Member-only story
Beneath the North Atlantic is the Tormented Truth
Two Decades After His Death, I Finally Understand My Conflicted Father
My father’s hands were rough as sandpaper. His clothes smelled of paint thinner, gasoline, and developing fluid. He was a mechanic and design engineer. A musician. A photographer. An artist.
A stranger.
I never knew which version of my father to believe. Stories toppled on top of each other like the jars of nails and screws cluttering his garage worktable. He knew everything. . .and nothing. He had been everywhere. . . and nowhere. He read voraciously, especially when he wanted to disappear. He had an extended family back east that we never visited. Two mysterious ex wives. Down in his garage workshop, he refinished pianos and furniture. His second job. It was a place he receded to when the responsibilities of domestic life crowded in on him. It was also where he hid a great deal of himself from me. Where he kept mementos of a history I didn’t understand. A child’s violin. Curling photographs of nameless women in uniform. Stacks of books about WWII. A hissing radio tuned to big band music.
The only child of Hungarian and Prussian immigrants, my father grew up in New York. For most of his young life he lived with his parents in the servants quarters of a sprawling Long…
