Chapter 65: Blockhead

March 16, 1992 Chicago, Illinois

We arrived home from O’Hare just after Elyse brought Abbie and Matthew home from Midway Airport, and just in time for dinner, which Nancy had helpfully prepared.

“There’s my other granddaughter!” Nancy said when she saw Birgit.

“Hi, Grandma!” Birgit said going over to give her a hug before climbing into her booster seat.

“How were the trips?”

“Vermont was nice and peaceful,” Kara said.

“Except for a certain husband who just HAD to watch NASCAR!” Jessica teased.

“Steve, you must have been going nuts when that caution fell for Moroso’s spin,” Abbie said.

“I was! Matthew, did you like the race?”

“Yes! I saw Bill! And Alan! And the Intimidator!”

“You mean Ironhead!” I chuckled.

“I rode on a plane! Twice!”

“Was it fun?”

“My ears hurt,” Matthew said. “But it was fun!”

“I’m glad!” I said, then turned to Nancy, “How were things here?”

“Those Sunday gatherings of yours are VERY interesting,” she said with a laugh.

“Uh-oh. What was the topic?”

“Not group nudity, thank heavens!” Nancy, said, laughing harder. “We talked about love. Your friends Michelle and Jorge kind of got into it with Elizabeth.”

“How bad, Elyse?” I asked.

“Heated, but polite. Let’s just say Elizabeth is NOT a romantic!”

“And this is news to anyone on the planet?” I chuckled.

“I thought Jorge was going to blow a gasket when she insisted it’s just a biochemical reaction to stimuli with no real meaning.”

“I bet! And Michelle had a religious perspective on it, I take it?”

“Yes,” Nancy said. “Though it’s quite different from my experience.”

“Given the churches you attended, I’m not surprised,” I said. “That girl has more faith in her little finger than most people have in their whole bodies.”

“That was quite obvious,” Nancy said.

“I’m glad you participated.”

“It was fun!”

March 17, 1992, Chicago, Illinois

“Are we voting on the way to the office?” Elyse asked.

“I think so,” I said. “Kara will vote at lunch. Jessica will vote during her break. Bethany moved here too late to register, and Abbie doesn’t vote.”

“What time are you leaving, Mom?” Kara asked.

“About 10:00am. That gets me home before 5:00pm Ohio time.”

“We really appreciate you coming to Chicago and helping with the kids while we were away. Please thank Joyce for us as well.”

“I loved being with the kids!”

Elyse and I left the house and walked to the polling station. We both took Democratic ballots for the same reason - there was really no choice on the Republican side. Bush was going to be renominated and the state and local races had single candidates who were sure to lose in the fall. Voting in the Democratic primary was the only way to have any say at all, even if I voted Libertarian in November. I cast my vote for Bill Clinton, then went through the other offices and marked the ballot for the candidates I’d researched and chosen.

Mid-morning Charlie came to my office to discuss the two finalist candidates she had for Pittsburgh. Both of them looked very good, and Mario and the team had seen them all. I approved bringing them to Chicago for interviews and she went to make the arrangements with Kimmy.

Just before lunch I had a quick status meeting with Sam and Penny on Dante’s project, and confirmed that everything was going OK and that Dante was not hitting on Sam. At lunch I confirmed with Crystal that I’d made the reservations at Alex’s place and that I would, indeed, wear my tuxedo. After lunch I spent time on the phone with a network engineer from InfoNet finalizing the specifications and configurations for connecting our offices to their Wide Area Network.

March 19, 1992, Chicago, Illinois

“How will this work?” I asked.

“Today? Just sit and listen. We’ll be voting on two proposals. Both of them are more of my mom’s liberal political crap. I don’t think I have the votes to defeat them this time. Vote your conscience. Next meeting, you should start arguing your position. But not today. You need to get the lay of the land.”

“You don’t think I can figure it out and sway votes?”

“I think you need to understand the personalities first,” Jeri said. “Seriously. If you make enemies, we’ll get nowhere.”

“So just tell me then,” I said.

“That won’t work because you need to understand their relationships to each other as well. Trust me on this. New members who are too forceful in their first meeting end up isolated. This isn’t like your board at NIKA where you knew everyone and they know you.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” I said.

Jeri pulled her Mercedes into a private parking garage next to the Foundation building. She parked in a spot marked with her name, and we got out and went through a doorway into the building. She used a key card to access a private elevator and we went up to the top floor where the boardroom was located.

