At Home with Muhammad Ali

by Hana Ali

  When it was time to leave, Dad whispered in her ear, “I still love you.” Just as he always had whenever he spoke to her or saw her.

  Trying to understand my parents’ love story has weighed heavily on my heart, and over the years I’ve searched the past, revisited days gone by, questioned my mother for a reason why and for answers not even she could give. Only broken fragments of a time long past and haunting reminiscences of a marriage long lost remain.

  I wanted to figure out what went wrong with my parents’ love story—how the letters ended up in storage. Like with most things we fret over, their misplacement wasn’t complicated but the result of a simple, fated occurrence.

  Those last few days at Fremont, my grandmother and aunts were helping Mom pack up the house, carefully folding and storing the last of our belongings—my happiest memories—away. Our linens, clothes, dolls, and books. Postcards sent from around the world: Hong Kong, Asia, England. My black fedora hat and sparkling glove, all carefully placed into small cardboard boxes as if to preserve them for another time and home, as if they’d help ease the pain of a ten-year-old girl’s broken heart.

  Downstairs, my father stood alone in his empty office with nothing tangible left to express his love for my mother but an envelope of hopeful letters it seemed he never gave her. Surely, he must have thought that, if not Marge, Auntie Diane or my grandmother would see them and give them to Mom. Surely, he must have left them there on purpose so that, if nothing else, she’d know he tried. But Marge had put the unaddressed manila envelope into a small box with other random, unpacked items she found around the house and written a short message across the top: Veronica, Muhammad left this behind—Marge. If only Mom had been curious and opened it, but she probably assumed it was more of Dad’s quotes, notes, and speeches, which he usually wrote on lined yellow paper, and so she might have quickly closed the envelope, if she even saw the box at all, never knowing what the pages contained: my father’s bare heart.

  I wanted nothing more than to undo Dad’s mistakes, clarify the misunderstandings between him and my mother, give life to his unspoken words. I wanted to bring peace to my parents’ hearts and heal their wounds, especially my father’s. I always thought his heart suffered greatest.

  Then, one afternoon in 2014 when I was sitting on the sofa in my father’s living room in Scottsdale, Arizona, lost in thoughts about days gone by, I looked at him sitting peacefully in his large leather chair, smiling at the image of his youthful self on the television screen.

  “Wasn’t I something?” he said, wide-eyed as he watched himself telling reporters how he’d whooped George Foreman. “I wrestled with an alligator and tussled with a whale. I handcuffed lightning and threw thunder in jail. Just last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, and hospitalized a brick! I’m so mean I make medicine sick!”

  “You still are, Daddy,” I said. “And you always will be.”

  He smiled and kept watching with an expression of indescribable peace and satisfaction upon his face. One that a seventy-two-year-old man with Parkinson’s wasn’t supposed to have. Sitting at home watching himself on television, eating cake and ice cream, entertained by a life well lived.

  It was then that I realized it was my heart, not his, that was still fretful with unresolved grief and sorrow about the past. In that moment, I decided I would do as my father had done so many times before, when faced with sorrow, disappointment, or loss, in or out of the ring. All I needed to do was let go and give it to God. By doing so, I found what I was ultimately looking for, what I’d hoped for all along: peace and acceptance with what was past.

  I was always driving past the stone pillars that marked the entrance to Fremont Place, on my way to barbecues at Kim and Karen’s, where we reminisced about our childhood over drinks and hot dogs in the same backyard we used to play in when we were little girls. Their mother, Connye, still lived in the same house off Wilshire Boulevard. It had become sort of a home base for me over the years—the only thing left from my childhood that was the same, that I could still visit. Carnation’s and Bob’s Big Boy were torn down, but the mosque on Vermont, where my father brought me lunch every day, was still there.

  I always promised myself I would go back one day and say a proper goodbye to the house on Fremont. I just never got around to it. The closest I had come was on the day I sat in the car with my father, when he was in town to get his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, waiting for the red light to change.

  “Look, Daddy. Want to drive by and see the old house?” I had asked. “A lawyer and his wife live there now . . . They have two children . . .”

  We didn’t go that day. But eventually, he went back to Fremont Place. He was with Lonnie. She told me they met the new owners and walked around the house.

  I guess he just wasn’t in the mood to go that day. Or maybe going back with me—his daughter, with whom he had lived there—was too painful.

  * * *

  With a heavy heart, I put the letters and all the articles and magazines on my nightstand, then I went into the living room to look for Kevin. He had fallen asleep on the sofa. I sat down beside him and gently woke him with a kiss.

  “What time is it?” He yawned, stretching his arms and legs.

  “Just after four in the morning. I’m just finishing up.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I found a lot of interesting articles and read some of Dad’s letters.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m just tired.”

  “Okay, babe,” he said. “Let’s get some rest.”

  Then we turned out the lights, climbed into bed, and fell asleep.

