The Freshmen - 21. Chapter 21

September 12, 2004

Escorial

Palo Alto, CA

JJ

I stood in front of the mirror, working on different expressions, pausing to admire how perfect my hair was today. I knew that whatever these people (my family members) were going to throw at us, I’d need to be prepared. I knew my performance had to be top notch, so I was practicing my facial expressions like I was in drama class. I’d just finished perfecting my ‘I’m here to support you’ look and I was now working on my ‘none of this matters to me’ look when Kris came up and stood behind me. God he was gorgeous. “Time for breakfast?” Kris asked cheerfully.

“I can have a grape or two,” I joked, since he gave me shit for not eating anything. We left our room and I gave myself props for acting like a fucking stand-up comedian.

“I’m kind of nervous about this meeting,” he said. “I mean, they’ve been solid quiet about it all weekend. I asked Jake and he just put me off.”

I swallowed hard and opted to feign ignorance, like I hadn’t talked to Will at all, and act like I’d figured this out on my own. “I think we should both be nervous.”

“Why?” he asked and stopped me in the hallway. “What the fuck?”

“I get the feeling they’re going to toss some pretty big bombs at us in there,” I said. His eyes flew open in alarm, so I put my hand on his chest to steady him. “It will be okay. I’ll be there to prop you up.” I brushed a lock of his hair gently back into place while I gave him my ‘support’ look: it seemed to work.

“If you’re with me, I can handle anything,” he said. I didn’t share his optimism, because I’d seen how these people could operate, but I appreciated the sentiment.

We walked into the kitchen and found Grand, Stef, Will, Travis, Jake, and my father there. I’d opted to dress Kris and me in nice slacks, button-down shirts, and no tie. My father, Jake, and Grand were dressed in a similar way, while Stef wore a sleek Ralph Lauren outfit. I almost smirked at how Will and Travis, in their shorts and polo shirts, looked like they should be back in grade school. We totally eclipsed them in style, which made me almost gleeful until I realized they didn’t give a shit. It was beyond maddening when you couldn’t win at something just because the other people weren’t playing. “Morning,” Will said, even as he uncouthly swallowed whatever he was chewing. “Darius flew back to LA last night. He said to tell you that he’ll call you next week.”

“That’s fine,” I said. I really wasn’t worried about Darius bailing. I had a bigger battle in front of me, and besides, it was hard to blame Darius for wanting to escape from the hell that was yesterday. Our tour of San Francisco was more horrid than I’d thought it would be. When we were on the cable cars, a strange old lady actually touched my shirt and asked me what kind of fabric it was made of. She touched my clothes! Then when we were walking around Fisherman’s Wharf, some crazy-looking man hiding behind sticks jumped out and scared the fuck out of me. Everyone else thought it was hilarious, and Darius even tipped the guy. He paid that street freak money to hurt me. These were the people that everyone else thought I should rely on! And if that wasn’t bad enough, on the boat to Alcatraz there was a family who had no control over their children; they ran around screaming and yelling until one of them vomited on the floor. Those were exactly the reasons that I made sure to insulate myself in my Maybach when I was back home.

“We were planning to leave tomorrow at 8:30,” Will said.

“We can do that,” Kris agreed, as if to preclude me from objecting to their schedule. I was annoyed at that. I didn’t like to be precluded.

“We plan to drop you off first, then go on to Boston,” Will added.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely, since that way I would miss all the major drama of Will and Marie saying goodbye to whoever went with us. I miraculously remembered to add a human component. “I’ll come up and visit you when you’re all settled in.”

“I may see you before then,” he said, and smiled at Travis, who looked like absolute shit. He was not handling this impending separation well.

When we’d walked into the kitchen, I’d been kind of worried that breakfast would turn into a major battle, but everyone opted to keep things light, so Kris and I did the same. After breakfast, Grand led us into his study, which had been modified so the seating was arranged in a circle. The first person I saw when I walked in was Casey Bridgeport. “Shit,” I said softly to Kris.

“What?” he asked, just as quietly. We paused briefly while everyone else greeted Casey.

“That’s my former psychologist,” I said, then led him over and introduced him to Casey. The only reason for Casey to be here was if they expected either me, Kris, or both of us to completely lose our minds. Any confidence I may have had about this meeting was now completely eradicated. After those pleasantries were over, I opted to take one of the sofas and made Kris sit next to me, while Dad and Jake took the other one. Everyone else sat in chairs. “What brings you here?” I asked Casey.

