The woman on the other side of my front door was Irene Jablonski, eighty eight years old, five feet tall in her good black coat, with a cane in one hand and a rosary wrapped around the other. Behind her on the porch stood her lawyer, a quiet young man with a briefcase, and her priest from Saint Hyacinth. I had called her at 2:25, from my basement, on the old phone with the cord. I had known her for forty years. She was the mother of Greg, and the majority owner of his company, though neither Greg nor Nicole ever mentioned it. “Gregory,” she said, from the doorway. “What did I just hear?”
Greg stood at the top of the basement stairs, white as the turkey, holding the arm of the banister like a drowning man. “Ma,” he said. “It is Thanksgiving. What are you doing here?” Irene Jablonski walked into my front hall, slowly, leaning on her cane, and looked up at him. “Frank called me,” she said. “He told me you borrowed two point four million dollars against the stock of the family company, to buy into his business. My stock. The stock your father left me. I never signed anything. Tell me I misunderstood.”
Greg opened his mouth, and for once nothing came out. Her lawyer opened the briefcase and laid three documents on my dining table, next to the turkey. The first was the articles of the company of Greg, showing that Irene held fifty one percent. The second was the loan agreement from the bank in Naperville, with a signature that was not hers. The third was a letter, dated that morning, removing Greg as president, effective immediately, and appointing a new board. Nicole took one look at the letter and sat down in the chair of my wife, white to the lips.
A phone call made from a basement workbench gave one widower the afternoon to bring his son back to the family in Chicago.
I gave my terms from the head of my own table, where I finally sat down. “Greg, you will get your coat. Nicole, you will take the kids to the house of your mother. Kevin, you and I are going to have a long talk tomorrow. But before anyone leaves, I would like Irene to have a plate. The pie is still warm, and she has a long drive.” The old woman set her cane against the table, took the seat I offered, and ate a slice of pumpkin pie with great dignity. Nobody else said a word. The Lions were losing on the television upstairs.
Kevin came up the basement stairs slowly, with his hands at his sides. He walked to the table, and he stood in front of me, and I saw that he was crying. “Dad,” he said, “I did not know about the loan. I swear it. Nicole said the merger was to protect the business. She said you would be too stubborn to see it. I wanted to believe her, because I wanted to be the one who made the choice for once.” He wiped his face with the back of his hand, the way he did at ten. “I let them send you to the basement.”
Greg snatched the merger agreement off the table and bolted for the back hall. He yanked open the kitchen door, ran down the steps to the alley, and nearly tripped over a man in the shadows. Stan Mrozek, my lead electrician of thirty two years, in his work jacket, was leaning against the garage, eating a turkey sandwich. “Greg,” Stan said, “you are not going anywhere with that paper. Frank taught me to turn off the power before touching a wire. You are about to be turned off.” He took the agreement out of the hand of Greg and put it in his pocket with the sandwich.
Irene walked slowly to the back door, leaned on the frame, and called her son by name. Greg turned and stood in the alley with the cold wind in his hair. She said she would not send him to prison, because he was her boy, but she would not give him the keys to the building either. She said she would sell her shares to a trust for his children, and that he would work as a foreman under a man he had once cheated, and learn what it meant to earn a day of pay. He bowed his head, and nodded.
The money consequences were quick and clean. The loan from the bank in Naperville was voided as fraudulent, since the signature was forged, and Greg faced charges that Irene asked the state to reduce to probation. Kowalczyk Electric kept every developer contract, and the three biggest builders signed new ones that same week. Kevin was demoted to foreman, at his own request, and worked beside Stan on a crew for a year. When he was promoted again, I made certain Stan was there to hand him the new badge.
In the name of Barbara, who passed in 2022, I started the Barbara Kowalczyk Fund. It pays for apprenticeship tuition, tools and licensing fees for young electricians in Cook, DuPage and Lake counties. In the first year we sponsored twenty six apprentices. A young woman from Cicero who had been working at a grocery store passed her journeyman exam in the spring and wired the bungalow of her mother. She sent me a photograph of the new outlets, glowing, and a note that read, light for Barbara.
On the next Thanksgiving, the whole family sat at the table, thirteen of us, with Irene at the head. She insisted. I sat at her right hand, and Kevin at her left. Nicole brought the sweet potatoes, and Greg came for pie, and said very little, and washed the dishes. In the basement, my workbench waited under the hanging lamp, with the canning jars of Barbara on the shelf. After dinner, I took my grandson down to show him how to wire a switch. He asked why I had chosen the basement. I said it was the only quiet place in the house.
