"Nothing's wrong with me," I replied as I felt the knot in my stomach twist. With my father, no conversation that began this way ended well. I continued, "Bugsy and I want to help create opportunities for renewable energy and make a lot of money doing it. If you look at our financial projections—"
"The hell you do," he said as he raised his head and finally looked at me. His meaty hands were clenched in tight fists and I could see the color rising in his cheeks as he fought to keep his rage contained.
By no stretch of the imagination was my father a calm person, and I learned this lesson very early on. As teenager, I'd had several run-ins with him, but none as bad as the one that had marked my sixteenth birthday. He had raged out of control over my failure to show up on time for mass and rained holy hell down upon me for failing to put God first in my life. I ended up confined to my room with a broken arm and two broken ribs and missed the first month of the next semester.
No one had reported him because he'd made it clear that the price of disloyalty would be extremely high, and after seeing what he would do to his own son, no one dared test the waters. My mother had been traumatized by the incident, but we'd never spoken about it, and from then on, I made it a point to steer clear of my father unless there was a large audience of potential witnesses present. I had even gone so far as to make sure that I'd been invited to spend all school breaks with classmates or relatives, and although she never said anything about it, I always thought my mother had had a hand in those arrangements.
I'd been away from him for the past six years working on my degrees at MIT, and in that time, I'd grown taller and worked to develop the kind of bodily strength that would give me a fighting chance against the man. I was now 6'4" and a triathlete who could bench-press more than four hundred pounds. At sixty-seven, my father had lost some of the muscle that had made his 6'2" body seem so intimidating.
"Son, I am an oil man," he said, looking up at me with his steely, gray eyes. "I have worked my entire life to provide you with the resources and opportunities that would ensure your success. I have run myself ragged building this company and keeping it running smoothly knowing that someday my son would take over and run it even more successfully. I have gone to church every Sunday and prayed to God our Father that you would grow up to be the man you need to be in order to run the business successfully. Your mother and I have ensured that you will marry a girl who is rich, educated, and beautiful, and whose connected to a Venezuelan oil business will ensure the continued success of the company I've poured my blood, sweat, and tears into. And now you walk into my office and feed me this bullshit about some hippie-dippy, little startup that wants to harness wind?"
I clenched my jaw and looked straight at him feeling my own anger and resentment begin to rise.
My father angrily slammed papers onto his desk as he muttered under his breath finally looking up. "What son-of-a-bitch put you up to this? Tell me and I will have him hunted down like a dog and shot!"
"No one," I replied through clenched teeth. I tried to remind myself of all the reasons why it was a bad idea to lose my temper with my father as I explained, "I worked on a project like this at MIT and I can see the potential for wind power. It's my idea."
"Bullshit; you're not smart enough to come up with something like this," he scoffed. "Someone is putting you up to this. How much are they paying you to betray your family?"
"Is that what you think?" I asked as I realized that my father's anger at me was pathological. He hated me and his paranoia about a hostile takeover of his company was his primary focus. My value was only in what I could do for him: how I could run his company, carry on his legacy. I was irrelevant. The realization felt like a
physical blow and I inhaled sharply as it hit me.
"Damn right that's what I think!" he shouted as he stood up and pushed his chair back before striding around the desk to stand inches away as he continued. "I think you've enjoyed all the benefits of my money and that your education has made you a weak-minded, little weasel who would sell out to the highest bidder. You have been nothing but a disappointment to your mother and me. I told her we should have had a second child just in case the first one was a loser, but she assured me that you would be the perfect son. What a joke. You're the exact opposite of everything I wanted."
I felt my pulse racing as the accusations and insults flew. It was one thing to think your father hated you, but quite another to have him openly and aggressively confirm it. I clenched my fists at my side, trying to remind myself that he was just a mean, old man who hated everyone and everything. I was nothing special in that area, but as he continued to pile on the insults, I felt my resolve weakening until finally I couldn't hold back anymore.
"Wow, you really have a low opinion of me, don't you?" I sneered. "I'm choosing work I believe in—unlike what you did, Father. You're the weak-minded fool who trusted God and his father to guide him in the right direction, and look where you ended up: Old and mean and angry at the world because you didn't get to do what you wanted to do with your life, isn't that right? I mean, how pathetic are you that you didn't even get to marry the woman you actually loved?"
