by Dana Perry
And so I was now back in her office, waiting to learn more about the father I never knew and what had happened to him since he disappeared thirty-six years ago.
“Here’s what I’ve found out,” Carruthers said. “I’ve located the records for a James Tucker that seems to fit the profile of the man you’ve been looking for. This James Tucker was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1959, he attended college in Dayton, Ohio and he moved to Cincinnati after graduation where he worked as a marketing representative for an advertising firm. He married a woman named Susan Thorne from Pittsburgh, who he’d met in college. She gave birth to a child, a girl named Jessica.”
Carruthers smiled at me when she said that. Susan Thorne was my mother’s maiden name. And Jessica, of course, was me. My full name was Jessica Anne Tucker.
“Sometime soon after that, James Tucker disappeared. He was fired from his job for not showing up and not heard from again for a long time. But I was able to pick up his trail a few years later in Raleigh, his hometown. He filed for divorce from there with Susan Thorne Tucker, then married a woman named Jackie Stafford. They had three children, two boys and a girl. Based on all the evidence I’ve been able to accumulate, this appears to be the man named James Tucker that you wanted to find.”
I nodded, still in a state of shock. I wanted to say something – anything – but no words came out.
This was the moment I had been waiting for.
The answers to all the questions I had about my father.
“Have you talked to him?” I finally asked, when I could pull myself together enough to actually speak.
“No.”
“Why not? If we asked him why he left, told him who I was—”
“James Tucker is dead.”
She showed me an obituary about him from the Raleigh newspaper. It said James Tucker had been killed in a highway accident about ten years earlier. He had been a schoolteacher, who taught social studies and civics at a local high school and also was an assistant coach on the baseball team there. A school bus carrying the team back from a game was rear-ended on Interstate 95. Most of the students survived, but three people died. One of them was James Tucker.
I stared at the words in front of me for a long time. I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe this was happening. After all this time, wondering about my father and dreaming about finding him one day and somehow reuniting – well, none of that really mattered. Because he was dead. Just like my mother was dead. Which meant I truly had no family at all anymore.
But then I remembered something.
“You said he had three children with his new wife. Two boys and a girl. That means I have brothers and a sister. At least… half-brothers and a half-sister. That’s something. Do you think you can try to put me in touch with them? They’re my family, after all. Maybe not the family I was looking for. But the only family I have.”
Wendy Carruthers shook her head no.
“There’s more,” she said.
She looked extremely uncomfortable. But why? She’d already told me my father was dead. What else could there be?
And that’s when I found out.
“James Tucker wasn’t your biological father,” Carruthers said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I found records that show at the time of your birth, James Tucker demanded a paternity test be taken. That was shortly before he left your mother and his job and everything else in Cincinnati. DNA testing was much more basic back then, but paternity testing was available. We don’t know why he wanted a paternity test, but we do know the results. They were negative. Like I said, James Tucker was not your father.”
“Then who was my father?”
“No one knows,” Wendy Carruthers said sadly.
Forty-One
I don’t remember everything that happened after that.
A lot of it is still a blur.
I remember Wendy Carruthers telling me more about the DNA findings that confirmed James Tucker, the man my mother was married to when I was born, was not my biological father. I remember asking her questions without any real answers. And I remember leaving the building where her office was and finding myself out on the street again.
I’m not sure exactly what I did then.
I know I called the Tribune office at some point and said I was sick and couldn’t come to work for the rest of the day. I’d never called in sick before. Even during my worst days with all the pain from my injuries after the Central Park attack. But this was a different kind of pain. And I couldn’t face the people at the Tribune right now with my world suddenly turned upside down by Wendy Carruthers.
I called Ellen. She was the one person I could talk to about this. But she wasn’t in her office. I left a message asking her to get back to me as soon as possible. But I didn’t know how long that would be.
I went home for a while. But I didn’t want to stay there. Not alone. So I went outside again and began to walk. Up Irving Place to Gramercy Park, then East over to Third Avenue and uptown after that. I walked for a long time. At 58th Street, I saw a little girl – no more than five or six years old – being carried on the shoulders of her father. She looked so happy. I know it sounds crazy, but I was jealous of that six-year-old girl. Why did she have a father and I didn’t? Why did everyone else have a father except me? Even Maura Walsh had a father. She might have hated him by the end, but at least she had a father to hate.
I thought I’d had someone to hate like that all my life. James Tucker.
But I couldn’t hate him anymore.
He was dead.
And he wasn’t even my father.
It was all a lie.
I just couldn’t get that harsh reality out of my mind, no matter how hard I tried.
I checked my messages. Still nothing from Ellen. I tried to call her again, but no luck. Where in the hell was she? I needed to talk to her. I needed to talk to someone. Well, not anyone. Someone I felt comfortable with and someone I could trust and someone I wanted to be with right now. If not Ellen, then who? I thought about calling Michelle or Lorraine or even Peter at the Tribune. But I really didn’t want to involve the people I worked with there in something so personal for me. Besides, I’d already called in sick. No, I needed to stay away from the Tribune right now.
