Fitz (6 page)

Fitz tells his father that if anyone was at the hospital the day he was born, he always thought it was his Grandpa John.

“He never liked me,” his father says.

“Why not?”

“He was not an easy man,” he says. Fitz knows his grandpa used to be a drinker. He quit—“put the cork in the bottle,” that’s how he put it—when Fitz was little. Fitz has no real memories of him drunk or drinking. He was a Pepsi fiend, that’s what
Fitz remembers, knocking back bottle after bottle, bringing it home by the case. But his mom and uncle have stories about his temper.

“Plus I drove a foreign car,” his father says. “That was unforgivable. And I didn’t know the difference between a manifold and a master cylinder.”

Fitz doesn’t know much about cars either. He and his mom change the oil in her car but that’s about it.

“I couldn’t fix things. I was a college boy.”

“He always told me I had to go to college,” Fitz says. “So I wouldn’t have to work in a factory. He and my mom, ‘College, college, college.’ ”

“That’s different,” his father says. “You were his grandson. I was the guy who, you know, like you said. His little girl.”

“His only daughter.”

“Exactly.” He looks up, surprised a little, Fitz thinks, maybe even grateful, that he gets it, that he knows how to fill in the blanks.

“But the day you were born, he was on his best behavior. I have to give him that. He didn’t say much. But he didn’t have to. He had a look. It made me feel like a bug. You probably never saw that look.”

In the polar bear exhibit there’s some serious earth-moving equipment rumbling behind the line of fencing. A sign explains that Buzz and Neil are on loan somewhere. Fitz is glad they’re getting a new and improved home. It used to make him sad to see them pacing and swimming figure eights in their tiny pool. “Get me out of here,” his mom said once as they watched, using her
slow and deep polar bear voice, sounding so weary and defeated it just about broke Fitz’s heart.

“But you were there, in the hospital?” he asks.

“In the hospital. In the delivery room.”

“My mom says I was fast. In a hurry. That I made a quick entrance.”

“Oh yes. You sure did. You most definitely did.” His father takes a sip of water and looks off. To Fitz, his father looks as if he’s remembering something, feeling something. But how can he be sure? The man is a lawyer. He is a professional persuader. He’s good at it. There’s no way to know if he’s being sincere or just acting.

Fitz decides to plow ahead anyway. “There’s a picture of me,” he says. “My face is all scrunched up. I’m wearing a little cap thing.”

“With a blue ribbon on it.”

“You know that picture.”

“I know it.”

“Someone’s holding me in that picture. You can see his hands.”

His father sets his bottle of water on the ground. He holds his hands out in front of him, palms up. Just the way you would cradle a newborn, his long fingers extended, his right hand raised slightly to support the head. Except that his hands are empty. Fitz and his father stare into those empty hands, hands holding nothing, holding an invisible baby, holding the baby that Fitz used to be. Fitz can almost, but not quite, see his baby self.

Those hands, his father’s empty hands—they may be the saddest thing Fitz has ever seen. But for the first time today, the first time ever, Fitz knows it—he feels it. This is his father.

They’re still sitting
on their bench. The sun is higher in the sky now. It’s warming up. If Fitz didn’t have a gun stuck in his waistband, he’d think about pulling off his sweatshirt. His father has picked up his bottle of water, and they’ve each been sipping, listening to the growl and whine of construction, thinking their own thoughts.

“She says you were young and foolish,” Fitz says at last. “Young and foolish. Like it was the name of a soap opera.”

“The Young and the Foolish.”

“Were you?”

“Oh yes,” his father says. “I was. I’ll speak for myself. I had a starring role in that show.”

Fitz wants more but isn’t quite sure how to draw it out. He knows that stories can be cautious animals, like chipmunks or rabbits, and Fitz doesn’t want to scare this one away. He decides just to hold still, wait.

“It’s none of my business, I know,” his father says. “I have no
right to ask. But I wonder if you have a girl. You don’t have to answer.”

