by Lisa Unger
I pushed my way through the doors of one of the clinics where my father and Zachary volunteered their services. This one was in midtown; the other was out in New Jersey. My father was putting in more time at these places the closer he came to retirement. Usually at the beginning of the week, he was in Jersey, toward the end in the city, so I had a pretty good idea that I would find him there today. I know you’re thinking, Didn’t she just say she didn’t want to see her parents? It was true, I didn’t want to. But my father seems to have a magnetic pull in times of crisis. As much as I swear up and down that I’m not going to call or go to see him when things are bothering me, it’s as if he somehow knows and flips a switch somewhere in the universe, magically compelling me to pick up the phone, or show up at his office.
“I’m looking for Dr. Jones. Is he in today?” I asked the young woman working the desk. She had glowing café au lait skin and deep black eyes ridged with lush lashes. I’d never seen her before, though I’d been to the clinic a number of times to visit my dad or Zack. But I wasn’t surprised; there had always been a high turnover there.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked, not looking up from the file opened in front of her.
“I’m his daughter.”
She glanced up at me and smiled. “Oh, you’re Zack’s fiancée?” she said with a cheerful recognition in her voice.
Something about this annoyed me. We’d ended our relationship more than six months ago now and I’d never accepted his proposal. So, technically, I had never been Zack’s fiancée. Before I could even respond:
“And didn’t you just save that kid a couple of weeks ago? I saw your picture in the paper.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “That’s me.”
She looked at me with wonderment in her eyes. “Wow, nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m Ava.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, feeling impossibly awkward. It was too late to say, “By the way, I’m not engaged to Zack. Really, I never was…it’s a long story.” So I just clammed up and looked away from her.
“Just a second,” she said, still looking at me. “I’ll page him for you. Have a seat.”
I found a chair among the crying babies and toddlers with hacking coughs and runny noses, hoping that my immune system was up to task. A woman breathed heavily beside me, sounding like she had gauze in her lungs.
“Ridley,” called Ava after a few minutes. “You can go back. He’s in the last office.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You know,” said Ava as she buzzed me through the door to the right of her desk, “you don’t look like your dad.”
I tried for a smile. “I’ve heard that before.”
“Your father’s a saint. You know that? You kids are lucky, so damn lucky. Don’t tell your mother I swear in front of you, okay?”
Uncle Max had said that so many times, it lost its meaning. “You don’t know,” he would say. “You don’t know what it’s like to have a father that doesn’t love you.” And then he’d get that look, the look he had when my mother was around. As if the world were a prom and he was the only one without a date.
I guess Uncle Max may have been the loneliest person I’ve ever known, except Ace. When I was a kid, I sensed it without completely understanding it. As I got older, I recognized that he had an idea of himself as being alone in the world. But I still didn’t quite get why he felt that way; he had my parents, he had Ace and me, he had his parade of Barbie dolls. But I understand now. Loneliness is a condition, an illness. He carried it with him and it infected his life. He could treat it by spoiling us, by loving my parents, with his “girlfriends,” with booze. But there was no cure. His disease? It was terminal.
“Ridley,” said my father with a sigh. He gave me a pained, glancing look from the corner of his eye. “You’ve caused us some worry.”
“Sorry,” I said, closing the door behind me. It was an examining room, really. It smelled, well, you know the smell—Band-Aids and disinfectant. Flickering fluorescents, bad Formica floors speckled with the most awful array of colors: mustard, olive, salmon. Spotless avocado countertops, glass jars filled with cotton balls and tongue depressors still in their paper wrappers.
My father took me in his arms even though I could tell he was angry with me. I loved him for that. My mother, when she was mad, wouldn’t even look you in the eye, as though she had ceased to acknowledge your existence until she had forgiven you. I pulled away after a second and pushed myself up onto the examining table, the wrinkle of the tissue paper beneath me reminding me of a thousand visits to rooms just like this for various reasons. And they all seemed just like the same room. Well, not exactly the same. In spite of its cleanliness, there was a seediness, a run-down quality to this room that identified it as a clinic examining room versus some of the opulent private offices I’d been in. It depressed me. It was sterile and clean but ugly, the decor outdated, with hairline cracks in the wall, water stains on the ceiling. As if poor people didn’t deserve for things to be modern and pretty. A yellowed poster with ripped corners was taped to the wall: the human musculature system. Pretty. The guy’s face looked quite calm, considering he’d been skinned.
“Why did you send Zack to check up on me?” I said.
My father pulled an innocent face. “I didn’t, Ridley. I wouldn’t.”
I was quiet, kept my eyes on him.
“I asked him to call,” he said finally. “That’s it. I thought maybe you’d talk to him.”
“Well, he came to my place and let himself in. I wasn’t happy about that, Dad.”
“I’d say he’s learned his lesson,” answered my father, averting his eyes and sitting on a green vinyl chair with metal legs. He leaned back and crossed his arms across his belly. He heaved a sigh.
“God,” I said, pissed and a little embarrassed. “What, did he run and tell you everything like a little snitch?”
