Icarus Fell

It’s probably almost ten o’clock on a Tuesday in late April. I sit at my desk finishing the final bit of a joint I’d rolled. I roll a second one and watch an episode of a show I’ve seen twice, at least. My window looks out over a stretch of road between two dorm rooms, and I spend ample time watching other students walking up or down, alone or together, quiet or yelling. Sober or not. It’s in that moment, when a quiet student walks up the hill, when the dialogue of the show barely piques my attention, when I truly realize I am truly stoned, that my phone begins to ring.

It’s my father. He never calls without texting first. He never calls this late.

I pause the show, hop up to sit on my desk with feet on my chair, and answer the phone. I forget, nervously, to take a deep breath.

“Heydadwhat’sup?”

“Harp? You okay?” Shit. “Sorry if I’m interrupting something.”

I breathe. Why am I nervous? He’d always been honest about smoking in college, really he’d understand if I just told him I’m high. I decide not to, however. Always simpler not to rock the boat.

“No you’re fine,” I say. “What’s going on?”

He pauses on the line. I can hear his heavy breathing. I’ll find out later he’s out walking because he thinks the FBI might’ve bugged our house. At the moment I’m more concerned with how my own breathing sounds.

“Listen, this is pretty hard for me,” he says. “But I’m in a little bit of trouble.”

“Oh.”

Another silence.

“I’ll explain it all, but it’s a little complicated.”

“Okay.” I’ve forgotten that I’m stoned, that I’m the one who should be scared. I can hear the fear in his voice.

“I’m not going to jail or anything.” He sniffs, and his voice wavers as he speaks again. “But long story short, I’m going to have to plead guilty to a felony charge in a few weeks.”

This time I’m the one who’s silent.

“I fucked up.”

***

At the end of my sophomore year of college, I was set for an adventure. I had all my bags packed and plane tickets booked – I was flying down to the British Virgin Islands, so I could sail across the Atlantic to Europe, and then fly back home from Nice, France.

Some months before then, though, I struggled with how to spend my summer. It felt silly to throw away a perfectly good opportunity to further my career and pad my resume. I would graduate in just two years, after all. I can remember sitting around dining hall tables, relaxing in front of a TV, talking with friends about summers and what would come next. Roommates and friends went into detail about their internships – investment firms, PR companies, three months of networking on Capitol Hill. They were teenagers with five year plans, career junkies still waiting for legal drinks.

I sometimes took pride in staying outside that realm, keeping myself from stressing or obsessing about how every action I took would impact or better my future. I would sit back in those moments, letting myself revel just a little bit in feeling above them. More often though, I would get sucked down the drain of vocational anxiety. My heart would begin to pound, beating at my ribcage quicker and quicker with each passing moment.

It was these moments that caused me to question whether I should spend a summer on a ship, off on an experience instead of working for a future career, or if I should instead seek an office job. Perhaps I should spend my summer practicing my Windsor knot each morning instead of learning a bowline. Sit at a desk instead of standing behind a helm. Invest in my future vocation instead of indulge in a present adventure.

I raised the question to my father once over winter break that year. I was home for a few weeks, and I asked my dad if he thought I should try for something more legitimate. Something that might lead to a job.

“Why the hell would you want to do that?” he asked me. “You’ve got your whole life to get a job.”

“Yeah, but,” I struggled to articulate my thoughts. “Money.”

“What about it?”

“I’ll need it.”

“You’ll be able to get it,” he said. “Your sister didn’t look for jobs in school and she’s doing alright now.”

I was silent for a few moments. The scene is clear to me; I was reclined on our gaudy, old couch in the living room, petting our dog, Dixie. My father stood and walked over to his desk in the other room, still talking to me over his shoulder.

“Listen, Harp,” he started. “Money’s not a goal. It was for your Grandfather, but it shouldn’t be.”

That was one of the few bad things he would say about my Grandfather – that he focused too much on money. The rug my father swept the rest of Pop-pop under was bulging with passing racism, blatant sexism, alcoholism that grew rampant with age, and infidelity. This part of my grandfather was never spoken of, not by my father.

