Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro, and this is Family Secrets, the secrets that
Speaker 1: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. You're about to
Speaker 1: hear from a man we're calling Frank Gold, not his
Speaker 1: real name. We thought long and hard about whether it
Speaker 1: was okay to use a pseudonym for a guest on
Speaker 1: Family Secrets. After all, what we're doing on this podcast
Speaker 1: is casting light into the shadows, calling everything by its
Speaker 1: true name. But Frank has a good reason for keeping
Speaker 1: his identity private in the name of protecting others. So
Speaker 1: here's Frank insert air quotes. My parents, Well, my family,
Speaker 1: both sides of the family, came to this country around
Speaker 1: the turn of the last century early, so my grandparents
Speaker 1: were all born in the United States. My parents were
Speaker 1: born here. I was obviously born here, and my grandparents
Speaker 1: were Their parents were very prosperous that people who came
Speaker 1: here were very hard working and industrious. My father's father
Speaker 1: went to college and graduated from college, and my grandparents
Speaker 1: were all very affluent. Um, but my parents, both of them,
Speaker 1: we're like, we're like a regressive generation instead of building
Speaker 1: on the prosperity of their immediate ancestors. Both of my
Speaker 1: parents were like first generation immigrants. They neither one finished college.
Speaker 1: My father didn't even go to college. He was intrigued
Speaker 1: by a wealthy uncle and wanted to just skip to success.
Speaker 1: And uh, that was really not a good recipe for him.
Speaker 1: And um they got married very young in their early twenties,
Speaker 1: and they struggled. You know, they were choices and uh,
Speaker 1: shortsighted choices. And by the time I was born, they
Speaker 1: were married about two or three years. We were living
Speaker 1: in the Tri State area. You know. I remember we
Speaker 1: lived in like garden apartments, you know, not fancy, and
Speaker 1: uh we lived in one place. When I was in kindergarten,
Speaker 1: we moved again. I mean, I maybe I was the
Speaker 1: wrong kid to move a lot, because I take a
Speaker 1: lot in I'm very aware it can be hard to
Speaker 1: move around a lot as a kid. You can feel
Speaker 1: kind of unmoored. You become attached to a place, and
Speaker 1: then through no choice of your own, you leave that place.
Speaker 1: And Frank's dad kept changing jobs, so it keeps happening
Speaker 1: for Frank, along with his younger sister and brother. For
Speaker 1: Frank This constant moving around forms a key aspect of
Speaker 1: his character, one that will serve him well later in life.
Speaker 1: He becomes hyper aware, with a keen almost sixth cents
Speaker 1: about people and places. I just remember, you know, this
Speaker 1: awareness is like all these parallel lives, all these every
Speaker 1: town has a school, where school district, and you know
Speaker 1: every town in school is going through its own sort
Speaker 1: of you know John hughesesque high school experience simultaneously in
Speaker 1: parallel all over Long Island, over Westchester, or over New Jerseys,
Speaker 1: the same music, the same experience. You go to the
Speaker 1: same concerts, but separately. But when you don't move, that's
Speaker 1: your world. And you think that's that is your world.
Speaker 1: Yet when you move at kindergarten in the third and
Speaker 1: then the six, none of them are your world. This
Speaker 1: might be hard to imagine for anyone listening who say
Speaker 1: under a thirty Today kids grow up with all of
Speaker 1: this connectivity. They know there are worlds other than their own.
Speaker 1: And while that connectivity, the way we're attached to the
Speaker 1: hip to our devices, definitely has a downside, it also
Speaker 1: has an upside, especially in families in which secrets are pervasive.
Speaker 1: But back then, when Frank grew up, it was hard
Speaker 1: to break through that sense of isolation, a partners a loneness.
Speaker 1: Your family's world, your town's world, your community's world. That
Speaker 1: was the whole world as far as you knew. So
Speaker 1: Frank's upbringing, while making him hyper aware, also makes it
Speaker 1: hard for him to get close to people, because, after all,
Speaker 1: relationships don't last, not when you keep moving. What was
Speaker 1: their relationship like your parents, I wouldn't say it was
Speaker 1: particularly warm. They've gotten warmer, by the way, and more
Speaker 1: expressive in their old age than they ever were that
Speaker 1: I remember growing up. I don't remember a ton of affection.
