An Invisible Thread

by Laura Schroff

  “My bike got stolen,” he said. “And my mom got arrested.”

  Maurice told me he’d been riding his bike around midtown Manhattan and made the mistake of keeping it out too late. I’d made him promise to never ride after dark, and he had stuck to that promise. But on the weekend of his move, for whatever reason, he was riding at night. He said two older boys jumped him and knocked him down and sped away on his shiny Ross. He said he tried to chase them, but couldn’t catch up. He said he felt terrible that this bike I had given him was gone, and I told him it was okay.

  “It’s just a bike; as long as you’re not hurt.” But I knew that to Maurice the bike was not just a bike. It represented something important, and that something had been cruelly ripped away.

  Only years later would I learn the story Maurice told me about his bicycle wasn’t true. He did lose it that weekend, just not the way he said he did. Maurice was on his bicycle when he stopped to talk to some kids he knew from around the Bryant. It wasn’t after dark; it was broad daylight. A man in his twenties came up and complimented him on his bike. Maurice knew the man from around the neighborhood, but they had never spoken.

  “Can I take it for a spin?” the man asked.

  Maurice, sitting atop his bike, said no.

  “Come on, just a quick ride,” the man said. “Just wanna try it out.”

  The man took out his wallet and handed Maurice his driver’s license.

  “Blood, I’m not gonna steal it,” the man said. “You hold my license so you know I’m gonna bring it back.”

  Maurice did not want to let the man ride his bike. His instinct was to simply peddle away. But Maurice overrode that instinct; he decided to trust the man. He took the license and handed over his bike and watched the man ride off.

  “I’ll be back in ten minutes,” the man said.

  Maurice waited patiently at the corner for ten minutes. He figured the man would keep it longer; after all, it was a nifty bike. He waited half an hour, then an hour. The afternoon light gave way to evening, then to night.

  Maurice waited on the corner for seven hours.

  The license was fake and worthless; the bike, gone forever. Maurice felt a mix of anger and shock and sadness. Most of all, he was horrified he’d lost something I had bought for him—something I’d entrusted him with. He decided there was no way he could tell me the truth; the truth made him sound careless and stupid. Instead he told me two thugs ripped him off.

  I look back now and I know why Maurice overrode his instincts. It was because of me. He had seen how I trusted him: how I’d let him into my apartment, how I never worried he’d swipe any quarters from my giant jug of change. He had heard me say there is nothing more important than trust. He had been the beneficiary of my kindness, and he was moved to extend a similar kindness to someone else. He had come to understand the concepts of trust and friendship so well that he was now ready to put them into practice.

  And the person he chose to believe in ripped his heart out.

  Had I, in fact, endangered Maurice by filling his mind with lofty ideas that had no relevance to his life? Was I stripping him of a protective layer he needed to survive on the streets? Had I just been fooling myself—and deceiving him—by thinking a few meals and a new bike could make any kind of difference in his world? A difficult question had to be asked: was I doing more harm than good?

  Then Maurice told me about his mother being arrested—but there, again, he didn’t tell me the whole story.

  In the days before her arrest, Maurice was thrilled by the prospect of a new apartment. He had spent his life sharing tiny rooms with ten or twelve people, and now, for the first time, he would have a two-bedroom apartment just for his mother, his grandmother, his sisters, and himself. The move took away some of the sting of my announcement that I was leaving for White Plains. Though he never let on, not even for a second, that he was worried about our friendship, the truth is Maurice was shaken by my move. He was used to being abandoned by the adults in his life, and he couldn’t help but think I might abandon him, too. He had come to love hanging out at my apartment, doing his homework there, having a place to clean his clothes. He had come to love spending time with me, and now I was moving on and moving away. Maurice never let me see it, but I would later learn he was terrified of losing what we had.

