We had no children. And even if we had, Elisa would receive the income for the entire span of her lifetime. My brothers and I would be passed over entirely, lending the term “generation-skipping trust” an unpalatable new twist. Until now, I had never given the trusts much thought. I was young, and artists, well, they were always just scraping by. And so I had learned to romanticize my bohemianism, if only to cope with a lifestyle that afforded few of the luxuries I’d enjoyed in the past. In fact, until very recently, I had been perfectly happy on my chosen path, self-abnegation included. But now I realized that the Stroh trusts—psychologically certainly—had always, in truth, served as something of a safety net for me. I’d never had to cope with serious uncertainty. All that had changed now. And not just because of my father’s impetuous behavior.
The vast majority of the Stroh Brewery’s value had virtually disintegrated while I’d been holed up in my art studio in London, wrestling with esoteric issues of point of view in my video-installation pieces. For several years, every major brewer in the United States had been undercutting its competition with price reductions, and Stroh had been forced to follow suit; with no margins and no cash, our business was tanking. In a desperate last attempt to stay afloat—and with the help of another massive loan—the Stroh Brewery acquired the G. Heileman Brewing Company, a brewery in even direr straits than our own. The marriage was a poor one, and our combined sales continued to drop. Yet the Stroh board went on paying the family shareholders the large income to which everyone was accustomed. Indeed, my father’s lifestyle seemed to grow more lavish by the minute, with grander houses, fancier boats, and showier cars. His denial was contagious; even Bobby, Whitney, and I assumed our businesses must be faring better than reported at the annual family business meetings. For years, we’d all flown cross-country to attend these meetings—a requirement of all shareholders, present and future—under the assumption that the trusts would be there and that we, as future shareholders, were ultimately responsible for our stake in the company. Now it was clear we’d never had any control over the company’s destiny, let alone the trusts.
“Jesus, this just keeps getting worse,” said Bobby as he read the bullet points Bill had placed in front of us.
“Each of you will have to seriously consider what you will do for income,” Bill said, sitting back down. “Historically, the brewery has supported the family, but you would not be well advised to consider these trusts as . . . a significant source of future income.”
It was as if I’d come home to a seared patch of ground where my house had stood. Nor was the problem simply the loss of future income. Suddenly, the notion of being an artist seemed frivolous and misguided; I’d have to find something to apply myself to that guaranteed a decent living. Hell, I didn’t even have medical insurance. On some level, certainly, my mother had strived to prepare us for this all our lives, but being actively disinherited, well—this was a rather different thing from having money and pretending as if one didn’t. The life I had imagined for myself—becoming a successful artist, owning my own apartment, perhaps even collecting the work of other emerging artists—suddenly it all felt well out of reach.
Reading the fear in my brothers’ faces, I realized they, too, must be letting go of certain hopes about their futures. For Whitney, it was an Upper East Side apartment, Augusts on Long Island, and the ability to leave behind that monthly spike in anxiety triggered by opening his American Express bill. Just the night before, when my mother asked him about his job raising money for a friend’s company, he’d quipped that he’d “rather live Unabomber style in the woods of Montana” before he did any “bootlicking.” Now he might just have to.
Bobby had hoped one day to be able to leave his job at the brewery and run a restaurant in the Caribbean, but the way things were going at the brewery, he’d likely be leaving before he could afford to. The money had never been ours, of course, and none of us had ever had expectations of being “rich,” but knowing the Stroh trusts were there had given us the space to dream of the lives we wanted for ourselves.
“Hold on a second, Bill,” I jumped in. “Elisa is not the mother of our father’s children. That’s got to count for something.”
“No, she’s not,” Bill said. “But, you see, when these trusts were written, back in the forties, divorce wasn’t common. Your grandfather assumed that ‘lawful wife’ meant first and only wife. Times and circumstances have obviously changed since then. The documents, however, make no distinction between first and second wives. Or even third, for that matter.”
Whitney shifted restlessly in his chair, his upper lip beading with sweat. “Bill, are you saying that Elisa will likely get the biggest piece of the pie?”
Bill looked at all of us with sympathy. “At my urging, your father and Elisa are currently negotiating a postnuptial agreement. But . . . well, your father has no leverage, really, at this point. Elisa and her attorney have already rejected several generous proposals. So . . . you three should be advised that Elisa, now that she’s legally married to your father, can pretty much write her own ticket.”
“And you can be sure she will,” muttered Bobby.
“Afraid so,” Bill said.
I put my pen down on the table and pulled on my coat. “Are we finished?” I asked.
Everyone nodded.
“Merry fucking Christmas,” said Whitney to no one in particular.
CHRISTMAS, 1974
(by Eric Stroh)