"Son, you're pushing the outer limits of my patience," my father said as his face turned pale. I'd brought up history that he thought he'd buried and even though he felt free to dig deep into my life, he didn't like it when the tables were turned.
"You're not the only one who uses information as currency in this family," I said pulling myself up to my full height as my father stood a foot away glowering at me. "And I would have thought you'd appreciate the fact that I am looking to build a new business and tap into new veins of profit. But I guess your ego and your ignorance drives most of what you do these days, don't they?"
"You are an absolute disgrace to this family," he growled. I could see him clenching his fists and I knew that I was dangerously close to provoking a physical outburst. As I stood silently, waiting to see where this would go, I breathed deeply and reassured myself that this time I would not end up on the losing end of a fight with him. After a long while, my father's rage seemed to recede a bit, and he spoke terse tone, "I don't know what made you want to pursue this ridiculous line of work, but I'll tell you something right now, son: If you and that friend of yours want to pursue this little fantasy, you have one month to do it. Then you'll come home and marry the Vasquez girl or you will be cut off from any and all financial support. I'm not allowing a dime of my money to go toward the business of putting me out of business or to the impudent action of disgracing this family. I am a business man and a man who believes in God; you are a good for nothing, ungrateful rebel without a cause, and I will have no difficulty cutting you out of everything."
I stood completely still, staring into my father's eyes as I thought about my response. I knew what I wanted to do and I knew what would happen if I chose it. I'd thought about this moment for years, and in all my fantasies about this type of showdown, I'd always imagined myself heroically throwing punches until I had weakened him to the point that I could slam him to the ground and put my boot on his throat as I demanded an apology for all the pain he'd caused. I imagined that I would scoff at his weakness and then walk away feeling vindicated. What I had not imagined was this: Standing face to face with my tormenter and realizing that he was nothing more than a frightened, old bully who had lost the ability to terrorize me with his mere presence. I felt my stomach begin to roil as I stared at the man who called himself my father.
"You're so damn ungrateful," my father muttered shaking his head in disgust, but I could see that he'd backed down and was not going to go any further than using words to try and wound me. "I don't know how we managed to raise a son that is so disloyal to and disrespectful of his family. You're pathetic and sad."
I could feel the blood rushing to my face as he read off the list of ways in which I'd disappointed him and my mother. I could feel the shame threatening to engulf me, but I didn't look away. Instead, I absorbed the bricks he threw knowing that I'd later use them to build an even stronger wall of defense. I knew my father was a predator who used words to weaken his prey, but in his rage, he seemed to forget that I'd had a lifetime of practice in deflecting his attacks.
"One month of freedom and then you come back and do as you're expected to or you will forfeit all inheritance rights and you will not receive a dime from me or your mother," he continued as he stood and circled me. For a moment, I wondered if he might actually be thinking about physically hurting me, but then he went in for the kill. "Think long and hard about this choice, son. If you choose this wind business over your family, it will be the last choice you make as a Wallace."
As he said this, an invisible thread broke. I'd spent a lifetime cowering and hiding from this man, and now I'd had enough of his bullying. I might find myself dirt poor after this encounter, but I was damn well going to make all the choices about my life. Because when I looked ahead, I saw that if I gave in now, I might have all the money in the world, but I'd never be free of my father. I'd spend the rest of my life groveling on my knees as I did his bidding. I swallowed hard and made my decision.
"Well, since you put it that way," I said as a smile spread across my lips, but did not reach my eyes. "I'll pack my things and be out of my apartment by morning."
My father's eyes narrowed as he looked me up and down. He drew a deep breath, and as a cruel grin spread across his own lips, said, "No, you'll take what you've got right now. Everything else is mine. Now get the hell out of my sight. You have one month to make your decision. If you're not back and engaged to that girl, then you'll be out for good. Oh, and you're fired."
I opened my mouth to argue that this wasn't fair, and then quickly closed it and simply nodded. I smiled, shrugged, and said, "You can't fire me. I quit," then turned and calmly walked out the door.
As I walked past the front desk, Kimber called, "Have a good day, Mr. Wa—Adam!"
"Kimber," I said quietly as I stopped and turned to face her. "If you're smart, you'll get out while you still can."
A look of confusion crossed her unlined face, and then she smiled brightly and said, "Thanks for the advice, but I'm happy here."
"It's your funeral," I muttered as I turned and walked out the door.