  But at least he had his new apartment. It had taken his family years and years of moving through the system to qualify for their own place, and now their number had finally come up. Maurice waited excitedly for his mother to come home two days before the move, so he could hear more about their new home. Darcella didn’t come home that Friday… or that Saturday. Maurice figured she was somewhere sleeping off a drug binge. She only had to be back in time for their move on Monday.

  Instead, on that Monday, he found out from his grandmother that his mother had been arrested.

  She’d been selling drugs at Port Authority, Manhattan’s central bus station on the seedy fringes of Times Square. She was in a stairwell when another woman tried to rob her, and she beat the woman bloody. The commotion drew police to the scene, and they found bags of crack in Darcella’s pockets. She was arrested and charged with possession of drugs with intent to sell and with attempted murder. Instead of moving on Monday, Maurice and his grandmother went to a courtroom in lower Manhattan. A Legal Aid Society lawyer explained that if the judge dismissed the case, they still had a chance to move to their new apartment. He would plead with the court for mercy and explain the family’s dire circumstances, telling the judge about the apartment that was waiting for them and how it was their only hope to turn their lives around.

  Maurice saw his mother shuffle into the courthouse in handcuffs. The lawyer told the judge that Darcella and her family had been homeless for seven years and lived in subhuman shelters, and now they finally had a chance to have a home of their own. Could the judge have mercy on this family and let them have this one chance at normalcy?

  “Have you seen the woman that your client beat up?” the judge asked.

  “She was just defending herself,” the lawyer said.

  “That’s not defending yourself,” the judge said. “That’s malice with intent to harm.”

  The judge did not dismiss the case. He gave Darcella another court date and ordered her held until then. Maurice watched his mother disappear into the chambers behind the judge’s bench.

  His new apartment was gone now, too.

  Darcella faced twenty-five years in jail for attempted murder. She accepted a plea deal for two and a half years. She was sent to Riker’s Island and held in an all-female prison. Maurice never once visited her in those two and a half years. His grandmother went and his sisters, but not Maurice. He told himself he was not a person who visits people in jail.

  The city found a decrepit Section 8 apartment for Maurice’s grandmother on Hancock Street in Brooklyn. It was even smaller than their room at the Bryant. Maurice moved in with his sisters, an uncle, and, as the days went on, some people he didn’t know. The place soon became just another drug den, another forsaken space with no food or peace or privacy. Maurice didn’t tell me his mother’s arrest had caused them to lose the apartment. I believed they still had it and were living there while his mother did her time. But, as he had often done before, Maurice shielded me from the more brutal truths of his life. He didn’t tell me about the place on Hancock Street. And he didn’t tell me that, after just a few days there, he couldn’t stand to live like that anymore.

  Maurice did not tell me that he left home and went to live on the streets.

  After my move and his mother’s arrest, Maurice and I continued to see each other on Mondays. We’d meet at a restaurant or go see a movie or play games at the arcade; he never let me know what was really happening in his life. There was no denying things were different, but we both decided to make the best of our new arrangement. As time passed, the geographical distance between us became a problem. I missed a Monday here and there, and so did he. After a wh
ile, we were down to three Mondays a month. Some months we met only twice.

  But in the back of my mind, I had a secret plan. Things were going great with Michael, and within just a few months of meeting I was pretty sure he was going to ask me to marry him. We were having fun living together and spending time on his boat, and I could begin to see what a future with him would be like. That’s when I hatched my plan: if Maurice’s living situation ever got too crazy again, I could have him move in with me and Michael in his big four-bedroom house. I never mentioned this to Maurice or to Michael; I just kept tossing the idea around in my head. Michael was a wealthy man, and money never seemed to be a problem for him. I imagined the impact Michael could have on Maurice, both as a role model and as a kind of father figure. I dreamed of Michael offering to pay for Maurice’s college education. I thought about how moving in with us would utterly transform Maurice’s life.

  Maurice, of course, never mentioned such a scenario, but I believe that, deep down, he dreamed about it, too.