Money, he would admit, was a fault of the Estey family in previous generations. And he expressed that day for the first time, and on numerous occasions thereafter, what started to sound like a mantra.

“Money is just a tool through which you can do the most good.”

***

They come to visit just a few days after the phone call. My father, mother, and younger sister. A ten minute play I wrote is being staged, so they’d planned on visiting even before the details of my father’s felony came to light. I tell them I’ll meet them for coffee down in Pulver, the student center on campus, whenever they get there. I don’t sleep the night before, planning my confrontation with him.

I just need you to know that I’ve never been angrier with someone than I am with you right now. He’ll probably be quiet after that one. What the fuck made you do that? You knew it was illegal. He’ll say something about people making mistakes. If you wanted to earn more money, why not go back to private practice? Silence. It was maybe two days of billable hours.

They appear, almost from nowhere, and I smile. I’m terrified of upsetting my mother by showing my true face. Then we get coffee and my little sister is telling me about someone she saw somewhere. My ex-girlfriend, or her ex-boyfriend, or somebody who dated somebody at some point. I half listen, comforted by her presence. Then we’re outside, drinking coffee, commenting on the weather. Talking about nothing. I remind my father that I’d like to talk to him at some point while he’s visiting. He asks if I’d like to do it now. My mother chimes in that she and my sister were going to check out the school store anyway. I say sure, prepared for the confrontation. We gather up our coffee and begin to walk.

He takes me through the timeline of it all. He and my uncle had started a consulting firm once they’d both left Pennsylvania politics. They’d be contracted by companies who wanted to see some sort of legislation passed. My dad helped them do that, mostly through putting them in contact with the right people, and occasionally directing political contributions. He had a detailed understanding of the state laws.

A company approached them, the name is unimportant. They claimed to turn used textbooks into logs for fires – one textbook could heat a home for a day. They took a recycled product and turned it into a cheap heating alternative for lower class families. They seemed to be legitimate. The company flew my father and uncle down to Florida, where they were based, to see if the company could hire my father and uncle. The whole group went out on some yacht, indulging in the lavish trappings of a for-profit corporation. My dad tells me the company – the FBI, really – were trying to see if he or my uncle asked for drugs, or hookers. It would’ve saved a lot of time and money, made the whole sting a lot simpler; hookers or drugs would end it in one fell swoop. They didn’t ask for anything illegal, and the company hired their firm.

We walk along the street, and up to our left is the tiered lawns leading to Miller library. It’s a nice spring day, and students are out in full force to enjoy themselves, joyful to step out of their forced hibernation inside artificially heated dorms. I spot a few of my friends sprinkled into the crowd of unfamiliar faces. They’ll ask me later what I was doing, walking around campus for the better part of an hour, and who was that guy with me? Was that your dad? You looked tense, is everything alright?

***

Nearly a year later, his sentencing will finally be set. April 11th, my late grandfather’s 92nd birthday. I will be asked, in a group text clearly copied and pasted and sent to any number of people, to write a character letter. Something to send to the federal judge who would preside over the case. Time may not heal all wounds, but it can at least help with forgetting that they are there in the first place. I’ll receive the group text during dinner with my girlfriend and be struck with the pain all over again. She’ll ask what’s wrong and I’ll hand her my phone.

The next week will be spent wondering if I can even write that letter, if I have it in me to defend him. I’ll immediately reject the idea of writing it at all. They call it a character letter, and I’ll struggle in finding ways to portray his character in a positive light. Yet I’ll write it the night before it’s to be submitted, spending not even twenty minutes on it while refusing to lie or sand rough edges. I’ll use stiff language to describe what’s happened: “[his actions] have caused me to question a great deal of what I used to accept as universally true, and to probe the inner workings of my paternal relationship.” I’ll use simple phrases that reek of cliché: “He has expressed to me, in regards to our relationship, a desire to right wrongs and move forward.” And I’ll present it all without pomp or flair, and without hinting at accepted apologies or a mended relationship.

***

We clear the lawn, passing into the shadow of the science buildings and turning up a little street, the college’s art museum on our right. It’s colder in the shade.

