“No,” Lori had said, smiling sweetly, pulling Andy close, “but his father was,” and the woman had backed away, looking shocked.
“You like basketball?” Mr. Sills asked him.
“It’s okay,” he said, and used his napkin to make sure he’d gotten all the syrup off his chin. Mr. Sills was looking at him carefully, in a way that made Andy think that there was still some left, when Mr. Sills said, “Your dad played, you know.”
Andy was too shocked to say anything. Nobody ever talked about his father. Nobody even said the words your dad to him. Lori had hardly told him anything. “He went into the army and he died. End of story,” she would say, the handful of times Andy had gotten brave enough to ask. He knew that his father’s name had been the same as his, and that his father was black, and had gone to Catholic school, and that he’d gone into the army after Andy was born and he couldn’t find a job. He’d been stationed in Germany, and he’d said he would send for Lori and baby Andy, but then he’d been killed in an accident. Where in Germany? What kind of accident? Where were his parents, and had they ever met Andy? He would ask, and Lori would shake her head, looking so sorrowful it was almost as if she was shrinking, disappearing into her black clothes right before his eyes. They didn’t approve of me, she said, in a way that made Andy think that they didn’t approve of him, either.
“My dad played basketball?” Andy’s voice was husky, and both of his toes were tapping, bouncing against the diner’s carpeted floor.
“Yessir,” said Mr. Sills. “Center. Played with my son, as a matter of fact. In high school.”
It took Andy a minute of rummaging to remember that he knew where his dad had gone to high school, because Lori had told him once. His parents had met at a high school dance and gotten married right after they’d both graduated, his mom from Hallahan and his dad from . . .
“Father Judge?”
Mr. Sills nodded.
“Did you know him?” Andy asked. “Did you know my dad?” Those words, my dad, felt so good to say that he wanted to say them as often as he could.
“I knew of him,” said Mr. Sills. “Saw him on the court a time or two.” When Mr. Sills smiled his cheeks crinkled, sending his glasses up toward his eyebrows. “Your daddy was probably the best high school basketball player in the Catholic League. Maybe even the best in the city.”
All of this was news to Andy. His heart was pounding hard, the way it did when he was running. “He was?”
Mr. Sills opened the leather folder, glanced at the bill, and put down a twenty and a ten. Andy did some math and realized that was probably why the waitress had been so happy to see him.
Once, he’d gone out for pizza with the Strattons, and the lady taking people to their tables had stiffened when they’d walked in, and asked “Are you picking up takeout?” when she hadn’t asked any of the other families that question. She was white, and most of the people in the restaurant were, too, and Mr. Stratton had been scowling by the time they were finally seated. “Typical,” Andy had heard him say.
“Come on,” said Mr. Sills. They climbed into the blue truck and drove back toward the new apartment . . . but instead of dropping Andy off at his house, Mr. Sills led him to the row house halfway up the block where he lived. Andy hesitated as Mr. Sills unlocked the door. Lori had approved breakfast, not a home visit, but he was so desperate to hear anything about his father, from someone else who’d known him, that he would have gone in even if Lori had been standing right there in front of the doorway, her arms crossed, saying I don’t think so.
Mr. Sills led Andy into the first-floor apartment and walked toward what Andy assumed was the kitchen as Andy stood, stunned and staring. It looked like every bit of space in the small room—every inch of the wall, every scrap of the floor—was crammed, was covered, was occupied. Pictures, paintings, pages cut from magazines, all in frames a dozen shades of copper and brass and gold, lined the walls, almost obscuring the trellised green-and-cream-patterned wallpaper. One section of the wall was covered entirely in mirrors. He saw stacks of books and magazines, standing lamps, a strange brass thing Andy would later learn was a cuspidor, tables with delicate legs edged up against a couch, and two slipcovered armchairs. Layered over the floor were carpets in patterns of red and gold, blue and emerald green.
