We had been at Greenwood Cemetery for more than an hour, and it was time to leave. We exchanged long embraces and walked back to our cars. I reached for Tonya’s hand and looked into her eyes. A wordless question passed from me to her. “Yes,” she replied, “you should.”
I turned toward the Murphys. “Before we go,” I said, “we are getting married next month, right here in New Jersey. It would mean a lot to us if you could come.”
We were suddenly swarmed with congratulations and well wishes.
“So we will see you, then?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” Josie said, beaming. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
CHAPTER 39
The readiness is all.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET
For weeks Tonya and I had been reading almanacs, watching weather forecasts, desperately hoping it would not rain. As our wedding day neared, it became clear that it would not, and we finally breathed a sigh of relief. Wedding days planned for the outdoors don’t lend themselves to last-minute changes in schedule. As the limousine carried my college friend and best man, Tim, and me over to Colonial Park, I smiled, thinking back to the night I had seen Tonya on Martha’s Vineyard a year earlier. That weekend she had asked for my last name. “Pemberton,” I had replied. “And one day that will be your name too.” And now that day was here.
The limousine glided into the parking lot, and I stepped from it, breathing in the clean, fresh air. Suddenly I was overcome with emotion. Seated in front of the gazebo was everyone who was important to me: my brothers Ben and Steven; my grandmother Loretta; my uncle Greg, his wife, Sonie, and their three children; Aunt Josie, her husband, George, and their son, George III; John Sykes; Eddie Robinson; Tim’s parents, Herbert and Cookie; my friends in admissions at Boston College; my fraternity brothers; Russell and Dierdre Jackson and their son, Perry; several of my students from Upward Bound. As I walked toward the gazebo, they formed an impromptu receiving line, drowning me in hugs, backslaps, and kisses.
As far as I am concerned, Colonial Park Arboretum and Gardens in central New Jersey has never had a day as beautiful as that late day in June 1997. A long, shimmering, white runway ran the length of the garden leading up to a small gazebo. Blooming soapwort and creeping thyme nestled alongside Japanese black pine and flowering hamamelis. To the right of the gazebo, a gilded white cage housed two doves that we would release at the ceremony’s end. In the distance, the low drone of an airplane sounded. Geese flew overhead, honking their approval.
Steven and Ben escorted my grandmother Loretta up the aisle. Tonya stepped out of the long, white limousine (and from the pages of a bridal magazine, it seemed) and onto the lush grass of the garden. She walked up the runway toward me, escorted by her brother and her father, who had returned for her wedding. Halfway to me, she stopped to give her mother a yellow rose. A wonderful peace settled over me.
The wedding celebration continued at the reception hall at Bridgewater Manor. From time to time, I found myself looking around the reception hall, marveling at the sheer implausibility of this day. I had found my family after so many years, and we had all found it in our hearts to overcome our pain so as to create a new beginning. It occurred to me that never again would this group of people be assembled, and I wanted to savor this moment for as long as I could.
“Your father would be very proud of you,” a voice suddenly said. I turned around to find my uncle Greg, a father of three and a successful physical therapist in Athens, Georgia. A broad smile framed the deep-set Pemberton eyes and prominent brow I had also come to see in myself. Several of my friends, who had never met another Pemberton, actually commented on the physical similarity between us. I had met Greg several years earlier, and over the years we had grown close, bonded by our common desire to write a different story for this generation of Pembertons.
Friends and family surrounded Tonya in the center of the dance floor, dancing around her as she laughed and smiled. “Can I make a confession?” I asked Greg.
“Sure,” he said.
I took a deep breath. “Nearly everyone I have met has told me that Kenny would be proud of me. And to be honest, I’ve always felt he never had the right to be proud.”
