Shards

If a bird's-eye view of the lower end of Manhattan seen from the east might be said to resemble the profile of a hound's head, then St Vincent's Hospital lies adjacent to the tear duct of the eye. It was less than a block away at the intersection of West Eleventh and Sixth Avenue that, one spring day, I stood with an early Saturday afternoon crowd waiting for the lights to change. Sun and clouds mixed and a fresh wind airing the city of the musty effects of its winter seclusion brought expressions of renewed hope to even the most stanch faces about us. Beside me stood my companion, a nervous woman who fidgeted constantly, an anxious individual for whom immobility represented a personal affront to her dignity. Even then, she sighed loudly, impatient at the delay caused by the light. I welcomed this enforced relief from her compulsive haste and, glancing casually up at the sunlit façade across the street, was drawn to a boldly painted, hand carved, oval wooden shingle attached to the brick. Presenting a real estate enterprise, it announced the surnames of two proprietors, one, the totally unexpected surname of my father - an unusual one.

I had never met my father, for I was adopted within a few days of birth in England, becoming indirectly aware of his identity when I was twelve years old. Then, news in the society papers of a royal commission stirred whispered gossip amongst my older five siblings. In response to questioning I was told of my connection to the painter,  a Pole, and cautioned never to broach the subject with "mother."

As a consequence of the disparity in age between myself and my siblings, my childhood was more akin to that of an only child and, because our mother was divorced and shunned her own family, I grew up without any relatives. Frequent moves from one home and boarding school to another were occasioned by her restless nature and, while well-off, she expressed little permanent happiness. All of this, added to which were her emotional distance and frequent physical absences plus the resentment expressed by some of my siblings at my presence in the family, tended to isolate me, so that news of my parent was all the more eagerly received. While I felt powerless to materially alter the biased circumstances of my existence, I grabbed hungrily at every snippet of information relating to my father, creating, in time, an exciting fantasy to sustain me in my loneliness.

My father, I decided, was of noble Russian ancestry and he, with his grandfather, a banker to the Tsar, had been obliged to flee the Revolution. Financially secure, they established themselves in Poland, where my father, showing early promise, pursued a career as a portrait painter. Moving to Paris, he married and produced a son, following which, on the advent of the Second World War, he fled to England. A romantic dalliance, such as I supposed was common in the bohemian life I imagined he lived, resulted in myself.

As time went on and relations with my mother failed to the point of her virtual abandonment of me in my mid-teens, I guarded this parental construct with increasing jealousy and, in the aftermath of her disappearance from my life, I sought to contact my father. With the help of a sympathetic in-law, I came into possession of his studio's phone number. Placing a call, I reached a woman who, while failing to identify herself, in response to my hesitant self-explanation, forbade me ever to call again. Some months later I learned of my father's death.

It was a difficult time  - the world seemed to have failed me. I felt, by turns, angry and depressed. Retreating yet further into myself, I experienced a desire to avenge myself of these indignities, while confronting the corrosive effects of the bitterness which attend such emotions. While I had no clear ideas as to how to proceed with my life, I decided that I must avoid the victimizing effects of the powerlessness I felt. Whatever meager resources I possessed, I concluded, must be utilized to salvage my battered self. These included emotional reserves, which I now rationed as if I were strictly parenting myself, and creative abilities, which enabled me to invent an explanation for my compromised presence in the world which, though false, sought to harm no one, while serving as a protective barrier against unwanted inquiry. Though I craved support and was obliged to accept some charity, I hated the pity that frequently accompanied it. To bolster myself, I further embellished the fantasy of my father, adding that, following his death, his estate had gone to his son, whilst I had been granted his title. This was a particularly appropriate story for, while consistent with my impoverished state, it allowed me to entertain the regard of a father who acknowledged his paternity, thereby allowing me to retain a vestige of pride.

I was highly selective of those to whom I doled out this fabulous account of myself, though, for a brief period while abroad, I arbitrarily assumed my father's surname. In time, seeing no improvement in my circumstances in England, I accepted the offer of a temporary job in America, where I finally decided to take up residence. A marriage came and went, followed by a live-in arrangement which proved more durable. Then, my adopted mother died. During these years, my energies consumed by the struggle to survive, I gave scant attention to my father. One brief initiative revealed the existence of several of his paintings in public collections, which helped to substantiate my limited awareness of him. Of my birth mother, I neither knew nor discovered anything.

