The Inheritance (2 page)

“She’s my only kid,” my father said.

“Congratulations,” said the third man. His wife hit him lightly on the arm.

“She’s a beautiful girl,” one of the wives said. “Her mother must be stunning.”

The first man scoffed. “Cheryl?” he twisted up his face. “Now that’s a woman that requires a bag.” Over her face he meant, while he was fucking her.

The third man barked like a dog and they all laughed. Even my father.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said, shaking his head.

“I know exactly what you were thinking. ‘I can’t get better than this.’”

My hands tightened in my lap. I was prone to picking at my skin, back then, my nails digging hard enough against my flesh until a small cut opened and bled.

“But I did,” my father said.

The second man whistled. “Yes you did.”

His wife slapped his arm and the women uncomfortably laughed.

“Hardly,” I said beneath my breath.

The woman across from me lifted her drink. “I’m sorry, honey did you say something?”

They were all staring at me, expectant and drunk off their own jokes. My father shifted in the chair next to me, our silent deal swirling down the drain. I was supposed to keep my mouth shut at dinners like these, until someone posed a direct question.

I was louder. “I said he’s hardly done any better. Gina may be prettier than my mom and that’s subjective --”

“Not really,” said one of the men. The others laughed.

“But,” I raised my voice. “She’s unemployed and needy and stupid and,” I was getting worked up. “If the conversation was flipped, if my mom was sitting here talking about how ugly my dad was --”

“Caitlin,” he warned.

“-- and how much of an idiot she must’ve been to marry him. Well, that would never happen because she would have the decency to keep those thoughts to herself.”

The table grew silent. The women watched me with careful eyes, the men pointedly looking away. I could feel my father’s gaze on the side of my face, hardened and furious, but I didn’t care.

One of the wives broke the silence, her manicured fingers wrapped around the menu as she said, “I think I’m gonna get the Cobb salad.”

I pushed back from the table.

No one shouted for me to wait, stop, or come back. I bet my father didn’t even watch as I stormed out the restaurant and onto the sidewalk, flurries of tourists pushing me until I was steps away from the train. I rode around for hours, angry and violently scratching at my arms. One or two strangers came up to ask if I was alright, but I ignored them and no one in the city cared enough to ask again.

I came back to the condo around eleven, my father in his room, his door shut. I slammed the front door closed, announcing my presence with a bang but nothing in the condo stirred. There was no opening of the bedroom door, my father storming out, his worry transforming into anger, the volume of his voice announcing how much he cared.

But that was it. He didn’t care.

Not then and not ever.

Gina, who remained in Chicago after my father left her, offered me the spare room in her house but I declined and booked three nights at The Palmer House. Steps away from Millennium Park, the hotel was like a second home, my safe haven when summers with my father grew enough tension to suffocate the both of us. I would steal one of his cards and book a room for the weekend, ordering room service and movies and pizza close to midnight. I showered with the door open, blared my music too loud, pressed my face against the hotel window and dreamed of the glass disappearing, my body slowly tipping over.

I should be clear: I wasn’t and am not suicidal. I’m too prideful for that; too concerned about the whispers that would flare up once I was buried.
Poor girl didn’t even have it that bad.

One suitcase is all I brought, small enough to be stowed away on the plane, no time to waste standing around in baggage claim. I have two pairs of shoes, heels and flats, a black dress for the funeral, a shirt and skirt for the reading of the will, and a dress for my plane ride home. Everything’s carefully ironed and folded. I hang them in the closet so they can keep their shape.

I feel different when I’m in Chicago. Heavier, but in a good way, like I’m weighed down with substance. Chunks of my life are spread up and down the east coast – Boston, New York, Baltimore – but it’s in Chicago where
things
always happened. The fights with my father, the first time I did anything alone (riding the train, shopping, having dinner in a restaurant), the first time I got my period, and of course the ticker, losing my virginity.

