CHAPTER 3
Joe
Growing up, I didn’t have a father or siblings but was very close to my aunts and uncles and cousins, especially on the Kingsley side. Sadly, my father’s death wouldn’t be the last tragedy in our family, not by a long shot. The year after he passed away, my father’s second-oldest sister, Betty, died in a house fire (on Christmas Eve, no less); the following year, my three-year-old cousin Eloise wandered out of their yard in Sag Harbor and drowned in their neighbors’ pool; and when I was eight, my oldest cousin, Frederick, died in an avalanche while skiing in the French Alps.
People called it the “Kingsley curse.” The phrase infuriated my mother, perhaps because it also terrified her, especially when my cousins and I were having a good time. We loved to take risks on land and water, and I was typically the ringleader—surfing, skiing, hang gliding, rock climbing, you name it. Someone was always being hauled off to the emergency room for one mishap or another, which we cousins wore as badges of honor, keeping a running tally of stitches and broken bones. My mother didn’t find any of it even remotely funny and lived in a constant state of dread that I’d be critically injured. I guess I can’t blame her for that, given what she and our family had been through, but it still seemed unfair. She wanted me to follow in my father’s footsteps, and to me, a sense of adventure came with that territory. I wasn’t as smart as my father, but I could be as brave as he had been, if only my mother would let me.
Fortunately, my father’s mother (whom I called Gary, because I couldn’t pronounce Granny when I was little) understood me and gave me the freedom to be exactly who I was. The only thing that she asked of me was that I fulfill my own unique potential. She made me feel special, and when I messed up, she was always the first to forgive me. I adored her, and never turned down the opportunity to spend one-on-one time with her, whether at her home in Southampton or her apartment on the Upper East Side. I especially loved when she would pick me up from school and walk me over to Tavern on the Green for ice cream. We had some of our best conversations over hot-fudge sundaes and root beer floats.
“Tell me what’s going on in your world, Joey,” she’d always say.
I knew that unlike other grown-ups, who were just going through the motions, my grandmother was seeking an interesting answer.
One afternoon when I was about ten, she asked the question, and I told her about Charlie Vance getting bullied at recess.
“Why was he bullied?” she asked, taking a dainty bite of whipped cream while I took a spoon and dug down deep into mine.
“Because he’s a sissy,” I said.
“And what makes him a sissy?”
“You know. The usual sissy stuff,” I said, explaining that Charlie couldn’t throw a ball to save his life and was afraid of spiders and talked with a goofy lisp. And the most egregious example: he was rumored to play with his sister’s dolls.
My grandmother nodded and said, “Hmm. And when people tease him, do you stick up for him?”
“Yeah,” I said, which was true, but she may have guessed by the look on my face that my efforts to stand up for Charlie were halfhearted at best. Mostly, I just wanted him to fall in line and stop being his own worst enemy.
Gary suddenly put her spoon down and stared into my eyes. “Joey. Are you aware that Charlie might be homosexual?”
I gazed back at her, processing this. It had never occurred to me that Charlie was gay—nor had it crossed my mind that anyone our age could be—but I wanted my grandmother, the wisest person I knew, to think I, too, was wise in the ways of the world. I somberly nodded.
“And if that’s the case, Charlie is going to have a very difficult life, Joey,” she said. “He can’t help who he is, and you need to do everything you can to ease his way.”
“I will, Gary,” I said, feeling ashamed that I hadn’t done more for Charlie to date, and that what I had seen as tomfoolery by my more rambunctious classmates actually had shadings of cruelty.
“You’re a natural leader. People listen to you,” she continued. “I’ve watched you in action.”
“Where?” I said, picturing my grandmother holding up binoculars to the school yard fence.
“When you’re with your cousins,” she said. “All the time.”
I looked across the table at my grandmother, feeling so proud.
“Did I get that from my father?” I asked. “Was he that way?”
She shook her head, which shocked me. “Don’t get me wrong. He was a good-hearted boy like you are,” she said. “But he wasn’t as outgoing or brave.”
I stared at her, finding it hard to believe that I could, at any age, be braver than someone who became an ace fighter pilot and astronaut. I said as much, and my grandmother explained. “He grew into a leader, but he wasn’t born one. It didn’t come naturally to him. Not like it does for you. That’s a superpower, Joey. And you need to always use that power for good.”
She went on to talk about advocacy and activism, and her work for women’s suffrage when she was young, and how much still needed to be done for women and minorities.
