Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss(51)
Then, after the substantial business loans for the Heileman purchase had been paid off, the proceeds from the sale—just over a hundred million—went directly into the equities markets, only to take an instant nosedive with the “dot-bomb.” And since my father had sworn Bill Penner to secrecy about the terms of his postnuptial agreement with Elisa, my brothers and I weren’t even sure if a sliver of interest still remained. Yet we still sprang for those airline tickets, if only because we knew these meetings would be the only chance we’d have to see each other.
The evening went badly. The goose Arkady had procured was not a success, its tasteless meat yielding no drippings for gravy.
“In Russia this would never happen,” he said over and over as he sweated over the steaming bird carcass. “Farm-raised garbage.”
Trying to help him save the dinner, Bobby’s blond Louisianian wife, Cheryl, spent hours in the kitchen with Arkady. But it was no use; the American goose was just a total failure.
Charlie came into the kitchen as soon as he arrived. It broke my heart to see how irretrievably his looks had been disfigured by the drugs and hard living. “How’s my princess?” he said, wrapping me in a big hug, as if entirely unaware of the shock I was registering. A moment later he was cheerful, chatting away with Arkady at the stove, bringing a can of Old Milwaukee Near Beer to his lips now and again. My mother had asked him to not have any alcohol, and he seemed agreeable enough about this. None of us would be drinking at dinner—“It would be cruel to drink in front of Charlie,” my mother had said earlier that day—which was why my father and Elisa had opted out of the gathering.
When dinner was served, my mother sat at the head of the table in the dining room, her knitting pushed aside in a forlorn pile on the kitchen counter. She absently redistributed the food on her plate while Bobby, Whitney, and I discussed the agenda for the meeting the following day.
When the conversation lagged, we sat around the table staring at one another, unable to eat the tough, bone-dry goose meat. Whitney shifted restlessly in his chair, scuffing the wood floor. Bobby absently pulled on his mustache and looked at his watch. Charlie crossed and recrossed his legs impatiently, looking as if he might climb the walls. We all could have used a drink just then, but Charlie, he clearly needed one.
Whitney jumped up from the table first—to meet his friends at a bar. “If you’ll please excuse me,” he said in an official tone as he exited. “I’m expected elsewhere.”
Bobby, too, stood up, and then Cheryl. “Thank you, Arkady,” she offered sweetly in her Southern lilt. From the window, I watched them get into their car with somber faces and drive away.
Charlie dropped his napkin on the table and quietly went upstairs. My mother insisted I follow him. “Go up and make sure he doesn’t take anything,” she whispered. All evening, she’d been trying to head off some imaginary disaster.
Reluctantly, I stood up and, to appease her, I followed Charlie upstairs. I remembered a Christmas long before when he’d been accused of stealing forty dollars from my grandmother’s purse. The family had made too big a deal out of it, talking in hushed voices about the pilfered money. He’d stolen from everyone else in the family as well, I knew, with the exception of perhaps me. From the very beginning, he’d always had my back.
As soon as I reached the top of the stairwell, I veered into my room.
Charlie had gone into Whitney’s room, where I knew some of his old clothes still hung in the closet, along with some World War II Russian uniforms Whitney had collected.
“Franny, do you think Whitney’ll mind if I take one of these shirts?” Charlie, who must have heard me, called out.
I walked through the shared bathroom into Whitney’s room, where Charlie held up a blue oxford shirt on a hanger.
“Why not? Those shirts have been there for years. Whitney has all his clothes down in Florida.”
“Okay, just checking.” He sniffed the shirt. “Boy, you’d think Mom might get ’em cleaned once in a while, though.”
I took the shirt and looked it over. “Maybe just keep it out overnight? The smell will go away.”
“So you’re staying here, huh?” he said without the slightest trace of resentment. “I’ll stay down at the River Place Inn.”
I pictured the shirt hanging off the bedpost in his hotel room, at Stroh River Place, the hotel that we’d developed, owned, and then lost in foreclosure, while Charlie slumbered underneath the sterile covers. “Yes,” I said. “But I never sleep well here.” I wished I could give him my room.
“Too bad. You could have joined me at the bar.”
“I know.” I hugged him. “Hey, I’ll see you in the morning, though, at the meeting.”
After Charlie left, Arkady and I cleared the table while my mother scrubbed the pots with a Brillo pad, steam rising around her exhausted face. The goose grease sat in a tomato-soup can by the sink.
“Make sure you never give Charlie anything for Christmas that he could sell for drugs,” she warned. “Remember the time Bill Penner sent him the big-screen TV? He’d wanted one so badly, and then he sold it within a week.” She shook her head sadly and went over to take a pie out of the oven. The party had broken up before dessert was even served.
I sat down at the kitchen table. “Obviously I’m going to send him a Christmas present,” I said.