Chapter Twenty-Seven
-- April, 1975
Elton John – “Better Off Dead”
Janet was in a casting suite in West Hollywood, ten minutes from the best audition she’d been able to muster in months. They had been lean months too. No longer could she get excited over being cast in a play in the valley; the kind of thing that only the actor’s family came to.
But this was the one. She told herself that if she didn’t get this, then it was over. So why not leave everything out on the table? She felt the familiar nerves give way to a feeling of resigned possibility as they called her name.
She entered the room to find a sweaty, young executive in a mohair suit operating a single 16-mm camera. Funny, these rooms were usually filled with studio people. The exec explained that while the others were at lunch, he was tasked with casting this small, but intricate part. The excuse barely registered to Janet as she was so in her own head, ready to perform.
She introduced herself on camera, then went into the scene. It was a funny one, very Carol Burnett, and Janet decided to play the role as a ditzy, Marilyn Monroe type. She got laughs in all the places she wanted them and when she finished, the Exec smiled and gave her the good news. The role was practically hers. It just required some nudity and he could show her what parts of her would be on display if that would help.
**
Janet shut herself inside a payphone, fighting off tears. She dialed a well-known number. From across the country, Sandra Benson accepted the charges.
“Mom, it’s me.” Janet said, nervously playing with the phone cord. “Things aren’t going exactly as planned out here...”
She covered her face with her free hand, listening to the voice on the other end of the line. When she finally spoke, her voice betrayed her. “I need money, mommy...”
Choking on her words, Janet asked, “Can I come home?”
**
When Janet walked in the front door of her parent’s house, she quickly realized she wasn’t the only one there. Workers she recognized from her father’s factory in Jersey City were moving about in a great hurry, but she could flag none of them down.
Someone had left the living room television on. A midday news report had cut in on the soaps to report on the evacuation of embassy officials in Saigon. Not that anyone could hear it through the rush of bodies.
Janet spotted a familiar face, her father’s business partner. She was about to approach the tiny man when she saw that William himself was attempting an urgent conversation with him. “You can’t do this, Nirmal – you just can’t!”
“You told me time and time again – enrich your portfolio!”
“Not at my expense!”
“It’s nothing personal, Will--”
He tried to walk off, but William grabbed him desperately by the arm. “You middle-eastern bug! This is a family company--”
Nirmal motioned around them at the workers circulating. “I wonder if these colored employees you underpay agree it’s a family company...”
Pulling himself free, Nirmal straightened his suit and walked from the house. William watched him go, ashen-faced.
Janet was about to go to him when Sandra came bustling down the stairs. “So, you’re back then?” she asked in passing.
Janet hurried to keep up with her. “Mom what’s happening--”
But Sandra just talked over her. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. You quit school, you quit your boyfriend--”
“Mom, focus! What’s going on with dad?”
“We’re moving. Grab a box.”
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“What?!”
“Ask your father, it’s something called a ‘creeping tender offer, I don’t know... all it comes down to is the company owns the house and we no longer own the company.”
“What are you talking about?! You’re not going anywhere - this is our home!”
Sandra dug around in her purse, mumbling. “I need a cough drop. Where the--”
“A cough drop? Come on, mom!”
She tried to still her mother’s frenetic packing, but Sandra just whirled around on her. “The money’s gone! Don’t you understand that?!”
“Calm down and explain it to me!”
“That fucking Turk, he took it all. He conned your father!”
“It’s not that simple, darling.” William had quietly entered the room behind them.
“It is from where I’m sitting!” Sandra clucked while lighting a cigarette. “You said it yourself, he was the one signing the checks!”
Janet turned to her father. “That’s not true… is it, daddy?”
“Every time one of you needed to go to college or get braces… I was forced to do away with a couple shares. Never in a million years did I think Nirmal was swooping in to buy them up after I let them go.”
“Jesus...” Janet exhaled. “Are you guys gonna be okay?”
William put on a brave face. “Oh sweetheart, don’t worry about us. We’ve got our savings. We should be fine for a while. The Russos down the street are already expecting us.”