As he looked more closely, the room began to resolve itself. Andy saw a narrow pathway that led from the door to the kitchen and branched off to allow passage to a grouping of armchairs on one side, a couch on the other. The framed art was arranged by subject—one section of the wall featured paintings and drawings and photographs of flowers; another spot held landscapes; and a third was devoted to representations of dogs, some in human poses, others just doing regular dog stuff. One painting depicted a bunch of dogs in human clothing playing cards. The mirrors were of all different sizes, from as small as the one in his mother’s compact to as big as a television screen. A few of them were hand mirrors in fancy gold frames that had been shaped to look like vines and flowers. There was no fireplace, but there was a marble mantelpiece against one wall. On it, alone, was a gold-framed photograph of a slender black woman in a wedding dress. She stood in profile, with a bouquet in her clasped hands and a long veil drifting down on her back.
“That was Mrs. Sills,” said Mr. Sills. He was carrying a tray with a teapot and a plate filled with half-moon-shaped butter cookies with scalloped edges and a sprinkling of sugar on top, and Andy, who fifteen minutes ago had thought he wouldn’t eat again for a week, found that he was hungry again. “Go on, help yourself,” said Mr. Sills. Andy took a cookie, and Mr. Sills poured them tea. “She’s been gone eight years now. I miss her so.” He said this all matter-of-factly, like it was nothing special, to acknowledge that someone had died, to say that you missed her. What if Lori had a picture of his father in their place, somewhere that he could see it every day? Andy couldn’t imagine it. When he was little, she’d shown him a single shot, of her and his father on their wedding day. Lori had worn a big white dress, and her hair had been like an explosion on top of her head, barely held in place with a glittering white band. Standing beside her, lanky and tall, was his father, looking uncomfortable in his tuxedo, with his wrists sticking out from the sleeves. His father had big, dark eyes and close-cropped hair, his lips the same shape that Andy saw in the mirror in the mornings. “Do you have other pictures?” he’d asked his mom, as recently as September, but her face had gotten tight as she’d shaken her head.
Andy followed Mr. Sills along the narrow pathway that led to two armchairs with a table between them. Under the table was a waist-high stack of old Sports Illustrated magazines, and Andy gazed at them with naked longing while Mr. Sills continued on. The room reminded Andy of a picture in his illustrated version of The Hobbit that showed Bilbo Baggins’s burrow. He looked around at the framed posters of old boxing matches, the piles of National Geographics and old Life magazines, and the china figurines that, even to his unpracticed eye, looked much more expensive than his mother’s. There was a chess set on the low table in front of the couch, and a grouping of what Andy thought were hatboxes, some deep and some shallow, stretching almost as tall as he was, against the wall.
“Where’d all this stuff come from?” Andy asked as Mr. Sills came back with a big photo album in his hands.
“Here, there, and everywhere,” said Mr. Sills. He sat down in the chair next to Andy, sipped from his cup, then opened the book. “Here we go,” he said. “Mrs. Sills put these together. One for every year DeVaughn was in high school.”
Andy flipped through the pages slowly. There was DeVaughn’s class picture, which depicted a round-faced boy with Mr. Sills’s smile. Then came a shot of the freshman basketball team, three rows of boys in red-and-blue uniforms, with a list of names underneath them. Andy found DeVaughn Sills in the front row. And in the row behind him was a familiar smile and his own name. Big hands cradled a basketball, the wrists and fing
ers the same shape as his own.
Astonishment washed over him, pebbling his skin with goose bumps, making his mouth go dry. He skimmed through pages of DeVaughn’s report cards, a written report on the Geneva Conventions, and finally stopped on a yellowed article clipped from the Examiner. “ ‘Father Judge Falls in Semifinals,’ ” he read. “ ‘Despite the best efforts of standout sophomore center Andrew Landis, whose 28 points tied for a school record, the Crusaders were defeated by the Knights in the semifinals of the Catholic League’s basketball tournament.’ ”
With the story was a black-and-white shot of a man—a kid, really—caught midjump, with the basketball balanced on his fingertips, poised at the rim of the hoop. Andy bent until his nose was almost touching the photo-album plastic, studying every detail. His father, Andrew Sr., had the same long face, full lips, and wide-set eyes, but his nose was broader, and his hair more tightly curled. Andy saw his father’s legs, revealed in the brief shorts that players wore back then, long legs with visibly muscled calves and thighs. His father had the same ropy muscles in his arms, the same build as Andy, narrow but strong.
