An Invisible Thread (20 page)

Maurice’s mother was released from Riker’s Island shortly after we had celebrated his birthday. She came out of prison clean and sober, healthier than she’d been in years. This was a pattern for many hardcore addicts: years of horrific drug abuse that turned them into zombies and pushed them to the brink of death, followed by a jail term that literally saved their lives. The time in prison allowed their bodies and brains to heal and bought them at least a few more years of life. But for many, this new energy and resilience only made it easier to jump back into the world of drugs, starting the cycle again. Maurice’s mother stayed clean for a few weeks after returning to the Bryant, but, sadly, she was back on crack before long.

Maurice and I continued meeting every Monday and many Saturday afternoons for the next two years. At least once every
few weeks we went out for Saturday dinners at my sister Annette’s house, still one of Maurice’s favorite things to do. I was continually amazed at how often Maurice would experience something for the first time. I remember one Christmas Eve at Annette’s when her daughter Brooke came home from a friend’s house crying. She’d mentioned Santa Claus to her friends, and they laughed at her for believing he was real. When she came home, she asked her brother and sister if this was true. They said yes, and Brooke was inconsolable. That evening we were all due at church for a Christmas pageant. Brooke, playing an angel, was decked out in her wings and halo, but she was still distraught about Santa Claus and couldn’t stop crying. We had our coats on and were almost out the door, but Brooke refused to go. Maurice was watching this unfold. He could see Brooke’s tantrum was making us late. He watched as Bruce approached his weeping daughter. He’d seen fathers handle situations like this before. He felt sure he knew what was coming.

Bruce sat next to Brooke and put his arms around her, stroking her hair. He told her everything would be okay and held her until she stopped crying. Maurice could not believe what he’d seen. In his world, a crying child would have been yelled at and probably hit.

He later told me this was the first time he ever saw a parent comfort a child who was sad.

For Maurice’s fifteenth birthday, I decided I wanted to buy him his first bike. He loved riding with my nephew, and I’m sure he envied Derek’s flashy bicycle. A few weeks before his birthday I drove out to Greenlawn, and Bruce, Annette, and Derek took me to the local bike shop. There, I spotted a Ross chrome ten-speeder that was
just stunning. We all had the same thought: such a nice bike could be dangerous for Maurice to own. I knew he could never bring the bike to the Bryant; it would be stripped or stolen within minutes. But I didn’t think Maurice should be prohibited from owning a nice bicycle simply because of his circumstances. It wasn’t his fault he lived like he did; he was just a boy. I figured as long as he kept it in the bike room at the Symphony and watched where he took it, it would be okay for him to have it.

So I bought the Ross and had them hold it until we picked it up on Maurice’s birthday. I told Maurice it was Derek who was getting a new bicycle, and we were going with him to get it. Everyone came along: Bruce and Annette and all three kids. Suddenly, the manager came around from the back of the store pushing a gleaming new bicycle with a big red bow on it. He wheeled it up to Maurice and said, “Congratulations on your new bike, kid.”

Maurice pointed at Derek and said, “No, that’s for him.”

And then all at once we howled, “
SURPRISE
!”

It took Maurice a good two minutes to truly comprehend the bike was his.

We took it back to Annette’s, and Maurice and Derek went riding for hours, until Bruce called them in for dinner. Even then Maurice didn’t want to stop.

I think back to that day quite often. I think about Maurice’s surprise and about his unbridled bliss as he peddled it madly that afternoon. I think about the innocence of that moment—the purity of his reaction. I think about what it must have meant to him to own something like the Ross. But I also think about how fleeting such moments of innocence are, about how good intentions and
wide-eyed optimism and even love can only protect us from the harsh, corrupting reality of life for so long. Getting that shiny Ross bicycle was surely magical for Maurice.

But magic, like Santa Claus, isn’t real.

Just a couple of weeks after buying Maurice his bike, I got a call from Nancy. She said she wanted to fix me up with a guy she had met through work. I was thirty-eight years old, and I’d been divorced for over a decade. I’d been out on a bunch of dates since then and had a couple of relationships that had at least gotten off the ground, but nothing had ever really clicked for me romantically. As I got older, I began to wonder if it ever would, but I still had the same dream—to have a family of my own—and I wasn’t ready to give that up. I wasn’t all that crazy about blind dates, but I told my sister to go ahead and set it up.

