The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 6: The Assistant

Gillian O’Shaughnessy was born in Cork, Ireland and came to the United States in the last great Irish migration in the decade before the Emergency Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924. He was fifteen and alone when he arrived at Ellis Island and promptly renamed Gil Shaughnessy and then moved in with a great aunt on his mother’s side who he had never met before, Mabel O’Leary. Until the previous year Mabel had lived in the Vinegar Hill section of Brooklyn with her husband Daniel O’Leary, a New York City policeman.

Well, I should say that Mabel still lived in the Vinegar Hills section of Brooklyn when Gil arrived in New York, but Gil’s great uncle, Daniel, no longer did because he was dead. He had been killed while serving in the line of duty the previous year. This may conjure visions of shootouts with Lucky Luciano or of trying to stop a bank robbery while in progress, but unfortunately for Daniel, or perhaps fortunately for Daniel (it probably doesn’t matter to him either way at this point), neither of those dramatic scenes were the cause of his demise. Daniel was a traffic cop by trade and while working as a traffic cop he had been run over by a brand new Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost recently imported from England and driven by the chauffeur for some kind an Astor. (Even though no Astor was in the car because the chauffeur was late in picking up said Astor from his drinking club.)

Although the Silver Ghost was the fastest car of the time, automobiles of that age didn’t go quite as fast as they do now, especially when they were driving the streets of New York City, even when it was a chauffeur who was late in picking up his employer, so David O’Callaghan, the chauffeur (an Irish immigrant from the previous decade), was only going 20 mph when he hit Daniel O’Leary knocking him backwards onto the pavement.

The odds of dying when being hit by an automobile going only 20 mph are quite low, it is only when the mph get up to 35 or 40 mph that the odds of death become greater than the odds of survival. But David O’Callaghan, not to mention Daniel O’Leary, was quite unlucky in that it was a cold and icy December day in New York City, and despite what I said earlier Daniel didn’t fall backwards onto the pavement (partly because the streets of New York weren’t paved in the year of this incident), but onto a patch of ice fracturing his skull.

Alone for nearly a year in an empty Vinegar Hills apartment because all of her children were grown, Mabel needed company. And once she had company, she put all of her hopes into her recently arrived energetic, bright-faced and chipper-spirited great-nephew. Either because of, or perhaps in spite of, her husband’s death, Mabel wanted Gil to honor Daniel O’Leary’s memory by following him into the New York City police force. But much to Mabel’s disappointment, Gil had no interest on that side of the law. To be fair, he didn’t join one of any number of Irish-American gangs that tried to recruit him throughout his teenage years. He became a businessman instead.

A very good hardworking businessman even if he was a little amoral. Luck is a necessary mistress to any great fortune and it was lucky for Gil that his great-aunt lived in New York City because New York City of course houses Wall Street. Gil took advantage of this stroke of geographic good fortune and began working in various brokerage houses and investment firms from the age of sixteen. (When by all rights he should have been engaging in petty crime with one of the local neighborhood gangs.) By the time he was 23, Gil had made and lost more money than Daniel and Mabel O’Leary had seen in their lifetimes and by the time he was 25, some individuals insisted on calling Gil a confidence man, a trickster, a fraudster, and whatever other 1920’s terms people used, and this is what the small-to-medium sized crowd outside his office window were shouting in the weeks after the stock market crashed in 1929.

But this only mildly annoyed Gil, just as the crash itself had only mildly annoyed him because he was diversified in both portfolio and temperament and saw the economic downturn not as an economic downturn but as a way for those who were smart enough and strategically well-positioned enough to make a small fortune. And this Gil did throughout the years of the Great Depression. However, unfortunately for Gil he was Irish and Roman Catholic and these were the years before 98.5% effective birth control (and Vatican II), so a small fortune is exactly what he needed to ensure his family of 13 children (and 1 wife) lived in moderately upper middle-class comfort.

The exact middle child of Gillian (Gil had reverted to Gillian after 1931. He told all of his friends this was because he was getting in touch with his heritage and the “old country,” although many of those same friends speculated it was actually for legal reasons that are too complicated to get into here) and Beatrice Shaughnessy was a small otter-like boy who had inherited none of Gillian’s vitality and confidence, named Darby. Most everybody who met Darby put his mild-mannered to the point of not being there personality down to the fact he was the compromised and compromising middle child in such a large family with so many strong personalities.

