“Holy shit, Ridley,” he said, and pressed the buzzer to let me in.
I waited for the elevator. I had come to the only person who knew me and my parents. The only person I thought might have some answers. Zachary.
He stood waiting for me at his apartment door in his boxers and his Rutgers University sweatshirt, his blond hair tussled, his face creased with sleep. He embraced me and I let him take me into his arms, even though I didn’t lift my arms to him. It felt good to be held, even by him. He led me inside and took my coat. I sat on the couch while he made me a cup of tea. Then he sat beside me on his couch while I drank it, not saying a word. Finally:
“Ridley, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” He was gentle and looked at me with such worry. I remembered how harshly I’d treated him the last time I saw him and I felt bad (but not too bad—he had been
When I’d finished, he leaned back and shook his head. “Whoa. You’ve been through the wringer, Ridley.” He put a comforting hand on my shoulder. I had pulled my shoes off and was sitting cross-legged beside him. It was nice to be somewhere familiar and comfortable that had never been mine. The leather couch, the big-screen television, the clutter of Knicks paraphernalia, the bar lined with his collection of beer cans.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “It’s been a little rough.”
“Listen,” he said. “Why don’t you take my bed and try to get some sleep. I’ll sleep out here on the couch. And in the morning, when you’re rested, you take a fresh look at some of this stuff. I think things are going to seem a lot different after you’ve had some sleep.”
“What?” I said. “No, Zachary. I can’t sleep right now. I need answers. That’s why I’m here.”
He looked at me with that same expression of worry, and instead of being comforted by it, I wanted to punch him. Suddenly it didn’t look like concern as much as condescension. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs, steepled his fingers. I felt a lecture coming on. “I want you to consider something for a moment, Rid.”
“Consider what?”
“I know you’ve had a hard couple of days. But I want you to stop for a second and ask yourself if any of this seems reasonable to you.”
“Reasonable?”
“Yeah. Has it occurred to you that this whole thing is just bullshit? That the psycho who started all of this and your ‘friend’ Jake were lying? That this whole thing is just some kind of scam?”
It struck me as a ridiculous thing to say and I was amazed that he could even suggest it. “A scam? What would any of them have to gain? Have you been listening to me?”
“Yes, I have been,” he said slowly. “Have you been listening to yourself?”
I shook my head in confusion. He didn’t believe me.
“I mean, what makes you so ready to listen to these total strangers over your own father?” he asked.
“Zack, I just
He shrugged. “So what, Ridley? Your father has been doing clinic work for longer than you’ve been alive. He’s probably seen thousands of kids at these clinics. And yeah, some of them have probably gone missing or died from illness or neglect or abuse. But that doesn’t mean he had anything to do with it.”
I just looked at him. I felt this veil of confusion fall over my thoughts. If you questioned the basic truth of what had happened to me, then every single one of the events that had occurred in the last few days could be explained away as the elements of a very complicated lie, some kind of plot to make me question my identity. I entertained the idea for a second, the way you might daydream about winning the lottery or moving to the Caribbean. Sitting in the warmth and comfort of Zachary’s living room, I could almost be convinced. It would be so easy to let him convince me that I had been deceived and manipulated, suffered from a kind of temporary insanity. I could check into someplace plush in the country for a little “rest” and recover from my nervous breakdown. And when I got out, I could marry Zack and have children and we’d all be one big happy family. We’d forget all about poor Ridley’s little “episode.”
I lay back on the couch, closed my eyes, and tried it on. Was it possible? But the question “Why?” was the one that couldn’t be answered. Why would anyone do this? Even Ace, who maybe did have reason to hate me, to be consumed by some kind of irrational jealousy—what would he have to gain?
Zack rested a comforting hand on my forehead. I opened my eyes and looked at him. He wore a relieved smile.
“Just rest awhile,” he said. “This is all going to look different in the morning.”
He grabbed the oversize chenille Knicks blanket I’d given him for his birthday last year and pulled it over me. I could almost imagine doing it, lying there and letting him take care of me. He’d sit with me awhile, until he thought I was sleeping. Then he’d go in the other room and call my parents, tell them I was all right and that he was going to take care of me. It would have been the easiest, most familiar thing for me to do.
“Tell me about Project Rescue,” I said.
The relief dropped from his face, the smile faded. Annoyance took its place.
“You need to move past this, Ridley,” he said. “You can’t believe someone like Christian Luna over your own father.”
At another point in my life, I might have missed it. It might have slipped past me. But that Ridley was gone. I smiled at Zachary. I imagine it was a sad, angry smile because that’s what I was feeling. I sat up and threw the blanket off of me.
“I never told you his name,” I said quietly.
“What?”
“Christian Luna. I never said his name.”
“Yes, you did, Ridley,” he said, looking at me sadly.
But I hadn’t and I was certain of that. In fact, I had purposely omitted the name for reasons I couldn’t have explained at the time. He could pretend that he thought I was insane but I knew that I wasn’t.
“Ridley. Please.”
I looked at Zachary then and realized that there had been more than just wanting my freedom, more than just not loving him enough, that had led me to leave him. It was something about him that I had intuited but had never had proof of, something that had disturbed me on a subliminal level. I had caught a glimpse of it when he’d let himself into my apartment that day. I was feeling it now but still couldn’t put into words exactly what it was. I stood up slowly and reached for my coat. He stood with me, and when I looked into his face again, he was someone I didn’t recognize.
“If you leave here, I won’t be responsible for what happens to you.” His voice cracked when he said it but his eyes were flat and cold.
“What’s Project Rescue, Zack?” I asked, and I heard my voice quaver. I was scared of him, I realized. Physically afraid. I started backing toward the door.
He heard the fear in my voice, too. He looked surprised by it, as if I’d slapped him. And for a second he was the man I had loved once. “Rid, please. Don’t look at me like that. I would never hurt you. You know that.”
But I didn’t want to see any more lying faces, any more masks.
“What is it, Zack?” I was screaming now.
“Calm down. Stop yelling,” he pleaded, looking past me down the hall. “Project Rescue is exactly what your father told you it was. It’s an organization that gives frightened mothers an alternative to abandoning their babies in the street. It’s nothing more than that.”
“You’re a liar.”
“No. It’s the truth.”
I didn’t say anything and he sighed and sat down on the couch. “The child welfare system wasn’t always what it is today. Now, whatever its flaws, at least it errs on the side of safety for the child. But in the seventies, it wasn’t like that. It was hard to get a kid away from an abuse situation. Physicians a lot of times had a front-row seat to the systematic neglect and abuse of a child that would eventually end in that child’s death. Their hands were tied.”
“What are you saying?” I asked. But I was starting to see. I was starting to understand. The missing piece I’d