With the death of my adopted mother came the release of papers and a photograph, attesting to the identity of my father. Amongst several letters was one from a sibling describing his impressions of my father, gathered while he sat for a portrait commissioned by "mother" for the express purpose of discovering something of my father. This portrait had hung in the succession of houses in which I grew up and, while I remembered its presence, the artist's signature meant nothing to me, until a couple of years prior to my mother's departure from my life. Then, I was too preoccupied with the declining circumstances of my existence to pay it any useful attention. In the context of the portrait's execution was a brief letter from my father acknowledging a complimentary letter from my mother. There was nothing to indicate that he had any idea that she had adopted his illegitimate son.

Spurred by these revelations, I decided to increase my investigations of my father and, because of the public exposure occasioned by his profession, was able to establish something of the circumstances of his life. Amongst these were the fact of his Polish origin and the discovery of a half-brother I had, until then, merely imagined. Of a title there was no record. Indeed, I had, by then, outgrown the need for the personal trappings I had earlier contrived. In conjunction with these endeavors I also attempted to learn something of my mother, but she remained as elusive as ever.

Such a quest as I was on demanded, I soon discovered, a need for self-pacing. The stress of conflicting emotions associated with each engagement demanded periods of recuperation, during which the largely unconscious process of absorption and integration of new material, or the lack of it, followed its own course. After all, I was expending considerable energy looking for parents, mine, who had decided, for whatever reasons, not to expend their own in retaining me, their offspring. The potential for the inevitable frustrations and disappointments attending such a mission to overwhelm and capsize it in a flurry of self-reproach dictated the need for an unhurried and detached attitude. While I might have hired a private detective - though I never seriously entertained the idea; the context was far too personal for that - my researches made me feel like one. There were a couple of trips to England, a few years apart, in the first of which I consulted various archival resources devoted to the Arts community, and, in the second, was given, following an interview with a social worker, such detailed information concerning my birth as was a matter of public record. All of this helped to establish a useful, if incomplete, picture of my father. Still, while I discovered my mother's name and, from National Health Service records, that she was still alive, numerous inquiries failed to reveal her location.

As this process moved along, developing a momentum of its own, despite my efforts to control it, in the absence of information concerning my mother and the increasing store of detail relating to my father, I came to feel a sufficiency of knowledge where the latter was concerned. After all, I now knew what he looked like and where he was from, in addition to which was the powerful fact that he had been dead for many years. What else might I reasonably entertain in the way of expectations of him? In light of these considerations, I resolved to devote my energies to the discovery of my mother.

It was in this spirit of resolution that I found myself contrarily, even stubbornly, confronted by my father's presence in the shape of his decidedly unusual surname on a blustery spring day in downtown Manhattan, as I waited for the lights to change in the company of an impatient young woman. I was shocked, for, though nothing I had learned of him had suggested his appearance in America, while it was also possible that there was another of the same name, I knew in the deepest part of me that I had found him, or at least his flesh and blood. Counter pointing the trauma of the moment was my wonder at the chance manner in which I had arrived at it.

I had just spent two weeks in February in The Bahamas with a woman I had known for some time, an excellent travel companion and one with whom I enjoyed a purely friendly relationship. While I had invited my impatient friend to accompany us, work considerations had obliged her to refuse. So it was, that, on my return, anxious to spend some time with her, I had offered to underwrite a long weekend to a city in the Northeast of her choosing. Declining Portland, Maine, and Boston, she settled on Manhattan. Thus it was that, through the agency of another’s decision, I found myself confronting what I was sure would prove to be my father's family. Overwhelmed, I blurted out my discovery, my mind a welter of thoughts as to how best to proceed with this new information. My first sensible action was to record our location, on my companion's advice.

At the hotel where we were staying I ascertained the phone number and address of the real estate company, while checking for any further listings bearing my father's surname. I found two. One was accompanied by a man's first name - could this be my half-brother? -  the other, simply an initial, which, I learned, most likely indicated a woman's listing, due to the New York City phone directories' policy of not publishing the names of female subscribers to deter anonymous calls. With this information, following another day in the city characterized by constant personal distraction relating to my unexpected discovery, I returned home to ponder my next step.

