Never Tell Our Business to Strangers

by Jennifer Mascia

  “Jenny?” he asked. He was in New Hampshire that week.

  “Daddy, how are you?” I asked, waking up.

  “Jenny, is your mother home?” I sat up, my heart racing.

  “No, she’s at work. Daddy, what’s wrong?”

  “Jenny, eh, I was hoping to talk to your mother first, but … I fell off a ladder,” he said. “I’m in the hospital.”

  “How bad is it?” I asked, on the verge of weeping.

  “I broke my arm, and it’s pretty bad. I have to have surgery,” he said.

  “Oh, Daddy,” I said, crying.

  “It’s okay, Jenny,” he said, crying with me. We wept together for a moment until I finally said, “Okay, I’ll have Mommy call you when she gets home.” When I heard her keys in the door an hour later I began with, “Don’t panic, but …” She stayed remarkably calm, immediately calling the hospital and speaking to my father.

  “We’re going up there,” she decided as soon as she hung up.

  “How?” I asked. “We don’t have a car.”

  “Your father said we should call Mattie and he’ll loan us his Jeep,” she said. Mattie was my father’s boss, who lived in Flushing and tried his best to appear happily married to his rather rotund wife. But my father had told us the truth: On the road Mattie was a Hoover when it came to cocaine, and a proud patron of prostitutes. My father complained of being forced to act as the crew’s boss whenever Mattie was on a bender, waking everyone up in the morning and doling out their daily wages in the evening. One of my father’s co-workers picked us up and drove us to Flushing, where Mattie, who hadn’t gone on this trip, handed us the keys. “Don’t crash it,” he joked in his gruff, humorless way. But we didn’t get any farther than the on-ramp to the I-95 when the Jeep hydroplaned over some coolant in the street and crashed into the guardrail before sputtering to a halt. The car was totaled. After the tow company hauled it away we walked back into Mattie’s house with our heads bowed and handed him the keys.

  “Don’t worry,” my father said on the phone after his surgery. “He was delinquent on the payments and it was about to get repossessed anyway.”

  When my father returned we looked at his arm and gasped: It was outfitted with a metal contraption that penetrated his skin and held his bones together with screws. The thing jutted out of his arm and turned my legs to Jell-O whenever I looked at it.

  “You’re the Terminator, Daddy,” I remarked. But the Terminator was out of work, and we lived on whatever wages he had saved until they ran out. As soon as the brace came off he went right back to painting, though his doctors advised against it. But this time he hooked up with a crew that paid him on the books, so when they were out of work for weeks or months at a time he could receive unemployment.

  One morning, just a few hours after I hung up from one of my middle-of-the-night phone calls with Jeff, my father came into my room and sat on the edge of my bed. His hair was slicked back, like he’d just showered, and he was wearing his black ribbed bathrobe.

  “Jenny,” he said, “Grandpa died.”

  “Oh, Daddy,” I said, hugging him. “Are you okay?” My father had just placed Grandpa in an assisted living facility because his prostate cancer had returned and metastasized to his bones. In fact, we had planned to visit him that very afternoon.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” he said, but he looked tired. At the funeral my mother told me that even though my father appeared calm, he was devastated at losing his last parent. He finally broke down after the final viewing when he leaned in to kiss his father goodbye. I wondered what I would do if I had to kiss one of my parents goodbye, and decided I’d have to be scraped off the floor. As it was, the shock of seeing my grandfather’s body instantly reduced me to tears; I’d never seen a dead body before. When it came time to close the coffin my mother ushered me out, leaving Uncle Frankie, my father, and Aunt Rosalie to spend some last moments with their father. “It’s always a traumatic moment when the coffin is closed,” my mother whispered into my ear. I’d listened through the door and thought I heard wailing, but I wasn’t sure whose it was.

