An Invisible Thread Read online

  The baby of the group, just four years older than Maurice, wasn’t nearly as hardened. He was the handsome one, the one the girls loved, and Maurice knew him as Uncle Nice or sometimes Uncle Cassanova. He was also one of the smarter brothers, though that didn’t do him much good. As a drug dealer he was hapless and often wound up in jail. He is in federal prison today, doing ten years for drug trafficking.

  And there was the aspiring hip-hopper, who gave himself the rap name Juice. Uncle Juice was terrified of police and so never joined his brothers in dealing drugs. But he smoked more marijuana than all of them combined. His fondness for pot kept him in a perpetual haze, spinning rhymes that went nowhere, like his dreams. On 9/11, Uncle Juice should have been at the World Trade Center where he sometimes worked as a freelance messenger. But that day he was too high to get in on time and, instead, watched the first plane hit the Twin Towers on TV.

  “Michelle,” he told his wife, “I ain’t going in today ’cause a plane hit my building.”

  “Derek, stop playing,” she said.

  Uncle Juice then noticed the tower he worked in had not been hit, so he put on his clothes and got ready to go in. He was lacing up his sneakers when the second plane struck.

  “Plane hit the other building,” he announced, plopping on the sofa and rolling another joint. “Now I really ain’t going in.”

  A few days later, Maurice asked him, “Uncle Juice, do you know how lucky you are?”

  “Not lucky,” Juice said. “I knew the planes were coming. The rats in the towers told me.”

  “And that,” he told Maurice, by way of offering a little advice, as uncles often do, “is why you never go to work on time.”

  Over the years the uncles came and went. Sometimes none of them were around; sometimes only one or two; other times all six. To Maurice, they were family. They were the only family he knew.

  And together with his mother and his grandmother, they were the people who cared most about him in the world. By outside standards they may not have appeared to care much about Maurice at all, but in a city that seemed hostile, in a series of welfare hotels and shelters that housed the crazy and the violent, Maurice’s relatives were his only protectors. He knew whose side he was on. He knew where he was safest, if not from all harm, then at least from the worst of it.

  Maurice saw that, in their own way, these people loved him. And he saw in his grandmother someone he could count on when he really needed her.

  One night, when the family was staying at the squalid Prince George welfare hotel on West 28th Street in Manhattan, Maurice’s mother did not come home. She did not come home the next night, either. She did not come home for two weeks. No one knew why; she was simply there one day and not there the next. Maurice’s older sisters took this as a cue to fend for themselves and, though they were barely teenagers, moved in with older boyfriends. Maurice’s uncles were scattered, and Grandma Rose was living in another welfare hotel, the Bryant, farther uptown.

  That left Maurice all by himself at the Prince George. He was ten years old. At night he’d wander over to Park Avenue South and talk to the prostitutes who worked the streets. One of the pimps, known as Snake, took him under his wing.

  “Yo, youngblood,” Snake said. “I want you to do something for me.”

  Snake had Maurice watch as men drove by and made deals with the hookers. They’d park and take the hookers into their cars. Snake didn’t want any one trick going on too long; he needed his girls on the street getting more work. So he told Maurice, “If you seen them bitches in the car for more than five minutes, go bang on the window and tell ’em police coming.”

  Maurice did this every night until dawn. Snake paid him in single dollar bills, and sometimes he’d finish a night with a hundred dollars.

  In a way, it was Maurice’s first job.

  Then, as the sun came up, Maurice always spent the money the same way: he played video games for hours at a Times Square arcade.

  Then one day he heard a loud knock at the door of the Prince George. It was 7:00 a.m., and Maurice had just come in from a night on the streets. He figured it was a neighbor or maybe one of his uncles, so he opened the door. Instead, he saw two white men in suits. He slammed the door and locked it; the men kept banging.