Jeri introduced me to each of the board members, all of whom were at least twenty years older than we were. I didn’t have much use for class, whether it was determined by money or birth, and none of these people particularly impressed me at first blush, except for one man who appeared to be a self-made real estate investor. In the brief conversations with each board member, he was the only one who seemed down to earth.

“He grew up in Bridgeport, went to public school, and UIC,” Jeri whispered as we took our seats around a large conference table.

To me, that was her saying he was a ‘Commoner’ as I was, and he seemed to be a potential natural ally in Jeri’s quest to rid the board of dilettantes who championed silly left-wing causes when there was so much work to be done in Chicago that could directly help people. I continued to size up the other members as lunch was served by impeccably dressed waiters.

Margaret Lundgren, who sat at the head of the table, spoke briefly before we ate, and then there was small talk around the table during the meal. According to the agenda, there were two proposals on the table. What surprised me was that I hadn’t actually seen the proposals circulated. And that was problematic.

“The meeting will come to order. Our first order of business will be the two proposals before you.”

“Mrs. Lundgren,” I said. “I did not receive copies of these in advance, and don’t think we should be voting on them without having time to read and digest them.”

Jeri kicked me under the table but I ignored her.

“Mr. Adams, as you’re new, you don’t know our procedure. I’ll present the proposals and then there will be discussion, and we’ll vote.”

“Ma’am, with all due respect, the amount of money involved, and the complexity of the proposals requires time to evaluate and, if necessary, talk to the organization involved.”

Jeri kicked me again, harder.

“I have done all the necessary research.”

“I move we table these items until everyone has a chance to actually read the proposals.”

“You’re out of order!” Mrs. Lundgren said.

“Margaret, he has a point,” Alec Glass, the real estate investor said. “This is something that’s bothered me for the two years I’ve been on this board. I believe his motion is in order and I second it.”

There was a quick whispered discussion between Margaret Lundgren and a man sitting to her right. Jeri leaned over and whispered that he was the Foundation attorney.

“Very well, we have a motion on the table. I believe we can dispense with discussion and have a vote. All those in favor of tabling the proposals, please signify by raising your hands.”

As I’d expected, Alec raised his hand, as did I. And so did three others. That was five. Jeri didn’t raise her hand, and I turned to look at her. She gave me a slight sideways shake of her head.

“All those in opposed to the motion?”

Six hands went up, including Jeri’s. If she was trying to teach me a lesson, I was going to be very put off. If she was doing it because I refused to listen to her advice, I was going to be even more upset. And if she was doing it because she disagreed with what I was saying, she’d have my resignation the minute we left the room.

“The motion fails, 6-5. We’ll take up the first one, a request for funding from an environmental group in Oregon.”

I listened to what amounted to a lecture, and when a motion was made and seconded, and Mrs. Lundgren tried to move on without discussion, I objected. Another whispered conversation with her attorney resulted in her opening the discussion.

“Mrs. Lundgren, exactly how will this money be spent, and what controls are in place to ensure that it is spent properly?”

“It’s funding for the general operation of this group, and they publish a financial report each year.”

“So, in theory, they could use this money to pay their executives large bonuses and not spend a dime on actually doing any work? Or use it for political donations? Or go off on some completely unrelated endeavor. And do we receive these financial reports? Are they audited?”

“Mr. Adams,” Stuart Monroe said, “We’ve been donating to groups like this for years. It’s standard procedure. Mrs. Lundgren and the staff vet these groups and make recommendations to the board.”

“I’m sure they do,” I said. “But if the Board is a rubber stamp, then why does it exist? I have a board of directors of my company and they are by no means a rubber stamp! Their job is to review business practices and financials and help guide the company, not simply approve of everything I ask for!”

The room erupted with several people trying to speak at once. At this point, I was past caring. I let them have their debate, and when the proposal was called, Alec and I were the only ‘no’ votes. The same thing happened with the second proposal. It, too, passed 9-2. I was, to say the least, disgusted. The entire sordid affair could have been prevented by Jeri agreeing to table the motions.

When the meeting ended, I didn’t bother with socializing. I simply left the room and went to the parking garage and stood next to Jeri’s silver Mercedes. She came out twenty minutes later.

“I TOLD you not to do that! You didn’t listen!”

