Red Clover (34 page)

In the bottom of the drawer, he found a stack of envelopes, each bearing Nelson’s handwritten name and a Chicago post office box address. There was no return address on any of the letters. He opened the one on top. It started out “My Dearest Nelson” and ended with “Love, Abbey.” He didn’t have it in his heart to read what was in between.

The rest of the file drawers in the desk revealed little, so Lee moved on to the four-drawer file cabinet. The top two drawers appeared to be the typical kinds of business-related files one would find in a company president’s office.

The third drawer contained many files related to the Congress for Cultural Freedom. He scanned the file folder labels—Conferences, Contributions, Correspondence, Publications. He flipped though each folder and found nothing out of the ordinary.

The bottom drawer contained files related to AIR, the Association for Institutional Research. He removed the first file folder labeled BOARD MEMBERS. At the top of the list was Basil Stonebugger’s name, with the title vice president of grants.

The second folder contained a list of donors. The name Abigale Sedgwick Winekoop appeared many times throughout the list, the latest entry for her being the previous year.

Another folder, a very thick one, contained newspaper clippings, copies of articles, and sheets torn from magazines, all having to do with one topic—psoriasis.

Finding nothing of interest in the remaining folders, Lee took a break and sat back in his father’s chair to survey the room. A college diploma from Northwestern University hung on one side of the door. On the other side was a hounds-and-fox painting. A bookshelf with a few reference books and artifacts had been positioned on one wall next to another door.

He opened the door to reveal a bathroom.

From the bookshelf, he picked up a carved wooden elephant with the inscription MADE IN INDIA. He wished he knew if his father had been to India or if someone had just given it to him.

Some of the reference books pertained to printing and others to medicine, making Lee even more curious about him. His mother had never mentioned any ties to medicine.

Something changed outside the room. Lee could no longer hear the reverberation of running machinery overhead. He sat still while the sound of closing doors echoed from the back of the building. He could feel the vibration of what he thought might be the overhead door on the loading dock being raised. Two minutes later, he looked out the window to see a line of cars exiting the parking lot. It was nine o’clock. The second shift must have just ended, an hour earlier than he had anticipated.

Lee waited several minutes before making his way to the back of the building. When he saw only his own car in the parking lot, he walked through the storage room and headed back toward his father’s office.

The elevator doors caught his attention. Feeling adventurous, he pushed the button to go up. The powerful sound of the elevator caused him to jump. When the elevator door opened, Lee stepped inside and pushed the 2 button.

When the elevator door opened again, Lee was taken aback by the pungent smell of chemicals. The room was enormous. The two rows of machinery flanking either side of a twenty-foot aisle were at least twice as tall as he was. He walked the length of the machines and tried to envision pages of newspaper flowing through each section of the press. A wrought-iron stairway took him to the third floor where there were a dozen or so smaller pieces of equipment.

When he’d finished his tour, he went back to the first floor, glad he had taken time to see the operation, even if it wasn’t running at the time.

As Lee passed through the storage room, he pulled off the plastic cover of an old Xerox copier, similar to the kind he had used in the Cornell library years earlier, the kind that broke down after just about every use. He hit the On button, and the display lit up. To his relief, it did not malfunction while he made copies of the four photographs, the AIR board member list, and his father’s college diploma.

He left through the back exit with his photocopies, the wooden elephant, his father’s nameplate, and his mother’s letters, making sure the door was securely closed behind him so no other unauthorized person would have the opportunity to do what he had just done.

29 | Promised Land

Staring at the carved wooden elephant and the brass nameplate now proudly displayed on his new fireplace mantle, alongside the photocopy of the picture of his father shaking hands with JFK, Lee felt he knew his father a little better. But not enough to be completely satisfied. He continued to ask his mother questions, and she continued to be conspicuously unresponsive, either because the only aspect of him she knew had taken place in the bedroom, or because it was just too painful to talk about him.

He wanted to know more. He needed to know more, and he figured Stonebugger might be his only hope. He regretted not having pursued a meeting with him sooner. Lee had just received a letter informing him that Stonebugger had retired. Hopeful he would still be willing to meet with him, Lee called Stonebugger's office and explained to his secretary the personal nature of his request.

The next day, the secretary called to tell him that Mr. Stonebugger was amenable but only if Lee’s mother was made aware of the nature of the discussion. Lee agreed, and a meeting was arranged to take place in Stonebugger’s office the following Sunday.

When he called his mother to tell her, she sighed and said, “I’ve told you everything, Lee.”

“With all due respect, Mother, you’ve told me very little. And you admitted yourself your relationship with him was narrowly focused. I want to know more.”

“I admit I didn’t live in his real world—our relationship was cultivated completely outside of that. What I’m trying to say is I don’t know what you’re going to find, and I don’t want you to be disappointed.”

He didn’t believe her. He suspected the real reason she didn’t want him to learn more about the man was so she could preserve the Utopian image she had of him.

“From my perspective, the truth is better than ignorance, even if it’s hard to take.”

She didn’t speak for a long moment. “This is important to you, isn’t it?”

“Very important.”

“Then I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

After Lee hung up, he gazed out the front window at his acreage. A mild winter had given way to spring, allowing the stems in the massive fields of red clover to push their way above the soil like a platoon of billowy soldiers. The structures for his current project had been completed before the first heavy snowfall, allowing Lee and the contractors to concentrate on the interiors. With the grand opening scheduled for June 21, the project was right on schedule.

After driving to Chicago, Lee parked his car near Stonebugger’s office and gave himself a few minutes to calm his nerves. He had no idea what to expect from the meeting.

It was evident from Stonebugger’s face that he still bore the pain of his sister’s death, and now Lee felt guilty for initiating the meeting.