  “Open up! We need to talk to you!” they yelled. Maurice went to the window and considered crawling out, but he was on the thirteenth floor. The banging got louder. Finally, Maurice hatched a plan and opened the door. “We’re from the Bureau of Child Welfare,” one of the men said. “We need to take you down to the lobby.”

  Maurice said nothing and went with the men. But he waited for them to relax just a bit, and when they stopped in the lobby to make a call, Maurice bolted. “Stop that boy!” they yelled, barking instructions into walkie-talkies as they gave chase. Maurice ran up the block and looked back; the men had climbed into a white van and were coming after him. Maurice turned sharply and went up a block that ran against traffic so the van couldn’t follow, but the van rounded the corner and kept on his tail. He ran up Fifth Avenue, again so they couldn’t follow, but they managed to catch up. When they got too close he dove under a car and hid as they sped past. But when he got up, they spotted him again.

  He ran past Macy’s department store, past Rockefeller Center, past St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Past a thousand oblivious working men and women. He made it up to 54th Street, where his grandmother was staying at the Bryant. He ran inside as the van pulled up and the men jumped out. He ran up the stairs to the fifth floor, the men close behind. He got to Grandma Rose’s room and banged on the door, and when she opened it, he collapsed inside just as one of the men grabbed his arm.

  “We are BCW,” the man said. “This boy’s mother has been incarcerated, and we need to take him with us.”

  Maurice’s grandmother pulled out Betsy.

  “My grandson ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  The men were convinced to leave Maurice in her care.

  When Maurice told me about the joint Grandma Rose gave him, he did not mention it with sarcasm or scorn. He said it matter-of-factly. To him, it had been a real gift, a true act of kindness. It meant someone had thought about him, and that was better than the alternative—to be forgotten, ignored, invisible. He didn’t know there was anything wrong with being given an illegal drug. He didn’t know any kind of life at all without drugs.

  When he got the joint, Maurice put it to his lips, inhaled, and choked. He took another hit and coughed even more. Grandma Rose took it away from him, and from that day forward she tried her best to keep Maurice away from the scourge of drugs. She saw something in him in that moment—something different, something special. Perhaps she saw the same thing I did on that street corner.

  When we both finished our McDonald’s meals, Maurice and I walked toward Broadway. This time, I didn’t want to just say goodbye and send him on his way.

  “Maurice, how would you like to get together next Monday night and go to dinner again? We’ll go to the Hard Rock Café.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Can I wear these clothes?”

  I figured they were the only clothes he owned.

  “Yes, you can,” I said. “So we’ll meet on the same corner at seven, okay?”

  “Yes, Miss Laura,” he said. “Thank you for my meal.”

  And then he was gone, slipping into the night.

  This time, I had the feeling I would see him again.

  I was back on 56th Street exactly one week after I’d met Maurice, and my watch said 7:02 p.m. I felt pretty sure he’d show up, but still I didn’t really know much about him and there were a million reasons he might not make it. Men in suits and women in heels hustled past, heading for drinks and dinner. At 7:05, still no sign of Maurice.

  Just a few minutes later he came walking up Broadway. He still had on the burgundy sweats, but I was surprised to see they were clean. Somehow, he’d laundered them. And his face and hands, too, were scrubbed, not like the other times I’d seen him.
/>   He’d made an effort to look his very best for dinner.

  We walked up the block to the Hard Rock Café, which in those days was a happening spot. Guitars on the walls and good greasy burgers. Our waitress led us to our table; I noticed she was especially friendly and attentive toward Maurice. It was as if she understood the situation and wanted to make Maurice’s night as special as I did. She handed us our menus, and Maurice disappeared behind the oversized list of appetizers and entrées.

  When he emerged, he said, “Miss Laura, can I have a steak with mashed potatoes?”

  “You can have anything you want.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna have a steak.”