  My sisters came up from Florida to mourn Grandpa, and because of my father’s absence from Tony’s wedding I was tense around them at first. I hadn’t seen Angie in nine years and I hadn’t seen Tina in seven. My sisters and I were pieces of a broken family and I didn’t know how to act around them. They didn’t stay with us, instead bunking at Uncle Frankie’s. Though they made home movies of my mother and father and Frankie showing them around Rockefeller Center and Central Park and their old house in Brooklyn—where they lived as toddlers before moving to Florida—the only time I saw Angie and Tina was at the wake, and then later at the grave site, after I gave Tina my seat in the limousine that would take us there.

  “You go with them,” I said to her when my parents beckoned me inside. “You’re the oldest daughter.” And she appeared to be really upset, while I was not—I barely knew Grandpa. “I guess Tina was close to him, huh?” I later asked my mother. I didn’t understand why she would be tight with Grandpa but not Dad, but I guessed it had something to do with his being in jail for twelve years.

  One night a few months after the funeral I was rummaging through my father’s night table searching for a stray Baby Ruth when I found a letter from Angie. It was addressed to my father and it had been opened, so I assumed he’d seen it. He was out of town and my mother was in the living room watching TV, so I read it.

  On the first page Angie wrote about how she and her husband, Frankie, and the kids had to move in with Angie’s mother, Marie, while their new home in Royal Palm Beach was being constructed. Nicole and Krissy were pulled out of school right before the year ended, which upset them, even though Nicole still earned a 3.9 grade point average for the year. Angie also talked about Krissy, who was six at the time. “She’s been obsessed with who her grandfathers are ever since Grandpa died,” Angie wrote.

  Also, Frankie’s father died recently and we never met him, and she’s having trouble understanding why she doesn’t know who these people are. I always told her about you, she’s seen pictures and videos and Nicole remembers you and talks about you to her. I tried to call you so Krissy could talk to you but you were away. So if you could, would you maybe call sometime? I know you’re busy, but I feel bad for her and I don’t know what to tell her.

  I wish we could maybe keep in touch a little bit more than we do, too. I know I’ll never have a relationship with you like Jenny, but I feel like we have nothing at all and I don’t know why. I really felt awkward seeing you at first at the funeral, but later I became comfortable and thought you did too. But then I leave and I never hear from you and I feel if I don’t tell you this now, I may never hear from you again.

  I know I’m not great with cards and letters, and I never remember birthdays, but I don’t want to never speak again. I can’t believe I’m actually telling you all this and if I don’t hear from you I’ll just forget it, but I have to make an effort. Tony and Tina wonder what’s up with you, too. Tony really thought you were going to walk in at his wedding the whole night until it was over and your chair was still empty. I don’t know if it’s easier for you to forget about us, it may be for you but it only hurts us. We are all grown up now and we’re not looking for a Daddy anymore, but just to know that you still acknowledge our existence and care a little would feel nice. If not for our sakes, maybe for your grandchildren’s sakes.

  Well I probably said too much, but I have not said anything for long enough. Well think about it and I hope to hear from you.

  Love, Angela

  (561) 753-xxxx

  I was in hysterics as soon as I got to the part about how everyone expected my father at Tony’s wedding, holding out hope till the end of the night, only for him never to materialize. I imagined my brother and sisters jerking their necks toward the door whenever somebody walked in and feeling disappointment when they saw it wasn’t their father. I wondered if Angie knew how appalled my mother and I had been at h
is withdrawal, but then, how could she? We weren’t in touch, either. But the fact that she left her phone number at the bottom of the letter just ripped me to bits. It’s true that she had just relocated, but I couldn’t imagine my father not having my phone number if I moved. My father was also her father; how could the same person treat different children so differently? The tragic part was that after each of his dozen or so trips to Florida in the eighties he’d come back completely smitten with his infant granddaughters, talking about nothing but their coos and quirks. What had happened since then to break the spell?

  Letter in hand, I ventured into the living room with tears pouring down my face. “Mom,” I said, holding out the letter, “have you seen this?” She took it, read a few sentences, and nodded.

  “Yes, and your father did, too,” she said, handing it back to me. “What can I tell you?”

  “But, Mom,” I said, and read aloud the part about the wedding. “How could he do that? How could my father do something like that? To me, this is worse than breaking the law.”

