Fitz

27



“You were a good baby, a beautiful baby,” that’s how he starts. That’s his once-upon-a-time. He says that Fitz was healthy, bright-eyed, curious. He had amazing blue eyes. It’s just that he didn’t sleep, at least not for long stretches. Two hours max, that’s how long he’d stay down, often less than that, and then he’d be wide awake, demanding attention. Sometimes he’d be down for just a few minutes, then go off like a fire alarm, crying so hard that his face, even his head, turned red. Singing, rocking, jostling, walking—nothing seemed to help.

Annie was beyond exhausted, his father tells Fitz. “She was sleep-deprived. People say the words, but the real thing, it’s hard to comprehend. How bad it is.”

“Like torture,” Fitz says.

“Exactly,” his father says.

She wasn’t getting a lot of help either. Her brother came over when he could. He had a good heart and a talent for goofy faces, but he was a teenager, his real world was somewhere else—the next date-dance, homework, hockey practice. One of her girlfriends from the diner used to stop by. But just like Dunc, she had a life outside of Annie’s apartment.

“Annie never asked her dad to help, and he never offered,” his father says.

Fitz could believe it. His grandpa was old-school. He couldn’t imagine that he’d do diapers. You weren’t going to catch him warming a bottle. From listening to his mom and uncle talk, Fitz could tell that his parenting style, if that’s what you’d call it, wasn’t suited for babies. He had the no-nonsense manner of an Army sergeant, which is what he’d been. They used to hold out their plates and he’d scoop food onto them. He called washing dishes KP. He wrote their names on cups and on every article of their clothing. Fitz knew that wouldn’t work with a baby. Babies didn’t care about keeping everything shipshape; they didn’t come with a field manual; they showed no respect for standard operating procedure.

“What about you?” Fitz asks. “Were you still going out?”

“There’s no going out with a baby,” his father tells him. He says that he would stop by every couple of days, usually in the early evening before heading off to the library to study. He was trying his best to keep his head above water academically. He had finals and then, after that, the bar exam. He was sending out résumés. Still, he wanted to do the right thing.

But the baby scared him a little. He was so small, so delicate—so alien somehow. He’d hold him, but as often as not, as soon as he picked him up, the baby’s lips would quiver and he’d start to cry. He was nervous and self-conscious, Annie watching his every move.

“I felt so awkward,” his father says. “Totally inept. I had no real experience with babies.”

Fitz imagines he’d never been really bad at anything before. He probably never received a failing grade in his life. Welcome to the human race—that’s something his mom likes to say.

“I’d fumble with something, forget to support the head, and then Annie would step in. ‘Here,’ she’d say, ‘let me take him,’ and I’d hand you off.

“Back at school, in my study carrel,” his father says, “things made sense. There were precedents, rules of evidence. There was a sense of order.” He didn’t love it, but he could do it. He could read through a case and identify the issues. More and more, he liked to argue, he enjoyed the back and forth, the give and take. Because he’d confided the fact of his fatherhood to only a single classmate, his study partner, Rory, he was able to keep it walled off, hidden away in a kind of bottom drawer of his life. In the middle of his familiar school routine, he could almost forget about it.

Fitz is trying his best to lean into his father’s story, to meet him halfway. The bottom drawer—maybe that’s where he’s been keeping his dad these last few weeks.

“Kind of like a double life?” Fitz asks. “Like being undercover?”

“Yeah,” his father says. “Something like that.”

In Annie’s apartment, his father says, nothing made sense. For one thing, Fitz had somehow mixed up days and nights. At three in the morning, the lights would be blazing, there’d be music playing, and he would be wide awake, wanting to play. In the middle of the day, the place would be dark, the blinds drawn, Annie sleeping in a chair, the baby on her chest. The sink was full of dishes. She ate mostly peanut butter sandwiches, one slice of bread, folded over, food you make with one hand and eat standing up.

“I tried, I really tried,” his father says. “I brought over Chinese takeout and some chocolates and once, a couple of books about babies. Dr. Spock, stuff like that. How-to books. I figured they might contain some helpful hints, maybe some advice about the night-and-day business.

