If my father killed Krupy, and it seemed that he did, it was because he was scared of losing me. My basic fragility must have reminded him of Yuri, so he tried to keep me safe by policing my behavior. He exploded when I fell down the stairs and burned me when I couldn’t stop playing with the stove because such events called up a pain he couldn’t bear to experience again. Watching me move through the world meant constantly watching the beginning of a story that ended terribly. It ignited the fear and anger he’d been suppressing over Yuri death’s and maybe even frustration that he’d been given a clumsy daughter instead of another son. I understood his desperation to protect me after losing Yuri, but I still did not understand why he’d attacked me as I did homework and refused to back down when it was obvious his approach wasn’t working.
To learn who my father was when he wasn’t being my father, I sought out the coworkers he’d spent so much time with. Although it had been two decades since his division was disbanded at the Bank of Boston, most of my father’s peers from the twenty years he worked there were still in touch with one another. It only took locating one person for me to be connected to many more who were eager to talk to me about him.
Over breakfasts in hotel lobbies, drinks at university clubs, lunches, coffee, and Skype, I was regaled with stories about my father. One man told me, “There was kind of a mad-scientist quality to him. He was an eclectic man who happened to be a banker. He was not a banker who somehow became eclectic. He loved going to funky places, the funkier the better.” Because he was always in a rush, his staff nicknamed him “the Blur.” When they suggested that he slow down, he charged past and told them, “It’s harder to hit a moving target.”
According to one of my father’s coworkers, the bank was “extremely conservative, but the Middle East and Africa division was like a financial artists’ colony. Some people might say it was full of misfits. It was a weird and wonderful hodgepodge of people and characters, and they were characters. People from all kinds of backgrounds with different abilities, different educations, different languages—different everything.” One man, who was in his seventies, told me with boyish glee that whenever people from the European division walked by, he and his cohort shot rubber bands at them.
Multiple people told me that my father gave them their big professional “break.” He didn’t care where they’d gone to school or been employed before. One guy was working at a motorcycle shop when he was hired. Another was a security guard. Both went on to have prominent roles in the division. The ex–security guard said my dad “recognized the value we could create, and respected that we were different.” He hired people he could trust to be imaginative and take well-calculated risks. They told me that my father “was interested in the quality of our thinking. He wasn’t looking for people who were going to maintain. He wanted people who were going to get on their feet and get out there.”
No one explicitly referred to him as a father figure or called him paternal, but that’s how his behavior sounded to me. I was frustrated that this group of misfits got the dad I’d wanted. He’d purposefully hired people who were “different” and let them work in their own ways. He knew people had particular minds and abilities, and found eccentricities valuable. The qualities he’d celebrated in his staff made him furious when he saw them in me.
But as I thought more about it, I realized that he and my mother actually had allowed me to be different in certain ways. I started dying my hair at twelve, wearing makeup and dressing like the personal assistant of the Mistress of the Dark, and they never interfered. Most kids I knew didn’t even shop for themselves; their parents controlled their appearance. I’d once told Alexandra how upset I’d been that neither of our parents had been sympathetic to me in middle school, when my appearance and behavior provoked so much malice. She’d shaken her head. “Maybe they wanted you to know that being an individual came with consequences that you had to be able to deal with. They had to deal with them! Everyone in our neighborhood talked about whatever you were wearing, the color of your hair…I know Mom found it annoying, but she and Dad probably admired your guts.” I hadn’t felt gutsy; I’d struggled with the consequences. But my sister was right. They’d let me suffer, but they also let me experiment with boundaries and self-expression.
I met with a Nigerian American woman who’d worked with my dad in the ’80s and she explained that whenever he traveled for work, he tacked on a few days at the end for his own adventures. “We all used to tease George about his boondoggle trips,” she said, and laughed. “Let’s say there was business to be done in Damascus. He’d take a few extra days to go to Aleppo, Palmyra, to shop every bazaar for the rattiest rug he could find. If it didn’t have enough holes, he wasn’t buying it.”
A Lebanese coworker told me he’d been roped into one such trip while he was in Syria with my father. After their meetings, my father insisted that they go to Hama, a city north of Damascus, which was supposed to have one of the oldest mosques in the world. “Your father all of a sudden told me, ‘We need to go see that mosque.’ I didn’t even know it existed, but I said, ‘Okay, let’s arrange a cab.’ ”
The driver had to be convinced to take such a long journey. “The way the driver was looking at us, I knew something wasn’t right. He dropped us off a mile from the mosque. In Arabic I said, ‘What’s going on?’ The driver said, ‘It’s a military zone, be careful.’ Of course we immediately got lost. We asked someone where the mosque was, and the person said, ‘I can’t tell you.’ As we went along, I realized we were being watched. Eventually, your father took out his map, which is the worst thing to do.”
I was surprised that my father would make such a rookie mistake. “You never take out a map! Even I know better than that.”