“Kris, tell me what you know about your grandparents,” Jake directed, totally blowing off my question to Casey. I glared at them for ignoring me. Kris looked at me nervously, then shrugged.

“My grandfather was Frederick von Schulenberg. I spent a lot of time with him when I was a kid. He told me that he had been involved in German industry, and that his business had thrived under Nazi leadership, but after the Anschluss started, he began to have serious doubts about Hitler. He told me that you had to keep quiet about such things or you’d end up in prison, although he suggested that for him the worst they’d have done was banish him to his estates. He ultimately made the decision to escape from Germany. He had business interests in Switzerland, and he managed to convince the Gestapo he and his wife needed to go there,” he said.

“And they let them?” I asked.

“They did. He must have made a compelling case,” Kris said. “He said that his brother and sister were even able to travel with them. No clue how they pulled that off.” His tone was very casual, making me briefly wonder what was going through his mind. Something was clearly up or Jake wouldn’t have asked the question, but even if I didn’t know Kris so well, he was so sincere that it was obvious he completely believed in the history he was relating.

“That does seem a bit odd,” Casey agreed.

Kris shrugged. “He told me that he and my grandmother packed up everything valuable they could carry, and transferred what assets they could to Swiss banks. When they got to Switzerland, they immediately booked travel to the US. I think that was in 1938.” He paused and looked at me. “I think I told you it was 1940 by mistake.” He was so fucking detail-oriented.

“That’s fine,” I said, and held his hand. I didn’t really give a shit when they emigrated anyway.

“They got to the US and had enough money to live a good life. My grandparents got a place in the Upper East Side, and they helped my grandfather’s brother, my great-uncle Otto, buy a place nearby. His sister, my great-aunt Helga, lived with him and my grandmother,” Kris said.

“What did he do for a living?” Jake asked.

“His company had been in munitions, so he went to work for Dupont,” Kris said.

“Did Otto ever have kids?” Jake asked.

“He had a son, named Heinrich, and a daughter named Ingrid. They each had two kids. I don’t see any of them,” he said.

“Why?” Casey asked.

Kris shrugged again. “My grandfather and my great-uncle Otto got into a big fight about something, and after that we didn’t see them anymore. I heard about them from my great-aunt Helga, but only when my grandparents weren’t around.”

“And your grandparents had your father. Did he have any brothers or sisters?” Jake asked.

“Why are you asking me all these questions?” Kris asked, getting exasperated.

“Hang in there,” Jake said firmly. “I’ll explain in a bit.”

“Fine,” Kris said, in a way that let everyone know he wasn’t fine with things, then went on with his tale. “My father was an only child. They named him Franz for some stupid reason. I guess if he’d had a brother they’d have named him Hans.”

“We’re gonna pump, you up,” Will and Travis said together, acting like they were on Saturday Night Live. Everyone ignored them.

“He was an engineer,” Kris added.

“And you have one brother, Klaus,” Jake concluded.

“I do,” he said. “My father died in 2000. He was born in 1941, and he was almost 60 when he passed.”

“I’m sorry,” Casey said. “Is your mother still alive?”

“She is,” Kris said. “So now can you tell me what this is all about?”

“I think that’s a reasonable request,” I said, because I was tired of them jerking him around.

“Your grandfather was not Frederick von Schulenberg,” Jake said.

“What are you talking about?” Kris demanded.

“Everything that you said about Frederick von Schulenberg was true until right before they got to Switzerland,” Jake said. “He was a businessman specializing in munitions, and he was escaping to Switzerland with his brother and sister, but when they got to the Swiss border, the Gestapo arrested them.”

“Why would they give them permission to leave then arrest them?” Kris asked.

“They were led into a trap,” Jake said.

“How did they get out of it?” Kris asked.

“They didn’t,” Jake said. “The Gestapo shot them, and replaced them with Nazi agents.”

“But they were here!” Kris objected, referring to being in the US.

“A man named Johann Schmidt had been groomed to replace Frederick,” Jake explained. “The plan had been in place for two years, starting when the Gestapo became suspicious of Frederick. Files showed that it took that long for Johann to become cultured enough to pull it off. He grew up on a farm; his family were peasants.”

“Peasants?” I heard myself ask, horrified.

“Poor farmers may be a more apt description,” Casey said, giving Jake an annoyed look. Somehow, I found Casey’s bitchiness reassuring.

“So Johann Schimdt posed as Frederick von Schulenberg?” Kris asked, completely stunned.

“Actually, Johann Schmidt became Frederick von Schulenberg,” Jake answered.

