Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss(9)
“Times are changing, Eric,” Uncle Peter gently instructed my father. “We have to grow. Have to get bigger to compete, or we’ll continue to lose market share and volume.”
My father frowned through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “How big?” he asked his older brother, his striped dress shirt dampening under the arms.
Uncle Peter had once had plans to join the CIA, but he had been run over by a truck and nearly crippled, ruining his chances. Now, walking with a slight limp, he ran the brewery alongside my great-uncle John, who, after Gari died, watered down the beer formula to suit the post–World War II American preference for milder beer. After that, the company had grown rapidly, acquiring its number one competitor in Michigan, the Goebel Brewing Company.
“As big as we can get,” Uncle Peter replied, his jaw set. “Stroh’s and Goebel alone aren’t enough. We have to keep acquiring other brands, other breweries.”
“We need national recognition, Eric,” said Aunt Nicole, in her French accent, her chin-length blond hair pulled back with tortoiseshell combs. She was always chic and sophisticated like that, a Town & Country magazine cover come to life.
Our housekeeper, Ollie, and my mother arrived from the kitchen with a hot cheese dip and a platter of Triscuits, and Ollie put the dip down on the table with an oven glove. It was hardly like at Aunt Nicole and Uncle Peter’s house, far grander than ours, where servants brought out French cheeses, bowls of olives, and delicious sliced tomatoes from their garden, drizzled with olive oil.
“Thank you, Ollie,” said Uncle Peter. He always stayed in the kitchen for a few minutes and talked with Ollie, whenever he came over to the house, asking after her family.
“Mr. Peter Stroh is such a nice man,” Ollie always said after he’d left, and my father wouldn’t say anything.
But he was a good man. Once, after a golfing accident in his garden when a driver swung into my head, Uncle Peter had driven me to the hospital. All the way to the emer gency room he’d held my hand as I’d bled into a linen towel. “You’re going to be okay, Franny,” he said over and over, his small eyes dewy and bloodshot, and I could see how shaken he was.
The leaf-dappled light had drifted from the terrace to the lawn while the grown-ups talked, and the mosquitoes were starting to nip at my ankles. Finally, my father stood up from the table in a fit of frustration. “And where the hell are we going to get the money for all this growth? Our volumes are already starting to decline.”
“Exactly,” said Aunt Nicole. “The competition is gaining ground; we can’t defend our position in the Midwest anymore.” She crossed her bone-thin legs, her gold sandals offsetting her tan to perfection.
“We have to grow or go,” said Uncle Peter with finality. “We’ll borrow the money.”
Everyone fell silent. I didn’t know what “grow or go” meant, but I understood that the company was in trouble, and I felt afraid. Even Pierre had stopped laughing. The acid smell of the hot cheese dip hung on the air. My father walked away, defeated and angry, like the champion runner I’d seen on TV who’d gotten second place in the Moscow Olympics. He walked the garden’s circuit, taking quick drags on his cigarette, absently checking the sprinkler heads. He never liked to sit with any group of people for very long, especially after an argument, and I had that sinking feeling I so often got when my father was unhappy. The evening continued without him, the sun setting behind the trees in bursts of pink and orange, ice clinking in people’s glasses as the rest of the grown-ups managed to talk on amiably enough.
Taking my picture was one of the few things in life that made my father happy.
He’d get me to pose against the textured bark of a tree, or the long grass in a field, zooming in close with his vintage Leica, his cigarette dangling as he barked out art direction: “Relax your hand on your knee! That’s right. . . . Now, on the count of three.” Invariably he’d snap the shutter on the count of two.
Once he’d photographed me in our garden just before a party. I stood beneath a towering oak tree, its gloriously gnarled roots dwarfing my tiny feet. I remembered how my feet ached gripping those roots as I crouched down for the shot.
“This time give me a smile,” my father said.
I shifted my weight onto my other leg, my back scraping against the tree. “Ow!” I whined.
My father stood and stamped out his cigarette on the perfectly manicured grass. Sometimes I’d see the gardeners picking up cigarette butts on their way to the flowerbeds.
I tried to stand up.
“Stay there!” my father commanded. “Just a few more.”
He breathed heavily as he looked through the viewfinder. He always tried several angles, smiling at me between each one, while my shins throbbed and my feet went numb. I remember wondering if one day I would also learn to use a complicated camera like his Leica. Like my father, I wanted to freeze people in time, as if by doing so I might come to understand them better.
“Frances!” my father said then affectionately. “You look marvelous!”
I smiled for the shot and he clicked the shutter.
My father’s photographs were widely recognized as the best in Grosse Pointe. An amateur with little training, he shot the portraits that my parents’ friends sent out in their Christmas cards and framed on their living room side tables, portraits that in years to come their children would take into their more modest houses as keepsakes of an all but bygone era of lakefront estates, Lilly Pulitzer dresses, and big, strapping American cars.