Finding Dad: From "Love Child" to Daughter (12 page)

Tracy just shook his head. “See? I told you a girl can get away with a lot more with him.”

So many times, we had fallen on humor to escape awkwardness, and I could tell by the softening in my father’s brow that this was starting to work. Try as he might, my father’s stern gaze melted into laughter.

“Okay, okay, now get this out of my hair, and let’s get dressed…and no more running off anymore without telling me where you are!”

Whatever ice was there between me and my new family was being broken. Humor really was the best elixir.

The weekend went by too fast, and Tracy and I promised to stay in touch. “Once you get up to school, I’ll call you on Sundays.” And he’d kept his promise, often checking in from various cities around the world—in spite of his demanding schedule. Like my father, work made Tracy tick. He was a master at his profession, and he couldn’t separate it from who he was. Every time he took time out of his busy life to call me, I knew it was his way of trying to make things right, and I loved him for it.

My youngest brother, Peter, was the next to visit. He was coming from Richmond, Virginia, and I hoped we would have as much fun as I’d had with Tracy. I felt more confident knowing at least one brother approved of me. When Peter walked through the door, it was like déjà vu. He was a taller blond version of my father and Tracy. “Hello, hello!” he said, giving me a big welcoming hug. “It’s so nice to meet the new family member in person.” He was alluding to having heard the rumors about me over the years and seeing the newspaper articles.

I smiled. “It’s great to meet you too—for real.”

Then he looked at our father shaking his head, “You needed a paternity test? Look in the mirror!”

Wow, now
that’s
an ice breaker. We both laughed as our father shrugged his shoulders—uncharacteristically speechless.

Peter talked about when my father told him about me and the news conference. He took it in stride like Tracy. “I told him he lost an engine, feather it.”

Peter had followed my father’s love of aviation by becoming an airline pilot. But that’s where the similarities ended. Peter showed a sensitive, perceptive side that wasn’t as apparent in my father or Tracy. Where my father was tough and brief, Peter told long, loving stories about his wife, Karen, and I knew he was a good man who believed in the importance of family. He was also the only one who had ever met my mother.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come and see you when you were a baby. Your mother called me, you know.”

I was touched that he was trying to make amends, but I could hardly blame him for anything. “I know, she told me. But it’s okay. I know there was probably nothing you could have done.”

He shook his head. “No I should have. I was just a college kid when your mom called and asked me to come meet my sister. I called Dad and he told me to stay out of it, so I did. I wish so much now I had done something different, and we all could have known you.”

As great as all this made me feel, I could tell there was a “but” coming.

“But why did you have to make things so public? Why couldn’t you just reach out to us in a private way?”

It was a valid question, and my heart went out to him. “I never wanted this to become a huge media circus. The problem was I did try to reach out privately. I wrote letters, and even after I met him and the DNA test proved I was his daughter, he still refused to acknowledge me. I felt like I had no choice. I never wanted to hurt anyone.”

He nodded slowly. “Well, that makes sense. It sounds like him,” he said with an “I know it all too well” undertone. “You know, he wasn’t around much for us either. He’s a businessman first and family man somewhere down the list.” I could tell he still carried the hurt.

The one thing Peter did inherit from my father was an analytical mind. After our weekend together he seemed satisfied that I had answered all of his questions, and he was ready to embrace me just like Tracy had. Today, Peter is the one brother I can count on to never miss anyone’s birthday, and always calls on holidays. He is a wonderful father to his son, Hunter, and devoted husband to Karen for more than twenty-five years now. And he’s the only one in our family who is handy, often fixing all the little broken things in my house when he comes to visit. He chose to live life differently than my father, and though he is a pilot, he’s anything but a jetsetter, preferring to be home to go to all of Hunter’s swim meets and help with homework. I often think he healed himself through the love he gives to his family, and I am happy to be on the receiving end of his sincerity.

The last to visit was my middle brother, Stuart, the handsome bachelor with the thick curly hair and blue eyes that apparently came from his mother. He was a jetsetter like Dad, doing business all over the world, but also sweet and funny, like the boy next door.

He was wearing his trademark blue Lacoste shirt and Levis when he arrived at Seaward after taking a train from New York City, where he lived on the Upper East Side.

“Hello! So nice to meet you,” he said hugging me right away.

“I’m so happy you’re here, I have heard a lot about you.”

