The Inheritance Paradox
Five (My Story)
OF COURSE, when I showed my handwritten version of Dad’s story to Brenda on Monday afternoon, it wasn’t as complete as you’ve read it here. A lot of details were revealed to me later and I added them in when I typed the manuscript. Brenda nodded and clutched my hand as she read from the journal.
Brenda is one of the few people who can read my handwriting. We weren’t taught penmanship in school like our parents were. We were probably the last generation who could even read cursive writing. Our kids had been taught keyboard skills from kindergarten on. Even their printing was suspect. I was sure neither Lisa nor Zach could read my writing.
It felt really good to sit with a fountain pen and scrawl this stuff in the journal. I felt like a part of my life had been missing ever since college.
“This is really intense,” Brenda whispered when she’d finished reading it. “You are a really good writer.”
“It’s not supposed to be about my writing,” I laughed. “It’s Dad’s story. I just want to make it sound believable.”
“It is. What do you suppose happened to him that left him homeless when he met Mom?”
“Whatever it was, it hit him so hard that he still doesn’t want to talk about it. When I asked questions, it was like he didn’t even hear them,” I said. “When are the kids getting home?”
“It won’t be too long, I suppose. They have school tomorrow. Zach and his classmates are already in full-party mode,” Brenda said. “The school might as well hold graduation now and just mail out diplomas. I don’t think there’s a senior who has his head in school.”
“I’ll talk to Zach when we go out Wednesday,” I said.
“You’re getting him a car?”
“I promised. We set a budget and I’ll go with him to pick it out. I should call Loren Aisley and have him come along to evaluate the car. I’ve never been very good at used car shopping. Loren was the gearhead of my high school. And Zach likes him.”
“Zach is looking forward to the time with you, honey. Even if you don’t get the perfect car, he’ll be happy. He is more interested in something he can fix up than in having the perfect car.”
“He’s really going to go to that auto repair school, isn’t he?” I sighed. “I hope he’s making a good choice. I won’t complain, though, if it’s what makes him happy.”
“You don’t need to worry,” Brenda said. “Zach has a good head on his shoulders. He’s putting a lot of consideration into what he really loves. And we have always told the kids that they should do what they love, right?”
“They just haven’t realized that doing what they love for a living might not be as satisfying as just having a job and doing what they love because they love it,” I said.
Writing Dad’s story had just hammered that point home. It had been more satisfying to spend the past day writing because I loved it than all the hours I spent writing technical manuals and documentation. I loved to write, but writing for a living didn’t mean I was enjoying it. Not that I hated my job. It was good and I worked with good people. It’s just that writing Dad’s little story had awakened something inside me that left me feeling unfulfilled.
“Well, Lisa has decided she wants to learn all Mom’s recipes. We’ll see how that discovery sits with her academic aspirations,” Brenda said.
“They sure had fun baking Christmas cookies. My whole office gained five pounds,” I laughed.
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Mom and Lisa cooked up the idea that the kitchen gadgets that wouldn’t fit in their new kitchen should come here so she can show Lisa how to use them all.”
“Oh, my gosh. Mom has a gadget for everything! Didn’t she show Lisa how to use the pineapple slicer a couple of weeks ago? I didn’t even know Lisa liked pineapple,” I said.
“One of her favorite things right now. This morning, she sliced one and packaged all the slices to take to school in her lunches this week. I need to get her to clean the counters better afterward. That pineapple juice is so sticky I left part of my cookbook stuck to the counter last week.”
The aura of satisfaction that settled over me after my weekend of writing didn’t last the first hour of work on Tuesday morning. The high tech health industry is alive and well, even if its patients aren’t. Bad joke. We had a team meeting and by ten o’clock we were all feeling overwhelmed. Excited, but overwhelmed.
“You all know I’m John Parsons,” the chief of our technology group started the meeting. “I’m taking the lead personally for the new team. This is the official kick-off for a project we’ve been toying with for the past two years. Management thinks it is finally time to make a commitment. This is the team we’ve selected. I know some of you have things to wrap up on other projects, so we’re going to focus on tying up loose ends and transitioning ongoing projects to other resources this week.”