Speaker 1: I don't remember hardly any emotional conversation. And I just
Speaker 1: saw them recently and it's always light la la, superficial stuff.
Speaker 1: There's no depth that know. They don't want to talk
Speaker 1: about heavy things or emotional things that aren't necessarily even heavy.
Speaker 1: You know, the weather, about what other people are doing,
Speaker 1: very little um personal conversation. Ever, when Frank is in
Speaker 1: the ninth or tenth grade, the lack of warmth between
Speaker 1: his parents becomes something else, something harder, murkier. They've moved
Speaker 1: all over the Tri state area around New York City,
Speaker 1: and at this point his father is commuting a pretty
Speaker 1: sizable distance to work each day to a better job.
Speaker 1: He's making more money, but life isn't getting better. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's getting worse. And the family is pretty isolated because
Speaker 1: Frank's father has shoved away his own relatives always because
Speaker 1: of unspoken petty grievances. It went from you know, it's
Speaker 1: some extra time to commute two. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: late nights, things were like chugging along normal suburban existence,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you know, it's like ten
Speaker 1: o'clock o'clock, and you know, my mother's anxious, upset, standing
Speaker 1: by the window, looking out the window, pacing, and um,
Speaker 1: you know that that creates anxiety in the in the house.
Speaker 1: And you know, we have school the next day and
Speaker 1: I am by the way at most fifteen sixteen. You know,
Speaker 1: my sisters like nine and my brothers in between. He
Speaker 1: would come home eventually, and uh, they would argue. They
Speaker 1: would fight, where were you? What? Why are you home
Speaker 1: still late? Why didn't you tell me? And that's unsettling
Speaker 1: to hear, you know when you're really wide awake in
Speaker 1: your bedroom. Were worse awakened by stuff like that? And um,
Speaker 1: it was a lot fast, and you know it's in
Speaker 1: a family that doesn't really talk about emotions. It was confusing.
Speaker 1: It was the most emotional thing I'd ever experienced, probably
Speaker 1: up until then. And um, all I remember looking back
Speaker 1: is how incessant. To God, it seemed like it grew
Speaker 1: into I mean maybe it started off you know, a
Speaker 1: day a week, and then it grew into like a
Speaker 1: constant thing. And there were just these arguments night after
Speaker 1: night after night, and then yelling and name calling and
Speaker 1: and it was horrible. And you know, it's it's really
Speaker 1: abusive to have nine year olds and twelve year olds
Speaker 1: and you know, sleeping the right listening to this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know couples have problems, but there's a time and
Speaker 1: a place and that was neither. And I remember talking
Speaker 1: to my mother one day, was very upset and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, why are you guys fighting all the time?
Speaker 1: And what's going on? Like why can't you, like naively,
Speaker 1: you know, worked this out of fate? What's going on?
Speaker 1: And I remember, I mean I remember where I was standing, like,
Speaker 1: I remember, well, because there's things going on, I said,
Speaker 1: what's going on? I said, well, what do you think?
Speaker 1: I said, how hell do I know what's going on.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just listening to idiots fight all night,
Speaker 1: like enough already, and she's, well, there's another woman. And
Speaker 1: I didn't know where to go with that. By the way,
Speaker 1: my guess is if I had really listened to the fights,
Speaker 1: I probably would have known that by now. And maybe
Speaker 1: I did know it on some level. But hearing it,
Speaker 1: especially from you know, your parents, who you never spoke
Speaker 1: to about anything emotionally or of substance ever anyway, was jarring.
Speaker 1: And uh, all I remember, you know, is that was
Speaker 1: that persisted through high school. I don't remember anything other
Speaker 1: than that fighting. And then I left to go to college.
Speaker 1: And uh I went to college, and I didn't think
Speaker 1: about that for one second, not a minute. Did you
Speaker 1: go far away? I mean, did you try a feeling
Speaker 1: miles away? I didn't even visit the school. You know,
Speaker 1: back then you'd get a brochure in the mail and
Speaker 1: type your application and send it off across your fingers.
