As Luck Would Have It (13 page)

Christian was 15 years old and had his learner’s permit, so Mr. Casslemond let him drive the few miles to the zoo.  He drove a sharp looking 1971 yellow Camaro that Christian was hoping to inherit on his 16
th
birthday, assuming of course that he successfully passed the requisite drivers training course and didn’t screw up at all in the meantime by running
into
anything or anyone.  With his recent family history to be taken into consideration, that seemed to be anything but a sure bet.

The three of us got along well at the zoo after some initial uneasiness and Christian asked a lot of questions about my school and what I liked to do.  He played the saxophone, as well as the piano
and
a few other instruments, and had just landed the lead role in the spring play his class was rehearsing for.  I told him how much I loved baseball, even though I wasn’t on the team anymore.  By the time we arrived back at their house, I was
more
comfortable with them and accepted their invitation to stay for lunch.  Mr. Casslemond’s wife was very nice and said she was so happy to meet me, as she prepared the sandwiches and offered me a Pepsi to drink.  We sat at a large table in the kitchen and everyone was polite and patiently waited their turn for the food to be passed around; not like meals at the Klein’s house where everyone talked at once and grabbed what they could when the platter went by.

At the suggestion of Mr. Casslemond’s wife, Christian took me outside after we finished eating and we shot some baskets
on his grandparent’s driveway.  Afterwards, we sat on the porch and Christian carefully broached the subject of the accident, making it clear that he didn’t want to pry and it was fine with him if I didn’t feel like talking about it. 
I was still seeing t
he therapist,
but
I
almost
never talked to anyone
else
about my parents or what happened, except for Joseph.  I didn’t have
many close
friends by then, most of the kids at school were perfectly happy to keep a safe distance from me, and who could blame them?  None of my relatives seemed too eager to rehash any of it with me at this point; certainly Uncle Jack and Aunt Doreen preferred to steer clear of the subject as much as they could.  I immediately trusted Christian though and understood his curiosity, given his close proximity to the tragedy.  He asked me about the details of the accident itself and what it was like being an orphan.

How could I begin to tell him what it was like?  I believed it would have been more tolerable if there had been a sibling or two to empathize with, someone who could know for certain what it felt like, someone in the same sinking boat that I was in.  He seemed to be listening intently and I wanted to share everything with him on two levels; first
because I
felt comfortable around Christian and I liked him
, but also because I believed someone in the Casslemond family should know everything, even things Joseph would never hear about.
I swore to myself early on that I would not dump too much on him, but with Christian it was different.  It was hard to imagine spilling my guts with Mr. Casslemond, with his own nightmares to cope with; maybe his grandson by proxy would be the better choice to hear the
entire
story and share some of the gruesome reality
,
there was certainly enough to go around.  And in exchange, I might hear something of the twisted road Mr. Casslemond had been forced to navigate these past months.  For I would never ask the old man himself anything too personal; never question why he was driving so fast, or what did it feel like when he woke up to the terrible news.  I’d forego any need that I might have to go directly to the source for answers to these questions, those frightening
subjects
that tormented both of us, day and night.
  You sure you want to hear this?  Yes, please Clifford, I need to know.

Where to begin?  When I looked at Christian, if I squinted a bit, I could see Mr. Casslemond there in his place.  So this is how it would be; his grandson, younger, stronger, more removed, could know the truth
,
and
no doubt
some of it would pass on to the rest of the family as they talked in the days ahead, but still the words would be filtered through Christian and what he knew or at least thought he knew to be true, and what he wanted to keep inside and spare the others would be his decision alone; no one could coax everything out of him and no one could know for sure what Christian knew.  Except for me that is, I would know
;
so if we went through with this, there would be a bond formed now between just the two of us that
might
last until eternity.  Did he understand what he was asking?

Where to begin indeed!  Like Dorothy staring down that endless yellow brick road asking where to begin; then of course having to face the unfamiliar journey alone, and knowing that the only place she could begin was straight in front of her.  Yes, it’s always best to start at the beginning, but where was that for me exactly?  Maybe it would be easier if I started at the end and worked my way backwards to the beginning instead, like that movie
Momento
that was told in reverse and bewildered me when I saw it years later.  If only I could make this story go backwards before the
sheet of ice formed
and before I turned 14
;
please let me go back to December 7
th
and I would hug my parents and tell them, let’s eat home tomorrow
;
Mom, please cook your roast beef just one more time, just one more meal together and I’
ll be OK with all of this, no, I don’t want to go to Angelo’s.

Christian and I talked for more than two hours on the porch that afternoon, until Mr. Casslemond finally appeared and said he would drive us both home.  By then, the sun was low in the sky and the chill had made its return to the late day air.  I was cold now, but Mr. Casslemond’s wife had brought out my Bears jersey to put back on and she gave me a warm hug when it was finally time to leave.  As it turned out, I hadn’t done much talking at all.  Later on I would tell Christian whatever he wanted to know and answer every question he had so that things would be level again, but for now anyway things seemed off center and my mind wandered in new and different directions trying to assemble the information that he had revealed, things that I had never stopped to consider, not because I did not want to know, but because my brain was partially paralyzed still, not sufficiently recovered
to absorb more painful truths.

