The Inheritance (3 page)

The conversation shifted from cigarettes and money, to parents with money, to father’s without an ounce of respect for their children.

“My dad called me a dyke,” Cara said, shuddering at the word.

“But isn’t Louis your boyfriend?” I asked.

She tugged on a strand of her hair. “Yeah but straight girls don’t cut their pretty long hair.”

My hands were folded in my lap as I patiently waited for my turn to speak, my resentment for my father naturally growing in my stomach. He was married to Darlene then. That morning she’d ushered me out the house with no more than a few words and a wave of her hand. “Don’t come back until around five,” she said, shoving my dad’s credit card in my pocket before slamming the door in my face.

Louis’s father wanted a son who played football and chased cheerleaders while drunk off cheap beer. “Not a writer,” he said, shaking his head. “The last thing he wanted was a writer.”

My neck bristled with anticipation as Cara looked at me. “What about you? Got any daddy issues?”

I excitedly nodded. “I hate my dad and not, you know, in the way a lot of girls say they hate their dads but then they still hug and hang out with them. Not me.” I shook my head. “I hate him and he hates me too.”

They held my hand through the conversation, leading me from one step to the other.

“Where does your father work?”

“He’s in finance.”

“Lucky you, I bet he makes a lot of money.”

“Yeah but it’s…It’s not really all legal.”

In retrospect it all played out like a well-structured play. Cara playing the role of the sweet, understanding woman, seeking solidarity through softened eyes and our mutual feminine disappointment in our fathers. Louis was the disgruntled son who funneled his anger through conversational mini-games. One-Up: the Who-Has-It-Worse edition.

Louis: “My dad’s done some illegal shit too. Sold drugs, ran a small prostitution ring.”

Cara: “That’s not even remotely true.”

Louis: “Yeah it is. He just doesn’t bring it up anymore.”

Cara: “Well my dad used to hot wire cars and was arrested once.”

Louis: “Congratulations.”

Cara: “Yeah. At first it was nice but then my mom had to get another job and overworked herself to a mental breakdown.”

It was ridiculous. Their unbelievably cliché sob stories that only sixteen year old me would believe. And I did. I eagerly slurped up their words.

Me: “Well, my dad’s never been to jail.”

Cara: “Good for you.”

Me: “But, um, he works with – for – a lot of bad guys. You know, the crooks you see on the news all the time.”

Cara: “What crooks?”

Me: “I don’t wanna name names or anything.”

Louis: “Oh come on.”

Me: “No. Just. He’s into some shit. That’s all.”

They tried to pry more information out but I wrapped my lips around my cup and refused to say any more. Louis sulked in his chair, arms crossed over his chest as he flickered his gaze between the window and me.

Cara smiled. “Our dads are all into some shit, we should make a club or something.”

I smiled. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”

From her messenger bag, army green and covered in patches, pins and buttons – So trendy! So cool! – Cara pulled her camera and said, “I’m doing this art thing in Toronto next week. Just like, photos of people we met in Chicago. Only interesting people though and…I hope you don’t think this is weird, but would you mind if I took your picture?”

She had me at “only interesting people”.

My photo was in the paper a week later, tucked away in the finance section but it immediately caught my father’s eyes. JULIAN WHEELER’S DAUGHTER REVEALS FATHER IS A CRIMINAL. Paragraph after paragraph highlighted my father’s suspected crimes and at the end, tacked on like an after-thought, was the single sentence:
Unsurprising to no one, his daughter hates him.

That summer was the first and only time I was sent home early.

“Go on, you should say something.” Gina bumps her shoulder into mine, a shimmering black sequin catching on the short sleeve of my dress. She plucks it off and drops it on the carpet, covering it with her heel. “Everyone would love to hear from you.”

I wanted to remain standing in the rear of the chapel, my back against the pale pink wall, heels digging into the grey carpet, but Gina wrapped her arm around my wrist and dragged me to the first pew. There are eight pews sectioned in sets of two, all filled with sniffling men and women, dotting their eyes with handkerchief’s, wiping away tears with the backs of their hands. Clusters of people line the walls, hands clasped respectfully in front of them, all of us turned towards the front of the room where my father’s ashes rest in a ten-thousand dollar urn. Solid onyx and gold.