  “I don’t know, honey,” she said. “I asked him the same thing, but he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  A thought kept popping into my head. “Would he ever do that to me?” I asked.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, “he’d never do that to you.”

  “Yeah? What makes me so special?” I asked.

  “You’re his baby,” she said. “He’ll always be close to you.”

  I felt guilty that something as random as birth order granted me a relationship with my father. But I realized that while circumstance may have separated them, it hadn’t kept them apart. My father did that all by himself.

  THAT SPRING JEFF sat me down to dinner and told me that he was finally ready to come out of the closet. He had fallen in love, he said, and couldn’t pretend anymore.

  “Oh, thank god!” I exclaimed and threw my arms around his neck. We were determined to remain friends, and I was relieved at having discovered the ultimate breakup loophole. When I got home that night I found my parents in the living room watching television. “You guys are not going to believe this,” I said, bursting with excitement over having finally defined my stubbornly elusive relationship. “Jeff is gay!”

  “I knew it,” my mother said.

  “No, really, Jenny?” my father asked. “Are you sure? Is he sure?”

  My mother and I looked over at my father in disbelief. “Dad, yes,” I said, laughing.

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “Tell you the truth, I wanted him as my son-in-law.”

  “Aw, Daddy,” I said sympathetically.

  Jeff was relieved he hadn’t broken my heart by coming out, and our friendship was sealed. That May he was in the audience alongside my parents as I tore up the stage as the lead in Hunter’s spring production. But I could have been dressed as a tree for all the difference it made to my father, who wept silently from start to finish. In fact, he took an interest in all of my collegiate endeavors, reading every story I wrote for the school paper, and when I was accepted into the honors program at Hunter, my father was especially proud, paying for my lifetime membership in the Golden Key Society without my knowledge. One day he came into my room with a small gold membership pin.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” I said when I opened the little black box, surprised and pleased that he cared so much. However, we were struggling to pay my tuition bill, and when I discovered that I could fill out a FAFSA form to apply for financial aid I brought one home to my parents and laid it out on the living room table.

  “Jenny, we can’t,” my mother said. “They’re going to find out we haven’t paid any taxes,” she added, whispering the second half of the sentence.

  “Mom, they’re not going to find out,” I said, exasperated. “Trust me. This is the only way I can pay for college: with grants and student loans. Please, just fill out the form.” When my father ambled in I pleaded my case to him.

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “Who knows what they’ll find on us. No.” The only way I could get them to fill out the paperwork was by dragging them both in to my student loan adviser’s office so he could convince them that there was no underground IRS Gestapo combing through student loan paperwork desperately searching for tax delinquents. (When it came time for me to file my first 1040 a few months later, I asked my parents what to do. They stared at me blankly before suggesting an accountant who lived in our building.)

  But my father did shoulder one cost for me—my credit cards. I’d accrued seven of them, and when the bills overwhelmed me I approached my parents, helpless. I figured they’d been through this so many times they might have some advice for me. But they didn’t recommend I “bust out” my cards. Instead, my mother found a consumer credit counseling service that froze the interest and let my father pay them off. Now whenever we fought I couldn’t acidly remind my mother that I’d given her my paychecks for two years, because my father’s gesture essentially canceled mine out.

  With the Jeff situation and the credit situation and my parents’ financial situation under control, I ended the school year with one goal in mind: preparing for my upcoming trip to California, my first since we’d moved away. That August I greeted Maria at the airport with “Take me to the ocean,” and we watched the waves break at Heisler Park, the whitecaps glowing in the darkness. One night my high school friends took me to Laguna Beach and we dropped in to our old haunts on Forest Avenue. It was then I decided that I could never live in California again. Somewhere between the U-Haul place on New Utrecht Avenue and my perch between the boulders in Central Park where my friends and I sometimes smoked pot between classes, I had fallen in love in spite of myself. It had crept up on me, and without the hum of city streets and the sight of people scurrying up and down sidewalks, I was bored. Who knows what would have become of me if I hadn’t moved away? I’d outgrown Orange County, a fact that filled me with pride. I was growing up.

