My mother shook her head. “No, dear. It’s the meeting he’s coming for.”
Arkady seasoned the bird, his back to us. I loved his Old World values—good food, family bonds, and friends who mattered. He was deeply hospitable; he and his three brothers—talented musicians all—turned every gathering into a hearty celebration. How different they were from my family.
I hoped Arkady would understand the situation with Charlie—that my mother simply couldn’t handle this son of hers; if Charlie stayed at the house, the cascade of guilty feelings would be too much. And so, it was her only defense, keeping Charlie at bay. Seeing how disturbed Arkady clearly was, however, I began to wonder if I should have brought him home for this particular weekend.
Among the only times we convened as a family, the annual Stroh business meetings were never happy occasions. Bobby, Whitney, and I always came home for the meeting, springing for expensive airline tickets only to be told just how badly the business was faring. After our acquisition of the bankrupt G. Heileman Brewing Company in 1996—landing another fifteen or so declining brands in our portfolio—sales had continued to plummet. In 1999, we finally sold our entire brewing business to Miller and Pabst, who divided up our labels like so many spare parts. The family was crestfallen, our 150-year brewing tradition gone, just like that. Miller Brewing bought our Henry Weinhard’s and Mickey’s brands. Pabst bought our forty or so remaining brands, including all the Stroh’s brands, which they soon buried, even as its own label picked up a hipster cred it parlayed into record profits. Internet chat rooms had filled up with conversations among our many loyal consumers about what had happened to Stroh’s Beer. No one knew.
Then, after the substantial business loans for the Heileman purchase had been paid off, the proceeds from the sale—just over a hundred million—went directly into the equities markets, only to take an instant nosedive with the “dot-bomb.” And since my father had sworn Bill Penner to secrecy about the terms of his postnuptial agreement with Elisa, my brothers and I weren’t even sure if a sliver of interest still remained. Yet we still sprang for those airline tickets, if only because we knew these meetings would be the only chance we’d have to see each other.
The evening went badly. The goose Arkady had procured was not a success, its tasteless meat yielding no drippings for gravy.
“In Russia this would never happen,” he said over and over as he sweated over the steaming bird carcass. “Farm-raised garbage.”
Trying to help him save the dinner, Bobby’s blond Louisianian wife, Cheryl, spent hours in the kitchen with Arkady. But it was no use; the American goose was just a total failure.
Charlie came into the kitchen as soon as he arrived. It broke my heart to see how irretrievably his looks had been disfigured by the drugs and hard living. “How’s my princess?” he said, wrapping me in a big hug, as if entirely unaware of the shock I was registering. A moment later he was cheerful, chatting away with Arkady at the stove, bringing a can of Old Milwaukee Near Beer to his lips now and again. My mother had asked him to not have any alcohol, and he seemed agreeable enough about this. None of us would be drinking at dinner—“It would be cruel to drink in front of Charlie,” my mother had said earlier that day—which was why my father and Elisa had opted out of the gathering.
When dinner was served, my mother sat at the head of the table in the dining room, her knitting pushed aside in a forlorn pile on the kitchen counter. She absently redistributed the food on her plate while Bobby, Whitney, and I discussed the agenda for the meeting the following day.
When the conversation lagged, we sat around the table staring at one another, unable to eat the tough, bone-dry goose meat. Whitney shifted restlessly in his chair, scuffing the wood floor. Bobby absently pulled on his mustache and looked at his watch. Charlie crossed and recrossed his legs impatiently, looking as if he might climb the walls. We all could have used a drink just then, but Charlie, he clearly needed one.
Whitney jumped up from the table first—to meet his friends at a bar. “If you’ll please excuse me,” he said in an official tone as he exited. “I’m expected elsewhere.”
Bobby, too, stood up, and then Cheryl. “Thank you, Arkady,” she offered sweetly in her Southern lilt. From the window, I watched them get into their car with somber faces and drive away.