We were all paying attention. We only had two tech writers in the company, and I knew I still had weeks of work to wrap up the docs I’d been working on. No one had been called in to document that project until it was almost ready to release. I guessed it was a positive sign that they were assigning a writing resource for the new project up front. I supposed that meant I’d still have my current projects for the foreseeable future.
“We’re onboarding three new employees this week, so some of you will have people to hand your current projects off to. Nathaniel, Paul, and Rhonda, that includes you three, specifically. We’ve known we needed another writer, interface engineer, and tester for some time. This was a good excuse to move on that front,” John said.
“Besides, graduation at the University is this week and we had people lined up to start immediately anyway,” Rhonda whispered to me. I nodded.
“HR is meeting with the new hires now. The three of you will have a shadow from the time you walk out of this meeting until the end of the week. Make sure everything you currently have on your desk is in the hands of your replacement by Friday. Friday afternoon, you’ll be moving offices so we can consolidate all the new work in one area. The Friday move includes all of you, not just the three getting replacements. You’ll all be getting better digs on the fifth floor, so don’t start complaining yet.”
That changed things significantly. I was getting a &lwquo;replacement.’ I wondered if this was a way to just usher me out the door rather than into a new office. There was a lot of education to be done in order to transition my current project over to a new body. I wondered what they had in mind for me at this stage of the new project.
“Our initial task is scope and specification. That’s one of the reasons we have writing, testing, and interface designers on board already. Engineers and program managers will take the lead during this first week or two, even though they, too, will be shifting projects to other resources this week. Monday, I want our first official specification meeting to start. Program managers will continue to own the specs, but they will be reviewed and passed by both writing and testing. Before line one of code gets written, I want a spec that has a complete test harness.”
If we went by job description and training, that was the way every project was supposed to run. Unfortunately, documentation and testing were often relegated to looking at what had already been done in writing code. If this project worked the way the process flowchart said it should, it would be a pleasure to be on this team. For me, at least.
“Here’s the project,” John said, starting a slide presentation. “Our mission is to design and create software that will power the Micron Guardian implantable health monitor. The miniature device is designed to test and monitor individual health markers and report them to a smartwatch, cell phone, or service. We’ve been pitching our ability to write the software for it and they’ve bought into our company. Literally. They’ve become an investor. This is going to change the medical device landscape.
“You will have access to the hardware specification this afternoon. Our task is to specify and create the brain of this device. If it is something that can be determined by testing the blood or tissue in a person, we should have the brains to run the test and report it, 24/7.”
“Sounds like the holy grail. Didn’t people accuse Gates of implanting that kind of tracking device when the COVID vaccines first came out?” Adam asked. He was one of the founding engineers of our company and usually looked like he was asleep in his corner office. Then we’d see a memo that congratulated him for the issuance of a dozen new patents none of us knew he was working on.
“Well, this isn’t science fiction. It’s never been possible to inject a computer chip into the human body through a vaccine needle. It will probably be done the same way other implants are done—through a catheter or local incision.”
“We can call it &lwquo;Grail’,” Paul said.
“Too loaded with religious implication,” John said.
“Arthur?” Rhonda asked.
“Or a knight of the Round Table?” John asked. “Who found the Holy Grail?”
“Galahad,” I said automatically. Everyone stopped their side conversations.
“Really?” Rhonda asked.
“Uh… Yes. He was the purest of Arthur’s knights. There were two others who found the grail. I can’t remember. One of them was Perceval.”
“You just happen to know this?” John asked.
“I was an English major,” I laughed.
“And now we know why we have a writer on the team from the very beginning. Let’s do this! Team Galahad is now officially in pursuit of the holy grail,” John said. We all had work to do, but a bunch of us continued talking over lunch.
I’d promised to take Zach car shopping, so Wednesday after dinner, we headed out. We’d discussed his proposal pretty thoroughly before I agreed to it. I would have bought him a nice, fairly new car that had all the safety features of the 2020s. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to rebuild a classic. It was his passion. It was why he was going to an auto repair school in the fall instead of college. Zach had been a car enthusiast since his Hot Wheels days.