Mr. Casslemond had gone into a long and severe depression following the accident.  The doctors were afraid that he might not snap out of it and that he, previously a robust and
energetic
man who went to work every day and still jogged two miles even before he left, might in fact never get out of bed again.  The cast came off his leg after ten weeks, but Mr. Casslemond had not spoken a single word as far as anyone knew for nearly that long.  Mr. Casslemond’s wife steadfastly refused to have him admitted to a psychiatric hospital, though there was little she could do but cry and pray; she was a religious woman who would rarely leave his side except to visit their pastor or tend to the house.  Charles and the other children would visit nearly every day, trying to coax a response out of Mr. Casslemond, or at least offer a respite for Mr. Casslemond’s wife.  They brought the grandchildren, cooked their best meals, played his favorite operas on the cassette tape deck they had; all well-intended but useless gestures.  Then, one cold morning in March, more than three months after the accident, Mr. Casslemond pulled the IV tube out of his arm, found the crutches that
had been laying unused
beside the bed
,
and decided on his own, with no prodding from the children, without the
benefit
of his wife’s prayers, without a doctor’s expert interventions, that this might just be a good time to finally get out of bed and test out his bad leg.

Mr. Casslemond’s re-entry into the world of the living resolved just one of the issues that now confronted the family.  Christian related to me how his father Charles struggled to
k
eep the business going amid the confusion at home and the bad press that the company was now receiving.  Given that it is the nature of people to assess blame and exercise judgment, at least ten of their better customers did just that when they heard the details of the accident and decided
that
they
should
now
get
their produce
someplace
else. 
Morale was suffering within the company as well and Charles’ unfailing administrative assistant, Martha Grooms, deiced she needed a change and packed up her two border collies and headed to her cousin’s ranch outside of Albuquerque.  Two of the loading dock men who Charles had known since graduating from college also decided this might be a good time for them pursue other career ambitions.  Charles’ younger brother
Calvin
, who had never been more than peripherally interested in produce, suddenly decided that he should come in as a full partner, and with their father out of commission and unable to mediate, the brothers argued loudly and
frequently
about who would make the decisions from now on.  While all this was going on, Christian’s older brother Carter, who was a high school senior, was arrested with possession of nearly four ounces of marijuana, enough for a felony distribution charge to possibly stick.  That story also made the newspapers
,
so Michigan State University promptly revoked Carter’s hockey scholarship on moral grounds, then his admission as well, citing his average grades and less than
laudable
SAT scores as justification.

After he recovered the ability, or should I say the desire to speak, Mr. Casslemond announced that he and Mrs. Casslemond were not going to retire to Florida later that year as
they had
planned.  In fact, they were never going to move out of the Chicago area; they were not about to run away from the trouble he had caused, but would stay put and try in some way to make reparations, if such a thing might even be possible. 
He was done driving the produce truck and if things did not improve, he would sell the business altogether.  Then he decided, against the advice of nearly all the family members, and everyone else that knew him, that he would seek me out, because to do otherwise was in his view tantamount to negligence revisited; that is to say if he failed to do whatever he could by whatever means possible to see to my safety and well being, then it might turn out as bad as if I too had been killed in the accident.  By running away or pretending an orphaned boy did not exist, who might be in need of him, or anything that he might be able to give, would be in Mr. Casslemond’s view, completely unconscionable.  The first day back on his feet so to speak, he called the real estate agent in
Pensacola
and told her in a voice quite raspy from its lack of use, and quite incredulously from her perspective we can be sure, to rescind the offer on a house they had made the very morning of the accident. 

*****

By 2018, the longest and steepest period of recession in the nation’s history had finally begun to ease. 
At its peak in 2016, the national unemployment rate had risen to more than 1
2
% and in some of the industrial areas of northeastern Illinois, it was
even
higher.  Millions were to lose their jobs over the course of a decade, many of them to never find meaningful employment again.  The recession that had been predicted to end by 2011, or worst case by 2012, continued to stretch out for several more lean and painful years.  For those in my generation, it was a frightening time where little could be done to prevent the dwindling of the portfolios we had been carefully tending, like a cherished flower garden that just kept shriveling from the heat and blight.

There were to be many converging forces that impeded recovery, the most powerful of which proved to be fear and greed.  The lack of confidence and the relentless foreboding about the country’s future cause
d
countless people to retrench further, or worse, to buy into the far right’s propaganda pr
ogram of placing blame.  The 2016
elections were particularly disastrous for the Democrats, who by now had lost their majority in both houses by a substantial number of votes.  The predictable result was a return to the same gluttony that had fueled the earlier financial meltdown, only this time around, the wounds were to be even deeper and take even longer to heal.  The gratuitous tax cuts that only marginally benefitted people that could not afford to pay them in the first place, combined with the short-sighted deregulations across the economic spectrum, only served to exacerbate the problems and cause greater dismay among the population
.
 

So many companies had decided to cut back and lay off their employees, out of caution, fear, necessity, or from a combination of the three.  The irony at Flanders and Associates was baffling; rather than streamline the business and get rid of people and processes that were unnecessary, they did exactly the opposite.  Trying to score points with the notion that it was out of compassion for its employees, they didn’
t let anyone go.  Instead, they adopted a new business plan that was heavily boated with managers, with multiple layers of oversight, with autonomy and decision making reduced at
many
levels to near zero.  The corporate culture became largely one of paranoia, where fear of making a mistake that might lead to financial consequences would outweigh any need to retool or reorganize.  Every decision, every proposal, every report was scrutinized
o
ver and over again to minimize the likelihood of any error that might damage a client, or worse, result in SEC involvement or ugly litigation.  The theory was simple; if you had enough people thinking up enough processes to eliminate enough potentially costly mistakes, the company could ride out the stormy recession however long it lasted and at a minimum, keep the ship upright and more or less on it
s
intended course.