  Toward the end of my stay, Maria and I planned a day trip to Mexico in an effort to re-create the senior year trip we took to Tijuana. But instead of sipping margaritas on the water I found myself on a hasty plane that landed in a different New York, one that was filled with sorrow.

  “HI, JENNY, IT’S JUST MOMMY. Just making dinner. Call when you get this.”

  Maria and I had been gone all day and the message was waiting for me when we got back. The time difference meant that she and my father had already consumed her dinner, whatever it had been. I dialed my number. After four rings the answering machine picked up.

  “Hey, Mom, it’s Jenny, sorry I didn’t call you earlier. Gimme call.”

  I sat in the living room and absentmindedly switched on a summer repeat of Friends. I was supposed to meet a couple of Mission Viejo High School alums for a late-night swim but I wanted to touch base with my mother first. It bothered me that she wasn’t home. My parents were never not home. I sat and nervously shook my leg as I tried my mother’s number once more. (Okay, so she went to the compactor room to take out the garbage.) Twice. (Okay, so my parents are next door at Brian’s apartment having coffee and Danish.) Three times. (Could they be … having sex? Unlikely.) Four times.

  “Jenny, are you coming over?” my friend Natalie asked in a “Where are you?” phone call. I should have been over there by then, but I chose to sit it out in Maria’s living room until my mother called back.

  But she never did. As the sun disappeared below the horizon and the orange glow of suburban night settled over the Saddleback Valley, I whipped myself into a helpless frenzy. Maria looked on, concerned, as I repeatedly dialed the eleven digits hoping for a different result. At nine o’clock Pacific Daylight Time, somebody answered.

  “Hello?” asked my father’s weary sandpaper voice.

  “Daddy!” I shouted. “Daddy, what is going on? I have been calling for hours! Where is Mommy?”

  “Oh, Mommy is fine,” he said. “Yeah, Mommy … Mommy was stressed. The doctor was worried about her stress level, so they held her over
night.”

  “She’s at the doctor’s?” I asked.

  “Yeah, honey,” he said, his voice level. “He didn’t like her stress levels.”

  “Did she have an appointment today?” I asked, trying to believe. “She called me hours ago, and she didn’t mention anything about a doctor’s appointment.”

  Long pause. I heard him exhale. “Jenny,” he said, a sob invading his low, guttural tones. “Jenny.” My heart was pounding so hard so suddenly I thought I might throw up. “Jenny, it was a heart attack,” he finally said. “Mommy had a heart attack.”

  “What?” I asked, bewildered. “She had a heart attack? When? What happened?” I looked at Maria, who was watching me intently.

  “They took her to St. Vincent’s, here on the Island,” he said.

  “Why did no one call me?” I demanded to know.

  “Your mother didn’t want me to tell you,” he said. “She didn’t want to ruin your trip.”

  “Ruin my trip?” I asked incredulously. Did my mother really think I would care more about downing margaritas in Tijuana than this? “Are you kidding me? I’m coming home tomorrow!” I could almost hear him nodding over the phone, picture his relief. Then a thought struck me, threatening to level me: Was my mother still alive?

  “Hey, wait, what else aren’t you telling me?” I ventured, suddenly suspicious. There was something I didn’t know; many things, in fact, and I didn’t want my world to collapse without being told first.

  “Nothing, Jenny. I’m sitting here in the kitchen, Brian is here with me, and I’m having a scotch, and I just, I was sitting here wondering how I was going to tell you, when I was going to call you …” As he spoke I made my way to Maria’s backyard, perched high in the hills of Laguna, so her parents wouldn’t take me for a madwoman.

  “You’d better tell me what the fuck is going on right fucking now!” I boomed into the phone as soon as I stepped outside. My outburst shook tendon and muscle, leaving me wrung out and barely clinging to gravity. I was never permitted to curse at my father; that was his exclusive privilege. The fact that he didn’t reprimand my indiscretion or threaten me with his belt meant that something serious had indeed transpired.