Did I realize that I sounded like a twelve-year-old? Yes, and I disliked it. But I guess it was part of a problem that I was just beginning to understand. When my parents were around, I was a twelve-year-old. And guess what? That’s the way they liked it.
“Are you seeing someone, Ridley?” my father asked, forcing his voice to be light and inquiring.
“Dad. That’s not what I’m here to talk about.”
“No?”
“No, Dad. I want to talk about Uncle Max.”
Nobody could ever call my father handsome. Not in the traditional sense. But even as his daughter I could see his sway over women. I’ve yet to see a woman who did not break into a smile under his gaze. His appeal went beyond the physical. The landscape of his face gave subtle hints at the man who lived beneath its surface. The bump on the bridge of his nose whispered of his tough, working-class roots. His square jaw was a dare to test his resolve once his will had been set. His light blue eyes were a gallery of his every mood. I’d seen them radiate with compassion, glow with love and understanding. I’d seen them grow dark with grief or worry. I’d seen them narrow with anger or disappointment. But never had I seen them the way they looked at that moment. They were utterly blank, unreadable. The pause following my question was a third presence in the room, a ghost that had slipped in under the door.
“Haven’t we loved you enough, Ridley?” he said after a few moments. “Haven’t we given you everything you needed—financially, emotionally—to thrive as an adult in this world?”
“Yes, Dad,” I said, the guilt trip gnawing at me instantly.
“Then what is going on? Is this the point in your life where you indict us for all the mistakes that we made in raising you and your brother? I don’t expect this from you, Ridley. From Ace, but not you.”
There it was again, that crippling comparison. Since he left, Ace had been held up—not always verbally, mind you, but through some kind of emotional osmosis—as an object of disdain in my family, the very ultimate in failure and ingratitude. Any comparison to him in this way let off bottle rockets in my chest. The explosiv
e mixture of shame, resentment, and anger brought color to my cheeks.
“What does any of that have to do with what I just asked you?” I said quietly.
A little flash of surprise lit up his face, as if he hadn’t expected me to notice that he’d dragged out the big emotional guns to deflect my question.
“You’re telling me that this doesn’t have anything to do with what we talked about the other night?” he said with an indignation that didn’t seem quite sincere. “Your mother is still upset by that.”
“Dad,” I said.
He held my eyes for a second, looked away and then back at me again. “What do you want to know?”
What did I want to know? Ace had told me to ask Dad about Uncle Max and his “pet projects.” But that seemed like such a vague and bizarre thing to ask.
“Were there things about Max I didn’t know?”
He shook his head and looked at me with a heavy frown. “Why are you asking me this? Where is it coming from?”
I didn’t answer him, just leaned against the wall and kept my eyes on the floor. I heard my father sigh, saw his feet move over toward the window.
“So how long have you been talking to Ace?”
I stared at him. His eyes were edged with sadness now. It wasn’t a look I was happy to see, but it was better than the dead, flat look he’d given me just moments before when I asked about Uncle Max.
“A long time,” I answered. “But I think you know that already.”
The fluorescent lights seemed to get brighter, harsher. I could hear the soft footfall of nurses’ shoes scuffling back and forth outside the door. Some chatting, a bit of laughter. I was getting it, finally, that Zack had been giving my dad information about me for as long as he’d known me. The thought made me sick and angry.
My father shrugged. “Better he talks to you than no one. I haven’t been able to get near him in years. But why didn’t you tell me?”
I felt a little flare of anger. “Tell you? I wasn’t allowed to say his name after he left,” I said, surprised that I had raised my voice and that my hands were now shaking.
My father nodded. He walked over to me and put his hands on my shoulders. I could smell his Old Spice and remembered how he’d smelled of rain and cologne when he’d come home from work at night.
“I’m sorry, Ridley,” he said, forcing me to meet his eyes. “We handled it wrong. I know we did.”
“It doesn’t matter now, Dad,” I said, sliding off the table and moving away from him. “I mean, you know, it’s okay. I understand.” I could feel the undertow of his love. It was subtly pulling me into him and away from the reason I’d come.
“We were hurting, Ridley. Devastated, really…your mother especially. We didn’t know how to handle it. And we didn’t really think about how it was affecting you. That was selfish of us. And we’re sorry, both of us.”
I felt bad for him, felt guilty again. I sat in the chair he had occupied a moment earlier and put my head in my hands, stared down at my knees. My head ached suddenly and I felt confused. This wasn’t the encounter I was expecting to have.
“I’m glad he talks to you, Ridley,” said my father again, after a moment. “As long as you’re careful to listen selectively to what he has to say.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Ace has had some strange ideas since he started using. He has a lot of hostility toward Max. A lot of jealousy about the relationship you shared with him. Don’t let his anger poison your mind against a man who loved you.”
“You think Ace put all this into my head? I showed you the photograph.” I could have told him there was more—another envelope, someone in the pizzeria looking for me. But I didn’t.
