Chapter 88: Hitting The Road

July 19, 1981

Study group was fun. Particularly for Angie, of course. Until the school year started, I wasn’t likely to find a new girlfriend. Anyone right now would be a rebound. Not that I’d mind getting laid, but even then, while I had some girls I could get a date with, I still couldn’t actually ‘date’ yet, and inviting someone new to study group seemed like a pretty extreme solution right now.

July 20, 1981

We’d set the call with Angie’s — well, Frank’s — Skokie, Illinois-based lawyer for today, so it’d be out of the way before behind-the-wheel driving lessons started tomorrow. Just after Mom headed for the store, Angie got on the phone, and I sat nearby.

“Hello, I’m calling for Sid Brown.”

“Yes, I’ll hold.”

“Hello, Mr. Brown? This is Angela Marshall.”

“Angela Marshall. You were the executor of my father, Frank Marshall’s, estate, and you’re supervising custodian of a fair bit of my trust.”

“Yes, I’ll wait.” We waited about five minutes. After a minute, Angie started making faces, rolling her fingers near her ears, pantomiming yelling into the phone, and other things along that line. Finally... “Yes, that Angela Marshall.”

“No, I don’t need access to the inheritance early. Well, not the way you’re thinking, anyway.”

“I imagine a lot of people do. I’m not trying to do that.”

“Now that Houston’s my home, I’d like to make some changes in the structure of the trust and I wanted to see if it was possible.”

“I understand, but the changes are fairly straightforward. First of all, I would like the trust moved to a national investment firm, in this case Fidelity. I would like them to be the account holder. You would still be providing account instructions until I reach the age of maturity.”

“Wonderful. Now, would the trust pay for your charges to transfer the account or will I need to send a check? Okay, you can pull the money from the Trust? Excellent. How much would that be?”

“Just a couple of hours would be required? What is your billing rate? Two hundred an hour? Please go ahead. Can you have Fidelity send me copies of the monthly statement the way you’re sending them to me now?”

“Great, thanks. One less thing for you to do. Would Fidelity be the custodian?”

“You’d still be the custodian?”

“Yes, now to my next request. Is there any chance of directing some of the investment goals?”

She made a face. “That makes sense. Is there any way I could absolve you of liability?”

She shook her head and made a thumbs-down. I shrugged. Moving the account — which might allow us to increase the money being managed, over time if nothing else — was the goal. Trading would’ve been a perk; we could wait.

“I’m pretty sure I’d still like to go ahead and have the trust moved from the local bank to Fidelity. I’ll call you later this week.”

“If you know by Friday, you can do it next week? Wonderful!”

“Thank you for your help. It was a pleasure talking to you.”

She hung up. “OK, no. Won’t fly. If we were to make small deposits, say, quarterly, or possibly a bit more often, the odds are really high that Sid won’t notice. He sounded thrilled with moving the account; I think he sees it as one less bother. But we can’t put in very much or even Sid will notice.”

“Damn. Oh well. Do we tell Mom and Dad that the account is being moved to Fidelity?”

“Yeah. Probably. I can’t imagine why that would upset them.”

“Yeah. Of course. Since it’s just moving your mismanaged money to somewhere better. Also, closer to us, since there are Fidelity offices here.”

“Exactly.”

“So ... plan B. I think we ask Dad to have Sid ship down everything in storage. There are a few things I really do want, and I’m pretty sure some of it will be sentimental for Dad. Otherwise, we can donate anything we don’t want to charity. If Daddy Frank’s is better, we can donate our old stuff to charity.”

“Makes sense.”

9:30pm

“That could’ve gone better.”

“Yup. Well ... plan B has to work. But we can probably only manage maybe $20,000 or so. The rest ... we need a good hiding place. A really good hiding place. Fireproof.”

“Fireproof would be good. I can say the house never burned down in my first go-round. Nor did they ever get burglarized.”

“Nor in mine. I’d have heard. But, still, we need to be as careful as we can be with the money, and with how we handle it. Dad and Mom aren’t dumb. If they get wind of how well we’re doing financially, they’ll think we’re some sort of financial geniuses. Or criminals.”

