Chapter 1: What happened when Elyse's father disappeared?
Pushkin.
Hi, Jonathan.
Hi, come on in. You should make yourself at home in the studio because it is like a second. You've been spending so much time in here.
Yeah, I actually sometimes just sleep in here. It's just easier than having to go home.
I don't know if you should be telling me that. This might be a conversation with HR. Yeah, what are we listening to today?
Speaking of the studio, today we're going to revisit an episode that started with us sitting around in the studio. It's called Elise.
Yeah, of course. I love this episode.
It's a really good one that came to us, as you'll hear, in an unconventional way.
Yeah, we were trying something new. We were trying to do a call-in show. But in our case, that basically failed. But it succeeded because we wouldn't have had this story without it.
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Chapter 2: How did Elyse's relationship with her father change over the years?
It's going okay. Is this... What's your name?
Elise, I'm very surprised I got through. This is so exciting.
I guess you really lucked out. Elise is a longtime listener, first-time caller from Washington, D.C. And as it turns out, her call proves not only the first of the day, but also the last. And this is not just because we don't receive any other calls. It's because I'm completely drawn in by the story Elise tells me about herself and her dad. What's his name? Billy. Billy?
Yeah. So I guess, basically I'm estranged from my father.
When Elise was a kid, Billy was the fun parent, the one who always had hours to play with her, the guy who, in spite of being something of a macho man, gave himself over to playing beauty salon, even allowing Elise to paint his toenails. Before the estrangement, Billy and Elise were really close, which is why not having any relationship now hurts the way it does.
She was my dad. Like, our idea of a family vacation was to, like, show up in a country with no plan and, like, rent a car and just, like, drive around. And it was amazing. Like, that's what life with dad was like. It was, like, every day was an adventure.
Even the way Billy met Elise's mom was like something out of a movie, the first act of a film noir. Billy was an Englishman driving through Chattanooga on a tourist visa when he got into a terrible car accident. And the physical therapist assigned to him was Elise's mom. Billy was still in a wheelchair when he talked her into sneaking him out of the hospital for their first date.
Pretty soon after, they got married and had Elise. Billy never went back to England. Instead, he stayed with his family in Chattanooga and became a successful used car salesman.
I have a lot of things in my upbringing and life with him to be very grateful for, in addition to all the craziness.
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Chapter 3: What shocking updates does Elyse share about her father's new life?
And I say this, by the way, like, with the idea that this could be a terrible, terrible idea. I'm not championing this idea. This could be a stupid idea. Yeah.
It's better than any of the ideas that I've had for the past five years.
So, yeah, I think it would be helpful.
My idea is to serve as Elise's emotional advance scout, to call up her dad and see if he might be ready, after all this time, to talk to Elise and offer some answers. Given what Elise has told me about her dad, I can't say I'm optimistic about that. But then again, I can't say I'm optimistic about anything.
Good luck with the rest of your calls.
No one's going to call anyway, so. I'm so sorry. No, this was a good call-in show.
Have you ever heard a true story so crazy that you immediately think, I got to tell everyone I know?
The Hindenburg is a German ship. Was it sunk?
It did crash.
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Chapter 4: What emotions does Elyse express about her father's abandonment?
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Elise. Hi. Hi, how are you? Good. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. I've invited Elise to my office in Brooklyn so that we can call her father together. It will be the first time in five years that Elise hears Billy's voice. How are you feeling? Very nervous. You are? Yeah. Do you want some coffee? Nothing calms the Kishkas better than a nice cup of coffee.
Elise declines and we settle in for some small talk while I set up the call. As we chat, I'm struck by Elise's cultural sensitivity.
Wasn't it Canada Day recently?
It was.
Happy Canada Day.
Thank you. I fumble around, incapable of an appropriately reciprocal well-wish. Hmm. We're three days after Canada Day, so that makes it the third, maybe the fourth of July? Nah, I got nothing. I tell Elise about my conversation with Billy, how remorseful and open to talking he seemed. She's still worried, but says she wasn't even expecting things to progress this far.
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Chapter 5: How does Elyse feel about her father's new family?
I've never owned a German Shepherd over here, but we had a dog. But because of the stories that I've told, what did they call the dog? Charlie.
By the look on her face, Elise doesn't seem reassured by the fact that, like her, Charlie, the beloved German shepherd from her childhood, had also been replaced. Although I haven't been to the Philippines, it feels as though Billy is throwing an entire country under the bus to save his own hide.
