25. Where It Started, Where You’re Going

Where It Started, Where You're Going

I don't go home.

I try to reach Sam again. When he doesn't pick up, I pass by my stop. I take the subway to Avenue H. My father's old neighborhood.

My father made no apologies about how eager he was to leave Midwood behind. He found it funny that his only daughter chose to live so nearby a world he couldn't wait to leave. And that I loved it.

But, no matter how fast he fled from here, my father seemed to love a piece of Flatbush too. I could see it in how he would light up when he talked about Midwood. And he liked showing me around his old stomping grounds, taking me to the places he and Uncle Joe used to frequent, to their old neighborhood hangs.

Now I walk down Bedford Avenue, on my own, and work to remember. I pass his high school, which is letting out for the day, Brooklyn College standing pretty and tree-lined right across the street. Uncle Joe had gone to school there. They were the first two kids in their family to go to college—my father to Yale, Joe a couple of years behind him to Brooklyn College.

The two of them reunited after graduation to live together in Manhattan. The two of them always found their way to each other and spent their lives, one way or another, by each other's side. Your father was nothing if not loyal.

If he had been loyal to anyone, wasn't it Joe?

I turn on Twenty-Eighth Street and head to my father's childhood house. This small yellow house with green shutters, plants lining the outside porch.

I have never been inside. I walk up to the front door and ring the bell. A young mother answers the door in a tank top, a rose tattoo sleeve covering her left arm, her baby son on her other hip. She looks me up and down, an unexpected visitor, the last thing she needs today.

She keeps the screen door closed. "If you're selling something, you've come to the wrong place," she says.

"No, nothing like that," I say. "And I'm so sorry to bother you. But my father used to live here."

"Oh. Are you Mr. O'Malley's daughter?"

"No, Liam Noone. His family sold to the O'Malleys."

"Like thirty years ago?"

I nod. It was closer to twenty years ago, but I don't correct her. One of the first things my father did as soon as he could afford to was to pay off his parents' mortgage. Then, when his father's knee got bad enough, he convinced him to retire and moved them (and Joe's mom) into a waterfront condominium in Naples, Florida. Midwood, finally, and for good, behind him.

"Would it be weird if I came inside for a bit?" I ask. "See his old bedroom."

"Very," she says.

I turn and start to go. I hear the screen door squeak open.

"But come on in anyway."

There are only two bedrooms upstairs.

I peek into the smaller room, which is now home to the baby and his older sibling. I try to imagine what it might have been like when my father was here—a bunk bed where the crib is, a small wooden desk instead of a blowup truck bed. The window doesn't let in a lot of light. But it looks out on the alley, and there's a rusting basketball hoop and two kids playing an intense game of one-on-one, running fiercely, no room for any cars trying to get by.

The closet door is open, the smell of baby detergent and fresh diapers hitting hard. I flick on the light. And I notice there are etchings on the wall. The marking of someone's height. It could be my father's. It could be the kids who lived here after him. There are no initials to indicate whose height is being measured, no names beside the lines. But I run my fingers along all the markings anyway, reaching up to the top height line.

And then I see it, just above the top height line. A small stenciling in the wood. Two little hearts sandwiching the bubbled-out names:

Cory & Liam

I run my fingers along the ridges, run my finger through his name.

This is when I hear the young mother clearing her throat. She is standing in the doorway.

"I just looked up your father. He did live here."

"You thought I was lying?"

"I thought you were taking a long time."

I point to the markings in the wood. "I love that you kept this. This plank with all the markings on it."

She shrugs. "Closets are pricey."

I want to ask her if I can make her a trade. I will design her a new closet, build it out, if I can come back and take this wood plank. The height etchings that may or may not be my father. The little love note that is. But it's not just the plank I want. It's the feel of this place, of this room. It's what lives beneath the surface, lives in the history—despite how far he ran from it, from here. Him.

"He looks familiar to me, your father," she says. "I think he came by too. Not that long ago, actually."

I turn and look at her. "When?"

"Six months ago, maybe? Maybe longer. I don't really remember exactly. And I can't be sure it was him, but I think so."

"He came to see the house?"

"I guess. He didn't introduce himself, though. He stood outside on the sidewalk for a bit. He was with a woman."

"A woman?"

She nods. "I went to the door, but they'd already left."

I turn back toward the closet, take in the Cory & Liam again. I try to figure out what my father was doing here. Who he was doing it with.

She clears her throat. "So my other son is on his way home from soccer practice and I'm going to need the nursery back," she says. "Unless you're willing to offer up one of your father's hotel rooms for bedtime."