chapter/ Number One

He was Number One. He told me, rather nonchalantly, over the phone.  

“I have some interesting news: it seems I’ve been voted Best Radio News Personality,” he said, in his signature, velvet monotone.  Daddy was the late-night voice of 1010-WINS Radio: You Give Us Twenty-Two Minutes, We’ll Give You The World. Perfected for broadcast and permanently imprinted on his off-air persona, his meter and tone captured a controlled balance of enthusiasm, authority, and calm. His evening shift ran from 6:30pm to 2:30am, Wednesdays through Sundays, so if you lived in the New York tri-state area in the 1970’s and 80’s, commuted to the suburbs or outer boroughs, rode in taxis after dark, or relied on the repetitive rhythms of news radio for late-night companionship, then my father’s voice anchored your evenings. 

When he won, I was fifteen years old, a full-fledged anti-establishmentarian punk rock kid. Fifteen, living in New York City, suffering the way middle-class American teenagers suffer: I was pissed at the world, powerless against my oppressors, victimized by the ills of our capitalist society. Distrusting anyone in authority. I wanted to hate my parents. That was the norm among my friends, most of whom lived in restrictive households, commandeered by teams of parental units whose power reigned supreme.  But my mother ruled our single-parent/only-child household with a Jell-o fist. As long as my grades didn’t slip, social deviance met no parental friction from her. While I complained long and loudly about the few rules she often threatened to enforce, I was truly grateful for my father’s open refusal to “interfere with whatever understandings” my mother and I had.

At fifteen, I was used to Daddy’s absence. As puberty encroached, our lives veered apart. We exchanged brief updates from time to time, but never went deep. His occasional invitations to dinner in the city confined our contact to the timeslot he usually reserved for copy revisions. If I played it right, he might get to know me. He might take an interest in what I had to say. Or we might just forfeit another fancy meal, pressed for time, short on answers. 

 “How’s school?”

“Fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Yes. It’s all right.”

“Are you still in that band?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what this hairdo is about?”

“I change my hair all the time.”

“It’s not very becoming. Is that supposed to be punk?”

“I guess.”

“Do you like that band The Sex Pistols?”

“They’re OK. They’re not my favorite.”

“I can’t believe your mother lets you listen to that garbage.”

Hush. I refuse to defend my mother to you. She is not the problem. I wait, hoping the silence will diffuse his strange bitterness. Watching him masterfully cut and chew, sip and swallow, finesse every move with the studied grace of a debutante, I choke on my own childish need for connection. 

Daddy was a private man. He rarely shared any details of his work, the celebrity interviews, or the fantastic events he covered as part of the job. His long-gone years in Colored Radio were a total mystery to me, only hinted at by my mother, who knew him then. His exclusive access to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., as New York’s only black radio journalist, was part of his fragmented past. That black world, in which he had grown up, and subsequently discarded. 

He had ascended! Marriage to my mother marked the trailhead. The big job at WINS was the door to the kingdom, slamming shut behind him. The award must have been the final flag: he had reached the summit. His loyalty to the station, and his fierce adherence to every rule of propriety, had paid off. The sacrifices his parents made, to send him to Professional Children’s School, and the acting and modeling jobs that prepared him, and the very careful choices he made along the way, clinched his success. In an industry full of black stars he labeled “flashy, cornball disc jockeys”, he had few peers in the newsroom. No one he openly admired. He looked down on those who had failed to reach such heights, and held fast to his elite position on the mountaintop. 

I knew I should congratulate him on winning the award. This could be the start of a real connection. But where to begin?

“Did you win a little commemorative statue or something?” I asked.

“No. No statue. I’m sure the jerks at the station will make a big deal about it, in their own way. Make some sort of tacky plaque or something. But there is a prize attached to the award. It’s a trip. To London.  On the Concorde. You know, the supersonic transatlantic airliner.”

“Really?” I couldn’t see my father getting on a supersonic transatlantic airliner. Maybe in his youth, in the Army, when he had something to prove, or orders to follow. But the Daddy I knew was not looking for a thrill. His daily, round-trip drives between midtown and Southampton seemed to be all the adventure he could stand.

“I can’t say I’m looking forward to the flight. But I’ve always wanted to see Paris. They’re sending us to Paris and London. Linda is already boning up on her French.”  Linda.  Of course he would take Linda. Smart, soft-spoken, selfless, impossible-to-dislike Linda: his girlfriend of the day, and co-worker at the station. A promising young copywriter. 

“Sounds great. I’d love to go to Europe some day,” I mused, without a hint of rancor.

“Well, maybe you’ll do some study abroad in college… Is there something you’d  like me to bring back for you?”

“From England? Or France?”  I tried not to care. But there were a thousand things I would have brought back for myself, from either place. Records (vinyl) from London, clothing from Paris. But Dad wouldn’t have a clue about any of it. Country Club Chic was his idea of high style. I was the East Village to his Park Avenue.

“Come on. There must be something,” he pushed.

It was a set-up. If I fed him something real, he would forget. Or fumble. Or forbid it altogether. Like the football I asked for, when I was ten: No daughter of mine is going to grow up with quarterback shoulders.

“How about just something really different. Something I can’t get here.” I left the choosing to him, resigned to appreciate the gesture behind whatever token he delivered.

While he was gone, I imagined how much his loyal fans must have missed him. The women who sent him amorous notes, in care of the station, enclosing photos of themselves. My own late-night taxi rides, piled tight with friends going from nightclub to party, were mercifully free of my father’s live voiceover. But could anyone trust what the next day’s weather would bring? 

And what did Daddy bring back for me, from his grand trip abroad? A pair of stretchy, acrylic, unbearably ugly electric blue knee socks emblazoned with the Union Jack, which must have cost three pounds at the Heathrow duty-free shop. Ironically, they were a great complement to my non-conformist wardrobe. I wore them over threadbare black tights, with a gray plaid miniskirt and combat boots.  The socks presented a pop of color in an otherwise bleak palette, the flags boldly flying in a bright, tidy band across my calves. I also received Linda’s slightly used pair of nylon comfort slippers, compliments of the Concorde. Which crumpled and died, forgotten in the bottom of my sock drawer.

The radio station issued a limited number of coffee mugs, printed up like newspaper articles, with his name and NUMBER ONE filling the the headline. They were numbered. I have mug #92, here on my desk, filled with writing tools. A quiet reminder.