He nodded. “Now everyone’s watching us. We went a little farther until finally we saw a wide, empty area. The whole downtown was rubble. It was like a bulldozer came and opened a soccer field. That’s the first time I heard your father swear. He said, ‘They blew up the fucking mosque. How could they do something like that?’ We were in the open area, and people were looking at us with binoculars. A few people started coming over to see who we were and listen to us talk. I told your father, ‘Well, we’re probably going to be asked pretty soon what we’re doing here,’ And he said, ‘Yeah, let’s go. Nothing here to see.’
“We went back to the cab and the driver said, ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ I said, ‘Well, we found the spot. But I don’t think you want to know what we found.’ He said, ‘I’m not asking any questions.’ ”
A man who worked with the bank in Cameroon told me that my father once asked if he could see where he grew up. Flattered, he arranged for a weekend visit to his village, which was “deep in the African forest” and required a long drive over terrible roads. “We went to a beautiful beach on the Atlantic Ocean,” he said. “He saw fishermen’s traditional houses and smoked fish ready to sell to traders. After dinner, your father insisted we see some local entertainment and dancing. He was very happy. Your father was an open-minded intellectual; he loved Cameroonian culture, the cooking and palm wine.”
In Nigeria, my father made the same request of a man he’d become close to over multiple visits to Lagos. “Your father wanted to see places, which, ordinarily, he would not have been able to see,” the man shouted over Skype. “We went to my hometown, Benin City.” He described how impressed his parents were when he brought my father home. His mother said, “ ‘So this is your friend from Boston?’ I said, ‘He’s not my friend, he’s my boss.’ That was a plus. My father was a very serious person. He said, ‘Son, I’m sure you are doing a good job, otherwise your boss would not come to the house with you.’ They were very proud.”
My father’s coworkers also told me stories about my parents traveling together. One of my favorites took place in Nigeria as well. My parents went to the northern city of Kano to visit one of the bank’s outposts wi
th one of my father’s coworkers and his wife, and someone in their group decided that they should meet the emir. However, the emir did not meet with women. My mother and the other woman said their husbands were only going if they could go, too. My father contacted the emir’s staff and convinced them to make an exception.
The emir sent two gold Mercedeses to their hotel, one for the men and one for the women. When they arrived at his mansion, they were greeted by his staff and lines of drummers and trumpet players. The emir received them while seated on a pedestal and addressed the women directly, warmly inquiring about their impressions of his country and asking many questions about Disney World.
I’d wondered how my mother negotiated the role of “banker’s wife abroad.” I was told she was polite when she needed to be, opinionated when it was appropriate, and kind to people regardless of their “status.” She knew that she “needed to be the right person at the right time.” Only in small groups or with certain people did she confess boredom or annoyance. One man said that my mother once came up to him at a dinner party and whispered, “I don’t know how you put up with these people.”
I loved hearing about my parents’ travels because I knew the world had delivered the thrill and gravity they sought. They were determined to see everything they wanted to, even the things they weren’t supposed to see. I was an equally brazen traveler and often sought out experiences that were dangerous, or had the potential to be. In Turkey, children snuck me into a decrepit mosque after seeing that I was trying to observe a prayer service. In Zambia, I paid a man to bring me into the off-limits area surrounding Victoria Falls so I could swim at its edge; he made his way through the still waters of the Zambezi’s fringe using a stick not to steady himself but to scare away crocodiles. He watched as I swam to the rim and clung to slimy rocks while being battered by the rapids. When I returned, he congratulated me for avoiding being swept away. In Johannesburg, I met an older Xhosa woman who was training to be a sangoma, or traditional healer, and went with her to her village to observe her days-long induction. Outside of Durban, I learned that Nelson Mandela would be speaking at a school opening a few hours away, and hitched a ride to hear him. That day, like so many others, I was in awe of the abundance of the world and intoxicated by its different people and possibilities. When I was younger, I wanted to believe that I traveled the way I did because that’s who I was, and that I had developed my interest independent of my parents’ influence. As an adult, hearing about their travels forced me to acknowledge what I’d tried to deny. Many people discover traveling on their own, but I owed my interest in it to my parents. They’d given me a gift. Despite everything, they’d given me many.
Each time I spoke with someone who’d worked for the bank in Africa, I thought of my mother’s story of the woman who’d said that Africans were “used to losing their children.” I didn’t think it would be the kind of thing that someone else would remember. If they did, they might not want to admit that it happened.
I heard the story anyway, or a version of it, as I ate lunch with a man who’d spent a long time working for the bank’s Zimbabwe branch. He said, “I remember on one occasion, your mother joined your father in Zimbabwe. They had dinner at our house in Harare, and your mother had a meltdown.”
“Oh?” I said casually.
“We were sitting around after dinner, and I started talking about pre-independence days, when there was white rule in Zimbabwe and the medical facilities weren’t open to Africans. Your mother completely broke down, and your dad had to take her back to the hotel. Later your father apologized, saying it was the lingering effect of the death of your brother. Anything involving medical treatment that wasn’t right or wasn’t proper struck a chord with your mom.”