  38

  I woke up the next morning, had breakfast with Kevin, and told him about everything. He listened intently as I explained about the letters, the new tape I had found, and all of the documents and keepsakes I had brought home from storage. Then I jumped into the shower, got dressed, kissed Kevin goodbye, and drove straight to my mother’s house. I was eager to talk to her about it all—especially about my father.

  * * *

  “I met him when I was eighteen years old,” said Mom. “People think we met in Africa, but we first met in Salt Lake City.”

  The thought of it made her tearful. She sniffled and swallowed and pushed herself upright in her chair. A hand pressed gently against her mouth and dropped away without comment.

  I placed my hand on her shoulder, hoping to comfort her.

  “He was tall, handsome, incredibly charismatic, charming, and—to my surprise—terribly shy.”

  I was thinking, trying to imagine what it must have been like for her. My father always had a sheer physical presence—even as a child. It was quite remarkable, really. He didn’t have to do or say anything. He had a magnetic attraction that drew people into the glow of his orbit. Mom never stood a chance, I thought. She would have fallen in love with him just observing him. Like most people did.

  “The entire car ride from the airport to his boxing exposition he joked with everyone else and said very little to me,” Mom continued. “He just smiled and pretended not to notice me. He later told me he was afraid of me.”

  She went on to explain the details behind their courtship. Her condo in Chicago, their trips to the farm in Michigan, where I was born, the stories and details behind their union. All the drama with Belinda—things the world didn’t know—why we moved to Los Angeles, their wedding, and their divorce.

  I sat there, silently listening to my mom tell her story. It wasn’t easy. I wanted to butt in and defend my father. She wasn’t speaking badly about him; defending Dad was just something I did naturally.

  “That’s not fair, Mom,” I said when she told me why she divorced him. “You knew he wasn’t faithful when you married him.” Though she didn’t know the extent of it.

  I thought about all the things I didn’t know—things she wasn’t telling me. Moments my father’s recorder didn’t capture and conversations half finished and a
bandoned.

  Listening to my mother, I felt like a whole new world was revealed to me. There was so much I didn’t know—would never have guessed and couldn’t remember. But it was a world no longer within my reach. The lost letters, the tape recordings, and the conversations that had become a part of me—they belonged to a long-ago place and time.

  So I listened. I listened long and hard, and I asked her hard questions.

  “Why did you wait so long to leave . . . and how could you not see something was wrong with Daddy?”

  There was a pause before she answered.

  “Sometime after the Larry Holmes fight we went to the hospital in New York City, where your father was thoroughly evaluated. All they found was that he had a sleep disorder—they said the cause was jet lag.”

  Even back then the papers were reporting that he was dying and only had months to live. Dad always got a kick out of that. He loved getting the attention.

  “Did I make the front page?” he always asked.

  Mom didn’t know that Dad was having trouble sleeping—until she heard him tell the doctor. They weren’t sleeping in separate bedrooms yet. But how would she have known if he didn’t tell her? Unless she had woken up in the middle of the night and found him.

  “The truth is,” said Mom, “after that I didn’t worry because the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him. A few years later Gene [Dad’s longtime friend] took him to the Mayo Clinic. The doctor diagnosed him with Parkinson’s syndrome and said it would not progress.”

  That’s when the conversation erupted.

  “How could you not know something was wrong with him? I was a little girl and I could see it. The whole world could see it. Why couldn’t you?”

  “The newspapers were always printing lies when he was fine. Your father was fine.”

  “He wasn’t fine, Mom!” I yelled. “Even I could see that!”

  “His speech was slurred at times, but it had been that way for years. We thought he was just tired. All of his medical tests came back fine!” she yelled back at me.

  “His hand shook, Mom! Even the newspaper reporters could see it. You still traveled together, Mom! How come you’re the only person who couldn’t see?”

  “I wasn’t in his office all the time! I didn’t see everything! I wasn’t there!” she finally admitted. “I was trying to figure out what to do with my life! His thumb twitched sometimes and his speech was slurred at times, but the doctors said it wouldn’t get worse, it wasn’t supposed to get worse!”

  “But he wasn’t fine, Mom! It did get worse and he needed you!”

  We were both crying by then. But I had finally asked her the questions. And she had finally admitted that she wasn’t around as often as she could have been.

  We hugged, wiped each other’s tears, and continued our conversation.

  “Your father never told me they changed his diagnosis to Parkinson’s disease. I found out after we were divorced,” said Mom. “He was a decent, loving human being. His biggest fault was fooling around. I didn’t always know when he was fooling around,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Sometimes I wouldn’t find out until years later. He didn’t have affairs—they were mostly one-night stands. But there were too many broken promises. After being hurt so many times my feelings gradually numbed over the years. I couldn’t have left him if it weren’t for that. Divorce is hard on the person leaving too. I always cared about him, but I had to distance myself somehow.”

  I realized there was nothing left for me to discover or figure out. This was my parents’ love story: their memories, their choices, their sorrows and regrets—their lessons.

  I told Mom about the tape I found and the Marilyn Funt interview she meant to give me. Hana, . . . there was a lot you were too young to remember, her note had said. Love, Mom.