Speaker 1: But it was it was it important to you to
Speaker 1: get away. I like the idea that it was different,
Speaker 1: and I liked the idea that you know that thirty
Speaker 1: two kids in my class, which is about two five
Speaker 1: kids went to one state school. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: school with thirty two people. I just spent less, you know,
Speaker 1: four plus years with I liked the idea that no
Speaker 1: one was going there. I mean, I, yeah, I might
Speaker 1: sing a pattern now, yeah, you know, it didn't occur
Speaker 1: to me that I like, I got to get out
Speaker 1: of here. But I did. And I wanted to change
Speaker 1: and I wanted new and I got it. I really did.
Speaker 1: And um, what's funny, We're interesting. I remember going to
Speaker 1: college and totally compartmentalizing and blocking out these fights and
Speaker 1: all this horribleness. And I mean, Danny was the night
Speaker 1: after night after night after it's it's it's torture. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny. At one point, I said to
Speaker 1: my mother when I was still home, you gotta leave.
Speaker 1: Why are you doing this? He's not he's not. It's
Speaker 1: not working. Like, get get out, Let's get the funk
Speaker 1: out of here. Like what are we doing here? I
Speaker 1: can't you don't understand. It's complicated. Let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break here. There were other family fights going on at
Speaker 1: the same time. Frank's mother used to fight with her
Speaker 1: mother on the phone. He would hear the two of
Speaker 1: them going at it all the time, more anger, more
Speaker 1: rage that he constantly overhearing. During his childhood and adolescence,
Speaker 1: he used to want to walk into the kitchen, take
Speaker 1: the phone out of his mother's hand and hang it
Speaker 1: up because he just couldn't take it anymore. I will
Speaker 1: say that my mother, who really is is not the
Speaker 1: perpetrator in any of those stories, is the professional victim
Speaker 1: in a way, like how she could those that same
Speaker 1: conversation with my grandmother countless times for years and years
Speaker 1: I'll never understand. And then to gets stuck in a
Speaker 1: it's her own with my father in that dynamic. It's
Speaker 1: horrible And I don't know why she took it where
Speaker 1: she felt so powerless, but she obviously did. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say I resented her for it, but it
Speaker 1: angered me that she was not stronger. So now we're
Speaker 1: talking about you're in college. Now I come home to
Speaker 1: visit and my you know, my sister and brothers still
Speaker 1: live in the house because they're here in high school
Speaker 1: or middle school whatever, the same things happening, And I think,
Speaker 1: oh my god. Still every night, every night he goes
Speaker 1: to work, she it's turns dark. She's standing at the door,
Speaker 1: pacing upset, everyone's in their bed. He comes home, and
Speaker 1: the same two person play plays out, you know, from
Speaker 1: ten to midnight, like like like it was the first day,
Speaker 1: like I never left. Frank's now out of college and
Speaker 1: one day he needs to borrow his dad's video camera.
Speaker 1: This was in the early days of video cameras, when
Speaker 1: they took VHS cassette tapes, the era well before smartphones.
Speaker 1: So Frank's dad sets out to show Frank how to
Speaker 1: use the camera. Frank calls this a normal sea moment,
Speaker 1: you know, like backyard barbecues or shooting hoops or eying
Speaker 1: board games. Normal, just something any father and son might do.
Speaker 1: So in this normalcy moment, I remember him showing it
Speaker 1: to me and how it works, and he had to
Speaker 1: put a tape in it. And he had a tape
Speaker 1: in it, you know, and he's like, you hit play,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know, you just record and then
Speaker 1: you can go back, and a video started to play.