The ceremony was short and conducted by a lone pastor who zipped through my father’s life. Born in Brooklyn, raised in Brooklyn, moved to Chicago, died in Chicago. He rattled off a list of his charitable contributions, four thousand dollars there, sixteen thousand dollars here, opening small windows to my father’s life where enough sun could peek in to wipe away some of the dark.

Now is the time for remarks, the pastor abandoning the podium so others may speak, but we all remain squirming in our seats, eyes darting around the room to see who’ll be the first to make a move.

Darlene sits behind us. Beautiful and tall as ever. She keeps one hand wrapped in her husband’s, the other on her son’s shoulder. He’s adorable and obedient, keeping his head down as he flips through a book. She’s said all of three words to us, “I’m so sorry,” as if none of this has affected her. As if she washed her hands of my father the minute she left him, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she had.

She has nothing to say and neither does Gina, who nervously chews at her lips before she whispers, “I would go up and say something, you know, but I don’t wanna cry, I mean look at me.” Her make-up’s caked on in layers – foundation too light for her skin, eyeliner thick around her eyes, blush, bronzer, and lipstick that remains despite her teeth against her lips. If she cries her face might melt off and we wouldn’t want that.

Across the small aisle, from the first pew, Ashleigh shoots to her feet. The low string of conversation halts. Ashleigh, dressed in a short yellow sundress – Yellow! Like she’s at a garden party! – has been wailing since the ceremony started. Her cry is the sound of someone who’s practiced in the mirror, fixing her lips and cheeks and eyes so she still looks pretty. She throws her hands over her face and runs out the room. Overly dramatic.

Again, Gina bumps her shoulder into mine. “How’s it gonna look?” she whispers. “His only daughter – his only child – doesn’t have one nice thing to say about him?”

I try to think of one good memory but all I remember is the icy aura my father wrapped around himself, whenever I was around. He was never supposed to have children, especially a daughter, and yet there I was, taking up space in his condo every summer, sucking in the same air as him, digging through his fridge in the middle of the night, asking for money to buy tampons. He openly resented me and now Gina wants me to stand and bullshit niceties for the sake of a dead man.

“I don’t care how it looks.” I cross my arms over my chest and sink into the pew.

Gina tuts beneath her tongue. “You’re gonna regret this, you know.”

I highly doubt it.

______

The press waits for us across the street from the funeral home. A small gaggle of them huddle around one another, sweating beneath the high afternoon sun, their cameras at the ready, hurling questions from the sidewalk. They have the right to come closer, to lean against the line of pitch black limos if they want, but they’re all too afraid.

The press has never been able to prove that my father dealt with unsavory characters – drug dealers, hit men, what’s left of Chicago’s dwindling mob – but the rumors are enough to keep them at a distance when there’s a flock of large men in black suits and tattoos on their knuckles, pacing up and down the sidewalk, glaring at them from behind their sunglasses.

Gina’s ushering me in the back of a limo when I spot Anthony Serafin of The Chicago Times. Mr. Eight-oh-Six. Without his suit he blends in with the lanky reporters next to him, their heads bent towards one another, a poor attempt to devise a plan.
What happened to your brazenness?
I want to shout across the street, but Gina has both hands against my lower back, impatiently shoving me inside.

Darlene, her husband, and her kid ride with us to the repass. Stiffly, Gina extends an offer to Ashleigh but she declines in favor of riding with her college-aged friends. Six of them pack into a beat-up Sudan with Wisconsin plates and beer bottles and fast food wrappers littering the floor. They ride behind us with The Smiths playing on low, Ashleigh squished in the backseat, sobbing on her friend’s shoulder. I watch from the back window and catch Darlene and Gina tossing glances over their shoulders too.

They pretend not to care but they do. My father’s friends are the type of men to see a sobbing woman, at a funeral or not, and turn to one another with a grin and say, “Women, right? They’re emotional about everything.” Years of composure, of solid reputation, demolished in a second.

The ride is silent, Gina staring at her hands and Darlene staring at her phone. Her husband speaks lowly to their son, the little boy antsy in his seat. I know how he feels. A bundle of nerves shoots through my body, sliding up and down my fingers until I sit on my hands. Darlene and Gina catch me and I feel all of fourteen and sixteen again. The two of them throwing me a look whenever I tripped or coughed or breathed in a way that unsettled them.