“Wait a minute,” Kris said pretty loudly. “What kind of bullshit is this? I don’t know what kind of game this is, but I’m not playing.”

“It’s totally reasonable that you are upset by this,” Casey said to Kris.

“Goddamn right I’m upset!” Kris said loudly. “Why the fuck would you people make up these stories about my family, and attack me in one of the most important parts of my identity? Is it because J and I are together? You want us apart that badly?”

“Kristopher,” Stef said in his smooth way, all but casting a spell of calmness on this conversation. “I am very happy that you are JJ’s boyfriend.”

“Dude, so am I,” Will said. “He’s been a lot less bitchy since you guys hooked up.” This was so typical of things. I sit here, minding my own business, only to have people insult me.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Kris said, mostly to Stef.

“I will accept your apology,” Grand said in his stuffy way, but with a slight smile, “provided you do not exceed normal volume limits again.”

“Kris, if you are patient, Jake can explain this to you,” Casey said.

“That’s why you’re here,” I accused Casey.

“Why?” Kris asked.

“Casey is here to make sure that you don’t completely freak out over all of this,” I said.

“This is some heavy shit,” Kris said, and whereas he’d been enraged before, now he seemed totally devoid of any emotion at all. “How did you find out all of this?”

“When you asked me to look into your lawsuit, it got fishy pretty fast,” Jake said. “I hired private investigators to dive into it. They managed to uncover the story.”

Kris’s mood went from morose to snarly so fast it really shocked me. The currents racing inside him must be ripping him apart. In a rare moment of genuine sympathy, I moved closer and put my hand on his shoulder. That seemed to energize him, not calm him down. “So some private investigators claimed to find information to discredit my whole family, and you just believed them? Why would someone make this up? Why would they do this to us?” Kris demanded, refusing to believe it was true.

“Kris, it’s not made up,” Jake said. “Here.” He handed Kris a paper written in that barbaric language he spoke, and I sat next to him while he read it. I could feel the agony in him as he digested the document. I glanced at Casey who raised his eyebrows to make his gaze at me more intense, then he purposely looked at Kris, telling me to try to be supportive. It hated to be managed, and I was tempted to do nothing, but then I paused to look at Kris and could see the pain he was in.

“I’m sorry you had to find out about this,” I said. “I know how badly this is fucking up your world view, but I want you to know that this changes nothing between us. I still want to be with you.”

He smiled briefly, shook his head, and a tear fell out of his eye. “How can you want to be with me? My grandfather was a fucking Nazi peasant! This ring, all the other shit, it’s just a big fucking lie.” He ripped off his ancient signet ring and threw it across the room. I mean, I wasn’t all that happy about it, about this new revelation about his heritage, but I was willing to shove it all under the rug unless it was going to backfire on me. If it was my reputation on the line, and I was going to be painted with his Nazi brush, I might have to rethink my devotion.

“Kris,” Jake said firmly, to get his attention. Travis scurried over to retrieve the ring. “No one has to know about this.”

“What do you mean? This will get out!” he said. “I’m surprised it already hasn’t. I’m surprised they didn’t make some television show about it, showing someone hunting me down and cornering me with this news.”

“The only reason it got out this time was because the law firm that was working on your suit wasn’t really a law firm,” Jake said. “They were scamming you.”

“What?” Kris asked, stunned.

“You and your brother have each been paying them $300 a month,” Jake said.

“My mother told me it was a legit firm,” Kris objected.

“Your mother was involved,” Jake said.

“My mother set up a fake law firm to scam us? You’re telling me that my mother is setting up her own sons?” he asked and was clearly at the end of his rope.

“Hey,” I said, and put my arm around his back. “None of this is you. You are not these people. You are not like them.”

“My whole life, my heritage has been everything to me. And now it’s not one of my biggest foundations; it’s a source of total humiliation,” Kris said despondently.

“Kris, this is going to be very difficult for you to grapple with,” Casey said soothingly. “JJ actually explained what you have to do.”

“He did?” Will asked, all surprised, acting like I was a fucking moron. I tried to incinerate him with my eyes, but of course that didn’t work. I was ignored yet again, and so was my outrage.

“He did,” Casey said. “You are not them. You have to divorce them, not in the legal sense, but in your mind. You can make that choice.”

“I don’t know why anyone would want to be with me,” he said to me, tears pouring out of his eyes.

“I know why,” I said, winking at him. I watched him struggle with himself, not wanting to respond to my flirtatious allusion, but he finally gave in a little bit, enough to give me a slight smile, and to shut the tears off.