“But Annie looked at me as if I were out of my mind. ‘You think I have time to read?’ she asked. ‘Do I look like someone with time for leisure reading?’ She didn’t. Honestly, she looked a little crazed. More than a little crazed. Her hair was wild, and there were circles under her eyes. Makeup was a thing of the past. Mostly she wore the same plaid nightgown and a pair of woolly socks. Day and night. I started to wonder, do I even know this person? Who is she?”

Fitz feels defensive of his mom. He’s not sure he likes hearing her being talked about this way. “What about your parents?” Fitz asks. “Did they know?”

“I meant to tell them,” his father says. “I really did. I called one Sunday with just that intention. Annie was big as a house, and I felt ready to share the news. We’d found a crib at an estate sale and set it up in Annie’s apartment. I was feeling optimistic, exhilarated even. For the first time in my life, maybe, I was doing something daring.

“Still, I knew it wouldn’t be easy to tell my parents something they didn’t want to hear. So I prepared and rehearsed—same as I would for an oral argument. I made notes. But when my mother answered, when I heard her voice, all that went out the window. I got as far as saying that there was a girl—kicking myself for calling her that—and that we were getting serious.

“ ‘How serious?’ my mother asked. She didn’t ask the girl’s name.

“ ‘Semi-serious,’ I said. ‘Just a little serious.’

“ ‘What does she do?’ my mother asked.

“What you did—your job, your income and status, your prospects—to my parents, that was who you were.” He glances at Fitz. Maybe he’s wondering if Fitz knows people like that. Maybe he wants Fitz to believe that he is not a person like that.

“What Annie did was make me happy,” his father says. “I could have told her that. Instead, I lied. I said that she was a law student, too, third-year, and when I hung up, I felt sick.”

So you chickened out, Fitz doesn’t say. That was your dare-to-be-great moment, your chance to declare your independence. But you didn’t do it. You took a pass.

“When I was offered the position in St. Louis,” his father says, “I was thrilled. A clerkship with a federal district judge was something special. It was my dream job.

“But now we had to figure some things out—we couldn’t go on like this. For months we’d been speaking only in the present. But now I had a job out of state. At first Annie said that she was happy for me. She didn’t want to hold me back. She never demanded anything from me. But now things were going to change. We had to make some decisions.

“It all came to a head one Saturday night. I was leaving on Monday for St. Louis. We’d been talking all day, going around and around. We’d been talking for days, really. You were in a little baby seat. It had a handle and a little canopy. I had brought a pizza over, and it sat on the coffee table in front of us, untouched, just looking nasty. It seemed like some kind of accusation, even—who thought this was a good idea?”

Fitz understands. What kind of person brings cheese-and-pepperoni to this?

“We got into it again, really arguing this time. It was confusing, all my coming and going, that’s what she was saying. It was making things worse. It wasn’t right.”

His father says he was ready to respond. There were some points he wanted to make. He wanted to take exception to some of the things Annie had said. Maybe he got a little bit, well, lawyerly.

“Annie cut me off. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘Cut the crap. You can’t have it both ways.’ She said something about stepping up, being a man.”

Yes, Fitz thinks. Yes! It’s about time. Step the hell up.

“I guess I raised my voice then,” his father says. “I just wanted to defend myself. Annie was being unfair. I can’t even remember what it was I said. I was upset. Doesn’t matter. It was loud, it was angry. The pizza box got knocked on the floor. The baby was still in his seat, right there on the couch between us. He startled. He started crying.”

“That was me,” Fitz says. “The crying baby.” He feels like he needs to remind his father. This story—it’s not all about him.

“You,” his father says. “You started crying.”

And Fitz isn’t stupid. The pizza box didn’t knock itself on the floor. Who’s he trying to kid?

“Annie snatched you up in a flash. Held you close and just like that, you stopped crying. But your face was still beet red. You gave me a look. As if to say, what are you doing here? As if to say, get lost. That’s just what you seemed to be saying. You are not needed here. I belong to her, not you. You’re the problem. You’re unnecessary.”

Of course, Fitz feels like saying. Who needs a father?

“Annie told me that it would be best if I would leave. Best for her. Best for you. Best for everyone.”

“So that’s when you walked out.”

