Schuyler Square, Day Three

Schuyler Square
Day Three
Number One Son

Sometimes, quite often actually, Brad Schuyler fantasized about being born in a normal family. A family where lying, deception and secrecy weren't the norm. A family that had members who liked each other and enjoyed hanging around with each other and who spent Christmas and Easter and birthdays together because they wanted to, not because they saw those occasions as good opportunities to spy on each other and make sure the will hadn't changed. Brad had friends with families like that and he envied them just as much as they envied him. They envied him because he was rich. He envied them because they were happy.

But Brad, at age 28, was coming to accept that the Schuyler family was never going to be normal. The deck had been stacked against them from the very beginning, way back when Great-Grandpa Schuyler had opened Schuyler Enterprises. It was a totally unglam business but it had begun to hemorrhage money almost immediately. Being wealthy in a small town had its high points and being rich was always better than being poor but all that money had created character flaws in the Schuylers that seemed to get deeper and deeper with every passing generation, kind of like fissures in the walls of a valley.

Take his father, for example. Brad had grown up being scared of his father and his hair trigger temper but that fear had eventually been replaced with a kind of apathy and later a resentment that he knew he'd never be able to shake. Ron--he no longer thought of his father as "Dad"--was such a cliche. A middle-aged  businessman who burped antacid, fell asleep over his brandy and never, ever had an original idea. What was so scary about that?

Then there was Mommy Not So Dearest. Mavis Jenson Schuyler, a woman of a certain age who lived for Dr. Phil and sales at Macy's. A woman who wanted to be mistaken for a cougar or a Real Housewife of Atlanta. Brad loved his mother, he supposed, but he would be the first to admit that Mavis Schuyler wasn't what anyone would call lively. How had he sprung from such dried up wells? Brad did his best to avoid his mother. And his father. And his twit of a brother, Tyler.

Good Lord, Tyler Schuyler! Maybe his parents did have a sense of humor but in the 20 years since Tyler had been born not once had Brad heard Ron or Mavis comment on the fact that their youngest son's first name rhymed with his last. It was very possible that they'd never noticed.

Brad was making himself sick and that wasn't a good idea. He had to get to work and nausea and management seldom went hand in hand. Putting his neurotic family out of his mind, Brad parked his car next to his father's and walked into the grey concrete building that was someday going to belong to him and the twit. He wanted to stop in his father's office and have a drink. He had a meeting with HR in half an hour and those kinds of meetings always required a little extra lubricating.

Brad had almost reached his father's office when he heard voices coming from the waiting room. That was odd; his father seldom had anyone see him at work, probably because Ron was rarely at work. Peering through the half opened door, Brad saw a tall blonde who had a pissed expression on her face. Following her gaze, Brad saw she was looking at his father, who looked like he was on the verge of stroking out.

"...a long time," he heard Ron say.

"Too long," the blonde said. "I've been putting this off for a long time, Ron, but it can't wait any longer."

Brad took a step back and strained his ears. Hopefully he'd hear something useful, something that might enable him to convince his father to spring for a vacation in the West Indies. Crouching in the hallway, it occurred to Brad that he was just as rotten as the rest of his family, always looking for the easy way out , the chance to blackmail a relative. Yes, he was definitely a Schuyler.

Shrugging, Brad leaned his head closer to the open door. It was really pointless to fight genetics.