Chapter 2: Birthdays and Surprises

After the lunch with Peter Salieri, Tom had to drive home. Mrs. Pound had already picked up Cor at school, and she had used the morning to prepare everything for the birthday party. Cor just wanted to have his friends over to play in the garden, have cake, and later char some sausages on the monstrous garden grill. No clown, no inflatable castle, no DJ. In many respects, Cor was far more Tom’s son than Iris’s, and his ideas of fun were simple.

“Hey, sport! Will they all come?”

Cor smiled and nodded eagerly, but then a shadow fell over his face.

“I wanted to play soccer with them, but Mr. Castro has forbidden it.”

Arturo Castro was the family gardener, an inheritance from Old Bluenose and just as snotty. Tom squared his shoulders. No. He would not allow the gardener to ruin Cor’s fun. He turned to Mrs. Pound, the housekeeper.

“Should I tell Castro or will you?”

Mrs. Pound was one of Tom’s own hires, in fact the only one. When he and Iris moved into the grand mansion, the mausoleum as Tom called it, he clashed immediately with Emmet Villier junior’s housekeeper. She wanted to run the house and the family, she wanted a say in Cor’s education, she wanted a say in what they ate for breakfast. Tom put his foot down, something he had not done nearly often enough as he realized now, and Miss Luger was sent packing. Mrs. Pound was far more compatible with Tom, but she still had a hard time after five years to enforce her authority over the other house staff.

“I can tell him, but he won’t listen,” she shrugged.

“Call him. On the terrace in ten minutes,” Tom said sighing inwardly but determined not to budge.

He had time to change from his suit and tie getup into blue jeans and a polo shirt. He was quick about it, but when he came downstairs, Mr. Castro was already waiting on the terrace.

“You asked for me, Mr. Verkade?”

“Yes. Today is my son’s birthday. He has friends over, and they want to play soccer on the lawn behind the garages. Just so you know.”

“Mr. Verkade! This is not a public park! When Mr. Villier had the garden planned in 1949, he...”

“ ... had no idea of raising a child,” Tom interrupted the man. “This garden belongs to my family, Mr. Castro, and we use it as we see fit. A few eight-year-olds won’t cause irreparable damage, not if the lawn is worth anything. Get used to it.”

“I will protest to Mrs. Villier!” Castro replied angrily. “You have no right to give me orders, and I...”

It was a bad day for Castro to provoke Tom.

“Furthermore, you will not give any orders to my son, Mr. Castro,” Tom continued unperturbed. “Any repeat of that will lead to your immediate termination. The same will happen if you disobey the instructions from Mrs. Pound. If you feel that you can’t live with that, I’ll be happy to accept your resignation. Now get out of my sight.”

The man stared at Tom in silent fury for a moment or two before he turned to leave.

“Oh, and don’t even think of starting to water the lawn now!” Tom shot the closing salvo.

God verdomme! he swore under his breath. He was done letting the creepy Villier family and their minions run his life! He breathed deeply to overcome the anger and rejoined Mrs. Pound and Cor who helped her with the last preparations. Cor grinned at Tom.

“Thanks, Papa.”

“Hey, this is your home. What good is a backyard if you’re not allowed to use it?”

———

It was past five o’clock, and Tom was busy at the grill frying burgers and hot dogs for their young guests. Iris had not shown yet, much to his anger and in spite of her promise to be home early. For a moment he contemplated calling her, but a perverse pride kept him from reaching for his phone. If her son’s birthday was not important to her, let everybody know it! It was bad for Cor, but then he was used to it by now. The year before she had only come home at six, after the last visitors had been picked up, and then she’d had no patience for Cor either. Grimly, Tom resumed turning the burger patties.

———

At a quarter past eight o’clock, Cor went up to his room. They’d had fun during the party, but after his friends were gone, Cor had become acutely aware of his missing mother. Sensing his son’s dejection Tom then placed a call, but he only got her voicemail.

