An Invisible Thread (26 page)

“You’re in so much trouble,” he told Steven. “Mom and Dad are so mad at you.”

He put Steven in his car and started driving home, but then he jumped on the Long Island Expressway and drove in the other direction.

“Where we going?” Steven asked.

“Just wait,” Frank said.

Frank ended up taking him to Shea Stadium for the fifth game of the 1973 National League Championship series between the New York Mets and the Cincinnati Reds. The Mets won that game, 7–2, and, with that, won the series. Toward the end of the ninth inning, Frank took Steven down to the edge of the field so they could sneak on and celebrate.

“I don’t know,” Steven said. “We’ll get in trouble.”

“Come on,” said Frank. “Just follow me.”

After the last out, a thousand fans rushed the field and ran around cheering and screaming and pulling up clumps of grass, rounding the bases as if they’d hit home runs themselves. Two of the fans going crazy on the field were Steven and Frank, and it’s nice to picture them there, romping on the emerald green grass, frozen in time, happy, carefree.

We brought Frank up from Florida, so he could be buried on Long Island. We were all surprised to discover that St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Huntington, where my father and mother were buried, a third plot had already been bought and paid for. We hadn’t known about it, and we never learned who bought it. Was it my father’s idea? My mother’s? And why just one extra plot? At the time Annette was married, and so was Nancy, and so was I. Steven was engaged. That left only Frank, out there on his own. Sometimes I think my mother may have anticipated that and insisted on the extra plot, so her son Frank could be there next to her.

He is buried there now, with our parents, beneath a flat stretch of grass beside a gently sloping hill.

After coming back from North Carolina, Maurice quit the bootleg jeans business and got a job as a security guard with the Doar Security company in the Bronx. He started out making $5.15 an hour, but within six months he was promoted to a supervisor. His bosses saw he was good with people and particularly good at defusing tense situations. For a while he was assigned to a Bureau of Welfare office, where people were constantly agitated and fights were not uncommon. Maurice knew how to calm things down.

“Listen, I know why you’re here. I know your circumstances,” he’d say. “I know you need this money. So you can either move on from this argument and stay in line and get your money now, or you can keep fighting and get kicked out and have to wait until next week.”

He would say, “Think about what you’re doing. Your next decision will determine what happens to you. It’s in your hands.”

Eventually, his salary got all the way up to to $18 an hour.

But Maurice had bigger goals in mind, so he went back to school.

He enrolled at the Brooklyn Adult Learning Center, and his plan was to study hard for two years, pass his General Educational Development exam, and get his high school diploma. Just two months into his studies, a teacher pulled him aside.

“Listen, Maurice, I think you’re ready to take the GED test right now,” he said.

Maurice said no thanks. This test meant everything to him—it would decide the very shape of his future, the direction of the rest of his life—and he felt he wasn’t ready. But the teacher kept pushing.
Finally, Maurice showed up at Edward R. Murrow High School on Avenue L in Brooklyn and took out his sharp No. 2 pencils and got to work. The test covered everything: history, English, math, social studies. It was split over two days, and when it was over, Maurice was exhausted. He was also sure he failed.

So he went back to school and kept studying. About two months later he came home after school, and Michelle and the kids were there to greet him. He noticed they were all acting funny. Michelle sat him down for dinner and brought out his favorites—a big rack of barbecued ribs, collard greens, and corn bread—and after dinner she served him a big slice of cheesecake. Maurice asked, “What’s going on? What’s all this about?”

Junior came up to him and handed him a frame. Inside the frame was his GED diploma. It had come in the mail.

All at once, his wife and children yelled, “Congratulations!!”

Maurice bowed his head and cried.

But his high school equivalency degree was just a first step. Next was another dream he’d been harboring for a while. Maurice took the test to join the New York Police Department. He passed that, too.

He still needed two years of college to become a cop, so he enrolled at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. It was there, while studying education, that he came across a newspaper article about the fate of black youth in New York City. The article said there were more black men in prison than in college. Maurice got together with some other students and the president of the college and started the prison-to-college pipeline for the Male Development program, a
campus organization designed to encourage young black men to get involved with their communities and realize their own strengths and potential.

The college president, Dr. Edison Jackson, was impressed with Maurice and asked him to give a speech at a budget litigation meeting in front of the New York City Council. On the day of the speech, Maurice got up early, put on a tie and jacket, and read his speech a dozen times. Outside the meeting room he took a deep breath to calm his nerves. When it was his turn, he sat in front of a microphone, cleared his throat, and started his speech. He flubbed a line, then flubbed another one. But then he calmed down.

“On behalf of Medgar Evers College, I implore the council to fund this program. We are ready to do whatever it takes to promote the development and progress of young black men.”

Afterward Dr. Jackson put a hand on his shoulder and told him he had done a great job. He made Maurice a spokesman for the Male Development program. Before long, he was hired as a research director for a college program called the Fatherhood Initiative. He was awarded a Certificate of Achievement for outstanding work in his community and in school.

Right now, Maurice is halfway to earning his degree.

He is the first man in his family to earn even a single college credit.

Friday, October 5, 2001. The Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York. Close to ninety people in eveningwear fill a mahogany-paneled main room. Beautiful jewel flowers are scattered on every table. Everyone is there to celebrate a special occasion.