We lived in Michigan, and not that far from Detroit. There was plenty of opportunity to find training. It was generally cheaper than a college term with better job placement. So, I’d agreed to fund his little project up to $20,000. I didn’t know what he could get in that range and expected what I considered a classic car—a ’55 Chevy Bel Air, or maybe a T-Bird. He said he’d found the perfect car, and we went to take a look.
We drove out into the country to a farm north of Brighton. It took us nearly an hour to get there. Zach had his GPS tuned in to the location, though, and drove right into the long, rutted lane to a cluster of buildings—one of which could pass for a house. A dozen or so rusting cars were haphazardly parked in the yard and among the outbuildings.
A guy who looked as old as Dad came out of the house to meet us. Zach introduced himself and shook the guy’s hand. I breathed a sigh of relief when he led us to one of the barns rather than one of the rusting hulks in the yard. Inside a couple dozen cars were parked. They were dusty but didn’t seem to be in too bad a condition.
“I haven’t started it in a few months,” the old guy said. “Might run, might not.”
“I’d rather not have to tow it, Mr. Johnson,” Zach said. “I plan to do a restoration, so it doesn’t need to run perfectly.”
“I’ve got some nice muscle cars from the sixties,” Johnson said. “Could make you a deal on one of them. You sure you want this one?”
I just stared at the car he’d stopped at.
“Sentimental reasons,” Zach said.
“Well, I put the trickle charger on it when you called. Let’s see if the old babe starts.”
I snorted. I’m no gearhead like my son, but I’d seen enough pictures of this model to recognize it. It was at least sixty years old and beneath the dust, I could see it was a Chevrolet Corvair. I’d just written a story that included Dad living in his Corvair when he met Mom. I’m sure Dad had told Zach about that old car. I knew before the car started that we were going to buy it. I just wasn’t sure how much it was going to cost me.
It took a few tries after Mr. Johnson had checked the oil and made sure the battery cables were clean. He still had to jump it, but the engine finally came to life. It wasn’t smooth, but it was running.
Johnson glanced at me, but I just nodded at Zach. This was his deal. I was just going to write a check. He started out telling Zach a car in this condition was rare and he wanted $12,000 for it. By the time I wrote the check, Zach had talked him down to $9,000. If it had been up to me, I’d probably have paid the asking price. Johnson fished the title out of a strongbox in the barn and signed it over, then moved three other cars so Zach could back the Corvair out of the barn.
I followed him home with my flashers on. It took a lot longer to get home than to get out to the farm. He pulled the car into the garage, and I parked in the driveway. I’d agreed to let him have the garage for his work until snow flew. If it didn’t run by then, I wasn’t sure what he’d do.
“Isn’t it a beauty, Dad? I need to disassemble everything and start rebuilding the body first. I found a site online that has parts for it. I might be able to restore with all original parts. It’s just what I wanted. Thanks for getting me started. I know you really wanted me to go to college,” he said, giving me an uncharacteristic hug.
Brenda and Lisa came out to the garage to see what he’d gotten. Lisa caught her lower lip between her teeth and scowled.
“When I get a car, I don’t have to rebuild it, do I?” Lisa asked.
“That’s not your thing, Lis!” Zach said. “You can come out and help me, though.”
“How about if I bake cookies and you fix the car?”
“All we want is for both of you to be happy with your lives. Just because I don’t understand automotive mechanics doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate having someone to change my oil. Lisa, you’ve been talking about following your Aunt Meg into medicine. Zach wants to rebuild classic cars. We’ll support what you want to do with your lives 100%.”
“You’re the best, Dad. You know a couple of my friends from the high school auto shop don’t have support like that. They have to go to college, even though they aren’t that smart, like Lisa is. They’ll all be envious when they see this,” Zach said.
“We’ll see how envious they are when they see you covered in grease with skinned knuckles and broken nails,” I laughed. “Maybe I can hang out a little and learn something.”
