WEBVTT - The Fifth Passenger 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:17.120 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. People 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:20.360 came racing out of their houses in their backyards, and 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:25.280 these are all people who knew everyone involved and saw 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:29.880 these children. I mean young teenagers children. My sister was 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:32.920 told my brother was fourteen in the street, you know, 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:40.600 essentially dead. This is Joanna Raykoff. Joanna is a novelist 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:45.360 and memoirist who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Picture a woman 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:50.240 with dark, curly hair, lively eyes, an easy smile, a 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:53.080 woman you might pass on the cobblestone streets of Cambridge 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:56.240 and imagine that she has had a simple, lovely life. 0:00:57.160 --> 0:00:59.960 But Joanna's life has been shaped by an enormous secret. 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.800 It a family tragedy that she was shielded from until 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:08.080 well into adulthood, a secret that cast a long, sad 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:21.880 shadow over her childhood. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:25.039 family secrets. The secrets that are kept from us, the 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.160 secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:35.880 from ourselves. I was born in the Hudson River Valley 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:38.479 in a town that a lot of people know. It's 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:42.000 sort of a popular town outside the city called Nayak. 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:46.240 So Nayak sits on the river sits on the Hudson River. 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:50.640 It's a very beautiful, beautiful place. It's a place that 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:53.920 you know, Manhattan Night's like to come visit for the day. 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:59.480 There are wonderful restaurants and beautiful shops and lovely walks 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:03.040 along the river, seafood restaurants, boats, that kind of thing. 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:06.360 It's a lovely place to live. Kids all walked to 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:09.080 school there at sort of a utopian place. So I 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:11.760 was born in this town and my father had a 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:16.880 dental practice in the town. And when I was about three, 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:20.440 for reasons that were were not quite clear to me, 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:26.400 my family moved to a few towns over. We moved 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.200 to a very different place. We moved inland to the 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:32.960 kind of mountains a few miles up from nyack Um 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:37.520 to a very very tiny town called Pomona that was 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:40.360 more a very new town. It was kind of a 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:44.680 fake town that catered to people fleeing the city as 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:49.519 they did in the seventies, and was filled with brand new, 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:53.639 modern glass houses. We moved to one of these houses, 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:56.240 a very large house that was kind of surrounded by forest. 0:02:56.960 --> 0:02:59.440 It couldn't have been more different than nyak which was 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:02.960 this tiny The ancient town where the houses are very 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:05.440 close together, and we knew all our neighbors and kind 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:10.120 of ran back and forth between their houses and this 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:13.079 new town Pomona, the houses were sent much farther away, 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:16.520 and you couldn't see your neighbors. And in retrospect, I 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:19.160 realized that was what my parents wanted. They wanted privacy, 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:22.520 they wanted to be anonymous in this town. At the time, 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:25.800 I didn't understand it, And what I did understand was 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:30.560 that this felt like a kind of scary, strange place 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:34.680 to me. And I also understood that my mother was 0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:39.680 sort of unhappy in this place, and I didn't understand why. 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:42.720 You know, I would walk into the kitchen and find 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:47.800 my mother crying, or I would do some small thing 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:51.400 that didn't seem at all like a big deal to me, 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:56.680 like take my security blanket out of the dryer on 0:03:56.760 --> 0:03:59.280 my own, or said this this really happened, um, and 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:02.280 my mother would you know, go crazy and start screaming 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:06.839 at me in this sort of hysterical way and grow 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:11.080 so angry at me that I truly couldn't understand it. Um, 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:13.560 you know, screaming get away from me. I can't look 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:15.520 at you, I can't see you get away from me, 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:18.640 and as a small child, I spent a lot more 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:22.760 time with my father. There's a way in which, you know, 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:26.880 some people maybe are just by nature kid people, and 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.839 some people are not. And my father just was a 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:35.320 kid person, and he just loved doing stuff with me. 