by Kathy Izard
“Okay, let it go to voice mail,” I relented.
We turned up the radio, and I focused on singing, driving, and family. The twins were right. It was Thanksgiving, and I could forget about Moore Place for a few days. Lauren and Kailey were both home from college, and it was the first time we had all been together since the summer.
When we arrived at the mountain house, we got busy with all the cooking. Having four daughters was the best for holidays because everyone had learned our family recipes and each had her own specialty. Lauren hand cut bread cubes for the sausage stuffing, Maddie kneaded and rolled the dough for the ham biscuits, Kailey created apple pies, and Emma made the cranberry sauce. Charlie was in charge of the turkey, so each year I focused on chopping onions and celery, mashing potatoes, and preparing green beans with almonds like Gigi used to make.
We spent the afternoon listening to music and bumping elbows in the kitchen until dinner. Every Thanksgiving, we always went around the table to say what we were grateful for.
“I am grateful Mom stayed off her phone and computer all afternoon,” Maddie said.
We all laughed, but it made me remember that voice mail in the car I hadn’t listened to. It was three hours later when the dishes were done before I finally played it.
“Kathy, this is Tom Lawrence with the Leon Levine Foundation.”
Hugh McColl III and I had made a presentation to the Levine Foundation months before and submitted an application, but we hadn’t heard back. They were the most prominent local foundation, and after months with no word, we assumed we had not made their priority list for the year.
“The Leon Levine Foundation is pleased to award a grant of $500,000 to Moore Place.”
I knew what I was grateful for that Thanksgiving. I saved that voice mail on my phone for three years and played it over and over. That remarkable message would boost our year-end receipts to just over $9 million: an impossible amount, especially considering the Wells Fargo gift had been awarded only six months earlier.
With under a million dollars to go, I started getting nervous about delivering on what we had promised donors. Moore Place was going to be a home for people like Chilly Willy, Bill Halsey, and, hopefully, women like Christine—men and women who had been on the streets for decades. Their lives were complicated, and keeping them housed was going to be a daily challenge.
Moore Place was going to be only as good as the people running it. We needed to start with an incredibly effective executive director. I knew that job was over my head. During the last two years, I had been saved repeatedly by people such as Jerry Licari and the other Five Guys, who covered for my weaknesses. Now we needed someone who was qualified for this twenty-four-hours-a-day job.
Dale knew we needed someone as well. “We better start advertising now because it could take a long time to find someone.”
I honestly had no idea who would take this job. The ad would need to read: “Must be fearless and have no personal life.”
I didn’t put that in the job description, but it was true. I knew what Joann gave up on a daily basis to keep the residents at Homeless to Homes going. The executive director was going to have her job times seven. I listed the position on a national nonprofit website and hoped somebody like Mother Teresa would apply.
There were 115 volunteers all over downtown Charlotte wearing purple T-shirts that read “Counting on Change.” Liz Clasen-Kelly and I had been working for months on this event, the most important phase of Moore Place other than raising the money—finding out who in Charlotte needed Moore Place the most.
Common Ground had developed a survey of questions, the Vulnerability Index (VI), designed to determine which chronically homeless were most likely to die on the streets. With this knowledge we could systematically rather than subjectively prioritize the hundreds of men and women for the eighty-five apartments we would build.
We set the VI study for February 22–26, 2010, aiming to interview every chronically homeless person in Charlotte and create a priority list for Moore Place based on those most likely to die on the streets.
The system survey was straightforward; the implementation was daunting. Because Liz loved data, she led the project, organizing dozens of volunteers to help canvass the city from 5:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. every day for four days.
Common Ground sent three people from its staff to help us conduct this city-wide search for every chronically homeless person in Charlotte. Becky Kanis, the lead on our project, was like a general commanding the troops through the arduous survey process.
As we gathered stories and data, we realized the final conclusions were going to reveal a tally larger than we had imagined—807 people had been homeless more than a year, almost double our highest estimate. The data collected was going to be powerful in convincing the community that Charlotte did indeed have a long-ignored problem of chronic homelessness, and Moore Place was the solution.
At the end of the week, Becky and one of her coworkers from Common Ground arranged to meet me for dinner to celebrate our success. I had spent so much time with logistics and Becky that I had barely spoken to Caroline Chambre, who had also flown down to help.
When we finished ordering, Becky left the table to make a call. Caroline leaned over the table and quietly said, “I saw your ad.”
“The ad for Moore Place executive director?”
She nodded.
I couldn’t imagine why she was even looking.
“I grew up in Charlotte,” Caroline said simply. “My dad’s been sick and I’ve wanted to move back to help my mom for a long time, but I didn’t think I could find a job like the one I have at Common Ground.”
Caroline’s résumé was better than I could have hoped for. She had even been the director of a property with 650 residents—Moore Place with eighty-five would be simple by comparison.
But there was one fact from her résumé I could not believe. Caroline had been on staff at the Prince George property—the very same one I had visited at Christmas two years before.
We hired her the next day.
