Ever After: A Father's True Story

by William Wharton

  “Fox leaned in for the kill.

  “ ‘What did they fight about?’

  “ ‘Well, Mom is a very good cook and Bert was always putting pepper or catsup on his food. This would always make Mom mad.’

  “Well, there was silence for a few seconds, then the laughing started. Even Fox had to smile. Rosemary’s right, it sort of broke things up.”

  We talk some more. It’s about quarter to four.

  “Well, do I go in now?”

  “No, they’ll want to really lean on you. We’ll start your deposition at nine o’clock tomorrow. Come on. I’ll help you down to your car. The traffic will be picking up just about now. You can miss it if we hurry.”

  We get back to Karen and Robert’s at about five. Neither one is home, but we have the key. We’re tired. We flop out on the beds and before we know it, we’re all asleep.

  Next morning, Karen and Robert lend us their car. I know my way pretty well now. I head down Hawthorn and over the Hawthorn bridge. I can see the pink Steele, Cutler and Walsh office building as we go over the bridge. It seems ominous. I’m dreading the deposition. I swear it won’t break me down.

  When we come up, Mona and Clint Williams are waiting for us. The other lawyers are congregating, whispering softly to each other as if they’re cardinals about to perform an exorcism, or maybe students going into a dreaded examination. I’m the subject. Mona and Clint pull me aside. Clint gives the instructions.

  “Mr. Wharton, I have a feeling you’re an impulsive person. This is not the time to be impulsive, just play it cool. Play it close to the vest. Most of all, don’t start answering anything until you have paused to think it over.”

  They don’t seem to have much confidence in me. I probably have too much confidence in myself and that’s what scares them. It’s as if we’re playing a game like chess or contract bridge, one that’s based on not showing what you think or feel. These are the games I don’t like and am not good at. I should know better than to resist; they’re probably right.

  We enter the room and Mona leads me near the head of the table beside a window. There’s a man at the end with an antiquated machine I recognize from movies as the stenographic machine of a court reporter. Mona sits beside me. Clint Williams sits on the other side of her. These are the only seats left in the room. One of the lawyers at the other end of the table stands up and closes the door.

  The court reporter is about to have me swear in. I put up my hand to stop him.

  “Before we start this deposition, I want to remind all you gentlemen and ladies that this is not an inquisition. I watched both my wife and grandson come out of this room crying. There could have been no need for that.”

  I pause.

  “We are terribly upset by our loss. I hope all of you will keep this in mind. Sometimes, I shall probably not be able to speak. If this occurs, please have patience, just wait. I’ve found I cannot talk and cry at the same time. Do you understand?”

  There are nods and smiles around the table. I lean forward to look at each of them in turn.

  “If I feel that a question or implication is insulting or unfitting, I shall consult my attorneys here beside me and if they feel that something actionable has occurred, although I am not a suing man, I shall sue. Is that understood?”

  I turn to look at Mona and Clint. I can tell they are not happy with this turn of events, but they dutifully nod.

  “All right, now. Let’s get on with it.”

  The man across from me looks like “the man in the butterscotch ice-cream suit.” He’s to be my inquisitor, it seems. He can’t be the dreadful Mr. Fox. He’s slightly overweight, but perfectly tailored, with his hair combed neatly and flat against his head. He seems about fifty years old. He has a permanently unctuous smile, an almost Buddha-like calm.

  The court reporter asks all at the table to identify themselves and he takes down the names with his rickety machine. We’re ready. The Buddha, named Mr. Crosley, leans forward and pauses for about fifteen seconds.

  “We don’t want to antagonize you or cause you pain, Mr. Wharton. This is only an attempt to gather information which will help us in understanding this case and settling it amicably.”

  “I don’t intend to settle, Mr. Crosley, let us get that straight first. I’ve told my lawyers this, so I guess they haven’t passed on that information, but it is very important.”

  This slows things down again. Mr. Crosley consults the thin, wiry, bearded man beside him. I’m quite sure this is the notorious Mr. Fox.

