October 13, 2015

On occasion, purely by nature and not intentional, Michael remembered that woman from Thadius' funeral, usually around the anniversary of his death, but this year, Michael recalled her on Thadius' birthday. He would have been thirty-three. What kind of man would Thadius have become? He wasn't sure he could even imagine his younger brother as a man. Twelve years was a long time to forget the details, especially since Michael had no desire to think about him.

But why did the woman's image stick in his mind so? Over the years, she had become like a beacon in the gloominess of the day – her soft light hair and pale face a glow amongst the awning of umbrellas. Still after all those years, he didn't know who she was and never thought to ask, always working on the assumption that she was a bystander to a curious event, stunned by the meaningless death of a teenager.

"Michael, did you hear me?"

He looked up from his desk. His secretary (she refused the title of Office Manager although it fit her job description perfectly) stood at his office doorway, hands on her hips, ready to scold him.

"I'm sorry, Peggy. What did you say?"

"I said leave the paperwork."

"Paperwork?"

"Yeah, right there." Peggy pointed to a small mound of invoices in front of him. "Are you all right?"

Michael looked at the stack of papers on his desk. He liked to review the customer invoices, not so much as to check Peggy's work because she could do them in her sleep, but just so he knew what was going on in his company. Sometimes he missed the days when he swung a hammer.

"It's still early. I can do it before I go."

"No," she said, stretching out the "o."

She watched his face. He knew she was waiting for something from him but he was clueless.

"I give up. What is it I'm really supposed to be doing right now?"

Peggy entered the office, limping ever so slightly from a deteriorating hip joint compounded by her grandmotherly plumpness. She worked for Tate Contractors & Builders, Inc. since the first year of operation forty-nine years ago when Henry Tate started the company from his barn. Michael inherited the business nearly thirty-two years ago when he was only sixteen, and transformed it into a multi-million dollar operation. It had been a long time since Peggy sat at Henry and Cecil's kitchen table to balance the checkbook. When Michael started with upgrades and improvements, including computerizing the office, Peggy kept pace with him. She would not be replaced. Nowadays she sat in a leather chair behind a reception area of deep burgundy, midnight blue and splashes of gold-tone. She managed time for Michael and his sales staff and played receptionist. He knew she liked her job most days, even after almost five decades and despite his moodiness.

"Your schedule hasn't changed from ten o'clock this morning," she shot.

"You're being encrypted," he snapped back.

She clucked her tongue, a sign that she would back down. "You're supposed to go by Nathan Ross's office."

Michael groaned and contorted his body in disapproval – something he could only do in front of Peggy. "What for?"

"Whining doesn't become you, Michael. Don't you remember anything I tell you?"

"No," he stood, "that's why I keep you around. To remind me."

Usually that backhanded compliment made her smile, but no smile broke out on her face.

Michael stood and walked by her into the reception area, opened the coat closet, and retrieved his Durham work jacket. Being the boss meant he could wear finer clothes, perhaps a nicely tailored rich Italian leather jacket, but no matter how much money he had, he still was a boots and jeans kind of guy. He heard the soft hush of expelled air as Peggy plopped into her chair. He turned just as she swiveled the two-thousand dollar seat to face him. Maybe he didn't throw away money on his clothes, but decorating his office was a different story.

"You really don't remember, do you?" She kept a straight face, no smile.

The only thing he recalled from the morning was that the Wilkes boy didn't show for work again. Michael had to fire him and would have normally already taken care of it by now, but the boy's father worked for Michael over twenty years and was a great foreman. And great foremen were hard to come by. He wanted to tell Jack that his son was fired before he actually fired the lazy kid. He needed to insure that Jack wouldn't walk. He didn't think he would, but who knew. People do weird things when it comes to family.

Michael looked away from Peggy's disapproving eyes. No matter his status or age, she could stare him down like an incensed mother.

"He wants to talk to you about Lee Ave," she said, giving in.

He slapped his thigh. "That's right. He wouldn't tell you more?"

"We were both too busy to talk, but he did say it was very important."

"I can't imagine Nate being busy."

"Nevertheless, it sounded important."

Michael slipped his arms into the quilted lining of his jacket. "Very important, huh? What does Nate Ross want with Lee Ave?"

"He's a realtor, Michael. You do the math."

He sighed. "It's not for sale, Peggy. There is no math to do." Michael wondered if his sarcasm annoyed her as much as hers could annoy him. He took a set of keys from his jacket pocket. "I hate going into his office."

