Another One From the Heart: "You Don't Know Me"

When I first heard “You Don’t Know Me” — Ray Charles’s version — as a teenager, I felt as though Ray was killing me softly with his song, singing my life with his (actually songwriter Cindy Walker’s) words, specifically, those about being too shy to approach the girls for whom I secretly lusted so fervently. Every day at school, just as in the song, I, afraid and shy, let my chance go by. I wasn’t afraid, as in the song, that the objects of my affection wouldn’t love me too, but that they’d laugh in my face. 

It was the last verse of the song that came to resonate for me most in adulthood. My first wife and I had split up — she couldn’t stand me, I couldn’t stand her, and one of us (she) wouldn’t go to couples counseling to try to regain the magic we’d had our first four years together.  Having moved down to San Francisco, where I worked, so I wouldn’t spend three hours riding Golden Gate Transit every weekday, I’d pick up our little girl on Friday evening, and drive her back on Sunday evening. Every Sunday evening, as I watched her disappear into the Swiss electronics millionaire's hilltop mansion into which her mother had moved, my heart would shatter all over again, and I’d drive the first five miles back toward The City either in tears or wishing I could burst into them to relieve the awful pain I felt. 

I’d loved my daughter from the moment my wife told me she was growing inside her. My adoration increased exponentially when she finally joined the party. When she spent much of our time together on weekends pining for Mommy, it felt like a dagger in my heart. I’d taken her, on the Saturday night of the weekend I’m reliving as I compose this, to Columbus Street in North Beach. We’d walked around, she riding high on Daddy’s shoulders, watching the cooks cooking and people dining in the wall-to-wall Italian restaurants, and savouring the delicious smells. I was happy beyond my ability to articulate, and imagined Brigitte was as well. But right at the height of it she informed me, “I want Mommy,” and  felt as though sucker-punched in the face. I nonetheless managed to  distract her from Mommy’s absence, and to get her laughing, as she kept doing the next day, halfway through which Mommy phoned to say that she and her new Swiss electronics millionaire husband were coming down to The City, and that I wouldn’t have to drive Brigitte back up to the wine country. I was ambivalent. I hated the long drive home alone less than I hated the idea of losing a couple of hours with my daughter. 

As usual, Mommy was very late. Brigitte’s becoming more and more impatient hurt iike the devil. Finally the buzzer rang, and I walked her down to street level. Brigitte fairly glowed with what I couldn’t help but see as relief. Get upstairs, I told myself, now. I didn’t listen. I watched the three of them walk up to the corner, and then across California Street, to where SEM’s huge SUV awaited, Brigitte skipping ecstatically between them. It wasn’t like a dagger in my heart, but a fucking machete. A different part of Ms. Walker’s beautiful, heartbreaking song came back to me. “I watch you walk away beside the lucky guy.” I headed back upstairs intending to pour vodka down my throat until I lost consciousness or the pain abated — whichever came first! — but before I could, I encountered my across-the-hall neighbour,, who, seeing the look on my face, insisted I come in and chat with her. I think she may have saved my life that afternoon. I don’t think we exchanged 10 words after that — I was ashamed about having needed her so desperately — but Ms. Claudia Kingsley is one of the great unlikely heroines of my life. 

My daughter hasn't spoken to me in almost 16 years, and doesn't know me. I think she remembers a version of me that never really existed. According to her mother, Brigitte was nothing but miserable with me. That's  the cruellest lie anyone will ever tell about me. How many hundreds of times over the course of her childhood did I tell her how much I loved being her daddy? How many hundreds of times did she tell me, under nothing resembling duress, that she loved being my daughter?

Walking around in the late afternoon gloom this afternoon, thinking about how she's now not spoken to me pretty close to half her life, and isn’t likely to before my ticket gets punched, I wondered if I should ask my wife to play this for her when I check out, or one of the several songs I’ve written about her. I thought maybe I won’t ask her to play anything at all.