Fitz thinks about Nora. He actually had a conversation with her after school the day before. Supposedly about singing in the band now that the spring musical was done. He didn’t tell her that whenever he heard her sing, no matter what it was—could be a spiritual, could be a corny show tune—he felt something. Her voice seemed to know things—there were secrets in it. Instead he just handed her a blues mix Caleb had burned for her and told her a little bit about the singers on it—Etta James, Ruth Brown, Koko Taylor. Just some secondhand tidbits and anecdotes he’d picked up from Caleb. But Nora was into it. She wanted to know more. She listened so intently—forehead scrunched in concentration, nodding as he talked, as if she were keeping the beat—it was a little unnerving. But he liked it. It made him feel interesting. Talking to Nora, he didn’t feel adrift. He felt if only she’d listen to him long enough, he might figure out who he was.

“Not really,” Fitz says.

“But there’s someone. Maybe someone.”

“Well sure, maybe,” Fitz says. He feels himself starting to blush. “And your point?”

“My point is,” his father says, “I wonder if this girl, this maybe girl, if she’s ever made you foolish.”

Nora is his maybe girl. Has she made him foolish? Not much. Not unless it’s foolish to stare at the back of her head in biology class, to follow the ever-changing configurations of her amazing red hair, the complicated female business of holding it in place
with an arsenal of bands, ties, and clips. Not unless it’s foolish to study her picture in all his yearbooks, all the way back to elementary school, to follow her year-by-year transformation from gawky little girl into her current self. To memorize her schedule so that he can position himself at strategic locations throughout the school where she passes by. To imagine that they might someday study biology together, just the two of them. To hope. Is that foolish?

Because they have bottles in their hands, Fitz feels like there might be some kind of bar-room camaraderie between them, a couple of guys knocking a few back and talking about women. He almost says something about Nora. Almost. But stops himself.

Because he doesn’t know this guy, not really. Maybe he was in the delivery room. So was the doctor. What does that prove? Anybody can hold a baby.

“I want to talk about you,” Fitz says. He tries to put an edge back in his voice. “Your foolishness, not mine.”

“Okay,” his father says. “Sure.”

“Did you guys, like, go out on dates? You and my mom?”

“Sure we did,” his father says. “We went out on dates.”

“You ask her out?”

“Yeah, I asked her out.”

“What did you like about her?” Fitz asks. “Tell me about that. Curtis and Annie, sitting in a tree. That’s the story I want to hear.”

This is a test. As far as Fitz is concerned, it’s pass-fail, make or break. A deal breaker. Does he even know her? Are they even talking about the same person?

“Back then,”
his father tells Fitz, “she had an apartment on Grand Avenue. Right down the street from the place she worked. The diner. That’s where we met—you know that, right? I was in law school, and that’s where my buddy and I went to get something to eat after studying. She was our regular waitress.”

Fitz shifts a little on the bench. He didn’t know they met at a diner, but he’s not about to let on. He shifts again—the gun is cutting into him. He wonders why all the movie gangsters hide weapons in their waistbands. It’s super-uncomfortable. First chance he gets, Fitz decides, he’s going to put it back in the pouch of his sweatshirt.

His father has paused and is watching him. “I’m listening,” Fitz says. “Go on. She was your regular waitress.”

“She lived in a basement apartment, with pipes and radiators on the ceiling. Except she hung strings of Christmas lights from the pipes, decorated with all kinds of colorful stuff—flowers, I think, sparkly streamer things, crepe paper. In Annie’s apartment, every day was a holiday.

“The first time I picked her up for a date it took her the longest time to come to the door. I thought maybe I had the wrong day, the wrong time. I knocked again and waited some more. Of course, I was nervous. Finally, she opened the door. It was obvious she’d been crying: her eyes were all red, and there were little rivers of mascara running down her cheeks. She had a tissue wadded in one hand and some kind of dangerous-looking tool in the other hand, a wire cutter. Uh-oh, I thought. I’m in trouble now.

“But it wasn’t about me. Not at all. ‘Come in,’ she said.

“On a coffee table in the living room there was this tiny plastic portable television—right out of the 1970s, or maybe the ’60s. Some kind of relic. A museum piece. There was a bent coat hanger coming out of the set, a makeshift antenna. The TV was surrounded by little cups full of beads and stones, coils of wire, pliers—she was making jewelry back then. So that explained the wire cutter.

“She was watching
Casablanca
. The old movie. You know it?”

Fitz isn’t stupid. Of course he knows it. Play it again, Sam. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. It’s on cable about every other night. “Yeah,” Fitz says. “I’ve heard of it.”

