The Man I Never Met

by Adam Schefter

  I took a taxi to Roosevelt Hospital. They asked me to rate the pain on a scale of one to ten. I gave it a nine. I was practically hyperventilating when they put in a catheter. Never had one of those before—and never want one again. Ever.

  I wrote in my journal:

  It hurt like a bitch and I was crying and I was lonely and I was scared.

  I really didn’t think much beyond that: Lonely, scared, can’t use the restroom properly. I didn’t even know whom to call. I felt totally alone. I had moved home, yet I felt completely and overwhelmingly lost. My life in New York had peaked the moment I saw those rose petals. From that point on, it had gotten progressively worse.

  When I got out of the hospital, I met a woman on a bus. She said she was a model for commercials; she made me miss something I didn’t even have. At the time, rain was coming down. I had an umbrella, but of course, it was too small and didn’t work. I started cursing New York City, the place that was supposed to rescue me. I thought about how much I hated it and how miserable I was. Picture this, because it actually happened: I was standing on a corner, in the rain, with an umbrella that was too small, and a taxi whizzed past, through a puddle, and doused me. I was a real-life Charlie Brown—only more hopeless.

  I didn’t know what was left for me to do. There was no other place for me to go. I thought about going back to Denver, but it had only been a few months. So as difficult as it was to do, as much as I was contemplating yet another change, I decided to stick it out. I decided to stay in New York.

  * * *

  A month later, my friend Jeff Rubin called. He had the names of three women for me to call.

  He said I could call any of the three, but he recommended that the first one I should call was a woman named Sharri Maio.

  Before I called her, though, he told me there was something I needed to know: She was a 9/11 widow with a six-year-old son.

  7

  A 9/11 widow? Some men might have bailed as soon as they heard that piece of information. I knew that because, for a long time, I was one of those men.

  But that was before I felt so lonely, before I ended up in the hospital in severe pain with nobody to call, and before my fortieth birthday was creeping up on me. I was not looking for the perfect résumé anymore. I had taken a hard look at myself.

  I didn’t love any of the three therapists I saw, but they all hit on the same themes: I had been focusing on the wrong things, and I put so much pressure on relationships that they burst. My mind was all over the place. Everyone was giving me names of women to meet.

  So when Jeff asked if I still wanted to go out with Sharri, knowing she was a 9/11 widow with a son, I said, “Sure.”

  After Jeff mentioned Sharri, I happened to look through my journal entries from the previous year. I did it because I wanted to figure out exactly how much work I had done for the NFL Network since the start of the last football season, but the real revelation had nothing to do with work. My entries about dating all read the same way. I summed them up in my journal:

  There have been identical patterns of behavior. Amazingly so. Eerie.

  So that day, I did something amazingly unfamiliar. I picked up the phone and called Sharri.

  * * *

  Sharri was insistent: Any man she dated had to know she was a widow with a six-year-old boy. And they had to know how her husband had died. It was like they were signing a waiver: Yes, I understand. And it was nonnegotiable. She didn’t want to sit down for dinner and have to tell a man she had just met all about her husband dying in a terrorist attack.

  Almost five years had passed since Joe died. His parents, Paula and George, had encouraged Sharri to start dating again, and eventually she had. She had been on a lot of dates and in one semi-serious relationship since Joe died, and she figured that any man who dated her would have to be comfortable with her past and embrace the idea of loving both her and her son.

  She had gone on one date with a man who had a daughter with a visible disability, and he was hesitant to show Sharri a picture of her. She was disgusted and wanted to go home. She did not understand how anybody could be embarrassed by his own child—or worried about how somebody would react.

  As I called Sharri, I honestly wasn’t sure how I felt. A widow with a six-year-old still didn’t sound like my dream date. But I thought about all the times I had gotten my hopes up, then ended the evening paying for a nice dinner with a woman I knew I would never see again. It was such a waste. I’d be sitting there, thinking, OK, how much longer do I have to stay here before I can get back to work? I thought, I’m done with that. Let’s just see how we connect.