“Stepped back,” his father says. “That’s what I thought I was doing. Just for the moment, like a time-out. A cooling-off period.”

“Stepped back?” Fitz says. Can he hear himself?

“Annie told me that it would be better for all of us,” his father says.

“Better for you,” Fitz says quietly.

“I know how it must sound,” his father says. “But it was temporary, that’s what I thought at the time. That’s what I told myself.”

The rest of the story is pretty much what Mr. Massey calls denouement, falling action. After Curtis left town, Annie moved back in with Grandpa John and Uncle Dunc. Fitz knows things had been testy at home during her teenage years—back then his mom had a wild side—which is one reason she moved out in the first place. But now, they must have come together, because that’s what you do, that’s how family works.

As soon as he got to St. Louis, his father sent a check.

“I had no intention of being a deadbeat,” he says.

Annie mailed him back a polite thank-you note. After that, he sent money every month, an amount that struck him as generous and gradually increased over the years. More at Christmas and around his birthday and at the beginning of each school year.

“While you were gone,” Fitz asks, “did you think about us? Did you think about me?”

“Of course,” he says. “Of course I did.” Those first years, he says, he was working long hours, twelve, fourteen, even sixteen hours a day, living like a monk in a tiny apartment, but still, he would remember that baby smell, the way the baby threw his arms over his head after a feeding, milk-drunk. He hoped he was sleeping better.

“I called a few times,” he says. It was awkward. Formal and polite. Annie thanked him for the checks, and he told her she was welcome, it was nothing. He asked how the baby was doing, and she said fine. She said everything was fine, and it was better this way. He agreed, and she agreed with his agreement. It was easier to believe her. Easier just to write a check, to believe he was doing the right thing.

When he came back to town once, he stopped by the house. He brought some flowers and a teddy bear. Her father was home, and he did not invite him in. “He’d had a few drinks,” his father said. “He said that Annie wasn’t home. He said that I wasn’t welcome there. Told me what I could do with the flowers. I chose not to get into it with him. I called and left messages, but Annie didn’t call back.”

One day followed the next. It’s just the way it is. His clerkship ended, and he took a job with one of the largest firms in St. Louis.

“Weeks passed,” he say. “Months, years. I made partner. I thought about reconnecting, getting acquainted. I thought about it a lot.”

“But you didn’t do it,” Fitz says.

“No,” his father says. “I didn’t do it.”

They’re both silent for a moment. For now, Fitz can’t think of anything else to say.

“Every day you don’t do something,” his father says, “it’s easier not to do it the next.”





28



“You have a kid there?” Fitz asks. They’ve been driving around more or less aimlessly while his father talks. They’ve been out as far as the airport and the megamall, and are in Highland Park now. Edgcumbe Road. They’ve just passed the golf course and the theater where Fitz and his mom sometimes go to see second-run movies.

Fitz is trying now to keep the story going, trying to keep poking and prodding, trying to keep the ball in the air. But he’s running out of gas. His father’s story is slowly working its way through his insides, making him feel something. It’s like a spiked drink, he’s afraid, it’s starting to make him woozy. Or maybe it’s more like he just swallowed some broken glass—any minute, his insides are gonna start bleeding. Later, there’ll be time to sort it out. Like one of the poems they read in Mr. Massey’s class, he can chop it up, weigh and measure every little bit, analyze and interpret it, but for now he just wants more: more details, more words, more anything. “You got a kid in St. Louis, too?”

“No,” his father says. He looks surprised. “No kid in St. Louis. No kid anywhere else.”

“And you’ve really never been married?”

“Never.”

They’re at a four-way stop, and he motions for a momish woman in a minivan to go first. He may be a terrible father, but he’s a courteous driver—Fitz has to give him that much. Go figure.

“I think maybe some people are just not cut out for that,” his father says.

“For what?”

“You know—for that life. I think I’m one of them. I guess I’ve learned that much about myself.”

