40

The streets of Teaneck, New Jersey, were nearly deserted on Erev Yom Kippur. We had arrived early and circled the block a couple of times to get our bearings. In the emptiness and quiet—not typical of an ordinary weekday—I could sense the town’s anticipation of the holiest day in the Jewish year. We passed a large synagogue, one of several. By this evening it would be crowded with congregants, and the sound of the shofar would pierce the air. A suburb of New York City, Teaneck has long been known for its tight-knit Jewish population. My father’s younger brother raised his family in this town, and I counted at least two cousins among its many rabbis. This only added to the surreal nature of the moment. Of all the possible destinations, this place to which I felt an uneasy connection had turned out to be the best meeting spot for lunch with Ben and Pilar.

Michael and I parked just outside Amarone, an Italian restaurant I had chosen. I know the area somewhat. In fact, I knew the area not at all and had relied on the recommendations of local friends, one of whom had even scouted a couple of places and sent me photographs. Much of my anxiety had been poured into making a restaurant choice. It needed to be quiet but not too quiet. Not empty at the lunch hour, or too busy—I didn’t want us to feel rushed. Oh, and not too expensive, but nice enough to be relaxing. I then called the restaurant and asked for a corner table—my friend had specified which one—and explained that it was a special occasion. No, not a birthday or an anniversary, nothing like that. Just important.

I was in a state of high alert. Even after all the careful planning, it seemed crazy and impossible, as if I had been swept into someone’s novel—someone’s melodramatic novel—and I was playing a character rather than living my life. And then there were the practical concerns: Was I going to risk alienating him by asking questions about what he remembered from that time? Were we going to keep it at polite chitchat? How much would we share with each other? And what about his wife? I wondered what it could possibly be like—married for fifty years, retired, with three grown children—to discover that your husband had another child. From what I could gather about Pilar from bits and pieces available online, she seemed to have lived a traditional life for a woman of her generation. She was a doctor’s wife. An avid golfer. She and Ben were dedicated congregants of a local church. My news must have rocked their world—and yet they had come around to deciding to have this meeting. Second thoughtus.

“We should go in,” Michael said.

We still had half an hour. Maybe they had arrived early as well. What if they were already inside? I wanted to stay suspended in this moment of before. I didn’t have the muscles for this. How could I be emotionally or psychologically equipped to meet the biological father I hadn’t ever known existed? It was as if I had just strapped on my ice skates and was expected to perform a triple axel.

“I’m not ready.”

We sat in the car watching the entrance of Amarone. The restaurant’s maroon canopy hung over a small patio dotted with tables. It was still quite warm, unseasonably so. I had worn a favorite sweater over a silk camisole and corduroy jeans for my meeting with my biological father. Father, Michael had said that morning as he was getting dressed. We’ve been married twenty years, and I’m about to meet your father.

I had considered wearing something of my dad’s to keep him close to me. But I didn’t want him at the table with Ben. I didn’t want him hovering there, stricken, sorrowful. It felt like a betrayal of one father, that I was meeting my other father. And if my dad had known—had always loved me, as I knew he did, in full recognition that I wasn’t his biological child—then that, too, would make this day fraught beyond measure. If he had chosen to keep such a massive secret, how could it feel to have that secret revealed now, when it was too late to discuss or make amends? I once heard a psychic say that the dead are able to observe the living with compassion but not emotion. In that case, the entire restaurant would be filled with my long-lost relatives: mother, father, aunts, uncles, floating, invisible, impassively witnessing the meeting about to take place.

I watched the sidewalk and front door of Amarone.

“Let’s go in,” Michael said again.

“I can’t.” I felt pinned to the spot. “How do I greet him? Do I hug him? Shake his hand?”

“You’ll know.”

“And who should pick up the check?”

“We’ll pick up the check.”

“You don’t think that will insult him?”

“Honey, you’re going to have to let this play out.”

Just then—seeing before I fully registered what I was seeing—I caught a glimpse of an older couple slowly walking up the sidewalk in the near distance. The man was tall, white-haired, wearing a blue button-down shirt and khakis. He held the bent elbow of a petite, elegant woman. It was Ben.

“Get out of the car,” Michael said.

“I can’t. Let’s wait.”

“Get out of the car,” he repeated. “Now.” He said it lovingly but firmly, not taking no for an answer, as if teaching a child to swim or ride a bike. This was my moment to flail or to fall on my own. I opened the car door. I saw them seeing me. There was no going back.

The four of us moved toward one another. It was probably no more than half a dozen steps. What now? There seemed to be nothing to do but acknowledge the strangeness, to live inside the world of it.

“Ben,” I said. “Hello.”

It was bewildering to look at him—to see my features reflected back at me. All those staring contests I’d held with myself as a child were about this, I now understood. I had been searching and searching for the truth in the mirror, trying to make sense of my own face. Here it was, finally, irrefutably, in the form of the old man standing before me.

I stuck out my hand. “I’m Dani.”

His eyes crinkled as he smiled. Both of us were flushed bright pink. Michael and Pilar were now both standing slightly apart from us. A passerby might take us for a family.

Ben took an awkward half step toward me. His voice was like a fragment from a remembered dream. His first words:

“Would it be all right to give you a hug?”