A Family Affair by Mary Campisi

Chapter 1
     
    Christine Blacksworth scanned the jagged red
and black lines on the computer screen, one crossing over the
other, peaking, sliding back, inching forward again. She glanced at
her watch. It would take at least fifteen minutes to run
comparisons, ten more to analyze them, and another five to make
recommendations. If she started right now, she’d be done in half an
hour . . . the twenty minute drive would put her at her parents’
house around 7:25 p.m. Twenty-five minutes late for her father’s
welcome home dinner.
    Unacceptable. Her mother planned these
gatherings with such precision that walking in even ten minutes
late would upset the entire evening not to mention what it would do
to Gloria Blacksworth’s emotional state. Christine rubbed the back
of her neck. Twenty-seven should be old enough to just pick up the
phone and tell her mother she’d be late, or not be there at all.
She’d tried that once a year and a half ago when she and Connor
opted for the theater instead of a family dinner. What a disaster
that had been.
    It was time to go. She dimmed the computer
screen, gathered up her papers and placed them in a folder to the
side of her desk. Uncle Harry was probably already there, draining
his first scotch and antagonizing her mother. They tolerated one
another for her father’s sake. He insisted that Harry attend,
though after the initial pleasantries and somewhere part way
through dinner, the conversation usually turned to business, which
left Uncle Harry and her mother staring at their wine glasses.
Christine promised herself every month that she would try harder to
include them, perhaps inquire about Uncle Harry’s latest golf game,
or her mother’s garden club meeting, anything to avoid business, at
least until coffee was served. But the pulse of the Dow was in her
blood, surging up and down; the need to connect with her father
emerging past the ‘hellos’ and ‘isn’t this Veal Oscar
fabulous?’
    She understood the necessity of her father’s
monthly trips to the Catskills. The success of any great executive
was down time and Charles Blacksworth, CEO of Blacksworth &
Company Investments had found his own piece of Nirvanna seven
hundred miles from Chicago in a tiny cabin just outside the
Catskill Mountains.
    And he deserved it.
    ***
    “ Didn’t anyone ever teach
you that overwork is one of the great sins, Chrissie girl?
Especially on a Sunday?”
    Christine tipped her glass of chardonnay at
her uncle, smiled. “I think it was you, Uncle Harry.”
    He let out a loud laugh, downed the rest of
his scotch. “No, girl, I would have said work on any day is a sin,”
he winked and headed toward the liquor cabinet. He was a handsome
man, tall, tan from hours on the back nine and frequent jaunts to
Bermuda, or St. Croix with his latest intrigue. Just shy of fifty,
he was more fit than many of the men Christine knew, perhaps from
the daily trips to the gym or, or perhaps because Uncle Harry
worked at staying in shape and it was the only type of work he
engaged in.
    While other men were carving out their
careers, striving for betterment in wealth, recognition, and fatter
portfolios, Uncle Harry closeted himself in his office on the 16th
floor practicing his putt, reading Golf Digest and managing one
solitary account; his own.
    Christine saw the way other people watched
him when he came to her office, their eyes moving over him, taking
in the Armani suit, the silk tie, the Italian loafers, and then
discarding him as though he were the morning courier come to pick
up Fed Ex packages. They laughed at the crude, off-color jokes he
told them every morning at the coffee station and then moved past
him, to their offices, to their work.
    “ I’m getting worried about
your father,” her mother said, picking up a linen napkin, folding
it just so, setting it back down. “He should have been here by
now.” She moved to another napkin, picked it up.
    “ Maybe his plane was
delayed. You know how flying