Page 19 of The Night We Lost Him

My mother said he intrigued her: this too-serious young guy with his mop of blond hair who seemed out of place in a family-focused hotel. My father felt like she didn’t belong there, either. She belonged on a movie set. She belonged on a world stage. He said one of the things he liked most about my mother was that she was so comfortable in her own skin that people just wanted to be around her—wherever she was.

He was correct about that. My mother was confident in a way you could only be when you really knew yourself. When you really knew what you wanted. And, at least then, she wanted to get to know him. She also didn’t want to change her life. She loved her old farmhouse in Croton. She loved walking to work at the high school and only going into the city for studio sessions, or the occasional night out.

So my father sublet his West Village apartment and moved in with her. He started doing the hour-plus commute to Midtown Manhattan each morning and back every night, not begrudging her that it added two hours to his day.

And my mother didn’t begrudge him when their marriage started to show strain and he started coming home less, staying at his West Village apartment again.

She didn’t begrudge him when shortly after Walter Hayes died and left him the company, my father started spending longer days at the office in Manhattan, which led to even more nights spent in that West Village apartment, and (eventually, as they grew further apart) to a new friend, the travel expert on a popular morning show. The new friend named Sylvia.

I spent almost no time at my father and Sylvia’s place while I was growing up. Sylvia had little interest in having a stepdaughter around—a point she made clear by purchasing a penthouse apartment for her and my father’s growing family and conveniently not designating a bedroom for me. One of the few times I visited them, I overheard my father insisting that I have my own space to decorate in a way that made me feel comfortable, to which Sylvia replied, without a hint of irony: There are Frette sheets in the guest room. If those aren’t comfortable, I can’t help her.

Even if Sylvia had been welcoming, my father would have siloed his different families anyway. He was more comfortable focusing on each of us separately rather than figuring out the implications inherent in merging all of us. He liked to come up to visit me in Croton most Friday evenings, so the three of us could have dinner together.

He often came up for dinner, even when I was older and I chose to spend most free nights with my friends instead of with him.

He and my mother would take walks by the river or drive to Cold Spring to get an early supper, just the two of them. Sometimes, they’d just sit on the porch and catch up.

It wasn’t romantic between them. My mother started dating another musician, Julian, shortly after she and my father separated. From day one, she was completely devoted to him. They were devoted to each other. She’d often say to me, I was meant to meet your father so we could have you. I was meant to meet Julian for me. As for my father, he was the one who left their marriage in the first place.

I pick up a photograph of the three of us at my college graduation—my mother in the middle of my father and me—our arms wrapped around each other, all of us laughing. I zero in on their faces, easy with each other, relaxed. They’d been divorced for over a decade at that point, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at them. You would only see how close they seemed.

So how do you explain it? My father’s desire to keep my mother close, long after it was about me. How could I begin to understand his need to start new lives but never to walk away from the old ones?

Oh, for Pete’s sake, my love, my mother used to say when I’d ask. It’s like you don’t know your father at all.

Fifty-One Years Ago

The first time Liam met Cory, she was coming out of his bedroom.

“Hi there,” she said.

She was wearing a green wrap dress, her curly hair running halfway down her back. The shock of her standing there—this beautiful girl in his bedroom doorway—like she belonged there, made him step back.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I don’t know, can you?”

She smiled at him, her eyes shining. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, though she was beautiful. But it was more than that when she looked at him with those eyes. She was so familiar to him. So present. Liam had never seen her before, and suddenly he felt like he’d never not seen her.

“I’m Cory,” she said.

“Liam.”

She held out her hand, and he took it just as his cousin Joe walked out of his bedroom too.

“Hey, bud,” Joe said. “This is Cory.”

“I heard.”

“She just transferred to Midwood…”

Liam nodded, keeping his eyes tight on Cory. He didn’t even look over at Joe—Joe who had recently transferred to Midwood and moved in with Liam’s family. He’d moved, more specifically, into the top bunk in Liam’s room after running into some trouble at his own high school in Vinegar Hill. His father wasn’t in the picture to help out. And his mother (Liam’s mother’s sister) decided Joe needed a change. Needed a good influence, needed someone with his head on straight. Needed someone like Liam.

Cory was still holding his hand.

“Where’d you transfer from?” Liam asked her.

“Immaculate Heart, unfortunately.”

---