Searching for Andre
When I arrived at college as a Freshman (attending Cornell University, my mother’s Alma Mater located in Ithaca, New York), I was seventeen and had arrived via a hitched ride from Cleveland, Ohio. I had been in Cleveland working for the summer as a sociology research assistant at Case Western Reserve University and my mother was on an extended business trip to Colombia from our regular home at the time in Rome, Italy. The scene of showing up alone with a duffle bag at a Freshman dormitory, wearing an army surplus jacket and jeans, with pork chop sideburns and hair that was WAY too thick to wear as long as I did, while everyone else was having their mothers make their beds with hospital corners, was quite an awakening. I was expected by my independent-minded mother to manage for myself and as for my father, well, I hadn’t seen him in nine years and literally had little recollection of him. There are two physical requirements each incoming Cornell Freshman needed to do in those days. First, you had to take a swim test (bare-assed I might add) to prove you would not drown if thrown into the lake. The second was that you had to have a chest X-ray at the University clinic. I passed the first with flying colors and got a call to say I had not passed the second quite so easily.
I suspect the rationale for mandating chest X-rays in 1971 was a lingering concern about tuberculosis, which was then and still is today, a highly infectious and contagious bacterial disease that has a high mortality rate. By 1971 there was both an effective skin test called the Pirquet and Mansour test and anti-tuberculous drugs like streptomycin, but detection was a key to containment (something we are all being reminded of by the COVID Pandemic). Hence the chest X-Rays. When I got the call from the infirmary, I was told that there was shading on my lung X-ray that was indicative of TB and that I needed to come in for one of the skin tests to confirm the diagnosis. That shocking bit of first-week news caused me to wonder who to call. Mom was on the road in Colombia somewhere and generally incommunicado. My sisters were off at college in St. Louis and having lived life as their younger brother my whole life, I was not inclined to think that they could help much or needed that added burden. For some reason, I got it in my head that I should call my father for advice. Strange choice to be sure, but I did manage to reach him. He had been born Silvano Andre Prosdocimi, but had changed his name in 1962 to Andre Silvano Marin in his efforts to Americanize himself.
His advice was not to worry about it, that it was probably nothing and that he was sure my mother would show up soon if there was an issue. Oh, and by the way, did I need a car, say, like a new BMW 2002 Series, since he would be glad to buy me one. Nice to talk to you and don’t worry, everything will be fine. As it turned out, he was right. I took the skin test (I received scratches on both forearms and the left one produced nothing and right one produced an inflamed forearm). That was good news to the epidemiologist who said I did not have TB, but must have had some fungal infection in my youth that had scarred by lungs. Had I ever lived on a farm or in the tropics. Bingo, two years in rural Costa Rica and three years in rural Maine (when I remember having quite a bout of bronchitis) was the answer. So, I was told I could indeed start college as planned and my mother didn’t even learn of the issue until she showed up in early October from her Latin American sojourn. As for my father, I’m pretty sure I never got that BMW, but I did see him a couple years later at my older sister Kathy’s wedding in St. Louis. He didn’t bring up TB and I didn’t bring up BMW.
Back in 1962 during my one encounter with him, he was driving me to his home in Santa Barbara for a visit (my mother thought I should meet the guy one summer while she was in graduate school) and explained to me that he was married and had two daughters (age 3 and 18 months, named Diane and Sondra, respectively). The next time he popped up was in 1978 when he passed through NYC after attending my middle sister Barbara’s wedding in Rotterdam. While there he had suffered his first coronary and caused quite a commotion with the delay of the wedding and the ensuing recuperation. He flashed a $3 million check in my face to show me how he had brokered an oil tanker from his hospital bed for the Arab gentleman sharing his room. Along the way, I had come to know Diane and Sondra reasonably well as they tried to sort out their feelings around their disappearing and reappearing father, Andre.
In December, 1993 while on a ski holiday at my home in Utah I got a call from his latest wife, telling me that Andre had dies rather suddenly at the age of 70 and could I fly out to Southern California to make the arrangements. I was, after all, his one and only son (or so I thought). I did what was required from the cremation to the burial plat at The Mission San Luis Rey to the eulogy at the garden funeral to the expansive gathering (with four ex-wives including my mother) at the nearby La Costa Resort. My sisters (Kathy, Barbara, Diane and Sondra) wee in attendance. I spent a good deal of time with Diane and Sondra getting them used to the permanence of his absence and trying to help them understand the man a bit better. Neither of my older sisters needed help with any of that, they understood the man just like I did.
The next month I was awoken in my bed in my tower apartment in Tudor City, which overlooked the UN building in NYC by a call from a man with a strangely familiar voice. He said through his heavily Hispanic accented deep voice that he was my brother. There had been tales of a son that Andre had birthed in Mexico City and sure enough, he had found his way to me. When I asked him his name, he proudly declared himself as Andre Marin. OK then, we would meet for dinner when he came to NYC for the World Cup matches since he was a TV soccer announcer for Televisa Azteca. I spent that dinner at BICE on 54th Street explaining to him that never meeting the man was less about him than about our father and his tendency to overcommit and underdeliver.
Several months ago through the circumstances of 23 & Me and Google, we have reconnected with two other siblings. One is a mere year younger than me and he goes by the name Ralph (also tagged with the older Prosdocimi surname). I met Ralph for lunch a month ago. He wanted to know about a father who had never bothered to meet him. I’d been through that, so I told him as best I could that this was not his failing.
Tomorrow (Monday) I go to Pasadena to have a first meeting lunch with half-sister Marissa, who lives in Santa Clarita (where she is a COVID nurse). Apparently, she is the product of a dalliance between Andre and her mother during the Santa Barbara years while Diane and Sondra were young. I guess that’s life…at least it’s Andre’s life. Marissa seems like a genuinely warm and pleasant woman and I am looking forward to properly meeting her tomorrow. Kim has other plans, which will allow Marissa and me to cover all of the searching for Andre stories we have in us.