The Voice Message
Book excerpt
January 19, 6:12 P.M. “Tod, this is Denise Crosby. I am absolutely speechless. I’m so…I’m…I have tears in my eyes as you can tell from my voice. I can’t believe that you called. I’m so grateful. Um…I most definitely want to speak to you and would love to speak to your father. This is so incredible because for years, for years I’ve been entertaining um, the thought of writing a book about this very thing, and, um, it’s like you came knocking on my door like a godsend, and it’s on the eve of my writing class, which begins tomorrow, so I can’t believe your timing. Anyway we, we must talk. Um, it is four o’clock here, a little past four in Los Angeles. ***-***-**** as you know is my home, and my cell is ***-***-****. So, we’ll just keep trying each other. Um, I am again, so grateful that you reached out to me, and I am especially thrilled that your father is doing well, and um, I, I so look forward to talking to you. Okay, be well, talk soon, bye.” That was the voice message I left for Tod Zerin, a stranger who lived in Michigan and found my number, then waited for months to find the courage to call me. Tod’s father, Milton, represented my mother in her paternity trial against my father., Dennis Crosby. Milton was still alive, quite old then, but wanted me to know how proud of that case he was. Tod wasn’t sure how I would react or whether I wanted to discuss any of this. But his friends encouraged him and finally he picked up the phone. I wasn’t home when he called so he left a message introducing himself, that he too was a lawyer, that he remembered the trial as a little boy, and how much the case meant to his father. Of course to me, it was a gift that fell into my lap, something so emotionally shocking but the start I needed. A story I could never put my finger on, but now this strange house was becoming brighter. Would I swim in a sea of ignorance or drown in a sea of truth. As far as father’s go, I had a pretty shitty one, this only confirms it. But this story isn’t about him. It was never going to be about him. This is a reckoning that started with a phone call.