It happened at this hotel and I was sixteen and fat with love. Even now my head swims when I think about Justin, an uncontrollable smile breaking across my mouth when I remember his sweaty hands roaming over my body, the way his fingers tickled my ribs and how his mouth tasted spicy against mine. I had a salad before we came up to my room. He scarfed down a burrito. It was messy and painful and the best moment of my life, my entire body on fire as he entered me, my orgasm (Orgasm! How many girls have that on their first try?) pushing my back off the mattress and filling my body with all the stars and moons of the universe.

Every girl feels a similar way about their first love, but with Justin it felt real enough to touch and my feelings were reciprocated. Justin wrote notes and secretly slid them into my purse, three line poems about the color of my eyes (I’ve never seen/Two so green/Your eyes, Caty) and the smell of my hair (Strawberry, Grape and Lime/You smell like fruit all the time/I’m so glad you’re mine). He had his mother bake heart shaped cookies and wrote my name on the inside of his arm, before scribbling his own on the curve of my hip. Our adolescent matching tattoos.

He was my forever until he fucked it up. Viciously and without shame.

And yet, whenever I think of him, I always imagine him happy and my stomach swells like a balloon at the thought. I hope so, I tell myself, I hope he’s married and happy and fulfilled. After years of repeating it, it’s so very easy to swallow the lie.

______

Out of boredom I head down to the hotel bar. It’s nine-thirty, late enough for me to have a drink without feeling like a lush, and early enough that if I decide to over-indulge (which I rarely do, I’m not twenty-one anymore) I’ll have enough time to recover by morning.

I’ve been ignoring Gina’s calls and texts all day, her shrill voice clogging up my inbox, her desperate messages begging for a reply. She wants to hang out, to grab lunch, how about dinner?
I really, really wanna see you before the funeral :)
I can see her now, pacing the linoleum floor of her tiny kitchen, chain-smoking as she taps and swipes at her screen. Her mouth’s tight and angry but she tacks on the smiley to seem less anxious and more casual, but she’s a few years too late, I already think she’s crazy.

I turn my phone face down on the bar top as the bartender pours a mix of Sprite, orange juice and vodka in a highball glass.

I feel all of sixteen again, sucking down fruit-flavored drinks that barely mask the smell of alcohol but if you hold your breath you can’t taste it. Sheepishly grinning at the bartender who knows you aren’t legal but what can he do? Your ID says otherwise. I don’t get to play those games anymore. I’m twenty-five now and my students have told me it shows, “In the best way possible, Mrs. Wheeler”. The bartender doesn’t ask for my ID as he places my drink on a coaster and charges it to my room.

The bar’s full of lone drinkers like me, staring at their hands as they wrap them around glasses of bourbon and bottles of non-alcoholic beer, occasionally glancing up to see if they’ve caught someone’s eye. An older woman and man make eye contact from across the room but she blushes and ducks her head and he’s too shy to make a move.

I wish I was one of those women, the quiet, non-threatening ones who wear “adorable” and “docile”, like a well-fitting sweater. Instead, I project an uncontrollable aura of
fuck off
, which women found attractive on men like my father but has never done the trick for me.

After Justin there were a string of boys in Boston. Handsome New Englanders whose parents owned estates on the water and summer homes in Italy and France. They had names like Blake and Cooper and Reginald, and they all had trust funds. Oh, the trust funds. Hundreds of thousands tucked away
just in case
.

I didn’t have the capacity to love them and they didn’t seem to mind. There was always another girl who would marvel at their knowledge of Socrates and Gorgias by Plato. There was always someone else willing to give up their summer for a trip to Greece, but it wasn’t me.

I was hung up then and I’m partially hung up now, wishing beyond reason that Justin will stroll through the lobby and take a seat at the end of the bar, staring at my profile as he slowly realizes,
holy shit it’s her
.

But that’s not what happens.

What happens is a man in a salmon pink shirt and navy tie takes up the barstool next to me. He points to my nearly empty glass and says, “Can I buy you another one?”

Without looking at him I say, “No thanks.”

Making eye contact with a stranger in a bar is the best way to keep them by your side all night. It’s intimate, catching the light in their eyes and watching the corners wrinkle when they laugh. It makes you seem open and it pulls you closer together, neither of which I’m looking for tonight.