Two months later she arrived from New York, and one of her first assignments was to go back to her own high school, South Mecklenburg, with Eugene Coleman. Their service club hosted an annual weeklong social justice fundraising campaign, and this year the students had picked Moore Place.
Coleman and Caroline were headed to the event when she asked if he had his speech ready.
“I know what I want to say,” he said.
In a packed gymnasium full of fidgeting teenagers, Coleman came to the lectern and quietly gazed at the audience. He continued to stare, not moving, not saying a word.
Finally, after an uncomfortable silence, Coleman leaned into the microphone and spoke softly. “Can you see me?”
Caroline, and maybe the gathered students, thought he was asking if they had a good view of the stage. Some students shifted in their seats.
Another long pause.
“Can you see me?” Coleman asked again.
This time the question was more disturbing.
“That’s important,” Coleman said. “Because for twenty years, I didn’t think anyone saw me. Nobody could see me because I didn’t want to be seen. Drugs took all my pride, robbed me of every piece of self-respect, every dream I ever had. But somehow God saw fit to give me a second chance. And that second chance is people like you.”
Coleman went on to share much of his personal story. Afterward students and staff stood in line to tell him about their connections: a father who was homeless, a brother on the streets, time spent with family in a shelter. Even the school security guard confessed that her own brother was a meth addict, homeless in Charleston, South Carolina. She added her own $60 to the total of more than $6,000 collected by students to help make Moore Place more than a dream.
twenty-two
JUST LISTEN
Never be so focused on what you are looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.
—Ann Patchet
t1
Gifts like those from the high school service club, along with additional donations throughout spring 2010, inched us toward $9,500,000. We hoped the final $500,000 would come from the City of Charlotte.
In the past two years so many had worked together on this effort to solve the city’s homeless problem—churches, foundations, corporations, even children running lemonade stands. We had also finally received support from the state of North Carolina for $500,000, and the county had created an ongoing partnership by paying the salaries of five social workers for Moore Place.
Everyone but the City of Charlotte had chipped in. On June 14, 2010, Dale, Liz, Caroline, and I sat in the auditorium where the council held their meetings. We nervously waited through the nineteen agenda items on the docket before ours. Before starting Moore Place, I was not aware of who was on the city council or even that they held these meetings. Staring at the panel in front of me, I now knew the name of every councilperson and how they were likely to vote. The meeting started at 7:00 p.m. At 8:59 p.m. the vote for $500,000 for Moore Place was called. We collectively held our breath.
Nine in favor. One opposed—the representative from our neighborhood where the junkyard waited to be transformed. We passed. It was our final yes.
Crossing this last fundraising hurdle was exhilarating. After all the months, all the work, all the dreaming, we actually were going to do this. At the office I was feeling heroic, but at home my intense focus on this project came with a high cost.
I had been so consumed with doing good I had forgotten to love well.
The day I realized this I was working from home, trying to distract myself with e-mails. In truth I was focused on Kailey, who was upstairs, hidden behind her bedroom door. Kailey was home for the summer after her freshman year of college at a prestigious California school. The spring semester had been particularly rough, and she had made the decision to transfer to an East Coast university. Charlie and I couldn’t decide if her decision had been prompted by the long distance from family and friends or something else.
I contemplated her closed door. Should I knock?
No, I was sure she was fine. I would give her some more time. I tried to return to Moore Place and my in-box. Staring at my computer screen, I attempted to concentrate on the day’s work. There were several e-mails from the Charlotte Housing Authority I could start with. Even though we had all the money raised, we still couldn’t begin construction. Since we were taking some government money, we had to wait for federal approval to move forward. Four months had passed with no word from the government. We couldn’t get the regional employee to push through the application, so I was constantly fielding questions from donors to explain why we had not started construction.
As worried as I was about all that, I was more concerned about the problem upstairs. Kailey had been in her room for hours, so I went to check on her again. Slowly I climbed the stairs, but her door was still closed. I could see no light from under the door.
Pausing halfway up the flight of stairs, I sat down and tried to calm the sense of dread that had been choking me all morning. The dread really had started the day before with a letter I found in the trash can. It had been Kailey’s twentieth birthday, and in typical fashion, she had torn through her presents. Discarded wrapping paper, boxes, and ribbon had left a foot-high heap on the table. Charlie, always the cleaner, had scooped up behind her, not checking to see whether all the boxes were empty or full. In the process a beautiful pair of earrings had gone missing, and I was sure they were in the trash.
Searching the outdoor trash can, some thickly folded pages caught my eye. Four papers torn from a legal pad had been haphazardly shoved into the bag of giftwrap in an attempt to make them disappear forever. But it was Kailey’s handwriting that I couldn’t stop staring at.
I took the journal pages from the trash and sat down to read them. The words took my breath away. My daughter was desperately depressed. The girl who had written these words, I did not know. The girl who had written these words needed help.
I don’t know how long I stayed in the backyard trying to absorb it. How could I have missed how unhappy she was? I had vowed to be like Gigi and curl up on the couch with my daughters and always listen.
