about where Peter is, where Peter’s gone. Where the money comes from, why they have so very, very much of it. If she’s not careful, she’ll lose her whole family over it. That thought almost makes Caroline back out right then. Almost. She doesn’t think of what could happen to her children.

  “Yes,” Caroline says. “They’re between him and his family. And frankly, I’m a little insulted that you seem to think so little of me as to ask.”

  “I don’t think so little of you,” her mother says, in a quiet voice. Her mother’s just worried, and Caroline knows it. Knows, too, that her mother can see how her daughter’s holding all the cards. Her mother can’t be angry. Just hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” Caroline says. “Perhaps I misunderstood you.” She’ll regret all of it later, but relishes the power now. And a month after the wedding, after they’ve made arrangements to deliver furniture to the giant house in Bratenahl, empty except for the bedroom, the kitchen, and two chaise lounges on the long porch overlooking the lake, they take the car west along the coast, into downtown Cleveland, where the steelwork for Terminal Tower is starting to go up. Drive over the Cuyahoga, where the Flats are clanking and roaring. Peter doesn’t look. They drive through Ohio City, pass the West Side Market on Lorain; Caroline can’t get it out of her head that it looks like a train station, clock tower and all. As if they’re going far away. Then they’ve dipped into the valley and come back up again, and they’re in Tremont, they’re on the South Side.

  Caroline’s never been there—she’s an East Side girl—and it hits her, hard. She always knew Cleveland was an industrial place, knew that’s how people earned money around here. She just didn’t appreciate the difference between making a living from it and living with it. On the South Side, it’s all church spires and smokestacks. The people living in obvious poverty. The streets are lined with picket fences instead of sidewalks, and they’re so narrow that two cars almost can’t pass each other. The alleys are open gutters. Children appear from gates and run out in front of them without warning. People keep green hedges and flower gardens, ivy and foxcomb, but the paint on the houses is covered in cinders and soot, the pigment bleached out by sulfur fumes.

  They have to drive slow to get down to the house where Stefan and Galina still live. Stefan’s been to college, is working for the Ukrainian National Association as an accountant. You’re not going to make any real money doing that, Peter tells him. Yeah, but I don’t need to be ashamed of what I do make, Stefan says back. Both of them tough enough to say what they have to say and not flinch, laugh about it a little bit afterward, though they both feel it later, like a burn they didn’t put the ice on fast enough. The fight they had years ago that they both still remember. And Stefan can’t hit him with everything. The Ukrainian identity Peter left behind. The people he could be helping—the money he could be sending back—if he only gave a shit about them. It’s hard for Stefan not to think it, being part of the UNA. He’s too aware of the war that’s fought over Ukraine from 1917 to 1922, just when everyone over here says the fighting’s over. That war ends with the Soviet Union and Poland dividing the place up; well over a million and a half Ukrainians die for their privilege. And at the beginning of 1922 Svoboda, the UNA’s newspaper, runs a few pieces so Ukrainians in America won’t forget it. Everywhere there are Ukrainian tears; everywhere the spilling of Ukrainian blood; everywhere the wounding of the Ukrainian soul. Everywhere we were on our native land, but surely not our own. Svoboda covers, too, the famine in Ukraine in 1922 and 1923. There are conflicting reports of bread shortages in the country and the export of bread from it. At first it appears the two reports are contradictory, the editor at Svoboda writes. If one of the reports is true, then the other is a lie. It’s the setup for pointing the finger. The editor sees through the Soviet ruse even then, believes without hesitation that Moscow would sell bread abroad and let the Ukrainians starve. He doesn’t know how right he is, or how it’s going to get much, much worse ten years later.

  But Stefan can’t push Peter that far. He’s gotten used to Peter’s surprise visits, has learned to accept the money he gives them with a measured grace. They’ve absorbed, in its entirety, the complex of shame and pride, love and obligation, that keeps Peter coming back, even as Stefan’s education—beyond high school, all the way through college, thanks to his brother—separates him from his friends, who are still working in the factory. Hey, ask your brother if he can help me out, too, one of them says. He’s not like that, Stefan says. He tries not to wince when he sees the expressions on their faces, calling bullshit without having to say it. The money alienates all the Garkos, from their neighbors and themselves. And with Caroline beside Peter, Stefan and Galina are awkward all over again, awkward like they were in the first seconds when Peter arrived with the first envelope full of money, that first thousand. Stefan notices the ring on her finger when he opens the door; Galina sees it before they take five steps into the house.

  “Who is this, Peter?” Galina says. She’s learned never to use the name she gave him again.

  “Ma, this is Caroline, my wife. Caroline, this is my mother and my brother Stefan.”