From everything I’d heard, Stuart was the special one. Like my father, he went to Harvard, and was a great athlete, and was now making his mark in the world of finance.

Over dinner, Stuart told me how he’d first heard about me, which was a carbon copy of how Peter and Tracy had found out, only by the time my dad called Stuart he was running out of time, and even more brief. “Dad called me up and says, it’s your father, I’m having a press conference in fifteen minutes, you have a sister, I’ve gotta go. By the time I stammered out an ‘okay,’ he’d hung up. Click! That was it.”

You would think these stories made my father cringe, but he didn’t say anything—as if he embraced his perfect imperfections. Instead, we all just laughed, since that was
so
my father. His abruptness was part of what made him who he was, and my brothers had learned to expect it. I was learning my new family was unabashedly honest, despite its deficiencies, and I think that’s why my brothers took to me so easily. They had learned to roll with the punches. After four marriages, and several step kids, nothing seemed to surprise them anymore. My father was who he was, and you could drive yourself nuts, or just focus on the good—and laugh at the rest.

I looked forward to getting Stuart’s story of how he really felt about my arrival when we could be alone. In the meantime, my father seemed happy that all of his sons were being so open to me, especially since he had clearly kept a lot from them in the past few years.

When we got back home, Stuart and my father took off their blazers and ties, and we all sunk into the couch in the study for the traditional Oreos and goodnights. Just like with Tracy and Peter, Stuart and I stayed up in the study talking about life.

”Well, are you okay with all that’s happened?” I asked in between bites of Oreos. “What do think about all of this—about me?”

“I feel great, Kara. You’re smart, you’re pretty, what else is there to worry about?”

It was obvious Stuart had inherited my father’s suave manner, and it was clear they both had the ability to make women love them. I had heard Stuart was living with the famous model Margaux Hemmingway since they were both in a
People
Magazine
story together, and he was featured in her
E! True Hollywood Story
as the businessman who helped her recover from alcoholism.

“Well, I guess we both have
People Magazine
in common,” I said, trying to crack a joke.

“That’s true,” he beamed back.

Stuart was brilliant and could talk about anything, but he spoke
to
me, not
at
me. He was the easy-to-get-along-with middle child, and I felt proud to have a “cool” brother like him.

Stuart visited Newport often that summer, since he loved to spend weekends playing tennis and relaxing at Bailey’s Beach, where he was also a member. He was gracious and kind by always introducing me to everyone as his “sister.” When some people gave him a funny look and remarked about not knowing he had a sister, he would laugh and say, “Neither did I!”

Just like our father, he knew how to use humor to change the mood.

Sometimes my father tried to encourage Stuart to settle down. “You’re wasting your life, you need to get married and have children.”

Stuart would roll his eyes—it was obvious he’d heard this many times. “Someday, Dad, someday,” he said, unfazed by my father’s prodding. He knew how to placate his commander.

Stuart has a heart of gold, but I wonder if he avoided marriage in fear that he might be wired too much like our father, and didn’t want to end up with the same bad track record. Today, he is a wonderful uncle to my two children. They call him “Uncle Jungle Gym,” since they love to climb on his big strong shoulders. He spends nearly every weekend at our home in Newport during the summer, and I love watching him go from buying toys for the kids at a Thomas the Train outing, to a black tie gala where the ladies are waiting for a dance. He may never be the type to settle down, but I’m so happy when he presses the Pause button, it’s with me.

As a journalist who covers spirituality on my talk show, I have met many gurus who speak about past lives and say we are part of a soul group that chooses to incarnate time and time again to learn our lessons on Earth. I’m not sure where I am with all that, but all I can say for sure is that my brothers didn’t feel new to me. Just like it was with my father, the connections we shared were easy and strong. Filling in my family tree with smart, successful men made me feel more grounded. Their love settled in my core and made me feel more solid.

My brothers and I represent pieces of my father. He had been a runner like Tracy, a pilot like Peter, a businessman like Stuart, and a broadcaster like me. We are all spokes of the same wheel, connected at the center by our love for and likeness to this man who helped shape who we became.

As summer drew to a close, we promised to keep in touch and meet at my father’s home in Middleburg, Virginia for Thanksgiving. My brothers were now the borders to my tapestry, with all four of us now joined in a way that assured me it wasn’t going to unstitch the minute I turned my back and went off to college.