Michael and his uncle ran a lucrative business renting cars to travelers in Europe. He was divorced and had two sons, one graduating college and the other about to start. We joined my sister and her fiancé, John, at El Quijote, a traditional Mexican restaurant in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. I remember I wore a smart blue business suit and had lobster. I also remember I hadn’t felt that comfortable on a date in a long, long time. Michael was warm and funny and gracious and sophisticated, and I said good night thinking that I liked him.

He called me up a couple of days later and asked for a second date, and we went to a restaurant in my neighborhood. We’d talked about Mandy Patinkin, and Michael showed up with a CD of his songs. On our third date Michael picked me up at my apartment
and presented me with a pack of L&M cigarettes. He knew I no longer smoked, so I was confused. But then I got it: the L&M was for Laura and Michael. For our fourth date we went to a restaurant in the suburb of White Plains, where he lived. I followed him there in my car, and at a toll booth an attendant said, “That fine-looking gentleman ahead of you paid the twenty-five-cent toll for you.”
Nice
, I thought.
Classy.
It’s only a quarter, but still.

I told Maurice about Michael right after our first date. I said I had met this guy, and he was nice, and I was interested in seeing where it would go. Maurice would occasionally ask me why I didn’t have a boyfriend, and I’d always shrug him off. Now I wanted to be upfront with him, because I thought he might worry a boyfriend would change our arrangement or maybe even end it. I wanted to assure him that would never happen. Maurice seemed genuinely excited and happy for me.

“It’s about time you met someone nice,” he said. “Someone who is gonna take care of
you
.”

And, just as I had told Maurice about Michael, I told Michael about Maurice. I told him about this amazing kid I’d met on the street and how we’d become friends and how we met every single Monday and how we were important parts of each other’s lives. Michael nodded and said, “That’s great,” but he didn’t seem especially curious about it. I was used to people asking a lot of questions about Maurice, but Michael just didn’t.

Over Memorial Day weekend we went up to see his brand-new boat, a thirty-six-foot Grand Banks trawler that had just arrived from Singapore. He named it
Paddington Station
. I hadn’t spent much time on a boat, but I took to it right away. When Michael
asked me to go on a two-week cruise with him starting the Fourth of July weekend, I immediately said yes.

Then I talked to Maurice about it. I’d have to miss two of our Mondays in a row, the first real interruption in our schedule since we’d met. Once again, Maurice was amazing: he told me he was excited for me and not to worry about him, and how I deserved to be treated nicely, and go have fun. He made me feel like it was okay to go, but still I felt a real tug in my gut about missing two of our Mondays. I remembered what Miss House had said:
you cannot just wake up one day and abandon this boy
. But I wasn’t doing that; I was just taking two Mondays off. Even so, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was somehow letting Maurice down.

After our boat trip, Michael asked me to move in with him in Westchester. By then, I was completely in love; I felt Michael offered me everything I could hope for in a man. He was kind, attentive, and generous, and he seemed like an amazing father. Plus, he didn’t have a temper or drink too much. I was eager to move in with him, but I felt that same tug in my gut:
what about Maurice?
We lived only two blocks from each other in Manhattan, and Maurice could just drop by and hang out. Now I’d be leaving the city and moving to a suburb forty-five minutes away. When I thought about sitting Maurice down and telling him, it made me want to cry. It was like a riddle that had no answer:
how do I follow my heart and be with Michael but not give up what I have with Maurice?

Oddly enough, Maurice was about to move, too. His mother had been awarded her own apartment in Brooklyn under Section 8, a federal program that subsidized housing for low-income families. This would be the very first real home Maurice had ever had.
He was set to move on Labor Day weekend—the very weekend I planned to move in with Michael. Seeing that Maurice was excited about his own move lessened some of my guilt, but not by much. I knew that even if Maurice moved to Brooklyn, he could easily come into Manhattan to see me, but once I moved to Westchester, our special arrangement would be changed forever.

