Angry thoughts returned. Two cups of coffee. Then I jumped on the little prop plane and flew over a strangely calm sea—still feeling unsettled, still feeling crazy.
Mom met me at the airport. We drove to the Britannia Beach Hotel on Paradise Island, where, in a little courtyard, we sat down. She looked at me. I looked at her. I was an emotional mess. With no sleep and after traveling across the country, I had to drop a bomb that would destroy my mother’s world.
The silence was deafening.
I laid out the story.
I said, “Dad is having an affair with a woman, and I believe he’s stealing your money and giving it to her.”
At that moment, I saw something I’d never seen before. I saw my mother’s face crack and her soul fall to the floor. I watched the life drain from her body. She became an empty shell. She didn’t move, didn’t cry, didn’t even respond. Her eyes were vacant. After a few minutes, she found her composure and began speaking.
She told me that my father had been cheating throughout their marriage. She told me how she’d have to go to his mistresses’ apartments when I was an infant and, with me in her arms, buzz the intercom to tell the woman, “Tell Sy that playtime’s over. Time to come home.”
She also told me how Grandpa Joe Kravitz had repeatedly cheated on Grandma Jean, and how Sy had hated his father for it. It was history repeating itself.
I asked Mom why she hadn’t left Dad. She shared that she was a committed wife. Her Bahamian upbringing was ironclad: divorce was not an option. She was determined, largely because of me, to keep this marriage together. Besides, Dad had promised to change. The promise wasn’t kept. There were a few more indiscretions, but they were short-lived. She had thought he’d finally mended his ways. This was the first time she’d shared this intimate information with me.
I asked her what she was going to do. She explained that, for now, it was best to do nothing—not say a word, not let Dad know that she knew. She’d return to L.A. and act like everything was normal. Meanwhile, she’d hire professionals to document his affair. When she confronted him, she would be armed with incontrovertible proof. And the only way to obtain that proof was to make sure he remained in the dark.
In a remarkably short period of time, Mom’s mood had changed. Ten minutes before, she had been crushed. Now she had a plan.
* * *
A few days later, Mom and I returned home. She went back to Cloverdale. To feel safe, she suggested that I stay in the house for another week. That’s how I got to see what I consider the greatest dramatic performance of her life.
She greeted Dad warmly. She acted as though nothing were wrong. She laughed at his jokes. She slept in their bed. She fixed his breakfast. And all the while, she showed no anger, resentment, or suspicion.
Meanwhile, she had hired a private detective. It didn’t take long. Three weeks later, she received a folder with incriminating pictures, bank statements, and receipts that included two round-trip tickets to Paris on the Concorde.
When it was time for the big confrontation, I listened from the living room, adjacent to the master bedroom wall. I heard screaming, hysteria. I heard Mom saying, “How could you go into our finances to keep a mistress?” She shoved a folder of photographs and papers in his face, proof that he had paid for the girl’s college tuition, her rent on a Westwood apartment, and the monthly note on her Mercedes. The “girl” was a young Black woman in her early twenties who, ironically, worked at their bank.
When Mom mentioned the Concorde tickets to Paris, she completely lost it. She screamed that he’d been promising to take her to Paris for years, only to learn he had taken a secret trip there with his girlfriend. She was beyond furious.
Instead of begging forgiveness, Dad, in shock, was stone-cold silent. No explanation, no apology, no remorse, no nothing. He was paralyzed.
* * *
Mom stayed strong throughout the ordeal.
Being as private as she was, she told only a couple of friends, who gave her some comfort and support. Regardless of how hurt and mortified she was, her intention had been to somehow still make the marriage work. For Roxie Roker, through love, there was always a solution.
Then she learned something that took that possibility away.
She received an ominous phone call from someone in Las Vegas concerning a large sum of money owed by Dad. Knowing that Dad liked hanging around wiseguys, she reasoned that it was time to cut all ties with him. She was frightened that Dad had possibly put the family in danger. She wanted nothing to do with his gambling debts or anyone looking to collect. She filed for divorce. She wanted distance between him and us. She wanted him out.
She wanted him out so badly, in fact, that as she was saying all this to me, he was in the bedroom packing. When he came into the living room, suitcases in hand, she asked if he had anything to tell his son. Meanwhile, this man still didn’t know that I was the one who’d given Mom the information that had led us to this moment. It was her final hope that he might say something redeeming, an apology. That he would let me know how wrong he had been, so that I, in turn, might learn from his tragic mistakes.
Silence.
At least thirty seconds ticked by. Dad looked away from me. I had no idea what he would say. What could he say? My heart was beating. My throat was dry. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he raised his head and looked me dead in the eyes before saying the words that would haunt me for the rest of my life:
“You’ll do it, too.”
“WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TO TURN DOWN A DEAL LIKE THIS?”
Before discovering that Dad was cheating, I had viewed his relationship with Mom as good. I was naïve. For all my problems with my father, I never saw him as deceitful. Just as Mom had been undyingly loyal to him, I had presumed he was loyal to her. Their bond seemed indestructible. I never saw the cracks in the façade. So, when the façade crumbled, I realized I had been ignoring the warning signs.
I should have put two and two together when Jewel told me her pimp thought she could use me to meet Dad. Obviously, Dad had a reputation. But I wasn’t thinking about Dad back then. I was thinking about helping Jewel. Proof of that reputation came when Phineas Newborn and Joey Collins learned that my parents had split up. They weren’t surprised. They had once seen Dad out with another woman.
Why hadn’t they told me?
Because they didn’t want to hurt me. Or hurt Mom.
* * *
In the aftermath of the divorce, I was willing to stay at Cloverdale, but Mom knew there was no turning back the clock. I had to move on with my life. She helped by paying the security deposit on a small place in the Hollywood Hills. My roommate was Christopher Enuke, a Nigerian educated in England whom I had met through Eliza Steinberg’s mom, Lenny. Christopher had flair. Four years older than me, he was a star student at Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design.
We rented an old Hollywood Hills two-bedroom house. The thing stood on stilts and offered a gorgeous view of the city. Because the rent sapped all our money, we had no furniture other than mattresses. We didn’t even have a car, and we had to trek down the hill for thirty minutes just to get to the grocery store. Our meals were sparse: roasted potatoes glazed with honey, white Japanese rice with seaweed.