My Father's Wives by Mike Greenberg Page B

kind I can recall being asked, and it was followed by more than I could keep up with, but you always remember your first.
    What I remember most is not how it made me feel, but how my mother made me feel about it. Really, it is that which is most significant about the whole thing; it was the first time I recall my mother explaining life to me in a way that made it seem less daunting.
    It was Lee Marshall who asked the question, at Yankee Stadium. Lee was the prettiest girl in our second-grade class, which at the time meant nothing to me at all. She was also the daughter of one of the richest men in New York, Robert Marshall, who traveled about the city in the back of a Rolls-Royce. Lee’s father’s wealth was of no import to me at age seven either; I was just impressed by his Yankees tickets.
    Lee invited me to join her family in their box seats for a game during the World Series. We rode in the back of Mr. Marshall’s limousine, me in my Yankees jacket and matching hat, Lee in a dress you might wear to a dance. It was game six, which proved to be among the most famous in history: Reggie Jackson slammed three home runs and the Yankees clinched the championship. But what I remember most, amid the din that only fifty thousand New Yorkers can create, was Lee turning to me and saying: “My daddy says your dad wants to take all of our money and give it to the men who clean the windshields when you stop for red lights. Why can’t he just clean his own windshield?”
    Reggie Jackson hit his historic third home run right after she asked that. We joined the crowd in a standing ovation, and when the game resumed Lee had forgotten all about the question. But I didn’t forget. Even as I watched the Yankees spill out of their dugout to celebrate, Icouldn’t get the question out of my head. I didn’t know the answer, but I knew who would.
    “Your dad is a powerful man,” my mother told me that night at home. “Powerful men make decisions they believe in and stand up for them, even when other people criticize them. So you can feel proud to know that your father stands for something, even if some people don’t like it.”
    “Do they not like him?” I asked.
    “It’s not him,” she said. “Every one of the men who disagree with your father would love him if they sat down together. They just disagree with his positions.”
    I have since come to know that at the time of this conversation, my father was already involved in a relationship with the woman who would become his second wife, and my mother knew it.
    “I don’t understand,” I said that night. “Why does Lee’s father care if Dad washes his own windshield?”
    “He doesn’t care about your father’s windshield, he cares about his own,” my mother said. “Your father believes that people like Mr. Marshall, who have a lot of money, should pay some of that money in taxes so that people who have less can afford to live. Like those men in the street who wash the windshields. Do you understand?”
    “I think so.”
    “Does that seem fair to you?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “That’s right, because you’re seven years old and all you should care about is that your favorite team won the World Series. Don’t let things you don’t understand interfere with your fun. Remember that the next time anybody mentions your father.”
    I still remember it today. Just as important, I remember that when I am in trouble it is invariably my mother who can make things better. So, on my fortieth birthday, nursing a miserable hangover (I wasn’t lying about that), I rode a later train into the city and took the subway downtown to see my mother.
    The apartment she lives in is the same place where I mostly grew up; with my father we lived on Central Park West, but when he went his way we went down to Sullivan Street, where we were surrounded by the artists and beatniks among whom my mother felt much more comfortable than she did the power-and-politics set uptown. She loved telling