Speaker 1: I think he thought that the tape was probably blank,
Speaker 1: and it was well. I remember is like a kid,
Speaker 1: like a young boy playing on a lawn, and I
Speaker 1: thought it for maybe five or ten seconds. He got
Speaker 1: completely flustered, so I thought it was mine, let me
Speaker 1: see that, and you know, took it, took a camera
Speaker 1: triad off and fiddled with it and wound and did
Speaker 1: something and I thought, whatever, dude, Like, so there's something
Speaker 1: on the tape, Like it didn't occur to me that
Speaker 1: it was his or it was a secret or I mean,
Speaker 1: I thought, what are y'all jumping about? Like the reaction
Speaker 1: seemed odd? And I remembered it, and yeah, and you
Speaker 1: remembered it. It stayed with you. Yeah, because I you know,
Speaker 1: I think, Um, I've developed this thing for it's not
Speaker 1: even conscious. Um, I'm very tuned to people's behaviors, patterns,
Speaker 1: the way they do things or say things, not consciously.
Speaker 1: I don't have a list, but when you change course,
Speaker 1: when you're not consistent, when you're speaking oddly, or something's
Speaker 1: out of your pattern. Despite the senses tingle, I think
Speaker 1: for people from whom a tremendous secret has been kept,
Speaker 1: develop a kind of sixth sense, some sense of there's
Speaker 1: a heightened sensitivity because you don't know that there's a secret.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's it wouldn't be a secret if you
Speaker 1: knew there was a secret. There's just this feeling of
Speaker 1: hyper vigilance or UM observing very carefully the piece is
Speaker 1: not necessarily totally adding up UM. And then I think
Speaker 1: in retrospect those moments, like the moment with the video cassette,
Speaker 1: become AHA moments. It certainly wasn't an AHA moment as
Speaker 1: you were experiencing it, but later, yeah, I filed it away.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I didn't try to develop the skill.
Speaker 1: I didn't know I had the skill. I didn't know
Speaker 1: everyone didn't see and perceive things the way I did.
Speaker 1: But I now know. You know that I have a
Speaker 1: hyper subconscious awareness, two patterns, two behaviors. You know, it's
Speaker 1: funny you don't want to watch a movie with me
Speaker 1: because I can spot that formula. There's nothing unintentional in
Speaker 1: a movie. So everything they say and do that seems
Speaker 1: meaningless or an ocuous is not. It's a It's a
Speaker 1: plot device. And I'm like, oh, he's gonna get locked
Speaker 1: out of his house when they focus on the keys,
Speaker 1: being like, there's a reason for all that stuff, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this was the this is the byproduct of
Speaker 1: this UM. I mean, my mother told me in part
Speaker 1: with the one little factory that she knew that you know,
Speaker 1: this fighting and CoML was you know, the result of
Speaker 1: an infidelity, but there was still so much lying and
Speaker 1: manipulation and emotional abuse happening, and uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: sit up, You're sitting in your bed in the pitch black,
Speaker 1: and you hear it all, and you hear at night
Speaker 1: after night, and you know, all of a sudden, You're like,
Speaker 1: I'm hearing inconsistencies in the story. She's not picking up
Speaker 1: on it because she's sobbing and yelling, but I'm thinking, well, wait,
Speaker 1: you didn't. That's not what you said two nights ago.
Speaker 1: It's a rough way to develop that skill. So fast
Speaker 1: forward into Frank's adult life. He becomes an attorney. His
Speaker 1: skills as an interpreter of people's patterns and behavior serves
Speaker 1: him well in his career. He marries, has three kids,
Speaker 1: his parents still together, incredibly, moved to Florida, and sort
Speaker 1: of settle into a calmer life. The violent fights have
Speaker 1: been reduced to squabbling, but with a mean edge to it.
Speaker 1: Frank doesn't see them too often. One day, literally, I'm
Speaker 1: sitting at my desk like life is just normal, and
Speaker 1: that stuff is very far behind me and very distant
Speaker 1: in my mind. The phone rings and it's my sister
Speaker 1: and she's like, hey, we need I need to talk
Speaker 1: to you. And she said, I got a call and uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do with it. I said, well,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about out and she's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know all the stuff we talked about growing up
Speaker 1: and all the fighting and all that other stuff. I said, yeah.
Speaker 1: She's like, well, I got a call from our half
Speaker 1: brother and I said, why who? I am unaware of
Speaker 1: a half brother. I'm like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: She says, well, it seems that all those fights and
Speaker 1: all those like nights, it wasn't just an affair. It
Speaker 1: blossomed into another family. I said, and there's a son.