  When a thick, sizzling slab of sirloin arrived, Maurice looked as if he’d never seen anything like it. When he picked up his giant steak knife and heavy fork, I could see he had no idea how to use them. He held the knife with his fist like a dagger. I didn’t say or do anything—I didn’t want to spoil his dinner with etiquette lessons. If he asked for help, then of course I would help, but for now I just let him do his thing. Finally, he tore off a piece of the steak and ate it. He must have really liked it because he smiled, and this time his smile was as wide as could be.

  I was starting to really like seeing that smile.

  After dinner, we walked back to our spot.

  “Maurice, would you like to meet again next Monday and have dinner?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So we’ll meet right here, seven?”

  “Okay,” he said. “Thank you for my steak.”

  “You’re welcome, Maurice. Good night now. And be careful.”

  He took off running, maybe back home, maybe somewhere else. I walked to my apartment and tried not to think about where he’d gone.

  The next Monday we went to the Broadway Diner on 55th Street. Maurice had passed it every day but never gone in. He’d peered through the windows once or twice, just as he’d done at dozens of other diners and restaurants and stores in Manhattan. It was just another place that wasn’t accessible to him.

  At the diner Maurice considered his thick menu and finally said he wanted eggs.

  “Eggs?” I asked. “For dinner?”

  Maurice sat there, confused. He didn’t know what I was talking about. He had no comprehension of the concept of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He didn’t know different foods were served at different times. To him, there was no such thing as a structured meal.

  He ate whatever he could get, whenever he got it.

  Maurice ordered eggs, and when the waiter asked, “Scrambled or over easy?” Maurice guessed “over easy.” He also asked for orange juice, but when it arrived he made a face and didn’t touch it.

  “Something wrong with your juice?”

  “It’s gone bad, Miss Laura,” he said. “There’s all this stuff floating on top.”

  I told him about pulp and he took a tentative sip. Then he drank his fresh juice in a couple of gulps and asked for another.

  Afterward, at our spot, I said, “Maurice, next Monday? Seven?”

  “Yes, Miss Laura. I’ll be here. And thank you for my dinner.”

  By then, I was already cooking up a surprise for him, and I planned to spring it on him the following Monday. I’d asked him if he liked sports, and he’d said he watched the Mets on TV.

  “Have you ever been to a baseball game?”

  “A real game? No way.”

  My boss at USA Today had season tickets to the Mets. I knew from having two younger brothers just how important and thrilling baseball could be to a boy. So that was my surprise: I was going to take Maurice to his very first baseball game.

  For my younger brother, Frank, there was nothing more magical in the world, nothing more wondrous to own and to hold, than his old worn leather baseball mitt. It may have been a Rawlings, or a Wilson, I can’t remember. Nor can I pretend to understand what it is about baseball and all the stuff of baseball that’s so entrancing to boys. But I know that it is, and I saw it in six-year-old Frank—some elemental stirring that made him love his bat and his cap and, above all else, his glove.

  I realize now, many years later, that baseball was something other than just a favorite hobby for Frank; it was his escape. We all needed one—me, my sisters, Annette and Nancy, my brothers, Frank and Steve—and we found it in different ways. For Frank, it was imagining he was batting clean-up for the Yankees. The baseball glove was his talisman: the thing he could cling to in the storm.

  My family lived an outwardly typical life in Huntington Station, a solidly middle-class town an hour east of Manhattan. My father, Nunziato, was a bricklayer and a bartender, beloved by friends and neighbors and all the hundreds of people he ever gave a free drink to. Everyone called him Nunzie. He was short and stocky, with a bald spot on the top of his head, a twinkle in his eyes, and a smile that would make a stranger believe he was a friend. His hands and forearms were, to a child, cartoonishly strong. He fancied himself a builder, and he built two of the homes we lived in—plain, sturdy houses that are still there today. Most of all, my father was kinetic, restless, unable to stand still for long: he never stopped hustling, never really caught his breath.