Fitz wonders if it can really be that simple. Some people have a marriage allergy? Maybe. What about his mom? She went out on dates, more it seemed when Fitz was little. He can remember her primping, he can remember shaking hands with a few guys, playing the little gentleman, being interested in their cars, them being nice and kindly in an exaggerated way, trying to show his mom what good guys they were. There was Philip, who lasted longer than any of the others, who became a kind of regular around the house with his pressed jeans and full packs of sugarless gum. He was a computer expert, with a monster laptop Fitz played games on. Fitz liked him, but he stopped coming around eventually—not so much a breakup as a fade-out. His mom seemed kind of relieved. Recently Fitz even had some hopes that his mom and Mr. Boudreau, his French teacher, might hit it off on parent-teacher night. But she’s never seemed especially eager to hook up with someone. She sure isn’t one of those desperate middle-aged singles. Maybe she’s got the allergy, too? Fitz wonders if you can inherit something like that. He wonders if he is doomed to be a serial loner, too.





29



They’re still driving, on Snelling again now, passing a string of funeral homes, where they were about ten minutes ago—it’s like they’re in a holding pattern, waiting for permission to land somewhere. Fitz has a kind of movie in his head taking shape from his father’s story. The scene of his father walking out, leaving him and his mom behind—Fitz knows already it’s the one that’s going to stick with him, it’s the one he’s going to come back to and watch again and again. He can almost hear the door slam.

In a Hollywood movie, Curtis would leave, but it wouldn’t end there. There’d be another act. Later, he’d come back, and there’d be a tearful reunion. They’d both realize how stupid they’d been. But in real life—his real life—it never happened. It’s not like his father was Bogey in Casablanca either, saying goodbye for some honorable motive. It was selfish, he basically said so himself. As if copping to that wipes the slate clean. It reminds Fitz of some politician’s feeble blanket apology: sorry if I offended anyone, now let’s turn the page, let’s put this behind us. Meanwhile, whoever it is he’s cheated is like, wait a minute, not so fast.

What really bothers Fitz is how easily his father seemed to step aside. He and his mom exchanged words, okay, they got worked up and said some things, he can understand that. She tells him, get out and stay out, etc. He goes to St. Louis, cools off a little, and then comes around with what, some flowers? It seems so lame. Why didn’t he put up more of a fight?

“So tell me again,” Fitz says. “Why you didn’t come around. Why you didn’t, you know, like, visit.”

“She didn’t want me to,” his father says. “She said it was best for you.”

“And you believed her.”

His father doesn’t say anything. Maybe he can’t think of a plausible evasion. Maybe for once he’s at a loss for words. He puts on his blinker, checks his blind spot, and changes lanes.

“You didn’t make much of an effort,” Fitz says.

“That so?” his father says. His voice is almost too calm, a kind of warning, a snake’s rattle, which Fitz ignores. He hates his father’s composure, that layer of lawyer cool.

“Come on,” Fitz says. “Tell the truth. You didn’t even try. You were so over us. Why don’t you just admit it?”

“Look, my friend,” his father says. Anybody who calls you “my friend” is not your friend—Fitz knows that much.

“Maybe you should have a talk with your mother,” his father says. “Ask her who told me to stay away. Who told me that again and again and again. Who didn’t return my calls. Whose father threatened me. Who refused me, who wouldn’t let me in. Maybe you should take out your little piece and ask her some questions.”

Fitz is startled by his father’s tone, by his—what’s the word for it?—his vehemence. He did it fifteen years ago, and now he’s done it again. This is the guy in the story. He’s looking at him right now. Fitz can totally see it. The man can be nice when he’s in control. In his office, surrounded by his people, he’s Mr. Magnanimous. But push him a little, get up in his grill, he’s a different person altogether.

Fitz flips up his hood. He’s got nothing more to say. He’s out of questions. He can’t even remember why it seemed so important to get his father to talk, to tell him a story. A story! A bunch of words. That’s all it is. It doesn’t do anything. What’s the point? Whatever his father tells him, that’s not going to change anything. Those years, growing up without a dad, feeling jealous and unlovable and odd. It is what it is. Fitz usually hates people who say that. It seems so mindless, so all-purpose: you can say it about anything. But now it makes some kind of sense to him.

He looks out the window of the car and studies the nice houses they’re passing. Brick and stone, some with winding driveways, all with beautiful green lawns and neatly trimmed bushes. Probably this is the kind of neighborhood where his father grew up. A suburb of Chicago—that’s what he said. Maybe he was spoiled. Maybe he was one of those kids who never owned up, who broke something and just asked his parents for a new one, who messed up and walked away.

