The Man I Never Met

by Adam Schefter

  I remember our family pulling up to the house with Dylan, welcoming her to it for the very first time, and thinking as we pulled into the driveway, This is where you will grow up. We took her upstairs, into a small room, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet, with yellow painted walls and a white crib, and the changing station that Sharri also knew to have set up in advance.

  Now Devon had to adjust yet again to a new person in the house. And again, he did really well. He loved having a little sister. He was well aware that he did not have a conventional family. It was obvious whenever we spoke or wrote our full names.

  I was Adam Schefter. Sharri was mainly Sharri Maio, but occasionally Sharri Schefter. Dylan was Dylan Schefter.

  But Devon was Devon Maio, not Schefter. He never wanted to become Devon Schefter. We never wanted him to lose his connection to Maio, not Joe, nor Joe’s family, nor the name with which he entered the world. To his credit, Devon said, “I don’t want to disrespect my grandparents. I want to keep my last name.” It was a really mature thought.

  And Sharri wanted the same last name as her son, so she largely remained Sharri Maio.

  So there we were: two Schefters, two Maios, one family. Devon knew this was unusual, but he also always knew he was loved. He received a lot more affection than many people who come from traditional two-parent homes. And his extended family was large and loving, too.

  He was still so close to all six of his grandparents. He had Sharri’s family, my family, and the Maio family, who always treated Devon like a prince. He had a lot of older cousins on that side, and they doted on him. His appearances were like an event: “Devon’s coming!”

  Devon always especially loved Joe’s brother, his uncle Anthony. I would watch them play together and almost be jealous of their connection. Anthony was the epitome of the fun uncle you read about. I understood why Devon felt the way he did. I enjoyed Anthony’s company, too. We were not in constant contact—he lived his life, with his wife and three daughters, and we lived ours—but family is family.

  When Devon was young, I used to joke with Sharri that he liked Uncle Anthony more than he liked me. I was teasing, but it did feel that way sometimes. Anthony and Devon had a special bond. Some adults struggle to connect with kids. Anthony did it naturally. One year, he built Devon a trampoline for his birthday. Devon always adored him.

  14

  When I was forty-three, I was dealing with a potentially disconcerting medical issue. I had a lump on my neck and two red splotches on my back. I didn’t know what the lump meant, but lumps worry everybody. I made a doctor’s appointment to see how concerned I should be.

  On the morning of the appointment, I went to the gym to work out first. When I got out and went to my locker and grabbed my BlackBerry, I saw a text from my friend Jon Miller, who works at NBC but belonged to the same golf club as the Maios.

  Is the story true about Anthony Maio? he texted.

  And I thought, Was what story true about Anthony Maio? I knew Jon had a friendship with Anthony, but I had no idea what he was talking about.

  I responded, What’s the story—first I’ve heard of anything.

  Jon wrote, Heard some sad news about Anthony Maio but don’t know if it’s true—lots of rumors. Car accident?

  I was not expecting that. I had heard nothing. I told him I would do what I always do when I want information: I would make some calls. But before I could dial the first number of the first person I would have called, Sharri called me.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” she said.

  I knew she had to be calling for the same reason Jon had texted.

  I said, “Anthony Maio.”

  She was surprised to hear me say that. “How’d you know?” she asked.

  I didn’t think that was important at the moment. I didn’t need to explain the text from Jon Miller.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  And she said, “He died—”

  “Died!?”

  I was stunned. Actually, stunned doesn’t cover it. It came out of nowhere for me. This was one of those moments in life where you just know immediately that everything has changed, irrevocably. I tried to fully grasp just how devastating this was.

  Anthony was gone.

  His three daughters, Nicolette, Dominique, and Julianna, had lost their daddy.

  His wife, Carmela, was suddenly a widow.

  Devon had lost an uncle he loved so much and a close link to the daddy he didn’t remember.

  I understood right away that for Sharri, a wound that had mostly healed had been ripped open again. She would have to go back to the cemetery where Joe was buried to see Anthony buried next to him. This would bring her back to that emotional place she had worked so hard to escape.

  And for Paula and George … well, that’s what actually concerned me most. What could I even say? They had lived through every parent’s worst nightmare—with grace and dignity, no less. They didn’t become bitter, angry people after Joe died. They warmly welcomed me and then Dylan into their family. And now here they were, forced to live through this nightmare again. After burying one son, they now were going to be forced to bury their other.

  Sharri called Little Joe to see if he knew anything. He didn’t know a lot of details, they still were coming in, but he did know this:

  Anthony had taken his own life.

  * * *

  Our first reactions are not always the ones that make us proudest or that others say we are supposed to have, but I will be honest here. My first reaction, when I found out that Anthony took his own life, was to be mad.

  I wondered: How could he do this to his parents? How could he do it to his kids? I had seen firsthand what Joe’s death had done to Paula and George. As much as I loved being in Devon’s life, my heart always hurt for him, because I knew he would never have the kind of relationship with his real father that he deserved. Anthony had been one of Devon’s favorite people. I was mad that Anthony would force Devon to cope with his death.

