Andrea was quiet for a moment, and I allowed myself to believe she had been consoled. Then she replied:
“But there are big holes like that all over the world.”
I fell silent in astonishment.
TWO MONTHS AFTER my mother died, as if fate had decided to spare me from dealing with both of them at once, I found my father.
The path to discovery was convoluted, full of loops and dead ends and mirages. It was crowded with New Yorkers, Italians, and Australians: all the far-flung branches of my father’s family tree. It held exhilaration and deep sorrow, tenacious days and sleepless nights. It was seven or eight weeks of full-throttle obsession.
The process of finding him was far too complicated to recount, but in the broadest strokes: The ancestry site continued to turn up distant relatives, and I continued to be incapable of turning away. Many were less than forthcoming, but others were willing to assist with my search. They talked with their own extended families and sent a series of leads. A few weeks in, I made contact with a woman named Debbie, whose own subsequent DNA test identified her as my first cousin. She confirmed that her uncle Giuseppe was a salesman for Jack N’ Jill diapers in the Bronx.
He had been dead since 2006.
I KNEW ALL ALONG, of course, that he might very well be gone. It wasn’t a shock, but it was still a blow.
The dream of the archetypal father died hard. The one in which there was a man in the world who would claim me as his own. Who would be overcome by the sudden gift of a daughter in his midst, fully formed and needing nothing from him but his paternal pride. The one where I garnered all the phrases people used to describe a father’s tenderness for his daughter: the apple of his eye, the treasure of his heart, the balm of his old age. The dream of having a parent who actually loved me.
I begged my cousin to tell me anything she could remember about him, but she could only recall a day spent driving through the streets of our Bronx neighborhood in search of Giuseppe’s car. “My mom and his wife—my Aunt Maria—were best friends,” she told me. “So when Maria was sure my uncle was cheating on her, my mom helped her look for him, even though it meant busting her own brother. We spent hours driving up and down, but we never caught him.”
She sent a single photo of him. It was black and white and cracked and faded, and in it, my father wears a dark suit jacket, light shirt, and patterned tie. He looks game but impatient, unsmiling. His dark hair is trimmed short and slicked back, close on the sides and forming a slight crest at the crown. He looks a little like Andy Garcia in The Untouchables: taciturn, mysterious, and New-York-glamorous.
How can you lose something you never had? I don’t know, but I look at his photograph and I ache with the loss of him.
Debbie also reported that Giuseppe and his late wife had two children: a son and a daughter. Their names were Joseph Jr. and Carol Lynn, and both were alive and residing in Scarsdale to the best of Debbie’s knowledge, though she hadn’t spoken with them for years and had no contact information to share.
The idea of another brother and sister was a potent consolation, and I set out to find them myself. What followed was the strangest, hardest blow of all.
In New York in 2019, decades into the internet age, I could hardly find a shred of information about either of my half-siblings. No social media pages, no LinkedIn accounts, no professional listings, no community or political affiliations. Moreover, no one from any place they’d lived or worked was willing to speak with me. The two of them might as well have been ghosts, or figments of my imagination.
An exhaustive online search finally turned up an obituary for Carol, dead at fifty-seven. It bore nothing but her name, age, date, and city of death—July of 2016 in Scarsdale—and the name of the funeral home that had seen to her arrangements, Sinatra Memorial. The guest book had been signed by a single acquaintance, a Michelle Caruso.
Carol was a beautiful, friendly, funny, full of life person I knew. I will think and miss her a lot. My heart goes out to her family.
Debbie found contact information for Michelle and tried to connect with her by phone. She reported that Michelle hung up on her, after telling her never to call again.
Sinatra Memorial provided me with the phone number of her only known relative, my half-brother Joseph Jr. I must have called that number, and all the other ones I could find in association with him, a hundred times. No answer, ever. No voicemail. No nothing.
Next I dialed Michelle’s number again myself, unable to fully accept Debbie’s report of her hostility. She’d written that message in the guest book, hadn’t she? Carol could hardly have offended her since, given that she was no longer alive.
A man answered, who identified himself as Michelle’s boyfriend. I said I was the half-sister of Joseph Tobacco Jr. and that I was trying to track him down by searching out anyone connected with his family.
“No!” the man bellowed so loudly that I actually jumped in fright. “No! No, no, no! Never call this number again, do you hear?”
Then he hung up on me, as Michelle had done with Debbie.
Finally, in desperation, I hired a private investigator.
Two days later he called to say that Joseph Jr., too, was dead, as of 2018. The medical authorities believed that both brother and sister died by suicide. By the coroner’s best estimate, Joseph Jr. had taken his own life on his sister’s birthday. His body wasn’t found for another full week, and then it was by the police, who’d had to break down his apartment door. The P.I. gave me the name of the funeral home that had accepted his body.
The undertaker told me the county welfare office had conducted a search for his next of kin and found no one. They cremated his remains and disposed of all his possessions. The city provided him with a “welfare funeral and burial.” No one came.
I DON’T RECALL just what I said in response to my daughter the evening we read the story of Pretzel, but I do remember thinking she’d spoken a terrible and irreducible truth. There are big holes like that all over the world, and sometimes we don’t get out of them.