In the silence, I try to bring things back to what I think is Billy's strongest suit, his seemingly renewed capacity for repentance. I want Elise to hear what I heard in Billy during our first conversation, so I try to steer things in that direction. Bill, you know, you mentioned feeling regret. What would you do differently if you had a chance to do things over?
I don't think that the final outcome would change much, to be honest with you. But I should have called for a family meeting, and I should have gone over it in detail with times and dates and plans.
A family meeting about leaving your family was not the do-over I was expecting. After having heard the level of Old Testament shame he'd expressed in our first phone call, I'm surprised that Billy's now talking in the language of meetings and launch dates. Elise stares down at the floor. She looks at me. Billy's not giving her what she needs, so she puts it to him as directly as she can.
Like, you have to understand that you just disappeared and I had no context. Like... I want to know what you were thinking when you left and like why you left. So like what happened?
Well, there are lots of things that I would like to explain to you regarding my leaving.
I'm here. I'm listening. If there's anything you want to say.
Well, there were several, several things that happened, Elise. It's a long story that I would like to explain to you step by step. Got kind of a really busy schedule today.
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Chapter 6: What led to the phone call between Elyse and her father?
I don't think that everyone gets sort of like equally agreeable compromised ending. But for a long time, I felt like the burden of us not having a relationship was on me because he would email and I would never respond. And that was kind of the end of it.
And I feel like now that I have tried to contact him, like the burden of us not having whatever relationship I think we should have is not as much on me. I feel a lot less guilt now. We'll never be as close as it sounds like he wanted us to be. I don't think that's likely. And maybe it's okay that I don't push for that. I think he creates his own universe.
I lived, I was a permanent resident of Billy World for a number of years, and I was glad to get off the ride. You don't get to live in the universe that you create and expect it not to affect other people.
and other people have been affected. In recent months, Elise has been corresponding with a British man named Martin. And Martin was able to help Elise answer the question of why her father left in a way that Billy himself couldn't. Martin believes he's Billy's son, born before Billy left England for Chattanooga.
So unlike Elise, Martin grew up without a father, because like Elise, one day, without warning, his father left, moved to another country, and started another family. And from what Martin is saying, he's not the only one. There's another man living in England, he tells her, who also believes that Billy is his father. The two of them have been trying to reach Billy for years.
In fact, it turns out that Martin and Elise have brushed against each other before, a long time ago. When Elise was growing up, she remembers the home phone ringing, usually around the holidays, and a young man with her father's accent on the line asking to speak to Billy. Back then, Billy said Martin was a distant cousin. And all these years later, Martin still feels like he's being pushed away.
He just wants Billy to acknowledge him. In learning about Martin and her other possible half-brother, how her story has repeated itself over and over, Elise has found the answer she needed. The answer Billy himself was never able to give her. It isn't about her or about Martin or anyone else. The reason Billy did what Billy did is because that's what Billy does.
Martin and the other possible half-brother are planning to take a DNA test, and they'd like Elise to take one too. If their DNA matches hers, Martin says, it's all the proof they'll need. Billy will have to accept them as his own. When I talk to her on the phone about it later on, Elise says she isn't sure a DNA test will give Martin the thing he's looking for. But she does want to help.
Knowing how much I wanted closure, it would definitely be good to be able to provide him some.
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Chapter 7: What unresolved issues does Elyse want to address with her father?
In the Philippines? Yes. Wow. Does it even make sense? I mean, I don't know anything about Filipino law. That being there illegally would have been enough to put a person in prison for two years? Do you think maybe there's more to the story?
I think it's very possible because I feel like I remember Faith saying to Mom that he was getting charged with additional other things that she was so sure he didn't do. And me and my mom were like, it's much more likely that he did them.
Wow. So how old a man was he at the time that he was sent to prison?
probably in his 70s at that point, or, like, just close to, then eventually they did deport him to Guam. He eventually ended up in Thailand. And then in fall of 2024, the U.S. Embassy started reaching out to me because he had been hospitalized in Thailand.
This is all just going to sound very terrible to say, but, you know, when he was in prison and in the hospital, like, at least I knew where he was. Mm-hmm. And then I think presumably his medical stuff continued to devolve. And then in early, essentially just over a year ago, he passed away in Thailand.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Very mixed feelings. I actually have his ashes and I don't know what to do with them right now.
And what is the feeling of having them there? Do you feel like, I mean, do you have any feelings left?
I was, because I, after you all reached out, I went back and listened to the initial podcast reporting. And I remember immediately after, because we recorded that, it sort of ended with the phone conversation that you facilitated between the two of us. And then within a couple of hours of that, I was driving back from New York to D.C., And I remember feeling so overwhelmed emotionally.
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