  At the very least, my secret plan helped assuage some of the guilt I felt about moving away. It was obvious my relationship with Maurice was growing more complicated. Annette and Bruce decided to move to Florida, and when Thanksgiving rolled around they were in the middle of packing up their house and couldn’t host the dinner. Instead, we were all invited to the home of Annette’s mother-in-law. It was one thing for me to bring Maurice with me to my sister’s house, but bringing him to someone else’s home wasn’t always that simple. My friendship with him, I knew full well, was not something that could be easily explained. It was just not that easy to fit Maurice into every situation in my new, more cluttered life.

  I agonized over the decision and got up late at night to hash it out with myself. In the end I agreed to go—without Maurice. It was, at the time, one of the hardest decisions I’d ever had to make, and just thinking about it today ties my stomach in knots. I wanted more than anything to spend Thanksgiving with Maurice, but I also wanted to be with the man I loved and with my sister and her family before they moved to Florida. Looking back, I should have simply said I wouldn’t go anywhere without Maurice.

  But that’s not what I did. What I did was tell Maurice I wouldn’t be seeing him on Thanksgiving.

  And, as he had before, Maurice told me not to feel bad about it.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “We can see each other right after Thanksgiving anyway.”

  And, of course, we still had Christmas, our favorite holiday.

  A week before Thanksgiving, Nancy got married to her fiancé, John—the guy who had been with us on my blind double date with Michael. Right after the reception, in the hotel room where Michael and I were staying, Michael handed me a small black box and asked me to marry him. It wasn’t a total surprise; he’d asked me to help him pick out the ring. I had selected the diamond and the mountings and I knew it would be beautiful, but I hadn’t seen it put together. When he proposed, I jumped in his arms and said yes. After my first disastrous marriage, I wasn’t sure I’d ever fall in love again. And now I had, to a wonderful man, and I still had a chance to live my dream—to have a beautiful family of my own. We set a date for the following June.

  Then it was time to start planning for my first Christmas with Michael in White Plains. It was a few weeks before Christmas when I mentioned to Michael that I would be inviting Maurice to join us.

  Michael said, “I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

  I had to take a moment or two to let that sink in.

  “What do you mean, it’s not appropriate?”

  “I don’t think you should invite Maurice to Christmas.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “You know Maurice is a friend of mine. You know how important he is to me. Why don’t you want me to invite him?”

  “Because I don’t know anything about him,” he said. “I don’t know anything about his family.”

  “Maurice is a great kid. He’s a friend of mine, and I will vouch for him.”

  “Laura, it’s not that I don’t trust Maurice, but he has a family. He has relatives we know nothing about, and I don’t want to bring all that into our life here.”

  Michael and I continued the argument for hours.

  I simply couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was angry, confused, in shock. It had never dawned on me that Michael would not invite Maurice into our lives. Not in a million years did I think he would ever ban him from our home. We hadn’t seriously discussed it, but I had talked about Maurice a lot and he knew what our relationship was like. For me, it just went without saying that Maurice would be a part of our family. To now learn the man I dearly loved didn’t share this view was completely shattering. But that wasn’t the worst of it; Michael was not only against inviting Maurice to Christmas, he was dead set against it. He was a confident, self-possessed man, used to getting his way and not having to compromise. He simply would not budge on this matter.

  “How can you be so callous?”

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “I made a commitment to him. You know how I feel about him.”

  “I never said you can’t see him.”

  “But I can’t bring him to our home?”

  “It wouldn’t be a comfortable situation.”

  We argued and argued until we were both exhausted, then I got in bed and pulled the covers over my head. I tried to sleep but couldn’t, and at 2:00 a.m. I got up, got dressed, drove down Mamaroneck Avenue, and parked by the water. I just sat in my car, crying. The realization that it would be hard for me to balance my friendship with Maurice and my life with Michael was one of the most painful realizations I’d ever had. As I sat in my car, I kept hearing Miss House’s message to me: “Do not abandon this child.” I thought of Maurice and where he was at that moment, in a bed with dirty sheets, in a home without a mother. I thought about his bicycle being stolen; I thought about our little cookie-baking ritual that was now gone. I thought about where Maurice would go on Christmas if he couldn’t be with me. A Salvation Army, a box of donated toys.