Fitz needs some music. Not his own—right now he’s tired of his own sound, and he’s not sure his father even deserves to hear any more from him and Caleb. He flips through the sleeve of discs and pulls out the Beatles’ Revolver. He knows the album so well that when one track ends, he somehow feels the beginning of the next one even before it starts to play: “Eleanor Rigby” after “Taxman,” “Good Day Sunshine” after “She Said She Said,” the album unfolding song by song as inevitably as the alphabet. “Yellow Submarine” is one of the first songs Uncle Dunc taught him to play on the guitar—G, C, D, and A minor—and he can still remember the pride and pleasure he felt strumming while his mom and his uncle sang along. In seventh grade, when his Beatles obsession was in full force, Fitz wore a Sgt. Pepper T-shirt just about every day, and his mom even baked a birthday cake for George on February twenty-fifth.

Fitz is listening to George’s famous backward guitar solo on “I’m Only Sleeping” when suddenly the volume cuts out. He looks over at his father and sees him holding down a button on the steering wheel—he’s got built-in controls.

“I’m sorry,” his father says. He says it softly, but even hooded, Fitz hears him perfectly. “I didn’t mean to be short with you.”

Fitz doesn’t respond. All he can think is what a strange expression: short with you. “It was wrong to speak to you that way. I was wrong. I guess you hit a little close to home. I’m sorry.”

Fitz imagines that it can’t be very easy for his father to admit he’s wrong. To apologize to a kid. I’m sorry—that can’t be something he says very often. “It’s okay,” Fitz tells him. “Don’t worry about it.” Why not? Apology accepted. Forgiveness is free. And it’s not as if he’s been a model of good manners himself. Really, he’s in no position to judge.

Whenever he’s inclined to judge someone, his mom will usually call him out. She’ll stick up for any underdog, criminals even. You don’t know what they’ve been through, she’ll say, you don’t know what they’ve suffered, you have no idea what you would do if you were in their position.

If he were in his father’s shoes fifteen years ago, what would Fitz have done? He’s heard crying babies before, and they jangle his nerves. An angry woman showing him the door, giving him permission to leave, telling him, ordering him, really, to walk. Maybe he’d ease out the door, too.

One of Caleb’s favorite all-purpose phrases is can’t imagine. He says it when someone tells him about something foreign to him, outside his somewhat limited range of experience. Somebody’s girlfriend woes, maybe, some kind of love triangle situation, say. Caleb takes it all in—he’s a great listener—but that’s about all he says. Can’t imagine. It might seem unsympathetic. Most people want you to say just the opposite, that you get it, you understand—you can relate. But Fitz has come to appreciate his friend’s honesty. He likes that he doesn’t pretend to understand what he really knows nothing about. So what was it like to be his father back then? Fitz can’t imagine. He really can’t.

Fitz likes to think that he himself would have acted honorably. Manned up. Not taken the easy way out. He’d like to think that. But really, he doesn’t know. He does know that he’s taken the easy way himself plenty of times. It’s easy to be brave in theory.

Fitz comes out of his hood and looks around. They’re passing a school now. There’s a line of buses idling outside. A woman in a reflective vest and a handheld stop sign makes them wait while a woman with a stroller crosses in front of them. School is about to let out.

It feels like the longest day of his life. It also feels like the shortest. They crammed a lot into a few hours together. They made some memories. You can say that much.

Here’s the problem. As good as this day has been, it’s been forced. Not freely given. They’ve fed sea lions, he’s had a second piece of pie, he’s heard about the exploding television, he’s made his dad laugh. He’s visited a law office and shared one of his songs. He’s heard his father apologize. But it doesn’t count, not really. What you get at gunpoint, that’s not love. That’s something else altogether. You can take a guy’s car, but you can’t jack someone’s heart. It doesn’t work that way.

Fitz can remember when he realized that Bethany, the teenage girl who lived across the street, was getting paid to play with him when his mom was out. He thought she liked playing with him, building with Lego toys, coloring, lying on the floor with all the figures from his Star Wars bucket around, arranging battle scenes. Then he saw money change hands, the smile on Bethany’s face. To her it was a job. When he figured that out, he felt stupid and ashamed.