  I did not know how Anthony could do this to so many people he loved. I was so sad to hear the news, but I was also angry at what struck me, at the time, as a selfish act. Didn’t he realize how much devastation this would cause?

  The news came so quickly that I didn’t even know what to do. It wasn’t like he became deathly ill and we could visit him in the hospital. It took us minutes to find out he was gone. I went home and saw Sharri, who was crying as she talked on the phone with her mom.

  My head was in a fog. I kept my appointment with my doctor, who diagnosed me with shingles. That seemed insignificant now. I braced for the moment when Devon got off the school bus and we would give him the news. I was in a daze that afternoon as I rushed to get back home to be there for Devon when he got home from school.

  In the parking lot of my doctor’s office, I backed into a concrete pole.

  I drove home and watched Devon get off the bus. He thought it was just another school day: go home, get something to eat. But we knew better. As he stepped off the bus, I was thinking, This is a day that he will remember for the rest of his life.

  Sharri stepped to the bus to help him off the steps. Once he got down, she pulled him aside.

  “Dev, I’ve got some sad news,” she said. “Anthony died.”

  He was confused.

  “Anthony who?” he asked.

  “Your uncle Anthony,” she said.

  He said, “Seriously?”

  That was his reaction: Seriously? He said it as if we were telling him we wanted him to skip homework to watch a movie instead. He said it very calmly, very matter-of-factly, without any emotion at that time. Devon was a month away from turning ten years old. He couldn’t quite grasp how his uncle could suddenly be gone. There had been no indication this was coming. Anthony had not been sick. It didn’t seem real to Devon.

  But then we went in the house and it hit him. He went upstairs and started bawling.

  * * *

  We left Dylan with my mother and drove t
o the Maio house in New Jersey. The sky was gray, the air misty. This was the drive Sharri had been too scared to make in the months after 9/11. It was extremely difficult to comprehend the reason we were making it now: Anthony had committed suicide in Florida.

  We arrived at the Maios’ and walked inside. When George saw Sharri and Devon, George started wailing. That was the only word that came to mind: wailing. You could know somebody for fifty years and never see them cry like that.

  George’s mother was crying and calling out to God: “Why didn’t He take me?”

  Sharri walked out to the deck to see Carmela and hug her. I looked out at them, these two women in the prime of their lives, and thought, Wow. These are the two women who lost the Maio boys. It was a powerful image and an unimaginable reality.

  I tried talking to George, delicately asking what had happened. He told me he had gotten the news the night before, when a Florida police officer called and asked if he was home. George said he wasn’t. The officer told George to call when he got home. George told me he knew right then that Anthony had died.

  In the house, I found none of the anger that I initially felt when I first heard the news. Everybody was just crushed. Paula was questioning the existence of God. After three hours, we turned to head home, but there was no way to detach ourselves from the scene. Even when I stopped for gas, Devon started crying because he remembered being at that gas station with Uncle Anthony. That night, I woke at 4:00 A.M. with a headache, and I just lay there in bed, thinking about Anthony being gone. It didn’t seem real.

  * * *

  The next morning, when Dylan got up, I walked into her room to get her. She was nineteen months old, far too young to understand what was happening to her family. I started to really understand what it must have been like when Joe died. Back then, Devon was almost fifteen months old, far too young to understand what was happening to his family.

  I looked at Dylan.

  “Adam,” she said. This was what Devon always called me, and she was imitating her big brother.

  “No,” I corrected her. “Daddy.”

  She started crying. I guess she really wanted to call me Adam, just like Devon. It was one of those funny, unexpected moments you have as a parent, and it was completely incongruous with what was happening to our family. That day, I took Dylan to a nearby duck pond, where she fed the ducks and saw a turtle and remained blissfully oblivious to what was going on in our world and the Maios’ world.

  Sharri and I wanted to make things better for Paula and George, but we knew that was impossible. Their boys were gone. What could we, or anyone, even say? We tried to help in the smallest ways, because that was all we could do. We picked up paper goods, enough paper goods to last a year, to take to their house, and drove there to try to provide whatever comfort we could.

  Friends who gathered in those days at the Maios’ house would wonder: If Joe had lived, would Anthony have lived, too? The brothers were so close. Anthony never fully recovered from Joe’s death.

  There is no way to know how much Joe’s death contributed to the end of Anthony’s life. Sometimes there just are no answers, only questions, and this one always will linger.

  But we also started to hear about the inner turmoil that might have led Anthony to take his own life. People who had spoken to Anthony in the previous few months could tell he wasn’t right. He said things that didn’t make sense. He made purchases that defied logic. A few people were worried about his mental state. We didn’t know any of this until after he died.

  He had been taking a drug called Chantix to stop smoking. There had been reports of thousands of mental-health issues linked to Chantix use, including suicidal thoughts. The drug had been hit with a so-called black-box label warning that it could cause life-threatening conditions. Pfizer, which settled numerous lawsuits related to the drug, fought the black-box warning and, with the benefit of new clinical trial data, convinced regulators to remove it in 2016. Still, we couldn’t help but wonder whether Chantix contributed to Anthony’s suicide.