Speaker 1: She says, no, there are two. And I laughed because
Speaker 1: it's insane news. It's unimaginable. It changes your entire reality
Speaker 1: in a moment, and it's not even just one. And
Speaker 1: I needed a moment to just like process, like, okay,
Speaker 1: let me shut the door and you can tell me,
Speaker 1: like what are you sure? Like you don't know where
Speaker 1: to go with something like that. And uh. She told
Speaker 1: me this story how this guy kid called her and
Speaker 1: you know he's younger than us because he was born
Speaker 1: when we were in high school. And uh, the short
Speaker 1: version is this is the older son. He uh speaks
Speaker 1: to my father and sees my father fairly often. And
Speaker 1: he said to my father one day, you know, you're
Speaker 1: getting older, and what happens, like you know if if
Speaker 1: you were sick or you died, Like, how would I know?
Speaker 1: I need to speak to my siblings and find out.
Speaker 1: And my freaking father's like, yeah, call call my daughter
Speaker 1: because she's the most understanding. I'm like, they didn't think
Speaker 1: I would understand. I don't want to call me by
Speaker 1: the way, probably pick the right person. But you know
Speaker 1: I went from like stunned and almost laughing to like
Speaker 1: kind of anger. So your half brother calls your sister
Speaker 1: and introduces himself with your father's permission. Yes, and and
Speaker 1: but but my father does not have the balls to
Speaker 1: to to make the call himself. First of all, that's
Speaker 1: a cowardly move. Your this kid, your your your secret half,
Speaker 1: your secret son wants to speak to his adult path
Speaker 1: siblings and you decide with him which one is the
Speaker 1: best to approach, and then you let him do it.
Speaker 1: That's offensive. And she's like, you have no idea. The
Speaker 1: conversation I had with this like we thought we had
Speaker 1: it bad. He had the reverse, you know. He the
Speaker 1: times that Dad was home, he wasn't there. And that
Speaker 1: woman who concocted a whole story. See, they didn't know
Speaker 1: there was another family. They thought he was busy and
Speaker 1: traveling and at work. Hold them. So your father, who
Speaker 1: was pretty ineffective in a variety of ways in life,
Speaker 1: you know, professionally, that kind of saying as average or below,
Speaker 1: as running the mill, unexceptional as you get, except as
Speaker 1: someone who managed to have two households, each of which
Speaker 1: didn't know about the other. Correct, How did this half
Speaker 1: brother then know that there was another family with other siblings.
Speaker 1: He's like a like a criminal investigator, which I think
Speaker 1: is hilarious because part of him calling my sister might
Speaker 1: have been about, you know, just were in contact in
Speaker 1: case of theing happens to my father. I think the
Speaker 1: other half, for maybe more than half, was he actually
Speaker 1: wanted some answers, and I suspect he wasn't getting them
Speaker 1: from my father. And now, now keep in mind, now
Speaker 1: we're in the age of social media, and it's not
Speaker 1: hard to find people, and it's not hard to find
Speaker 1: people with your last name or your proximity, especially if
Speaker 1: you're a criminal investigator for a police department. So then
Speaker 1: what happens, Frank, how do you process? Does your mind
Speaker 1: go back to that VHS cassette tape. Absolutely, And it
Speaker 1: goes back to why why he wouldn't stop the behavior?
Speaker 1: You know, he would lie and connive and promise, but
Speaker 1: he had a house with two babies, so he's not
Speaker 1: gonna stop. And by the way, so I mean so
Speaker 1: I my sister explains all this to me and gives
Speaker 1: has a lot of details because she's spoke to in length,
Speaker 1: and I said, this is a huge bromb this, this
Speaker 1: is not okay. And um, first of all, I don't
Speaker 1: really I know this kid who called is innocent in this.