“Why did the Nazis go through all that effort?” Kris asked. “I mean, why replace the von Schulenbergs?”

“Because your grandfather, Otto, and Helga were not just Nazis; they were spies,” Jake said. “You probably haven’t heard of a guy named George Peter Metesky, who was known as the ‘Mad Bomber’. From 1941 to 1956 he set off over 33 bombs, of which only 22 exploded. He didn’t kill anyone, but at least 15 people were injured, and he created a whole lot of chaos.”

“Why are you telling me about this dude?” Kris asked. “Was he a relative?”

“No,” Jake said, then swallowed. “Your grandfather supplied the gunpowder for his bombs.”

“Holy fuck,” Kris said, and buried his head in his hands. I rubbed his back supportively, trying to forget that my boyfriend was the spawn of Nazi scumballs.

“Metesky turned out to be a useless tool during the war, but your grandfather had a whole network of saboteurs who relied on him for weapons,” Jake explained. “They were very subtle. They would build small bombs to create disruptions, and the US government tried to hush the whole thing up so as not to panic the population. After the war, Metesky became more useful.” “So that’s what my grandfather did? Helped people build bombs?” Kris asked.

“He worked for Dupont, and had access to a bunch of their information, some of it top secret,” Jake said. “We don’t know how much of that made its way back to the Germans.”

“Fuck!” Kris said, his mind totally blown. There was a silence after that, one that was welcome at first, then became more and more uncomfortable as time lapsed.

“Drinks?” Will asked. It was nice of him to end the awkward pause, but I was still mad at him, so I didn’t acknowledge that.

“Grab a Diet Dr. Pepper for Kris,” I said, remembering that he’d taken one of those out of my fridge.

“Thank you,” he said to me appreciatively. I just smiled back at him in as loving a way as I could, while inside I wondered if being a Nazi was genetic. “Why was my mother doing this?” he suddenly demanded.

“Kris, I think we need to deal with this in segments,” Casey said. “Let’s close the book on your grandfather and then we can talk about your parents.”

“Bullshit! What about my parents?” Kris challenged assertively, refusing to be managed. Jake sighed as if in defeat.

“Your mother agreed to the scam because she was being blackmailed,” Jake said. “She didn’t do it voluntarily.”

“Who was blackmailing her?” Kris demanded, being defensive of his mother. “Did she do this to protect Klaus and me?” There was a shred of hope in his eyes, as if he was grasping at straws to try to show that she at least had a valid reason.

“No,” Jake said, then looked at Casey with dread. “Your father was a Stasi agent.”

“Stasi?” I asked, because sometimes these people threw out terms that no one could possibly understand.

“Wasn’t that the East German equivalent of the KGB?” Will asked. Of course he’d know, being the brilliant suckup that he was, and conveniently enough making me look like the stupidest idiot at the same time. Grand looked at him lovingly, and that made me want to puke.

“It was,” Jake said.

“What the fuck?” Kris asked, for what seemed like the millionth time he’d uttered those words since we’d started talking about this. “So my grandfather was a Nazi operative, and my father was a spy for the Stasi?”

“Yes,” Jake said. “Actually, your grandfather worked for the Stasi too. After the war, the Stasi inherited the records about your grandfather, and they used those to convince him and your father to work for them.”

“Convince?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“I’m sure it wasn’t fun, but they paid them,” Jake said. “That’s why your parents could afford such a comfortable lifestyle.”

“What did he do?” I asked, referring to Kris’s father.

“His father was a civil engineer,” Jake explained. I noticed that he’d adopted a very monotone cadence, as if to try to keep things calm. It was a total waste, in my opinion. “His official job was designing roads and bridges for the New York Department of Transportation, but his Stasi job was to study American bridges and other major pieces of infrastructure and determine the most effective way to sabotage them in the event of hostilities.”

“That’s why he was out of town so much,” Kris said, as if he just got clarity on that.

Jake nodded. “He was actually very good at it. No one suspected him and he sent back literally hundreds of plans of bridges and the like with diagrams on where to place a bomb.”

“Why was Kris’s mom doing this?” I asked.

Jake swallowed hard and turned to Kris. “You noted that your fee went up to $1000 this month?” Kris nodded. “This was not a short-term plan. It was almost a sleeper operation, where they went along charging you a manageable amount, nursing that along. The plan was first to tap into the money you were making at Goldman. I think that when you moved in with JJ, they decided that they might be able to get even more money. At that point, your mother worked a deal with them to get a piece of the action.”

