MORE OF SOMETHING MORE,
a story about a salesman trying to establish himself,
a CEO scheming to buy out his father's influence
and the woman important to each
4
Her heart in mouth, Rhea Slade tried spotting the plane at 10,000 feet. Grandsons, Malcolm and Gerald, shared the watch and directed barbs at their mother, Delfina, who was content watching only them.
The sky in the high desert was windless and clear, and bright sun glinted off windows, mirrors and the outsized sunglasses dominating Rhea's face. On hearing the intermittent buzz of a single engine craft, she pointed to the pinprick holding her life, husband Graham. “There they are!”
The sighting prompted another round of sulk. “Aw, I wanted to go,” moaned Malcolm. “Me, too,” said Gerald who, at thirteen, was two years the younger. His mother tugged at the collar of his jacket without fueling the argument. “Put on your jacket, Malcolm.”
“Aw, mom. It’s warm!” They were an obvious family, wearing dark blue jeans and red jackets. The sons had already sprouted taller than their mother. The elder was dark and serious, the younger, blond and carefree. A wave of hair crested each brow, which demanded regular flicks of the head to clear the eyes.
The family matriarch appeared elfish old beside them: petite with helmet of pewter-colored hair and dressed in stylish woolen slacks and puffy blue jacket. Glancing at them, she bemoaned her son’s absence. Despite her pleas, Stephen wouldn’t budge. “I’ve got a company to run,” he told her. The attitude displeased her because it diminished the family and supported Graham’s belief he was running things into the ground.
“Have you decided what to wear to the wedding?”
The question surprised Delfina out of her thoughts. “Wedding? Oh, Dave Forester’s.” Her mouth fell open in advance of a trickle of rote words. “It’s just business; company people, investors, his family. I'm not going.”
“Stephen's family! We’re going, and I’d like to see you there too. Tell him.”
Her daughter-in-law's meekness infuriated her. When Graham was CEO, she’d stood beside him at routine and not-so-routine occasions at the company: birthdays, anniversaries, commemorations, promotions and deaths, which were milestones in her love and devotion. She feared for Stephen and Delfina. Sources had informed on his time spent at the condo, the parties and the young woman too. She had hoped she would assert herself; instead she established a defensive barrier around her sons. She would have to intervene. “I’ll talk to him.”
Gerald screamed, “They’re falling!” Rhea nearly fainted, but on observing an orderly extraction, corrected him. “Jumping, Gerald. They’re jumping.”
Mere dots to the eye but to imagination daredevils spilling from the platform plane, free fall was the most disturbing time. At that distance, she’d no way of knowing which was her husband; presumably, the first. He had always been first.
They’d met in New York City after the Second War. He went to Yale and she was working retail. The match was improbable but provident, and after getting past being “the poor girl from Kansas” she married into a family that had sired a line of corporate CEOs, who started in manufacturing then progressed into finance, changing as the country changed. Graham trained in family businesses before starting Slade Insurance in the 60's. Meanwhile, they had Stephen, Diana and Gerald, and lived a happy, prosperous life. In the past year, he retained the role of chairman of the board, while Stephen became the CEO.
Today, she was angry-proud at his throwing seventy-year old bones from a plane on his birthday. Stuff happens, but daring it to was pure Graham. She clutched Malcolm and squeezed, expressing her fears till one…two…three…then four white parachutes blossomed in the sky. “Hurray!”
They watched their languid descent, ending in landfall about a mile away. A pickup went to gather them for the reunion, sending up a dust trail. When it returned, Graham wheeled his legs over the truck bed and jumped out to stride toward them in green jump suit and boots. Lean and leathery, he had a gray crew cut over electric blue eyes. The boys surrounded and praised him as he continued his progress to Rhea who stood like an attractive magnet.
On contact they locked into an embrace. Then she hit him with the heel of her palm on his chest, on his hip and on his thigh, testing for fatigue and releasing her anxiety. She clutched him tightly.
"I had an insight," he said. "Up there so high, beyond the mountains are blue horizons, and farms are crazy geometric patterns, and the desert a moonscape of peaks and depressions. Spinning like a seed and carried by the wind, gravity pulls you down. Between life and being splat on the desert floor are the pull cord and the parachute. Fail to execute and you’re a goner. I can pull the company out of its free fall. I’m the parachute, the chairman of the board.”
The unexpected burble of words delivered from on high gave her pause. “He doesn’t see that private elevators, chauffeurs and parties are distractions. He’s forgetting about the cord. I’ve got to save him.”
She led him to their car for the drive to a restaurant for a celebratory meal. She understood that the ascendant CEO had to create things anew and develop loyalty within subordinates, but clear-cutting old-line managers wasn’t going down well, and his apparent goal of disassociating Graham from the company was an affront to him, to her and to the family. Graham was right: someone had to pull the cord.
The characters and events in this story are fictitious and do not represent any living person or real event.