There you are, thought Andy, with astonishment and joy. There was his other half, the rest of him, the man who’d contributed his mouth, his eyes, his long, strong legs to his son. Andy could tell that the wedding picture showed him frozen in a moment where he’d been told what to wear and how to stand, but here he was himself, leaping into the air like gravity no longer applied, so vivid and alive it seemed as if he could continue the motion, ascending and turning his hand until the ball slid through the hoop in a perfect whoosh, nothing but net. His dad must have felt the same way about the basketball court that he did about the track or any stretch of open road. That was where he lived. That was where things made sense. That was where he belonged.
Andy flipped through the pages rapidly, scanning each clipping for more mentions of his father, finding a few. Center Andrew Landis contributed 22 points to the Crusaders’ victory over West Catholic Prep. Andrew Landis scored a record-beating 32 points. No more pictures.
“Standout center Andrew Landis,” Andy whispered . . . and then, so softly that Mr. Sills couldn’t hear him, “Dad.”
“That’s him,” said Mr. Sills. “He had that sense that the good ones have, that way of getting to the place where you need him. And was he fast!” Mr. Sills gave an admiring whistle. “When he got the ball on a breakaway, no one could catch him. But he wasn’t showy, you know? When he’d dunk he wouldn’t hang off the rim, waving his legs around, acting a fool. He’d just get the job done, run back down the court, look for the next shot.”
Andy didn’t know what to say. He still couldn’t quite believe that Mr. Sills had known his dad, that he was finally getting some information. What was his father like? Was he funny or quiet? Did he get good grades? Did he like cars or comic books or music? Did he have a lot of friends, or just a few? Had he had any girlfriends before Lori, and why had he picked a white girl to love?
“Did you ever meet my dad’s parents?” he asked.
Mr. Sills shook his head.
“Or any of his friends?”
Another headshake.
“How about your son?” He struggled for the name. “DeSean? Were he and my dad friends?”
“DeVaughn,” said Mr. Sills, and then he went quiet, lacing his hands over his belly, staring at the wall. Finally he said, “I don’t mean to pry, but what has your mom told you about your father?”
“Nothing!” The word came out so loud that it seemed to bounce off the mirrors. “She hasn’t told me anything. Just that he went to the army, to Germany, and he died in an accident.”
Mr. Sills nodded and put down his cup and got to his feet. “It’s yours, if you want it,” he said to Andy, pointing at the photo album.
“Thank you,” he said, remembering his manners. “Thank you for breakfast. Thank you for everything.”
Mr. Sills waved one big hand. “It’s nice to know you actually can talk,” he said. “Don’t be a stranger now.”
I am a stranger to everyone, Andy thought. That’s what my mom wants. He clutched the album to his chest as he ran home. His plan was to ask his mother questions, ask her if she’d seen his dad play basketball, ask her what she remembered, and how they’d met, and what he’d said to introduce himself. What he’d said the very first time they’d met. But the door was locked, the lights were off, and Lori’s car was gone.
Andy let himself in, turned on the lights, and went to the kitchen. He spotted a note on the table, next to a surprise—a little stack of pictures. Andy, the note began. Lori never bothered with Dear. I found these when I was cleaning out my closet.
Then there was a space, as if his mom had stopped to think, or maybe to gather her strength.
It’s hard for me to talk about so please don’t ask questions. No signature. No Love. No mention of where she’d gone or when she’d be back, either.
Anger rose inside of Andy, squeezing up from his belly, burning in his throat, making his hands clench. Please don’t ask questions. But this was his father, the man who’d given him half of what he was, and she’d never told him anything, except sometimes, accidentally. A Marvin Gaye song would come on the radio and she’d say, Andrew used to love that one. Or, once, Andy had found a busted clock radio in the corner of their closet, and she’d sigh, Oh, your father always said he’d fix that. Things would slip out, then she’d press her lips together tight and sometimes cross her arms on her chest so her whole body said, Don’t even ask.