“I can see you in that fight for equality,” she said. “And maybe it all starts here. Defending Charlie. Will you do that for me? For him?”
I sat up straighter and promised her I would.
In the weeks that followed, I put the kibosh on all bullying of Charlie, and I did it in grand style. Rather than simply defending him on an ad hoc basis, I befriended him, and he was damn near popular by the end of that school year. I know that probably sounds arrogant, but it’s the truth. I was pretty pleased with myself.
—
A couple of years later, on the first day of the seventh grade, Mr. Wilkes, our headmaster, summoned me to his office and informed me that I was responsible for “shepherding a new student.”
I nodded and said, “Yes, sir. What’s his name?”
Mr. Wilkes told me that her name was Berry Wainwright, and that she had just moved to New York from London. She had attended Thomas’s Battersea, he said in a tone that made it clear this was an impressive school.
“Berry as in Barry White?” I interjected. “Or like a strawberry?”
“Like a strawberry, Joseph,” Mr. Wilkes said.
“Berry good!” I said, giving him a thumbs-up.
He stared at me a beat, looking weary, then said, “Joseph. I need you to take this responsibility seriously.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, suddenly feeling a little suspicious of his reason for choosing me for this job—that it had more to do with Berry’s parents’ social status or net worth. I was only thirteen, but I had seen Mr. Wilkes use me as a pawn like that before, and in that moment, I was annoyed not to be back outside in the courtyard with my friends. I also predicted that I wasn’t going to be a fan of this new girl named after a piece of fruit.
But my attitude did a one-eighty the second his office door opened and our guidance counselor brought her in. She was a dead ringer for Tatum O’Neal, and let me just say, there was a reason I’d seen The Bad News Bears three times. I got to my feet, as I had been taught to do when a girl enters the room, while Mr. Wilkes rose from his desk and cleared his throat.
“Joseph, this is Berry Wainwright,” he said, gesturing toward her. “And Berry, this is Joseph Kingsley the third.”
“How do you do?” I said, looking directly into her eyes, another point of etiquette, though also what I wanted to do.
“I’m well, thank you. And you?” Berry said.
“I’m good,” I said, for some reason relishing my bad grammar, perhaps because I wanted to offset any notion of being the kind of guy who had a Roman numeral after his name.
Mr. Wilkes asked us to take a seat, and for the next few minutes, he droned on about how wonderful our school was and how happy we were to have Berry. He then informed me that her class schedule mirrored mine with the exception of our respective seventh-period math classes.
“Lemme guess,” I said with a laugh. “She’s in a higher math class than I am?”
“She is, indeed,” Mr. Wilkes said, staring me down. “Perhaps if you work harder, you can join her in accelerated math next year.”
“Or maybe,” I said, keenly aware that self-deprecation was a crowd favorite. “We both work equally hard, and she’s just smarter than me.”
Mr. Wilkes ignored this as he stood and said, “I’ll let you two get acquainted before first period…. Berry, please know that you’re in excellent hands with Joseph.”
He gave me a final look that said, Don’t mess this up, then ushered us out the door of his office.
Now alone in the hall, Berry and I gazed at each other for a few awkward seconds before I cleared my throat and asked the standard back-to-school question. “How was your summer?”
“It was fine,” Berry said. “How was yours?”
“It was fun…really fun…. I did a lot of surfing.”
She nodded, looking uninterested but not impolite.
I changed tactics, asking, “Hey, has anyone ever told you that you look like Tatum O’Neal?”
“No,” she said.
“Well, you do,” I said. “Have you seen The Bad News Bears? The movie?”
“No,” she said again. “I don’t really like sports.”
I started to tell her that liking sports wasn’t a prerequisite to enjoying the movie but suddenly realized something. “Hey. Where’s your British accent? Did you lose it already?”
“No. I never had one. I’m not British,” she said, holding my gaze in a way that many girls were incapable of doing—not just with me, but with any boy. “My dad worked at the embassy.”
I nodded, mentally returning to my theory about her wealthy, connected parents. “What’s he do now?” I asked, though I actually didn’t care.
She bit her lip. “He doesn’t do anything,” she said, hesitating. “He died. In March.”
Her delivery was so matter-of-fact that, at first, I thought I must have misunderstood her. But then she started blinking, like she might cry.
“Oh. Wow. I’m sorry,” I stammered, feeling the rush of empathy that I always had for another kid who had lost a parent. It was a club you didn’t want to be in—but a club nonetheless.
