When my dad passed away in a motorcycle accident on a hot Tuesday morning, they found a train ticket and a white note in his jacket pocket. The ticket was to go to New York City that Friday. The note simply said: "Ella Moy."
At first, my mother was more baffled by this than by her husband's death. "A divorce lawyer?" she guessed. "One of his mistresses? God forbid--a love child! What was he going to do? Leave you to raise her?" I wanted to kindly reminded her that I was nineteen and no longer really needed "raising," except in the monthly allowance they gave me to spend at college. But as weeks passed, even if my dad had cheated on her dozens of times and fought with her every minute he had been alive, his absence began to pain her more than all that hurt combined.
We resided in Illinois. I was on scholarship at the University of Chicago and lived at home since we were close enough to the school. That summer, I decided to pass up my internship at a film studio in California to be with Mom. It was difficult watching her sweep her hands across photo album pages, reliving only happy memories of her and my dad in her mind. It was heartbreaking listening to her screaming and crying alone in the living room, waiting for my dad to come home at 2 in the morning like he used to. The yelling was the same old, "How could you do this to me?," except that this time there was no calm, drunken masculine voice to reply back, just her own echos bouncing off the walls. Even though she reenacted these scenes, she no longer remembered that any of it was Dad's fault. She only fought with herself.
Finally, it was September and I was heading back to school for my second year when my mom sat me down, surprisingly calm and cheery. "Listen, Allie," she began, placing her hands on top of mine and smiling. "I've got the most wonderful idea."
"Okay," I said hesitantly, preparing myself to agree to any idea about to come out of her mouth.
"Well, your father and I had been discussing this for a while now," she said, and I stared at her, bewildered. "Yes, I know what you're thinking, how can she and Dad agree on anything? But we really think this is the best for you. And we think you should transfer to New York University."
"Uh--wha, excuse me?"
"You really like film, don't you? And NYU has such a great film school, I've heard it's called 'Tisch School of the Arts'? I believe you know of it--well it's simply the cream of the crop!"
"Mom, I'm majoring in Economics. I want to go to business school."
"Then why did you have an internship at a movie company?"
I stared at her, and she beamed back cluelessly like I was denying everything her mind recalled I ever told her. "I was going to do marketing, not filming."
"Okay, well I can see that," my mom said, not the tiniest bit thrown off. "But we always thought you'd be wonderful studying film."
"I'm not interested in that."
"Well, I'm very interested." Mom took away her hands and reached into her pocket to reveal a small, folded white piece of paper. "And while you're in New York, be sure to find this girl, Ella Moy. Her mother and I are very close."
That's how I ended up in the busiest city in America, I guess. Just a second-busiest city girl, sent on a mission her father left behind by her unstable mom. Before I left for junior year at NYU, my mom's psychologist reassured me that things were looking up, and that all the shock was slowly leaving her. "Sending you to solve one of your father's mysteries will only boost her mental stability," he told me, like I was some kind of junior detective. "And you seem to be holding up pretty well with the death."
"I'm fine," I told him curtly, not wanting to get into it too deep. "And NYU will be great."
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