“That would be cool, Dad. Maybe Gramps will want to hang out some. I just really want to show him what his old car used to look and run like,” Zach said.
“You’re good kids,” Brenda said. “We’ll all learn something.”
“Dad, where’s your passport?” I asked when we were over to help pack that weekend.
We were specifically trying not to rush things and not to leave things in a mess. The cottage they were moving to wouldn’t be finished until sometime in July. Dad had decided he should clean out papers this week. I couldn’t say I disagreed.
We’d sorted through and started shredding bank statements and canceled checks from back when banks actually returned checks to people and issued paper statements. We agreed that we didn’t need to keep anything from more than seven years ago. That included tax returns, too. Even so, we sorted through everything to be sure nothing valuable was included in any of the boxes of paper we hauled up from the basement.
“Hmm. Don’t think I have one. Didn’t need one to go into Canada and we didn’t go anywhere else,” he said.
“This folder has your wedding certificate, Meg’s and my birth certificates, and Brenda’s custody papers. It even has Mom’s birth certificate and her passport. I don’t see yours in here,” I said.
“Never thought it was very important,” Dad said. “You can take that folder home with you.”
It amazed me that he kept such meticulous records and was known in his work as being detail oriented, but he didn’t have any of his own papers, aside from several old driver’s licenses and defunct credit cards.
“If you plan to take Mom on that cruise you’ve been talking about, you’ll need a passport. It’s hard to even board an airplane without one these days.”
“I have an enhanced driver’s license. That’s Real ID,” he said defensively.
“Well, what about your birth certificate?” I asked. “That’s all you need to get a passport.”
Dad was silent, fiddling around with a stack of canceled checks he was feeding into the shredder. I couldn’t let it drop.
“Dad? Your birth certificate? Do you have a safe deposit box or something like that?” I didn’t think so, but I hadn’t come across the deed for the house or any mortgage papers, either.
“Lost,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“Lost in the fire,” he repeated more loudly.
“What fire?”
He turned and glared at me before responding.
“Any fire you want! The Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Forget about it!”
“Okay. Just trying to help. Let me know if you need help getting a passport. We can get a registered copy of your birth certificate from the county where you were born.” I went back to the basement to bring up a box marked &lwquo;1986-1991.’
I heard the lawn mower start up outside when I set the box on Dad’s desk and started sifting through the contents.
“I wasn’t sure Zach would even remember the lawn this week,” I said. “He’s all wrapped up in his new project. Has he told you about the car?”
“Crazy to want a Corvair. Nader ruined them for everyone. But Zach’s a good kid. You should be proud of him. And Lisa. She reminds me a lot of your mother.” He glanced toward the door and lowered his voice so I could scarcely hear him. “A lot smarter, though.”
“Dad! Mom’s smart.”
“Your mother has her own kind of intelligence,” Dad answered. “She’s not stupid, by any means. But she wouldn’t win a spelling bee. She drilled you on that long list of words you had to memorize when you were in elementary school, but she couldn’t remember how to spell half of them herself. When she worked in the diner back when we were first together? She could take the orders from a table of eight and deliver every item exactly as it was ordered without writing one thing down. It’s just different.”
“You really didn’t tell me anything about when you and Mom first started dating—not after the rescue,” I ventured. Dad nodded. He pointed to one of the shelves and I followed the line to the box of trinkets he’d supposedly collected from his time travel. I supposed that anything he said about the early time he was dating Mom would have something to do with a travel story.
I handed him the box and he opened it, gently sorting through things until he pulled out a charred bit of what looked like a map.
“Maybe you could find some way to preserve this,” he said. “There are flakes of ash all over the bottom of the box. I thought putting everything in this box would be enough to preserve it, but I didn’t realize how much one thing affects another. Never expected this button to get stuck on the ribbon, for example. They don’t go together.”
“What’s it a map of?”
“History. Just a remnant of the fire.”
“The same fire you lost your birth certificate in?” I joked.
He just sat there nodding. Then he started telling me a story and I knew I was going to be up late writing it down that night.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
