Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss (15 page)

“Jesus, this just keeps getting worse,” said Bobby as he read the bullet points Bill had placed in front of us.

“Each of you will have to seriously consider what you will do for income,” Bill said, sitting back down. “Historically, the brewery has supported the family, but you would not be well advised to consider these trusts as . . . a significant source of future income.”

It was as if I’d come home to a seared patch of ground where my house had stood. Nor was the problem simply the loss of future income. Suddenly, the notion of being an artist seemed frivolous and misguided; I’d have to find something to apply myself to that guaranteed a decent living. Hell, I didn’t even have medical insurance. On some level, certainly, my mother had strived to prepare us for this all our lives, but being actively disinherited, well—this was a rather different thing from having money and pretending as if one didn’t. The life I had imagined for myself—becoming a successful artist, owning my own apartment, perhaps even collecting the work of other emerging artists—suddenly it all felt well out of reach.

Reading the fear in my brothers’ faces, I realized they, too, must be letting go of certain hopes about their futures. For Whitney, it was an Upper East Side apartment, Augusts on Long Island, and the ability to leave behind that monthly spike in anxiety triggered by opening his American Express bill. Just the night before, when my mother asked him about his job raising money for a friend’s company, he’d quipped that he’d “rather live Unabomber style in the woods of Montana” before he did any “bootlicking.” Now he might just have to.

Bobby had hoped one day to be able to leave his job at the brewery and run a restaurant in the Caribbean, but the way things were going at the brewery, he’d likely be leaving before he could afford to. The money had never been ours, of course, and none of us had ever had expectations of being “rich,” but knowing the Stroh trusts were there had given us the space to dream of the lives we wanted for ourselves.

“Hold on a second, Bill,” I jumped in. “Elisa is not the mother of our father’s children. That’s got to count for
something
.”

“No, she’s not,” Bill said. “But, you see, when these trusts were written, back in the forties, divorce wasn’t common. Your grandfather assumed that ‘lawful wife’ meant first and only wife. Times and circumstances have obviously changed since then. The documents, however, make no distinction between first and second wives. Or even third, for that matter.”

Whitney shifted restlessly in his chair, his upper lip beading with sweat. “Bill, are you saying that Elisa will likely get the biggest piece of the pie?”

Bill looked at all of us with sympathy. “At my urging, your father and Elisa are currently negotiating a
post
nuptial agreement. But . . . well, your father has no leverage, really, at this point. Elisa and her attorney have already rejected several generous proposals. So . . . you three should be advised that Elisa, now that she’s legally married to your father, can pretty much write her own ticket.”

“And you can be sure she will,” muttered Bobby.

“Afraid so,” Bill said.

I put my pen down on the table and pulled on my coat. “Are we finished?” I asked.

Everyone nodded.

“Merry fucking Christmas,” said Whitney to no one in particular.

CHRISTMAS, 1974

(by Eric Stroh)

M
y father’s house was brimming with Christmas spirit. We’d come straight from the meeting at the bank, stiff from cold. Handel’s
Messiah
was piped in from hidden speakers in the walls, and a handsome trimmed tree brightened the living room, the floor beneath blanketed with festively wrapped presents.

“Bah
,
humbug!
” said my father with a big grin as we sat down. “How about some eggnog?”

“Sure,” I said. I needed a drink. At least here I could count on more whiskey than nog.

“Elisa will be back any minute,” said my father cheerfully as he left the room.

“She’s dropping off some presents at her father’s house.”

Bobby, Whitney, and I gave each other meaningful looks. This was the first time we’d all be together as a “family,” and we’d agreed in the car not to let on about the meeting. Bill had told us that my father knew we’d come down and would
be calling for the report, and I guessed this was the reason for my father’s uncharacteristic cheerfulness. The meeting, after all, had gone off without a hitch.

Whitney suddenly stood up and stamped the snow off his loafers onto the Berber carpet, as if marking his territory before Elisa returned.

Bobby laughed at his younger brother. “Nice. Now there’s going to be a big puddle in the middle of the goddamn carpet. Dad’s going to
love
that.”

“Better there than on my shoes,” Whitney said. But a moment later he picked up the chunks of snow and carried them into the kitchen. My father’s benevolent mood, he knew, especially toward him, was as changeable as the wind.

Beautiful objects adorned every surface in the room: an antique partners desk stood in a bay window with a gilt-framed painting by Gari Melchers on the adjacent wall. Tasteful patterned fabrics covered the upholstered furniture. Eighteenth-century walnut side tables held needlepoint coasters for drinks. The tree sparkled with old family ornaments and colored lights, just as it had when we were children.