The day I left, I hugged my father goodbye at the same threshold where my new life had begun a few short weeks ago. He squeezed me extra hard. “Make sure you call when you get home to Michigan to let us know you made it okay.”

“I will. And thank you for everything—I’ll miss you so much.”

“I’ll be in touch,” he said smiling, but I could see in his eyes that he’d miss me, too.

I hadn’t called him Dad yet, but with a little more time, I knew I would. I just wanted it to be special.

I had to teach my father how to share his feelings, and that would take time. In later years, he never hung up without saying “I love you,” but it took many times of me saying it first. It’s not that he didn’t care, he was just afraid to show it—or didn’t know how. Eventually, we both felt safe enough to open our hearts—and it started with him opening his home that summer.

My father had a state trooper escort me to the airport. I gazed out at the ocean as we pulled away from Seaward, and a part of me wished I could stay forever. My life had been indelibly changed, and I didn’t want the dream to end. This time, there were no cameras waiting for me at the airport. Finally, the show was over, and I was so grateful we had created something real.

  
13
A Whole New Me

August, 1993

I came back home to Mom’s open arms. “I missed you so much,” she said, squeezing me.

“I missed you, too.” And I did. But looking at her and our apartment, nothing felt the same. I was looking at my life here through a new filter, and I felt like I’d just stepped back in time. I needed to find my footing. My entire being had been transformed in a life-altering way, while nothing back home had changed at all. I needed to readjust to the old world, all the while knowing that very soon, another new world would open at college. I was standing in limbo land.

More than anything, I didn’t want to hurt my mom, so I didn’t say much about private beach clubs and helicopters. Instead, we set off to do our favorite thing together—shopping! This time the trip would be a rite of passage as we set out to get everything I needed for my college dorm room. Mom had already secured a great deal on a green and white striped mini couch that rolled out to a bed, much more chic then a typical futon she thought, and it would still fit in my tiny dorm room below the loft bed my roommate and I were going to have built by the college guys on campus on move-in day.

Today was about Mom helping me buy the bedding, cute accessories, and plenty of plastic storage to set up my new abode in academia. As we strolled the aisles of the Bed Bath and Beyond on Orchard Lake Road in West Bloomfield, I could feel the eyes of other shoppers looking at Mom and me as we squeezed different pillows to see which would be most comfortable. Then came the whispers. In the midst of this very normal errand, I suddenly remembered that my life was anything but normal now. After spending an exhilarating summer with Dad in Newport, I was looking forward to some Joe Schmoe days back at home, and was quickly realizing there was no more normal.

“Hi, are you Kara Hewes?” The questions came from a mom who was shopping with her daughter.

I nodded. “Yes”

“I thought so, I just want to say I am so proud of what you and your mom did. So brave.”

“Thanks,” my mom said proudly. “I raised her to be a tough cookie.”

“You did a great job,” the woman answered.

Mom smiled, energized by the compliments, and I was happy she was getting the credit she deserved. But standing there in that store with strangers who came up to us, it hit me that the genie was out of the bottle and, like it or not, we were now famous, which meant people were going to be watching and judging us. The new level of distinction and the feeling that Mom could still crumble at any moment had me walking on eggshells. I was back in the world where I had to be the protector, and I sorely missed the safety I’d felt when my father ran the show and protected me.

The problem was, Mom felt anything but safe, thanks to my father. It had only been about two months since he called her a golddigger, and I knew she was still hurting. I had inherited a thicker skin from my father, but Mom’s was paper thin, so she felt insults deeply, and it was hard for her to let go. While I had spent a summer healing my hurts with laughter and exciting moments, Mom stayed stuck on Pause. My father hadn’t done anything to heal her, and I wished there was some magic to make her better. I really wanted our last couple weeks together to be peaceful before I moved off to school, so I tried to tread carefully and avoid talking too much about my father, or how amazing my summer in Newport had been.

When move-in day at the University of Michigan arrived, Mom helped me load up the car to drive to Ann Arbor for the big send off. We waited in long lines of traffic trying to get close to South Quad, the dorm I would move into on the 7th floor. My roommate, Ellie, was a friend from my high school, and we were so excited to discover that we’d gotten one of the coveted rooms with a sink—which meant we wouldn’t have to go down the hall to the communal bathroom every time we wanted to brush our teeth or get water. However, Mom was less than excited about hauling all of my things up seven flights of stairs to our coveted room. This was a job for a strong man, of which we saw plenty in the form of fathers lugging duffle bags into the dorm. But, once again, Mom was doing the heavy lifting on her own. With each box we lugged, she got more ticked off.

