Dear Maisie,
I wish I knew the proper way to begin this, or if there even is such a thing…I read about your birth in the local newspaper today. It’s been a week to the day since the event, and this is the first I’m hearing of it. It crossed my mind to call your parents and congratulate them, but I’m sure the last number I have for them is terribly out of date. It has been years, years since we last spoke. Your birth was a powerful reminder of how sorry for that I am.
I don’t know if you’ll ever see this letter. I’m not really sure why I’m even bothering to write. It will be years before you can read. And I’m certain if I sent this, if I even had your address, your parents would make sure you never saw it. But I felt compelled to do something when I saw the piece in the Entertainment News section.
Maisie Cass Jonas…eight pounds, two ounces with her father’s hair and her mother’s eyes…the family is ecstatic, and mother and daughter are resting comfortably.
The family. I wonder who that means, nowadays. Is it just the three of you? Or is your mother’s family still around? Are we the only ones at a distance?
I don’t know if your parents ever told you their love story, if they ever will. Or the story of how our family fell apart. Those two things are so intertwined that for a long time I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to think about one without despairing the other. I often wonder if your parents are able to think back to the beginning of their relationship, or if the memories are too sullied by the mushroom cloud that swallowed us up back then.
But I wanted to put it all on paper. So that someday, maybe, you will see it. You will know where you came from. I’ve thought about that a lot in the past nine months, watching your mother’s pregnancy splashed across the pages of every tabloid that crossed my path. Because with time and introspection, I’ve become able to see it much more clearly. I’ve become able to think about your parents and their great love without despair, for them or for our family. And it is a great love, Maisie, and you should grow up knowing that.
When your Mom and Dad first met, it didn’t seem like a particularly auspicious occasion, or at least, not to me anyway. I never had a chance to ask your father what he really felt that day. We were too young, too busy, too blind, perhaps, to communicate about that before everything fell apart, before it was all too far gone. Please don’t misunderstand me; your father was immediately taken with your mother. But back then, when he was only 18…he was taken with all kinds of girls when he first met them. And even then, your mother was a woman, not some flighty teenage girl. So it seemed impossible to me and your Uncle Kevin that this could be anything other than a passing fancy. We assumed it was just a harmless crush, or maybe a slightly less than harmless game of cat and mouse, a way to entertain himself, to distract him from his everyday life.
You see, your father was a bit of a ladies’ man back then. Much more than your Uncle Kevin or I, your father had the kind of confidence and charisma that immediately attracted female attention and he knew how to use that. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. I’m just stating that for the record, so that maybe you can understand why we didn’t see it. Back then, your father was a merciless flirt who enjoyed the company of many girls. He was always falling into and out of love at the drop of a hat, on occasion reeling girls in and letting them go when he tired of them, like it was a sport. I know, I know, that sounds terrible. But we were just teenagers then and it all seemed harmless. We had so much to learn of love...
It turns out your father was learning right before our eyes, and we hadn’t the foggiest idea that it was happening.
To be completely honest, I’m pretty sure I was not the only one who didn’t see the greatness of the moment: your mother seemed unimpressed at first too. It was the summer of 2008 and we met her in a meeting at our record company’s Manhattan office. At the time, she was working for a marketing company that the label had hired. When she entered the room, your father was immediately kicking me under the table, eyes wide and eyebrows raised as if to say ‘check her out!’ I couldn’t argue with him, she was most certainly beautiful, with all that red hair tumbling over her shoulders and those big blue-green eyes—your eyes—rimmed in smoky black. She was different than everyone else in the room as well, younger by at least 10 years, more enthusiastic about her work too. She was exciting to be around…
What I mean to say is that I know what your father saw in her. But I was only sixteen at the time, and a twenty-five year old woman with whom I was supposed to be working didn’t exactly seem like fertile ground for a relationship. So really, the thought never crossed my mind. Perhaps that is why I could never understand how it had crossed your father’s.
But your father instantly turned on the charm, ratcheting it up to ten thousand percent. Your mother, she seemed immune to it all. To his big brown eyes and his coy smile and the constant, playful teasing he aimed in her direction. In fact, I think she was a little bit annoyed with him overall. She was trying to conduct a meeting and he was trying his darndest to distract her. She was not having it.
When the meeting ended your mother remained all business. She shook each of our hands, including both of your grandparents, wrenched her hand out of your father’s aggressive grip, and exited the room without another word or even a backward glance. I think your father was flabbergasted; women did not react that way to him, ever. Especially not once he turned on the charm. Whatever the case, whatever he felt, he jumped up out of his chair to follow your mother. I do not know what he said—he never told me—I only know that he came back so quickly that I know he could not have gotten the response he was looking for. And yet, he remained undeterred. In fact, I think he was only more interested by her lack of interest.
“I’m going to make her like me,” he said. At the time I didn’t think much of it. I don’t think anyone did. We just laughed at him. He was just being Joe, used to getting his way and always having what (and who) he wanted.
It would be weeks before we saw your mother again, at another meeting, and by that time I’d nearly forgotten your father’s determined proclamation. I assumed he had too. Boy was I wrong…
But that’s another story for another time.
All My Love,
Uncle Nick.