He thought for a moment. “I understand that. I really do. When the fire destroyed our home and scattered our family, most of my family was lost to me. I still remember when you walked up to my front door. I teared up because I wished that I could have done the same. Your grandfather was almost as distant to me as Kenny was to you. And Kenny was what he was, and wasn’t what he wasn’t. But he understood some things, even if he didn’t live by them. Here’s what you need to know: you are the man he could have been.”
Off in the distance, the wedding coordinator was calling Tonya and all single women to the dance floor. I smiled as I watched my grandmother stand up and join the group. I extended my hand to Greg, and he took it warmly. “Thanks for coming and being part of our day. It wouldn’t have been the same without you. I just hope I can build the family you have.”
He winked. “I wouldn’t bet against you, Steve.”
Cheers and a rhythmic clapping erupted in the middle of the dance floor. My brother Steven was in the middle of the swaying crowd, dancing salsa with anyone brave enough to volunteer. There weren’t many takers, since Steven was good, real good. His tie whirred and snapped, his feet chopped and glided as he spun his partner around the floor. I threw my head back in unbridled laughter. A short while later, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was my aunt Josie, beautiful in a light-green blazer and matching skirt. Behind her were her husband, her son, my grandmother, and my brothers, Ben and Steven. Something was certainly up. Aunt Josie did not seem too pleased, either, a fact she confirmed as soon as she began to speak. “Now, Steve,” she said sweetly, “we have something of a problem here.” Her tone was pleasant enough, but there was the slightest hint of annoyance.
I glanced over at Ben. As soon as we made eye contact, he looked up, taking a sudden interest in the iridescent chandelier, nudging our cousin George. “Hey, Ben,” I called. He ignored me, still looking up at the chandelier. I called him again, louder this time, “Ben, I know you hear me.”
“Huh, what?” he asked, a sheepish grin spreading across his face.
“How much trouble am I in?” I asked.
He put a hand about twelve inches above his six-foot frame. “Oh, only about that much.”
I put my hands out in mock indignation. “And you’re not going to help me? I thought you were the oldest.”
“Hey, bro, I’ve got to drive back with her,” he said, laughing.
I pointed a menacing finger in his direction.
“That’s enough, you two,” Josie warned. Turning to me, she said, “I see this photographer running around taking all these pictures. And I am sure he is doing a wonderful job. And, of course, your friends are all such nice people. But we”—she gestured behind her—“we are your family, and you haven’t taken a picture with us yet. And that,” she said, folding her hands in front of her, “is why we have a problem.”
I bowed my head and smiled. She was exactly right. In the hustle and bustle of the day, I had forgotten to take a picture with my mother’s family.
Josie stepped away from the small entourage and adjusted my flower, which didn’t need adjusting at all. “Isn’t that nice?” she said lightly. “Your flower is the same color as my outfit. And you look so handsome today. A king if there ever was one.” She lowered her voice so only she and I could hear. “Now, you know we really can’t leave until you take a picture with your family. So can you be a dear and tell the photographer? We will be standing right here waiting for you.” And with that she stepped back.
I went to find the photographer.
CHAPTER 40
In July 1997, after our weeklong honeymoon in Cancun, we returned to New Jersey to pack up Tonya’s things. We had decided to live in Massachusetts, where I would continue my career in undergraduate admissions and she wou
ld work as a teacher. We had a small one-bedroom apartment in Newton and a beat-up Oldsmobile Cutlass that would turn off when we went through a puddle. We also had more debt than both our salaries combined. Still, we had each other and went about enjoying our new life together.
One night a few weeks into our marriage, at about three in the morning, my eyes blinked open. There was an empty space beside me where Tonya should have been. I sat up and heard muffled sounds in the kitchen. I waited for a few minutes, expecting her to come back to bed. When she didn’t, I got up and walked into our tiny kitchen. In the darkness, sitting on a stool at the island, was Tonya, head bowed and hands clasped. A soft moonlight came through one of the windows and lightly touched her shoulder.
“Hey,” I asked, “what’s going on?”