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.120 And so my childhood, when I think back on it, 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:41.440 and as I as I experienced it at the time 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:44.600 as well, had these kind of polarities to it. I 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:47.840 have such vivid memories of being of kind of trapsing 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:51.039 around this giant cold house, not quite knowing what to 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:53.760 do with myself, or sitting by myself playing with my 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:57.160 million barbie dolls, um wishing that my mom would sit 0:04:57.200 --> 0:04:59.599 on the floor and play with me. And then also 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.040 have these memories of going to the park with my dad, 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:07.600 going to this lake nearby and feeding duck. Joanna has 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:10.839 a much older sister, Amy, who no longer lives at home. 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:14.000 By the time Joanna is a toddler, this is familiar 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:16.880 to me. I grew up that way too, the feeling 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:19.320 on the one hand of having a sister and on 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:22.680 the other of being alone, surrounded by the eyes of 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:26.000 all your toy animals, your barbies, staring back at you, 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:32.839 I had those barbies to army of barbies, army of 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:36.960 barbies who are like your friends and only friends or 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.240 so would feels exactly making up stories for them and 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:45.000 so Um. Yes, So I did grow up feeling like 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:51.120 an only child. So I had an older sister who 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:55.039 was eighteen years my elder, Amy. I didn't really understand 0:05:55.120 --> 0:06:00.000 where she lived or what she did. Amy Um basically 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:03.480 graduated from college by the time I was born, and 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:06.640 in a way, the role she played in my life 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:11.760 was more of an aunt, a kind of fond but 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:16.400 distant aunt. She would occasionally come to our house on 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.120 my birthday, you know, give me a little present. She 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.560 would often show up at her house unexpected. So I 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:27.599 didn't I just didn't understand. And I think, if I'm 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:31.080 really honest, which I'm sorry, I often try to kind of, 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:33.800 I will be honest here and say I really often 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:38.320 try to sugarcoat our life and make excuses for everyone. 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:41.400 But the truth is I'm sort of struggling that to 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:45.320 cry here. You know, I I was just filled with longing. 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:49.280 I wanted I so badly, just wanted her to be 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:56.039 a sister, sister too, despite her age to come back 0:06:56.080 --> 0:07:00.600 and live with us and be there every day. We're 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:02.640 going to take a quick break, we'll be back in 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:10.400 a moment. What Joanna didn't realize was that there was 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:16.760 an entire tragic history surrounding her sister Amy. Sometimes Joanna 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:20.360 would walk in on her mother crying or looking horribly sad, 0:07:20.400 --> 0:07:23.800 and she would ask what was wrong, because Joanna presumed 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:27.240 that she she must have done something wrong that her 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:31.040 mother's sadness had to do with her. In general, I 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:35.280 knew not to ask anything of more depth than what's wrong, 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:39.000 you know, to not kind of probe at all. And 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:45.320 as an adult it's actually been I'm forty six years old, 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:51.840 and it's still very very hard for me to probe deeply, 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:54.720 to ask my mother difficult questions or to tell my 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:58.800 mother difficult things. But it also is difficult for me 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:01.840 to talk I realized to talk to other people, to 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:05.600 kind of probe deeply into other people's lives, and it's 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:09.760 affected my friendships. There's this way in which I was 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:13.680 kind of raised in this environment of just pretending that 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:20.120 everything is fine. This is the work of a lifetime, 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:24.120 isn't it. Sometimes we're able to look back, or we're 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:26.920 forced to look back. And see all the ways in 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:30.320 which our childhood selves have formed the adults we've become. 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.120 Especially when we discover a secret that has been kept 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:37.199 from us, we can look back and see the isolation, 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:40.880 the loneliness, the walking on eggshells that we once had 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:44.160 to do. And finally we understand all the ways we 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:49.040 were shaped by the unsaid. Because here's the thing. We 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:51.960 feel the things that are hidden from us, they live 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.960 in our bodies, in our bones, but as children we 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:59.920 don't understand. It's only later that the piece has fallen 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:03.560 a place. And for Joanna, one of those pieces was 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:07.160 a trio of portraits that hung in her childhood home. 