As we checked into the four-star hotel, I mentioned Nordstrom’s reputation for the best shoe salons in North America. “I should arrive at the conference in a new pair.”
“As well for me,” he replied. Sure enough, he met me the next morning in a pristine pair of Ferragamo lace up oxfords, Burberry Clinton Check tie, and a designer’s dress shirt whose name escaped him. With his head of thick grey hair, he looked like a well-aged John Stamos. As agreed, I’d taken responsibility and already prepared the materials, dressed the conference room, and double-checked equipment with their sound engineer. Ready, set, go. Mr Christopoulos held the buyers’ captive. Nordstrom was the place to shop. He lifted his pant leg and then his foot to display his purchases. “Dallas is closer to my Empire State Building office, yes? Still, I fly right over your competition to be sure I see you first.”
Appreciative laughter set the tone and he was off and running, pitching Clos-Vougeot to attentive buyers with a polished visuals from charts of projected sales, to a teaser preview of the campaign’s mildly erotic print campaign. He took me to dinner that evening, confident grin still in place. “I walk on air, Emma. Such a moment for us.”
We touched on specifics and business strategy. Rather than push, however, I summoned patience. Our return morning flight would be the ideal time to revisit my input into the project. He thanked me again at breakfast. But “A change in itinerary,” he said. “I have unexpected family business in Las Vegas. I’ll fly in this evening. So?” He grinned. “I will see you off to the airport shuttle. Then I take the Nordstrom head buyer to lunch. How about that? On a Saturday.”
“If I may be so bold, we make a good team,” I said.
“You may be so bold. Perhaps I need your services again.” He agreed getting together in New York would be a good idea, but no job offer as he handed my carry-on to the driver. Treading lightly was worse than second guessing.
I flew home and killed the weekend fighting jet-lag. Vickie Spaulding’s departing gifts from my early Fairfield Monthly days still sat in my home office. I consulted The Complete Guide to Executive Manners Sunday afternoon, and composed a thank-you to Mr Christopoulos on my monogrammed stationery. Vickie’s grammar and comportment corrections stayed with me. No doubt she’d marvel at how far I’d progressed. My jangling office phone startled me out of the reverie.
“The old man finally kicked it,” my brother said without a greeting. “I guess five White Castle double cheeseburgers at one meal and his four-packs-a-day habit weren’t good for him.”
“Darby!”
His voice broke. “Mom said he just fucking keeled over, pouring a fucking cup of coffee. Emma? Emma, can you come home?”
I knew Ethan wouldn’t go with me even before I dialled his Laredo number. Early spring training meant tournaments. Managers wouldn’t let players go, especially pitchers. Injuries were common and affected the bull pen. Maybe more to the point my husband’s feelings for his own family generated more PTSD than loyalty, obligation or affection.
I tried anyway, barely avoiding a shouting match. I closed with, “Don’t make me do this alone.”
“Let your mother handle everything. Listen to me, Emma. Let her bully, let her help your grandparents. Pass what’s left to Darby and Genevieve. For once in your life stand back.”
“I still have to go!”
“Okay, I get that, and yes, this sucks big time. For me, too, Babe, but you know I can’t get away. I’m at the top of my game and I can’t leave the team in a weak place.”
“You mean you still have to prove loyalty above all else. I don’t know why I called. I knew you’d have an excuse.”
“It’s no excuse. I’ll send flowers. Even if you’re pissed at me, listen to one more thing. Emma, do not show up like the goddamn family hero. You know damn well they’ll be wanting you to take over their lives. Handle this, settle that. Helping Genevieve is one thing, but blink twice and you’ll have your mother on an allowance and living in our guest room.”
There was too much truth to it to laugh. As dysfunctional as we all were, Daniel O’Farrell was the glue that had held us together. As much as anyone could, he kept a lid on my mother, and held court from his ratty orange recliner in every godforsaken dwelling we occupied.
Dad never knew a stranger; he’d talk to everyone without judgment, probably learned from his earliest days defending Neil Harvey. He professed atheism but read the Bible multiple times. He pounded his red state bar mates with Democrat rhetoric but remained tight-lipped at the ballot box. Despite legendry alcohol intake and his own dabbling in the prescription world, he used my sister’s video camera to conduct surveillance on suspected neighbourhood drug dealers.