I decided that a phone call was out of the question, for, even if it were to reveal a relative, it was impossible to predict a reaction and I ran the risk of losing all on one throw of the dice, so to speak. A letter respecting the privacy of the recipient and granting space for uncompromised reflection was better, I concluded. In simple, unadorned phrases I presented myself and my query, ending with an apology, should I be mistaken in my identification of, and posited relationship to, the addressee. Finding that I lacked a zip code, I chose to call a friend in Manhattan, who supplied me with a number. As I posted the letter, it was something of a relief knowing that, for the two days it would be in limbo in transit to its destination, I could suspend my anxious thoughts.

The two days were soon passed, however, stretching into weeks, until I began to feel that I had surely been mistaken. Then, one afternoon, six weeks after my visit to Manhattan, an afternoon when I had nothing more on my mind than putting away the contents of a shopping expedition, I discovered a message on my answering machine. The caller, in the confident voice of a younger man than me, barely suppressed excitement raising its pitch a notch or two above the norm as I was to discover was customary with him, announced himself as my nephew. Now, I had some space in which to gather my racing thoughts, but it did not take me more than a few minutes to set aside any further consideration and dial the number he had left.

The finding of a blood relative from whom one has been separated by social mores is akin to the success of a mini-revolution against such customs. Given the unique vitality of a biological family, when society participates in the dismantling of one for whatever reason, the affected child is perforce obliged to accept a compromise which can never fully replace what was. In such circumstances, he or she loses the salutary and irreplaceable knowledge imparted implicitly by the presence of blood - the line of continuity, the biological lifeline, is broken. Absent are the medical history, character traits, cultural heritage and sense of place, all of which add up to the 'smell,' the notion of self, that is peculiarly one's own. Public acknowledgement of this truth necessarily sets the adopted child apart from the rest. This is not to say that adoption should not be, simply that it is an imperfect event in an imperfect world. To discover a relative in this context has the effect of restoring that vital connection and, while the consequences cannot be guaranteed to be comfortable, the self-knowledge gained is indispensable.

During our phone exchange my nephew expressed delight at the encounter - he had always wanted an uncle, he blurted out, as if he were realizing a lifelong ambition - explaining that my letter, which he had only just received, had gone by way of Chicago and points west, as a consequence of an incorrect zip code. All at once, at this revelation, my anxious six-week history, occasioned by the many self-doubts I had entertained in the absence of a response, resolved itself and I felt vindicated in the confidence I had originally placed in my intuition.

In the search for my parents I had learned to pace myself and, now that I had inadvertently achieved part of my goal, I was conscious of a need to proceed with utmost care, for fear that, in hazarding an unwanted response out of sheer clumsy exuberance at my discovery, I might lose all. With this in mind, while permitting myself to express a natural pleasure at our connection, I repressed the intense excitement that would have had me drop everything and make haste for Manhattan immediately. My new half-nephew, business-like despite his emotion and acknowledging how much we had to discuss, proposed weekly phone calls until we could arrange to meet in person. In addition to the more mundane requirements of our lives, there was also the matter of the distance between us, for I lived in northern New England. I was happy to acquiesce in this plan and it wasn't until I had hung up that I realized that there had been no mention of his, now our, family.

A person discovering a family member in the manner that I had might reasonably expect to hear something of other close relatives and, while I did, in time, learn of several from my half-nephew, a certain reticence attended their individual disclosures to the point of notable omission. This last concerned both his parents -  my half-brother and his wife - to whom he only once referred with an oblique indication that they did not reside in Manhattan. In addition, while he acknowledged a brother, he would only say that he lived "across town" and that he rarely saw him. Another, to whom he referred with less reservation, was a grandmother whom, he said, he visited every week. It was she whose phone number was listed under an initial in the directory I had consulted; the other listing had been that of his business number. I sensed from a general reluctance to speak of certain family members that he was estranged from them, and a warning note in his voice disinclined me to press him for further explanation.

One family member my half-nephew did speak of regularly with great affection was his son, who bore the same first name as mine. He was an adopted child from Columbia and the fact of our identical first names was a source of wonder to me, given the unlikely conjunction of the context with our shared adopted status.