  Sharri and I talked on the phone for around an hour, and we connected right away, which was encouraging. There were other phone connections in the past, for sure, but this one did feel different. It felt natural, comfortable, not forced, though she did not take kindly to my first-date proposal. I suggested we go to a barbecue at one of my friends’ houses—low-key, no romantic pressure. She said no chance. She had visions of turning around to put food on her plate, and behind her my friends would be holding up signs rating her:

  “EIGHT!”

  “SIX!”

  “THUMBS-UP!”

  “YOU CAN DO BETTER, ADAM!”

  That wasn’t my intention. My idea was more: “If I don’t like her, I can hang out with my friends, and at least it will be a fun night.” But she was adamant we go somewhere other than a friendly barbecue—either for coffee, lunch, dinner, but away from my friends. And so on July 9, 2006, I borrowed my sister’s new car, which still had the new-car smell, and drove to Sharri’s house on Long Island. These were the pre-GPS, pre-Waze days. Sharri had given me directions that led me right into her driveway.

  The grounds looked like a botanical garden. There were flowers everywhere. The lawn was well manicured, and the house incredibly well maintained. The outside of the house had a cheer and warmth to it.

  I parked my sister’s car, walked up to Sharri’s front door, and was greeted by another great sight: Sharri. I can still remember my eyes scanning her over from toe to head, tight khaki pants to black sweater, up to her face, and I was blown away. She was gorgeous. She showed me around her house, which was lovely. We continued talking, just like we did on the telephone. We clicked again.

  I thought, Yes!

  She thought, He is wearing a tight long-sleeved orange shirt. Ugh.

  But she figured she could improve my wardrobe. She had the same thought I did: This seems promising.

  We went out to this local American restaurant near her house. I later learned that Sharri liked to go on dates there because if they didn’t go well, she could get home quickly. But this time, she didn’t seem like she was in a rush. We sat in the corner, up against the window. The restaurant was crowded, but we felt as if we were in our own world. She ate her artichoke salad and chicken Milanese, I ate my mussels and yellowfin tuna, and we just talked.

  I told her about my sister, Marni, and her husband, Mike, and my brother, Jordan. She told me about her sister, Robyn, and Robyn’s husband, Jordan. We talked about our dating histories. We just laughed, had fun. It was easy. I was calling her Maio, her last name. She was calling me Schefter. We made a bet: Whoever called the other by his or her first name first would owe the other a dollar. It was pretty funny.

  Sometimes you know a date is going well just because both of you order dessert. It doesn’t always mean you want dessert. You can always go home and pull some frozen yogurt out of the freezer. It means you want the date to keep going. Sharri ate an apple tart, I had berry pie, and we just kept talking.

  We talked about her son, Devon, and her husband, Joe, and what it was like raising Devon without Joe. What Sharri had done was remarkably commendable to me. She was raising her son by herself, taking care of her home, doing it in a strong and independent way that attracted me as much as her appearance. None of this felt awkward to me. It wasn’t storybook, but it was comfortable.

  After dinner, we drove bac
k toward her house. She said her in-laws were at the house, babysitting Devon, so we parked the car on the street and talked, touching on topics that spanned from family to friends to life.

  She asked me when my birthday was.

  “December 21,” I answered.

  She looked shocked. I thought it might be her birthday, too.

  It turned out to be Joe’s birthday.

  That was odd—not just because we have the same birthday but because it came up on our first date, at the moment when we were both thinking there might be some chemistry.

  We kept talking about birthdays. She said Devon was born on June 21; that is my half birthday—and Joe’s, of course—and the date my grandfather Poppy Marty died in 1968. Later we learned that my grandmother Nanny Blanche had the same birthday as Joe’s grandmother Louise, who was known as Nanna Bubs. So that also felt odd. But Sharri and I got along great, talked for another thirty to forty-five minutes, and made plans to go out again Saturday night. I was pumped.