  Mr. Fox smiles and then asks a series of curt, almost insulting questions about my life. He’s interested in how much money I make writing.

  What’s that have to do with Kate’s death?

  Mr. Crosley takes over. His concern is how much money I didn’t earn during the greater part of my life.

  I haven’t worked for anyone but myself since I was thirty-five years old. I’ve been a painter, self-employed. This seems beyond his comprehension. He tries to portray me as a bum. In a way, I am, from his point of view. We’re getting nowhere.

  Mr. Crosley leans back, extending his thin-lipped smile.

  “How about if you just tell us about yourself?”

  I turn to Mona beside me. She shrugs.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “We just want to know about you.”

  “What’s that have to do with the death of our daughter, her husband, our two granddaughters?”

  “We’ll decide that. Just start.”

  “Remember I’m a professional writer, a novelist by trade. I can give you the three-hour, the three-day, or the three-volume answer to an open question like this.”

  “Just begin. We’ll tell you if it’s not what we want. We’ll interrupt if we have any questions.”

  I lean back and look at the ceiling. I keep my eyes on the ceiling, or on Mona, as I go on. I enjoy playing raconteur, and here I have a large, willing audience and a court reporter taking down everything I say. I didn’t realize it then, but I was paying to play.

  “Well, I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in Saint Vincent’s Hospital on November seventh, 1925, at five o’clock in the afternoon. I weighed over nine pounds. My mother was twenty years old when I was born, my father was twenty-three. I had colic for the first three months.”

  I stop and look over at Mona, then at Mr. Crosley and along the line at the others. There’s no response. I thought they’d have stopped me by now.

  I look up at the ceiling again and continue with all I can remember from those first few years, plus all the tales Mom told me: her pride at having toilet-trained me at thirteen months, or the time she prepared to take me, all dressed up, to her sister’s in Kensington, on the other side of Philadelphia. She put me in a white suit into which, almost immediately, I proceeded to crap. She took off the diaper, wrapped it around my face and locked me in a closet.

  Mr. Crosley leans forward with evident distaste. At least, it’s a reaction.

  “Did she really do that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s what she told me. I was too young to remember. But I still don’t like the insides of closets.”

  I get my first laughs and a giggle. They aren’t dead.

  I go on like this for three hours. Sometimes the court reporter stops me for a spelling, or one of the depositioners asks me a question, but generally I push forward with my life as I remember it. I begin to think this might make a great autobiography, under oath. I’ll call it Deposition. I’ll have to ask the court reporter for a copy. I should have a right to it.

  At about twelve-fifteen, just when I’m up to my first year in high school, dropping a blivey from the third floor onto my algebra teacher, Mona puts her watch in front of my face. I get the message. Time to eat. Everyone shuffles out and leaves the room, without speaking or looking at me. The “blivey” bit might have been a little too much. Maybe they don’t know what a “blivey” is.

  Mona, Clint, and I stay in the room until they’re go
ne. Clint is having a hard time keeping from laughing out loud.

  “Jeez, you had me worried at first. I thought you were just shooting your mouth off, but you didn’t tell them a damned thing, did you?”

  Mona shuts the door. “I thought I’d pee my pants when you told them how you’d thrown the horse’s leg under the porch of the man next door.”

  We come out. Rosemary and Wills are sitting in the waiting- room. They’ve gone to the science museum but not to the zoo. That will be for this afternoon.

  After lunch, same place, we return for the second half of the deposition. It starts out fine. They’ve managed to pull themselves together and have some reasonable and demanding questions to ask. I check with Mona each time there’s something awkward, and generally she gives me the nod, but sometimes objects and then they all argue. There are some fairly hot disputes.

  By five o’clock, I’m up to 1963. Their questions have slowed me down. I’m never going to get my entire autobiography finished. At five, everybody starts shifting. It’s that time again. One of them stands, looks at his watch, and speaks.

  “I think we ought to stop now and continue the deposition tomorrow.”

