the past six years would have made me closer to Dad. He no longer had the huge demands of his company. In the old world, our time with him had been scheduled, as if it were an appointment written down in some shiny black book. We had dinner as a family at six every night, spent an hour or so in the library or den, maybe played a game or something, then at nine he bid us adieu and headed off to his study.
Nothing had really changed that much. He still did exactly what he wanted and none of us questioned him. Maybe the hardest fact to swallow was that, despite his being my father, I didn’t know any more about the man than the general public might find out by reading his biography.
Rex Yanakakis, adopted as a baby, then orphaned when he was nineteen, used his genius mind and inheritance to get a degree in computer science at MIT, and then start his own company. Not wanting to forget his roots, he supported the orphanage he’d been sent to as a baby. They ended up naming it for him. Quite a slick move, I’d say. It basically guaranteed his continued generous support.
At age twenty-seven, when his company was already on its way to the top, he saw my mom play in the Seattle Symphony and didn’t stop sending her white roses by the dozen until she agreed to see him. I can imagine the situation was attractive to her. To be raised with hardly any money, then grow up to be courted by one of the richest, most powerful men in the world? I’m sure the thought of a life with that kind of security had to hold a huge appeal.
They got married, built a thirty-room estate overlooking Puget Sound, immediately adopted one-year-old Lexie from the Yanakakis Home for Children, and then had three kids the regular way. They lived the sweet life. Happily ever after and all that crap.
That’s the Rex Yanakakis the world knew.
What Rex Yanakakis did I know?
My dad was never one of those dads you could ask for a quarter if you saw a gumball machine. Instead he had one of those black American Express cards not available to the general public. Gumball machines didn’t have slots for those.
My dad was never one of those dads who raked piles of leaves to jump in with their kids. He worked long hours most of the year, so his idea of quality time was a two-week trip twice a year, usually to somewhere exotic like Tahiti or Morocco. And there was usually another reason for going, like the time he “acquired” the software company in Rabat, or bought an uninhabited, uncharted island in the South Pacific. Our “vacations” always included some kind of business transaction.
Except for that last trip, a camping trip, the one that ended with us coming here, to the Compound. We just happened to be on Dad’s three thousand acres in eastern Washington when our nation was attacked.
Even though Dad always told us the Compound could be reached by helicopter from our estate in under that ubiquitous forty minutes, I thought that was cutting it a bit close. I remember thinking how lucky we were to be at thecabin with our RV, so close to the Compound we had heard so much about right as the nightmare began.
But we were not lucky that we were away from the cabin, a ways away, when we discovered Terese had smuggled a stray kitten into the RV.
We were not lucky when Eddy’s allergies flared up.
Not lucky that his medicine was back at the cabin.
Not lucky that Gram had to drive back to the cabin in the Range Rover to get the medicine while the rest of us went to bed.
Not lucky Eddy climbed in the back of the SUV without anyone knowing.
And definitely not lucky that some country decided that moment was the right one to launch a nuclear attack, sending us careening across the flat landscape in the RV.
The rest of it comes to me in a series of black-and-white flashes:
Dad slamming on the brakes. Grabbing Terese
.
Dad shouting at the rest of us. Get out! Run! Run! Run!
Following behind him in the dark. Stumbling over rocks in the middle of nowhere. Mom
Nothing had really changed that much. He still did exactly what he wanted and none of us questioned him. Maybe the hardest fact to swallow was that, despite his being my father, I didn’t know any more about the man than the general public might find out by reading his biography.
Rex Yanakakis, adopted as a baby, then orphaned when he was nineteen, used his genius mind and inheritance to get a degree in computer science at MIT, and then start his own company. Not wanting to forget his roots, he supported the orphanage he’d been sent to as a baby. They ended up naming it for him. Quite a slick move, I’d say. It basically guaranteed his continued generous support.
At age twenty-seven, when his company was already on its way to the top, he saw my mom play in the Seattle Symphony and didn’t stop sending her white roses by the dozen until she agreed to see him. I can imagine the situation was attractive to her. To be raised with hardly any money, then grow up to be courted by one of the richest, most powerful men in the world? I’m sure the thought of a life with that kind of security had to hold a huge appeal.
They got married, built a thirty-room estate overlooking Puget Sound, immediately adopted one-year-old Lexie from the Yanakakis Home for Children, and then had three kids the regular way. They lived the sweet life. Happily ever after and all that crap.
That’s the Rex Yanakakis the world knew.
What Rex Yanakakis did I know?
My dad was never one of those dads you could ask for a quarter if you saw a gumball machine. Instead he had one of those black American Express cards not available to the general public. Gumball machines didn’t have slots for those.
My dad was never one of those dads who raked piles of leaves to jump in with their kids. He worked long hours most of the year, so his idea of quality time was a two-week trip twice a year, usually to somewhere exotic like Tahiti or Morocco. And there was usually another reason for going, like the time he “acquired” the software company in Rabat, or bought an uninhabited, uncharted island in the South Pacific. Our “vacations” always included some kind of business transaction.
Except for that last trip, a camping trip, the one that ended with us coming here, to the Compound. We just happened to be on Dad’s three thousand acres in eastern Washington when our nation was attacked.
Even though Dad always told us the Compound could be reached by helicopter from our estate in under that ubiquitous forty minutes, I thought that was cutting it a bit close. I remember thinking how lucky we were to be at thecabin with our RV, so close to the Compound we had heard so much about right as the nightmare began.
But we were not lucky that we were away from the cabin, a ways away, when we discovered Terese had smuggled a stray kitten into the RV.
We were not lucky when Eddy’s allergies flared up.
Not lucky that his medicine was back at the cabin.
Not lucky that Gram had to drive back to the cabin in the Range Rover to get the medicine while the rest of us went to bed.
Not lucky Eddy climbed in the back of the SUV without anyone knowing.
And definitely not lucky that some country decided that moment was the right one to launch a nuclear attack, sending us careening across the flat landscape in the RV.
The rest of it comes to me in a series of black-and-white flashes:
Dad slamming on the brakes. Grabbing Terese
.
Dad shouting at the rest of us. Get out! Run! Run! Run!
Following behind him in the dark. Stumbling over rocks in the middle of nowhere. Mom
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