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
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 explosive 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
“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
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
“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
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.