They have no future. This is a one-off. Fitz and his father, they’re going to be known as one-hit wonders. Tomorrow, probably, he’s going to get a restraining order, and it will be illegal for Fitz to go within a hundred yards of him. It was fun while it lasted.

Fitz thinks of those Make-A-Wish stories he sees on television from time to time. Some doomed, bald little kid spending the day with his sports hero, playing catch, getting autographs, going home with a big pile of gear. It’s supposed to be heartwarming. But what about the next day? Fitz always wonders about that. And the day after that? It just makes Fitz sad.

“So now what?” his father says. They’re stopped at the light on West Seventh. Fort Snelling is one way, downtown the other, the river is in front of them. “Where to?”

For a moment Fitz thinks his father is giving him a song. He tries—he likes songs with questions in them. “Now what?” That could be the title of something. He could see his father’s questions becoming the chorus in some sort of existential anthem. But his heart’s not in it. It seems like a lot of work. And for what? Scribble some words in a notebook—what would be the point of that? “Take me home,” Fitz says.





RAINING TEARDROPS





30



Back on the west side, Fitz feels more like himself. On Summit Avenue, or in a downtown office building surrounded by suits and briefcases, he’s an outsider, an alien, a spy. Here, he’s just Fitz, a kid in his neighborhood.

They pass the gas station where he fills the tires of his bike, the pizza place where he and Caleb get slices and Dr Pepper with free refills, the hardware store where his mom gets little screws and such for her projects and is always smothered with attention by the old-guy clerks.

A few blocks away is the playground and park where Uncle Dunc used to push him on the swings, where he and his mom would spread a blanket and watch the Fourth of July fireworks from Harriet Island, where he still goes sledding with his friends in winter. Also, where he bought his gun.

Fitz looks at his father. Does it look like a slum to him? Compared to what he’s used to, maybe it does. Does he see only chipped paint and crabgrass? Does it make him fear for his hubcaps and want to lock his doors?

Fitz doesn’t care. He wouldn’t mind if his father felt a little bit guilty: look at this miserable life I’ve inflicted on my poor son! He would like his father to think that he’s grown up as a tough guy on the mean streets of West St. Paul, but it’s not like that, not at all.

“Here,” Fitz says when they come to his street, but he already has his turn signal on. On this block, Fitz knows the names of every family, present and past, he knows the names of their dogs, living and dead, he knows who gives out amazing treats on Halloween (Julia, the elderly piano teacher on the corner), who gives out sketchy-looking off-brand candy (the couple that listens to opera really loud on Saturday afternoons), who sits in the dark and pretends not to be home (Mr. Muscarella).

What does his father do on Halloween? Fitz wonders. There’s no way any kids get into that building of his to trick-or-treat. For years he’s probably been living in the same kind of place, some compound full of starched professionals, people just like himself. Does he even know what he’s missing? He probably sits inside drinking fancy French wine and trading stocks online or something. Fitz almost feels sorry for him. Now Fitz hands out candy on Halloween: he and his mom pretend not to recognize Evelyn and Vivian, the little princesses from next door; she takes pictures, and Fitz gives them huge handfuls of fun-size candy bars, the good ones, Snickers and Milky Way. Fitz has learned that being with kids on Halloween is just about as good as being a kid on Halloween. What has his father learned?





31



Now Fitz feels like he is stalking himself. They’re parked across the street from his own house. Fitz can see his bedroom window on the second floor. There’s an empty can of Dr Pepper on the sill.

Fitz half expects to see himself coming up the walk from his bus stop, backpack slung over his shoulder. It’s just about that time. He’d take the mail from the box, fish inside his pocket for his house key, and push open the door. He’d text his mom, tell her he’s home. And she’d send back one of her perfectly punctuated messages telling him what he already knows: that there’s food in the fridge, that he ought to get started on his homework, that she loves him.