This certainly may have been a factor in his development, however, more likely the reason Darby was nothing like Gillian was that he wasn’t actually his biological child, but instead the product of one of Beatrice’s many affairs while her husband was away working many hours making a lot of money and generally ignoring his family. (The 3^rd, 4^th, 9^th and 13^th children of the Shaughnessy clan were also products of Beatrice’s affairs, although none of them as obviously different in temperament from their supposed father as Darby.)

Darby didn’t stay in New York City or New York state. And Darby did not go into the family business like all of his older brothers. Instead, Darby moved to western Massachusetts to become a librarian at a small liberal arts university. It was at this university and at this library he fell in love with his vivacious and warm assistant librarian, Constance. And it was in western Massachusetts where Constance and Darby would raise their only son, Michael.

Michael Shaughnessy was a natural-born salesman. This was always attributed to the genes passed on from his larger-than-life grandfather and not from those passed on from his smaller than life father (these things skip a generation, y’know). However, Michael’s strong personality and overabundant energy were not inherited from the man he knew as his grandfather not only because he wasn’t related biologically to his grandfather because of Darby’s hidden illegitimacy, but also because he wasn’t biologically related to Darby, either. Although, unlike the perennially distracted by business and unaware of the internal family goings on Gillian, Darby was perfectly aware that Michael wasn’t his son because Michael was already a very small child when Darby married the warm and vivacious Constance after the real father, some good-looking boy named Johnson, ran away and joined the army upon hearing the news of Constance’s pregnancy.

Michael grew up unaware of all of this previous family drama and perhaps because he never had any brothers or sisters he never felt the urge to delve into his family history where he would have found out such things as the slight discrepancy in dates between his birth certificate and his parent’s marriage certificate. A more inquisitive and philosophical sort like his father Darby would also have picked up on at least one of any number of hints throughout his childhood of his real paternity, but Michael was truly his grandfather’s grandson and didn’t have time for such things because he was going places.

He was the star running back and captain of his high school football team and the prom king and valedictorian and voted most likely to succeed. All of the signifiers of a young man who is not only going places but will end up in places. And Michael ended up at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. where he was still on his inevitable path to one day become President of the United States. Unfortunately, during Michael’s sophomore year, he found out he wasn’t going to become President, not because of the insurmountable odds against any one individual obtaining the highest office in the land but because he found out he would rather make money instead.

Michael kept to his original plan of going to Harvard Law School, and this was quickly augmented with a degree from Harvard Business School, soon Michael was working on Wall Street like his grandfather once had for a hedge fund that was named for some sort of biblical character out of the Old Testament. Michael stayed at this hedge fund for several years, making the money he had always dreamed of making but not satisfied with the imprint he was making on the nation at large (after all, he had given up the Presidency for this), so he moved to Los Angeles and began to work in the marketing division of Landmark Communications.

The marketing division was full of many competent workers who were going places just like Michael was, but Michael was going there faster and he was quickly promoted up the corporate ladder and named Vice President of Marketing by the time he was 40. After several years he moved to take over the struggling Speculative Products Division, which he quickly turned around much to the satisfaction of his boss, David Humphrey. He was so successful as the head of the Speculative Products Division that Daily Variety named him an Executive to Watch and then the next year did a profile on him, trumpeting him as a possible candidate to run one of Landmark’s smaller competitors.

Michael didn’t get that job, but there was still time. David Humphrey knew this and Michael Shaughnessy knew this, so David Humphrey moved Michael once again, now to head the Customer Profiling Division and hopefully turn that around as well. This would all be head-spinning for someone who hadn’t expected to be the most powerful man in the world by the time they were 45, but Michael still thought he had done quite well for himself; a house in Pacific Palisades, a beautiful five to ten years younger former attorney wife with two beautiful private schooled children who wanted for nothing, not even affection, like Michael’s father was left wanting for affection from his successful father. Michael had made quite a success of himself and he was still going places as he hit his late forties. And he was sure he was going to end up in those places by his early 50s.

And now he was my assistant in the mailroom.

*

“Where would you like me to begin, Mr. Abbott?”

“I really don’t need any help. Mr. Humphrey…”

“Dave.”

“What?”

“He wanted me to make sure you call him Dave, not Mr. Humphrey. Where should I begin?”

What was I to do, insist that I sort the mail, deliver the mail, pick up the mail, when I had such a capable man offering to help. So I sat back down at my desk, yeah, I had a desk now, too. It used to be Richard’s desk, but he had been downgraded to a small folding table and folding chair and now I had his desk.

