Sea Cliff

Chapter 3

Chapter 3Amanda was in real estate. She had taken a listing on a Sea Cliff house even though it desperately needed renovation. She knew that one day it would become a gold mine. Once renovated, the old building could easily sell for an exorbitant price because of its location on the cliffs behind the Richmond District. “Amanda told me to get my dad to buy the house. She convinced him in subsequent conversations that he needed the tax advantage that house afforded since his dependents would soon leave home. I live in that house now.”

“And the rest is history.”

“Not quite, but he bought it. Then, for the first time in my life, Dad thanked me for something.” Rachael was shocked when he let her stay in San Francisco with Amanda to oversee the renovation. “Me, he left the whole renovation to me,” she said, tapping her chest. “Made me promise to consult with Amanda on everything though.”

“Rachael, your dad did have a good heart.”

“No, actually without me there to thump on, he used my brother.”

“He abused your brother, too?”

“I didn't realize it then. I was ecstatic about being away from home.”

All her life, her father reminded that she didn't know how to do anything competently. He'd painfully flick her ears, or slap or kick her when he was frustrated. He's use a board if he had one in his hands. He destroyed what little self-confidence she had and denied her any opportunities to prove her abilities. In one way or another he'd convince himself he was right. Other than Amanda's coaxing, Rachael couldn't guess what motivated him to allow her to manage the renovations, let alone leave home.

“I'll bet you went to great lengths to win his approval.”

“I did. I worked hard on his books. Paper work was a burden he struggled with. The Sea Cliff house gave me the opportunity to do something almost completely on my own that would please him.”

“That was right after high school. How old were you?”

“Seventeen. I desperately wanted to prove I was more than just his dumb daughter.” Renovations were progressing well. Amanda organized a gigantic birthday party for her that October. Rachael felt vindicated.

“Did your dad follow your progress?”

“No, he didn't call on my birthday or Thanksgiving.” Rachael finally called Brandon. He wouldn't say much. His pretentiousness told her something was wrong. The week before Christmas, she took a bus home and experienced the saddest two weeks of her life. Her dad continued to gripe about raising two kids alone. He cursed her mother for having died, then mumbled something about it being better anyway because she was another burden to him. “He was vicious and self-serving. Brandon's grades were poor. He had a broken arm and made excuses about how it happened.”

“I can understand how everything would look normal to outsiders,” Tina said. “I'm guessing the a***e happened when no one was around.”

In the week that followed, Brandon admitted he was glad the Sea Cliff house was progressing well. All he wanted was for Rachael to come home. He admitted he wasn't good at doing her bookkeeping.

“Your dad made him do the books?”

Brandon wasn't yet sixteen but trying desperately to be the man their father demanded he be. Brandon cried when they spoke. He was planning to run away.

“Never did I think about moving back there.”

“Don't tell me you did.”

“A neighbor told me I could report my father to child a***e authorities. There were agencies in Sacramento that would investigate. She warned it could be a long losing battle.”

“After being away a while, were you emotionally strong enough to handle your father's wrath?”

“I left the Sea Cliff house sitting idle with Amanda to look after it. I hadn't done all the renovations I wanted to do. Dad wouldn't rent it out for fear someone would damage the upgrading I did. I mean, the kind of people who can afford to rent a house in Sea Cliff are not the type to trash it. I went home till Brandon completed high school, then planned to bring him back with me after he graduated.”

After she returned home, two miserable years passed. Her dad never laid a hand on her again. He yelled and complained and cursed. Brandon would have occasional bruises and make flimsy excuses. He was afraid to complain and quietly worked hard. His grades were failing.

“You know, Rach? This sound like reality TV. Where does it end?”

“Oh, that wasn't the end of it. Brandon refused to come back with me after graduation. He was bitter about my having left him behind in the first place.” She couldn't convince him of the impossibility at the time and he blamed her for the a***e he'd received.

“There's got to be a positive end to this. You're a different person now.”

“Maybe positive after a while.”

Just days after Rachael and Brandon had their talk, in an explosive argument with one of his drivers out on the loading dock, her dad turned to leave. In his rage, he walked right off the end of the platform. He hit the concrete hard, chest first, and sprawled out, disoriented, anger and blood pressure raging. They say he struggled to stand, and then suddenly thrust his shoulders back sharply several times before collapsing again as blood spurted out his nose and mouth.

Rachel and Brandon stayed at his hospital bedside. Past midnight, he went into cardiac arrest and expired. Later, the doctor said his flaccid respiratory organs were unable to supply his heart with life-sustaining oxygen. The diagnosis was that the shock of the fall made both his lungs collapse, possibly weakened from a life time of breathing crop pesticides and other toxic residues that permeate the croplands.

“I know that whole scene, Rach,” Tina said while squirming in her seat, as if the emotion of it made her feel as trapped as Rachael had felt. She gestured with her hands. “You and your brother standing at his bedside, trying to show your dad you loved him, and with his dying breath, he made no effort to repent.”

