Now You See Her - Michael Ledwidge [1]
I was practically going to have to get a home equity loan on our two-bedroom apartment in order to pay for tonight’s 120-person party at the Blue Note down in the Village, but I didn’t care. As a young, single mom, I had practically grown up with Em. She was my heart, and tonight was her night.
“Mom,” Emma said, coming over and shaking me back and forth by my shoulders. “Lift up your right hand and solemnly swear that this will be the last time you will puddle this evening. I agreed to this only because you promised me you’d be Nina Bloom, très chic, ultrahip, cool mom. Hold it together.”
I raised my right hand. “I do so solemnly swear to be a très chic, ultrahip, cool mom,” I said.
“OK, then,” she said, blowing a raspberry on my cheek. She whispered in my ear before she let go, “I love you, Mom, by the way.”
“Actually, Emma, that isn’t the only thing,” I said, walking over to the entertainment unit. I turned on the TV and the ten-ton VCR that I’d dragged out of the storage bin when I came home from work. “You have another present.”
I handed Emma the dusty black tape box that was on top of the VCR.
“TO EMMA,” it said on the index card taped to its cover. “FROM DAD.”
“What?” she said, her eyes suddenly about the size of manhole covers. “But I thought you said everything was lost in the fire when I was three. All the tapes. All the pictures.”
“Your dad put this in the safety deposit box right before he went into the hospital for the last time,” I said. “I know how badly you’ve been dying to know who your dad was. I wanted to give this to you so many times. But Kevin had said he wanted you to get it today. I thought it would be best to honor his wishes.”
I started out of the room.
“No, Mom. Where are you going? You have to stay and watch it with me.”
I shook my head as I handed her the remote. I patted her cheek. “This is between you and your dad,” I said.
“Hey, Em. It’s me, Daddy,” a deep, warm, Irish-accented voice said as I left. “If you’re watching this, it must mean you’re a big girl now. Happy Sweet Sixteen, Emma.”
I turned back as I was closing the door. Aidan Beck, the actor I’d hired and filmed with a vintage camcorder at the Hudson that afternoon, was smiling from the screen.
“There are a few things I want you to know about me and about my life, Em,” he said in his brogue. “First and foremost is that I love you.”
Three
DOWN THE HALLWAY, I went into a large closet, otherwise known as a Manhattan home office, and shredded the script I’d written to fool my daughter. I sifted the confetti through my fingers and let out a breath as I heard Emma start to sob.
No wonder she was crying. Aidan Beck had performed the script impeccably. Especially the accent. I’d met and hired the young off-Broadway actor outside the SAG offices the week before.
As I sat there listening to my daughter crying in the next room, some part of me knew how cruel it was. It sucked having to be a Gen-X “Mommie Dearest.”
It didn’t matter. Emma was going to have a good life, a normal life. No matter what.
The ruse was elaborate, I knew, but when I spotted Emma’s Google searches for Kevin Bloom on our home computer the week before, I knew I had to come up with something airtight.
Kevin Bloom was supposed to be Emma’s idyllic, loving father who had died of cancer when she was two. I’d told Emma that Kevin had been a romantic Irish cabdriver/budding playwright whom I’d met when I first came to the city. A man with no family, of whom all trace had been lost in a fire a year later.
The fact, of course, was that there was no Kevin Bloom. I wish there were more times than not, believe me. I could have really used a romantic Irish playwright in my hectic life.
The truth was, there wasn’t even a Nina Bloom.
I made me up, too.
I had my reasons. They were good ones.
What I couldn’t tell Emma was that nearly two decades ago and a thousand miles to the south, I got into some trouble. The worst kind. The kind where forever