“Well, we are financial geniuses. It’s the why of that statement that’s... unusual.”

“Unusual is a mild way to put it.”

“I dunno. I mean, I think we’re nearly unique, but who knows? Presumably, we’re not the only people in the history of the world this happened to. Would you tell anyone who didn’t call you on some future reference they could only know if they had at least similar knowledge or circumstances?”

“It would take a very high level of trust, that’s for sure.”

“So, for all we know, someone else at school is in the same position. Or someone else we know elsewhere. Or whatever.”

“I’ve found myself listening to people and wondering if someone’s saying something that’ll be common only later.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, yeah. And I’m not good at it, considering. You gave me a bunch of clues I ignored, until I got hit with one that I couldn’t ignore.”

“There’s pretty much no way to hear ‘fuck me gently with a chainsaw’ and not think of ‘Heathers’,” she said with a grin.

“Yeah. And I knew where I was when that movie came out, years after high school. That made it easy.”

“I wonder what would happen if I went around saying that to other people.”

“They’d think you were weird.”

“Probably true.”

“Not that that’d be a big change,” I smirked.

Whap! Whapwhap!

“You knew I couldn’t resist.”

She smirked right back. “And you knew I couldn’t resist, either,”

“Fair enough.”

“By the way...” she said with a grin. “ ... Frank had a full-sized bed. Maybe you’d want that.”

“Maybe I would. We’d still have to behave.”

“Yeah, but it’d be a lot more comfortable.”

“That it would. Much more.”

“Going to sleep, big brother. Driving tomorrow. Wish me luck!”

“Eh. It’ll come right back to you.”

“I hope so!”

“Me too! Night, little sister. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

We rubbed noses and she headed out.

July 21, 1981

Driving a car is not at all like riding a bike. But remembering how to do it is, apparently, just like riding a bike.

We’d gotten to the driving school around 10:30 for our 11am lesson. It’d be three of us, Angie, me, and a guy named Mark that neither of us knew. I was pretty sure he’d been a sophomore last year. Our instructor got us situated, Mark in the driver’s seat, Angie and me in the back. He stressed the importance of seat belts, which had already been repeatedly stressed in the classroom section. Compliance was still miserable in 1981; they weren’t legally required, and many people claimed you were safer being thrown clear, even though that’s nonsense.

Mark started off. Slowly. Which was good, because it gave Angie and me an idea of what we ought to look like. He went slowly, he weaved, he nearly hit trash cans, braked too hard. All the beginner things. Thanks, Mark!

Angie got the next turn. I would’ve had it, but I asked if she wanted to go ahead of me, and she did. She was fairly uneven. Polished bits and then weaving. I really couldn’t tell if she was acting or if her skills were rusty, and in the tight confines of the car she didn’t try to give me any hints.

When it was my turn, I did my best to appear overcautious. Even so, I was worried enough about overacting that I likely underacted. We’d been going about ten minutes when the instructor looked over and said, “You’re doing really well for a first-timer.”

I shrugged a little. “I just watched and learned. Angie picked up a bit from Mark, I picked up a bit more from the two of them.”

“Well, you seem to have some aptitude, as well. And Angie, you do, too, if you just stop over-correcting. And we’ll get you there, Mark. It’s not really that hard. Idiots manage every day. I’m sure you’ve heard a parent commenting on that.”

Angie laughed. “Oh, definitely. There are a lot of idiots out there, if you listen to Mom or Dad.”

I drove us back to the driving school, being very careful of everything, and we got out.

“See you tomorrow, Angie and Steve! And Thursday, Mark,” the instructor called.

“Can’t wait!” “Looking forward to it!” “Thursday!”

We headed off to non-study group and proceeded to bore everyone with driving school stories in which we drove around the neighborhood with the skill and speed of professional race car drivers. It was our last meeting until the Sunday just before school, August 9^th. Mike and his family would be out of town for two weeks starting Saturday, visiting both siblings at their colleges.