The hole that swallowed my mother was so deep and dark she never truly emerged from it. All of my living siblings are in holes of their own.
I might never know why my two paternal half-siblings seem to have been submerged in darkness as well. It’s impossible not to suspect abuse in some form. Two suicides, two unattended funerals, two human beings so isolated there’s hardly a record of their having lived—that kind of twinned pathology doesn’t happen by chance. It was hard for me to believe that it could happen at all. How did that depth of social estrangement come about? As bad as my mother’s children had it, not one of us is without connections, attachments, or entanglements.
I was shocked by the depth of my own grief for people I had never met. But if blood counts for anything, they were just as close to me as Allan, Pablo, Isabella, Dominic, and Walter. They shared a single parent with me, no less than the siblings I grew up with.
I was a year too late in Joseph Jr.’s case, three years too late in Carol’s. For weeks I was haunted by this. If only I’d found them sooner, could I have made a difference? Might I have stopped either of them from taking their lives?
Nothing could be more pointless than wondering about this. I’ll never have that chance or know those answers.
I still don’t fully know how I escaped my own hole, the one that seemed to be yawning in wait for me since the womb. I can list the circumstances I credit for saving me, but they amount to no more than my own ever-shifting conjecture. Emotional wiring, the love of a steadfast partner, otherworldly protection, certain decisions and inborn traits—at one time or another, I’ve counted all these factors in my favor. But I also know that luck might be the most essential piece of all.
I resolved to write a real eulogy for Joseph Jr. and Carol, but I could find out nothing else about them.
THREE MONTHS AFTER my mother’s death, on an afternoon in late March, I stood with my husband, daughter, youngest brother and oldest niece
on the western edge of Gibbs Cemetery in Sherwood. My search was over. I’d invited everyone in my extended family to join Jim, Andrea, Josh, Jeremy, and me in our own makeshift memorial service for all our departed family members. Walter and my brother Allan’s older daughter were the only ones who showed up.
I had chosen the location for its beauty, its lack of morbidity, and the feeling I had when visiting of being in a park rather than a burial site. From our spot, there was a clear view of both Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens, snow-white and pristine against the deep blue sky. There was a border of trees and stately houses on either side of the grounds. It was a place I’d be glad to return to for the rest of my life, and after.
I’d purchased three plots. One for me when my time came, another for Jim, and one for all the remains and personal effects we would place there today. Because we were not lowering a coffin into the ground and would need nothing even close to a standard excavation, we were allowed to dig the hole on our own. We would each take a turn at this task.
It was unseasonably warm for March, the sun bright and strong in the sky. The first tender crocus and daffodil shoots were just pushing up through the grass. The trees were rustling, and there were birds overhead. It was a good day for a funeral.
I stood at the spot where we would soon break ground, cradling a box and an urn in my arms. In the box were pictures of my father, Joseph Jr., Carol, and Louie, as well as notes I had written to each of them. In the urn were my mother’s ashes. My brother Allan’s daughter Rachel carried the urn that held his ashes. My brother Walter had the urn that held Rick’s.
For a moment, just before we began to dig, I was overcome by all I had learned about my roots, my history, and my heritage. I stood surrounded by my family and yet I was alone there on the cemetery grounds, my arms full of all that remained. I’d learned so much about my own past over the last two years, but the more I uncovered, the harder it became to distill it all into an easy or serviceable identity.
I was the American Dream.
A rags-to-riches tale. A poster girl for social advancement. An unlikely achiever and a bootstrapper. I was a feel-good story, a happy ending.
I was living proof that a child in this country can come from nothing and end up with everything. That dreams and drive and grit mean more than high birth or a fancy pedigree. I was walking evidence of equal opportunity, a testament to the possibility of transcendence.
I was an American daughter, in the most optimistic sense of the phrase.
And I was an American nightmare.
I was a child, one of millions, who fell between the cracks.
I was our failed school system. A girl who remained silent in the classroom, illiterate past the age of eight without anyone taking much notice. A kid who sat outside the school office for hours with a shattered arm and no pain relief, because my mother was in no hurry to show up and I wasn’t important enough to bother about.
I was our failed child protection system. The girl who lived with her siblings on the beach for a year—alone, unschooled, and free of adult supervision, eating seaweed because we were starving—without causing any concern. The kid who went half-blind from untreated strabismus. The child returned to an incompetent and criminally negligent parent over and over and over again.
I was our failed foster care system. Placed in the home of a serial sexual predator—one of many children sent to them over God knows how many years. The sister of a boy raped in a juvenile detention home.
I was our failed legal system. The daughter of a girl-child gang-raped by upward of a dozen grown men, none of whom were sentenced to more than two months in prison. The daughter of a woman driven mad by trauma and injustice.
I was our failed healthcare system. The daughter of a woman who never once in her lifetime received adequate care for her mental illness. The daughter of a woman who was committed to countless psychiatric wards, the conditions of which were worse than any horror movie.
An American daughter.
I descend from America’s foremost founding family. In my bloodline—along with the Washingtons—are the likes of the Thorntons, the Grubbs, and the Bealls. Suppliers of the Revolutionary War. Titans of industry. Men of education and intellect. Men who were among the founders of Harvard and the New York Cotton Exchange.
