Beautiful Lies

with half-decent reaction time and a heart would have done what I did. But it’s those little things I was talking about. Standing behind me on that corner of First Avenue and Eleventh Street was a photographer for the New York Post. On his way back from shooting some high-profile thug’s “walk of shame” from the Ninth Precinct, he’d come over to Five Roses to see if they were open, which naturally at 8:30 A.M. they weren’t. He’d popped into the Black Forest Pastry Shop on the corner for a coffee and bear claw. These items were now lying on the ground at his feet where he’d dropped them in his haste to get to his camera. He got the whole thing on film.

three

It must have been a slow news week. And, okay, that action shot the Post photographer captured was pretty sensational, if I do say so myself. The combination of those two things, and I got my fifteen minutes. What can I say? I lapped it up. I’m not a shy person and I do like to talk, so I did all the interviews: Good Day New York, The Today Show, the Post, the Daily News. My phone was ringing off the hook and it was pretty fun. My parents even got some reflected glory in the New Jersey Record. They’re not shy, either.

By Friday, my image had been on every local television show and in every newspaper in the tristate area. There was even some national pickup because of a sound bite on CNN. People were stopping me on the street to hug me or shake my hand. New York City is a quirky place in general, but when you’re the “New Yorker of the Moment,” it’s absolutely surreal. A city that can seem bitterly lonely and aloof even with its throngs of people suddenly seemed to turn its face from the sidewalk and smile. I think when someone does a good deed in New York City, it makes the rest of us feel as though we’re not alone, that maybe we are looking out for one another in spite of evidence to the contrary.

“I can’t believe you, Rid,” said Zack over drinks at the NoHo Star. The echoes of a hundred conversations rose up and bounced off the high ceilings of the restaurant, and the aromas of Asian-infused cuisine mingled with the scent of the warm breadbasket on our table. I looked at my good friend, because he had always been that, and was grateful for him.

“What? You didn’t think I had it in me?” I asked with a smile.

He shook his head. There was that look again, that mingling of longing and regret and something else I just couldn’t put my finger on. I averted my eyes; it made me feel like such a heel.

“Believe me, I know you have it in you. You’ve been like that since we were kids—defender of the weak, cheerleader for the underdog.” Was there the slightest shade of resentment in his voice?

“Someone has to do it,” I said, lifting my Cosmo and taking a sip.

“But why you?” he asked. “That woman should have had a better eye on her kid. You both could have been killed.”

I gave a shrug. I didn’t see the point of judging and analyzing a single moment in someone’s life. I was just glad to have been there to mitigate the consequences. He went on, as he was prone to do.

“And all those pictures of you…forget it. You’re going to have psychos crawling out of the woodwork. You should have just stayed out of it.” He shook his head disapprovingly, but I could see the caring and the respect that was behind it. He was a good guy, worried about my well-being above all things.

“Oh, yeah,” I said with a laugh. “And let a little kid get mowed down by a van.”

“Better him than you,” he said with eyebrows raised.

“You’re so full of it,” I said with a smile. He would have been the first one diving in front of the van to save that kid—Justin Wheeler, by the way. Three years old and counting. Did I mention that Zack was a pediatrician like my father? (And yes, they worked together at some of the clinics where they donated their time. See how complicated this whole breakup was?) He dedicated his whole life to the care of children, and I’d never met anyone, other than my father, who was so passionate about his work.

“Seriously,” he said, softening, returning my smile. “Watch out for yourself until all this dies down.”

I touched my glass to his.

“To the hero. To my hero,” he said.

Things did die down, of course, and my life returned to its natural rhythm. By the following Monday, a week to the day since I’d plucked Justin from the path of the van, my phone had stopped ringing for interviews, I noted. I got a call from the features editor at Vanity Fair regarding the article I wanted to write on Uma Thurman. We made an appointment to get together on Tuesday afternoon. I went to bed that night still flushed with my fifteen minutes but happy that everything was settling back to normal.

The following day, I got dressed like a grown-up and took a cab uptown to the Vanity Fair offices. I had a brief meeting with the features editor, a busy, somewhat tightly wound, impossibly chic older woman who I’d worked successfully with before. Provided that Ms. Thurman agreed to the article, we settled on a fee and a deadline and we were good to go. I took the train back downtown and dawdled some at St. Mark’s Bookshop and toyed with the idea of starting a novel. I strolled toward home, picked up some sandalwood incense from a street vendor, and as I passed it on my way back to my apartment, lamented the Gap on the corner of St. Mark’s (the mecca of my gothic youth) and Second Avenue. I’m sorry; the Gap has no place on the same street as Trash and Vaudeville.

By the time I got back to my apartment, the afternoon was darkening and I was freezing in my black wool gabardine Tahari suit, my feet screaming in protest of my gorgeous but painful Dolce & Gabbana leather pumps. But I figured I deserved to be uncomfortable in these shamefully expensive (but so fabulous) items. It’s only right to suffer for fashion. I wrestled another unwieldy pile of mail from my box, took off my shoes, and jogged up the stairs to my apartment.

My apartment was small—okay, minuscule—with a bare minimum of storage space. Actually, it had only one closet at the end of a hallway that ran parallel to my bedroom but went nowhere. But I liked that it kept a limit on the amount of clutter I allowed to accumulate in my life. I had a sense that if I needed to pack up and move in a day, I could, and that thought gave me a significant amount of comfort. Which was strange because I had been there for more than ten years and had no desire to leave. There was something about that apartment that made me feel rooted and free at the same time. It was exactly the way I wanted it, with comfortable, plush furniture, and area rugs to soften the hardwood floors. The walls were freshly painted a subtle cream. It was cozy, familiar… my space. And yet at the same time, I had no attachment to anything there.

That night I changed into my most comfortable pair of black yoga pants and sweatshirt, pulled my hair up, and settled onto the chenille sofa with my stack of mail to sift through. I made piles: one for magazines, one for garbage, one for bills. And I began to sort.

It was relaxing in its mindlessness, the simple act of sifting through, putting items into their place. Then I came across an eight-by-ten envelope with my name and address handwritten in a black scrawl, no return address. There was something about it, even though it was an utterly innocuous manila envelope. In retrospect, it seemed to radiate a warning, to throb with a kind of malice, which I naturally ignored. I sliced the top open cleanly with a letter opener and removed three pieces of paper. Even now I still find it amazing how these simple items were able to challenge everything I ever thought I knew about my life.

In the envelope there was a clipping of the Post article that featured a picture of me. There was also an old, yellowed Polaroid photograph. In it, a young woman in a flowered dress held a little girl on her hip. The woman looked stiff, her expression drawn. The child looked at her with eyes bright with laughter, mouth smiling. A man stood behind them, tall, broad shouldered, incredibly handsome with chiseled features and sharp, intelligent eyes. He had a possessive hand on the woman’s shoulder. And there was something about his expression that wasn’t quite benevolent, though I couldn’t put my finger on it. I couldn’t explain the constricting in my throat, the adrenaline suddenly pumping through me, causing my hands to shake. The woman in the photograph bore such a striking resemblance to me that I could have been looking at my own portrait. The child in her arms resembled pictures I’d seen of myself, though at that moment I realized I’d never seen images of myself that young.

And there was a note including a phone number and a question.

It read simply: Are you my daughter?