A Chance in the World

by Steve Pemberton

  As a first step, I called information to see if they had anything. Not only were there no Murphys in Pucker, New Jersey, but no town named Pucker even existed; nor was there any town with a similar name. Hanging up the phone, I dropped heavily onto my couch. Mike had told me the notation was from 1973. Maybe the name of the town had been written down incorrectly. I picked up the phone again and called information several more times, trying to find anyone with the last name of Klakowicz in the New Bedford area. This strategy failed too. There was no one by that name in the area.

  I had no idea what to do next, so I wound up putting the project on hold for several weeks. In June, after I celebrated my twenty-fourth birthday without a single call or card, I sat down and called information again, asking this time to be put through to the operator in New Jersey. Everything seemed to hinge on the town in New Jersey where my grandparents were last known to reside. If I could determine the name of that town, then I could find them. A pleasant female voice answered, and I gave the name of the town I was looking for. She confirmed Pucker did not exist.

  “Let me explain why I’m looking,” I said. I proceeded to give her the Cliffs Notes version of my search. “So, I know they were in a town in New Jersey,” I wrapped up, “but I just don’t know where.”

  She was quiet for a minute. “That is quite a story. Are you sure you have the name of the town right?”

  “That’s just it. The notes were written almost twenty years ago, so I can’t be sure. Is there any town that has a similar name to Pucker?”

  “Not really,” she said, “but there is a Tuckerton, New Jersey, which seems to be the closest thing to what you are looking for.”

  I jotted down Tuckerton and underlined it twice. Even if it was the right town, and if there were Murphys living there, they likely wouldn’t be the Murphys I was looking for.

  “Now, what listing were you looking for again?” she asked.

  “Murphy.” I could hear the pounding of keystrokes in the background.

  “Well, I’ll be,” she said. “There is a listing for a Murphy—J. Murphy to be exact. They are the only Murphys listed in Tuckerton, which is odd since it’s such a common name. It would be a miracle if they are there after all these years, but here’s the number.” I wrote it down very carefully, starting with the area code, 609.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said, overwhelmed with gratitude. “You’ve been really helpful.”

  We hung up, and I paced my apartment, steeling myself against the inevitable disappointment. There is no way, absolutely no way, this is your grandparents’ number. You’ve had enough disappointments. Don’t get your hopes up. You’ll only be let down. You will find them someday; it just won’t be on this day. Still, it was important that I exhaust every avenue. A few minutes later, I rushed to the phone, anxious to get this setback out of the way. As the phone rang once, twice, then three times, I realized I hadn’t given much thought to how I was going to begin the conversation.

  “Hello,” said an elderly voice on the other end.

  She sounds just like a grandmother should. My heart began pounding in my chest.

  It’s not her, Steve. It can’t be that easy.

  “Hi. Mrs. Murphy?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m, uh, sorry to disturb you, and, uh, I don’t know if I have the right number, but my name is Steve Klakowicz and—”

  On the other end, I heard an exclamation of “Oh!” and the phone clattering to the floor. Then she drew it to her ear and uttered the words I’d longed to hear: “Steve, oh my goodness, we always wondered what happened to you.”

  “You know who I am?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Oh, yes. The last time we saw you, you were a little baby.”

  Even in the midst of the overwhelming possibility that I had finally found my family, my ears still perked up with her use of the word we. Was she referring to my mother?

  “So you’re my grandmother?” I asked, trying to verify, to be absolutely certain this was not another false hope.

  “I am,” she replied, laughing lightly. “You were a beautiful little boy. When we took you out, people would stop and stare. You had these beautiful blue eyes and blond hair. Your mother used to call you the ‘golden boy.’ ”

  My mother,” I said, my voice breaking, “where is she?” “

  She paused for a moment, and in that brief swallow of time, I knew the answer. “I’m sorry, but your mother was very sick. Steve, she died many years ago.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the door frame. She’s gone too. Both of them. They’re gone.