  These guys are too much, after all the time they’ve wasted. I stand up myself.

  “My wife and I have a very tight schedule. We can’t stay here for another day of deposition. I was assured by our lawyers that two days would be enough and we have a plane leaving tomorrow at ten-thirty a.m.”

  He sits down. There’s a mumbling and looking at watches. Mr. Crosley stands up.

  “But we haven’t finished the deposition.”

  Mona answers him.

  “You’ve had more time than you needed. Mr. Wharton, are you willing to stay on until we finish the deposition today?”

  “Sure, if you’ll go down at six to the doorway where I’m supposed to meet my wife.”

  “I’ll do that. Clint can take my place here. Gentlemen, the deposition is still on. If you have any more questions, ask them now. Mr. Wharton is willing to stay on until midnight if it proves necessary.”

  She sits down. There’s some serious mumbling, one by one they start leaving.

  Mona stands.

  “All right. I warn you. By leaving, you are terminating the deposition. You’ve had your chance to continue it.”

  But the exodus goes on. I’m sorry. I’d like to have finished my autobiography. The court reporter is gathering up his tapes as if they’re some kind of party streamers that have been sprinkled over the room. He, Mona, and I are the last to leave. Deposition over.

  It’s only five-fifteen. I walk with her to her office so she can pick up her bag and a few things. She says she’ll show me the door where Rosemary will be for our rendezvous. We go down the elevator.

  In the elevator she asks, “Have you ever tried some of the Northwest Macrobrewery beers? Do we have time while we wait for Rosemary? They sell them in a little cafeteria on the ground floor.”

  “Sounds great to me. My throat’s sore from all that talking.”

  We settle into a booth and she orders. The beer comes fast. It’s dark and tastes like a German beer, only sweeter and rawer. Mona’s watching me.

  “I shouldn’t tell you this. Lawyers are supposed to stay out of the private lives of their clients, but …” She takes a long drink and then looks up over the glass. “Well, as I listened to Rosemary and then Wills, I had this incredible feeling that I actually know, or knew, Kate, maybe in some other life. It was so weird. It’s not the kind of thing that happens to me. But I could hardly keep my concentration on that mob of lawyers during your deposition. Have you ever had that kind of feeling?”

  “All the time. I haven’t told you yet and I won’t tell any of those people up there, but I had an absolutely incredible—right, incredible in the exact meaning of the word—experience just after the accident. Sometimes I have these unexpected openings, these loopholes, in the regular run of reality. I’ve had them since I was a kid. You should know that Kate had them, too. Tell me exactly what you felt, Mona.”

  “It was as if she were taking my place, or I was taking hers. I really don’t understand and I know it sounds crazy to talk about it, especially with a client. Do you understand?”

  “I not only understand, Mona, but I know what it was. It was Kate. Like Bert, she’s having a hard time letting go. I’m beginning not to believe too much in coincidence. It’s a word we use to explain too many things we just don’t understand. Maybe they’re God-incidences, events beyond normal reality.

  “My conviction, that they’re still here and caring in some way I don’t understand, is important to me. It’s my way of dealing with the events in this so-called real world, that are totally unacceptable, impossible. I’m here, fighting field burning because Bert asked me to, after he was burned to death, if you can believe that.”

  I finish the beer and look at my watch. It’s five till six.

  “I’d better look for Rosemary and Wills. Point me to the door. But let me get the bill here first.”

  Mona puts her hand over mine. “No, this was my idea.”

  Early in the next morning, Robert drives us to the airport. All goes well. The flights are on time—Wills’s for Los Angeles, ours for New Jersey. We settle back and Rosemary goes to sleep almost immediately. But my mind is spinning. All this flying around, all that money down the drain, and for what?

  CHAPTER 13

  IN THREE WEEKS we’re back home in France and just about settled into our old routine. But I’m about to leave again. I’ve agreed with my publisher to do a publicity tour for my new book, Franky Furbo, a book that Kate suggested I write and one which I’ve been working on between letters to governors and legislatures and all the other legal matters, as well as my painting.