"I know. But Denise might be there." Peggy somehow found her smile and she made no attempt to hide it.

"Denise?"

"Maybe Lee Ave is just a ploy to get you into the office."

"I don't get it."

The smile disappeared as quickly as it had surfaced. "Michael, I love you like a son, but sometimes hon, you're dumber than a doorknob. How the hell can you be so smart about business and investments and so...so..."

"Dumb?"

"Dumb about affairs of the heart." Peggy stood faster than Michael thought she possibly could and snagged a white cardigan from the back of her chair.

"Peggy, at the risk of sounding dumber than I already do, what does Denise and affairs of the heart have to do with each other?"

"Michael Tate." She stuffed her arms into the sleeves of her sweater. "I have known you since you were a bump in Cecil's belly. I have changed your diaper more times than I can count. I worked with your dad and watched him build this company from next to nothing. Then I watched you turn it into a...a...this." She spread her arms out. "Your dad had one thing you don't have and it made him the happiest man I ever knew." Peggy held up her right index finger. "One thing and it made all the difference in the world."

Michael quickly tried to figure out the one thing. He had so much. His dad never invested like Michael and never reaped the financial reward of it. Nor had Howard Tate dreamt of going beyond single family residential construction. Michael had built entire neighborhoods, revitalized the street-fronts of several towns, and had gone commercial the first chance he got. He had stocks, mutual funds, real estate in the way of five luxury condominium complexes and multiple office & retail buildings, and three vehicles in his garage - albeit one was a company truck but another was a red Mustang GT convertible. He wasn't ready to upgrade to a Mercedes convertible just yet, though money had nothing to do with it. It just seemed too mature. He had a home theater customized with tiered seating and every television channel imaginable, the newest electronic gadgets before they hit the shelves, and plenty of liquid funds to boot. His own house was 8,500 square feet of massive play space filled with expensive artwork and professionally interior decorated rooms. Way too big for a single person with no pets and no kids. His dad would have been embarrassed and overwhelmed by the show of excessiveness.

The funny thing was, Michael hardly used any of the toys and almost none of the rooms in his house. He drove the same truck everyday and read in the same small den off the kitchen almost every night, only using the theater during the Super Bowl, preferring the smaller screen TV in the den. He listened to the news from a portable radio in his kitchen as he drank his morning coffee. He ran outdoors or went to a public gym instead of the completely furbished one in his basement, which had more living space than many homes housing a family of four. He hated the echo in the cavernous main hall and was bored with the colorless décor, but he was still proud of the mini mansion. It was a trophy for all of his hard work and time. But there were times he really missed his old bungalow and the coziness it had provided.

"Do you want to know what that one thing was, Michael?"

"Sure." He expected to hear that his dad had stock in some obscure company that was currently a Fortune 500 candidate. Although a lot it would do him now.

"He had a wife and a family to go home to." Peggy lowered her hand.

Michael felt a familiar punch to his stomach. A wife and family? It wasn't a topic he wanted to think about, let alone discuss with Peggy, again. So he diverted the subject with his own sarcasm.

"You said there was one thing." He mocked her gesture and held up his right index finger. "But a wife and family are two things. Unless of course there are multiple kids then you could technically break out the family into..."

"Go see Nate. Say hi to Denise. Maybe ask her out."

"Ask her out?" Michael was stunned at the prospect and yet somewhere in the wheels and gears of his brain, he recognized the thought. He supposed he had considered asking her out once or twice but dismissed the thought because he felt silly. He was no where near old but compared to Denise...well she certainly must think of him as old.

"Yeah, like a date, Michael," Peggy said. She sounded exasperated. She opened the bottom drawer of her desk and retrieved her pocketbook. "Your grandmother is ninety-six. When she's gone, you're it. The last of the Tate line."

"Thadius' suicide insured that, didn't it?" He couldn't stop the words before they spilled out of his mouth.

"No, Michael. Your brother's death didn't stop the bloodline. You did. You're still alive. You've just stopped living ever since he died. You should find a wife. Have little Michaels."

Peggy sounded so unusually passionate, or maybe it was desperate. He didn't know what to say. He wasn't adverse to marriage in theory. It was the whole compatibility thing. He just got bored too easily. Besides, he wasn't about to take the blame of ending the family line. Thadius jumped to his death. Michael just hadn't found the right woman. At least she didn't bring up Missy – his fiancé who left him a year after Thadius' death. She complained that Michael had turned into a worse miserable prick than before his brother's death.

