By Nicole Jacques

Originally published in Washington Square Review

“Ain’t you hired anyone yet?”

I get this question almost every time I talk with my father.

“No, Dad, I haven’t had a chance to hire anyone yet,” I admit — again.

We’re sitting across from each other in my parents’ kitchen, sharing an ashtray and a couple hours of free time. My mother is napping in the living room. I drove an hour up to their house for a mid-afternoon visit to escape work for a while, not to ruminate on it.

“Whaddya waitin’ for?” Dad prods me.

I sigh dramatically to accentuate my fatigue and we both take draws off our cigarettes. He thinks I’m exhausted from working, but I’m more exhausted by having to give the same answer to the same question every time I see him.

He’s eager to witness my professional success, assuming a staff is the fastest way to do it. He’s not necessarily wrong. I had part-time employees before I moved two hours across the state, and I saw how more billable hours equaled more money. I also spent more time at my office, on airplanes, and in hotels. That meant less time with my son, my partner, and my friends. We all suffered for my time spent away, and I’m not sure it was worth the extra few thousand dollars.

But I can’t tell my father that. Dad was born an entrepreneur with a work ethic that rivals top CEOs’. He’s owned more businesses than I’ve ever even worked for. Unfortunately, none of them were as successful as he’d hoped. He’s been a filmmaker, a used-car dealer, a craftsman, a snack-food salesman, and an auto parts rep — among other professions. Some of his businesses operated out of our basement or dining room when I was growing up. Others required an office and warehouse. One even warranted a minivan — the nicest car my parents ever owned — that my father customized with shelving for daily deliveries of his products around town. Each business lasted only a few years or less, folding for lack of real revenue.

Dad is retired now, or at least as retired as his bank account allows him to be. Having never found financial success as an entrepreneur, he now can’t make ends meet for my mother and him on social security checks alone. So, he delivers parts for a local car dealership a couple days a week, earning him enough extra cash to cover the groceries and utilities. I know his interest in my professional growth is actually concern that I’ll end up as a 70-year-old delivery driver like him.

I have to convince him I’m making smart decisions. “I’m traveling a lot. I don’t have time to train a new employee.”

“If you hired someone, they’d be able to take care of your office while you were on the road.”

“True,” I agree. “But if I can’t train them, they’ll be sitting pointlessly behind a desk doing nothing while I’m gone. I need billable hours.”

“You got any new clients?”

“Maybe,” I say. “I just submitted a proposal for a new account.”

“You’ll need help if you take on new clients.”

He’s got me there. I nod. “Yup, I will.”

***

When I was in grammar school my father launched one of his first side businesses — this one inspired by my mother’s weekend habit of buying cheap trinkets. My mother was a thrifty shopper and she was raising me to be one as well. Saturday mornings the two of us would go to the grocery store for a week’s worth of meals, to the bakery for warm doughnuts — my favorite! — and to the meat market for ground chuck and chicken breasts. The real fun was in the afternoon when we would head out in search of ways to spend any extra cash leftover from food shopping. We might have had only $10 or $15 to spend, but we’d never return home empty-handed. Yard sales, the local surplus and salvage store and department store clearance sections were gold mines. Our favorite, though, was a craft fair.

At least once a month a local organization would host a fair in the nearby high school auditorium. Rows of local craftspeople would display their wares, from knitted caps and homemade costume jewelry to baked banana bread loaves and bread-and-butter pickles. For a few dollars I could go home with a beaded bracelet that made me feel like a princess for at least a week. Occasionally my father would reluctantly chauffeur my mother and me on our Saturday outings. He would pass by table after table that was selling tacky baubles by the bucketful. 

“Junk,” he’d grumble.

Always a visionary, my father eventually saw a way to capitalize on this fair. He imagined himself behind one of those tables, taking fistfuls of cash in exchange for crafts. He returned home one day and holed himself up in the basement for hours. The whine of electric saws and sanders serenaded the house all afternoon. The earthy scent of pine wood permeated the heating vents and engulfed the entire house. Eventually he emerged with a novelty that was sure to be a bestseller: a wooden teddy bear silhouette with legs and arms that moved. The bear was stained a deep brown and had a piece of ribbon tied around its neck. It could sit or stand using dowels that connected its flat limbs. It was a true work of craft-show art.

“What do you think, Nicki?”

The bear was beautiful. I forgot my beaded bracelet entirely.

“Wow.”

My father took my awe as a sign of approval. For the next month he spent every weekend standing at his scroll saw like an artist over his easel. I would wake up to the whirring sound of the electric sander echoing up from the basement, rattling the radiators. He mass-produced these bears, stacking pieces of wood and cutting out three or four arms at a time. The cellar became a morbid Santa’s workshop, with limbs and torsos piled among multi-colored spools of ribbon. At the end of each Sunday, he would lay out his parts and stain them in various colors: cherry, walnut, oak. Eventually his considerable inventory was ready for its debut among the other local craftspeople and their inferior homemade art projects. I was convinced we’d become millionaires in no time.

***

My own career has been more consistent than my father’s, though just as infused with creativity. I’m a graphic designer and copywriter, which means many days I spend more time thinking than doing. Staring into space and spinning my thoughts into a single, viable concept for a client can be as exhausting as hard labor. There isn’t much glamor in writing brochure copy, designing advertisements, or coding websites. But the work is consistent, sufficiently lucrative, and affords me a bit of independence from the nine-to-five grind that most of my friends endure.

I should be eager to hire younger versions of myself who are keen to start similar careers. I can offer them fair salaries, reliable work, and the benefit of my own insight into our industry. In my mind’s eye, I see my team and I brainstorming together, creating marketing campaigns that win awards and bring in even more work. A cycle of success!

