of bus fumes and sometimes, when the wind was right, dark cocoa from the chocolate factory a few blocks away.
My mother, who had been a local radio DJ in Michigan, got some help from her boss, who found her a job as a traffic reporter. Every day, she ironically boarded a helicopter and floated above a city she hadn’t known since childhood, telling people about the congestion on the Dan Ryan Expressway, the gridlock on the Northwest Tollway.
Sometimes at my new school, I would stare out the classroom window and into the sky, imagining her flying around up there, like an angel. My mother had taken on angelic properties, too. She was thin—so thin I sometimes imagined I could see her veins and muscles right through the translucent shell of her skin. She rarely played with us anymore. She never laughed. I thought she was probably thinking of my father, of his messy brown hair and mischievous eyes that made him look as if he was about to crack up, despite his serious round glasses.
I thought I’d grown up that day, sitting on those leaves. My mother would tell people afterward that I was an “old soul,” a comment I took as the highest of compliments and a quality I worked hard to cultivate. It wasn’t difficult given the fact that I had taken on many of my mother’s duties. Every morning, I toasted two slices of bread, just like she used to. Every morning, I smeared them with peanut butter, and then, very carefully, striped the middle of the bread with a column of strawberry jam, just like my mother had when we were in Michigan. I would coax Charlie from bed and make him sit in the kitchen, where we would eat our toast, just like we used to.
And then one day, my mother came back, at least for a while. She smiled again, she had gained a little weight, she laughed when Charlie spilled chocolate milk on the couch.
As I got older, I felt stronger for having lost my dad at a young age. There was a certain relief in having experienced that loss, because I knew what pain was like; I knew I could survive. I laugh now when I think of that. The fact was I was only eight—old enough to be nearly destroyed, yet resilient enough to see no alternative but to march forward.
I’m not eight anymore, and the truth is, I grew lighter over the years. Maybe the old soul was still there, a piece of me that watched over my life, but my life had become fun again; I found friends with whom I could be silly and revel in it. Eventually, I found Sam, who had brought me so much joy. And then came that Tuesday—another autumn Tuesday—when the plates of my world screeched and shifted.
3
Forester Carlton Pickett loved being alone. Absolutely loved it. He was the youngest of eight from a poor Southern family. He had begun working steady jobs when he was eleven, and since his twenties, he had run Pickett Enterprises, which had some four hundred employees. All of this meant he was rarely alone.
At age sixty-eight, he now felt entitled to an occasional bit of solitude. So at a time like this—home early on a surprisingly balmy autumn day with no dinner parties, no date, no work occupying his mind—he planned to take advantage of that solitude.
His Audi hugged the long gravel driveway. At first, only the towering pines lining the drive were evident, but then they cleared, and his house, still far in the distance, came into view. Its style was Greek Revival, the kind Forester used to stare at in awe while growing up. It was made of white stone, the front protected by massive columns. Inside, the house boasted ten bedrooms, eleven baths, two kitchens, a gym and a movie theater. The place would have been ostentatious if it wasn’t in the big-money area of Lake Forest and if it wasn’t surrounded by acres and acres of lawn and trees. Forester had known the house was over the top, but he entertained frequently, and he felt he deserved it. He had never been shy about living a big life.
Forester entered through the garage door and came into the kitchen. His housekeeper stood at the counter, back turned, fixing his meal.
“Hello, Annette,” he said. He remembered when it was Olivia he used to call hello to. He remembered that every day, even though she’d been gone thirteen years now, stolen by ovarian cancer.
Annette turned at the waist and bid him a subdued good-evening, then returned to her work.
Forester walked from the kitchen and through his large marble foyer. In the front living room, he opened the four sets of French doors looking out onto the patio, the vast yard and a small pond. For some reason, Annette liked to keep the house sealed up tight, a habit he couldn’t seem to break. He glanced around the living room. The effect, he hoped, was one of eclectic elegance. The designer had packed it full of expensive rugs, couches and wall coverings that showcased Forester’s unique and odd collection of objects collected on his travels—an oxidized brass bowl he paid two dollars for in Malaysia; the plaster statue of a radio microphone his mother gave him after he bought his first station.
Annette stepped into the room. “Cornish hen tonight,” she said simply.
“Wonderful.”
“They’re in the warming oven when you’re ready.”
“Thank you, Annette.”
In the study, he opened a bottle of DuMol Pinot Noir and poured it into a glass decanter. He turned on Ramsey Lewis. God, he loved jazz. He could still remember arriving in Chicago when he was twenty-one. He would hang out at the Green Mill, seeing every kind of jazz he could. His favorites were the southern, bluesy stuff that made him think of home, and the true Chicago style, guys like Franz Jackson that reflected the big, new, shiny city he lived in. In a way, it was jazz that had brought him everything he owned.
Looking back at his life, Forester was amazed at the apparent organization of it. He believed now that everything had happened for a reason—leading him to the next stage—but while he was busy living that life it had felt, at the time, like a convoluted, random mess. It was random that he had lost his factory job only seven months after moving to Chicago. It was random that a radio-station owner, a guy named Gus Connifer whom he’d met at the Green Mill, offered him a job as a “production assistant” at the jazz station, where he was essentially a glorified gofer. And it was decidedly random that after a year at the station, a year in which Forester had soaked up the world of radio the way the summer ground soaks up rain, he had a chance to buy the station.
Gus Connifer was a smoking, drinking, hard-living man who’d finally been diagnosed with emphysema and a host of other respiratory illnesses. He thought he would die soon, and he was fine with that, except for one little thing—he couldn’t stand his wife, whom he suspected of cheating, and wanted her to inherit nothing. Gus was a Catholic, so divorce wasn’t an option. He wanted to unload the radio station, and he didn’t care for how much. He liked Forester, who over the last year had been a bigger help to him than his ten other employees combined. He told Forester he’d sell the station for exactly a thousand dollars. Forester got a loan and with it his first property. Later, he bought other radio stations, not to mention television stations, cable networks, production companies, newspapers, recording studios and publishing companies, making Pickett Enterprises the largest media conglomerate in the Midwest.
Forester poured wine into a long-stemmed glass. Thank God red wine was considered healthy these days. It gave him an excuse to indulge in one of his few vices. And hopefully it would give him a mellow buzz, maybe take away that vague sense that something was wrong inside his body. He was a fit, strong sixty-eight—that’s what all his doctors said, and he had a few of them. Forester now believed in preventive medicine rather than a reactionary approach. Yet there was still this tiredness, this sense that his body wasn’t exactly right. But he was nearing seventy. What did he expect?
He glanced at the framed pictures above the wet bar. He kissed the tips of his fingers and touched the photo of his late wife, Liv. He would give up everything to have her back.