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:14.200 One was a boy, dark hair in a style that 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:17.959 dated the portraits, neatly parted on the side and kind 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:20.720 of brushed to the side. It was sort of nineteen 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:24.079 fifties look, though I didn't quite understand that. I just 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:26.920 knew that this was a different thing from a different era. 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:29.679 And then there were two girls who did not look 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:33.959 like at all. One girl had dark brown hair and 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:39.600 bright green eyes and kind of olive skin, and um 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:44.960 was looking at the artist in a very kind of 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:48.000 I don't want to say ferocious because that's too extreme, 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:51.600 but a kind of bold way and smiling, but not 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:54.040 a smile of joy, a kind of smile of engagement. 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:58.199 More and um an intelligence. There was a fierce intelligence 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:02.560 to this girl, really captivating. And then the third one 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:07.280 was also a girl younger who had beautiful blonde hair, 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:12.280 kind of ash blonde um that kind of curled softly 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:16.839 to her shoulders, and bright blue eyes and a much 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:19.400 kind of softer expression on her face. She looked kind 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:24.400 of shy, almost kind of bashfulled. Both girls were matching 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:30.080 blue ribbons in their hair. The children were of indeterminate age, 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:33.600 like it wasn't quite clear to me. Maybe the older 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:36.600 girl was on the cusp of adolescence, like ten or eleven, 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:41.120 maybe twelve. The other two kids, it wasn't clear. Um, 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.280 they weren't little kids, but nor were they teenagers. So 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:49.320 these portraits um sort of gazed down at me for 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:51.480 a lot of my day as I watched TV, as 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:54.839 I did everything, and I had no idea who they 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:57.680 were of I honestly thought that they were art. We 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:00.400 had a lot of art in her house, uh, you know, 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.000 a lot of original art of all from all different eras, 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:06.560 all different types. I told myself that these were just 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:11.560 beautiful paintings, and so what did I do with this? 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:13.800 I I loved them, and I would gaze at them. 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:15.160 I would sit there on the sofa. I was a 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:18.360 huge reader, and I spent a lot of time just 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:21.760 lying on the sofa eating an apple, and I would 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:24.120 kind of gaze at them and make up stories about 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:27.600 them in my head. And I would when I read books, 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:32.520 I would kind of imagine the characters as as looking 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:39.960 like these kids. Joanna also recalls a mysterious photograph in 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.040 a home that has no family photos at all. There's 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:46.720 one picture in Joanna's dad's office, a place he retreats 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:49.640 to to smoke his pipe and do paperwork, of a family, 0:11:50.520 --> 0:11:54.440 but whose family. These people are strangers to her still, 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:57.199 they pull her in and she knows in a bone 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:01.320 shaking way that she'd better not ask about it. But 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:04.040 when she's about ten years old, her need to know 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:11.360 wins out. So finally, one day, after contemplating it for 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:14.280 a very long time, I said, who are these people 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:21.160 in the photo? And my father said, you you really 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:26.360 don't know who these people are? And I said no, 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:31.720 But I felt there's a horrible guilt, This horrible guilt 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.680 because and I thought, I guess I should know who 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:41.320 they are. And he he said, even sort of incredulous, 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:43.559 and he took the photo from me, and he pointed 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:47.240 to the woman in it and he said, that's your mother. 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:50.200 And then he pointed to the man in the photo, 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:53.839 who was also smiling and laughing and looked very happy, 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:56.280 and he said, you and that handsome devil is me. 