Tears welled up in Rachael's eyes as she reminded herself to drive safely. “When the heart attack came, he went into deep spasms and twitched till his wretched soul shook loose.”

“How did I know that?”

A will was found in a safe deposit box. They learned she and Brandon would each inherit half of a large double indemnity life insurance policy, and equally half of the business or half of the proceeds if the business would be sold. Money from their mother's life insurance policy, when she died, was invested in a broad stock portfolio. “We were to divide shares equally or liquidate and split the earnings. Brandon received the Walnut Grove house and I got Sea Cliff.”

Tina had tears in her eyes. “All bittersweet recompense for the years of battering and abuse.”

Brandon offered his share of their mother's stocks in exchange for sole ownership of the company. However, he agreed to pay Rachael a nice fee for doing the accounting in order to avoid more costly expenses from a CPA firm.

“So he'd picked up some business savvy.”

“More like selfish motivation. He'd allow me to do the bookkeeping, even though I can do more. A CPA firm would pull the monthly Profit and Loss statements. He was afraid I'd have too much control.”

Brandon wanted to keep the business alive in Walnut Grove. He hadn't been trained for anything else. His grades were barely enough to allow him to graduate. He had his special kind of emotional difficulties from growing up with a tyrant. With the help of the business, he saw the chance to make a reputation for himself by carrying on where his father left off. With his share of the inheritance, he should have been able to do it quite comfortably.

At the turnoff in Walnut Creek, Rachael headed south on Hwy. 280. The flow of traffic changed from expensive SUVs and sports cars to pickups, larger trucks, and other commercial vehicles glutting the road.

“You taking the long way to the Delta?” Tina asked as she noticed the sign.

“No, we're going to Lathrop, south of Stockton. Brandon only stayed in Walnut Grove through two crop seasons.” There was ample work servicing farmers who needed heavy equipment, truck motors, or spare parts and over sized tires transported. About every farmer in the Delta communities hired George Connor's Hauling and Drayage at one time or another. Moving cumbersome equipment, transferring of animals, even transporting of crop overloads to the processing plants in Clarksburg and Sacramento had to be done by someone. “But Brandon wasn't prospering. He had taken on Dad's temperament and abused the drivers so much, finding willing help was nearly impossible. When people spoke of his temper…”

“Like father, like son, right?” Tina glanced out the side window studying the open fields that flowed into the distance. “What made him choose that area?”

“The best work Brandon could get to keep his trucks running was by referral from Manchester Trucking out of Modesto.” Manchester couldn't come that far north in the Central Valley and make it a profitable trip at the same time. They pushed their overruns to Brandon because George Connor gave them referral business when they were a startup company years earlier.

“Sounds like your dad was a good businessman, at least.”

“Someone told Brandon about an old mansion for sale outside of Stockton sitting on six commercial acres that could house his equipment.” The isolated mansion was run down, being sold for virtually pennies. People in the area hoped a private party would buy and restore it, rather than see a developer demolish it. Selling the Walnut Grove house allowed him to purchase the old mansion and acreage. He'd have enough capital left over to pump fresh blood into his floundering affairs. The flood of images paraded through Rachael's thoughts as clearly as if they happened yesterday. She was thankful for Tina's friendship and understanding.

“And?” Tina asked, as if impatiently waiting for an update on a missed episode of a favorite reality show. “Did his business improve after the move?”

“He thought his trucks would stay busy being deeper into the crop lands. Moving was just another excuse.” George Connor built a hard reputation, managing to prosper right there among the farms on the Sacramento River Delta islands. Brandon chose to move away from bad memories.

“Rachael, your history, I thought I knew you.”

Rachael remained silent. The reverie took her to the days when she and Brandon were much younger. They would romp through the tall weeds and wild flowers that grew between the rows of pear trees near where they lived. After the orchards were flooded, when the water receded and the ground dried out, they'd walk in the powdery soil and feel the fading coolness of moisture in the dirt under their bare feet. Soft powdery dust would fly up between their toes as their feet slapped soft drifted mounds of top soil. They would laugh discreetly, without making noise, afraid of being accused of doing something wrong.

Rachael's memory slipped farther back, to one of the many times when her parents thought she or Brandon had done something wrong. Her dad taught her mom how to punish. She would rip a thin new branch off a pear tree, run her hand backwards over it to strip off the leaves, then use it to whip them as punishment.

Another memory flashed through her mind; her father holding her three month old brother's n***d bottom over the kitchen stove to dry him out because he wet his diaper too much.

A car honked startling her. Rachael gasped, drew her attention back to driving. She looked up through tear-filled eyes, in time to catch a glimpse of the overhead sign for the junction to Highway 680.

Tina remained quiet for many miles, surely absorbing what she had just learned. Judging by the way she studied the countryside, she was thankful to be out of The City for a while. Rachael wondered if what she disclosed would affect their friendship.