  Caroline doesn’t know what she was expecting. Some kind of drama. Screaming, maybe, from joy or anger, she couldn’t say. Some real discomfort, the beginning of some intense family politics. Aren’t all families political? she thinks to herself. Those endless questions of who has the power, over what domains. The favors and slights that get banked in people’s heads. The rising and falling values of the familial bonds, traded in a market like any other, she thinks. At least that’s how her family operates. But Galina just looks Caroline over from head to toe and nods, and Caroline realizes that Peter’s mother has sized her up, knows everything she needs to know, while Caroline doesn’t understand the first thing about her. If there were politics in this family, Galina would be at its head, a dictator, severe but fair. But there isn’t any time for politics. Just fighting, fighting and moving on.

  “Caroline,” Galina says. “Catholic?”

  “No. Episcopalian.” She can tell the word means almost nothing to Galina. She’s aware of Episcopalians as a far-off tribe whose customs she doesn’t pretend to know. The older woman nods three times.

  “Kids?”

  Caroline smiles. “We haven’t been married that long.”

  “Ha!” Galina smiles too. “I mean kids and church. You will take them?”r />
  “I intend to,” Caroline says.

  “Church is good for kids,” Galina says.

  “I think so, too.”

  “Then we understand each other?” It’s like Caroline’s signing a contract before she knows there’s a pen in her hand. She stops. Looks down.

  “Yes, we understand each other.”

  “Good,” Galina says. Turns to Peter. “She’s too good for you.” Doesn’t give anyone in the room a clue as to whether she’s joking or not. But Stefan chuckles anyway, goes into the kitchen to get Peter and Caroline something to eat. A small bit of sausage he bought on Professor a couple days ago. A triangle of cheese he’s been saving for himself. A bottle of homemade wine he got from a neighbor in exchange for helping him dig holes for fence posts in his yard. Bread. A dense bunch of small grapes. He brings them in on a platter. Galina has Peter and Caroline seated at the small table in the living room and is pulling up a chair to sit close.

  “May I?” Caroline says, before she reaches for the platter.

  Galina chuckles. “Oh, this is a nice one,” she says, though it’s unclear who she’s talking to. Then to Caroline: “Of course you can. You must eat until you are no longer hungry.”

  “Why?” Caroline says.

  Galina pats Peter’s knee. “Long trip ahead with this one,” she says.

  Chapter 11

  On February 27, 1933, Galina Garko develops a cough. She ignores it. But the next day, the cough is worse, much worse. A fever comes down on her that makes her head spin. Then she has trouble breathing, and it puts her in her bed. She won’t get out of it alive, and she knows it when she lies down. So Stefan heads downtown to see his brother.

  Tremont, the South Side, has changed a lot in the past ten years; the Great Depression’s hit the place hard. The churches, the houses, aren’t as kept up as they used to be. People just don’t have the money. There are no restaurants, no gas stations, one movie theater on Jennings, which they say used to be the Gold Coast of Cleveland, though there’s no evidence of that now. Two of Stefan’s neighbors are drunk all the time, the husband and wife both. Their four kids sleep in the same bed. Their water keeps getting turned off, and the kids end up showering and getting clean clothes at school. Ten boys are hanging around in front of the Ukrainian National Home, playing baseball, craps, and cards, sometimes playing music on an accordion. They’re looking for a way to earn a little money; any errand will do. In Lincoln Park, the flowers and lawns for band concerts have become seven acres of dusty baseball fields where boys and men play games during the day. At night, after the policeman on duty goes home, the games turn into fights, and God help the woman who shows up there then. A bunch of the windows are broken at the Lincoln Bath House and they can’t keep the faucets and fixtures in the building because the boys keep stealing them to sell for scrap. An old Indian lady with a machine gun runs pool rooms out of the vacant houses at the end of Fruit Street. The ruckus there goes until three in the morning. One Saturday night a gang bursts in and makes off with a hundred dollars after throwing the furniture, along with a couple chickens, in the street. Two priests complain to a couple government inspectors about a dive on Professor and College. They have a beer parlor, a dance hall, and rooms where it is possible to retire, one of them says. Every Saturday night there are big doings over there. Not so long ago a gang of roughnecks over there stripped a policeman of all his clothes and beat him. Stefan avoids the stoplight on 14th and Fairfield because of the pretty good chance that a gang’ll hold him up there. Same goes for the hill on Jefferson Avenue—Big Jeff—if he were heading that way. And every night, Stefan hears the procession of women and children walking home from the Central Market, keeping together for protection. He sees the boys pulling wagons filled with boxes and bits of wood, sees them playing horsehoes in the Flats with bent wire, until it gets too dark to be out. Because unless you’re looking for trouble, serious trouble, being out at night is not a good idea.

  Peter’s a world away from that now, even though he’s just on the other side of the Cuyahoga. He’s got an office in Terminal Tower. Looking at the marble and bronze of the lobby, Stefan feels underdressed, disheveled. He wants to brush the snow off his shoulders, but he has to wait until he’s gone up in the elevator and is standing outside the door to the suite. He leaves snow on the carpet in the hallway.