“Kara this is just too much, I’m going to get some guys to help us.”

“No, Mom, we can do it,” I said, feeling annoyed we couldn’t do this rite of passage alone, yet painfully aware of Ellie’s father helping with the heavy lifting.

Mom insisted she didn’t want to do the job and was going to get us help. “I’m not strong enough. I’m going to pay some college boys to finish.” Then the elephant in the room reared its head. “If your father is so great, why isn’t he here to help move you in?”

“Mom, come on, he’s seventy-three years old. He can’t be lugging all this. Besides, he has to be in Rhode Island to run the state.”

“Why are you always defending him?” Mom shouted.

“Stop yelling, everyone is looking at us!” I yelled back, only calling more attention to us. “Why can’t this just be a great day like it is for normal families?” I felt the heat of rage boil up inside of me.
Normal.
Normal was that elusive quality I was forever seeking.

Outraged, she came back at me. “Do you yell at your father like this? Why, you treat him so much better than your own mother, who raised you alone!”

There it was—all the hurt and ugliness unleashed itself from the well of fury and resentment that Mom had carried my whole life. How I wished she could snap out of it, but she just couldn’t jump over the crater in her soul. She’d loved him, and he’d hurt her. She’d had his child and he had ignored us. Her reality was different than mine, and there was nothing I could do about it except bear the brunt of her frustration.

But Mom had a point. I was being a brat and wouldn’t have acted like this to my father. I wouldn’t have yelled at him or talked to him in a disrespectful tone because he was too new. My relationship with Mom was older, more tested, and filled with the comforts that allowed fighting and criticism, because we knew the long-standing love would allow us to bounce back like rubber.

Mom and I were durable, strengthened by the test of time. My father and I were more like the fragile fine china that’s only brought out on special occasions, always careful not to scratch or chip the porcelain. My father’s relationship had not been tested for everyday use yet—it hadn’t been toughened up by typical teenage fights because I’d always used my best manners around him. Heck, I was still at the point where I avoided calling him anything since I didn’t know how to refer to him. His first name sounded cold, and he hadn’t earned the title of Dad yet.

None of this was fair to Mom—I knew that—but it was the way it had to be now. Even with my father in our lives, writing the checks for college, Mom would still be the one to do the dirty work of day to day parenting. My father wasn’t the type to wear overalls, and I was too scared to ask him to help me move since it wasn’t in our agreement.

After the guys finished hoisting my last box up the cold industrial stairs, Mom and I sank down into the tiny couch she bought me and called it a day.

“Thanks, Mom.” I reached out and touched her arm. “I’m sorry we fought.”

She gave me a weary smile. “I’m sorry, too. I’m so proud of you. You’re going to do great here.”

“Thanks. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” she said, hugging me.

I walked her downstairs and gave her a lingering hug before she got in her car. As I watched her drive away, I was struck that, for the first time since having me, she could finally focus on her own life. I was grown, and it was now my father’s job to cover my education. The burden of being a single mother was finally being lifted, but with that, she was also losing her exclusivity. Now she was forced to share me with the man who’d never shared any responsibility for me. I wanted Mom to be just as happy, but she was starting her next chapter of life all alone, and I considered the same fear that had become a running theme; I’d gained a father and lost my mother.

My new identity was only three months old, and it felt like a borrowed sweater that didn’t exactly fit me right. When I had to talk about myself to new friends, I was never sure what to say about my family or background. I had grown up as an only child of a single mother, and now all of a sudden I was a Governor’s daughter with three older brothers. I was a Midwesterner, but if I said who my father was, one assumed I was from the East Coast. Rather than spending twenty minutes explaining my unique situation, it was easier not to say anything.

As I tried to find my way around campus, my father let me know he was still thinking of me with frequent phone calls to my dorm room, usually at 6 a.m., when he knew we were fast asleep.

“Kara, it’s your father, just want to say good morning and make sure you’re studying,” he would say with a chuckle.

“No, actually we’re all sleeping,” I would answer in a groggy whisper.