It was early summer when my half-nephew and I finally met in Manhattan at the Museum of Modern Art, one bright and cheerful Saturday noon. He had chosen the meeting place, he explained, out of a particular fondness for the museum. Granted the momentous nature of the occasion, the respectful gravity and neutrality of the setting was perhaps appropriate, but the cavernous public space also suggested a desire for anonymity on his part. For more than five hours we wandered through the collections, pausing to sit for extended periods - he declared the Egyptian Room to be his favorite destination - while we tendered one another our personal narratives. Immersed in the past, time ceased to matter and the splendors of our environment went unremarked. It was only as I became aware of the shifting and lengthening shadows of the sun and sensed a collective restlessness amongst the other visitors about us that I discovered the approach of five o'clock. Five hours had passed as if it had been five seconds, for all the notice I had taken.

Though my half-nephew avoided mention of his immediate living family members, other than his paternal grandmother and adopted son, he spoke at length about my father, his paternal grandfather. Except for an occasional light cough, which I put down to the lingering effects of a cold, he spoke in a low voice with a rasping, slightly nasal edge. There was talk of the painter's life and circumstances, confirming much of what I had already learned, and I was able to clarify certain matters which had perplexed me, in the process demonstrating the not inconsiderable depth of my own research. Apparently he found my store of knowledge provocative, for, towards the end of our visit, following announcement of my father's Jewish origins and my surprised response, he expressed himself delighted in having been able to tell me something that I did not know. Amplifying, he explained that father had changed his name to enable his career in a society known for its latent anti-Semitism.

The fact of my father's Jewish ethnicity was indeed news to me. I had been educated in private English boarding schools, where the Anglo-Saxon heritage was as jealously guarded as the Crown jewels and the slightest departure from the norm regarded with deep suspicion, if not downright contempt. In addition, my mother, while professing liberal sympathies was, herself, suspected of latent anti-Semitism. Though denied a Jewish identity in orthodox circles, unless my birth mother should prove Jewish, it amused me to reflect on the Trojan Horse aspect of my childhood existence, for I had no doubt that any prior knowledge of my Jewish ancestry would have dictated a very different upbringing.

Before we parted, my half-nephew requested a passerby to take a photograph of us with a camera he had brought. In it his face bears a challenged and challenging expression and, much as I might have demonstrated a knowledge of his grandfather, I am aware, as I was then, of how little I knew of him. This, I then supposed, would be remedied with time and patience.

A particular matter my half-nephew had addressed in our lengthy exchange concerned his desire to effect a meeting between me and my father's widow. For all the obvious reasons, this seemed an unlikely, even unwise, plan.  Explaining that my father's philandering habits had been well-known to his grandmother, he professed confidence that, given time, he could bring us together.  Health considerations associated with her advanced years necessarily dictated a slow approach in bringing about our introduction, but he was convinced of the wisdom of his proposal and sure that we would appreciate one another. Natural curiosity overcoming my reservations, I yielded to his enthusiasm. At the same time, I felt increasingly aware of a hidden agenda, which made me question where all this might be leading.

Summer drew on and, in our weekly phone calls, I learned of the progress my half-nephew was making in respect of bringing me together with his grandmother. In one call, he told me of her silence in response to his revelation of me, and, in the next, that she had accepted this information. It seemed only a matter of time before we would be arranging a meeting. Sometimes he called from home and would include word of his young son, who, he would explain, had just risen from a nap, or with whom he was about to take one. Once, I heard him gently instruct the boy to go off and play - "daddy's on the phone." He was clearly inordinately fond of his adopted son and, given my own largely comfortless childhood, I found his expressions in this respect particularly affecting.

Mid-summer passed and, borne along by the imperatives and pleasures of the season, a couple of weeks elapsed before I noticed the cessation of my nephew's hitherto regular phone calls. While I placed two or three calls to his office, leaving messages on an answering machine, I got no response. He had never divulged his home number, presenting yet further evidence of a life he was, apparently, unwilling to share with me. Frankly, I was perplexed at this sudden change in our relationship, but other unexpected and unrelated events requiring my attention obliged me to set aside my concerns.

With the approach of fall, I planned a trip to Manhattan to visit a friend, he who had accidentally supplied me with the faulty zip code. Hoping that I might also see my half-nephew, I wrote him a letter announcing my intended visit and proposing a meeting. I was disappointed to receive a brief note begging off the invitation, with the cryptic explanation that he did not "feel like socializing." This only served to deepen the mystery surrounding him.