Back in those days, before the advent of video, my father would draw the curtains, on Christmas Eve Day, to project 35 mm films of all the Christmas classics—
A Christmas Carol
,
It’s a Wonderful Life
,
White Christmas
. The living room would be packed with spectators: my parents’ friends, their kids, and, of course, the four of us. The adults drank Bloody Marys all afternoon, forming a chatty line at the tabletop bar while my father switched reels midmovie.

The next morning, Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” would
be playing on the stereo when we came down to investigate our stockings. Charlie and Bobby would get toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, pens, and a jar of macadamia nuts, contents that left me baffled by Santa’s odd sense of practicality. Whitney and I got dime store toys with the price tags still attached, tubes of toothpaste, and packets of pencils. Most years my father slipped into my stocking a Cuban cigar, which I’d smoke with him in the late afternoon, after the guests had gone home.

My father came in with the eggnog and placed the glass next to me on one of the coasters. “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas!” He gave me a goofy smile. “How’d you like the tree?”

“Very nice,” said Bobby. “When did you put it up?”

“Last week, before all the snow. I haven’t had a real tree in years.”

For about a decade, after the divorce, my father had pretty much given up on everything, even Christmas, making due with a small tabletop tree. He even gave away his entire 35 mm film collection—hundreds of rare prints. But in spite of everything, he’d managed to stay away from the bottle. Now, though, along with the tree, he had brought the drinking back into his life.

I spotted a small aquamarine Tiffany box under the tree. “Who’s
that
little blue box for?” I asked pointedly, remembering Christmases past when the Tiffany box had been for me.

“That’s for my sweetie,” my father beamed.

It took me a moment to register that he meant Elisa. I glanced around the room and noticed that the family photos were now mixed in with shots of her. I looked over at Bobby, who was trying to suppress a laugh.

Whitney came into the room downing a Pepsi. “I like that painting of the pheasants in the kitchen,” he said to my father. “Where’d you get it?” He sat down on the sofa, nervously crunching the half-empty Pepsi can.

“Out in Jackson,” said my father, putting another log on the fire. “At a wildlife art gallery.”

Whitney put the Pepsi can down on a coaster. “Outstanding. Maybe we can go there next week, see what else they’ve got . . .”

Rising from the fireplace, my father gave Whitney a disingenuous smile. “Trouble with
you
, Whit, is you’ve got champagne taste, on a beer budget.” This was his favorite line.

Whitney looked as if he’d just been slapped.

Coming on the heels of our visit to Bill Penner, my father’s gloating seemed almost sinister. The three of us could put on a good face for only so long.

Just then the wreathed front door opened with a rattle, registering somewhere between festive and frantic.

“Hello?” Elisa’s voice called from the front hall as a gust of freezing wind brought the temperature in the house down several degrees all at once.

“Close the damn door, Elisa!” shouted my father. “Then come on in to the living room. We’re in
here
.”

The door slammed shut, and a moment later Elisa came in, ruddy-faced and wild-eyed, her glance shifting self-consciously from face to face.

“Look, everyone’s here!” she burst out, giving me a big-breasted hug before turning to shake hands with Bobby and Whitney, who stood up to receive her. She wore lumberjack
boots and an oversize down jacket that she absently tossed onto the rug. “How’re things on the other side of the pond?” she said, turning back to me.

“Not bad.” I smiled, pretending, as she was, to be “comradely.” It was going to be a long week out in Jackson, I realized.

“Hey, have the police found out who
burgled
you?” Before I could even answer, Elisa roared with laughter at her own quip while my father gazed at her admiringly.

The burglary had happened while she and my father were in London, making it an easy conversation topic over several dinners. She’d asked me this same question, and laughed in the same way, a couple of times before.

“Not yet.” I sipped my eggnog. “But, you know, they’re searching high and low.”

W
e turned the corner onto Lakeland Road, the snowplow just ahead of us spewing salt and snow in all directions. Every door on the street was wreathed. Some had Christmas lights strung across the shrubs, or fixed around doorway arches, that were coming on in the fading light. When we were younger, back on Provencal Road, my mother would drive us to other parts of Grosse Pointe to see the showier displays of Christmas lights and lawn decorations, usually at the “new money” houses along Lakeshore Drive.

“I hate this house,” said Whitney bitterly as we pulled into my mother’s driveway.