“Oh, so sorry, have a good day.” Click. Short and sweet—that was my father.

It was adorable that he wanted to say hi and let me know I was on his mind before his day began, but there’s little doubt my roommate found this very annoying. This was also his way of letting me know he was already up and conquering the world. He used to call the Lieutenant Governor, Robert Weygand, and wake him up every morning when he crossed into a section of Massachusetts because, according to an archaic state law, he wasn’t governor when he left the state.

“Hello, I’m just calling to say you’re the governor, so wake up,” he would say, laughing before hanging up. Ten miles later, he’d call back and tell Weygand he could go back to bed since he was the governor again.

Back at school, it was time for sorority rush, and though I didn’t want to engage in the catty, mindless activities that were sometimes associated with being in a sorority, I did want to find a way to make the campus of thirty-five thousand people feel smaller, and build a new community of friends. But I would have to ask my father for the dues to join a sorority.

“Please, I think it will really help me with a great place to live and some wonderful connections.”

“I don’t know…are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“I do! The Greek system is respected on this campus, I promise.”

“Okay, but this better not turn into a big party that keeps you from studying.”

“Thank you so much! And I promise I’ll keep my grades up.”

Brooke and Dayna planned on rushing, too, but we all had agreed to go our own ways in order to branch out and meet new friends. Our friendship was cemented in granite, and we would always have each other. They would always be the witnesses to me before I’d gained a father.

~

The first day of rush, I met Laura, a stunningly beautiful blonde girl from New Jersey who had curly hair like me. She was like a ball of light, and we sparked an instant friendship. Even though her blue-green eyes and curvy shape made the boys speechless, she was quick and bright. We discovered that we lived in the same dorm and ended up liking the same sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta. Not only was it the oldest sorority, founded by a young woman who thought girls should have fraternities, too, but we got to live in one the most beautiful old mansions in Ann Arbor, complete with antique furnishings, comfortable rooms, and a great meal plan.

Laura and I got in and immediately bonded. After teaching her how to straighten her curly hair, it got to the point where people started to confuse us.

As close as we were becoming, I hadn’t shared my story with Laura as yet. She knew my father was the governor of Rhode Island—I just left out the part where I’d only met him three months earlier. I wasn’t sure how to bring it up, so I kept waiting for the right time.

It was Heather, another new friend, who ended up helping me let the cat out of the bag. Laura had introduced me to Heather, who was from Philadelphia… and so tiny that she made me look like a giant. What she lacked in size, she made up for in her ability to make a big splash with her storytelling—which earned her the nickname Hollywood. Seemed like destiny that her ability to tell a big story would bump up against my tale that seemed made for the movies.

The three of us had become a tight threesome, and I wondered when and how I would share my whole story. As usual, Fate stepped in. Heather’s grandfather called her up one day after reading the
People
magazine article and told her about the girl who sued the governor of Rhode Island and was going to the University of Michigan. Since it was such a big school, Heather naturally assumed she wouldn’t know the girl from the article until Pop Pop read her the name—Kara Hewes.

“Holy cow, Pop Pop, she’s one of my closest friends!” Heather exclaimed, telling Laura and me the story.

Phew, that took care of my problem about how to tell Laura. Now everyone knew, and I could finally relax, knowing the secret was out.

As my new friends learned my story, my identity started to feel more real, and I was relieved that their reactions were positive.

Another good friend, Lauren, who came from Cleveland, remembered watching my story on TV all summer long before leaving to college, and thought my life sounded like a novel, though there were times when I wondered if it didn’t more closely resemble a soap opera.

My freshman year was going great. I was making new friends and happy to tell Mom and my father that I was doing well in my classes. I looked forward to sharing my stories about college life with my father and brothers at the Sundlun family Thanksgiving, though I felt guilty leaving Mom for the first time on a holiday. After promising I would drive home for a weekend soon, I packed my bags for what everyone called “the farm” in Middleburg, Virginia. To me, anything with the word “farm” in it meant jeans, Timberland boots, and warm sweaters, so I was alarmed to discover I had the wrong idea. This wasn’t a place of cows and chickens, but rather a 170 acre estate for fox hunting. Instead of a humble ranch house with a creaky screen door, I walked into an elegant stone home, complete with a carriage house that was grander than Dad’s Cliff Walk estate.