Andy sat down and looked through the sad little stack of pictures, faded square snapshots, some of them yellowed and sticky, like they’d been stuck in an album, then pulled out. There was the one from their wedding that he remembered, and a picture of what must have been high school graduation, with Andrew in a cap and gown, grinning at the camera. There was a recklessness in his smile, a tightly coiled energy that Andy could sense in the set of his shoulders, the way his arms were raised. If the picture had shown his feet, Andy bet that his father would have been on his tiptoes, bouncing the way that Andy bounced, barely able to hold still, like if he didn’t move he’d burst out of his skin. There you are, he thought again, and wasn’t sure if the you meant his father or himself.
Next came a Polaroid that someone had taken of Lori, with her belly bulging under a blue-and-white-checked top: 9 mos, someone had written—his grandmother, Andy thought. At the very bottom were a few pictures of little Andy, a squinting bald bundle swimming in a blue one-piece thing with a little lamb printed on the chest . . . and, finally, baby Andy in his father’s arms. His dad was holding him, one big hand, with its bulging knuckles, cupping Andy’s head, touching his nose against Andy’s. His white undershirt showed his corded forearms, and his biceps made the sleeves bulge. He imagined that he could hear his father’s voice. Don’t worry, he was saying. Your mom loves you, even if she doesn’t do a good job of showing it. You’re a fine young man. I’m proud of you.
Andy fanned out the photographs like a hand of cards. He arranged them in a square, then a row, then picked up each one again for careful review. Finally, he slipped them under the plastic of the two empty pages in Mr. Sills’s album and put the album in his closet, where he kept his clothes and comic books in boxes, and his bedding folded up during the day.
Slowly, over the spring, he and Mr. Sills became friends. When summer came and Miles’s parents sent him to camp, and the weather got so hot that most people just stayed in the air-conditioning, Andy would accompany Mr. Sills on jobs. He’d hear the rattling blue truck with CARETAKING & REPAIRS painted on its side pulling up to the curb and sometimes driving over it, and he’d come out of the house or run down the street, so that when the truck was parked he could open the passenger’s-side door and either take out the heavy toolbox or climb in for the ride. He learned to do a dozen different things—unclogging toilets, rewiring blown fuses, scooping dead leaf-goop o
ut of gutters, patching up roofs when they leaked. “My assistant,” Mr. Sills would announce, leading Andy into each new house.
Andy didn’t talk much on these forays into people’s places, their bathrooms and roofs and backyards, but he didn’t have to. He liked to listen to Mr. Sills talking about basketball—big plays, memorable shots, a best-of-seven playoff series that had come down to the final seconds of the last game. Mr. Sills would show Andy what he was doing while he worked, his big fingers deft and precise: “This is a Phillips-head screwdriver. That’s what we need here—see how the screw’s got a cross on top, not a straight line?” Andy loved the names of the tools—levels and hex keys, needle-nose pliers and socket wrenches. He liked how carefully Mr. Sills kept them, wiping them down with a clean, oiled cloth after each use, putting each wrench and screwdriver into its own compartment in his toolbox. He liked being able to do little jobs around his own house, unsticking a window or tightening a drawer pull. “That’s a man’s job,” Mr. Sills had told him when Andy had first started following him around. “A man takes care of his house, and a man takes care of his tools.”
On his days off, Mr. Sills went antiquing, which, he’d told Andy, he used to do with Mrs. Sills before she’d passed. He made the rounds of different thrift shops and consignment stores, driving his truck all over Philadelphia and South Jersey, talking back to the guys on sports radio. All the salespeople knew him and would put things aside for him—the magazines he liked, antique silver forks and spoons, Spode china in the Blue Italian pattern that he collected. In the shops that smelled like must and mothballs, yellowed paper and old clothes, Andy would page through comic books while Mr. Sills chatted with one of the old ladies who always seemed to be behind the cash registers. They would spend the morning shopping, then have a late-afternoon lunch of thick, juicy sandwiches from John’s Roast Pork, a cinder-block shack next to the train tracks where men in suits and ladies in high heels waited with construction workers and truck drivers. Lots of times, people thought Mr. Sills was Andy’s grandfather, Mr. Sills’s grandson, which made him feel like he’d swallowed something warm and sweet on a cold day. Sometimes Mr. Sills would call him son, and the word would catch in his heart like a hook.
Who Do You Love Page 8