Speaker 1: You know, he didn't choose it, he's I don't begrudge
Speaker 1: him wanting to know his full story because he had
Speaker 1: an even more bizarre He also lived in the household
Speaker 1: lies just different lies, and maybe they weren't fighting, but
Speaker 1: he saw his father very not often less than we did, ironically,
Speaker 1: So I don't want to meet him and I don't
Speaker 1: want him to be in my life. And I wish
Speaker 1: you didn't exist. And while I don't, I begrudge him nothing.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work for me. So I said that to
Speaker 1: her right away. I said, I'm not interested. I'm not
Speaker 1: talking to him, I'm not meeting him. And my sister said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. I didn't believe at the time, although I
Speaker 1: think she's come around to that, and um, I said,
Speaker 1: we have to talk to are that about this? Like
Speaker 1: this is not okay? And I thought about it for
Speaker 1: a long time. And you go through a lot of
Speaker 1: different feelings, you know, those stages of grief, truly, anger, denial, bargaining.
Speaker 1: I mean, you really do go through that. What would
Speaker 1: you say you were grieving? I thought those days and
Speaker 1: those feelings and those scaps were behind me, if not healed,
Speaker 1: closed at least, and like an alien just showing up.
Speaker 1: Like I'm telling you, your reality change is in an instant.
Speaker 1: It's very disorienting to think you know the world today
Speaker 1: and receive a phone call and find out that humans
Speaker 1: exist that don't fit with your story, blood relatives and
Speaker 1: they're alive and they were and it's and that's the reality.
Speaker 1: It's the difference between like the language, like when my
Speaker 1: when I found out that my dad hadn't been my
Speaker 1: biological father. I was describing it as something that happened
Speaker 1: to me that I discovered that, you know, that I
Speaker 1: wasn't who I thought I was, literally, and I realized
Speaker 1: I had to change the language because it wasn't something
Speaker 1: that happened to me. It had always been thus like
Speaker 1: it it was me, and that, I think is part
Speaker 1: of what's shocking and disorienting when you uncover a secret
Speaker 1: that because it was the reality. You didn't know it
Speaker 1: was the reality, but it was for a very long
Speaker 1: time in your life. Yes, And I feel betrayed and
Speaker 1: deceived because of it. And I never trusted people that
Speaker 1: much like when I I. Most people give people trust
Speaker 1: and then people can lose that I I don't distrust,
Speaker 1: but I started out at zero. No one gets credit
Speaker 1: in advance, and that was formed long before this phone call.
Speaker 1: The phone call lets me to work where it came from,
Speaker 1: even though it wasn't always conscious. We're going to pause
Speaker 1: for a moment for a word from our sponsor. Frank
Speaker 1: tells his wife the story because, as he puts it,
Speaker 1: that's what couples and healthy relationships do. But he feels
Speaker 1: sick about it, embarrassed, as if somehow this reflects poorly
Speaker 1: on him, and then after sitting on it for about
Speaker 1: a week, he calls his father. I said, this is
Speaker 1: not okay, it's not He says, look, life is complicated,
Speaker 1: and you know, all I could say is you you know,
Speaker 1: you have needs, you take actions, you do something and
Speaker 1: you think it's one thing and it turns into something else,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you have this. And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe for one kid, not too. Two is not an accident.
Speaker 1: One is like, oh my god, what happened. Two is
Speaker 1: a family you know, fool me once too unforgivable, unacceptable.
Speaker 1: He's he's bullshitting me. He's he's selling me. You know.
Speaker 1: They say, hey, man, you know you think it's one thing. No,
Speaker 1: at some point you were in when you were when
Speaker 1: you took that fucking video camera there to film your
Speaker 1: son's you know what you were doing Owen, by that
Speaker 1: point it was not unintentional or an accident. So don't
Speaker 1: tell me that that crap. I mean, my my whole
Speaker 1: life and career is about sussing out full of ship people.
Speaker 1: And he's he's, you know, patient zero in in full
Speaker 1: of shitness for me. So I'm imagining that that conversation
Speaker 1: like doesn't particularly and with some kind of like great
Speaker 1: closure for any anybody. No, it doesn't, and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you how it ends. He says, Look, you know your mom.
Speaker 1: I don't think you want you know, you should burden
Speaker 1: her with this and it would be a lot for her.