"If I had a daughter Michael..." Peggy lowered her head. "Six boys, five daughter-in-laws, two ex daughter-in-laws, eight grandchildren and another one on the way. They drive me and Dale crazy, but they're family. And it's divine. Ask Denise out. She's a nice girl. She likes you."

"She's like twenty-five, Peggy."

"She's twenty-nine. And so what?"

"I'm forty-eight."

"Like I said, so what? You're in better shape than most men twenty years younger. You're handsome. You're rich. And she's pretty, Michael."

"She likes me, huh?" He twirled his keys by the ring. Maybe it wasn't such a ludicrous idea. They might have something in common...maybe.

Together they walked to the exit. Peggy shut off the lights.

"She looks at you in that special way."

Before Michael could protest or inquire, Peggy said. "At the Fourth of July festival, she swooned, literally swooned anytime you came near her. At the Lauder Condominiums Grand Opening, she watched you like you were the only man alive."

"Really?"

She turned to Michael as he opened the outer front door for her. "Are you really that oblivious?"

He shrugged. He had seen her watching him, but so had other women. He ignored most of them, most of the time.

She shook her head. "If not Denise, then someone. Go on a date for goodness sake's." Peggy fished in her pocketbook for her keys. "There's gotta be someone we can set you up with. Maybe..." Peggy didn't finish her sentence and Michael didn't want to further pursue the conversation.

They walked to their parked vehicles. At her car door, Peggy looked at Michael. He thought she looked a little sad. "If your mother were alive, you would be married. She would have made sure of it."

Michael held his tongue but thought, "yeah well Thadius took care of that, too, didn't he?" She hadn't even lived long enough to see her youngest son separated by fifteen years from her other child, Michael. And then when his dad died only six months later, everyone said that Howard's heart couldn't take the pain of losing his wife, but Michael wasn't sure if he believed in such things as broken hearts.

The family business would have gone under had it not been for Michael. At sixteen, he stepped in when Howard ceased to care. He slowly took on his father's role as he finished high school. Peggy's husband, Dale, ran the show until Michael knew enough about the business to take over. And all the while, Felicia raised Thad at the family homestead on Lee Avenue. Michael rarely saw them over the years. He moved into his own apartment and the business became his family. He could barely stand the sight of his little brother whose existence seemed to wipe out Michael's life as he knew it.

Michael waited as Peggy got into her dark red Continental. She started the engine and rolled down the window. "Do something other than going home and checking your stocks. Go out. Have fun. If worse comes to worse, come over and have dinner with us."

"If worse comes to worse?" He chuckled. He preferred humor to the heavy topic.

"Well, we're not the kind of fun I was thinking you should be looking for, but it's better than being alone." Obviously, Peggy wasn't up for a laugh.

Suddenly everything felt too heavy-his briefcase, his jacket, his boots. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She sighed and shifted to reverse, but kept her foot on the brake, "Alright, have it your way. Good night. I'll see you tomorrow. But if you're not going to ask Denise out, I'm calling her in for an interview. She filled out an app."

"Did she?" Another topic that Michael didn't want to talk about. Peggy was looking for a replacement, not that she didn't love her job. She was just getting too tired for the full time position. Her age was catching up with her and she had declared to Michael that she needed to help out with the grandkids more. Dale had already stopped pulling the massive amount of overtime he used to clock in. "Do you what you think is best. But don't you think she's a little young to be taking on your job?"

"For a modern man, you sure do have a Neanderthal perspective."

"I never claimed to be a modern man, Peggy. I'm just realistic."

"You just don't want anyone else in my chair but me."

"Damn right."

Peggy chuckled which brought out a grin. Finally, a show of softening. Maybe everything would be alright. With her grin still on her face, she ruined the moment by saying, "Time marches on, Michael. You better find the beat before the parade passes you by."

"Listen, whoever you hire to replace you, just make sure she, or HE, doesn't have your same sense of philosophy. It's exhausting."

Another grin from Peggy. A truce sign. "Goodnight, you," she said and let her foot off the brake. Michael stepped away from her vehicle and watched her pull out of the parking lot. His business without Peggy? No way. His business would find a way to survive, but he wasn't sure he could. Things were changing in Michael's life again, and he wasn't happy about it.