This is the dark center of the investigation, the place where the light does not go. This is the part of the story that has never been written, the missing piece that was never reported in the paper. There are no external sources to quote from and respond to, no intertextual webs of meaning to spin and deconstruct. The only materials I have to work with are shadowy memories, the limits of language, and the things I am most afraid and ashamed to say.
As a girl, it seemed like no matter how hard I tried to be good, I couldn’t help being bad; so as I got older, I decided to stop pretending. In college, I spent more time hanging out with the boys than I did studying. I smoked and drank and woke up one morning surprised to discover that I had a bad reputation. I kept taking wrong turns until I found myself in a very dark place and realized I had no one to blame but myself. After that, I tried to turn it around, to make everything right, but I had dug myself into a deep hole and spent the next two years trying to claw my way out.
I salvaged what I could of my education, and in the end, I met all the requirements to graduate on time—with average grades and no distinctions. I couldn’t see the next step, but the only thing I knew for certain was that I could not work for my father, so I did what I was supposed to do and wrote a series of job applications.
A few weeks before graduation, I got an interview with an academic press in Philadelphia. I took a bus down from Providence, and my father drove me to Center City. “Good luck, Neine,” he said and gave me a peck on the cheek as I stepped out onto the sidewalk. I had dressed as carefully for the interview as if I were auditioning for a role, and I carried a paper resumé in a black leather bowler bag. I sat at a circular table with a team of editors who explained that the position would entail preparing scientific articles for publication in peer-reviewed journals. I hadn’t taken a science class since high school, but I was my father’s daughter, and I answered their questions in an assured and decisive voice that masked my insecurities. I identified as a leader, and when they asked about my digital literacy, I said technology was a tool and I loved the challenge of learning new skills. My stomach sank when they looked at me with approval. I left the interview shaking. The revolving doors spit me back onto the sidewalk, and I chain-smoked in the shadows until Dad picked me up.
I went back to Providence, and the offer came at the end of the next business week. The job didn’t pay well, but it was a good opportunity. I thanked the hiring manager profusely, asked if I could consider it, and hung up the phone feeling sick. When I envisioned myself back in Philadelphia, my chest hurt, and I couldn’t breathe.
I didn’t sleep for six days as I deliberated on the offer, and in the end, I turned the job down. I didn’t feel I had the strength to do it well. I wanted to stay in Providence. I had been working in a restaurant for three years and figured I could wait tables to make rent until I found an office job.
When I told my father, he was irate. My decision was “irresponsible” and “absolutely unacceptable.” He told me I had to come home.
My father booked a suite at the Biltmore Hotel for graduation weekend. He wore his best suit to the ceremony and took the family out to dinner on Federal Hill. But the day after graduation, he stormed into my apartment, gathered armloads of my things, and threw them in the dumpster. He called me a piece of shit and ordered me to pack everything up and get my ass home. Then he drove off in a rage.
By the time I got home to Philadelphia, my father’s anger was extinguished, and he was again brimming with pride. The next time I saw him, he surprised me with a little black box. Inside was a ring—white gold filagree and four tiny sapphires. He told me it was a family heirloom recovered from my grandparents’ estate. This was a good story, but it looked just like an engagement ring—in that it was an empty setting.
“What do you think, Neine?” he asked. “Do you want a black diamond or a yellow diamond?”
I didn’t want a diamond at all, but I had learned to take what my father could give me. I closed the box and handed it back to him. “The ring would look best with a clear white diamond,” I said.
I didn’t need a diamond ring, but I would need a car if I was going to live at home in the suburbs. Dad wanted to buy me a white Lexus with leather seats, but I wanted something understated and reliable, a car I could drive across the country or park on the street in New York, so we went to the dealership, and he bought me a Honda Civic. It was brand-new, a little black hatchback with manual transmission. I loved the car—but when he paid cash, my face burned with a shame I could not articulate.
My father let me win that battle because he had already won the war. All I wanted was to live a quiet life in Providence and take the bus to the grocery store. Instead, I moved home and put a diamond ring on the middle finger of my left hand. I waited tables through the summer, and in the fall, I took a job my father had lined up for me in the School District of Philadelphia. The Office of Specialized Services was located in a tiny South Philly neighborhood called Devil’s Pocket. My title was Special Projects Assistant, and it was an easy administrative job. I answered the phones, made photocopies, took meeting notes, and edited policy handbooks. I had a lot of downtime, during which I read the NYTimes, studied the novels of Henry James, and prepared submissions—all of which were rejected—to literary magazines.
Everything should have been fine, but I was drowning. My presence in the office gave my father a good reason to drop by unannounced. More than once, he bought cookies and cannoli from Termini’s bakery for the staff. I smoked cigarettes with my morning coffee, berated myself for turning down the job in publishing, and had regular panic attacks in traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway. I couldn’t take it. Something about the job made me feel sick, and I resigned within six months.
