The Man I Never Met
Page 15
Eventually our stop came. We got off at Wall Street. As we walked along that particular subway stop, we looked up and saw all kinds of signs for the 9/11 museum and Wall Street. They were signs to him but reminders to us. Devon’s desk was across the street from the New York Stock Exchange.
Devon didn’t say anything. He doesn’t talk about this stuff. But it felt to me like the spirit of Joe was watching over him.
Devon says he is not ready to visit the 9/11 memorial, but sometimes he opens the large boxes that Sharri saved for him, full of letters to Devon from Joe’s friends, telling him stories about his father. Joe’s friends sent those letters for Devon to read one day so he could know the type of man Joe was. The box holds the plastic Cantor Fitzgerald ID that was found after Joe died.
As he gets older, Devon may have more questions. What would his father tell him? What advice would he give? How would he console him, lift him up, or set him straight? Maybe it will all click for Devon if he becomes a father, and the words that George uttered to Joe will echo for Devon:
“You don’t know what love is until you have your own child.”
Joe has not faded from our lives. He lives on, through Devon, through Sharri, and even through Dylan and me. His presence is constant. He is the fifth member of our family, never seen but always there. Every morning, I wake up knowing that at some point that day, my wife will think about another man she still loves. When we watch a movie from a decade or two ago, Sharri always checks the release date to see if Joe was alive when it came out.
As Sharri got ready for our latest renovation, she realized that in order to do it, the mural with the flowers and green grass and blue skies would have to be destroyed.
She had commissioned it in 2001, while Joe was alive, and watched the painter work on it during her darkest days. It had helped sustain her. Now it was 2017, and she watched as construction workers took the Sheetrock with the mural on it, piece by piece, to a dumpster.
She was surprised to discover she was OK with it. She no longer needed the brightness that the mural once provided. As the years passed, the mural came to remind her more of that time in her life when she was in such pain because she’d lost Joe. She would rather remember his life than his death. Even today, when Sharri redecorates a room, she sometimes pulls out an old picture of Joe that was in storage and puts it on a shelf.
* * *
Two months before he died, Joe Maio moved into a new house.
Joe never knew me, but here I am, living his life. I occupy his space. I fall asleep next to his wife and have helped raise his son. I call his parents on his birthday.
I have lived in that house for almost twelve years now—far longer than Joe did. But every time I come home, I feel like I’m walking into Joe Maio’s house. And I am.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to everybody who shared personal anecdotes and thoughts and who helped fill in the gaps in our story, including Paula and George Maio, Little Joe Maio, JoAnn and Chuck Setty, Robyn and Jordan Goldman, Shirley and Jeffrey Schefter, Marni and Mike Barone, Jordan Schefter, Jordan Bergstein, Casey Cummings, Craig Esposito, Susie Esposito, Stevie Esposito, Adam Gordon, Jeff Heitzner, Jeff Moallem, Kim Rothofsky, Jeff and Stefanie Rubin, Lori Sloves, Duane Tarrant, and Cory Tovin.
A big thank-you to the team at Creative Artists Agency—especially Dave Larabell, Nick Khan, and David Koonin—for pushing this project into a reality. Without them, this story would have been shared only within our family. ESPN first brought it to light when coordinating producer Greg Jewell and producer Dominique Collins turned our story into an ESPN feature that ran on the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11; they turned an idea into a tasteful feature that honored Joe’s memory.
Thank you to Marc Resnick and the team at St. Martin’s Press for believing in this book from the beginning. And a huge thank-you and debt of gratitude to another Michigan Man and master wordsmith, Michael Rosenberg, for bringing all the words and all the stories from all these people together in a way only he could.
About the Authors
ADAM SCHEFTER is one of the most influential voices in football today. He is ubiquitous across all of ESPN’s platforms—TV, radio, and digital. He has the largest Twitter following of any personality in football. He lives in New York with his wife, Sharri, son, Devon, and daughter, Dylan. You can sign up for email updates here.
MICHAEL ROSENBERG is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated and the author of the critically acclaimed War As They Knew It. Most recently he is the collaborator on Joe Buck’s memoir, Lucky Bastard. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Copyright
THE MAN I NEVER MET. Copyright © 2018 by Adam Schefter, Inc. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
“Funeral Blues” copyright © 1940 and renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden; from W. H. Auden Collected Poems by W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Cover design by Jonathan Bush
Cover photograph © Tomekbudujedomek/Getty Images
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-16189-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-21333-4 (signed edition)
ISBN 978-1-250-16190-1 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250161901
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
First Edition: September 2018