Bitter Business

answering.
    “Yes,” she said finally. “I am happy. And who’s to say what life would have been like with Jeremy? For all I know he might have turned out to be a womanizer or a drunk. Maybe I’d have come to resent having a globetrotting rock climber for a husband once I had a house full of kids. That’s the problem with being widowed young. You mourn not just the man, but the ideal of the life you were going to share together. You never had a chance to find out if your Polish mother-in-law would have driven you crazy or if you and your husband would have fought like cats and dogs. In the beginning everything is perfect. You look at your life and it seems complete... and then in an instant, it all gets taken away.”
     

9
     
    The fire had died down. The bottle of wine and the plate of chocolates were empty. Mary Beth and Peter had been gotten home safely and Dagny’s daughter, Claire, had long since gone up to bed. Outside, it had started to snow.
    “What can I tell you about my family?” Dagny sighed. “They’re my family and I love them. But that doesn’t make me stupid. I think I can see them for what they are. My father is a stubborn son of a bitch who has been getting his way for so long that he’s come to believe that if he wants something to happen, it will. And you’ve got to hand it to him. The number of things he’s accomplished and overcome just by sheer force of will is staggering— his alcoholic father, a fire that leveled the plant the first year he turned a profit, an all-out war with the Teamsters—I’ll never forget it. I was still a teenager. They blew up Dad’s favorite Cadillac in front of our house but he still wouldn’t give in. In all those years there’s only one thing that’s ever defeated him.”
    “What’s that?”
    “My brother Jimmy’s death. Did Daniel tell you we had an older brother? He died when I was thirteen.”
    “Daniel told me about what happened.”
    “Losing Jimmy is the one thing that Dad can’t change or fix, and every time he looks at my brother Philip you can see the disappointment in his face.”
    “How sad for Philip.”
    “Yes. He’s spent his whole life being the good son who’s never been good enough. I’m the first one to admit that Philip is not an easy man to get along with. He’s petty and humorless and has a mean streak like the stripe down a skunk’s back. But I don’t think there’s been a day since the accident that Philip hasn’t wondered if he’d just been able to swim a little faster, if he’d just been a little stronger, tried a little harder, Jimmy would still be alive. The irony of it is that of all of us, Philip and my dad are the most alike. But Philip’s been in Dad’s shadow for so long it’s robbed him of his self-confidence. After more than twenty years of working together Philip is totally unable to communicate with Dad. He’s actually very accomplished. Did you know he has degrees in chemistry and mechanical engineering?”
    “I had no idea.”
    “He’s done incredible things with our specialty chemicals division over the last ten years. It’s been his baby. Last year specialty chemicals accounted for more than twenty percent of revenues.”
    “That should make your father happy.”
    “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t. It makes him feel threatened. Plating is what he knows, and dammit, what’s good enough for him should be good enough for his son. It doesn’t help that Philip’s biggest successes have been new compounds that have nothing to do with plating—a solvent for industrial cleaning, a special lubricant for pumping equipment, and a new surfacing agent for a large specialty market.” She sighed. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but nobody ever said that families are logical.”
    “How does Eugene fit into all of this?”
    “Even though Dad feels that neither of his surviving sons measures up to Jimmy, he’s always been very protective of Eugene.”
    I thought about the ramrod of a man with the snake tattoo on his wrist. He hardly seemed in need of anyone’s protection, so I asked Dagny to explain.
    “It all goes back to when we were children. Eugene was nine when Mother died—she developed a blood clot after Lydia was born. One day she was fine, proudly showing off the new baby. The next day she was dead. Of all of us, Eugene was the most affected. As soon as she died he stopped speaking, literally—not one word came out of his mouth.
    “Dad took him