When I sat him down and told him I was moving, I couldn’t stop myself from crying. We were still going to meet every Monday in the city, and we’d still talk on the phone and otherwise keep up our friendship, yet I felt a deep sadness that something special between us—the sweetness of baking cookies in my apartment, of seeing Maurice set the table and do his laundry and trim the Christmas tree—was being lost. Once again, Maurice rescued me from my anguish.

“Laurie, we’ll still see each other every Monday,” he said. “We can still go to the Hard Rock. Everything is gonna be just the same.”

This kid from the streets was reassuring
me
it was okay to go to Westchester.

Then Maurice said, “Don’t worry about me. I’m gonna be just fine. Laurie, this is your time now.”

I packed up everything I owned and had it moved to White Plains, and on Labor Day weekend I drove up to my new home, a fairly nondescript, split-level ranch house with a stream running through the backyard. I told Maurice to call me as soon as he was settled into his new apartment. He had packed up his belongings, too—everything except his bike, which would stay in the bike room at the Symphony. I’d tipped the doormen to let Maurice come get it
whenever he wanted. Maurice didn’t call me that weekend, and I got worried. Finally, that Monday, he called. He was crying so hard I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I told him to calm down and tell me what had happened. Maurice caught his breath and spit it out.

“My bike got stolen,” he said. “And my mom got arrested.”

Maurice told me he’d been riding his bike around midtown Manhattan and made the mistake of keeping it out too late. I’d made him promise to never ride after dark, and he had stuck to that promise. But on the weekend of his move, for whatever reason, he was riding at night. He said two older boys jumped him and knocked him down and sped away on his shiny Ross. He said he tried to chase them, but couldn’t catch up. He said he felt terrible that this bike I had given him was gone, and I told him it was okay.

“It’s just a bike; as long as you’re not hurt.” But I knew that to Maurice the bike was not just a bike. It represented something important, and that something had been cruelly ripped away.

Only years later would I learn the story Maurice told me about his bicycle wasn’t true. He did lose it that weekend, just not the way he said he did. Maurice was on his bicycle when he stopped to talk to some kids he knew from around the Bryant. It wasn’t after dark; it was broad daylight. A man in his twenties came up and complimented him on his bike. Maurice knew the man from around the neighborhood, but they had never spoken.

“Can I take it for a spin?” the man asked.

Maurice, sitting atop his bike, said no.

“Come on, just a quick ride,” the man said. “Just wanna try it out.”

The man took out his wallet and handed Maurice his driver’s license.

“Blood, I’m not gonna steal it,” the man said. “You hold my license so you know I’m gonna bring it back.”

Maurice did not want to let the man ride his bike. His instinct was to simply peddle away. But Maurice overrode that instinct; he decided to trust the man. He took the license and handed over his bike and watched the man ride off.

“I’ll be back in ten minutes,” the man said.

Maurice waited patiently at the corner for ten minutes. He figured the man would keep it longer; after all, it was a nifty bike. He waited half an hour, then an hour. The afternoon light gave way to evening, then to night.

Maurice waited on the corner for seven hours.

The license was fake and worthless; the bike, gone forever. Maurice felt a mix of anger and shock and sadness. Most of all, he was horrified he’d lost something I had bought for him—something I’d entrusted him with. He decided there was no way he could tell me the truth; the truth made him sound careless and stupid. Instead he told me two thugs ripped him off.

I look back now and I know why Maurice overrode his instincts. It was because of me. He had seen how I trusted him: how I’d let him into my apartment, how I never worried he’d swipe any quarters from my giant jug of change. He had heard me say there is nothing more important than trust. He had been the beneficiary of my kindness, and he was moved to extend a similar kindness to someone else. He had come to understand the concepts of trust and friendship so well that he was now ready to put them into practice.

And the person he chose to believe in ripped his heart out.

Had I, in fact, endangered Maurice by filling his mind with lofty ideas that had no relevance to his life? Was I stripping him of a protective layer he needed to survive on the streets? Had I just been fooling myself—and deceiving him—by thinking a few meals and a new bike could make any kind of difference in his world? A difficult question had to be asked: was I doing more harm than good?