  “Do you have an appointment?” his secretary says.

  “I’m his brother.”

  “Please wait here,” the secretary says. Rises and goes into the next room. She’s trying to be discreet, but Stefan can hear her through the door. I didn’t know you had a brother, Mister Hightower. She comes back out, leaves the door open.

  “Please come in, Mister Hightower,” she says to Stefan. He can’t quite bring himself to correct her.

  Peter’s at his desk. Papers in neat piles. A sleek black telephone on his desk, the same curve on the handset that Stefan sees in the metalwork of the Terminal Tower; he doesn’t know the phrase Art Deco, but he recognizes the style when he sees it. His brother looks up and smiles.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure, Stefan?”

  “Ma’s sick. Really sick.”

  Peter nods. “You’ll get the best doctor I can find.”

  The doctor’s car stands out in Tremont. It fills the street, seems bigger than the house it’s parked in front of. It’s the first house call people have seen on that street in a while. The smart suit, the little black leather bag. Everyone knows he’s not from the university, not from the city. Only the ones who don’t know the Garko family wonder how Galina can afford him. Inside the house, the doctor notes Galina’s symptoms, gets out his stethoscope, bends over her on the bed. Her breathing is fast and raspy by then, faster sometimes than the second hand on the clock. Her sentences come out in pieces; she can’t get through more than three syllables at once. Through the stethoscope, the doctor can hear it in her lungs, crackly and dry, like the sound you hear when you rub your hair between your fingers behind your ears. He knows what it is.

  “Pneumonia,” he says. “Almost certainly.”

  “What can we do?” Stefan says.

  “Well,” the doctor says. Gives a small sigh. “You shouldn’t let her out of bed. Make sure she gets plenty of rest. Does her cough let her sleep?”

  “No.”

  “Well, do what you can.”

  “That’s it?”

  The doctor considers. Remembers who’s paying him. “There is the possibility for serotherapy,” he says. “Injections, you know. Like a vaccine.”

  “For pneumonia?”

  “It’s a new treatment. Controversial. They tried it out in army hospitals a few years ago. They’ve tried it in New York. Now they’re starting a big study in Massachusetts. We don’t know how well it works on a large scale, but the initial results have been promising.” In a few years, after the study’s finished, there’ll be a big push for serotherapy, because it will seem to work, at least for some people; more people will live because of it. There’ll be a government program in place to bring the treatment everywhere, to hospitals and homes, to give everyone a shot. A campaign from the public health service to try to convince private doctors to go along with them, complete with lurid posters. One with an army of Grim Reapers, flags and all, marching together: heart disease, cancer, pneumonia, nephritis. A skeleton captain with a sword leading the way. Among the men of death, pneumonia ranks third. Another poster has Hermes sprinting across it, the winged helmet on his head, caduceus in his hand. Speed is the great factor in the diagnosis and treatment of pneumonia. Take no chances with this disease! Then antibiotics will come and change everything. But that’s a way off.

  “We might be able to try serotherapy in the hospital,” the doctor says, “but we can treat her better there in any case. In fact, we should take her right now.”

  “No you shouldn’t,” Galina says. She’s been quiet through all
of this, because talking is too hard, but nobody’s making any decisions for her. “I don’t want to go anywhere. Not even to the hospital. I’m staying here.” She thinks of the farm she grew up on outside of Kiev; her memory of it is as strong as ever. The vibrant light, the endless fields crossed by lines of thin trees. The houses of thick walls and animals in the yard. She thinks, too, of the view across the Cuyahoga, the perch on the lip of the valley she’s kept going to, because its meaning has only deepened for her as she’s gotten older. Her oldest son works in the spires of office buildings on the other side. Her poor, dear Mykhaylo’s still somewhere in the valley below. She’s so much richer for it, for everything she’s seen and done. Though there’s weight to that wealth, too, and she’s tired.

  “I’ve lived long enough,” she says. Sets her mouth and squints at them. Nods a few times. There’s no more discussion about it. Everyone comes to see her, one after the other. The priest from St. Peter and Paul, friends and neighbors. Baskets of food and flowers. She won’t kiss the baby Henry when Caroline and Peter come by; she doesn’t want to make him sick. She just lays her shaky hand on the baby’s head. Be good, she says. I know you will be.

  After she dies, they bury her in Riverside Cemetery, in the plot Peter’s bought. The ceremony is quiet. There’s Peter, Stefan, and the stepfather, who isn’t far behind his wife. Caroline holding baby Henry. The stepfather tells Caroline that one of Galina’s great happinesses in her final days was that she’d lived long enough to see the child. It’s the longest conversation they’ve ever had, and they lapse back into silence fast. The loudness comes a few hours later, at the reception back at the house, where the friends and neighbors bring food and drink and instruments, enough party to help the ones who are grieving unburden themselves however they want to, without judgment or consequence. But Peter isn’t there.