  I’ve always resisted requests for book tours or signings. I’m running out of time. I’m not thirty years old or hungering for fame. I want to preserve what’s left of my private life. But I agree to go on this tour on the condition that both Portland and Eugene are included. I inform Mona. I also have my publisher send an extra 200 copies of my book to Portland and another hundred to Eugene. I then ask Bill Johnson of ENUF, who’s running the Initiative, Petition, and Referendum movement, if he can have people with petitions at the doors of the places where I’ll be speaking. Bill Johnson, who is about my age, is the most enthusiastic supporter for banning field burning that I’ve met in Oregon. It’s his mission. My plan is to give a free copy of the book to anyone who can bring in a legitimate petition, twenty-five signatures, full.

  In October, in New York, I start my tour. I work my way across the country, talking at universities, giving interviews for newspapers and radio, signing books in stores. I read the book’s dedication to Kate, Bert, and the girls on each occasion. Once in Portland, I put into operation the STOP FIELD BURNING project. I speak wherever I can gather a group together, in libraries, schools, Powell’s bookstore, any bookstore. I’m signing and selling books like mad, all the time letting people know how angry I am about the lethargy surrounding field burning. Bill Johnson’s people are there too, and we’re gathering thousands of signatures. But we need 65,000 if a referendum is to be held. It looks hopeless.

  In the middle of all this, Mona asks if I can take time off to continue the deposition. The creeps from the first deposition are not satisfied.

  I agree to give them three hours before the signing at the Powell bookstore that evening. This time, the lawyers are prepared and ask more specific questions—more and less pertinent at the same time. Among other things, they’re concerned that I was trying to build a billboard along the highway where the accident occurred.

  It seems that on the first anniversary of the deaths, a group of young people mounted white crosses along the road where the accident happened, without permission. I knew about this but had nothing to do with it. I tell how I’d tried to obtain permission to have some kind of memorial plaque set in the ground, but had been refused.

  They wa
nt to know why I photographed the bodies and why I went out to the highway two days after the accident. I tell them the truth; after all, I’m under oath. It’s simple enough; I only wanted to see what was left of my family before they were totally reduced to ashes, and I wanted to see the last things my family had seen before they were plunged into darkness, the seemingly final darkness. I also tell about my sense of obligation because of the “dream” I’d had. Anything other than “dream” would have been beyond them.

  The next day, I rent a car and drive down to Eugene. The crowd is even more enthusiastic. The burning often blows smoke and grit over this lovely university town. I speak in the public library and pass out petitions in all directions. I do my best to impress on Oregonians how dangerous the field burning is to all. The lecture and discussion are videoed for local stations. Several other sessions are aired locally as well. The next day I fly back to New York and from New York to Paris. I’m acting like a jet-setter but I’m not feeling like one. I’m dead tired. I’m losing steam and confidence: we have fewer than 20,000 signatures for the referendum.

  Forty-five percent of Oregonians do not live in cities, and it’s hard to reach them with our petitions. Also, the greater part of Oregon doesn’t suffer from the field burning: it’s only those in the Willamette Valley. Meanwhile the growers are making more and more noise about how much revenue will be lost to the state if grass growing is stopped. It lists all kinds of public services which would, possibly, not be available. People are dumb enough to believe it.

  When I come home, I tell Rosemary that’s the last time I go to Oregon. Those people are just too damned ornery, thick-headed, and I don’t have the energy, time, or ability to change them. I’m also beginning to feel I’m interfering with the basic ecology of the area by asking them to think.

  We continue to receive considerable mail from Mona Flores who tries to keep us abreast with what’s going on. They seem to be taking depositions from anyone who had anything to do with the accident or even knew it happened. And these are all costing us money. Our own depositions cost us $232.80, not counting plane fare. Even the one I did when I interrupted my publicity tour at their request cost me more than fifty dollars.