The front door opened and closed and Nick, Lynn, and Kevin hurried inside. Lynn was already breathless. “We just heard, tell me it’s not true--”
Her father had sunk down onto the carpet. “It’s true alright...”
“He’s supposed to be your bookkeeper – isn’t this illegal?” Lynn asked.
“I ran it by Bob Charles. On paper there’s nothing wrong with what he did.”
Kevin was growing out a big, handlebar mustache. He tried to slow things down. “Wait a second, just break down what happened.”
William breathed hard and tried to gather his thoughts. “When we acquired his company, I thought we were getting the good end of the deal because he was getting very little cash upfront but shares in the company. Then, when we have the public offering, suddenly he’s a minority shareholder buying up stock. And when he got enough of it that corporate raiding son of a bitch, freezed me out! Got a whole new management team in there, one that the banks could feel confidence in. Said I received a fair cash compensation for my shares, but Nirmal knew when to strike, we were selling at an all-time low--”
Kevin was anxious to show off his business degree. “I don’t understand, where’s his money coming from? How the hell did he get a loan? Banks don’t back hostile bidders without seeing the company’s finances--”
“Nirmal WAS this companies finances!”
Lynn pulled her fiancé back. “Kev, just let it be.”
As Lynn corralled Kevin, Nick made his way over to the couch and kneeled down to talk quietly with his mother. “Hey ma, I know this is a bad time, but I need the check you promised me. Deposit’s due by tomorrow or I lose the space...”
“Oh, of course daring, I think I have something in my purse--”
Lynn saw Sandra digging for her billfold. “What are you doing?! Don’t ask her for money! Haven’t you been listening to what’s been going on?!”
“It has nothing to do with whatever this is!”
“Do you not live in reality?! It has everything to do with this!” Lynn said, hysterically looking around the room. As she did, she seemed to take in Janet for the first time. “When did you get here?”
“Just now.”
“Well, you’re not staying in my room--”
“Stop it, you two!” Sandra barked. “Now if you want to help, then help! Grab a box or leave!” She left the room with an armful of stuff, followed closely by Nick, who was still hoping for a handout.
With nothing left to say, Lynn and Janet slowly began assembling the cardboard boxes that Sandra had left behind. They worked in silence until Lynn picked up one of their old stuffed animals, perched on a nearby bookshelf.
“I keep telling myself it’s gonna be okay, but it’s not, is it?”
All Janet could do was shrug.
A week later, Kevin and Lynn were married in a civil ceremony down at town hall. Nothing from Lynn’s hope chest made the occasion, but she was able to wear her mother’s wedding dress (taken in in a few places, of course). Although her parents were present, later she would recall that neither of them was really there, as they had so little to say.
The next day, William and Sandra walked through their gradually emptying house, collecting memories for the road. For the time being they were homeless, but they had a line of friends willing to let out their guest houses. Or as Janet put it: “They lived like gypsies.”
Of all the things she saw that day in her childhood home, Janet recalled only one. How the real estate agent, in her plaid, business skirt and done-up hair had taken control of everything, leaving nothing to chance. In the middle of their lives falling apart, she was an island of peace. Janet kept the woman’s business card for a time and came upon it long after in a junk drawer. When she was desperate for work...
William seemed to shut down after that. He never again held down a job. He would have been furious to learn that Sandra had soon after gone to her father for some “getting by” money. But Magnus was livid. If he had still been running the company, he said, there’d be no way he’d let it be taken from him.
Everything he knew about William had been proven right. He was flighty. He was untrustworthy. And when Sandra asked for her inheritance early, Magnus knew exactly what he would do. He told his daughter that all her money would be made available at once, on one condition: that she leave William and never look back. Never in a million years did he dream that his daughter would refuse him.
He was so outraged by this that he dreamed up the trust. Its stipulations were crystal clear: Sandra would be given an allowance to live on, but nothing more. In his need to cut William out of the picture, the money would go right to Magnus’ grandchildren.