  I kissed her in my sister’s car, down the street from the house she shared with her late husband, in which her in-laws were sitting on the couch. I brought her home and watched her walk back to her house.

  * * *

  I drove away from Sharri’s house after our first date thinking that I had found my future. It was only one date, sure. I didn’t even know how to spell her name yet—I thought Sharri had only one r. But being with her just felt right. I drove back to my sister Marni’s house in Melville and told her and her husband, Mike, how excited I was. At 11:00 P.M., I fell asleep in my nephew Casey’s room with the TV on ESPN, watching a late-night SportsCenter. I woke up the next morning at 5:30, still feeling the fumes of excitement from the night before. That day, I wrote in my journal:

  Even though I didn’t get much sleep, it was one of the first peaceful mornings I’ve had in a while.

  And:

  She made me happy. Or I made her happy. Or whatever. I was friggin happy!!!!

  I went for a walk with Marni and her friend Cari around their neighborhood. I talked about Sharri, and I told them about Sharri’s ex-husband having the same birthday. Cari got chills.

  I am an all-in guy. It’s how I live my life. Let’s get things done. It feels like it has helped me professionally. When there’s breaking news, it’s like a jolt of electricity. This was not entirely dissimilar to another kind of jolt with a different kind of adrenaline. So after that first date with Sharri, my primary thought was: When do I call her? I didn’t want to seem overanxious … even though I was.

  I left Marni’s house and played golf with some friends. When I got off the course, I had two messages on my BlackBerry—each from a friend trying to set me up with another woman. I thanked them, but at that moment, I wasn’t thinking about dating anybody else. I was thinking about Sharri.

  I decided to call her that day at 4:00 P.M., the ideal time that I came up with in my mind. It wasn’t too quick after the date, but it was early enough to show how interested I was. I thought, If she’s interested, she’ll pick up or call me right back. That was my experience with other women I had dated. So I called and left a message.

  Sharri didn’t call me back that day.

  Or the next.

  In my world, with instant news and deadlines and showtimes, an hour can feel like a day, and three days can feel like a lifetime. I kept checking the phone and kept seeing no voice mails or texts. With each hour that passed, more disappointment and despair set in. I called my therapist and explained that I had been on a date and thought we’d hit it off, but then I’d called the woman and she hadn’t called back.

  My therapist said, “So?”

  I said, “Well, how do you not call back if you like someone?”

  She said, “Adam, you went out with this woman on one date. What are you picturing here? What was so perfect? Do you think this woman is just going to change your life? Why are you so upset and so worked up over one woman—who you just met—not calling?”

  I was so consumed with finding a mate that I’d lost sight of the fact that people have lives. They don’t move at the same hyper speed, in the same way, that I do. They don’t attach a sense of urgency to many things. They can’t act like their lives are breaking news, acting on it right away, no time to waste, this must get done now. This could wait. Relationships can wait. They need to breathe. This is true for everybody, but especially single moms, which I didn’t really consider at the time. I didn’t know any better. I was looking for a woman to build my life around. Sharri was looking for somebody who fit into her life. There was a difference.

  My therapist said, “Why do you need that phone call to be happy? You’re unhappy she didn’t call back, and it’s totally dictating your moods about everything in life.” She was right.

  Sharri does not move on things like I do. She is not on the phone all the time. She does not instantly respond to texts and emails. She responds when she’s ready, whenever that is. Sometimes it’s a few hours later; sometimes it’s a few days later. But eventually she did call, and when she did, I was filled with happiness and excitement. It felt like validation.

  I had big plans for our second date. My dating style was definitely not “Hey, let’s get a burger and a beer.” I always had big, detailed plans, going back to my college days at Michigan. I’d lay out this perfect night in Ann Arbor: Zingerman’s Deli for dinner, then a Michigan hockey game, then a bar called Rick’s for drinks, and my friends would make fun of me. They’d say, “Let life happen, man.” But that wasn’t my nature.