  In my sophomore year at Boston College, we had a debate in philosophy class triggered by the question, “Can you miss something you never had?” For nearly an hour, the debate raged while the professor watched in delight. My seat was in the back, and at some point he noticed that I had remained silent. “Steve,” he asked, “care to weigh in?”

  All heads swiveled in my direction. I shifted a bit uncomfortably in my seat, unaccustomed to having the focus on me. Still, my answer was ready. “You absolutely can. I miss my mother because I’ve never been able to stop imagining her.”

  Over the years, in the absence of any memory, I had created my own detailed picture of my mother—her hair, her laugh, her mannerisms. I had imagined at times her pushing me in a stroller, nestling me in her arm, pushing me in a swing while I squealed in delight and screamed, “Higher, Mommy, higher!” I’d pictured her telling stories of bringing me home from the hospital, the first words I said, my first steps. I’d imagined asking why she had decided to name me Steve. Perhaps most of all, I imagined our long-awaited reunion: me trying to pick her out in a crowd, she running to me with open arms, an embrace that could bend time, me trying to brush away her tears, telling her that her son has come back and everything would be fine. Yet all this was not to be.

  “Steve, Steve, are you still there?” my grandmother asked. How much time had passed with my head against the wall, I don’t recall.

  “I’m here,” I said, sitting down heavily on the couch. “I’m sorry, it’s just that—”

  “I understand.”

  “And my father? Did she ever mention him?”

  “Your mother never said much about him. Only that he was a well-known fighter.”

  “So she said he was a fighter,” I said. If there was still any doubt that Kenny Pemberton was my father, my grandmother had just put it to rest. “Did she say anything else about him, his first name, his last name, anything?”

  “No, nothing at all. But I do know where your brothers are.”

  “My brothers? You know where they are?” Strange as it sounds, I hadn’t thought of this possibility. A gentle breeze wafted in from several open windows, bringing the scent of fresh air and the rose bush next to the porch.

  “Oh, yes, Ben and Marc live here in New Jersey, not too far from me. There were six of you. We don’t know where Joni and Bernie are, and we didn’t know where you were either, until this phone call.” My siblings’ names came at me in a rush, and I grabbed my pad to write them down. I had only written down Ben’s name when I stopped suddenly; the phone beeped, signaling another call was coming in.

  “You said there were six of us,” I said, ignoring the sound. “Who is the sixth?”

  There followed a brief moment of silence. I had my pencil in hand, ready to write down the name. “You mean, you don’t know?” she asked.

  “Know what?”

  “Steve, you had a sister, a twin sister. Her name was Starla. She passed away a little while after the two of you were born. I’m so sorry. There’s so much I need to tell you.”

  CHAPTER 30

  My grandmother Loretta and I talked for a couple of hours that evening in June 1991. I learned that she was not my biological grandmother but my step-grandmother, having married my grandfather, Joseph Murphy, after the death of his first wife. During that conversation, she also filled me in on the basics of my mother’s life.


  Marian Klakowicz née Murphy was born in Philadelphia in 1937. She dropped out of school after ninth grade and held a series of odd jobs, including working as a telephone operator. She moved around a bit, living at one point in Biloxi, Mississippi. While visiting friends in Texas, she met a fisherman, Rudolph Klakowicz, and they were married in February 1958. Later that year, Rudolph and my mother came to New Bedford, and their child Ben was born. My mother was twenty years old.

  Her marriage was in trouble from the beginning, hampered by her increasingly erratic behavior, including her drinking, as well as by Rudolph’s constant unemployment. By 1960 he had left her, and the two were barely in touch after that. Marian struggled to survive. She left Ben with just about anyone and didn’t return for days. After one such incident, Grandfather Murphy rescued Ben and took him back to his home in New Jersey for good, to be raised by himself and Grandmother Loretta.