“Thank you,” she said, a reply that I vastly preferred to some variation of it’s okay. After all, it wasn’t okay—those were just words we said to make other people less uncomfortable.
In that moment, I was speechless—rare for me.
I certainly wasn’t going to ask any questions about the manner of death. (Was it sudden? was the euphemism people used for Was it an accident?) Yet it didn’t feel right to just move on to a new topic, either. A few more seconds passed before I settled on telling her that my father had died, too. “But I was too young to really remember him,” I quickly added. “So your situation is way harder.”
“No. They’re just hard in different ways,” she said, acknowledging something I’d wondered about. Would it have been better if I had known my father? Or would it only have made me more sad? The fact that Berry recognized these nuances impressed me.
“I bet that’s why Mr. Wilkes put us together,” I said, mostly thinking aloud.
“Maybe so,” Berry said. “But please don’t feel like you have to babysit me.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “I’m happy to show you around and stuff.”
Berry shrugged and said, “Okay. But I really don’t need anything. I’ve changed schools before. It’s no big deal.”
I nodded, giving her my most earnest look. “I hear you,” I said. “But I’m gonna have to assist you regardless. You wouldn’t want to get me in trouble, would you?”
“No,” she said, giving me the smallest of smiles. “Of course I wouldn’t.”
—
By the end of the day, the whole school was abuzz with Berry’s story. Rumors swirled that she had lost not only her father but also her mother, both among the 585 people killed in the infamous runway collision of two fully loaded Boeing 747s on the island of Tenerife. I prayed that it wasn’t true—that it was simply some jerk kid embellishing her loss. I mean, surely Berry would have mentioned it if her mother was dead, too.
That evening, my mother, who had apparently talked to Mr. Wilkes about my assignment, confirmed it. She told me that Berry was an only child like me—and was living with her aunt and uncle, both of whom were busy with big jobs. I couldn’t believe it. Berry was an orphan.
Needless to say, I discharged my duties with the utmost seriousness, which some of my friends mistook as my having a crush on the new girl. I denied it, for although she was pretty, my feelings for Berry bore none of the hallmarks of my usual infatuations. I didn’t want to kiss her; I just wanted to be friends with her.
At some point, the two of us started spending time together outside of school, hanging out in the park, doing homework at my dining room table, and hitting up record stores all over the city. (Berry had great taste in music—which made up for her being clueless about sports.) She was the best listener, and asked questions about how I felt that would have seemed nosy or judgmental from anyone else. She confided in me, too, telling me heavy stuff about her grief and night terrors. Once, she told me how grateful she was that her parents had been together when they died, even though it meant losing them both. That really bowled me over. I’d never known anyone so selfless or strong.
Over the next few years, Berry and I became closer and closer, and by our junior year of high school, when we both headed off to Andover, she had become an honorary Kingsley, mingling with all the cousins. My mother adored her as much as I did, calling her the daughter she never had. Sometimes, I would come home to find the two of them already chatting away in the kitchen. I found their relationship comforting, like it made all three of us seem more normal. I didn’t even mind when they teasingly ganged up on me, though I pretended to be annoyed.
Their specialty was critiquing the girls I liked, or more accurately, Berry would critique them, and my mother would take her word as gospel. While she’d occasionally deem someone worthy of my attention, more often she’d wrinkle her nose in disapproval, dismissing them as being too needy or a social climber, or lacking substance. Over time, all the girls in our social orbit came to see Berry as the Joe Kingsley gatekeeper. Some girls even tried to befriend her to get closer to me. It was a tactic that Berry saw straight through. You couldn’t get anything by her.
The only time we ever argued was when I put myself in harm’s way with my cousins. Like my mother, Berry had good reason to be afraid—but I never understood why that fear translated to such anger. While others called me reckless, Berry called me selfish and arrogant and stupid.
The summer before our senior year, after one particularly harrowing mishap that involved a capsized kayak and a mild case of hypothermia, Berry wouldn’t speak to me for a week.
“What if something happened to you?” she said when we finally had it out. “Your mother would be alone. Alone, Joe!”
“She wouldn’t be alone. She’d have you.”
“It’s not the same, Joe, and you know it. We aren’t family.”
“You might as well be,” I said. “And besides, nothing is going to happen to me.”
“And why’s that?” she asked, her voice rising. “Because you’re invincible?”
I sighed, silently acknowledging to myself that I did feel a little bulletproof. But I wasn’t about to admit this to Berry, so instead I said, “No. Because I’m resourceful.”
“You took a kayak across the bay in a thunderstorm, Joe. That’s not resourceful. It’s idiotic.”