She looked up, and in a glance I could see that she was upset. She tried to speak, but each time, she couldn’t get the words out. A thousand thoughts ran through my mind. Does she think we made a mistake? Did we get married too soon? Is she having second thoughts?
“What do we do now?” she asked.
We had been so busy planning the wedding, the honeymoon, and her move to Massachusetts that we hadn’t thought much about the life that would follow. What was marriage supposed to be like? I think we both sensed the stakes were a bit higher for us than for many newlyweds, that we were not only trying to build a life for ourselves but also trying to repair the past. We didn’t have a framework for this, and as a result, it seemed like such an overwhelming task for Tonya. We resolved that night that we would focus our energies on building our future as best we could and in the way that we thought best.
Scarcely had we begun that journey when we encountered an unexpected obstacle. A few months later, Tonya, who had always been a workout warrior, began to experience rapid, temporary accelerations of the heart. These episodes were frightening to watch; from a few feet away, I could see the pulse pounding in her neck. When I placed my hand over her heart, I could feel it thumping rapidly through her chest wall. She became dizzy and short of breath. On several occasions, we rushed her by ambulance to the hospital, certain her life was in danger. Eventually we learned she had atrial tachycardia but still were not able to get a clear idea of their origins. Our only comfort came as she began to have them less and less frequently.
But Tonya’s health issues were not over yet. Tonya began to complain of extraordinary fatigue, muscle aches, and a level of exhaustion that seemed to take over her entire body. At first we thought this was the result of the pace of her kindergarten class and the demands it placed upon her. We saw one doctor after another, she underwent one test after another, but we could not arrive at a diagnosis. Finally, a specialist in Newton, Massachusetts, told us she had fibromyalgia, a chronic fatigue disorder with no known cause and little in the way of treatment. It was not fatal, and she could live a fairly normal life, but her symptoms would continue indefinitely and were likely to be permanent. It was a harsh diagnosis; neither of us had foreseen a chronic condition, and now two had suddenly appeared. Amazingly, Tonya was more concerned about me and would apologize for the illnesses that had taken over her life. “I know you didn’t sign up for this,” she’d say.
But she had brought me the greatest love I had ever known. I had found safety and peace with her by my side and I would remain by hers—without condition or qualification.
A week after her diagnosis, Tonya called my office in tears. She was not given to easy emotion; she rarely cried. But the doctor warned us that there would be times like this when she would have moments of sadness. I listened quietly and noticed there seemed to be something different about her tears, something I couldn’t quite discern. Stammering, she told me she had gone that morning to see her general physician who decided to rerun another series of tests to be sure they hadn’t received false negative results. She was openly laughing now. The diagnosis of fibromyalgia had been wrong. She was pregnant. I was going to be a father.
Over the next eight years, we had three children—Quinn, Vaughn, and Kennedy—raising them in a small, two-thousand-square-foot home in a working-class Boston suburb. Fatherhood brought me the greatest joy of my life. From the beginning, I embraced the responsibility of raising a baby—changing diapers, adjusting car seats, assembling cribs. I often rushed home from work to see what new skills my children had acquired. As soon as I hit the front door, the kids wrestled me to the ground, drowning me in kisses and hugs. They were a whirlwind of activity, and Tonya and I nicknamed them after weather occurrences: Quinn is Lightning, Vaughn is Thunder, and Kennedy is Tornado. What I treasured most was lying on the couch with a child resting on my chest, hearing his or her tiny breath deepen as we both slowly faded off to sleep.
In the evenings, long after baths were taken, nighttime stories were read, and bedtime prayers were said, I found myself standing at their bedsides, marveling at their deep and innocent sleep, their breaths rising and falling in perfect rhythm with the universe. I would lean over to kiss them and, despite the depth of their slumber, they sighed in response. There was so much I wanted them to know: that I loved them with all that I was; that I would travel this path a thousand times, knowing it would bring me to their bedsides; that they had righted every wrong in my life; that being their father had quieted my soul.