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:01.600 And then he pointed to the teenagers, the children in 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:06.400 the photo, and he said, this boy right here is 0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:10.280 your brother Mark. And so one of the people in 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:13.199 the photo who I had perceived as being a girl, 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:18.720 was a boy who had very long hair and you know, 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:23.679 kind of delicate features. Um, and I suddenly went the 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:25.920 minute he said boy, I realized, oh my gosh, that 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.160 is a boy. I hadn't realized it, but in my 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:32.960 mind was reeling because of course I didn't know that 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:37.960 I had a brother. And then he went on and said, 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:41.760 in this girl right here, that's your sister Amy. You 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:45.400 know your sister Amy, And I said yes. And then 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:51.640 he pointed too the other girl, the third girl who 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:56.559 had could have blond, curly hair, and he said, and 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:01.800 this beautiful girl is your sister Anita. And his voice broke, 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:05.680 and it never seen my father cry and all my 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:10.600 father was always happy, and it just kind of held 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:16.880 me close to him, and you, I just said oh. 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:21.480 And he helped me for a long time, and then 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:24.280 I it was my bedtime and I said good night 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:27.960 and I left. So in all the years between that 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:31.360 first conversation Joanna and her father had in which he 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:35.360 told her of her brother and sister, those pastel portraits 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:38.960 on the family room wall, they never again spoke of 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:43.280 her siblings, Anita and Mark. If people asked Joanna if 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:46.000 she was an only child, she would respond that she 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:50.200 had one sister, a much older sister. She just didn't 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:54.480 allow herself to go there. In a way, she unconsciously 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:57.800 conspired with her parents to allow the secret to go 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:00.920 back into its hiding place. After all, this is a 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:04.840 secret kept not only by Joanna's parents, but by her 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:11.280 entire large extended family. If you think about it, it's 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:14.240 kind of amazing Joanna never learned more about her siblings. 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:18.120 Think of the many many cousins of Joanna's, the aunts 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:22.280 and uncles, the satyrs, the thanksgivings, the reunions, the Mother's 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:26.120 day lunches. Not one mention of her vanished brother and sister. 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:31.320 Was it a conspiracy of silence? Did my parents ay 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:35.680 to my whole family, we don't want Joanna to grow 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:40.480 up with the specter of the lost children? Is that 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:47.520 what happened? Or was it just kind of an unspoken 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:53.200 rule in my family, a very talkative, kind of stereotypical 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:56.920 Woody Allen movie Jewish family in which people were always 0:15:56.960 --> 0:16:00.600 talking and arguing. Was it just an uns oken rule 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:02.560 that no one was ever going to talk to me 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:06.360 about this? I still don't know. It's one of the 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:09.400 things I'm struggling to find out. I know my mother 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:12.440 very much did not want me to be tainted by 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:16.040 this tragedy or to feel like a replacement child in 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:18.720 any way. She's told me this explicitly, that she didn't 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:21.960 want me to be known as the girl whose brother 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:24.160 and sister died, or the girl whose parents had this 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:26.960 horrible tragedy happened to them. She wanted me to be 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:31.640 my own person, free from the burden of this tragedy. 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:35.120 And I really I respect her so much for that. 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:40.560 I understand that I do, I really really do. The 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:42.880 only clues that Joanna has as to the fate of 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:46.040 her siblings is when as a child she eavesdrops on 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:51.040 her mother's telephone conversations. My mother, almost every evening, like 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.320 so many mothers of her generation, would spend the evening 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:56.480 talking on the phone to her friends and so. Then 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:58.760 she would sit in her bedroom using her blue rotary 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.960 dial phone talking dif friends, and I would be reading 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:05.800 or watching QV and I would catch these glimpses of 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:08.639 the subject. I would hear these these little bits and 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:12.040 pieces of things. And one of the things that would 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:15.040 often jump out at me, probably because the tone of 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:19.280 her voice changed, would be this term the accident. So 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.520 