I watched Mike and my coworkers for the rest of the day with my feet up on Richard’s, now my, desk. (As important as it is to put one’s feet on top of the desk to signify nonchalant power, it becomes unbearably uncomfortable after only 15 minutes as the flow of blood to your feet  is cut off and soon they are tingling and you have to stomp them on the floor repeatedly to bring them back to life, which kind of destroys the whole nonchalant power thing that putting your feet up on the desk was supposed to give off in the first place, so when I say I watched Mike and my coworkers sort, dissect, inspect and deliver the mail all day with my feet on the desk I’m speaking metaphorically, no, figuratively, no metaphorically, whatever, just picture me sitting there relaxed watching them slave away with my feet up.)

Every day at 11:58 exactly, Humphrey’s minion would come down to escort me up to the 179^th floor to have some version of fish and potatoes and every night Debi and I would continue our affair in the honeymoon suite of the Park Royale Hotel. Humphrey had put me up there for the rest of the week. I assume he put me in the honeymoon suite not because he knew about Debi and me, but because it was the best suite in the hotel, I mean, he couldn’t have known about our affair, could he? Actually, he absolutely could have known about our affair, but the thought is too horrifying to contemplate. Let’s move on.

Anyway, Debi and I would lounge around the suite (which was bigger than the glass coffee table that was bigger than the couch that was bigger than my apartment, although you probably already assumed that since it’s the honeymoon suite at the Park Royale Hotel) in plush complimentary robes eating Landmark financed room service and watching Landmark subsidized movies on the SUV-sized television that was bigger than my apartment (but smaller than the coffee table that was bigger than the couch that was bigger than my apartment). Debi’s morning sickness had passed so she wasn’t throwing up after the sex anymore, which was another plus, so we could lie in bed afterwards like 2 normal lovers talking about normal lover things.

“I think you should name him after me.” Debi had just found out it was going to be a boy.

“I don’t think Clark would like that.”

“How would he know? Benjamin’s a perfectly lovely name. There’ve been many impressive Benjamins throughout history: Ben Franklin…”

“And?”

The momentum of my thought had surprisingly slowed before it ever really started. Benjamin is a very common name so there had to be many famous Benjamins, it would only logically follow, every common name has a lot of famous historical figures attached to it, but as I laid there my head resting against Debi’s belly, I couldn’t think of a single other important Benjamin in the history of humankind besides Benjamin Franklin. Time passed. Debi seemed to enjoy my flummoxed state of mental paralysis. I’m a talker after sex, so usually I would regal her with elaborate theories or plans or ideas or just talk about random things like how she should name her kid after me, but now that I was trying to think of famous Benjamins, any famous Benjamins, a prolonged rare aftersex silence descended upon us like a warm soft down pillow smothering my thoughts. She continued to let the silence linger as I mentally searched through the past and the present trying to come up with anybody.

“I think there was a president named Benjamin once.”

“Who?”

“He was related to the one who died in office after 100 days.”

“Okay.”

“And there’s the guy on Law & Order.”

“Yes.

“The one that dated Julia Roberts.”

“I know who you’re talking about.”

“I think that might be it.”

“That’s quite a list. I’m not persuaded.”

“Come on, it’s a nice name. I have the name and I’m the most impressive one. I’m going to be famous.”

“You’re not going to be famous, Ben.”

“Humphrey wants to make me famous.”

“He wants to buy something from you. He’s a businessman. You have something he wants. He’s going to use different methods to try to get it from you. If he can get it by flattering you, he will flatter you. If he has to use other methods, he will do that. You don’t know much about business, do you, Ben?”

“I know enough,” I said defiantly and quickly changed the subject back to the important topic at hand. “I like the sound of Benjamin Jr.”

“Aaaaah!”

That shriek was me. Her stomach had punched me.

“He’s kicking. Do you want to feel?”

“Yes?” I lied. She took my hand and placed it on her stomach and I felt young Benjamin as he thrashed about inside of her. I gazed at her naked belly marveling at the miracle of life and wondering what the future would hold for the young child.

Okay, that’s not true. I wasn’t marveling at the miracle of the alien lifeform gestating inside my lover and I wasn’t thinking about the future this boy would face when he was pushed out into the world. I was thinking of my future. Not my future with Debi, my future with Humphrey. It was Thursday night. One more day and my week of freedom would be over. Our courtship was entering its final delicate stages. I would have to decide if I was going to give myself to Humphrey or not.

When this whole thing started my plan was to take advantage of his generosity for a week and then take the deal. It was the intelligent and sensible thing to do. But young Benjamin seemed to be trying to tell me something in his kicks. His vigorous knocking against a world that had encaged him communicated to me there might be a better path. Or maybe I was just overthinking things again. I hate when I do that.

Next Chapter: (The) Particle Zoo
Previous Chapter: Chapter Five
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