He continues his confession. They’d worked for the company for months, maybe year and a half or so. The whole time the company had pestered him about making political contributions, but he insisted they were unnecessary. You’ve got a good idea, he said he kept telling them. You don’t need to make any contributions; the idea will carry itself.

We pass between two academic buildings and begin heading back towards Pulver. In passing I notice myself warming up in the sun, and he hits the tipping point.

***

At the end of his visit, we’ll get breakfast as a family. And we’ll look the part to anyone looking in on our meal. My sister and mother will talk about colleges, or what my older sister is up to, or how proud they are of me for writing a play. I understand pleasantries and play along easily enough. My father will ask me about Philadelphia sports team, a constant in our relationship. My new lens will fog it all, though, and annoyance will set in as I think he’s patronizing. Sucking up in the hopes of mending the relationship.

They’ll drop me off at my dorm and I’ll watch them drive away. There were moments at breakfast where it all slipped from my mind, and suddenly I was just talking about Carson Wentz and if I think the Eagles can make the playoffs this season. They won’t and I won’t be surprised. This becomes a pattern, moments of forgetfulness scattered into the remembrance of my life being changed. It’ll be at the fore of my mind, though, and it will be for months to come. I’ll walk back to my dorm after their car pulls out of the parking lot and disappears down the road. I’ll roll two joints for myself – one to get high and the other to get high enough to forget.

***

He starts the explanation of wrong doing with an excuse. They weren’t so great about paying their bills. Eventually he caved when they asked about political contributions. They’d been asking him who to donate to, who would get their legislation passed. Just give me the money, he told me he told them. I’ll make the contributions.

Companies can give money directly to political candidates, and individuals can do the same. In certain states, companies can give money to individuals to donate to political campaigns. It’s called a straw-man contribution, and it is illegal in the State of Pennsylvania.

He took $20,000 dollars from the company, and wound up donating $13,000 of it. After getting caught, he’d go on to wear a wire for the FBI, he’d help them catch corrupt officials and even one State Treasurer – the father of a high school classmate of mine. My father did this from the time I was in High School, through family vacations and times I’d visited him at work. I wonder, as he says this, how many of our interactions he has on tape.

He tells me that the other seven grand went into the company, that it went to pay the bills that the company was always late on, but he’d already been lying to me for seven years so I don’t believe him. We get back into Pulver and grab two chairs, my mother and sister still in the store.

A few months after the contributions my father received an email. He took it to his lawyer and the curtain fell down. The company wasn’t real, they didn’t turn textbooks into fire logs, they didn’t turn anything into anything. It was a sham corporation, created by the FBI with the explicit intent of catching my father in the act of corruption. Another player in Pennsylvania politics had been caught in a similar trap, and named my father as a corrupt politician in a bid to save himself. So the FBI set up the corporation, contracted my father, led him step by step to the snare they set until he took the step himself and tripped it. He says that it’s not technically entrapment, but I’d still go on to spend the next few days reading every entrapment case that’s come before the Supreme Court, just to see for myself.

After he was confronted by the FBI, a choice was presented to my father: prison, or wear a wire. He chose the latter, and helped the FBI catch other corrupt Pennsylvania politicians. He started walking at home, claiming it was for exercise when really he was trying to get away from whatever listening devices had been placed around our home. People think I’m kidding when I tell them the microphone on my phone makes that weird sound because the FBI bugged it.

It’s at this point in the story, still in our seats at Pulver, that I see him begin to slip, losing the firm ground he’d clearly practiced. He keeps sipping at his empty coffee cup and looking at his hands. He describes it as a reality check, that really it might even be good for him. He’d felt like a god, untouchable, he was subject to no one and no law. He said he was Icarus, and that he flew too close to the sun. He’d fallen, he said, and he wouldn’t stay down for long. It was a moment, the first moment, when the natural position a father holds no longer seemed important to me. Respect was shredded, and he was practically begging for approval. For forgiveness. He tried to justify it all, he tried by acknowledging his hubris and his flight, but he’d forgotten. He’d forgotten that Icarus fell to the sea and drowned.