Laura Schroff—that’s me—is turning fifty.

My husband, Michael, had been planning my birthday party for months. I had long since picked out the perfect dress, a beautiful black silk shantung creation from Bergdorf Goodman. My brother and sisters and their families were set to be there—the first time all of us would be together in more than five years. I had chosen a theme—Laura’s Life in Music—and selected three songs from each decade of my life.

Three weeks before the party, the World Trade towers were attacked.

My first thought was to cancel the party, but in the days and weeks that followed, I came to realize there was no better time to celebrate our blessings—to say thanks for the family and friends who make our lives worth living. We agreed to have the party as planned, and everyone who was supposed to be there showed up.

It was a magical night. The pall of the 9/11 attacks made us all even more aware of how lucky we were to have one another. We had chosen music as my theme because it had so much meaning for my sisters and me growing up. I remembered playing records in the living room of my family’s house in Huntington Station and dancing for hours with Annette to songs like Chubby Checker’s “The Twist.” Dancing was our escape then. And on this night, it was again.

We had drinks and dinner and then my birthday celebration after that. Michael, dashing in a tuxedo, toasted me, as did my friends Phoebe and Jules, my mother-in-law, Jean, and my sister Annette. When it was Steven’s turn, he asked me to dance to “The Wonder of You.” I remember feeling almost giddy with happiness. Here I was, surrounded by the people I loved most in the world. I felt a deep sense of appreciation for everything I had. It’s not often you get the chance to step back from your life, survey the landscape you have traveled, and say thanks to the people you have traveled it with, reflecting on how truly fortunate you are. Sure, people say nice things about you at your funeral, but you’re not there to hear them. I had a chance not only to hear them, but to say thank you to them, and it was a night I will never forget.

Then came the final toast. The speaker was in a sharp black
tuxedo with spectacular black-and-white shoes, and his wife was in a stunning navy blue gown, her hair swept up. Nearly everyone in the room had met him or at least knew his story, and so everyone was excited to see him and hear him speak. He kissed his wife, walked up and took the microphone, and began his toast.

“Laurie, where can I start,” Maurice began. “We met…the way we met was so special to me. I was a young boy on the street with barely nothing, and I was very hungry that day and I asked this lady, ‘Miss, can you spare some change?’ And she walked away. And then she stopped. She was in the middle of the street—she almost got hit—and she looked and came back and took me to McDonald’s. We ate and then walked around Central Park; she took me to Häagen-Dazs and then we played some games.

“You know, at that moment she saved my life. ’Cause I was going down the wrong road, the wrong hill, and, you know, my mother—bless her soul, my mother died—and she was on drugs at the time, and the Lord sent me an angel. And my angel was Laurie.

“Without you,” Maurice said, raising his glass, “I could not be the man I am today.”

I was so incredibly moved when I heard Maurice say I saved his life. Heck, I nearly lost it throughout his whole darn toast. Whenever I hear someone tell me how lucky Maurice is to have met me, I have to stop them and correct them. The truth is that the lucky one is me.

Maurice taught me so many things; I can’t possibly list them all. He taught me how to live. He taught me one of the most important lessons a person can hope to learn—he taught me to be grateful for what I have. He taught me about resilience, courage, perseverance,
and about the special strength that comes from overcoming adversity. He taught me the true value of money, the real meaning of lunch in a brown paper bag, the importance of a silly ritual like baking cookies. He taught me, more than I ever taught him, what it means to be a friend.

Everything I ever gave to Maurice, he gave back to me tenfold. Every meal, every shirt, every bike or toothbrush, was matched by Maurice with a more genuine appreciation than I have ever known. Every hand I ever lent him was returned with a hug; every kindness was paid back with an impossibly optimistic smile. If love is the greatest gift of all—and I believe it is—then the greatest privilege of all is to be able to love someone. Maurice appeared out of nowhere and allowed me to love him, and for that, I simply can never thank him enough. His generosity of spirit continues to astound me, and to this day my relationship with him is the relationship I am most proud of in my life.

About a year after my fiftieth birthday party, Michael and I divorced. Perhaps my resentments about Maurice lingered. And I’m not sure we ever got past our disagreements about having a child. I remember I finally settled on getting a dog instead, and Michael disagreed with me about that, too. Finally I put my foot down and announced I was getting a little red French poodle, and I was going to name her Lucy, and if he didn’t like it that was too bad. And that’s just what I did. Lucy—my lovely little Lucy—helped me get over the pain I felt at not being able to have a child. Two years later I gave Lucy a sister, an adorable poodle named Coco. When I was growing up, the pets in my life came and went, but Lucy and Coco were never anything less than my family.

Michael loved my “girls” as much as I did, but eventually we just got off track. Divorce is never just one person’s fault. Michael and I had wonderful times together, and in many ways he was a wonderful husband and even the love of my life. I’m sure we will always remain friends, but now I am on my own. I feel good and strong and happy about life and more hopeful than ever about what lies ahead. I finally retired from the advertising business after a long and successful career, and I feel so blessed to have been surrounded by so many amazing people who are still my friends today. Every once in a while I get the itch to jump back into it, but I doubt I will. I think it’s just time to try new things.