Grief kept my anxiety at bay, and anxiety held back the grief. Ethan was right. I let family know I’d be there as soon as Dad’s service arrangements had been scheduled. Scheduled by them. “We know what he wanted essentially nothing,” I told Genevieve. “Let Mom hash it out with Gram and Grandpa.”
She reported back that my lapsed-Methodist mother and Dad’s Irish Catholic parents compromised on a secular memorial service at the local funeral home, and cremation. His ashes would be scattered at his favourite fishing spot. I promised to be in Brucknerfield in time to stand in the receiving line during visitation hours the evening before the service. I thought Neil might want to know and tracked him down through his Nob Hill shop, Neil Harvey Antiquities. He surprised me on two fronts: Gram O’Farrell, his Aunt Claire, had already called him. He’d booked a reservation at an airport hotel, and insisted on getting me a room and meeting my plane. I barely remembered what he looked like, but as I hustled with other passengers from the jetway into the terminal wheeling my carry-on, “Emma, darling!” sailed over us.
“Neil!”
He threw his arms wide, all cashmere coat, silk ascot and kid gloves, and pulled me into a hug. “I’m so, so sorry this is how we reconnect. Sorry for both of us. Honestly, I owe every drop of self-confidence to Cousin Danny.” He slung his arm around my shoulder and steered me toward the familiar exit. “Oh we had our spats, lord knows, but when the chips were down, and they were very often down, Daniel O’Farrell was in my corner.”
“That means a lot. You two seem so different.”
“Skin deep, darling girl. Single sons of close sisters. He had his own quirks. And that cigarette habit! He let me try my first one behind our shed. I couldn’t have been more than ten. Danny was probably twelve.”
Down the escalator and out past the luggage carrousels, Neil kept up his monologue. I tried to reimburse him for the hotel but he brushed me off.
“My treat. You need a place to decompress and steel yourself before we tiptoe through the family minefields.” I took comfort in the we, and his insistence the two of us drive to Brucknerfield together. He also insisted he’d stay long enough to drive me back to the airport. Solid guidance in my personal life was so rare it was hard to accept, but a two-day headache, frayed nerves, and the usual anxiety convinced me. He also cajoled, sympathised and listened, listened, listened. Over dinner in the hotel restaurant, Neil heard the details of my six weeks of hellish job hunts in hellish New York weather, and the irony of my successful gig for Ciao!Beauty, only to come home to Darby’s phone call.
“I’m still unemployed and I’ve lost my father.” I swiped my eyes with my napkin.
“Darling girl, it’s time you kept me in the loop. You have reached your saturation point. You’re due a good cathartic weep. And I may weep along with you. We’re a generation apart, but cut from the same cloth. I am so sorry I’ve stayed away so long when I have this big shoulder you can cry on.”
I suspect he shifted conversation to himself to put us on equal footing. Gratitude eased the sweats.
“Nineteen fifty-nine, fresh out of my god-awful high school career, I worked retail at Famous-Barr. I loved it. Emma, there was a time I could style a store window, a bed, or any of their furniture arrangements. I was King of the Soft Goods Vignettes.” It felt wonderful to smile.
“In no time I discovered F, F, and A: Furniture, Fixtures and Accessories. From there, antiques. Barely a year later I bought a one-way ticket to the City by the Bay and opened my first little Nob Hill shop. This gay, blue collar, St. Louis boy got out of the closet and out of town. I’ve never looked back. Rarely came back, either, as you well know.”
“I wish you had, Neil. I so wish you had.”
We arrived at the former Animal Cracker Park late morning the following day. Neil drove down the rutted lane still chatting as he steered clear of frozen dirt puddling in the February thaw. “In his own way, Danny was as much a misfit as I am. In his case, too much weight, too many vices. A bit of a con man with too little confidence and even less guidance. But damned if he didn’t try to cover it up with a good heart and that enormous gift of gab.” He parked and insisted on getting my luggage to the house before driving over to my grandparents.
“Glad you could pull yourself away from that fancy job, Emma,” my mother said by way of greeting as she opened the door.
“Well, I’m here, Mom.”
“And safely delivered, Iris.”
She gave Neil the once over. “I heard you were coming.”
“Danny was the closest thing I had to a brother. And you’re family, too.”
“Thank you for that.”
