Chapter 3
Chapter Three
HAPPILY EVER BEFORE
Will
There's humor in sneaking out of your own apartment at 5:47 a.m., especially when your middle brother is passed out on your couch, reeking of expensive whiskey and poor decisions. Alfie showed up at my door some time around three in the morning, tie askew and wedding ring suspiciously absent, here to lecture me about life choices while making several questionable ones of his own.
I grab my running shoes, bright orange ones that my mother once called 'aggressively pedestrian' with the same tone Hugh Sterling uses to discuss my career, and slip out like a teenager missing curfew. Like I'm eighteen again, choosing art history over finance at orientation, watching my father's dreams of continuing the Sterling financial dynasty crumble with each additional art history class I took. I'm really only sneaking out to save myself from another remix of last night's speech about family duty and corporate responsibility.
The air has that specific Boston bite in spring as my feet carry me toward the Charles River. The river path unfolds before me, a familiar loop that's carried the weight of countless crises and family disappointments. Check. The black sheep running from his golden cage yet again, while my older brother Cal runs the M&A division and Alfie handles risk management, both of their roles really just head of something or other in the family name. Titles that have them perfectly slotted into the lives we were groomed for.
I pass the footbridge just as the rowing team begins their morning practice and can hear their oars slice through the water in perfect synchronization. It creates a rhythm that mingles with my breathing, becoming my playlist this morning. The city itself, a chorus of early commuter trains, the whisper of wind across the river, the soft thud of other runners' feet hitting the pavement. I wonder what they're running from.
I do this loop almost daily, one of the few routines I have. It gives me space and time to think about the rest of my day. In a few hours, I'll walk through the doors of one of the most prominent museums in the city, through the modern structure donated to present the past, and into the space where thousands of stories are preserved in paint. And people come from all over to just revel in it.
Being a Sterling in the art world comes with its own peculiar weight. The name is on plaques in half the museums in Boston, even some buildings. Generous donors, patrons of the arts, and let's not forget, tax write-off enthusiasts. But when their youngest son saw this as more than a way to offset taxable income? Suddenly it was all 'But Will, that's not what Sterlings do.' Because apparently, Sterlings can buy art, can donate art, can use art as a conversation piece at charity galas, but God forbid I actually find value beyond societal and financial gain. Then again, that is how they measure the value of most things.
Which of course, brings me back to Alfie's drunken rant about the board seat they need me to fill. Eight weeks until the Memorial Day Weekend party at the Newport house, where the Sterling Financial Group will parade their united front before announcing their latest acquisition. Eight weeks to decide if I'm willing to be the final piece in my father's corporate chess game.
I breathe out as my feet pick up the pace heading toward the bridge, partly because I know what's coming. In about three miles, my right shin will start its familiar protest, and reality will come crashing back. The reality that this Memorial Day is viewed as especially critical, my father needs to show ‘strength on the Sterling front’ before the board votes on the acquisition. A vote they can't win without filling that family-designated seat with another compliant Sterling.
I curve past the bronze ducklings standing in their perpetual parade. There's something accusatory about those ducks, lined up in perfect formation, following their mother exactly where they're supposed to go. They gleam as the sun comes up, polished to a shine by decades of tiny hands and countless photo ops. I wonder if they ever wanted to break formation, if one of them ever thought about waddling off to become a swan boat instead.
My father would hate this metaphor. He'd say I'm being dramatic, that comparing myself to wayward waterfowl is philosophical nonsense.
As my laps start to slow, I follow the path towards the coffee shop where the morning crowd is starting to trickle in. I'll pick up an herbal tea and just ease my way back to my apartment before having to confront the conversation waiting for me at home. I just know Alfie will be in my kitchen by now, double-fisting caffeine like it's going to wash away his sins from last night, ready to deliver whatever speech our father programmed into him this week.
I can’t tell much about the woman at the counter from the back of her head, except that she is arguing with the barista about the difference between a flat white and a latte with the kind of passion not usually expelled on coffee, but the two of them seem to know each other by the way he threatens to ‘withhold her fix ’ and she backs down with a ‘see you tomorrow’ .
As she turns to leave, our eyes land on one another in a passing moment, and there’s a spark of recognition.
She brushes past me on her way before I can say anything. Not sure what I would even say, maybe offer up some support in her latte argument, though it doesn’t look like she needs any help from me. Then again, as I glance down at myself, sweaty, fabric clinging to my body, and my ‘aggressively pedestrian’ sneakers, is this the look of someone you want to make casual conversation with before the sun has even fully risen? Doubtful. But fuck it.
“Excu—” I begin to turn and speak to her, but as I do my name splits the air.
“Will… I have an herbal tea for Will.”
I see the narrowing of her eyes as she turns back towards the door and exits. Perhaps that I don’t have the coffee-legs to stand on to support her case, and she walks out the door.
“Thanks,” I say, grabbing the cup from where it’s waiting to be collected and sip my tea the rest of the way home, in absolutely no rush to pick up where Alfie and I left off. Hopefully just more sober this time.
The thing about being the black sheep is that they see my job at the museum as some sort of extended rebellion, a phase I'll grow out of once I realize the importance of ‘real work.’ Without any recognition of the very real work I do.