Speaker 1: And I realized, my mother, and I'm gonna say this intentionally,
Speaker 1: may not know. He thinks she doesn't know. She may know,
Speaker 1: she may have a video camera story in her head someplace,
Speaker 1: or she may not want to know. And I said
Speaker 1: to him, stop, I will talk with her about this
Speaker 1: or not because of my relationship with her. Don't ask
Speaker 1: me to do something or not do something, because I'm
Speaker 1: more likely to do it to spite you. So stop
Speaker 1: selling me. And here we arrive at the reason, or
Speaker 1: at least part of the reason why Frank is using
Speaker 1: a pseudonym for this episode. His mom, as far as
Speaker 1: this part of the story goes, is innocent. Also his kids.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to be the guy who suddenly doesn't
Speaker 1: speak to his relatives the way his father did. He's
Speaker 1: refusing to allow his father to turn him into a
Speaker 1: version of himself who he hates and disrespects. So he
Speaker 1: doesn't say a word to his mother or his kids.
Speaker 1: Five years go by and Frank's daughter wants to go
Speaker 1: to Florida to see her grandparents. There's a Pink Floyd
Speaker 1: concert that Frank wants to see what's happening in Florida
Speaker 1: at the same time, So he tells her, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'll come with you for the weekend. We'll see them,
Speaker 1: I'll go to the show. Then his dad catches wind
Speaker 1: of it, and he says he wants to go to
Speaker 1: the show too. He knows the venue, knows all the
Speaker 1: guys there. At first, Frank recoils, but then I thought, again,
Speaker 1: am I being that guy? You know? Again? I have
Speaker 1: a reason why I can't see my father, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to be him, you know, So I think
Speaker 1: I'll give it. How how bad can it be? What
Speaker 1: could go wrong? So, um, we go to this this concert,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's fine. He knows the people at the
Speaker 1: in the parking lot, he knows the ticket takers. Because
Speaker 1: the guy who thinks he's antisocial is you know, the schmoozer.
Speaker 1: He knows everyone. He's connected, and it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a real conflict between you know, how he describes himself
Speaker 1: and how he acts. We go to the concert and uh,
Speaker 1: there's an intermission and we decided to go and get
Speaker 1: some walk around and go to the bathroom whatever. And
Speaker 1: as we're walking up the steps to leave the arena,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, this is a you know, a client
Speaker 1: of mine, some local guy for now, and that he knows.
Speaker 1: He's like I. Guy was like, hey, how are you
Speaker 1: doing man? And my fathers like, hey, how you doing
Speaker 1: it is? Let me introduce you to my son. And
Speaker 1: he introduces me, but not by my name, by the
Speaker 1: half the older half brother's name, and he doesn't realize.
Speaker 1: He doesn't and he just and the guy's like, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: nice to meet you. And they just chit chat for
Speaker 1: a minute or two, and I am stunned, like like
Speaker 1: the arena got quiet, you know, like that device in
Speaker 1: a movie where it's just you, like the camera zooms
Speaker 1: in and all and everything fades to like a hush,
Speaker 1: and you're like, like time stood still, and you're like
Speaker 1: where do you go with that? And I thought another test,
Speaker 1: you know, And I said to myself, I really consciously
Speaker 1: thought this, I'm not going to get freaked out by this.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let this ruin this night for me.
Speaker 1: I'm letting this one go, and he says goodbye. The
Speaker 1: whole transactions like two minutes and we walk into the
Speaker 1: arena and it's a really nice guy. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: and wrong son. He's like what I said, I'm Frank.
Speaker 1: You introduced me by Southern aid and he turned red
Speaker 1: and he looked bewildered. I've never seen maybe the only
Speaker 1: other time I saw that face was on the video camera,
Speaker 1: you know, when he was fumbled and grabbed confused, you know,
Speaker 1: the two worlds all of a sudden overlapped matter and antimatter,
Speaker 1: and he did and he looks so bad. I've never
Speaker 1: seen that expression. I mean, did I don't think. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you did, And anyway, let's go. Oh no, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean he's he's a great kid, and you know
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be I mean as it stops speaking about
Speaker 1: it and don't mention it again, old man, And that's it.
