Everything Leads to You

Ava looks nervous.

“I never actually met him,” she says. “But Emi and Charlotte showed me one of his movies. Well, part of one.”

“You have his nose,” Dad says. “And his freckles.”

“I didn’t know he had freckles,” I say.

“Most people don’t know,” he says. “The studios thought the freckles made him look too boyish, so he wore heavy makeup to cover them. In 1966, when he was presented the Oscar for best actor in The Stranger, the public first got a glimpse of them. It was in all the gossip columns.”

Ava cocks her head and her hair falls over one shoulder.

“Really?” she says. “It was gossip-column worthy?”

“Yes. In fact,” Dad says, “I have a collection of Dorothy Manners columns in my office. I have the one where she talks about his ‘boyish appearance at the Oscars last Monday.’ Want to take a look?”

Ava nods and stands and follows Dad down the hallway, and then Charlotte and I are together on the couch while Mom is saying, “Really? You didn’t learn about the Watts riots in school? In Watts? What on earth were they teaching you if not that? You have to know the history of where you come from. Okay, so it started like this . . .”

I say, “I felt kind of bad about us all descending on their mellow evening just because we wanted them to buy us dinner, but I think we just made their night.”

Charlotte nods. “This is a dream come true for the Miller-Price household.”

Finally, our buddy the delivery guy rings the bell.

He waves at me from the other side of our glass door as I open it.

“Hey, Eric,” I say.

“Hey, Emi,” he says. “Big order this time.”

“We have guests,” I explain and, when Mom joins us with an article she clipped from the Sunday Times for him, I mouth, Good-bye, and take the food to the kitchen.

Charlotte and Jamal and I pull out plates and silverware.

“Hey,” Jamal says. “I think your mom likes me.”

“Yeah, probably,” I say. “Why?”

“She called me handsome and graceful.”

“She was telling you what your name means,” Charlotte says.

“My name means ‘handsome and graceful’?”

“Apparently, yes,” I tell him.

He laughs.

“I didn’t even know you were black,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “My grandpa’s black, so I’m a quarter.”

He leans back to get a better look at me.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he says. He drifts to the refrigerator and studies the photographs hanging there. “Who’s this?” he asks, pointing to a photo of Toby and me. We’re dressed up for the premiere of a documentary Dad was featured in, and I see it as Jamal must be seeing it now: Toby several shades darker than me, his hair thicker and curlier, his eyes dark brown to my amber.

“My brother,” I say.

“Same dad?”

I nod. I could tell him about all the teachers who had Toby first and who tried to mask their surprise when they discovered that I was his little sister. Or the times when I was a kid when strangers mistook my mom for my babysitter.

But I decide to keep it simple for now.

“The mysteries of genetics.” I shrug.

“For real,” he says. And then, a moment later: “You have a cool family.”

I don’t know what to say in response. I don’t know anything about Jamal’s life, but the fact that he lives in the shelter with Ava obviously means that his home life wasn’t exactly ideal. I suddenly feel very shallow for being embarrassed when they first came in. There are far worse things for parents to be than overinterested in their daughter’s friends, than a little too excited about telling them things about themselves that they might not know already.

So I just smile and say, “Thanks,” and my dad and Ava reappear from his study carrying two Clyde Jones biographies and a few books about Westerns in their arms.

“Should we set the table?” Dad asks.

“Actually,” I say, “we’re here to watch a video, so I’m thinking we’ll just coffee-table it in the den.”

“You have a den?” Jamal asks.

I nod yes, and Mom, now back to us, clasps her hands and says, “A movie!”

Charlotte and I exchange glances.

“Guys,” I say to my parents. “I don’t want to be rude but—”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Dad says.

“Yes, right,” Mom says. “We don’t mean to intrude. Gary, we could watch our own movie. That sounds fun, doesn’t it!”