The Last of the Stanfields(111)
Finally, clearly wanting to get rid of us, the teller explained that the only person with the authority to override the bank’s strict rules was the branch president and CEO, who only stopped in twice a week and wouldn’t be back until the day after tomorrow. It was pointless in any event, he added. After all, Mr. Clark was a Mormon, and Mormons never bent the rules, not even a tiny bit.
“Sorry, did you say Mr. Clark?”
“Why, are you hard of hearing?” sighed the teller.
Knowing we had no time to waste, I begged and pleaded with the teller to get a message to Mr. Clark that Sally-Anne Stanfield’s daughter was in town. I told him to remind the bank president that his wife—or at least his wife at the time—had worked closely with my mother to launch a weekly paper, and that my mother had entrusted him with a painting of a girl sitting by a window. I was convinced it was enough to land us a meeting, at the very least. I left my number with the teller, as well as the address of our hotel, and even offered to leave my passport. The man waved away my offer, immovable as ever, but took the scrap of paper and promised to pass along the message, as long as I agreed to vacate the premises immediately.
“I just don’t think it’s going to work,” said George-Harrison as we finally walked out of that horrible bank. “I mean, especially considering the boss is a Mormon.”
“Say that again! Repeat what you just said.”
George-Harrison balked. “What? I didn’t mean to offend anyone! I’ve got nothing against Mormons.”
I leaned in and kissed him, leaving him totally clueless as to what caused my sudden burst of energy. What he said had reminded me of a conversation between Maggie and my dad, when my sister was cooking up an excuse for sneaking around his apartment.
“Mormons wouldn’t call the work of other Mormons into question!” I whispered, breathing fast.
“Slow down, you’re not making any sense.”
“Mormons! They’re obsessed with genealogy. There’s a whole genealogical center in Utah they founded at the end of the nineteenth century. But they didn’t stop there! They continued into Europe and managed to convince nearly every major country to provide them with all these vital records for their studies. To this day, they’ve still got millions upon millions of records on microfilm, all stored in safes hidden away in the mountains.”
“How the hell do you know all this?”
“It’s my job. For whatever reason, my father used the Mormons at some point to get info on our family tree. He was careful to only show me the part with him and my mother in it, but I’m sure I can get the rest if I go straight to the source . . . The point is, Mr. Clark would accept my family tree, since it uses research done by Mormons!”
I found what I was looking for on the internet in no time. The Mormons had gone completely modern. All I had to do was enter my info and my parents’ names on their genealogy website, and I nearly instantly obtained the family tree that would serve as proof of my lineage. I had planned to march straight back to that teller with the document to give him a piece of my mind, when I got a call from Mr. Clark’s secretary.
The branch president had agreed to meet with us the next day, at twelve o’clock sharp.
I couldn’t tell which was oldest: the president, the furniture in his office, or his secretary.
As we settled into a pair of cracked-leather armchairs, I took a closer look at our host. Impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit and bow tie, Mr. Clark wore rectangular glasses that rested on the tip of his nose, and had a bald head and white mustache. He looked like a well-dressed version of Geppetto, which I found sweet. Despite his charming appearance, the man kept a poker face throughout my entire explanation, leaning down and closely inspecting the documents I had brought. He studied my family tree with utmost care and attention, muttering “I see” on three different occasions, while George-Harrison and I awaited his verdict with bated breath.
“This . . . is quite a complicated matter,” he finally said.
“What’s so complicated about it?” asked George-Harrison.
“Strictly speaking, a family tree does not constitute an official document. Yet, this one does attest to your roots. The safety-deposit box in question hasn’t been opened for thirty-six years. In just a few months, it would have been declared abandoned, and its contents seized by the bank. You can imagine my surprise at this visit from someone claiming it.”
“But aren’t you holding proof of my hereditary rights in your hand right now? I’m Sally-Anne Stanfield’s daughter.”
“That much is clear, I grant you that. You do also look a lot like her, I must say.”
“You remember my mother, after all these years?”
“Do you have any idea how many years my wife resented me for not having approved your mother’s loan? Or the countless times she told me I should have stood up to my board of directors, insisting that their fears had been unwarranted? You have no idea how many years your mother cast a cloud—albeit indirectly—over my entire existence. Probably best I don’t give you the actual number.”
“Then you know the truth, you know what happened.”
“I know that she fled the country after her brother’s accident, abandoning her mother to go live abroad. Like anyone who had a relationship with the Stanfields, I was dismayed to learn all this.”