she would say, you know, oh, we weren't at that 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:26.840 wedding that was right after the accident, or oh, I 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:30.439 didn't do X y Z, you know with the synagogue 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:32.359 that was right after the accident. I just couldn't do 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:36.240 anything at that time, or oh I lost touch with 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:40.000 so and so after the accident, I just couldn't see 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:44.200 her anymore. So my child brain started to realize that 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:46.840 there had been there the accident meant something to do 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:49.480 with my brother and sister. It took some time, but 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.960 I made the association, though I was, of course afraid 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:58.320 to ask what the accident was, and I developed a 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:02.360 whole story in my head it which was that my 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:07.600 parents had been driving a car. I imagined it as 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:09.440 the car that we had at that point, which may 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:14.439 have been a giant chevery cabrief classic um. And it 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:16.960 had been snowing, and they had been in an accident 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:21.000 on the highway and something had happened. I couldn't envision 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:24.800 the actual accident, but I would lie in bed at 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:29.359 night and kind of run through this scenario, the story 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:31.720 of my parents driving the car in the snow and 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:36.320 some sort of accident happening that resulted in my brother 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:42.240 and sister somehow dying. Um. And it would somehow simultaneously 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:45.240 terrify me so that I couldn't fall asleep, but also 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:48.240 comfort me so that I could. But I of course 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:53.959 never asked what the accident was. Imagine growing up without 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:58.719 critical information about your family. Imagine creating your own story, 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:04.119 one that feels satisfying enough and survives into adulthood until 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:08.399 someone shatters that story. That is exactly what happened in 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:12.040 two thousand ten. Joanna is married and the mother of 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:15.480 two young kids. Her first book, a novel, is about 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:17.840 to come out and paperback and one of her first 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:21.840 events is at a small independent bookstore in Maplewood, New Jersey. 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:26.119 When she gets there, the audience is packed a great thing, obviously, 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:28.840 and there are quite a few staff members lined up 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:33.280 to greet her. So I was going down the line 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:35.040 as if I were at a wedding, shaking their hands. 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:40.840 And I get to this one particular man and he 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:45.639 shake my hand and tears welled up in his eyes, 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:49.800 and he, with his voice breaking, said to me, can 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:51.879 get very nervously. Can you do you come with me? 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:54.000 Could you? Could you come with me for a second. 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:55.439 Could you just come to the office for a second. 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.600 So I went with him, and we got to the 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:02.080 office and he was actually sweat adding really profusely, and 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:05.760 he handed me some water and was kind of hunting 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:11.320 and hawing, and then finally he said, I'm Jonah Zimless, 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:15.480 and he sort of looked at me. I'm not really conveying. 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:18.240 He said it to me in this kind of pretendous way, 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:20.399 you presuming that I would know who he was, but 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:23.560 I did not. And and then he said I'm the 0:20:23.600 --> 0:20:26.840 owner of this bookshop. And I thought, oh no, this 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:28.600 is going to be a terrible thing about my book 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:31.000 he's telling me he's the owner of the bookshop, and 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:34.159 all of these thoughts were raising through my mind. But 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:35.879 then he sort of looked perplexed, and he said, you 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:37.880 don't know my name. You don't know who I am. 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:42.080 And I said, no, I'm you know, I'm sorry. He 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:48.640 said I was your brother Mark's best friend. And that 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:51.960 was when sort of the tears really let loose, and 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:54.959 he said, my family lived, we were neighbors in Nayak. 