“It wasn’t storming when I left.”
“And you didn’t check the weather? Or think to tell anyone where you were going? That’s the opposite of resourceful.”
“Well, how about the fact that I’m a strong swimmer?”
“Being a strong swimmer doesn’t help when you’re hypothermic—”
“Hey—I got to the shore, didn’t I?”
“Yes, and you also had to break into a stranger’s house to take a hot bath!”
“Exactly! Resourceful as hell,” I said, feeling smug.
Berry gave me a look of contempt, then shook her head. “You’re such an idiot.”
“But I’m right. I’m here. Alive and kicking,” I said, though I still felt a chill remembering how shockingly cold the water had been, how violently I’d been shivering as I knocked on doors for help.
“This time,” she said. “Who knows about the next time if you keep this up?”
I hesitated, and then said, “The universe has punished my family enough.”
“Oh. I see now,” she said. “Silly me. I forgot that the universe is fair.”
“I’m not saying it’s fair,” I said, thinking of her parents, as I always did. “But I’m saying—what are the chances?”
“What are the chances that an astronaut is risking his life? Or an idiot who takes a kayak out by himself in a storm?”
I bit my lip and lowered my eyes as Berry kept on going.
“Your dad had a wife and child,” she said. “He had no business being in the space program. Especially when your mother begged him to quit.”
I looked at her, a little stunned by the direction she was now taking. “That was his dream,” I said.
“So what?” Berry shot back. “How about your mother’s dream?”
“French literature? Journalism?” I quipped.
The former was her major, the latter her first and only job out of college. Her actual job title had been “inquiring camera girl,” for which she wandered the streets of Washington, DC, taking photos of strangers whom she polled about current events and other random topics. Her photos, along with their responses, were in a daily column in the Washington Times-Herald. It was a cool gig, but I’d never gotten the feeling that it was her dream.
“No, dummy,” Berry said. “Her real dream. To raise a family with her husband. And watch her child grow up with his father. That dream.”
“Oh,” I said.
“If he had listened to your mother, he’d still be alive. But he was too stubborn…too selfish.”
“What did my mother tell you?” I said, my stomach twisting in knots.
Berry shrugged and kept on staring me down. “She’s told me a lot of things, Joe,” she said.
“Like what?”
She took a deep breath, then let out a long sigh. “Well. Did you know they had a deal? That he made her a promise?”
“What promise?” I asked, my face hot.
“He swore to her that he would quit flying when you turned three,” Berry said. “Did you know that?”
I shook my head, feeling a wave of intense sadness.
“Well, he did. But he broke that promise. ’Cause he just had to do one more mission. His ego was too big—”
I’d overheard these whisperings before from some of my aunts and uncles, along with reading about rumors in the press about my father’s infidelity, but nothing had ever been confirmed by my mother. “Berry. Stop it. Right now!” I said as sternly as I’d ever spoken to her—or any girl.
But of course, she didn’t stop. “It’s true,” she said. “Your father was selfish, Joe—”
“He was a hero,” I said, my voice shaking.
“Yes, Joe,” she said. “He was a war hero. But he didn’t die a hero.”
“Yes, he did!”
“No. He died putting his own lust for adventure and fame and ambition over you and your mother. That’s what happened. Face facts.”
I couldn’t believe her disrespect and felt myself snap. “Shut your damn mouth, Berry!” I shouted.
“No, Joe,” she said. “I won’t. Someone needs to stand up to you—”
“Oh, cut the crap. Lots of people stand up to me,” I said, thinking of all the adults in my life who scolded me when I messed up.
“Yes, but you won’t listen…to anyone,” she said, her eyes suddenly filling with tears.
Now I felt pissed and guilty, the worst combination. “Shit, Ber. Don’t cry,” I said.
“I can’t help it,” she said, tears now rolling down her cheeks. “The skydiving. Rock climbing without a harness. Riding a motorcycle without a helmet. This idiotic talk about getting a pilot’s license. It’s all so stupid and pointless. It scares me. It scares your mother.”
“I’m sorry, Berry. You’re right. I’ll be more careful. I promise,” I said.
In that moment, I meant it. Not because I believed for one second that anything could happen to me, but because I loved Berry and my mother and didn’t want to upset them. So for the rest of that summer, and throughout my senior year, I did my best to keep my promise. Don’t get me wrong—I found other ways to upset my mother and Berry; it’s just that none of my bad decisions were things that could have gotten me killed. So that was something, at least.