Speaker 1: And we walked away. Throughout our conversation, Frank's embarrassment that
Speaker 1: this this is his family, this is his father, this
Speaker 1: is where he comes from, is palpable. He so badly
Speaker 1: doesn't want this to be his story. He got out,
Speaker 1: he moved away, he built his own happy, successful life,
Speaker 1: and then this new piece of information, shameful information, as
Speaker 1: Frank experiences it, has crashed in like a meteor, and
Speaker 1: he's now carrying around this story like his own secret.
Speaker 1: Is this why he doesn't want to tell his kids
Speaker 1: or talked to his mom about it? Embarrassment? Shame? First
Speaker 1: of all, it's not my secret to tell her, it's his.
Speaker 1: So on, that's that's my rationalization to get me off
Speaker 1: the hook. Now that I know this piece of information
Speaker 1: that I don't want to that, I don't feel I
Speaker 1: should even be the one to tell her. And I
Speaker 1: don't know that you'd want to hear it from me,
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't want to hurt her. She's the one
Speaker 1: who never left, and she's the one who still lives
Speaker 1: with this guy. I don't want to wait, the sleepwalker.
Speaker 1: So Frank puts this whole story somewhere inside him, or
Speaker 1: at least tries to file it away. He doesn't think
Speaker 1: about these two half siblings of his. He doesn't want
Speaker 1: to have anything to do with them. It's not their
Speaker 1: fault that their father had two families. Intellectually Frank knows this,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't matter, or at least it doesn't matter enough,
Speaker 1: so he doesn't think about this all that much, to
Speaker 1: the point where when he does one of those over
Speaker 1: the counter DNA tests, it doesn't occur to him that
Speaker 1: wait for it, guess who showed up in the database.
Speaker 1: They think you're their half cousins or whatever. And my
Speaker 1: kids are in there under my account, My sister is
Speaker 1: in there and her son. I had to, uh, I
Speaker 1: shut it all down. I stopped the sharing, I broke
Speaker 1: the connection. I did other than quit the service. I
Speaker 1: shut anything down that makes a connection or shares information
Speaker 1: or shows names. I stopped sharing with any relatives or
Speaker 1: anybody because again, you know, the virus and showed up again.
Speaker 1: Did it occur to you that that might happen or
Speaker 1: did that not into your mind? I didn't think about it.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting. I never thought about it. So there's
Speaker 1: this way. It strikes me that the way that you
Speaker 1: have managed to metabolize this and kind of just move
Speaker 1: on with your life is to just bring down. It's
Speaker 1: something bigger than a curtain, and it's like the bring
Speaker 1: down like a big thick concrete wall, like it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: It shouldn't have exist did, so therefore it's not going
Speaker 1: to exist. So you would have been able to do
Speaker 1: something like submit your DNA to a commercial testing site
Speaker 1: and actually not think, hey, wait a minute, there's this
Speaker 1: world genealogically out there that could be complicated. Yes, because
Speaker 1: it's the same compartmentalizing when I went to college the
Speaker 1: first time and came home and said, what this is
Speaker 1: still happening? But of course it was. I mean, why
Speaker 1: wouldn't it still be happening. So in a way that
Speaker 1: compartmentalizing has served you well, I think so. All right,
Speaker 1: So I have one more question. So you said before
Speaker 1: you said this great thing, you said, I'm glad. I know.
Speaker 1: I wish it didn't exist, but I'm glad. I know.
Speaker 1: Why are you glad? You know? Well, because it's reality.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank Frank for trusting us with his
Speaker 1: story today. Family Secrets is an I Heeart media production.
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer, Lowell Bolante is the
Speaker 1: audio engineer, and Julie Douglas is the executive producer. If
Speaker 1: you have a family secret you'd like to share with us,
Speaker 1: you can get in touch at listener mail at Family
Speaker 1: Secrets podcast dot com, and you can also find us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Danny Writer, and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod,
Speaker 1: and Twitter at fami Secrets Pod. For more about my book, Inheritance,
Speaker 1: visit Danny Shapiro dot com. For more podcasts. For my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,