In those years, the well-to-do family smoked their cigarettes down to the filter and watched closely their stocks. The new generation of Westlocks anticipated a shifting cultural landscape, compensating the Romantic sensibilities on which the business was founded with appropriate updates that would maintain the relevance of the Westlock name. Dorothy saw Ronald, her eldest son, accept the highest responsibilities as the new president of Westlock Products when her husband retired. Shortly after, George J. Westlock, the patriarch, passed away from lung cancer. Ronald and his family—wife Rachel and their three sons, Philip, David, and Kevin—maintained the global market that George established during his presidency and often moved about the country, finally settling in Los Angeles, where the family conserved a relatively ordinary existence, heightened only by the luxury of fortune. They ate turkey on thanksgiving, for instance, and often spent quality time at Dorothy’s coastal estate.
It was there, in that castle of a mansion, that Dorothy and David grew especially close. They played War once a week and shared in lamenting the conditions of the middle child. Like Dorothy, who despite her earnest capabilities was forced into a supporting role to George, David, who was just as qualified as his older brother, succumbed to the bad luck of heredity and settled for a supporting role in the family business as well. They were able to laugh about it around the card table.
David was not the most handsome of the Westlocks, but they were all attractive. He hid the slightest of acne scars which formed around his temples by growing his hair long and parting it down the middle so that it would fall like a wheat-colored wave framing his face. He wore tailored suits with faint pin stripes, making him appear taller. He had his face shaved by a barber who regularly made house visits. And by night, David fancied himself an author, writing his memoirs on his roof and smoking a pipe. Only his grandmother read excerpts.
One November morning, Dorothy’s health took a turn for the worse. Until now, amid the brightest doctors and the best medicine, Dorothy defied death as if halting on-coming traffic, but even the most defiant, the most everlasting, must eventually sign death’s guestbook.
David was the first to realize that death could not be paid off, so he stood beside the tall pillars of her bed in a suit as smooth as a freshly paved sidewalk on that November morning, talking with his grandmother, who, with white sheets unwrinkled, outlining the shrinking of her body, sat up straight, confidently welcoming death as an inevitable bedfellow.
“Must the end be so bleak?” she asked.
“This isn’t the end, Gaga.”
“Oh, bullshit. It’s the end, David,” she said in a whispered but scratchy shout. “And I always imagined that you would be here with me in the end.”
David wiped his face with the back of his palms.
“I’ve wondered about the best way to sign off. How should one make use of her last moment before white light?” She paused for a moment, reluctant to what she would say next. “I’ve concluded that there is no better use of a last breath than tying up the loose ends of one’s life, closing chapters long left open. The story is far too long, too long for even now, and I’ve not the strength to tell it.”
“Suddenly there is so much to say,” he agreed.
“But there is something especially important in my will that should be explained. I’ve written it in a letter to you.”
Hardly able to hold it, she handed him an envelope with his name on it in calligraphy, sealed with DW stamped into dried candle wax. Soon after, she fell asleep for the last time and he found himself out the long way.
My Dearest David, it read, in the coming weeks we will be inevitably and indefinitely separated. Do not be discouraged and do not weep more than you would for anyone else. Do not fear my ghost, for if it’s possible, I will surely send you my warmest regards from beyond. But in the event that it is not possible, if ghosts do not exist, you must know the heritage of your inheritance somehow. So it is for this reason that I write.
You will be surprised to find that I’ve left you my loft in Austria. “You had a loft in Austria?” you might ask with justified bewilderment. Yes, it is true. Allow me to explain: twenty years ago, your grandfather and I spent three months in the Alps, both for business and pleasure—mostly business for him, mostly pleasure for me. It was the perfect timing for an indulgent decision, a decision that I never asked forgiveness for and never will.
I was lonely and there was a man named Theodor Fritz. He was a German writer. Like with all lovers, we met in a café, but I’ll spare you the gory details. His publisher rented him the loft just outside of the shopping district and I spent the week there under the guise that I was shopping while your grandfather sold Westlock Cigarettes to the Austrians. Our physical affair lasted only that week, but we relived it for several years in our letters. I never kept it from your grandfather, but he never asked. He must have suspected. I know your mother suspected though she was very young.
When Theodor died, I received a notification that he purchased the loft after our weeklong affair and had left it to me in his own will. He wrote many great essays there that you could read in a heavy anthology I’ve also left you. I hope that you find the same inspiration there that Fritz found to complete your beautifully written memoir. The manuscript I’ve previewed is engaging and appropriately idealistic. When I read it, I read you, and that in itself is beautiful.
Do not be off-put by the genesis of this gift. I was young and never in love with him like I was your grandfather. I was in love with his words, and young women can easily fall in love with words. It is hardly an excuse, but I never intend to need one.
I love you, David. Thank you for loving this old lady for so long. You’ve always understood me.
Eternally yours,
Gaga
There were exactly one thousand attendants at her wake, which was exactly a week later. David read a poem that was quickly disregarded by most (although his younger brother Kevin was inspired and he later told David as much), but it captured a perspective of Dorothy that few were cognizant of with great precision—her card playing was particularly highlighted.
“She would have loved it,” choked Kevin after the wake. “We played War once as well, but I was never too fond of it. The game is merely chance.”
Exactly a week later, David flew first class from LAX to Salzburg Airport. Only the un-suctioning jolt of the plane leaving its runway pulled David from his curiosity. Now weightless, he traced the events of the last two weeks searching for the right word to describe his feelings and his late grandmother. He never found it on the twelve-hour flight, not when the plane landed, not as he traced the Salzach river, so close to the city, past where Mozart was born to where Theodor Fritz’s loft was located.
When he reached the baroque building, which looked expectedly antique, he sat on its steps before entering to catch his breath from the short walk after his transfer. Still no single word came to him. Each step up the unusually thin stairs required a deep breath. Still no single word came to him.
A dusty placard in handwriting distinctly German greeted him, “Welcome, Dorothy Westlock.” He opened the door to a musty dust and realized that no one word would describe his grandmother or the duality that encapsulates everyone. An understanding swept over him as he peered through the small loft apartment where his grandmother bed the German writer, Theodor Fritz. The romantic gesture should have made him sick to his stomach, but it did not. Fritz left his grandmother a loft in Austria, and now it was his loft in Austria.
Made up of only a single bedroom, a small kitchen with green cupboards, a living room without a view, a washroom, and three small closets throughout, the loft was not particularly extravagant, especially compared to the impressive setting surrounding it. The cracked tiled floor, the wilted bouquet of spring flowers whose petals were now dust on the dining table, the emptied bottles of whiskey and hollowed bottles of wine stained red were all reminders of his grandmother’s lover, proof of his existence and their affair.
He saw the Alps through the small French window in the kitchen as one does a full moon through a telescope and caught his breath quivering. His hands were shaking but not in fear, nor with anxiety. He sat down at the small table, pushed open the window and, as if falling in a dream, wrote this in one sitting.
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Next time on The Hindsight Bridge: “Jerusalem, the Woman.” Revisit on August 22, 2011 to read Allison Barlow’s first-hand description of Jerusalem and the intimate images that help her explore Jerusalem’s rich history, religious fervor, harsh conflicts, and its beauty. She starts: “Jerusalem is not a city. She is the loveliest of women. And she is a seductress.” For more, including updates, excerpts, and previews, like our facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Hindsight-Bridge/191503444224012. As always, thank you for your readership and support.
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