They sit there, Fitz and his father, looking at the house. His mom spent the weekend working on her flower boxes and hanging baskets, white and red and purple. He doesn’t know the names of the flowers, but they look good. Their house has a kind of old-fashioned vibe he likes—the flowers, a flag and wind chimes, the open porch, the wrought-iron rail, the gray clapboard and green shutters.

Fitz feels as if he ought to say something, but he’s not sure what. He feels a stupid urge to apologize, for what exactly, he doesn’t know. He knows that he says “sorry” a lot. Caleb called him out on it once after he excused himself for bumping into a chair—“Dude, relax,” he said. “It’s inanimate, it’s not offended.”

“You get paid by the hour?” Fitz says.

“My firm does,” his father says. “Our clients pay for the time we work on their case.”

“Plenty, right? They pay a lot.”

“It’s not cheap.”

“So, like an hour with you, if I was your client, would cost me what, a hundred bucks?”

“More than that, actually.”

“Two hundred, three hundred?”

“Something like that.”

“So I’m costing you big-time. Wasting your time. I’m money down the drain.”

His father starts to say something but then just raises his hand, palm out, fingers extended, like a stop sign, maybe, or a blessing.

At some point, Fitz needs to get out of the car. He needs to do what one of Caleb’s favorite classic blues tunes says: step it up and go. Then it will be over. Their not-so-excellent adventure. Soon, but not yet.

He knows there’s nothing he can say or do at this point that’s going to make any kind of difference. Earlier in the day, he had some clear goals. Revenge—that was part of the plan, to make his father suffer for being a jerk. Payback, too, that was a piece of it, getting some of the time and attention he’d missed out on over the years. He wanted some information, too, he wanted to fill in some blanks. It’s three o’clock now. Fitz is pretty sure that he’s scared his father, at least a little, and he’s heard some stories, and they’ve spent the day together. So what? Tomorrow he’s gonna be his same old drifting self, asking Google what’s the matter with him.

If Fitz is going to resume his regular life, he needs to get out of the car, go into the house, and text his mom. He should figure out the homework that’s due tomorrow and get to work. Maybe he needs to lose his angst and stop whining and become an achiever. He should, unasked, do some household chore—start dinner, say, something to surprise his mom.

Still, there’s a part of Fitz that doesn’t want this to end. When he was a little kid, he never wanted to go to bed on his birthday. It was something special and rare, and he wanted to make it last. The day after his birthday, just another ordinary day, with no balloons and no cake—it always seemed a little sad to him.

“Okay,” Fitz says.

“Okay,” his father says.

Fitz isn’t sure how he feels about him. Maybe he really does feel a little sorry for him. He’s got a nice car, sure, and he’s a legal-eagle big shot, but there’s something sort of deficient about him, something lacking, something hollow. Fitz wouldn’t trade places with him. But he doesn’t think he really hates him. There’s certain things about him that he could see himself liking if he got to know him properly. Fitz liked him feeding sea lions, he liked him at the diner, he liked him eating pie. At the office, not so much. It all depends. Fitz knows that he has not been all that likeable today himself, waving his piece and talking tough. Under different circumstances, it would be different. Under different circumstances, Fitz can be likeable, he can be fun to be around. He wishes his father knew that. He wishes he’d made a better impression today.

“Okay,” Fitz says again. It feels like the awkward pause at the end of a class—anyone have any questions? As a matter of fact, Fitz does.

“Why Fitzgerald?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why not Steinbeck? Why not Melville?”

“I was an English major,” he says. “I read Gatsby in a course on the twentieth-century American novel. I loved it. I kept rereading it. I’m not sure why. It just spoke to me somehow. The language. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly … all that. It made me want to be a writer, too. It made me want to write the great American novel.” He smiles a little, as if he’s half embarrassed by the memory of his younger self, his susceptibility to beautiful language, his big foolish dreams.

“So it was you?” Fitz says. He was the Fitzgerald fan? “I thought Mom was the one who loved his stuff. I thought Mom named me.”

“Oh, I gave her some books,” he says. “I’m not sure she actually read them, though. I don’t blame her. It was a little obnoxious. She thought I was trying to remake her, as if she weren’t educated enough for me. But that wasn’t it. I was just sharing my enthusiasm. But it came off wrong.”

