Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss(50)
After Greece, Arkady and I lived around the world for almost two years—New York, Kauai, Turkey, Kauai again—before settling back in San Francisco, where I had just finished my first short story. I had also been trading technology stocks and doing remarkably well, capitalizing on the crazy possibility of the dot-com era, while helping Arkady establish his yoga business. We were talking about getting married and having a baby, so . . . the time felt right now to bring him home.
The contrast with Detroit as we drove into Grosse Pointe was more striking than ever. Immaculate houses suddenly lined the wide boulevards. The upscale shopping villages were flanked with Noah’s Bagels, Brooks Brothers, and Talbots. Mercedes and BMWs lined the streets, a clear sign that even the locals no longer bothered to buy American.
“Where’s the Whole Foods?” asked Arkady after we’d passed the A&P market.
“There isn’t one,” I told him. “We’ll have to drive out to Troy tomorrow for the turkey.” I didn’t attempt to explain the differences between old money and new money in suburban Detroit, or the fact that the old money Grosse Pointers would rather simply dine at their clubs than bother stocking their kitchens with locally sourced produce.
But Arkady planned to make a totally organic Thanksgiving-style dinner for my family the following day. It was March. By this point, my family rarely gathered over the holidays, and always without Charlie. We had to seize the moment, Arkady felt.
“I can’t believe Charlie’s going to be there,” I mused. “He hasn’t come home in seven years.” Not since the Christmas just after I’d filmed the family piece.
“It will be great for you to see him,” Arkady said. “Family is so important.”
Like Detroit itself, Charlie had declined even further in recent years. After Bobby moved away from Dallas—first to Grosse Pointe, and then Tortola—Charlie got into crack and other hard drugs. Unable to hold down a job, he no longer even tried to. To keep him off the streets, my parents had appointed Bill Penner as Charlie’s trustee. It was Bill who paid the bills: rent, utilities, food, travel; Bill who controlled where Charlie went and what he did; and Bill who had succeeded, until now, at convincing Charlie to stay away from Grosse Pointe. Legally, my parents and Bill could not keep Charlie out of a shareholder meeting.
Arkady ran his hand over his shaved head. “Of all your brothers, Charlie will be my favorite,” he said. “I know it.”
My mother sat at the kitchen table knitting while Arkady stuffed the goose (there were no organic turkeys to be had in Michigan in March) and I peeled potatoes at the sink. My mother’s hair by now had gone completely gray, and her back was hunched from all the years of bending over backgammon tables and knitting projects—and she was bending over her knitting right now, in fact. The knitting needles clicked rhythmically to the hum of the dishwasher just as the dice and backgammon pieces had once clicked across sun-warmed corkboard at the club. Did my mother use the basic rhythm in these activities as an antidote to anxiety? I wondered.
“Charlie can be at the house for dinner,” she said. “But he’ll have to stay at a hotel. His seedy friends have put him up to this, I know. The poor thing, getting sent here by those grubs to get his hands on some money.”
Arkady shot me an alarmed look, whereas I’d grown so used to my parents’ callousness toward Charlie, I barely shrugged.
“Maybe Charlie, you know, just wants to come home,” I offered. “It’s been years since he’s seen us.” Charlie and I often talked by phone. Recently, he had confided in me that he had hepatitis C. My parents knew about this, too, but it had not changed their attitude toward him.
My mother shook her head. “No, dear. It’s the meeting he’s coming for.”
Arkady seasoned the bird, his back to us. I loved his Old World values—good food, family bonds, and friends who mattered. He was deeply hospitable; he and his three brothers—talented musicians all—turned every gathering into a hearty celebration. How different they were from my family.
I hoped Arkady would understand the situation with Charlie—that my mother simply couldn’t handle this son of hers; if Charlie stayed at the house, the cascade of guilty feelings would be too much. And so, it was her only defense, keeping Charlie at bay. Seeing how disturbed Arkady clearly was, however, I began to wonder if I should have brought him home for this particular weekend.
Among the only times we convened as a family, the annual Stroh business meetings were never happy occasions. Bobby, Whitney, and I always came home for the meeting, springing for expensive airline tickets only to be told just how badly the business was faring. After our acquisition of the bankrupt G. Heileman Brewing Company in 1996—landing another fifteen or so declining brands in our portfolio—sales had continued to plummet. In 1999, we finally sold our entire brewing business to Miller and Pabst, who divided up our labels like so many spare parts. The family was crestfallen, our 150-year brewing tradition gone, just like that. Miller Brewing bought our Henry Weinhard’s and Mickey’s brands. Pabst bought our forty or so remaining brands, including all the Stroh’s brands, which they soon buried, even as its own label picked up a hipster cred it parlayed into record profits. Internet chat rooms had filled up with conversations among our many loyal consumers about what had happened to Stroh’s Beer. No one knew.