chapter thirty-three
ON CHRISTMAS EVE DAY, the snow was still falling and the entire city was consumed with the idea of a white Christmas.
“Are you ready?” Jolie asked, chugging from her Starbucks cup.
“I think so.” I zipped up my coat and wrapped a scarf around my mouth. It was cold out, I thought, but maybe it would also be nice to be partially hidden.
We hailed a cab and I announced to the driver the address from the envelope that I had stared at and memorized for the last fourteen hours.
We took Lexington Avenue all the way up to the Upper East Side. I tried to let the elaborately decorated window displays distract me, but to no avail. My mind was spinning. What would he look like? What would he say? We slowed down to an apartment building near Lenox Hill Hospital and I wondered briefly if he was a doctor.
The woman who answered the door had a parrot sitting on her shoulder, a thick European accent, and absolutely no idea who had lived in the apartment before she did.
Neither did any of the neighbors.
“There’s got to be some kind of website that looks back at address history,” Jolie said on the cab ride home, but I was miles away, wondering how I could go on with such a permanent void.
Back at the apartment, Jolie handed me a chocolate donut and I sank back into the couch. Christmas Vacation was on TV, and when I couldn’t take any more zany Chevy Chase, I reached for the remote, accidentally knocking the gray ashtray off the coffee table. I bent down to pick it up, and feeling the smooth ceramic made me recall the day I ran off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The day I searched for Mom’s gallery to somehow be closer to her. I turned the cold ashtray in my hands, remembering the gallery. The spiral staircase, the diamond-patterned floor, the handsome man with the cleft chin stopping in front of me. I’m sorry. I thought I recognized you.
People always said I looked like my mother.
All at once I dropped the ashtray to the table, sending it clattering, and ran to my closet. I ransacked through my boxes until I found the photo of Mom and “D” at the Statue of Liberty.
Thick wavy brown hair, handsome face, and a cleft chin.
I tore out of the apartment and hailed a cab. I knew it was Christmas Eve and the chance of him being there was slim, but I couldn’t wait another second. I had to go.
As we slowed down near 86th Street, I saw the light in the gallery was on.
Oh my God. Someone is in there.
I had the cabdriver pull over across the street. I got out and tried to collect my thoughts. I leaned against the cold metal cart of a pretzel vendor.
“Pretzel?” the vendor asked.
I shook my head. “No, thank you. I’m just . . .” I pointed across the street toward the art gallery. The door opened.
“Oh my God!” I gasped.
“What?” The pretzel vendor looked panicked.
I continued to point. “I’m not going to make a scene, I promise.”
“Okay.” The pretzel vendor nodded. “Here,” he said kindly. “Lean under the umbrella so the snow doesn’t get you wet.”
“Thanks. Look at him!” I kept pointing. He was wearing a camel-colored overcoat and had his arm around a young pretty woman. “He probably makes a habit of seducing the young women who work with him. He ruins lives!”
“Sure, he does,” the pretzel vendor said.
“What a player!” I growled.
“Scum,” the pretzel vendor said.
“I mean, look at his hair! It’s so suave you just know he uses a blow dryer!”
“Absolutely.” The pretzel vendor handed me a pretzel.
I tore off a piece and ate it. As the chunks of salt hit my lips, I felt relief. This man, this Daniel, who was locking up the gallery door and going to spend Christmas Eve with his pretty girlfriend, there was no way he could be my father.
The woman leaned over and said something in Daniel’s ear. And Daniel threw his head back and laughed so loudly the pretzel vendor looked up toward the sky. Looked, I was sure, for a flock of geese honking by.
And I knew.
Suddenly, I was racing across the street, the pretzel flying out of my hands, skidding on piles of slush. I marched up the steps of the gallery, one finger pointed in accusation, the other frantically pushing up my nonexistent glasses, trying to clear my tear-blurred vision.
“YOU ARE DANIEL!” I shouted.
He stopped, his arm slowly dropping from the pretty woman’s shoulder.
The woman instinctively reached into her purse, clutched her cell phone. “Daniel?” she asked.
Daniel was stone still, a statue collecting snow on his sculpted hair. Then slowly he hunched down, extended his hand toward my face. He looked like he wanted to touch my cheek, but instead he opted to pull his hand back and cover his mouth. “My God,” he whispered through his leather gloves. “My God.”
You could see the comprehension cross his face, and I realized he hadn’t known that I existed. He sat down on the wet, concrete steps.
The pretty woman looked back and forth between us. “What is going on?”
But Daniel ignored her, staring so intently at my face I wanted to pull the scarf up over my eyes.
“Jill,” Daniel said softly. My mother’s name.
I started to cry. “You’ll never be my true father,” I said.
The pretty woman slowly dropped her cell phone back into her purse.
Daniel pushed on his knees and returned to a standing position. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “But I was never given a chance to be.”
My heart was thumping, and I didn’t know what to say. This was not at all what I expected. He was supposed to be a player—he was supposed to brush me aside and say I wasn’t entitled to anything from him. “My father was a good man,” I finally said.
Daniel nodded. “Yes. I’m sure he is.” Then Daniel stopped, noting my verb tense. “Oh,” he whispered. “And your mother?”
I couldn’t answer; my lip just trembled.
Daniel nodded, his eyes shifting down. “I see.” He reached into his wallet.
“I don’t need your money,” I started, but he extended his business card.
“Now you know where to find me,” he said. “If you ever want to.” He smiled a handsome but also kind smile. “No obligations.”
I took the card, turned, and bolted down the steps and across the street, only turning back once to see Daniel still standing in front of the gallery, watching me leave.