“I’ll remove the decorations now, Mr. Verkade,” Mrs. Pound announced, but Tom shook his head, no.

“Leave them. Tomorrow’s another day, and I’ll help you. You did enough today. Thank you.”

Mrs. Pound nodded. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Verkade.”

“It is what it is,” Tom shrugged.

Fifteen minutes later he checked on Cor and found him sleeping already. Running around with his friends had tired him sufficiently. Smiling sadly, Tom left his son’s bedroom. Downstairs, he switched off the lights. He even deactivated the porch light. A porch light was a sign of welcome, and Iris was not welcome after that day.

Back in their bedroom, he took a deep breath. What he was about to do could easily spell the end of their marriage. He shrugged for the umpteenth time that day. Did it really matter anymore? He and Cor were apparently just dead weight to Iris. Determined, he took his duvet and pillow together with a change of clothing and headed over to the guest wing. He used one of the guest rooms as a makeshift study, and there he dumped his bedding on the queen size bed.

There was a certain temptation to hit the liquor cabinet downstairs for a nice shot of Scotch, but there was a chance that he would have to confront Iris that night, and he would not give her the satisfaction of being a drunk or even smelling of alcohol. Sleep did not come to Tom. Instead he tossed and turned going over the day’s events.

They had shot down his one chance of moving up at Villier, making his current job a dead end proposition. Then Peter Salieri had dropped that exciting offer into his lap, an offer he was eager to learn more about. On top of that, Iris missed Cor’s birthday in spite of her promises. All things combined spelled a rough patch for his and Iris’s marriage.

‘What marriage?’ he then asked the ceiling above his bed. On good days, Iris was polite. On bad days, she belittled him and accused him of complicating her oh-so-difficult life. Their sex life had also dwindled away under the mutual resentment, and not for the first time Tom asked himself if Iris was perhaps deliberately moving away from him and her son, if she perhaps was having an affair. Walter Moran, Excel-Boy, came to his mind immediately, but he dismissed that. Her tastes could not be that bad. Moran was just a flabby, pasty stuffing for his expensive suits, with no redeeming personal qualities. He was vain, arrogant, and domineering, and Tom thought that Iris had had enough of that from her own grandfather.

He sighed. He probably would never know until it was too late.

———

Iris Villier leaned back into her seat, pinching the bridge of her nose with two fingers. It was late again, almost eleven she saw. Perhaps Tom would be in bed already. That would spare her the confrontation for tonight over the Palmer Street business which was sure to come. She felt bad about it herself. She would have let Tom know of the development, but she had not had a chance for any meaningful talk to him in at least a week.

Something else was also tugging at her conscience, but for her life she could not remember what it was. She exhaled deeply. She would apologize to Tom. She would make it clear that the new development had come as a surprise to her, too. Damn! Why did Walter have to do this without telling her? It was true: the board had installed the VPs of finance and production as answerable to the board alone, a construction to make her ascension to the position of president at age 28 more palatable to the other shareholders. Still, he should have told her. She had to back Walter in the interest of maintaining the authority of the senior management, but now she feared that Peter Salieri, the promising VP for Sales Management, would quit over this business. She could not afford to lose him. He was one of her own picks and one of her few supporters among the VPs.

How could Walter claim to adore her if he presented her with faits accomplis like that? She did not even want his adoration. She was married, and Tom had been loyal to her all those years. He was a good father too, and he used to be a brilliant scientist. Iris could not fathom why he was such a failure at Villier. Perhaps Hiram Gunderson was too critical of him. In that sense, the Palmer Street Plant would have been ideal for Tom to have a fresh start.
The wheels were crunching over the gravel driveway and Iris became aware of her surroundings again.

“Villier House, Madam,” the driver announced. He stepped from the car to open her passenger door and handed her the briefcase. “Good night, Madam!”

“Good night, Perlman,” Iris answered absentmindedly, already walking up the front steps.