My father was “disappointed in me” but didn’t push the matter because there was nothing to be done; my letter of resignation had already been accepted.
I was still living at home with my mother, waiting tables, and working odd jobs. I spent the weekends reading, taking notes, driving around aimlessly, going to house parties, drinking red wine, and talking to boys. I had many friends but no lovers. I could barely let anyone stand close enough to touch me, let alone know me—and my eyes glinted with a hint of deterrence.
I was young, spoiled, and bored—but I wasn’t stupid. After a few months, I started to get anxious about the possibility of a car accident or a broken bone. I worried about what would happen if my appendix burst and I didn’t have health insurance, so I asked my father to carry me on his policy until I found a new job. He relished taking care of me and agreed. One afternoon, he showed me into his home office and handed me a stack of forms with repetitive questions: name, address, date of birth, and bank account information. I completed the forms, listed the number to a checking account on which he was a co-signatory, and signed on the dotted line. The following week, an insurance card arrived in the mail. Now I had everything: health insurance, a new car, a diamond ring, and a newly minted Ivy League degree. I also had terrible dreams and often stayed up until dawn in order to get away from the things that I saw in my sleep: a masked man, a series of locked doors, and a child buried in the water.
In short, I was troubled, but I kept moving, pretending, and planning only inches ahead.
That spring, I announced that I was going to “find myself.” I bought a plane ticket and a Eurorail pass with the money I had saved from working for the School District and waiting tables, and I flew away to leave all my troubles behind.
Over the next two months, I traveled by train from Bulgaria to Spain. I saw the great cities of Europe: Athens, Rome, Paris, Barcelona, and a dozen points in between. I stayed with friends and acquaintances, and where I didn’t know anyone, I slept in hostels and cheap lodging rooms. I spent my days reading and looking at art, but at night, there was always another dark alley, another bottle of wine, another strange man whose gaze violated my sense of self—all the selves I relinquished and tried to reassemble the bathroom mirror.
I visited ruins and architectural wonders: the Acropolis, the Colleseum, the canals of Venice, the Eifel Tower, and Sagrada Familia. I toured the Vatican, the Louvre, the Villa Borghese, and the Musée D’Orsay. I saw the work of Michaelangelo, DaVinci, Rembrandt, El Grecco, Picasso, Miró, and Dalí. Everything was beautiful, so horribly beautiful, and it was as if I were looking at the world through dark panes of broken glass.
I saw the great art of Europe, but the piece I remember most clearly was not so much a painting as a mirror. I was wandering through the National Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria, when a likeness stopped me in my tracks. It was a man with hateful, yellow eyes. I read the plaque. The painting was called Lucifer (Franz Stuck, 1890). This devil didn’t have horns, just pale naked skin and dark wings that folded like a shadow behind him. The devil was so familiar, so human. I stood staring into his eyes for a long time. I was sure I had seen this face somewhere before.
The world was so beautiful, but wherever I went, there I was—alone with my thoughts.
On my way to Paris, I was detained by a Swiss customs agent who found marijuana in my bag. I was held in a small room in a train station for several hours before I was released onto the shores of Lake Geneva, where I was shamed by the majesty of the Alps.
For so long, I’ve tried to forget. I buried these events somewhere deep in my chest, and returning to them feels like disrupting the dead as if I am again descending from the heat of the day into the Catacombs. There was an engraving at the entrance: “Arrète! C’est ici L’empire de la Mort.” This may be the kingdom of Death, but the truth never dies. Beware all who enter here.
My diaries of the journey describe the sky as “a pale, indecent rag,” and I was consumed by self-loathing. I had purchased the plane and rail tickets myself but ran out of money somewhere near Rome, and my father was subsidizing my travel. There were regular deposits going into my account. By the time I got boarded the plane to Philadelphia, I felt empty and exhausted. My father picked me up at the airport and drove me home to my mother’s house, where a pile of bank statements was waiting for me on the dressing table. One by one, I opened the statements and examined them with growing dread. It was then that I realized I was on the payroll at my father’s school. He hadn’t added me to his personal insurance policy. He had given me health insurance and paid me as a benefited employee while I was backpacking through Europe. I added up the payments: almost $8000—and half of it was already spent.
“Dad,” I gasped into the phone. “What did you do? Why did you put me on the payroll?”
“You asked me to help you.”
“But I didn’t earn that money. It isn’t mine.”
“It’s just business, Neine.”
“This is not a good way of doing business, Daddy.”
That’s when I knew with certainty my father was stealing—and implicating me in his crimes.
I went back to waiting tables. I moved out of my mother’s house and tried to get on with my life, but the more distance I took, the more perspective I gained. I watched closely and took mental notes. Soon, I gathered enough evidence—not enough to understand the intricacies of the conspiracy—but enough to know something was wrong.