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:57.240 I was your brother Mark's best friend, and I was 0:20:57.280 --> 0:20:59.399 in love with your sister Anita. And then he just 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:03.479 fawn started crying and we sort of sat there. I 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.800 started crying too. I had never met anyone who knew 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:09.000 my brother and sister, because of course I did. All 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.160 my cousins, my aunts, and uncle's family friends, they all did, 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:14.359 but they didn't speak of them to me. So I 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:17.080 had never been in this situation before with someone who 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:22.160 was a peer of my brother and sister and knew 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:25.160 them really well, and for who like who had sort 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:27.639 of suffered a loss himself, you know, to use the 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:33.639 contemporary parliance. And he just started talking about the accident, 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:37.360 about our town, Nayak, and how the accident had affected 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:40.840 our town, but he I didn't understand anything that he 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:46.240 was saying. He was naming people's names and discussing repercussions 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:49.399 and all sorts of things, but I didn't know any 0:21:49.440 --> 0:21:52.119 of this. And he kept saying, I know you know this, 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:55.119 and I knew you knew this, and I finally said, 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:58.119 I just I I need to tell you something. I 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:01.439 actually don't know anything. And he looked at me a 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:04.880 little bit like I was crazy, and I explained, I said, 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:07.520 you know, I know that I have his brother and sister, 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:14.480 but my parents have never ever talked to me about them. 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:19.000 And I don't even know what happened. I I sort 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:20.800 of know that there was an accident, but I don't 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:25.679 know what that accident was. And he was so stunned, 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:28.680 I mean, his jaw dropped open, and he just kind 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:32.160 of stared at me for a very long time. And 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:34.720 you know, then he of course said what I guess 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:38.879 any empathic, normal person would say, which was he was like, 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:42.480 oh god, oh God, And he felt horrible, and it 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:45.600 was clear that he didn't know how much to say 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:47.399 to me, like he wanted to talk to me about 0:22:47.400 --> 0:22:51.040 all this, but he didn't necessarily feel that it was 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:54.600 his place to tell me about this horrible tragedy in 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:57.800 my own family. He basically said, you know, this was 0:22:57.840 --> 0:23:01.320 a tragedy for the whole town. The whole town was 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:04.520 in mourning, the whole town was affected by it. And 0:23:04.560 --> 0:23:06.360 then he said, you know, I know there was obviously 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:09.040 a tragedy for your family. I'm not in any way 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:12.240 comparing our grief and sorrow to your family is. I'm not. 0:23:12.640 --> 0:23:18.480 Please don't think that I am. This conversation between Joanna 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:21.320 and Jonah is the first of several talks they have 0:23:21.880 --> 0:23:24.639 in which the horrific truth of the accident that killed 0:23:24.640 --> 0:23:30.160 her siblings slowly reveals itself. On that first evening, she's 0:23:30.200 --> 0:23:32.439 so shaken by the conversation that she sits in the 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:37.119 office of his bookstore sobbing. Later, he contacts her again 0:23:37.520 --> 0:23:40.040 and makes himself available to her should she want to 0:23:40.040 --> 0:23:44.440 know more. Jonah also asks Joanna if he can put 0:23:44.440 --> 0:23:47.120 her in touch with others, some people from Nayak who 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:50.600 want to connect with her. It turns out that there 0:23:50.640 --> 0:23:54.240 was a world of people affected by this accident. They've 0:23:54.240 --> 0:23:58.200 spent their lives devastated by it talking about it all 0:23:58.240 --> 0:24:02.439 the while. Joanna's family moved into their glasshouse and lived 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:09.800 in complete silence. We're going to take a quick break. 0:24:12.880 --> 0:24:15.399 Here are the bare bones of what happened. In June 0:24:15.440 --> 0:24:20.879 of nine, the year before Joanna's birth, her parents went 0:24:20.920 --> 0:24:24.280 on a vacation to Grand Bahama Island to celebrate their anniversary. 0:24:25.000 --> 0:24:27.280 It was not a trip Joanna's mom wanted to make, 0:24:27.680 --> 0:24:29.560 but her dad convinced her that it would be fun. 0:24:30.440 --> 0:24:34.399 They left Mark and Anita, both middle schoolers, along with Amy, 0:24:34.480 --> 0:24:38.119 a high school student, in the care of their maternal grandmother, Pearl, 0:24:38.600 --> 0:24:42.240 a sweet, sweet person, but not someone who could necessarily 0:24:42.280 --> 0:24:47.879 control teenagers. Before their trip, Amy had turned seventeen and 0:24:47.920 --> 0:24:50.879 they had given her a car, a red Mustang convertible. 0:24:51.760 --> 0:24:54.840 Amy decided to take her younger siblings, along with a 0:24:54.880 --> 0:24:58.639 family friend named Rachel Finer, to the beach in Westchester 0:24:59.160 --> 0:25:01.880 and then passa blee to a rickety old amusement park 0:25:02.119 --> 0:25:09.680 called Ride plain Land. So this was a Sunday night 0:25:10.080 --> 0:25:12.080 at the end of June. It was a beautiful day 0:25:12.119 --> 0:25:15.280 out and you know, it got dark very late at 0:25:15.280 --> 0:25:18.520 that point. Nayak is a pedestrian town. It's a real, 0:25:19.080 --> 0:25:23.399 as I said, utopian, old fashioned American town where kids 0:25:23.480 --> 0:25:26.040 play in the streets. There's not a lot of traffic. 0:25:27.119 --> 0:25:29.200 There were tons of families and kids in the town, 0:25:29.920 --> 0:25:34.159 and at this time, there were all of these kids 0:25:34.280 --> 0:25:39.600 playing on their lawns, you know, having barbecues, all sorts 0:25:39.640 --> 0:25:43.400 of stuff was happening. As Amy and the kids drove 0:25:43.440 --> 0:25:47.080 along Broadway, a large sedan that had gotten off the 0:25:47.160 --> 0:25:50.040 thru away from a different exit, crashed into the convertible. 0:25:50.880 --> 0:25:54.639