  I told her about the articles, the sales contract of Fremont Place, their prenuptial agreement, and all of the other items I’d found in her storage the day before. Pizza was ordered, coffee was poured. More tears fell and dried. By the end of our conversation, I felt I had healed a little. Ultimately, there was a series of misunderstandings between my parents that led to them sleeping in different bedrooms and eventually their divorce. There was much more to their story than I have shared in this book, but it’s not my story to tell. Perhaps one day my mom will tell it.

  I finally understood what my mother always hoped I would. I had unfairly appointed her the villain, blaming and punishing her, ever since I was ten, for leaving my beloved father. Dad may have suffered acutely at the end, but my mother’s pain was drawn out over many years with each act of betrayal.

  Sometimes I still wish I could turn back the hands of time and rewrite the ending of my parents’ love story. In my version, my father would have handed her the letters. She would have read them and given him a second chance. I sometimes find myself asking, “What if?”

  What if he had stayed retired? What if he had been faithful? What if he had given her the letters? Would it have changed things? Would she have forgiven him? Who can say? But I do know this: even after all of the pain and heartache and sorrow that followed their divorce, I wouldn’t change a thing. Everything happens as it’s supposed to.

  I remember the look in both of their eyes every time they reconnected over the years. And I realize there was no end to their story—not really. Their love will live forever: in my father’s letters, through their children’s memories, in the photographs on my nightstand, and in this book. Maybe that’s enough.

  I handed the letters and tape recording to my mother. Finally understanding.

  “I always thought he never fought for me,” she had said. But after all these years she had found out he did.

  I hugged her goodbye. “Love you, Mom. See you at Laila’s this weekend,” I said, walking out the door.

  “Okay, love you—drive safe.”

  * * *

  In the early years, Mom had postponed her aspirations to become a medical doctor and dedicated herself totally to their marriage. She even took care of Laila and me. Life was often idyllic. We traveled everywhere as a family until Laila and I started elementary school. Eventually, Mom hired a live-in governess so she could pursue some of her own interests.

  She spent a lot of time trying to figure out what she wanted to do. For a while, she turned her hobby of horseback riding into a promising profession. By 1982, she was featured in the September issue of Jet magazine, posing with her horses and her countless ribbons and awards. It kept her away from home most of the day, which could be why my father started writing his letters to her. Sometimes he took us to the stables to watch her train, and he occasionally went to her shows. But after a while they both fell into the pattern of living their separate lives. As my father wrote in one of his letters, the relationship between them had become that of a brother and sister.

  After the divorce, Mom finally went back to school to earn a doctorate in clinical psychology. She’s currently working at one of the best medical centers in the country.

  When I think about my childhood, my mother always seemed busy and preoccupied, but at the same time she was always there for me when I needed her most. When I told her I was being bullied by Bertha in the third grade, she came to the school and tracked her down in the playground, holding my hand. Bertha could see us coming and was literally zigzagging through playing kids and playground equipment trying to avoid us. Mom told her to keep her hands to herself and leave me alone. After that Bertha never bothered me again.

  Mom was also great with my schoolwork. She spent hours helping me study for spelling bees and finishing homework. And sometimes she’d stay up until late rolling my hair for me—so I could feel pretty for my school crush. She always came to parents’ night and helped me with my class projects.

  My mother is a beautiful woman inside and out. She continues to grow and better herself with each passing day. She’s a special, classy, intelligent lady, and she has always pushed me to believe in myself. Although I
was angry with her for half of my childhood, we’ve always had a close, open, and honest relationship. I wouldn’t trade her for anyone in the world.

  Neither of my parents took lessons in child-rearing. They were doing the best they could with the weight of the world on their shoulders. And trying to make sense of their own lives in the process. Although they loved each other deeply, their time together had to come to an end.

  Like Dad said, “Life is a fair trade, where all adjusts itself in time. For all that you take from it, you must pay the price sooner or later.”

  * * *

  A few months after I discovered the letters, I arrived at my father’s house in Scottsdale, Arizona. Dad was sitting in his usual seat—a large, comfortable armchair that faced his ninety-inch television screen. Centered above it, staring down at him, was a small Neil Leifer portrait of his youthful face. A constant reminder that time waits for no man. His delight was clear in his expression as he watched himself dancing around the ring in the documentary When We Were Kings.

  His eyes, now sensitive to sunlight, were slightly squinted. I let down the remote-controlled shade behind him, blotting out most of the sun’s rays. A few gleams shone through the cracks, casting a soft glow over his serene face. I watched him sitting there for a moment. He looked more at peace with himself than ever.

  “I have something for you, Daddy,” I said, holding out a colorfully wrapped box. I knew how much he loved opening gifts. His eyes were glued to himself on the screen. I waited for the scene to fade—it was him talking about how he planned to destroy George Foreman—then I tried again.

  “Daddy, I made you an album of family photos. There are pictures of you, Uncle Rock, Mama Bird, Papa Cash, and all of your children and our mothers.”

  That got his attention. He loved looking at pictures, especially family photos.