Here’s what I knew: my father was running several schools, a non-profit, and a consulting company, and large amounts of money seemed to be moving between them. The consulting company was called Charter School Development Associates (CSDA). It was an entity registered to my mother’s residential address, and big checks from the Nobel Learning Company regularly came in the mail. I had a company phone even though I had not worked for the company in over three years, so I inferred this was not the only way he was padding his expense accounts. There were new charters, big real estate deals, and major consulting contracts. He talked a good game and was always on the phone with state legislators and Paul Vallas, then superintendent of Philadelphia schools. He traveled regularly, and I recalled that he had once taken me on a business trip to meet with an interstate coalition of lawmakers working on a national charter school policy. I didn’t like the tone of that meeting. They weren’t talking about services or programming; they were talking about big money and disrupting the unions. I excused myself and went to the courtyard to smoke. I saw my father handle a lot of cash, and his attitude toward money had changed. When I was growing up, he had always been frugal; now, he was buying diamonds, houses, and cars.
There was just too much money.
It became a point of contention, and we fought about it a lot. I remember confronting him on the driveway when he stopped by to pick up his mail.
“What you are doing is wrong.”
“There’s nothing wrong with making money, Neine,” Dad laughed, pocketing a check.
“If you keep this up,” I said, “You’re going to get caught.” My voice was even. I said it not as a threat but as a statement of fact.
“Caught doing what?” he said. “I’ve paid taxes on every dollar I’ve ever made.”
“I’m afraid.” Now my voice was small and wavering. “You’re going to end up in prison.”
“Don’t worry, Neine. You know I would never allow that.” I shrank from his touch as he patted me on the back and gave me a peck on the cheek.
I confided in my mother, but she kept insisting, “Your father is smart enough to make money legally.”
“But he is stealing.”
“Honestly, Christine, who is putting these ideas in your head? You sound a crazy person.”
There was no one to talk to and nowhere to turn. For the next six months, I drove around Philadelphia in a state of perpetual anticipation, trying to work up the courage to turn him in to the authorities, but I didn’t trust anyone and did not know whom to call. I was sick with my knowledge, and I didn’t understand how no one else could see what was happening—how no one else seemed to care.
But in hindsight, someone did notice— someone cared deeply. Now, looking back through the years, I can’t stop thinking about Jon.
Jon was a founding staff member at the Philadelphia Academy Charter School, and he kept the books. His daughter, Rebecca, was a student. I knew her from aftercare as a quiet eight-year-old with blond hair and pensive brown eyes. I didn’t know Jon well, but I liked him. He was equal parts timid and friendly. He wore round glasses and suspenders and had a kind, genuine manner.
One day, I stopped by the school to drop something off for my father. His secretaries were friendly and jovial, but something felt off. There was tension among the faculty, and things were not right with Jon. When I peered into his office to say hello, the room was in visible disarray, and his affect was troubled, harried.
He jumped when he saw me in the doorframe. He wouldn’t meet my eye and turned the other way.
I asked my father if Jon was okay.
Dad lay his hand on my shoulder and guided me down the hallway. He told me in hushed tones that Jon was having problems at home and that it was affecting his work. Dad was magnanimous. He didn’t want to have to let Jon go, but Jon was making mistakes—big mistakes—on the job. There were financial consequences, and the stakes were high. Kevin O’Shea—who had largely taken over the day-to-day operations at the school—had to reprimand him.
If I remember correctly, they were going to put him on leave.
Not long after, my father called me for a regular morning check-in. I was drinking black coffee and working the cash register in a workshop in Doylestown.
“Something’s going on with Jon,” his voice was wound tight as if he were choosing his words carefully.
“What do you mean?”
“Kevin’s over there now. He’s trying to help, but Jon’s locked himself in the house—with a gun.”
“What do you mean—with a gun?”
“Jon has barricaded himself in the house. Kevin is trying to get in there, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to save him.”
I couldn’t breathe. “Save him from what?” I said. “What do you mean?”
There was a loud sound. “I’ve got to go, Neine,” he said, “I’ll call you back.”
I put the phone down and stared at the morning light, strewn like split cords on the workshop floor.
When my father called back, Jon was dead; he had shot himself in the head.
Like the rest of the school, my father was devastated, bereaved by Jon’s suicide. Why would he do such a thing? What had possessed him? Dad speculated that the problems at home must have been worse than he could have ever imagined, and he took me to sit Shivah with Jon’s family.
I sat in an armchair while my father made his rounds of consolation. I didn’t know anyone there except Rebecca. Now she was twelve or thirteen years old, her hair hung like a veil, and her face was very pale. She sat across the room in a chair facing my own. She looked at me, and I met her gaze. We sat like that for a long time, just looking at each other. Neither of us understood, but we both knew what had happened.
NOTE:
Join me as I unravel my father’s crimes, examining the price of shame and the consequences of our lies.
Because “Poetry is what survives.”