“So okay. But the thing is, she’s not really
watching
the movie. This television has no picture. The tube or whatever must be shot. The screen is dark. She’s
listening
to the movie, that’s what she’s doing. She sits down, sets her wire cutter on the table, leans forward. Doesn’t say a word—just points to the television. I figure, what the heck. I take a seat next to her on her little couch, and we both sit there, staring at the broken television, listening to the sound track. Pretty stupid, right? Like watching the radio.
It makes no sense. Except after a while, I’m drawn into it, the story, the voices, without distraction, just the sound of these people talking to each other.

“Then all of a sudden these little orange sparks start flickering in the back of the television. First one, then more. ‘Annie,’ I say, and point. But she shushes me. But then there’s more sparks. I start to smell something burning. ‘Annie,’ I say again. ‘This is the best part,’ she says. So okay, I shut up.

“In the movie, they’re at the airport. Rick is saying goodbye to Ilsa. A classic scene. I must have seen it before but never really heard it, not like this. Ilsa asking, ‘What about us?’ The airplane propellers. Bogey being Bogey. Annie is crying again now, too. I’m starting to feel a little choked up myself.

“That’s when the TV set combusts. Not just sparks now, I’m talking about a flame. The television is on fire. This at least gets Annie’s attention. She leaps up and yanks the plug from the wall. I pick up the television—the thing is hot!—Annie opens the apartment door for me and leads me to the Dumpster behind the building, and I toss it in. How’s that for a way to start a first date?”

His father takes a drink of his water. It’s like he’s waiting for applause, some kind of response. And Fitz has to admit it: this guy is good. It’s a good story. Fitz could practically see the sparks flying out of the television. He can’t help but wonder, though: is it just a little too perfect? Fitz wonders if his father has told it before, how many times.

“We’re talking about my mom,” Fitz says. “What you liked about her.”

“Sure,” his father says. “What did I like about her?” He looks
at the label of his water bottle, as if maybe the answer is printed there. “Everything,” he says. “All of it. Her crappy television and her year-round Christmas lights. Her tears, her big heart. Her little cups of beads and her wire cutter. Her fearlessness. The whole package. I never met anyone like her before.”

The woman in his father’s story
,
that girl, that Annie—Fitz knows her. It’s his mom, spot-on. The black-and-white movie sap. Staying up late to watch
The Philadelphia Story
for the zillionth time, giving him an elbow if he dares make a smart remark. His mom, the dollar-store Martha Stewart, forever fixing and fiddling, rigging and rearranging, their whole house like some never-ending arts-and-crafts project. That’s his mom, all right.

If this were the final exam answer on the subject of his mom, his father passes with flying colors. He’s in the ninetieth percentile. But Fitz doesn’t let on. “That’s a nice story,” he says. He makes his voice flat, almost bored.

“I’m glad you liked it,” his father says.

Fitz sips his water. He wonders if maybe Nora likes old movies. He wonders if he invited her over to watch
Casablanca
, would that make him seem interesting? If the picture went out, would she keep listening?

But what he needs to be thinking about right now is what’s
next.
What’ll we do with ourselves?
That’s something Daisy asks Gatsby. That’s what Fitz has got to figure out. What’s he going to do with his father now?

There are other things to do at the park: more animals to see in the zoo, the paddleboats on the lake, ducks to feed, all the rides in the amusement park. In the happy home movie in his head, there are scenes of Fitz and his father on the bumper cars, the two of them getting strapped into the roller coaster.

But now, Fitz is not so sure. Thrill rides? His father doesn’t seem like the type. As far as Fitz can determine, his father is looking for a smooth ride through life—that’s why he drives a luxury car. He’s not looking to get jostled. He’s not interested in free fall. He doesn’t want to get his hair messed up.

To be honest, Fitz is not even sure he’s the type himself. With his mom, the Tilt-A-Whirl, that’s about as wild as the two of them ever got. When he came to the park with Caleb, his friend was obsessed, as he often was, with the danger of things. Everyday objects. How easy it is to choke on a corn dog. More people are killed annually by vending machines than by sharks, Caleb likes to remind Fitz. But Caleb believes the point is not to relax while swimming in the ocean: instead, he believes, you should fear vending machines—they’re more dangerous than sharks. Now, thanks to Caleb, Fitz can’t help but notice how irresponsible all the ride operators look, how fragile the machinery seems, the rattletrap sound of it all.