I kept walking. I was in the East 70s now. I pretended I didn’t know where I was going. But I had a destination. The Hangout. The restaurant where Sam worked.
Except Sam wasn’t there when I got to the Hangout. They said it was his night off. But Sam had told me he lived nearby the restaurant. And he told me I should call him when I was ready. I reached into my handbag, took out the card Sam had given me and called his number…
“What the hell is wrong, Jessie?” he asked when he opened the door of his place and saw me.
I was a mess. I was pretty tired too from all the walking I’d done. My legs kept buckling underneath me when I tried to stand. So I stood there holding onto his front door for support. Then, when I tried to go in, I stumbled on my bad right leg. Sam caught me and carried me to the couch.
He asked me if he could get me anything.
I said I sure would like a glass of wine, and he went to get it.
While he was gone, I thought about why I was there. How much should I tell him? How honest with him should I be about what I was feeling right now? In the end, I decided not to tell him anything about Wendy Carruthers or my father who wasn’t my father or any of the rest of it. I would tell that all to Ellen when I found her. But not Sam.
No, I’d come here for a different reason, I realized now.
I was tired of being a victim. I’d been a victim in the park twelve years ago. Now I felt like a victim all over again because of what I’d found out about my family history from Wendy Carruthers. I couldn’t do anything to change any of those things.
But didn’t want to be the victim anymore.
I wanted to take control of my life, to do something on my own that was
different and daring and exciting.
I looked around at his apartment. It was a two-bedroom in a high rise that had a doorman and even a concierge downstairs. Sam lived pretty well. I guess there must be good money in managing a restaurant. There were a lot of books around, just like my place. I liked that. I looked at some of the books on his shelves. Faulkner. Hemingway. Poe. Lots of newer stuff too. Stephen King, James Patterson, Janet Evanovich, Gillian Flynn and a lot of other popular writers. There was also a computer, a printer and a writing desk piled high with sheets of paper and notes on yellow legal pads.
“So this is the writer’s lair, huh?” I said when he came with my wine and then sat down in a chair across from me.
“It’s where I work.” He smiled.
“Very nice.”
I took a big drink of my wine. I was pretty sure I’d had wine earlier too at a place or two I stopped along the way in my walk. I kept drinking as we talked. When my glass was empty, I stood up and walked over to where the wine bottle was next to Sam. I poured myself another glass. I drank some more of it.
I was definitely starting to feel the effects of the wine now, both this and whatever I’d drunk earlier. Plus all the emotions running through me were making it even worse. The room seemed to be spinning a bit as I plopped down next to him. I reached over, took his hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back. I felt tired. I lay my head down on his shoulder. It felt good.
I picked my head up, leaned closer and kissed him.
He kissed me back.
“So is it too late to take back my no-sex decree I made at lunch the other day?” I asked him.
“I don’t think there’s any hard and fast rules binding you to that agreement.” He smiled again.
“And you are a lawyer.”
“Was a lawyer.”
“Whatever.”
I kissed him again.
“Let’s do it then.”
“You mean have sex?”
“Yes.”
He looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think we should do that right now.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just…”
“You’re not gay or something, are you?”
“No, I’m not gay.”
“Are all your working parts in order?”
“Last time I checked.”
“Then don’t you find me attractive?”
“I think you’re very attractive.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Look, you’re upset about something, Jessie. You’ve been acting strangely ever since you got here. You’re definitely very emotionally distraught. To be honest, I think you may be drunk.”
I was starting to get mad now.
“So what?” I said. “You’re an unpublished writer! Tomorrow morning I’ll be sober and you’ll still be an unpublished writer.”
Of course, somewhere deep down inside, I knew he was right. He didn’t want to take advantage of me in the condition I was in. I realized that later. But all I could think about at the moment was here I was offering myself to this guy, and he’s telling me no.
“You can spend the night here if you want,” Sam said. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“No, thank you.”
I tried to stand up. The room definitely seemed to be spinning now.
“Then let me take you home,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
I grabbed my handbag and started for the door.
“At least wait while I call you a cab.”
“I can find a cab myself,” I told him.
Somehow, I made it out of the apartment, down the elevator and out onto the street by myself. I stood there for a while and let the fresh air help clear my head. As it did, I realized I was embarrassed by the performance I’d just put on back there. I thought about going back and apologizing, but I didn’t know what to say.
I kept standing there for a long time hoping maybe he’d follow me out onto the street, put his arms around me and hold me for a while and tell me everything was going to be all right.
That’s what I really wanted – just a man to hold me and show me some affection.
My fiancé Gary Bettig walked away from me.
So did Logan Kincaid, the guy from California.
Even my own father left me.