“I am so sorry,” Kris said to me sincerely. I knew he was sensitive about being perceived as a gold digger, and while he wasn’t, evidently his mother was.

“Like I said, you’re not her,” I told him, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. I was annoyed that I didn’t get nods of approval from my family members for the total sympathy I was pouring all over Kris.

“My own mother fucked me over,” Kris said despondently.

“Did Klaus’s bill go up too?” Will asked.

“I don’t know,” Kris said sadly. “We’re not on speaking terms.” Everyone just sort of left that there and silently acknowledged it as one more piece of sadness Kris had to deal with.

“Think back to their marriage,” Jake said. “Did they get along? Did they argue?”

“Around the time I was 10, things started to get a lot more tense around the house,” Kris said.

“That’s probably when your mother found out your father was a spy,” Jake said. “Up until then, I’m guessing she didn’t ask too many questions.”

“I remember now,” Kris said, his eyes glazing as his mind went back in time. “She was mad at him for being out of town so much. She thought he was cheating on her and went through a bunch of his papers.”

“She must have found some of his spy shit,” I concluded.

“So what happened to them? Why didn’t they get arrested?” Kris asked. “My grandfather died in 1990, the year before my parents had their issues.”

“After the collapse of East Germany, the Stasi was disbanded, and there was a big battle over whether to release their records or not. The whole issue landed in the hands of the German government,” Jake said. “Tons of records were made available, but not these.”

“Why?” I asked, wondering why they were so special.

“Because the Nazi operation to replace the von Schulenbergs was used to replace another noble family too, and the records are linked,” Jake explained.

“So,” Kris said. “Why does that matter?”

“Because the other family is extremely influential and managed to have things sealed up,” Jake said.

“Alright, then how did you find out about this shit?” I asked.

“Because the CIA stumbled onto the files, so they had the records too,” Jake said. “Those aren’t going anywhere; they are going to languish in a federal storage facility forever.”

“I still don’t understand,” Kris said.

“The FBI wanted information on what your father had sent back to East Germany,” Jake said. “They wanted to know where all these threats were, the infrastructure security weaknesses your father had pointed out.”

“So he cut a deal with the FBI?” Kris asked.

“Yes,” Jake said nervously. “He was basically under house arrest while you and your brother were at Andover. When the FBI was done with him, they offered him a deal.”

“What was the deal?” I asked.

“The government would provide your mother with a pension so she could support herself, and the entire matter would be hushed up,” Jake said. He was so nervous that his voice quivered a bit.

“And what did my father have to do?” Kris asked.

“He had to die,” Jake answered.

“He had a heart attack. That killed him,” Kris insisted.

“If he had a heart attack, it killed him after the bullet he shot into his brain,” Jake said. That was just a bit crass, but this whole thing was a mess.

“So my father killed himself for my mother?” Kris asked, trying to find some silver lining in this thing.

“Sure,” Jake said, because he didn’t see the noble action that Kris was trying to conjure up.

“I am going to go out on a limb and guess that she made him feel very guilty for what he’d done,” Casey said. “Both for being a spy, and for getting caught.”

“She was good at that,” Kris said. “Are there any more bombshells you’re going to toss on me?”

“I have a written report that summarizes this, so you can read through it for better clarity,” Jake said, handing him two documents. “There’s both the German version and the English translation.” Will got up and handed me one too, which was really nice, and helped to atone for the way he treated me so poorly before. I was fortunate the one he gave me was in English.

“I would like to talk to you about this in two hours,” Casey said. “Can you do that?”

“You want to make sure I haven’t totally self-destructed?” Kris asked.

“I want to help you put things into context,” Casey said. “But yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

Kris smiled ruefully and shook his head. “See you in two hours.” I got up with him and followed him back to our room.

It was only after we’d entered and closed the door that I got nervous. “If you want some time to yourself, I don’t have to be here,” I said.

“You don’t want to be around me?” he asked, and looked heartbroken. I remembered back to when I was a kid watching the Grinch steal Christmas. For me, this was like that scene near the end where his heart suddenly grew much bigger, although I cringed at comparing myself to an ugly green thing. But the end result was that I genuinely put myself out there for Kris.

“I want to be here with you, but you just had a bunch of crap land on you, and sometimes people need space to deal with things. I’m hoping you don’t,” I said. I led him over to the bed, and he paused.

“I don’t think I can right now,” he said, referring to having sex.

I started laughing then lay down, motioning for him to join me. He put his head on my chest and I ran my fingers gently through his crusty gelled hair. After a bit, we dozed off, with him in complete turmoil, and me strangely content.