There was no mention of his wife’s maid losing a child, but it had to be the same story. I wondered if he was covering something up so he didn’t look bad. My mother hadn’t said she’d broken down. Was my father embarrassed? Did he chastise my mother in front of their hosts, or offer her the comfort she’d needed?
“Do you remember what year this was?”
“It would have been in the early eighties.”
“My brother would have been dead for more than five years at that point,” I said, as much to myself as to him.
Though my mother traveled with my father often, he took the majority of his trips without her. I would have been aggressively angry at such an unequal dynamic, jealous of his adventures and opportunities. He was working, sure, but my mom knew he’d always find a way to include a few thrills. While she was taking care of their kids, he was roaming souks and drinking palm wine. I had to remind myself that she and I were different. She could have enjoyed having a break. When he was home, she had to listen to him yelling at me, see me buckle under his words. His demands for silence and the loud quiet that settled around him whenever he isolated himself in his own thoughts caused resentment, anger, and confusion. It could have made her want even more space, space where she could be the person he didn’t want to see.
Did my mother wonder, as I now did, where the man who’d wooed her so passionately had gone? What had he done with the love that once flowed freely? By that point in their marriage, she might not have missed my father while he traveled. But she must have missed the person he’d once been.
She filled this hole with new men. There was Bob, whose visits I was happy to keep secret because I enjoyed them so much. I found a Polaroid of Bob with me and Alexandra among my mother’s things. The two of us are holding live lobsters that would soon be our dinner. My sister was in Wonder Woman Underoos. I was in pajamas. Bob, tan and bearded, is crouching down to be in the frame with us and beaming at the woman holding the camera.
I mentioned Bob to Chrissy and asked if she knew of my mother having affairs. She said that she’d once asked my mother if she had any “male companions, what with George being away so long. She said she did. I got the impression he was in Boston. She didn’t make it sound like she was madly in love with this guy. It was, you know, recreational.”
I used this as leverage when I asked Sylvia the same question. “My mother told Chrissy that she’d had an affair, or affairs. Did she ever talk about other men with you?”
Sylvia crossed her arms and gave me a stern look. “When your best friend tells you something in confidence, it’s not just for the next ten years, you know.”
“So that’s a yes.” I grinned.
“I can think of a couple of occasions, when your dad was traveling, or when she was traveling, going to Sierra Club or other environmental things, that she came into contact with men who had similar interests. I know there were times she brought men home when you girls were there. And, you know, your dad was just gone.”
“When you say ‘similar interests,’ do you mean cleaning up and protecting beaches, or having sex on them?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She laughed. “Stop being salacious.”
It’s easy for me to assume that my mother had relationships with other men because my father wasn’t as loving as she needed him to be. She may have been seeking attention and affection more than sex. Though I rarely saw my father be tender with her, he could have been very loving when they were alone. Maybe she couldn’t be sated because he didn’t want to acknowledge every part of her, particularly her ongoing grief over Yuri, or because her needs were too great for any one person to meet.
Yet my parents’ relationship wasn’t passionless. Chrissy told me that there were times she stayed with us when my father was away, and when my father returned from his travels, “They were at it in the bedroom within two hours.” Many of my parents’ friends said that though he wasn’t extremely affectionate, it was obvious from how he looked at my mother that he adored her. I wasn’t able to see that adoration at the time, but it was revealed in the thousands of photographs that he took of her.
When I asked my father’s coworkers from the ba
nk if they had any knowledge of him having affairs, they looked horrified. “I just don’t think your father was interested. He was always so busy,” someone told me.
There were rumors that he’d had an affair while he was in Ukraine, but when I spoke with his alleged mistress, Irene, a German woman who’d since moved to Canada, she assured me that they’d only been friends, and cemented her case by telling me she was a lesbian and that my father knew her girlfriend.
Irene and I met for dinner in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park after corresponding for months. We embraced firmly after spotting each other in the Mexican restaurant I’d suggested. After we sat down, she told me that one of the reasons that she wanted to meet me was to see how much I was like my father.
Surprised, I said, “I’m not like him. Not at all.”
She raised her eyebrow and took a sip of her beer.
“How did you meet?” I asked.
She said they’d met at an art gallery. “I was alone, and your father was there alone, and the gallery was empty, so we had to talk to each other. Your dad wanted to create a social life for himself and other people because really, there was nothing to do in Ukraine at that time. But there was art, and your father and I shared that interest.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“Anything. Everything. If someone managed to find a bottle of Moldovan champagne, we’d drink it. If your father heard of an interesting village somewhere, we’d hop in the car.” She laughed. “One really hot day we were hanging out on the banks of the Dnieper, and I decided to swim across it. Your father told me I shouldn’t—the current was too strong, and the ships were moving faster than they looked—but I didn’t care. I jumped in and started swimming. It was nearly impossible and utterly terrifying. Your father saw me being dragged downriver, so he rushed over a bridge to the other side. I could see him running up and down the bank in the distance, trying to figure out where I’d emerge.” When she finally made it to shore, my father helped her out of the water and said, “I told you it was dangerous, but you’re not the kind of person who listens.”
My Dead Parents Page 21