Yet I haven’t hung a “Now Hiring” shingle outside my office. In fact, my work daydream often dissolves into a very different vision of my professional life. I imagine myself behind the counter of a cafe and used bookstore talking to passionate readers about classic and contemporary novels. Or sometimes I’m behind the bar of a sleepy saloon, greeting regulars like some sort of Sam Malone character. My favorite fantasy is in an old-fashioned doughnut-shop where I’m baking rich, cakey treats dripping in handmade ganache — just like the ones from the Saturday-morning stop my mother and I made every week after grocery-shopping. I can sometimes smell the sweet cinnamon and sugar in my reverie.

Doughnuts aren’t going to make me a millionaire, nor do I want them too. I don’t want to own a chain of Krispy Kremes that has me awake at night measuring out the most efficient number of frosted sprinkles or comparing bulk butter prices to reduce my overhead costs. I want to see my customers’ smiles when they bite into a candied confection that’s still warm and gooey from the oven. I want to laugh with the kids who come to my shop as a special treat, and grin at the parents who are as excited to enjoy a chocolate sea-salt cruller as their children. Deep down in my hungry, aching gut, I don’t want to worry anymore about a failed ad campaign, a disappointing PR push, or a website crashing.

I know my doughnuts are my Dad’s wooden bears. When he first saw himself as the craft fair king, he was working a day job as a salesman for a national mustard company. Like me, he traveled often. He’d disappear for days at a time, driving to grocery stores around New England with a trunk full of yellow, honey, and spicy-brown Dijons. The dozens of small “Salesman of the Month” trophies in his home office testified to his success. Still, the bears roared from inside him.

***

Our first craft fair where we stood on the seller’s side of the table was on a rainy fall weekend. The weather was on our side, since shoppers like my mom and me would likely skip the outdoor yard sales and head straight for the indoor venue with cash in hand. While my father had been stationed at his spot since early that morning, my mother and I didn’t head over to the show until after our grocery-store run. It was moderately crowded, with a few dozen folks walking about. We found Dad’s table in a central aisle of the show. A natural marketer, he’d arranged his bears along with some pigs, ducks, and other wooden wares in a dynamic display.

“How’s it going, Bob?” my mother asked.

“I’m startin’ to think the idiots who shop here would rather have junk than nice stuff like mine,” said Dad.

As frequent buyers, Mom and I should have been offended. Instead we feigned ignorance of the craft-fair mentality.

“Oh, they’ll start stopping by your table any minute,” Mom said.

“You think I priced everything too high?”

“I think it’s all worth double what you’re asking,” Mom reassured Dad.

The table next to ours was selling knitted mittens, caps, and tiny decorative snowmen created with Styrofoam spheres and googly glued-on eyes. A 60-something-year-old lady with a Disney sweatshirt sat behind the table working a set of knitting needles. I’d seen her here before and I recognized her as a regular. She already had dollars piled up in her cash box from the morning’s sales.

“I better get some buyers who agree with you pretty soon,” Dad grumbled, giving the Disney lady a side-eye.

My mother and I made our usual rounds in the auditorium. When I came across a table of multi-colored marbles, I lit up with anticipation. They were so smooth and magical that I could practically feel them rolling between my hands.

“Not today,” my mother warned. “We’re not here to buy. We’re here to help your father.”

Mom and I went home empty-handed that afternoon while Dad maintained his post behind his ark of animals until closing time. Shortly before supper, he arrived back at the house with almost as many boxes as he’d left with eight hours earlier. I was playing with my Barbies while Mom stood over the stove cooking.

“Friggin’ fair,” he sputtered when he shuffled in the door.

“Oh, Bob,” Mom said soothingly.

“These people were buyin’ that lady’s snowmen next to me like they were going out of style,” Dad said in disbelief. “Styrofoam balls!”

He disappeared into the basement with his stock of wooden bears. I collected Barbie and Ken before slinking out of the kitchen and into the living room to avoid the grumbling. When Dad was in a bad mood, the whole house was in a worse mood.

I could still hear the muffled rants my father made as he stomped between the car and the kitchen and the cellar steps, unloading his wares. His disappointment was palpable. At the time I thought he was disillusioned by the fair-goers. It was years later before I would realize he was actually disillusioned in himself.

***

Even now — 25 years since the craft fair flop — I see the hope in my dad’s eyes that I’ll make the sales and have the career that he never could. He’s proud of me, I know. And he wants me to be a success — perhaps even more than I do. I see the reflection of myself in his eyes as they implore me to do more, to be more.

“I should head back to work,” I say, as if taking his not-so-subtle hint. “I’ve got a couple clients waiting on some stuff from me.”

We both stand from our seats at the table. Dad expends an unsettling groan as he steadies himself on his feet. His back aches terribly these days, and he’s gotten so thin that his belt cinches the ever-loosening waist of his decades-old Levi’s.

“Thanks for stoppin’ in,” he says.

I wrap my arms around Dad’s bony rib cage and squeeze lightly.

“Maybe you’ll come visit me soon?” I ask hopefully. “A weekend with me may not be a glorious vacation in Florida, but it will get you out of the house.”

Dad chuckles. “Yeah, I ain’t exactly doing all the travelin’ I’d hoped I would in retirement,” he admits. “Your mother and I don’t get around so good these days, though. We’ll see.”

When I release him, I take in his strained smile. He wears it like a mask that covers his ever-present grief and regret. He’s no longer waiting to make it big in life, he’s waiting to make it to the end of life — hoping for fewer disappointments along the final few miles of his path. I pause in the doorway, searching my thoughts for something I could do or say to alleviate some of Dad’s sadness before I leave him.

“Did I tell you I made doughnuts last weekend?” I say. “They came out pretty good. I’ll make you some the next time I visit.”