Then, one afternoon in early December, when gray skies ominously augured the onset of the darkest part of the year and, outside, smoke from neighboring wood stoves tickled the nostrils in frosty air, the phone rang downstairs. Possessed of a prescience with which I no longer bother to argue, I sensed an urgency in the ringing phone prompting anxious concern when it ceased before I had time to reach it. Thus, following a brief pause, when it recommenced to ring, I experienced intense, almost painful curiosity in lifting the handset.

In contrast to my half-nephew, the quavering tones on the other end of the line suggested a man considerably older than me. Indeed, the disparity in our ages proved similar to that which I experienced in respect of my adopted siblings. Having identified me, he announced himself as my half-brother, with the self-satisfied, boyish air of a budding magician successfully performing a nigh impossible trick. His appearance in my life was indeed a surprise and the news he had to give me, following a few preliminaries, a  considerable shock.

A few weeks previously, I learned, my half-nephew and his grandmother had died within days of one another at St. Vincent’s Hospital. While going through her mother-in-law's personal effects, my half-brother's wife had discovered the letter I had originally sent to my half-nephew querying our bloodlines. Hence, my half-brother's knowledge of my phone number. Evidently, my half-nephew had given this letter to his grandmother. While her death was easier to accept, considering her advanced years, that of my half-nephew required some explanation. The news that he had died of AIDS, while answering some of my questions, at once gave rise to others. He had been gay, my half-brother explained, and he and his wife had not known much of his life in that respect. Of the adopted child they were aware, though they had never seen him, and there was news that their son had been married to a Polish woman, with whom he remained until his death.

As to my appearance in their lives as a relative, while nothing was known of my mother, father's promiscuous manner had been well-noted, lending credence to it.

I was stunned by, and astonished at, the news of the deaths, particularly given their proximity to one another in space and time.  Reflecting on the cause of the demise of my half-nephew, I recalled his persistent cough and nasal tone. I had worked with AIDS patients and knew these effects to be amongst the more common in the later stages of the affliction. I wished I had known of his situation and, at the same time, understood his decision not to confide in me. His secret life was no longer a mystery and I felt saddened by the tragedy present in his death for his family, wife, and beloved adopted child, each of whom, it was apparent, had only seen a part of him, as I had done.

In the weeks following my half-brother's call, arrangements were made to meet. In addition, I was given an introduction to a former mistress of my father who had been known to, and remained in contact with, the family. On my way to New York for the visit, I stopped off to see this paramour, learning in the process perhaps more of my father's personality and behavior than a son might in a conventional family.

In New York there was, inevitably, much to discuss of both the living and the dead with my half-brother and his wife, who clearly remained shocked by recent events. It would be some time before our relations would adjust to a more even tone. Despite a spontaneous heart-warming element present in the satisfaction we expressed in filling in the blanks of family history for one another, the recent family deaths haunted the edges of our conversation, that of my half-nephew, with its subtle hint of reproach, faintly reminiscent of Banquo's ghost. Not surprisingly perhaps, his lifestyle and its consequences had borne with it complications which had created a rift in the family. Following his death, his widow and adopted child had, it seemed, disappeared, continuing the mystery which had surrounded him in life. I felt for our collective vulnerability in the turmoil, into which life had so unexpectedly thrown us.

At a point in my visit I was shown a postcard sent by my half-nephew to his parents a few months before he died. He had chosen to vacation at a popular tropical destination and the card featured a group of native fishermen going about their business in a sunny beach setting. However, affixed in place of their heads were images of the faces of family members including his parents, crudely culled from snapshots. The naked emotion wrought by the childlike effect was touching in the extreme. The reverse of the card featured a brief message wistfully recalling happier family times. I understood, at last, the nature of the agenda he had been bent on pursuing: the creation of a family to replace that which he felt he had lost. His grandmother, wife, adopted son, and myself -it seemed likely if he had lived - would all have been players in this re-enactment.

The exclusive and excluding aspects of my half-nephew's tragic life had turned him in on himself, effecting an embattled stance. This, while serving to protect, necessarily bore the seeds of exclusion which, in time blooming, made it harder for him to reach out for that which he craved. Death had brought an end to his dilemma. My thoughts turned to his son, my namesake, and I prayed that he might find the strength, as I had, to transcend the limitations with which his young life was already seemingly beset.