“I know, I know. But I thought we’d put all that to bed. It just seems like if you’d talked to Ace, he might have used the opportunity to spread a little of his poison.”
“Why would he think Max had anything to do with this? Why would he tell me to ask you about Uncle Max and his ‘pet projects’? That’s what he called them.”
My father shrugged dramatically, offering his palms in a gesture of helplessness. “How should I know where Ace gets his ideas? He’s sick, Ridley. You can’t possibly rely on the things he says.”
There was a truth to this, I could see, from the outside. I mean, who would listen to a junkie, right? I had faith in Ace because I knew that there was more to him than his addiction. I hope we’re all more than the sum of our parts. I thought my father would share that hope, too. But I guess Ace had been lost to him for a very long time.
“You can’t think of anything, Dad?”
He sighed. Then: “The only things Max was involved in, other than his business, helped thousands of abused kids and battered women get on their feet.”
“You mean the foundation?”
“You remember, don’t you?”
He opened a drawer in between us and pulled out a couple of pamphlets. He handed them over.
I read one:
When I was sixteen years old, my parents took me to a fund-raiser ball at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. It was a positively luscious affair, with all the New York City’s social elite turned out in glimmering gowns and exquisitely tailored tuxedos. There were towering flower arrangements, legions of champagne flutes, sparkling ice sculptures, and a full jazz band. I wore a pink silk organza gown and my first pair of real heels. The diamond earrings I’d received for my Sweet Sixteen glinted on my earlobes (I chased my own reflection all night long), and my mother’s diamond bracelet looked as if it belonged dripping off my wrist. Naturally, I felt like a rock star and a supermodel and a princess; I was quite literally flushed and giddy with excitement.
Uncle Max was my date. He walked around with me on his arm, introducing me as his “gorgeous young niece” to people like Ed Koch, Tom Brokaw, Leslie Stahl. I shook hands with Donald Trump, Mary McFadden, Vera Wang. The event was a fund-raiser for the Maxwell Allen Smiley Foundation for the Welfare of Abused Women and Children, and at five thousand dollars a plate, Max was able to raise untold amounts of money that night for the various charities that his foundation supported.
“Your uncle Max initiated the foundation to help pass the Safe Haven Law in New York State,” my father told me now, “which allows women to abandon their babies to safe houses, hospitals, firehouses, or police stations without fear of prosecution and with the knowledge that the infant will be taken care of and put up for adoption.”
I looked down at the pamphlet in my hand, flipped through the pages. It had two pictures on the front, one of a Dumpster, the other of a female nurse cradling a sleeping baby wrapped in her arms. Make the right choice for your child, no questions asked, it read. It explained the Safe Haven Law and urged mothers not to panic, not to leave their babies in a Dumpster or a toilet, as too many others had, but to bring them to one of the listed safe houses. In an even, nonjudgmental tone, it assured mothers that everything would be taken care of and that after sixty days, if they did not return for the child, all parental rights would be waived and the baby would be put up for adoption and placed in a loving home.
“I never heard him talk about the Safe Haven Law.”
“It was controversial,” my father said, sitting down again. He looked tired. “Detractors felt that it encouraged young girls to give up their child. Girls, I suppose, who might otherwise have kept their babies. But supporters, like Max and myself, believed that if a mother has an impulse to give up her child, for whatever reason, then that child is better off in a place where he or she can get the love and care needed. And if a frightened, desperate person has a safe alternative to murdering her child, she just might take it. The law passed back in 2000. Now the organization operates as a help line and a public relations office.”
Now that he mentioned it, I’d seen the ad campaigns all over trains and on the sides of buses, and had even heard a couple of public service announcements. A deep, mellow voice would intone over the sound of a crying baby: “Stressed out? C
an’t handle the pressures of parenting? Before you take it out on your kids, call us. We can help.” I just never had any idea that it was something my father and Uncle Max had been involved with. It seemed strange to me that I didn’t know about it. My dad and I were close and we talked about his work often.
“Why haven’t you ever mentioned this to me?” I asked.
“Haven’t I? I’m sure that’s not true. Maybe you just don’t listen to your old father when he tells you things.” He tried a smile but it died on his face when I didn’t return it. We were silent for a second. I stared at the pamphlet, wondering if this is what Ace meant.
“Your uncle Max’s childhood is not a secret to you. He was abused on a level I have rarely seen in my experience as a physician—and that’s saying something. Instead of using that as an excuse to throw away his life, he burned it like fuel to drive himself to success. And he used that success to make a difference in the lives of abused children like himself—and battered women like his mother.”
I’d heard this speech before. I wasn’t sure why I was hearing it again. But I let him go on.
“Getting this law passed was especially important to him,” he went on, “because he believed it got babies that were at high risk for abuse or neglect into the arms of people desperate for a child before any real harm could be done. As opposed to after the fact, like so many kids. It was important to him because there were things your uncle Max never got over. Not until the day he died.”
I thought about Max, about that sadness deep inside him that nothing seemed ever to reach, even in our happiest moments together.
