I may not agree with his unconventional methods, but I can find it in my heart to offer a little unspoken compassion for his desperation.
“He’ll be back.” Mr. Welles’ chin juts forward and he nods. “Not a doubt in my mind.” His eyes lift across the seating area and he points. “You’re going to be good for him, I just know it. You’re grounded. He needs someone like that. He’s a bit of a free spirit, a little bit wild, and he needs some structure, some routine. That’s where you’ll come in. You’ll keep him organized, keep his schedule, and show him Corporate America isn’t the seventh gate of hell.”
He speaks about his son like he’s some feral man child in need of taming. Keeping his schedule, I can do. Keeping him grounded? That goes beyond my realm.
“I’m happy to organize his schedule, Mr. Welles, but if you’re expecting me to clip his wings, so to speak, I’m afraid I’m unqualified.” I straighten my shoulders, zip my spine, and hold my head high.
“I’m not asking you to do anything other than to be yourself, Ms. Keane.” His gray eyes twinkle and he taps his thick fingers against the arm of the green sofa. “I told you. I know my son. I know what I’m doing.” Mr. Welles rises, adjusting his red satin tie. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to hop on a conference call. I’ll make sure Marta keeps you busy while we wait for my son to come to his senses. It won’t be long, that I can promise you.”
I show myself out, returning to Marta’s desk even more confused than I was when I first took Mr. Welles’ call.
I suppose he didn’t become one of the most successful businessmen in the history of our nation from sheer luck. He’s savvy. He’s persuasive. He’s a salesman. And he refuses to take no for an answer.
Calder Welles Senior epitomizes the saying, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
I just don’t understand how that way is … me.
Guess I’ll know soon enough.
I DROWN MYSELF IN the silence of my living room, a marble-framed photo in my hand of my beautiful smiling mother with her arms around a scrawny twelve-year-old me. Her cheeks are rosy, her eyes shining, her silky dark hair curled under and resting at her shoulders.
A picture of perfect health and happiness.
A portrait of a woman who had it all and then some.
It was the last real summer we had together, the last summer she still had color in her skin and enough energy to drag me along for seaside walks at our Hamptons estate, all the while pretending she believed me when I acted like I hated them.
I didn’t hate them at all.
I cherished our time together.
Gwyneth Welles was a saint. She was all that was right and good in this world and I had the good fortune to call her my mother, even if only for hardly longer than a decade.
I still remember her famous clam bakes that would bring the neighbors in in droves. The way she would hum under her breath as she washed dishes. The way she would brush the hair off my forehead and kiss the top of my nose when she thought I was sleeping.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of her. That I wouldn’t give everything I have to hear that contagious belly laugh of hers, to hear her hum one of those annoying Carpenters songs that were always getting stuck in my head, to feel the electric warmth that radiated from her larger-than-life personality one last time.
My mother didn’t just give me life, she gave life to everyone around her. She could brighten the worst of days, find the silver lining in any storm cloud.
And then she got sick.
Some congenital heart defect she didn’t know she had until she collapsed in her prized tea rose garden one balmy Sunday afternoon.
The moment she was diagnosed, my father wasted no time phoning his best friend, Roy Samuelson, who owned a medical device company that specialized in cardiovascular conditions.
Within a month, as my mother drifted in and out of consciousness in her weakened state, my father signed a waiver that allowed doctors to implant an experimental device patented by Roy’s company. It was still in the research phase, not yet FDA-cleared. It had only been performed successfully twice before and unsuccessfully three times before that.
For as long as I live, I’ll never forget sitting at my sleeping mother’s side, staring at my father’s polished onyx loafers and the doctor’s gloomy gray tennis shoes beneath a pulled white curtain as they discussed options.
“We don’t have to use the device,” the doctor said. “There are other options with less risks involved …”
To this day, I don’t know if it was because he trusted Samuelson … or if he wanted my mother out of the picture so he could inherit her family’s wealth and live high off the hog as he built up his technological empire.