I had long felt that my own story would not be complete until I became a father. What I hadn’t expected, though, was that fatherhood would cause me to rethink the stories of my own parents. I had discovered that my mother and father had left me to the winds of chance, and it had been all I could do to connect with their families. Intent on building my own family, I had moved forward with my life, but it had always deeply puzzled me how any parent could so easily abandon a child. Fatherhood added to that mystery; I could imagine no force alive that could separate me from Quinn, Vaughn, and Kennedy. Their innocence, captured in the smallest of moments, told me just how much they needed me—just as I had needed Kenny and Marian. Because I couldn’t understand their choices, my unwillingness to forgive my parents only deepened. My faith told me that I should forgive, but for me that was far easier said than done.
Thoughts of my parents came to the fore as my children grew and began to ask questions about my family. Tonya’s mother, Shirley, often traveled from New Jersey to Massachusetts to see us, and they would ask when my mother was coming to see them too. They wanted to know why there weren’t any pictures of my family gatherings as there were of Mommy’s. They couldn’t understand why I had a brother with the same name as mine. As I handled their innocent queries, I found myself answering the questions for myself as much as for them. Realizing that their questioning would only intensify, and adamant that they have an understanding of my early years, I began to write down the circumstances as I understood them to be. There had always been one loose end—the information contained in my case file. I’d not pursued gaining access to it largely because I thought the case file would tell me nothing I hadn’t already learned. I should have known better.
In January 2003, I called the Massachusetts Department of Social Services requesting access to my case file.
Six months later, I came home to find a three-inch-thick manila envelope wedged in my front door. It had been too big to fit in our mailbox. It tumbled down to the porch as I opened the door. At first I didn’t know what it was, but then I saw the official Commonwealth of Massachusetts seal. I recalled my caseworker Mike Silvia’s warning that the file was large and that its contents were disturbing.
I dropped my briefcase at the front door, loosened my tie, and sat down on the living room couch, unsure where to begin. I started to thumb through the pages, and a faded color Polaroid photograph of a smiling young boy dropped from the case file. He didn’t look familiar to me at all. They accidentally put a photo of another child in my file, I thought. I have to be sure to return this photo to them.
I turned the picture over to find the following inscription: Steve Klakowicz, 7 years old, 1974. It was me, alright. I had ne
ver before seen a picture of myself as a child and simply did not recognize the young boy smiling back at me. One more mystery solved, I thought.
When I finally turned to the first page, I received a shock. My mother was calling the Department of Social Services for help. She was eight months pregnant. In an entry dated March 13, 1962, a social worker provided the following account of my mother’s appearance at her office: “[Marian] appeared to be recovering from a bruised right eye, had a fur coat on, which appeared to be sheared muskrat; it was dirty and stained. She had on a very dirty white blouse and [illegible] hair.”
The stories I had been told about my mother had given me a picture of a woman who seemed contrarian and beyond help—someone who wanted to live on society’s fringes. Only now did I realize the sheer desperation of her plight, as well as her own awareness of it. Here was a woman frightened and anxious and incapable of taking care of herself, not a determined wanderer.
As I read on, I understood for the first time just how tormented my mother had been over the loss of her children. In 1960, she lost Ben to her parents. In 1962, Marc was born, and after some vacillation she decided to keep him. She disappeared from the agency’s view until 1964, again eight months pregnant, in a volatile relationship with the baby’s father and with no idea of what to do. At the time, Massachusetts’s law held that a mother on welfare had to appear before the court when she had her second illegitimate child. This worried her, and she asked the social worker: Will I be committed to jail? Will it make any difference if I put the child up for adoption? She didn’t go to court at that time, but in October of that year, she found herself before the judge who gave her probation and a stern warning after Marc was found roaming the neighborhood. She had left Marc with a friend, and the friend’s teenage son had left the three-year-old in the hallway of Marian’s apartment building when Marian hadn’t answered the door. Marc wasn’t found until the next day.
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