My father pointed at me. “Those two want you to run for Lincoln’s state Senate seat. Been planning it for a long time. That’s what they expected us to talk about last night. Transition.” He pointed at the paper. “Lincoln wanted to say that stuff to help you run for his Senate seat, but I told them this morning that’d be a waste of talent.”
He waited for me to say something, but I remained silent, so he continued. “You understand what government should be, not what it is. You’re authentic. You’ve got the head on your shoulders to write the civil rights legislation for the twenty-first century. You’ll know better than anyone how to help these poor kids find a path out and up. I’m out of answers, Justin. I’m out of ideas. You’re the one.”
I lifted my palms up to him. “Dad,” I said. “I can’t do that right now.” I thought about the darkness that had clouded me since cancer took Monica. My struggles as a single parent. My depression. I could think of a hundred reasons why being a United States congressman was a bad idea, but I couldn’t get them out of my head. The words wouldn’t come. Part of me, perhaps, wanted to keep the option of that childhood dream available. Up until now I had just avoided it.
Finally, I managed to ask, “So Lincoln knows all this?”
“Like I said, I told him this morning.” My father pointed at the newspaper. “His nonsense with the reporter was a perfect illustration of why he needs some more time to grow up. Let this pass.”
“He’s plenty old enough,” I said. “He’s older than you were when you were elected. More experienced, too.”
My father stood and put his hands on his hips. He wasn’t going to argue anymore. His decision wasn’t going to change. “Gotta catch this flight, son. I’ll let you be.” He walked over to the bed and held out his hand.
I took it and we shook, and then he leaned over and gave me a kiss on my forehead. It was probably the first time my father had done that since I was a little boy. “I can’t make you do it,” he said. “But you need to know that you’ve got more potential in you than you’re letting on. I know what you’re capable of. I know you can do great things, so just take a few days or weeks to consider. And I mean it—this isn’t some silly job in Jeff City with a bunch of hicks. This is the real deal. A national platform, an opportunity to make a difference.”
My father took a deep breath, and then he walked toward the door. As he went into the hall, he turned around. “I fought the battle over segregated lunch counters and the right to vote, but this is different.” He pointed at me, lying injured in bed, my face swollen and cut. “The Whites Only signs have been taken down, but they’re still there. This is your fight now.”
My father turned away, took another step, then stopped and looked back again. “Lincoln and Buster will fall into line. It’ll ruin their transition plans, but everybody’ll fall in line when you decide to run. Just you see.” He pointed at me. “Promise me you’ll consider it.”
“Dad.” I shook my head. “Now you’re sounding like Lincoln, pressuring.”
“Promise me.”
We stared at each other. My father’s eyes were focused, passionate. I had so often felt like I’d been a disappointment, and I couldn’t disappoint him again.
“Fine,” I said. It wasn’t convincing, because I wasn’t convinced, but it was enough for him to leave. “Better go catch your plane.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It took a week before I was without constant pain, but I wasn’t going to fall back into the hole. The incident may have broken my body, but it strengthened my commitment to Sammy. Even though I wasn’t working, I forced myself to get up, fix Sammy breakfast, and get her off to the bus. She wasn’t happy, but recognizing the circumstances, she didn’t protest too badly.
After watching her leave through the small window next to the door, as I’d done every morning, I carefully walked back through the kitchen, past the breakfast nook, to my toy room. If I moved too quickly or bent my upper body too far, the pain would return.
I hadn’t always had a toy room. Grown men aren’t supposed to play with toys, but I needed a safe place to heal after my wife died, and this was it: a small space with a record player and a stack of New Orleans jazz records (not the avant-garde New York kind); shelves of comic books, model cars, and figurines; and a maple worktable where I could carve my own villains and heroes out of clay.
I bent down and pulled an old Fats Waller record out of its sleeve, and then I put the record on the turntable, lowered the needle, and set it in motion.
Monica Glass was the love of my life.
She was my best friend. I’ve always known that a person can love many people, but I’m not convinced that I’ll ever be able to fall so madly and completely in love with another.
A shell had formed around me since she passed away, and I couldn’t allow myself to be that vulnerable ever again, not with Annie, not with anybody. I went to some dark places after she passed, and it almost broke me.
After Monica’s funeral, I couldn’t sleep at all. I couldn’t talk about anything real. I was angry and irritable. I alienated clients and friends. I missed deadlines at work. Eventually I lost my job at a respectable midsize law firm downtown. I stopped paying bills. Our house went into foreclosure, but I didn’t care.
After a year and a half of being a prisoner of my own mind, I was pulled out by my daughter.
Sammy crawled into my bed after a night during which I had abused my body with various chemicals. She snuggled up to me, in a way that only a child can fit alongside a parent, and waited, probably for hours, for me to wake up. Then, when I opened my eyes, she gave me a present.
“What’s this?” I asked, still in the fog.
“Open it.” She nodded toward the box wrapped in dark-blue paper.
I did as she had directed. I opened the package and saw that she had given me a model kit of Superboy. It was an original, manufactured by Aurora in the 1960s. It was an action scene involving a green monster in a cave. Superboy and his dog, Krypto, had the monster cornered.
I studied the box, smiling. Then I started to cry.
“You like it?”
I nodded. “Very much.”
“Grandma said you liked reading about him as a kid. I found it on Cherokee Street a couple of weeks ago.”
I put my arm around Sammy and gave her a hug.
“Happy birthday.” She looked up at me. She was right. It was my birthday, and I had forgotten. That was how bad I was. “Can we do something today?”
Her eyes were pleading. We hadn’t gone anywhere or done anything in so long. I had ignored her. It was just too painful. When I had looked at her, all I could see was Monica. Sammy’s presence reminded me of her mother’s absence. We had been a team, the three of us, and then her mother was gone.
I told Sammy that we would. I wiped the tears away from my eyes. “We’ll go someplace special.” Then I took her to Crown Candy for the first time, and we sat in my booth. When we moved into the carriage house a few weeks later, Superboy and Krypto were the first things on the shelf.