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Stonebugger.”

“Thank you. Have a seat, and please call me Basil.” His voice was soft, almost wistful.

“Yes, of course.” Lee sat down across from him. “First of all, I appreciate your agreeing to meet with me. I want you to know I wouldn’t have bothered you about this if it wasn’t so important to me.”

“I understand. Believe me, I do.”

“I know Nelson Sambourg was my father.”

Stonebugger nodded.

“And I know you had a long-standing relationship with him.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Can you tell me about him?”

He studied Lee’s face for a few seconds before speaking. “We grew up in the same town, Valparaiso, Indiana. We lived two blocks from each other.”

“So you went to school together?”

“We were best friends all through school.”

“And college?”

“He went to Northwestern. I went to Purdue.”

“What was he like? What were his interests? And most importantly, did he have any family?”

Basil didn’t respond right away. Instead, he got up and stared out the window at the empty city street below. Stonebugger’s office was in the heart of Chicago’s Loop district, which was typically deserted on weekends. “I loved him like a brother. We did everything together as kids. Played sports, went fishing, double dated, got into trouble. His family? His parents were good people. His father built that printing company from nothing. Amassed a fortune from nothing. Very smart man.”

“Did he have brothers and sisters?”

Basil didn’t speak for several seconds. “He had a sister. She died.”

Lee waited for him to say more.

Finally, Basil turned around. “Her name was Loretta. Beautiful girl.” Lee thought about the little girl in the photograph from his father’s office.

Basil sat back down. He folded his hands and rested them on his desk. “She took her own life.”

Lee hadn’t expected to hear that. “How tragic.”

“They were close...like Gladys and me.”

“How old was she?”

“Nineteen.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Basil took his time answering. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a few seconds. “You deserve to know. You
should
know who your father was and what he was all about.”

The expression on Stonebugger’s face told Lee he was pained by the memories.

“Loretta was what most people would call a perfect child—well-mannered, smart, caring, a real pleasure to be around. Nelson doted on her, protected her when she needed it, even when she tormented him the way little sisters can do. I know. I had two younger sisters to contend with myself. When she was about thirteen, it happened. And it happened fast.”

“What’s that?”

“She developed a severe case of psoriasis, and it was on her face. Are you familiar with the disease?” Lee shook his head. “It’s such a cruel disease when it attacks visible parts of the body. Thick, red, scaly patches of skin cells form raised plaques of skin, as they’re called. They didn’t pose a serious health risk, I don’t think, and the physical discomfort was tolerable. It was the teasing, the cruel names she was called, and rejection from her classmates and even adults that caused her demise.”

“That’s why she took her own life?”

Basil nodded.

Lee tried to imagine what the girl must have gone through. “How did my father take it?”

“Not well. He was a few years older than she and in his senior year at Northwestern. He came home for the funeral and didn’t go back to school. Couldn’t go back. At least not then. It wasn’t until years later he took the few courses he had left to finish his degree.”

“And his parents. That had to be so hard on them.”

“Yes, they took it hard. His mother died a few years later from congestive heart failure, and his father died shortly after that.”

“Leaving Nelson with no family.”

“Exactly. I shouldn’t say this, but the man was so lonely and distraught from losing his family, I think he married the first woman who came along.”

“That would have been Margaret?”

“Mm-hm.”

“And they had no children.”

“That’s correct. Another emotional letdown for him.”

“Do you know if she knew about me?”

“Nelson believed, or wanted to believe, she wasn’t aware of his affair with your mother, but I think she did. Whether she knew about you or not, I don’t know.”

Lee had hoped for a more definitive answer.

“I understand he inherited the printing business when his father died.”

“He did. But he didn’t have much interest in it. He didn’t have much interest in much of anything back then. He let others manage the business while he did other things, trying to find happiness, I guess. There was a lot of drinking and gambling going on in his circle of friends.” He shook his head. “He looked like hell most of the time. Margaret threatened to leave him. When I found out about the affair he was having with your mother...” He paused. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay to talk about it. My mother has been very open with me.”

“That’s when I stepped in and had a heart-to-heart talk with him.”

“And what happened?”

“He calmed down some. And then I asked him one day what he was so angry about all the time. He broke down and said it was Loretta’s senseless death. We talked for hours about it that day…something we should have done years before. At the end of our talk, he swore he would do something about it, even though he didn’t know what.”

“Is this story going to lead to his founding the Association for Institutional Research?”

“You’ve been doing some investigative work.”

Lee smiled. “Some.”

“Well, you are absolutely right. He was one of the founding fathers, and they asked me if I would oversee the administrative aspect of issuing grants. The first grant we issued was to two Northwestern Medical School professors interested in finding the early diagnosis and treatment of acromegaly, another disfiguring condition, one that results in abnormally large tissues in the hands and feet. It took your father several years before he found anyone to conduct research on psoriasis, and by that time, he was completely immersed in the AIR and its work. He was devoted to medical research of all kinds, but especially disfiguring diseases.”

“That’s why you said something about building a treatment facility for people with disfiguring diseases as an example of a way for me to increase the value of the land.”

“That’s actually what he had planned for it.”

Lee let that sink in for a moment and wondered why Stonebugger hadn’t told him that from the beginning. “Mother said he had referred to it as ‘the promised land.'“

“He talked about it for years, but for some reason, nothing ever came of it.”

“So he wanted me to carry out what he didn’t.”

“I’m assuming that was his intent.”

“Why didn’t he come right out and say that in his will?”

“I think it was because he knew you well enough through your mother to know for you to succeed in life, you had to figure things out for yourself.” He paused. “Unlike your brothers who were handed things on a platter and were able to run with it. I don’t mean any disrespect toward them. That’s just how it was, or so he told me.”