  One might have expected my mother, too, to return to New Jersey, but her relationship with her family was strained. The Murphys continued to support her, but they expected her to live by their rules, and Marian wouldn’t comply. She remained in New Bedford and held another series of odd jobs. In 1961 she was suspended for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, just one of several charges she would incur that year and for which she’d receive probation. By 1962 she was destitute, desperate, and pregnant with her second child. She managed to get by on welfare and gifts from charitable organizations. Later that year a son, Marc, was born, and two years after that, a daughter, Joni, each by a different father.

  The next few years saw more poverty and trouble with the law. In December 1965 she was arrested for disorderly conduct and sentenced to the House of Corrections for six months. Marc and Joni, three years and one year old respectively, were placed in foster care. When my mother was paroled in March 1966, she spent nearly a year looking for work in order to get her children back. In early 1967 my grandfather tried to get social services to allow the children to live with my mother in an apartment he’d pay for. Yet my mother refused his support and continued, unsuccessfully, to try to find work.

  Soon she was pregnant yet again—with me. She later told my grandparents that a well-known boxer was the father, although she seemed not to have revealed that to anyone in New Bedford. I was born June 15, 1967, as was my twin sister, who died five days later of a brain hemorrhage. I apparently stayed with my mother as an infant, while she continued efforts to get Marc and Joni back. By early 1968 she had a steady boyfriend in her life, and by May 1968 she had succeeded in reclaiming Marc and Joni. Later that fall, Marian announced that she and her boyfriend were expecting a baby, due right around the holidays. It appeared she was turning her life around.

  Yet it didn’t last. By the summer of 1970, right around the time Kenny was immersed in the riots, my mother’s life had unraveled again, for reasons my grandmother didn’t elaborate. The state stepped in; Joni and I went into foster care, and Marc went to New Jersey to live with our grandparents. Only Bernard, her youngest child, remained in her care. For the next several months, Marc lived in relatively good conditions, but at the end of September 1971, he returned to foster care. My grandparents could no longer afford to keep him. I can only imagine the effect this must have had on Marc and my grandparents. At the time, I was bound for the abandoning-on-the-porch Andrades and, later, the ruthless Robinsons. Bernard stayed with our mother for another three years before he, too, was placed in foster care.

  Marian Klakowicz continued to battle the courts and the state to have her children returned. Meanwhile she sank further into despair and depression. Her family heard from her from time to time—usually when she needed money. In the late morning of a cold January day in 1978, in Union, New Jersey, a building superintendent followed a trail of smoke to a small apartment shared by a woman and two brothers. He broke down the door to find a woman collapsed in a chair, her arm still in the outstretched position it had been in when she dropped the cigarette that ignited the fire. Paramedics tried to resuscitate her but to no avail. Either because of smoke inhalation or damage done by alcoholism, Marian Klakowicz née Murphy was dead. She was forty years old.

  CHAPTER 31

  Though I mourned the passing of my mother and my sister Starla, I came away from the conversation with Grandmother Murphy beaming with excitement at the idea of having siblings. I couldn’t wait to share the news with my work colleagues. The next day, I heard from current and former students who also congratulated me on finally finding my family. But in many ways, the story was just beginning.

  Susan Pawlak-Seaman, a reporter from the New Bedford Standard-Times, called that afternoon in June 1991 to ask whether these stories she was hearing about my quest for my family were true. She interviewed me for the better part of an hour and a half, trying to unravel all the complexities of the story. The following morning, Mike Silvia called with information on my sister Joni’s adoptive parents. A family in Taunton, Massachusetts, twenty minutes from New Bedford, had taken Joni in and raised her.

  I called Joni’s adoptive mother, Muriel Johnsen, who now lived in Reading, Pennsylvania, and told her who I was. Muriel was completely stunned to hear from one of Joni’s siblings. “Joni has looked for all of you for years,” she said. “She would often go to New Bedford trying to find anybody who had the last name Klakowicz. But she never knew where to look.”

  “Where is she now?” I asked.

  “Biloxi, Mississippi. She just moved there.”