But Sam Rawlings didn’t come chasing after me.
No one ever did.
Forty-Two
What was the point? What was the point of any of it? That’s what I kept thinking about after I finally made it back to my apartment on Irving Place.
My apartment was normally a refuge for me from the crazy world that I lived in outside on the streets of New York City and at my job in the Tribune newsroom too. Here I had my books and my movies and my comfort foods in the kitchen and all the other good things in the life I’d so painstakingly built for myself after the horror of what happened to me in Central Park.
But, lying there awake alone in my bedroom now, I suddenly realized the utter hopelessness and futility of everything I’d done.
Because you can’t change the past.
And you can’t undo the terrible deeds that have been done.
No matter how hard you try to make it right again.
I guess I first discovered this difficult life lesson a long time ago when I was a young reporter starting out at the Tribune. I was full of self-righteousness and noble ideas and a naive belief that I could change the world and make it a better place back in those days.
That all evaporated during a conversation with the wife of a convenience store owner on a hot summer night in Brooklyn.
Her husband had been murdered during a robbery because he’d hesitated a second too long in opening a cash drawer. I was with the cops investigating the case and they tracked the holdup man to a nearby bar where he still had the stolen money. They easily captured him. I called in the story to the paper, and then I went back to the store to make sure the woman had heard the good news.
“They caught the man who killed your husband,” I told her.
“I don’t care about that,” she sobbed to me. “I just want my husband back.”
So in the end, even if we accomplish the things we set out to do, it turns out to be a hollow victory.
Like being attacked in Central Park will never leave my mind.
Or like finding out the truth about my father – that he never was my father at all – made me feel worse and more alone than I ever had before in my life.
And it’s the same with Maura Walsh. Even if I do find out who murdered Maura, it will never bring her back to life.
So why did I keep trying?
Well, I was a reporter. And reporters went looking for facts and answers. Like I did with Central Park and my father. Now, hopefully, I would find out the answers about Maura Walsh too. And, when that was done, I’d start working on a new story and do it all over again.
I knew a reporter at another paper who once compared what we did to the Albert Camus story of Sisyphus, the mythical character forced by the gods to push a heavy rock up a hill, only to see it roll back down again every time he did it. The rock was always at the bottom of the hill, and all he could do was keep pushing it to the top again and again. This was his punishment, this was his life.
Was that what I was doing here?
With Maura Walsh?
My father?
My own life?
Okay, maybe it was.
But, like Sisyphus, I didn’t know anything else to do.
So I’d just keep pushing the rock up the mountain for as long as it took.
Forty-Three
I had never visited the scene of the crime: the spot where Maura Walsh was killed. Oh, I knew it had been weeks since her murder. There weren’t likely to be any clues or evidence still there after all that time. But I wanted to see it in person. I was desperate for any kind of a lead on this story. Why not start at the place where it all happened?
Little Italy, the neighborhood
where Maura Walsh died, was in Lower Manhattan. An Italian enclave that’s endured for years in this changing city. We sometimes think of it because of John Gotti and other mob figures. But for many years it was made up of hard-working Italians – some of whom lived in buildings that had been there for years.
Now though, just like a lot of other parts of the city, many of the old buildings were coming down and being replaced by co-ops, cafés and cappuccino stores.
I stood on the street there now – next to the alley where Maura Walsh’s body was found – and wondered what happened to her during those last few minutes of her life.
The alley was next to one of the buildings that was being renovated or replaced. This one was a squat, gray, six-story structure with the windows boarded up and even some graffiti on the front door.
On the far corner, I could see a cappuccino store. Next to it was the pizza place called Delmonico’s where Billy Renfro had gone on the night Maura Walsh died. Next to that was a store that sold T-shirts. I decided to talk to everyone. I started with the pizza place.
“Yeah, I remember the cop,” the woman behind the counter told me when I asked about Billy Renfro. “I was here that night and gave him the pizza. I didn’t know who he was or think much of it then. But the police came to question me afterwards, so I figured out the whole story of what happened to that poor woman cop in the alley down the street.”
“Renfro just came in here, ordered his pizza, waited for it and left?” I asked.
“Sure, that’s pretty much the way it happened.”
“And you don’t remember anything else?”
“Just that he acted real nervous.”
“Nervous how?”
The woman shrugged. “You know, like impatient. He kept checking his watch and walking over to look out the window, as if he was waiting for someone. Then he paid for the pizza, and he left. A little while later, I heard all the sirens and knew something was going on. That’s really about all I know.”
The guy at the cappuccino shop didn’t know anything about the murder. He hadn’t even been there that night. He knew all about the building next to the alley though. He said there’d been construction crews inside, tearing apart the apartments. It was going to be turned into luxury co-ops that people said would cost at least a million dollars apiece. The cappuccino guy was happy about that, figuring the new tenants would be good business for him. But he didn’t like all the construction work. He said the noise drove him crazy.