“You should have let me know you were coming to town,” I said. “I’d have been glad to put you up while you got settled.”
“It happened so fast, I didn’t even know I was coming myself until a week ago. See, I graduated from college in May. And then me and my roomie went to Africa for four weeks. We bought a used Land Rover, we drove all over, then we sold the Rover in Cape Town and flew to Australia. Anyway, when I got off the plane in Kansas City, Daddy was, like, do you have a job? And I’m, like, no, of course not. And he says how Harvey Krumas’s son is running for the Senate. Daddy and Harvey grew up together back in the Stone Age, so of course they’re still best buds. And if Harvey’s kid needs help, then Peter’s kid will pitch in. So, here I am. My poor body still can’t figure out what time zone I’m in.” She laughed again, a loud, husky peal.
“Harvey Krumas, huh? I didn’t know he and your dad were friends.”
“Do you know him?” Petra’s cellphone rang. She looked at the screen and put it back in her pocket.
“No, sweetie, I don’t swim in those rarefied waters.”
Krumas. The name in Chicago meant everything from pork bellies to pension funds. When a new high-rise broke ground here, or in any of a dozen other great cities around the world, you could count on seeing Krumas Capital Management listed among the financial backers.
“I thought maybe since Daddy and Uncle Harvey are such good buds, your dad must’ve known him, too.”
“My dad was twenty when your father was born,” I explained. “I don’t know if Peter even remembers the row house in Back of the Yards. By the time he started school, Grandma Warshawski had bought a bungalow in Gage Park. Then she moved to Norwood, up on the Northwest Side. That’s where she lived when I was a teenager. Your dad took indoor plumbing for granted when he was growing up, but my father and your uncle Bernie—they were the two oldest—they had to empty the slop buckets every morning when they were boys. Between them, Grandma and Grandpa Warshawski didn’t make fifteen dollars a week during the Great Depression.”
“It’s not Daddy’s fault his parents had a hard life,” Petra protested.
“Oh, honey, I wasn’t trying to imply that, just explaining what different worlds our two fathers inhabited even though they were brothers. My dad joined the police because it offered a steady paycheck.”
“But Daddy worked hard!” Petra cried. “He earned every nickel he ever made, down in the yards!”
“I know he did. Our grandmother could never understand why Peter went to work in the stockyards when there were so many better jobs around, but Harvey Krumas’s dad offered Peter a job because he and Harvey were friends, and Peter made the most of it.”
If my uncle hadn’t become wealthy on a grand scale, he had done well—way better than anyone else remotely connected to my family. When the stockyards left Chicago in the sixties, Peter had followed Ashland Meats to Kansas City. By the time my dad died, in 1982, Ashland was a five-hundred-million-dollar concern, and Peter was a senior officer. I’d always been a little bitter that he didn’t do anything to help out with my dad’s medical bills when Tony was dying, but, as I’d just explained to Petra, Tony of course was essentially a stranger to him.
It seemed unbelievable to look at this twenty-something kid and realize she and I shared a grandmother. “I didn’t know Krumas’s son wanted to run for office. What are you doing for him with the primary still ten months away?”
Her phone rang again. This time, she answered with a quick, “I’m busy, I’m with my cousin, I’ll call you later!”
She turned back to me. “Sorry, my roomie wants to know how I am. Kelsey, my college roommate, I mean. In my new place here I’m on my own, which feels really weird after sharing a sorority house and a tent and everything with Kelsey for four years. She’s back in Raleigh, and she’s bored to death after going all over Africa and Australia.
“What were you saying? Oh, what am I doing for the campaign? I don’t know. They don’t even know! I showed up to work yesterday for the first time, and they asked me what I was good at. And I said, being energetic, which I am, totally. And I majored in communications and Spanish, so they thought maybe I’d do something in the pressroom. But, right now, it’s pretty much just wandering around, seeing who’s where, and running out to the corner to get people fancy coffee drinks. They could save a bundle of money by buying a cappuccino machine for the office, but I like the excuse to be outdoors.”
“What kind of platform is Krumas running on?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Petra widened her eyes in mock embarrassment. “I think he’s green—at least, I hope he is—and I guess he’s against the war in Iraq . . . And he’s good for Illinois!”