From the time Lauren and Kailey and the twins were little, I always tried to be there when they got home from school. I loved being the mom who knew the lyrics to their songs and volunteered to drive the late shift from the school dances so I could be in on the gossip.
How could it be that Kailey had become so lost without my knowing? How could it be that I had spent the past two years getting to know people like Coleman, Raymond, and Chilly Willy, yet I didn’t even know my own daughter?
The pages stayed in my pocket all day, waiting for Charlie to get home so we could talk with Kailey together. It was hard to function with the burning shame; I felt like a failure as a mom. I had heard the saying, “You are only as happy as your saddest child.” Now I understood.
When we had sat down with the letter, Kailey looked first at the papers and then at each of us. She held Charlie’s gaze a little longer. They had always had some sort of unspoken communication, like whale sonar. I swear they could speak sentences without a sound. A paragraph of pain passed between them. A tear began to roll down her cheek, and she stared at her hands.
“I didn’t want to worry you,” Kailey said softly. “I didn’t know what to say.”
We agreed she needed to see a doctor, and I thought of Jane Harrell. She had helped Scott Mercer even before he knew anything was wrong. She had surprisingly put a check for Moore Place in my pocket. Somehow I sensed the reason we had come to know each other was so she could help Kailey. I sent her a text, and she called right away even though it was 9:30 at night.
“She will be fine, Kathy, I’m telling you. So many college kids struggle, and no one talks about it,” Jane assured me. “You send her to my office tomorrow, and we’ll make a plan.”
Now I paced outside Kailey’s door, waiting desperately for her to wake up so we could make that plan. I did better with plans, with lists and ways to fix things. As I stared at her door, wondering what she was feeling and thinking on the other side, I thought about my mom’s bedroom door. How many times coming home from school had I looked at that closed door? How many times had I waited for that door to open?
I couldn’t remember ever wondering what my mom was feeling on the other side. As long as I stayed on one side, I didn’t have to feel. I didn’t have to know. But this was my daughter. Her pain. Her problems. Her door couldn’t keep me from feeling. No door, no distance, could keep me from sharing her pain.
There was a bump and a shuffling as Kailey moved from her bedroom to the bathroom. I waited before gently opening her door.
“Kailey?”
She was sitting in bed in her gray school sweatshirt that had paint splotches on it from when she had gone to help rebuild homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Ripped, torn, and stained, it was still her favorite. She hugged her knees and looked up at me expectantly.
What could I say? It will get better? Everything will be okay?
I didn’t know how to make her feel better. Moms are supposed to be able to make their kids feel better. Normally I had a long list of suggestions for my girls. I was the ultimate fixer. You should do this. You should try that. Let’s make a list. Let’s make a plan. I always had lots of advice, lots of words. I could talk and find a solution for any problem. Over the years I thought this was what I wanted my girls to see and learn from me. I wanted to be a strong, capable example for them. Like my dad had taught me, I wanted them to know they could do anything, be anything. I never cried or let them see me quitting. If there was a problem, I didn’t feel it, I just fixed it.
But for this, I had no fix. No solution. No words.
I climbed next to her in bed and pulled her head onto my shoulder. We both began to cry. Me, slow, sad tears. Kailey, heaving sobs. We didn’t speak. We just cried until we couldn�
��t anymore. Finally she spoke.
“You know, Mom, this is all I ever wanted. I didn’t want you to fix anything,” she confessed. “I just wanted you to hold me and listen.”
With construction on hold and Caroline Chambre in charge, I spent the rest of that summer focusing on family. Ever since the pack trip in Wyoming with Lauren and Kailey, our family had started taking more adventurous vacations. We tried to pick remote and rugged ranches with little cell phone or Internet access. That way neither of us, especially Charlie, could be pulled into work. That year we planned a Colorado dude ranch vacation for hiking, horseback riding, and fishing. The week was so relaxing. No decisions to be made. No meetings to attend. No donors to update.
Toward the end of our stay, Charlie was distracted by a lengthy conference call. With no cell service, he had to use the phone in our log cabin, so he was stuck in a chair next to the wood wall for over an hour while we waited for him to go on our last family horseback ride of the vacation.
“Charlie,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”
He gave me the one-minute sign. I sighed. Sometimes I hated his job. Whatever it was, however, apparently needed his undivided attention. I heard him hang up and call quietly to me.
“Kathy, can we talk a minute?” He looked serious. “So there’s a problem in the New York office,” he began. “And they want me to work on it.”
“Okay . . .” I wasn’t getting it. Charlie rarely talked about work. The girls joked that he worked for the CIA because he never talked about what he did.
“So they are asking that I go to New York to work on it.” He paused and looked at me. “As in move.”
“Move? To New York? When?”
He nodded. “Like next month. I know there’s a lot to consider,” Charlie said. “We can talk about it.”
We both knew we could talk about it, but we both knew what would happen. Charlie was going to New York. When work asked, it wasn’t really a question.