  Before this second date, I actually walked around Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side, and scouted restaurants and tables like NFL teams do college quarterbacks. Finally, after visiting a half dozen restaurants, I settled on a plan.

  I decided Sharri and I first would have drinks in the Time Warner Center in Manhattan. Then we would go to an Italian restaurant downtown, Il Cantinori, which had beautiful flowers all over the place. Then, if all went well—and I was hopeful and confident it would—we would go back to my apartment on 67th Street, drink prosecco, and listen to music.

  And that’s what we did: Time Warner Center, Il Cantinori, back to my apartment. I put on the Notting Hill soundtrack on my CD player. I brought out a bottle of prosecco. I thought it was perfect. Romantic. Everything was going according to script.

  But Sharri didn’t bite. “So,” she said with a high degree of skepticism, “how many girls have you done this for before?”

  She scoffed and dismissed my plans, staying in my apartment long enough for me to give her a kiss goodbye, nothing more. I was starting to understand that Sharri Maio’s head was not in the clouds next to mine. I was looking for a woman to marry; she already had been married. Her world revolved around her son. She was open to the possibility of marrying again, but she did not have her heart set on it.

  I wanted somebody who had chemistry with me. Sharri needed somebody who had chemistry with her and Devon. Sharri would often let Devon meet the person she was going out with because she wanted to see the reaction. Not from Devon. Devon was a kid—however he reacted was fine. She wanted to see how her date reacted, whether the man was playful, uncomfortable, smiling, nervous, whatever.

  I tried to build a relationship with Devon, too. Each time I visited from New York City, I brought him a little gift. One time it was a truck, another time a package of tattoos, which he loved. We each would put on the tattoos and wear them around for days. It was so important for me to try to make Devon comfortable that I would do things with him that I wouldn’t ordinarily.

  The first time I introduced Sharri and Devon to my family, we went to the beach in Point Lookout. I never much liked swimming or going in the ocean, but that day, I took Devon in the ocean for a couple of hours, without getting out. When I finally did get out, my parents knew then that Sharri and Devon were different because they never had seen me stay in the ocean that long for anybody. But for Sharri and Devon, I was willing to do anything.

  De
von was sweet and quiet, and we got along well. Sharri and I kept dating, with me taking more and more regular train trips from the city out to Long Island. Finally, after a month or so, I asked if I could leave some clothes at her house rather than having to schlep them back and forth from my apartment to her house on the train every time. I was tired of hauling a duffel bag around New York City.

  Sharri lived in a nice-sized home. I asked for a drawer.

  She broke up with me.

  She viewed one drawer as an infringement on her space and life. She didn’t want anyone in her house full-time while she was busy raising Devon. The next time she had a man in her home on a regular basis would be when there would be a full-time man in Devon’s life—not any time before. Anyone who wanted a drawer got the boot instead.

  * * *

  Sharri had spent five years making that house her home. If she was wary of giving even a small piece of it to a man she had been dating for only a few weeks, who could fault her?

  She had created a playroom for Devon. She hired landscapers. She covered the walls and ceiling of two bedrooms in fabric, softening them, making them as cozy and inviting as she possibly could.

  Her parents would ask her, “When are you going to stop decorating?”

  She had no answer. She was not prettying up the home just so it was pretty. She was prettying it up because she liked prettying it up. It comforted her. She liked having contractors and painters and construction workers in the house. She liked hearing their voices. It gave her an activity and a distraction, all at once. They provided company without the awkwardness that intimacy can bring. She wanted to keep redecorating until the house felt just right, even when she wondered if it ever would.

  You can move things around a house. It’s not so easy to rearrange a community. Sharri started to feel like an oddball in a homogenous town. She did not see widows or single moms. She wondered if she belonged. She had moved to this house to escape Manhattan. Now she found herself longing for the city, for its quirks and its diversity.