Nervous is the wrong word for how I’m feeling. Anxious might be better. Anxious to get this over and done with. A few drinks, one plate of food, five fake smiles and I’m back at my hotel room, staring at the television until it’s late enough to head out to a bar.

The repass is held at my father’s condo, smack dab in the middle of the Gold Coast, lined along Lakeview Drive. The penthouse suite. One of two, but in the other you can’t see Lake Michigan.

The condo’s filled with people, new faces absent from the funeral, men and women (mostly men) with the right idea, arrive at the repass with a practiced excuse and shamelessly enjoy the free food and booze. There’s a caterer set up in the kitchen, waiters and waitresses floating about the room with silver trays resting on the palm of their hands, offering sandwiches or quiches or fruit or a wide variety of smoked cheeses, Wisconsin’s finest. Two bartenders mix drinks near the balcony, behind a black pop-up bar that mixes well with the room.

I haven’t been to my father’s condo in years and nothing looks the same. Not the furniture, not the color of the walls, not the wood beneath my feet. Even the structure is different, most of the walls knocked out to craft a trendy, ultra-modern open layout. Ashleigh, or some other woman after Darlene, must’ve talked him into it, the mass demolition of what once was. As if tearing up the carpet and re-doing the shower will erase the smell of the other women my father’s been with. As if a new end table will make him forget that they are not the first and they will not be the last.

Except Ashleigh, I suppose. She
is
the last.

She arrives after us, her eyeliner spotting her cheeks, her eyes red and blotchy. The room turns to watch her, maneuvering through the party like a ghost, pale-faced and silent as if she’s decided to follow my father into the dark.

“Is that her?” a man nearby whispers, cradling a rocks glass of scotch.

“It can’t be,” says the man beside him. “She doesn’t look anything like Julian.”

Oh
.

Occasionally a small cluster of people, all turned towards one another, cast a glance in my direction. I can hear the whispers from across the room:
Is that her?
Julian’s daughter, Julian’s kid, Julian’s big fat burden wrapped up in a black dress and brown hair.

Gina abandons me for Marcella, someone’s wife, someone important. Darlene and her family quickly inch away, towards the couch where they gently eat off one plate, three of the most beautiful people in the room. I’m standing alone, my arms wrapped uncomfortably around myself as the whispers grow louder and the looks more frequent.

“That has to be her,” someone says, two feet away. “Look, she’s got his eyes.” Sparkling green, the only thing I’ve ever thanked him for.

A group of women, desperately clinging to their youth, spot me and slowly make their way over. I turn away from them, as if something’s caught my eye. Something dire. I weave through the crowd, bumping shoulders with men who can’t go more than an hour without discussing business. Stocks and funds and
how much money did you earn last quarter, Richard, Jesus Christ I would kill my mother for that amount
.

I head straight for the kitchen, the only room absent of guests but filled with staff, the cooks lighting burners to keep the food warm, the waiters and waitresses leaning against the wall, waiting for orders.

They tense up when they spot me, lips zipping close. I know they’ve been talking shit about every single last person in the living area. I don’t care.

“Can one of you get me a drink?” I ask. “Vodka soda? I just cannot go out there right now.”

They’re college students, no older than twenty-two. My peers and yet I feel so far removed. They pass bored glances between the four of them before one pushes himself off the wall and says, “Vodka soda?”

I press a twenty dollar bill in his palm. “Please.” He grins. It’s an open bar. The twenty’s a thanks.

He returns in minutes and I flash him a smile before expertly gulping down my drink, the expensive vodka sliding smoothly down my throat. I don’t solve all my problems with alcohol but I would be stupid, in this situation, not to have one drink or four.

I know my father has a bottle of wine stored in the fridge. He always kept one or two hidden behind a swollen watermelon or containers of fast food, places none of his wives (except my mother) ever looked. They are not the sort of women to pick through things. I carefully make my way towards the fridge, flattening myself against the counters, apologizing whenever an inch of skin touches one of the cooks. They’re all so busy, carefully plating beautiful snacks to be devoured without a second glance.