Fitz looks at his father. At one time, this guy dreamed about being a writer. He cared about words. Maybe he scribbled in a notebook, too. There’s more to him than Fitz suspected. If they sit here long enough, there’s no telling what he may discover about him.

“I’m pretty sure she read those books,” Fitz says.





32



There’s someone coming down the street. Even before Fitz sees his face, he recognizes Caleb’s familiar walk. It’s a slow shuffle, slower than you’d expect a young person to walk, as if he isn’t really all that keen to reach his destination.

He’s got his guitar in one hand, his amp in the other. There seems to be something coiled around his neck, nooselike. It could be some insane kind of goth choker, but that isn’t Caleb’s style. It could be a bike lock, but Caleb doesn’t ride a bike (too dangerous).

“That’s my friend,” Fitz says.

Fitz lowers his window and leans out. “Hey, Caleb!” he shouts. “Caleb!”

Caleb just keeps walking, same glacial pace. It’s impossible that he hasn’t heard—they’re no more than twenty feet away from each other. But Caleb doesn’t even turn his head. “Caleb!” Fitz yells again, even louder this time. Still no response.

“I’ll be right back,” Fitz says to his father. He opens the car door and puts one foot on the curb. He pauses. He looks at his father. The key’s in the ignition. The motor’s idling. What if he drives off? Fitz has already as good as said goodbye, handed back his father’s phone and wallet, but still, the prospect of his taking off, of watching his taillights disappear at the end of the block, it fills Fitz’s stomach with something like panic.

“I’m not going anywhere,” his father says.

“Okay,” Fitz says. “It’ll only be a minute.” He crosses the street and intercepts Caleb.

Caleb is still moving forward. He looks like someone moving across thin ice, that cautious. What he has around his neck, Fitz sees, is a super-duper guitar cable, something he’s been talking about getting for weeks.

“Caleb!” Fitz shouts. He is maybe three feet away from him.

Now, finally, Caleb stops and turns slowly toward Fitz.

“What is up with you? I was calling your name. Didn’t you know it was me?”

“I knew it was you.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I thought maybe you were trying to lure me somewhere.”

“Why would I want to lure you anywhere?”

“You tell me. You’re the predator.”

“Cut it out.”

“Who’s the guy in the car?”

“That’s my dad.”

“Dude, you don’t have a dad. That’s like one of your trademarks. It’s one of the things that makes you interesting.”

“Everybody’s got a dad.”

“You know what I mean.”

Caleb sets the amp down and turns toward the car in a way he must imagine is casual. It’s not. “He’s wearing a tie.”

“I know,” Fitz says. “He’s my father, and he’s wearing a tie.”

“That’s a really nice car,” Caleb says. “Are you sure he’s not an A&R guy? That’s what he looks like.”

“I’m sure he’s not an A&R guy. He’s a lawyer.”

“Because we are nowhere near ready to sign with a label.”

“Be serious.”

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all day,” Caleb says. “I sent you about a thousand texts. You’ve gone dark, dude.”

“So here I am,” Fitz says. “In the flesh. We can communicate in real time. What’s up? You got the Monster—very cool.”

“This is way beyond gear, Fitz.”

“Okay,” Fitz says. “What? What’s worth a thousand texts?”

“Nora,” Caleb says.

Nora? The sound of her name perks Fitz up a little. “What about her?”

“She’s coming over.”

“Nora Flynn?” Fitz says. “Here? When? When is she coming over?”

“Right here, right now,” Caleb says. “Any minute.” He smiles, a little wickedly.

“Get out.”

“I saw her at lunch and asked her if she listened to the CD. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Loved it.’ ”

“She loved it.”

“She loved it. You should have heard her, going on and on about Ruth Brown. She was obsessed. So I’m like, ‘You wanna sing with us?’ ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Absolutely.’ ‘Like when?’ I said. ‘Like how about this afternoon?’ she said.”

“I don’t know about this,” Fitz says. “I’m not sure if this is such a good idea.”

“Since when are you anti-Nora?” Caleb asks. “Since when are you not her biggest fan?”

Fitz is trying to find some words to explain what’s going on with him, how he’s spent his day, why this may not be the best time to audition a singer, when he notices Caleb suddenly stiffen.