People so exclusive and insular they disowned their daughter for marrying outside high society.
My ancestors were the founders and builders of America, as socially prominent and blue-blooded as they come.
But I also descend from a line of women who rejected it all. From a grandmother who eloped with her chauffer. Who gave away her family’s priceless heirlooms in a yard sale. A mother who burned her house to the ground, who refused her membership in the rarefied social order of her girlhood, who turned her back on safety and respectability.
I was an illegitimate child, born out of wedlock.
I’m the daughter of an Italian immigrant. A diaper salesman.
The granddaughter of a cab driver. The adopted daughter of a Latino short-order cook. The stepdaughter of a drunk and a junkie, an armed robber, a grifter, an ex-convict, and Peyote Way Church of God devotee.
My brothers and sister are Puerto Rican. My daughter is Guatemalan.
My family is the war-torn and weathered, punctured and patched-over, gilt-edged and glimmering tapestry of America.
All of it was right there, in both my hands.
MY DAUGHTER AND I, along with Jim and our niece and my youngest brother, dug a different kind of hole together.
It felt so right to turn the earth ourselves. We angled the shovel into the ground, lifting out grass and weeds and dirt. The work was hard, and sweat broke out across my forehead as I gave myself to it. When it became too arduous, Jim took over. And when we had cleared an adequate space, we gathered around it and laid our loved ones’ remains inside.
I’d had a granite grave marker inscribed with their names, the years they had lived, and an epitaph reading: “They Finished Strong.” My mother was beside Rick, where she had vied to be all her life. The ashes and mementoes of everyone else were nestled nearby. We played the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” on an old ’70s boom box as we shoveled the turned earth back into place.
We spent hours together at the gravesite that day. We told stories. We sang some of my mother’s favorite songs. We said some private prayers, and there were stretches of time where we all fell into prolonged and comfortable silence. I let the sadness of the last two years wash over me and wondered again about what allowed me to be here, aboveground and upright amidst so much wreckage.
It was just then—as if she could read my mind—that my niece Rachel leaned over and touched my arm.
“Aunt Stephanie,” she said. “How did you make it through all those years with Grandma Florence? What advice would you give to kids like you and my dad? Advice for life?”
“Oh honey,” I said. I’d been asked some version of that question so many times before, and yet I felt flustered to be put on the spot. “That’s a good question, but let me think about it, all right? I promise I’ll write something down. I’ll send it to you soon.”
For the rest of the afternoon I wondered what I would tell her and whether it would make sense to her.
Understand that you must make your own home in the world, however modest. It doesn’t need to be rich. It just needs light, warmth, comfort, beauty, and love. Attend to these elements. Invite others in.
Find a way to be the love you didn’t get. Sometimes in the course of doing this, you will need to draw a protective circle around yourself and be careful about who you let inside. Love does not preclude boundaries—sometimes it requires them.
Still, keep in mind that the most difficult people are often suffering in ways we can’t fathom. It would have been so easy for me never to have learned what happened to my mother. I came so close to not ever knowing.
When I did uncover those revelations about her past, it allowed me to understand her.
But it didn’t restore what was lost. It didn’t redeem her life. It didn’t make anything okay.
So much harm had been inflicted that wasn’t within my power to repair. In the wake of it all, what use was this gathering, what use was ceremony? It did nothing to diminish the tragedies at hand, and yet I had to believe it mattered.
Sometimes we can’t fix what’s broken. The damage can’t be reversed or undone. Sometimes we don’t arrive in time. But if nothing else, I could honor the lives I couldn’t save. I could affirm their humanity and insist on their dignity. Gather them back from the far edges to which they’d scattered. I could hold the remnants of them close, say their names, and lay them to rest.
It was late afternoon when we felt ready to end our vigil. We felt tired and tranquil, uplifted, finished. A fiery pink light, my lifelong color of hope, was just tinting the edges of the sky. My daughter’s hand was in mine, and the sun was still warm when together we rose to go home.
Acknowledgments
FIRST AND FOREMOST, I want to thank my husband, Jim Plymale, for always being there for me in every aspect of my life, including the writing and creation of every chapter of this book. He helped me relive these painful memories in order to accurately tell the story. He drove us miles to Mendocino—to the beach where it all began. Together we revisited the motel where I used to live as a child, as well as my horrid former foster home. He helped me process that long season of my life, and to him I am forever grateful.
Josh, Jeremy, and Andrea—my children. Thank you for your encouragement and belief in me. You are my teachers: You provided me with continuous inspiration and gifted me with the family I always longed for.
Thank you HarperCollins and HarperOne for choosing my memoir to publish. And for the brilliant edits, revisions, additions, and stylistic vision your team brought to the table to elevate American Daughter.
To my collaborator Elissa Wald and editors Sydney Rogers and Amanda Hughes, thank you for putting your hearts and souls into this book and never settling, even when dark forces tried to stop us in our tracks. Thank you all for showing up month after month to undertake the rigor of this story. And thank you for continually challenging me to bring forth the best iteration of this book.
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