  My mother, Marie, was the opposite—a soft, retreating soul. For a time she was a waitress at a catering hall called the Huntington Town House, working long hours for little pay and handing over her checks to my father. She worked weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, anniversaries, you name it, sometimes starting at ten in the morning and not coming home until two the next morning. She was shy around new people; warm and loving with all of us. What I remember most clearly about her is how very beautiful she was. She had a lovely sweetness and innocence about her, a girlishness that would still surface whenever she found reason to be happy in her later years. I know all five of her children felt entirely loved by her; she had so much room in her heart for us that we never wanted to be anywhere else.

  My father’s job as a bartender meant he left for work between 6:00 and 6:30 p.m. That was pretty much the opposite of most dads, who’d be cozying up to the dinner table at about that time. As a result, we’d eat dinner at five, then watch our father leave for the night. On its own, this schedule might not have been too disruptive. After all, plenty of people work nights. But it was my father’s absences—those hours after he left and before he made it home again—that most defined my childhood and that still most define the person I’ve become.

  You see, something would happen to my father when he was away. When he came home, he was different. You could see it in the way his face had changed. You could tell by the way he parked the car. You could hear it from the sound of the car door slamming. It didn’t always happen, nor was the intensity of it always the same. But it was in the waiting—in the not knowing—that the true terror resided.

  One Sunday my father spent the afternoon tending bar. My mother was waitressing that day, so it was just the children at home. Around 6:00 p.m., my father came back. We scattered when we heard him pull up the driveway, all of us trying to avoid his line of sight. He went into the kitchen and there he found one of his tape measures on the table.

  He picked it up. “What’s this?” he said. Something was wrong with the tape measure: it was jammed. I knew Frank had been playing with it. My father had a lot of tape measures, and sometimes Frank would dig one out and fool around with it. Frank was five years old that day, two and a half years younger than me. He was a sweet, harmless kid, goofy and good-natured with an endearing stutter—an almost heartbreakingly guileless boy.

  “Frank!” my father bellowed. “Frank!!”

  My sister Annette and I sprang into action. We ran around the house shutting all the windows, so our neighbors wouldn’t hear what was to come. No one had ever told us to do this; we just did it on our own out of instinct. My father trundled down the hall to my brother’s bedroom and found Frank there. He stuck the tape measure in his son’s face.

  “What did you do to this?!”

  My father never hit me or
my sisters. He saved that for our mother and for poor Frank. But violence is not always a bodily thing. This time Frank flew out of the room, ahead of any blows. My father looked around the room for something to focus on.

  He saw my brother’s baseball mitt.

  He grabbed it and stormed down the hall, through the living room, out the front door, and into the garage. Frank saw what was in his hand and chased after him, screaming, “Dad, no! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!!” My sisters and I followed, begging him to stop.

  My father went to the wall and pulled down a pair of shearing scissors.

  My father took the scissors to the glove. He ripped through the hard leather, shredding it into ragged chunks. Frank couldn’t bear to see this; he ran inside the house, bawling. I went to the phone and called my mother at work: “Come home right now!” Annette ran and hid in her room with Nancy.

  When my mother came home, she found Nunzie passed out on the living room sofa. Scattered around him: pieces of Frank’s baseball mitt. Frank was curled up in a corner of his bedroom, and my mother tried to comfort him as he cried. But there was nothing she could say or do.

  The next morning, my father acted as if nothing had happened. So did we. This was how we handled it, how our mother told us to handle it. I can still hear her whispering to us, “Be normal, act normal.” A few days later, my father came home with a new baseball glove for Frank.

  He didn’t realize he could never replace the one he had destroyed.

  When we met on the corner on our fourth Monday together, I told Maurice that instead of going out I would cook him dinner in my apartment. He was clearly surprised, but he said, “Great.” I surprised myself a little, too, with the invitation. I’d been thinking of giving Maurice a home-cooked meal, but the same doubts kept creeping in: Should I be inviting this child into my home? Could this somehow backfire? What will people think? But when I met Maurice on the corner that night—when he smiled as soon as he saw me—I knew it was okay.