(For a moment, let’s forget about Justin.)

He leans against the bar. “You know, I’m not gonna leave until you look at me.”

I almost laugh. “That’s very mature of you. Are you sure you’re old enough to drink?”

He laughs. “You’re funny.” I feel him shift a little closer and my shoulders lock up. “I don’t meet many funny women.” I swallow the rest of my drink and push the glass towards the bartender. “I feel like I know you from somewhere,” he says.

I push myself from the bar. “I’ve got twenty dollars that says that isn’t the first time you’ve used that line.”

“It’s not a line. You’re Caitlin Wheeler, aren’t you?”

Feet on the carpet, phone in hand, I look at him. His smile slowly transforms into a grin, a cat whose teeth have sunk into the mouse. He’s handsome in the way all men are handsome when they clean up: nice hair, nice clothes, nice scent, but take it all away and he’s nothing to write home about.

“Are you gonna answer the question?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I thought you said you were going to leave once I looked at you?” He ducks his head. Hi cat, meet mouse.

From the pocket of his well-cut jacket he pulls out a business card. Thick stock pressed between two fingers. He leaves it on the bar, in plain sight as if I’ll snatch it up once he turns his back. “Anthony Serafin.” He holds out his hand. “The Chicago Times.”

I’ve almost forgotten about the media circus that surrounds my father. It drums up in spurts, like a volcanic eruption, unpredictable and sudden. A violent event that runs for a few days before sizzling out, almost as if it had never happened.

Fall was when my father always got into trouble. September-November, like clockwork, his face would appear in The Chicago Times (my mom has issues delivered to the house and pretends it has nothing to do with my father) beneath a bold sensationalized heading: CROOKED FINANCIER JULIAN WHEELER COOKS THE BOOKS. He wasn’t important enough to grab a spot on the front page, but his name floated around the finance section like an incessant bee.
Another client of Julian Wheeler’s was arrested this morning for fraud,
and,
Wheeler, recently named CEO of Cooper & Sons, renames business to J.M. Wheeler.

The city of Chicago was convinced my father was a crook, but he was resilient, refusing to answer questions hounded at him on camera, ignoring the reporters who camped out in front of his building, even the women who offered to flash him their tits. All of his wives (even my mother) knew to hang up and ignore fishing reporters. But I was young and stupid and angry at my father, willing to rant at anyone who would listen.

I grab Anthony’s card and rip it into fours. He pulls out another one and I rip up that one too.

“Don’t worry.” He smirks. “I’ve got plenty.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I want an interview.”

“Go
fuck
yourself.”

I turn away from him, two steps sinking into the carpet before he says, “You paid your drink to your room.” He waves the receipt, pinched between his two fingers, just like his business card. “Room eight-oh-six.”

I don’t bother snatching it away from him. The numbers are already engrained in his memory. Eight-oh-six, eight-oh-six, repeating like a news ticker.

“I have a taser,” I tell him, stepping close. “If you show up at my door not only will I use it, I can’t promise I’ll stop before your heart does.”

He grins. “You really are like your father.” My fingers curl into themselves as he pulls a notepad and pen from his pocket. Old school. He probably thinks he’s so cool. He flips to a new page, clicks his pen and says, “Now was that on the record or off?”

I exhaust every ounce of composure to keep myself from slugging him in the jaw. I tell him, “It’s off the record,” but I know it doesn’t matter. Journalists climb atop their high horses and drop their integrity, when it comes to my father, and by proxy, when it comes to me.

______

I remember the first time I saw my photo in the paper. I’d consented to having it taken at the Starbuck’s on Broadway, down the street from the Belmont stop where I met Cara and Louis, a young couple from Toronto who were looking for a place to grab some coffee. I was immediately taken with them – Cara with her short black bob and red lips, Louis with his tweed jacket and round glasses – they were a picturesque couple of the new generation. Well-dressed, educated, starving artists. They bought me a hot chocolate and complained about the price of cigarettes, spinning their empty box of Menthols atop the small table in the corner, the barista glancing over worryingly, waiting for the moment when she could say her line:
You can’t smoke in here
.