His palpable anger needed somewhere to land. I made no effort to correct or appease him.

“You could always stay at Dad’s house,” Bobby answered, deadpan, as he parked the car. “With your lovely stepmother.”

For a few moments we just sat there in the rental car, a bright red Ford Probe, the windshield wipers scraping loudly over the ice that had frozen to the glass. The house looked gloomy, all the rooms dark except for the library, where I knew my mother sat reading. She had no Christmas lights outside, and the lights on the tree in the living room hadn’t yet been turned on. She’d never gone in for frills. When we were kids, on an excursion to buy Whitney a fishing rod, my mother had told him adamantly, “Nothing fancy, just a stick and a string.”

No one made a move to get out of the car. “We haven’t talked about everything that just happened,” I said tentatively.

Bobby turned off the car, and the wipers stopped midscrape. He jingled the keys. “Yeah, didn’t want to be the one to start that conversation.”

“I’ll
say it,” Whitney interrupted him. “What a fucking turdfest! I mean, did you even see Elisa bring Dad that cocktail as we were leaving? She’s up to a lot more than getting the money—she’s trying to fucking kill the poor bastard!”

I shared his alarm, although I knew the drink wasn’t Elisa’s fault; nor was hastening my father’s demise the same as causing it, though it felt good for the moment to have a scapegoat. From where we sat, it seemed we’d lost both our father and his legacy, and Elisa was an easy target. I’d often wondered if having money was more of a curse than an asset; and at that
moment, money and death seemed hopelessly intertwined “Guess Dad and Charlie are in a race to die first,” I said. “And Elisa’s certainly getting all
her
ducks in a row.”

“Your father married bar scum, Frances,” said Whitney, as if announcing it officially. “Get used to it. Our family is like a
Vanity Fair
story on steroids.”

Bobby and I laughed at the absurdity of this. But I felt gutted at the thought of my father drinking regularly again with Elisa. And after everything our family had been through, his getting drunk and eloping without a prenup seemed supremely selfish.

“It’s just . . . very sad, that’s all,” said Bobby. He leaned back into the driver’s seat with a sigh of defeat. “You’re lucky you both live so far away. Watching this up close? It’s going to be torture.”

I exhaled two steady streams of smoke through my nostrils. “Believe me, I’d get on a plane back to London in a heartbeat if I could.” Things had taken a turn for the worse in London, but . . . anything was better than this.

As I watched my brothers, I wondered how they would cope. Bobby gazed out the car window at the freshly falling snow, his expression one of resignation. Whitney sat smoking in the backseat, his face stamped with bitterness. Wondering where I would go, what I would do, I suddenly felt the deepest fatigue, the kind no amount of sleep might relieve.

Night had fallen. Still, we did not get out of the parked car. Soft clumps of snow floated down into the beams of the street lamps behind us, and every house on the street, with the exception of ours, shimmered with festive lights. I could
hear the faint sound of singing and turned to see a neighbor’s front door open and a group of carolers standing inside their warmly lit atrium.
Hark! The herald angels sing / glory to the newborn king!
They sang joyously to the crowd gathered around them, in the cold, cold night.

T
he sugary smell of Campbell’s tomato soup filled the house as we went in at last. Bobby and Whitney went into the kitchen, and I retreated upstairs, feeling a headache coming on. My room still felt unfamiliar despite all the years of visiting my mother at this house, my old bookshelves, dresser, and desk arranged gracelessly against the polka-dotted walls, probably by the movers themselves when she first arrived here, never to be revisited.

I could hear Bobby’s and Whitney’s voices down in the kitchen, filling my mother and grandmother in on the meeting with Bill. I couldn’t hear the words, but compared with the rise and fall of my brothers’ distress my mother’s voice was a low murmur.

I went into the bathroom, took two Advil, and looked in the mirror: there were swollen sacks beneath my eyes; my skin was pale with winter, translucent almost. My grandmother was right: my hair looked like hell—bleached and cut too short, a supercropped bob that succeeded only in rendering me utterly androgynous. I had even taken to slicking it back in the style of a man. The cut and color had looked chic in my mirror in England, but here, in my mirror back home, I
could see only that I’d thrown away my looks, and two years of my life, to chase down a dream that now seemed as elusive as Santa Claus. An American woman, the next British art star? I laughed bitterly. Wanting to scream for all the wasted time, the squandered energy, the crazy hubris that had kept that dream alive, I grabbed my cheap hair and pulled until the tears came.