Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6
When the music ended, Anna looked at me quizzically. “How is your career progressing—with all this merriment?”
“The job is going well—quite well, in fact.”
And that was true. Father insisted on productive effort, but I really didn’t have to work to survive. I had reached my majority several years ago and received my little pile from the family treasury. I could have lived on the return. And yet, my not having to work was, I suspect, boosting my career at good old North Chemical and Photographic. I seldom worried about what my fellow workers thought, including those in the chain of command. I must have looked like a leader, for I had ascended the corporate chimney. I was now next in line to be assistant head of the Advertising Department. I had already written reams of advertising copy and supervised numerous commercial filmings, including two of those “public service” pleas for tolerance that inspired ethnic slurs in living rooms all over the country.
In other words, I was succeeding, and the journey thus far hadn’t been difficult. A posh aerie in one of the taller towers of good old North Chemical and Photographic wasn’t my great dream, but it would do, as they say, until something better came along. And something better didn’t mean joining Father in his advertising firm—the family business, as he liked to call it—in New York City.
This brings me to the one dark cloud on my horizon. Once a month, from the time I graduated from Cornell, I had received a letter from Father. Every second or third one carried a hint about my joining the advertising firm of W. W. Kilcourse—some mention of a desk waiting for me there, or of adding “and Son” to the name of the firm. My older brother, Bill, had gone to West Point and had stayed in the Army, and so I was the one suitable heir to join and eventually run the firm. But I was much happier learning the trade in Rochester, where the ski slopes were less than an hour away and I was free of Father’s supervision and the grudging deference of his associates.
I gazed at Anna, lovely in the candlelight. “How about my place for coffee and brandy?”
“Yes, I would like that.”
I was a little awed by Anna, never having experienced such things as she did in Hungary. In the violence of 1956, she had lost her two brothers, both killed by Russian tank fire. She and her surviving family had reached the Austrian border in a truck commandeered by one of her uncles. They’d met friends there, and eventually found asylum in the United States. And now, she was here, sitting across this tiny table, regarding me with wry amusement and mild suspicion. Earlier that evening, over dinner, she had asked one of her probing questions. “Terry, do you ever think of anything besides golf, skiing, liquor, and sex?”
“That’s a lot to think about,” I replied.
“Do you ever worry about—say, for example, the fate of the Free World?”
“Of course—in my private moments.”
“Should America have intervened in Hungary?”
“I don’t know. These things are decided by manicured types from Harvard. They gave away half of Europe, all of China, and now they’re fighting the Communists in the rat holes of the world. You tell me what’s going on.”
“The Freedom Fighters in my country were left to die.”
“Look—Anna. You’re in America now. Maybe it’s time to look ahead.”
“Yes, you’re right. I should.”
“Let’s discuss trivia—like my career.”
“Oh—Terry, Terry.”
Back at my apartment, we were both cozy and warm and mellow from the brandy, when I asked the pivotal question. “Stay here tonight?”
She hesitated. She was actually thinking it over.
“Yes,” she whispered at last, “I’d like to stay.”
And so, that night, we began an affair that was all too brief, alas, alas.
~~~
Father had his heart attack during the week of Thanksgiving. Mother called with the news Monday evening, and I flew to New York on the first plane Tuesday morning. I rented a car at LaGuardia and plowed through traffic to Lennox Hill. Mother was waiting in the lobby. She was well dressed in her Bloomingdale’s way and gave me her best smile, though her worry lines appeared deeper. She took my arm and sat me down for a serious talk.
“Now, Terry—I must tell you. The news about Father isn’t good. The immediate danger has passed, but his heart is failing, bit by bit. We may not have Father much longer.”
“God—it’s that bad?”
“Yes, it’s that bad.” Mother was bearing up. She was a World War II wife, for whom bearing up was a duty.
“What about Bill?”
“He’s far away and probably has his hands full. We can spare him for now.”
She stood up, took my arm, and off we went to an elevator ride and a walk through the corridors to Father’s room. She stayed long enough to see that he was all right and then closed the door on her way out.
Father didn’t look ill, but he had tubes stuck in his arm and in his nose. The wires taped to his chest were visible under his loosely tied hospital gown. His hair had gone grayer in the past two years—I had stayed away last Christmas to tour the ski resorts with my libertine nurse—but as he spoke, he seemed happy, almost carefree.
“I must look like hell with all this junk on me,” he said after our greetings. “Look at this stuff.”
“You’re right in style as usual, Father.”
Father laughed at the remark.
“Well, how goes it?” I asked, borrowing his favorite icebreaker.
“All right—for now. By the end of the week, I should be sitting up and dangling twice a day.”
“Dangling? What’s that?”
“I’ll sit on the edge of the bed and let my legs hang down. It’s a step toward getting me back on my feet.”
“Well—that’s a good sign.”
“Yeah—I guess.” He was momentarily subdued, but then brightened. “How goes it at good old North Chemical and Photographic?”
About Robert Watts Lamon
