Page 13 of This Is How It Started
I’ve never cried so much in my life. But at least I got to say goodbye. We all did, even Mom. We stood around his bed, squeezing in between the life support machine, tubes and wires, telling him we love him until Brooke told the medical staff to pull the plug. And then, just like that, he was gone.
A half dozen times a day, I start to pick up the phone to call him before I remember. Despite how angry we were with him, he was still our rock. None of us made a move without consulting Dad first. Not even Hannah, the most independent and arguably the most successful of us Gold kids, was immune from leaning on him. Adam liked to say Hannah couldn’t get dressed in the morning without Dad telling her what to wear. Yet Adam wasn’t one to talk. My dad had been a key investor in Adam’s startup and in some ways his business guidance counselor, though David Gold knew nothing about gaming or tech. What he did know was that his son liked to play more than he liked to work. Someone needed to crack the whip.
For me, Dad was...well, everything. My confidant, my reality check, my North Star.
I remember being thirteen and having my wisdom teeth pulled. The next morning was Heritage Day at school. I was bringing homemade mandel bread, the Jewish version of biscotti, to represent the food of my people. Most of the evening I labored with the dough from my grandmother’s recipe only to realize that I’d dripped blood into the batter from my bruised mouth. The painkillers had begun to wear off, and the lower half of my face throbbed like it had been run over by a Mack truck. I sat, hugging the batter bowl to my chest, sobbing. I didn’t have the wherewithal to start over. But I’d wanted to show off those cookies. For two days, I’d been mapping out my presentation with help from mysafta.I spent hours on the phone with her at the nursing home, going over exactly what I should say during my speech.
My mother said she’d write me a note. My father took one look at the disappointment in my eyes and got to work mixing the ingredients for a new batch, sending me off to bed. The next morning, my mandel bread was wrapped and ready to go.
In those early days, when I was just starting out as an agent, Dad used to help me write the ad copy for my listings. Not only was his spelling and punctuation better than mine—he was the guy who carried a Sharpie with him into the supermarket so he could correct the occasional misspelled word on a sign—he had a knack for real estate lingo. “Cozy” was a home for a family of hobbits. “Needs a little TLC” was code for bring in a wrecking ball. And “Up and coming neighborhood” meant MS-13 was moving in.
The day before he died, we’d met for lunch at Original Joe’s, his favorite restaurant, and he gave me a pep talk when I lamented that my career was a dumpster fire. It was an exaggeration of course. Dumpster fires are at least active. But I’d told him how I’d lost the deal on Irving Jones’s toaster oven house. At that point, Irving hadn’t canned me yet, but I could see it coming.
“Rachel,” he said, tying a linen napkin around his neck the way he always did whenever he ate anything with red sauce. “You still haven’t found what you’re looking for.” He grinned, realizing he’d just quoted Bono. “Things will work out with your client. But maybe you should go back to school, explore the things that make you happy. I never doubted that Hannah loved the law or that Adam would make a fine success out of his gaming company.” He shook his head. “And to think I used to worry about that kid. But you...I don’t think real estate is lighting you up, honey.”
“Is plastic surgery lighting you up?” I asked.
Then he surprised me by saying, “No. I wanted to be a photographer.”
It was the first I’d ever heard this. I couldn’t recall him ever taking pictures with anything other than a run-of-the-mill old Nikon—and later an iPhone. The pictures were mostly of us kids. All the usual stuff. Us opening presents at Hanukkah, Adam in front of his first car, Hannah with her debate team, Josie and me at Jew camp. Not exactly the stuff of museums or coffee table books.
“Really? I didn’t know that. What happened? Why didn’t you pursue photography?”
With a wistful shrug, he said, “It made more sense for me to go to med school. It was the sure thing, you know?”
Only he would think fourteen years of college, medical school and residency was a sure thing.
I was still trying to wrap my head around this revelation, trying to picture my father as Ansel Adams. “What kind of photographer?”
“Photojournalist. At Yale I worked for the student paper. One of the photos I took wound up on the cover of theNew York Times.A shot of a demonstration against William Shockley, who’d come to campus to spew his bullshit on eugenics.”
“Wow. I had no idea. So do you have regrets? I mean, do you ever wish you would’ve done that instead?”
“I don’t know. It was a long time ago,” he said with a practiced nonchalance, which made me think he did.
“Was it because of Mom?” I blurted, assuming she wanted the luxuries a doctor’s salary could provide. I didn’t know how much photojournalists made, but my gut told me not as much as very sought-after cosmetic surgeons.
“Nah.” He waved me off in a way that said she might’ve had something to do with his decision. “I chose stability over adventure. Back then it was the right decision.”
“But not anymore now?” I pressed, intrigued by this new revelation.
“Rachel, I’m sixty-eight years old. You think I want to be running around in war zones a year away from retirement?” He laughed, but it sounded superficial, almost sad.
If I had known he was going to die the next day, I probably would’ve spent more time asking him about it. Instead, we moved on to Josh’s and my plans to someday buy a house.
But when we parted ways after lunch, I couldn’t help wondering if Brooke was my father’s consolation prize for not becoming a photojournalist. Was she the substitute for all his regrets in life?
My buzzer goes off, snapping me out of my memory.
“I’ll be right down,” I say through the intercom.
Adam’s Prius is parked in the loading zone in front of my building. His music is so loud I can hear it through his closed windows. I turn down the volume the minute I get in the passenger’s seat. As usual, his car is a wreck. Fast-food wrappers litter the floor, and I have to lift up to clear away the stack of papers I didn’t see when I first got in.
“You can toss those in the back,” he says as he pulls out onto my street. “You ready to do this?”
“Not particularly. Better us than Brooke, though.”
“I guess.” There’s a long pause, and then he says, “Do you think Mom wants anything?”
