| in the belief that I might have been better equipped to withstand the chaos of it when I was older. But that wasn’t Mom’s argument; she’d never intended to tell me at all. She preferred to have everyone think I was my dad’s son. Later, I’d learn she’d actually discussed all of this with some of her closest friends at the time. “She would talk about it a lot,” her friend Beth told me. “She was worried your dad would find out. She didn’t know whose son you were until you were born. But with your physical appearance, she feared a connection would be made. She didn’t think Jason would make a good father. And she was glad you had a relationship with her husband and he took you as his son.” When I reached out to Isabel, the friend who’d saved my mom’s life after the suicide attempt—the first time we’d connected in more than a decade—it was as if she’d been waiting for the call. “I’ve thought of you often over the years. You know,” she told me, “you had three people loving you when you were growing up—some people don’t even have two. “Over the years, I’ve wondered if your mother would tell you,” she continued. “It just wasn’t my place to say anything when you were young, so I never did. I’m sorry.” I told her she had nothing to apologize for, but her words were a reminder of the ways secrets can |
Jewelers, occupies 8961/2 Whalley Avenue, beneath the shadow of West Rock, a rusty peak overlooking the city. From the outside, The Store, as everyone in the family calls it, looks every one of its nearly sixty years, declaring the name of its proprietor in fat neon tubes. The P stopped working years ago; the E-R-E emit only a dull glow. “We buy and sell gold and silver,” reads a hand-drawn sign in the window, a pull for the occasional walk-in. The avenue’s namesake, seventeenth-century English judge Edward Whalley, was a signatory to Charles I’s death warrant before fleeing to the New World, the first—but not last—refugee to settle in the neighborhood. The entire store is a single aisle, ten paces long with a dropped ceiling overhead, brown linoleum tiles underfoot, and a musty smell hanging in the air. On the left are waist-high glass showcases, their tops bare except for a twirling hand-held mirror, a cardboard coin folder for a children’s leukemia charity, and a rotating plastic dispenser of Twist-O-Flex watchbands. Inside the showcases are timepieces, jewelry, and miscellaneous accessories: wristwatches, pocket watches, travel clocks, bracelets, necklaces, brooches, key chains, rings, earrings. Toward the back, where the showcase on the left meets another, straight ahead—forming an inverted L—is a workman’s table, a “bench,” as it is called in the trade. That’s where Zayde himself can be found, hunching over shallow turquoise saucers, brimming with gears, springs, and screws, arranged on a thin sheet of paper |