By the time I make it back to my apartment, the sun is fully up, and my tea is long gone. I dragged it out as long as possible, taking a few extra laps around the block to be sure. I rest my forehead against my door, breathing hard, knowing exactly what waits on the other side. Alfie, ready to remind me that some people would ‘kill for the opportunities I have.’ One of his favorites. And he's right, of course, which only makes it worse. The problem isn't that I was born with a sterling spoon in my mouth. The problem is that they see my choices as if I am choosing to dig in the dirt with it, rather than stir my father's corporate tea.
When I push open the door, I'm proven right. My brother, the poster child for 'work hard, play harder,' looks like he got into a fight with a bottle of whiskey and lost. Spectacularly.
"We need to talk," he says, as if he didn't barge in here last night doing exactly that.
"I don't have time for this." I'm already stripping off my shirt, heading for the shower. Behind me, I can practically hear him straightening his shoulders, preparing to deliver the family gospel. He wants to know what I’m up to. What my plans are. How much longer I’m planning on drawing this out.
This being my life.
My answers are the same as usual, a version of ‘none of your business.’ And his answer is the junior version of our father’s, ‘it being my business is exactly why we are in this position.’ The position they refer to is this archaic ideal of old-school standards of living. All paved paths.
My father is one of those men that people consider successful because he’s managed to turn money into more money. He likes to fashion himself as a ‘pull yourself up from the bootstraps' kind of man, but that’s just an excuse for a form of selfishness I don’t subscribe to. It’s genetic. My brothers Alfie and Cal have the same distorted sense of reality.
The world is your oyster? That idiom is about me. For all intents and purposes, I’ve experienced nothing preventative in my life. I know it. That’s the difference, I know it. My brother stands in my kitchen bothered by a laundry list of things, when the man has never done a load of laundry in his life. And while I can look back at him and acknowledge the advantages to being on the gold-plated hamster wheel, those wheels exist in cages, gold or not. And my father has done well to make sure his children remember that.
“Did you have a guest last night?” I can hear him rustling around in my space, flipping through the books on my desk where I’ve been researching for upcoming exhibits.
“No.” I respond flatly. I did.
“Huh, I coulda sworn I heard–” She snuck out before I did.
“You didn’t.” I reaffirm. “You don’t care about my sex-life Alfie, what do you want?” Let’s get this over with.
"No one has heard back from you," he calls after me, his voice carrying that specific note of disappointment that is practically carried in our DNA.
"What did you expect to hear?" I step into the shower, letting the hot water blast away the morning's miles. Unfortunately, it does nothing to drown out Alfie’s voice.
"It's a single board seat, Will," Alfie says, as if he's explaining something truly that simple to a child. My brother has always tried to emulate our father's way of making everything sound like both an offer and a threat.
"And when that vote turns into another? And another after that?"
"That's generally how responsibility works," he snaps back.
My father Hugh Sterling, built an empire out of our great-grandfather's already existing empire. Despite my lack of interest or involvement, it’s my name just as much as theirs. I may not have an active interest in what they do, but by birthright alone, I have shares.
I don’t pay as much attention to the details as they’d like me to, and even if I wanted to, the fact of the matter is, my brain never wrapped around numbers the way it does a brushstroke. Most of the time they let me hide away within the walls of the museum, only turning up for the occasional gala, where everyone is reminded that the name on my badge is not just a coincidence.
But this time, as I’ve been told too many times to count, this merger is a game of numbers, board seats, and that is why this round of disappointment holds a great deal of resentment as well.
The problem is that Sterling Financial needs a supermajority vote on the board to approve the wolf of an acquisition in the sheep’s clothing of a merger. And right now they're one seat short. According to the company charter, that seat must be filled by a Sterling family member, a provision my great-grandfather put in place to ensure family control. Hasn’t been a problem until now.
"Here we go..." I say to my shampoo bottle, which is probably the only thing in this apartment that doesn't have an opinion about my education, my job, what I have for breakfast…
"It’s a big deal, you know that. Or you would if you ever came home."
"I am home." The words come out harder than I mean them to, but they're true. Home isn't the lobby at the Sterling Financial Group, it’s not the Westchester house or the one in Newport, all with their rooms of carefully hung expectations. Home is here, in my space with quiet mornings, late nights, not lectures from the president of the board of directors of my life.
Alfie yanks back the shower curtain. His eyes catch on my newest tattoo, a small rendering of Kandinsky's ‘Several Circles’ that would give our mother heart palpitations.
I started collecting tattoos in college, they began small, and I kept them hidden beneath fabric so as to not cause more dismay in the proverbial family newsletter.
"I'm really not asking." His voice has that edge to it, the one that means he's channeling our father. "You like to pretend you are better than the rest of us, but this is family we are talking about. At the end of the day, you have obligations and you'll do right to remember that when the time comes."
"Oh yeah, Alfie? And would you call whatever you were up to last night family obligations?" I yank the curtain closed, but not before catching his flinch. "What would Olivia say about that?" We both know that his nightcap with his old college buddies in the area, turned into something that would undoubtedly make his wife question her decision. Or, at least ask for more caratage.
"You’ve got eight weeks. I'm serious."
I hear Alfie take a swig of mouthwash, probably trying to wash away the taste of hypocrisy, or the whiskey. The sound of my front door closing tells me he's gone, off to transform back into the Sterling heir apparent.