“Jeri, with all due respect, fuck you!” I growled. “If you had agreed to table the motions, that would have been the end of it, and then we could have had a rational discussion. But out of some fit of pique or some foolish notion of teaching me a lesson or some desire to keep the peace with your mother, you blew it. We had WON. A simple point of reviewing the proposals and you threw it away!”

“And you made enemies in that room.”

“Which would NOT have happened if you had supported me.”

“You would have just made fewer. Maybe. And, just because people agreed to table the motion does not make them allies. They have their own agendas, none of which you are aware of!”

“Fuck their agendas! How could it POSSIBLY have hurt you to support my motion to table the proposals?”

“You do NOT understand what’s going on in that room!”

“At this point, I don’t WANT to understand. Give me one solid, logical reason for not supporting my motion to table the proposals until we had a chance to review them.”

“Get in the car. We’ll talk on the way back to the office.”

I shook my head, “No. I’m going to take the Metra Electric. I’ll see you at the office. I need some time to cool down.”

I turned and began walking towards the stairs. Jeri called my name twice but I ignored her. I was livid, and I knew that I wasn’t in any state to have a rational conversation with Jeri at the moment. I didn’t see any possible explanation for her behavior. But I also knew that I wasn’t in a state of mind to even know if her reasoning was sound. I needed to cool off.

I walked to the Metra Electric station and bought my ticket. I went to the correct platform and sat on a bench and did my best to try to make the tension and anger fade. By the time the train arrived, I was feeling less tense, but I was still angry. I found a seat on the upper deck and hoped nobody would sit beside me. I simply wasn’t in the mood. The ride didn’t help as much as I’d hoped, so instead of going to the office, I walked home.

“What are you doing here?” Kara asked when I walked into the ‘Indian’ room where she was sitting.

“Have time for a sauna? I’ll explain.”

She nodded and we went to the basement. I turned on the controls, we stripped off our clothes, and as soon as the rocks were hot, I ladled water onto them.

“What happened?”

I explained to her the sequence of events. She asked a few questions but otherwise just let me tell her what I’d seen, done, and felt. She did question why I ignored Jeri’s advice.

“Because it was a simple, logical action for a Board member. And if I’m on the Board, I’m responsible for the decisions made by the Board.”

“That makes sense, but if you voted against the proposals, wouldn’t that show you disagreed?”

“I can’t be part of something that is simply a rubber stamp. Yes, Jeri got the proposal for the Center through, though I’m not sure how she managed that one. But this seemed as if it was going back to the old ways of not publishing the information and not vetting the recipients, something Margaret Lundgren said was policy!”

“I agree that it doesn’t make sense,” she said when I finished. “But Jeri must have SOME reason.”

“Of course she does! There’s always a reason. But I can’t fathom any possible reason that would justify what she did. It just makes no sense.”

“Are you going to let her explain?”

“Yes. I was trying to calm down because I knew I was in no mood to listen to her and actually hear what she was saying.”

“I think you did the right thing by taking some time to cool down. Or get warm and sweaty!”

“The sauna just seems to make the tension seep out of me. It’s almost always worked that way. I probably don’t do it often enough.”

“Things haven’t been so tense lately. In fact, other than the little problem with Carla, it’s all been mostly low-grade things you can handle fairly easily. Yes, you messed up with Crystal, but that wasn’t eating away at you like things have in the past. You figured it out and dealt with it.”

“Well, I haven’t finished dealing with it, and I’m still curious as to exactly what she has in mind.”

“Usually you know. She has you completely confused.”

“It’s my own damned fault,” I chuckled. “I made the mess. Now we’re trying to navigate through it. I just don’t know the destination.”

“It’s not the usual one?” Kara smirked.

“There is evidence in both directions, and I don’t know exactly what she’s thinking. For all I know, the request to wear the tux is so that she can tease me. I’d deserve it, too. And honestly, unless she gets an STD test, it’s not going there. And I think that’s her ultimate safety net.”

“You think she didn’t do it on purpose?”

“She says she forgot in the heat of the moment, but I wonder about that. Perhaps it was subconscious, but I think that was her self-defense mechanism kicking in.”

“She doesn’t want to do it?”

“She’s conflicted. I think part of it stems from me insisting that we weren’t compatible. I think, perhaps, deep down, she knows that. And that’s what held her back. Or, perhaps, she knows that it’s just a quick fling and THAT is a problem.”

“She wants a relationship?”

“It could be that for her sex requires a relationship and she can’t have one with me because of my situation. Abbie was an aberration, if you will.”