  And I thought about what I could say or do to change Michael’s mind. The most distressing thing was that he was so utterly unyielding. It never occurred to me that our disagreement over Maurice could damage our relationship. I was in love with Michael, and I still wanted to marry him and have children with him, but I had just seen a side of him I hadn’t seen before—an intransigence, maybe even a selfishness, but certainly a disregard for the sickening anguish I felt. If he wouldn’t do this for Maurice, wouldn’t he want to do it for me? How could he not see his decision was breaking my heart? And if he could see it, how could he not care?

  I drove home and got in bed and didn’t say a word to Michael for four days.

  After that, what I should have done was draw a line in the sand. I should have said Michael could not have me if he didn’t accept Maurice as well. I should have said Michael’s and my life did not belong just to him and his family; it belonged to both of us. Maurice was part of our life, like it or not. I should have said Maurice is coming for Christmas, and that’s that.

  But I did not say those things. Instead, once again, I met Maurice at a restaurant and told him I wouldn’t be able to see him on Christmas. I promised I would see him the Monday right after Christmas, and I would bring my presents for him then, and we would get right back to seeing each other every Monday, and I’m sorry, Maurice, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just so very sorry, and Maurice, betraying nothing, said, “Laurie, it’s okay.”

  The next June, Michael and I got married in a small ceremony in our home in White Plains. We invited around a hundred people, and we set up a tent in the backyard. On a beautiful summer day we said our vows not far from the brook that cut through our property. It was, by anyone’s standards, a lovely wedding.

  Except that my friend Maurice was not there.

  One day at his grandmother’s Section 8 apartment in Brooklyn, Maurice counted the number of people in the tiny room. There were twel
ve. Not all of them lived there, but they were there a lot—cousins, uncles, friends, drug connections, people from the neighborhood, addicts sleeping it off. This was the way Maurice lived: fighting for space in a filthy room. But after his mother was sent to prison—after he lost the one person he loved most of all—Maurice couldn’t take the craziness anymore. And so he just left.

  Maurice knew the streets well. Big dining rooms and giant jugs of quarters and gift-wrapped presents might baffle him, but the streets were something he understood in and out. He’d grown at least three inches since I’d met him, and he was tall for his age, lean and strong—closer now to being a man than a boy. He was confident in his ability to survive off the grid; he knew how to scrounge for meals and elude cops and act tough when he had to. And, at least two or three times a month, he could still meet me in the city. Those meetings, I found out, were more important for Maurice than ever. They were the only dose of normalcy in a world that was becoming increasingly hostile to him.

  Maurice knew where he would sleep—at the rundown Kung Fu Theater on 42nd Street in Times Square. It was officially known as the Times Square Theater, but they ran kung fu movies around the clock. Maurice would panhandle the money for a ticket, find a seat in the back, curl up there, and sleep through the night, the shrill cracks of kung fu fights filling his head. During the day he’d panhandle for more ticket money and go to the theater across the street to watch the Eddie Murphy movie Coming to America over and over again. He must have seen it three hundred times. He knew all the dialogue by heart.

  He’d sneak into the YMCA on West 59th Street to steal a shower, and every once in a while he’d go back to Brooklyn to check on his grandmother. He never stayed long, and no one asked where he was going or where he slept. For a while he still attended I.S. 131, but eventually he was moved to another school—an alternative school. He didn’t know what that meant until he noticed most of the students had profound mental and emotional problems. He didn’t feel he belonged, and after just a few months he stopped going. By the time he was sixteen, he was done with school altogether.