  On the day Anthony died, a friend went to pick him up for dinner. The shower was running. The friend called for Anthony to get ready. When there was no response for five minutes, the friend went to check on Anthony. He found Anthony slumped down, as if his feet had slipped out from under him. The friend told me that for days after that, every time he closed his eyes, he saw Anthony on the floor. Paramedics said Anthony was gone in ten seconds. They found a note next to him.

  I looked around the house, at Dylan and Devon and Sharri, and other people in the Maio family. There were pictures of Anthony and Joe all over the house. It was hard to look away.

  * * *

  The wake, at the Pizzi Funeral Home in Northvale, New Jersey, did not bring peace or closure. Honestly, it just brought more misery, but it also brought signs of great character. On the first day of the wake, George stood right next to the open casket, hovering above his fallen son, greeting every guest, with pictures of Anthony all around. I turned to Sharri and told her how blown away I was by George’s strength. How he stood next to his son, with images of his son all around, and maintained his composure was a test of manhood many could not pass.

  The next day, we went back and watched George do it all again. It was incredible. I don’t know how he did it.

  Even with mourners walking past Anthony’s open casket to pay their respects, Devon said he wouldn’t look at his uncle, but at times, I caught him taking a peek; it was as if he couldn’t resist getting another look at the uncle he’d loved and lost. At other times that week, Devon seemed happy to be around the Maio family, who have always treated him so well. There were far too many emotions for a not-yet-ten-year-old to fully process.

  Throughout the wake, my eyes kept drifting toward a picture to the right of the casket. The picture was of Joe and Anthony, together, each kissing Paula’s cheek at Anthony’s wedding. Paula wore a smile that looked like it would last forever. The family looked so happy, so together, so alive. Now two of the three people in the picture were gone. Every time I looked at the picture, I cried.

  * * *

  The funeral was just as heartbreaking. Nicolette and Dominique spoke beautifully about their father, how much he meant to them, and how much they would miss him. It was hard to listen to Anthony’s daughters eulogize him and not cry. As the pallbearers carried Anthony’s coffin, Paula threw herself on it, wailing out loud. It was hard to watch.

  Afterward, we walked to the grave site and placed roses on Anthony’s tombstone. It was right next to Joe’s: side by side, brother to brother.

  Sharri had not gone to the cemetery since Joe had died. Sometimes Sharri wondered if people judged her for not visiting the burial site, but she thought about Joe every day. That was how she paid tribute to him. There were reminders of his life everywhere, in her mind and in her home. She did not need to be that close to a reminder of his death.

  Now she had to go. I wondered if she might break down, but she managed to keep it together—another Maio showing extraordinary strength. The moment that she would remember from that day was when Devon saw his great-grandmother, Nanna Bubs, crying. She was George’s mother.

  When Anthony’s son had died, and he told everybody the boy’s name was Anthony Joseph, Nanna Bubs said she had a hard time seeing the names Anthony and Joseph on a tombstone. It reminded her so much of Anthony and Joe.

  Now Anthony and Joe were both gone. It was more than Nanna Bubs could take.

  Without anybody prompting him, Devon walked over to her, sat down next to her, and put his arm around her to comfort her. He was only nine years old, but he knew exactly how to comfort somebody, and he wasn’t afraid to do it. Sharri watched him and she thought about Joe sleeping on the floor next to their sick dog, and she thought, Wow. He is just like Joe.

  15

  In the summer of 2013, right before Dylan started prekindergarten, her school held back-to-school night. Parents were invited in to see the school and meet the teachers. Hanging
on the wall in Dylan’s classroom were the students’ names and their birthdays. Sharri and I noticed another girl, Maelyn, was born on Dylan’s birthday, October 3.

  We went through the night’s introductory activities, which lasted around an hour, and on the way out, I happened to start chatting with another father named Charlie Burgdorf. He said he had four kids from his first marriage, then got divorced, met a woman, and remarried. He and his second wife had a daughter named Maelyn.

  I said, “Oh, the October 3 Maelyn?”

  He said, “Yeah.”

  I explained that our daughter was the October 3 Dylan.

  We kept talking. Charlie said his wife, Christina, had been married but was widowed.

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said. “Do you mind me asking what happened?”

  He said, “She lost her husband on 9/11.”

  Everybody has a story, and theirs was uncannily similar to ours. Dylan and Maelyn were delivered in the same hospital, hours apart, by the same doctor. Christina’s deceased husband, Richard, was the son of former New York Giants linebacker and broadcaster Dick Lynch. Christina and Richard had a daughter, Olivia, who was born three days before Devon, but also was due on the day Devon was born, June 21. Christina went to a Catholic girls’ high school in Syosset, New York; Sharri went to Syosset High School, in the same town. Christina went to Northeastern University; Sharri spent a year at Northeastern University.

  The similarities felt eerie to us, in the same way that me having the same birthday as Joe felt eerie.

  Dylan wasn’t thinking about all this when she met Maelyn. They were both too young to be conscious of how other people would tell their life stories. Dylan was aware that Devon had a father before I came along, but she didn’t think about it too much. And yet, Maelyn and Dylan formed an instant bond. They have been close friends since they met. They are similar in temperament and disposition. They often seem like sisters—as though they were meant to be together from the day they were born.

  * * *