  I had been taking notes, and my pencil froze on the paper. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

  “Biloxi, Mississippi. Why? Is there something significant about

  Biloxi?”

  “There sure is. Joni’s and my mother lived there for a few years.”

  “Oh my gosh!”

  “Is there any chance Joni would have heard about Biloxi from our mother?”

  “I don’t see how,” Muriel said. “She was very young, just five years old or so when she came to us.” She paused then—a long, mysterious silence. “Steve, I think it’s important that you know that Joni has struggled a lot. When she came to us, she had been through a really traumatic experience with your mother. We’ve always tried to help her as much as we could, but Joni has never quite gotten past it. Maybe finding all of you will help.”

  I listened quietly, understanding well the possibility of closure that finding your family would bring and the questions it could answer. “Please let her know we are looking for her and would love to hear from her,” I said.

  “I will. She just moved there, and as soon as she gets a phone, I’ll ask her to call you.”

  I said good-bye and placed the phone gently in the cradle. Leaning back in my chair, I shook my head in amazement at the recent events. But the week was still young, and more was yet to happen.

  The next day, Wednesday, June 19, 1991, the New Bedford Standard-Times ran their front-page article about my search for my family. Under my picture was the following headline: “Quest pays off: After 21 years he has a family.” The article went on to detail my path to adulthood and my long search to know my heritage. Toward the middle of the story, Kenny Pemberton was named as my father.

  The paper ran in the late afternoon, before I left my office. By the time I arrived home fifteen minutes later, several strangers had called and left messages. These people all said the same thing: they were friends of Kenny’s and wanted to talk to me as soon as possible. While I was writing down the messages, the phone continued to ring. And ring. The last message came from Susan Pawlak-Seaman, telling me that she needed to talk with me as soon as possible. I called her back immediately, pacing my usual path through the apartment. “Steve,” she said, “I’m hearing from several Pembertons who are giving me a hard time because I wrote that Kenny was your father. They are pretty upset. They’re saying Kenny didn’t have any children, and if he did, they would have known. They’re saying you should stop saying you’re Kenny’s son. But I told them you were absolutely certa
in.”

  “I am certain, Susan. The only thing my mother ever said about my father was that he was a well-known fighter.”

  “I understand, Steve. I just wanted to make sure you were aware.” I heard a similar message from Mrs. Dottin. Around noon the following day, we met for lunch at her request. No sooner had we sat down than she broached what she had come to say. “The Pembertons have been calling my office,” Mrs. Dottin said cautiously. “They’re telling me you’re wrong, that Kenny didn’t have any children.”

  It was now a familiar refrain, and I was frustrated. “Well, they’re wrong, Mrs. D. Besides, I’m not asking for their permission or for them to believe me. You know better than anyone how long and hard this road has been. I’ve got no patience for someone who tells me that somehow I’ve gotten it wrong. Have they ever asked why someone would claim Kenny Pemberton as their father? It’s not as if he left this great legacy.”

  A silence followed. She poked around at her salad and then gave me that familiar look over the top of her glasses.

  “Steve, you have to realize what a shock this is to everyone, especially his family.”

  I put down my fork. “Maybe that’s what I don’t understand, Mrs. D. If I had lost a family member as they have and then learned years later that he had a child, I would welcome him with open arms.”

  She nodded in agreement and slid me a piece of paper across the table. “Give Kenny’s sister a call. Her name is Geraldine, and this is her number.”

  Rather than taking the number, I leaned back. “If this is how it’s going to be, Mrs. D, if I have to get into a debate with anyone about who I am . . .” I left the sentence unfinished.

  She held her hand on the paper a moment longer and lowered her eyes as she so often did when she wanted to get a point across to one of her obstinate students. “You do need to talk to her, and you need to go see her. She is the oldest of all the Pembertons. I didn’t know Kenny, but I do know Geraldine, and if I remember correctly, she and Kenny were very close.”