Fitz

by Mick Cochrane

  Fitz flips up his hood and takes a deep breath. He takes hold of the handle of the gun.

  The thought crosses his mind: This is crazy. What am I doing? Kidnapping my own father. He feels himself starting to perspire. Fitz knows he’s probably going to regret it. He’s not stupid. There are going to be consequences. His life is never going to be the same, he feels that, he’s going to put himself in a world of trouble. He doesn’t have to go through with this. He could turn back now, catch a bus, head home, drop the gun in a sewer, crawl back into bed.

  His father holds up his key ring and extends his arm toward his car, pointing, an unmistakable look of pleasure on his face—this is mine, his expression says, all this finely tuned German machinery. My beautiful car, my beautiful life. There’s something about that expression that sets Fitz’s feet in motion.

  Fitz steps out into the alley. The lights of his father’s car flash, and the locks pop up. His father hangs his suit jacket in the back, takes a minute to smooth it, adjusting it so that it drapes without wrinkling, sets his bag on the backseat. His father still hasn’t seen him. He’s completely absorbed by what he’s doing.

  Fitz has witnessed this little ritual before: his father performs it every morning as he leaves for work and every evening as he prepares to come home. But there’s something about it this time that enrages Fitz. This perfectly starched, self-satisfied man all alone in his well-tuned, tailored, wrinkle-free world—the sight of it makes Fitz wants to smash something.

  His father closes the back door and is now getting himself settled behind the wheel. Fitz crosses the alley in a few quick strides, comes up on the car’s passenger side, and pulls the door open. He leans down and peers inside the car. His father has been fiddling with the radio and looks up now, startled. Fitz has his hand on the gun, but it’s still hidden under his sweatshirt.

  “What?” his father says. “What do you need?” Maybe he thinks Fitz wants directions, maybe a handout—spare change for bus fare. Maybe he thinks he has a sad story to tell him. That’s when Fitz takes the gun out. He doesn’t so much point it as show it. It’s a visual aid. He wants his father to see it.

  “Whoa,” his father says, and raises his hands. “Take it easy.” He’s talking to Fitz, but he’s staring at the gun. “Slow down,” he says. It’s as if he’s talking to the gun. He’s transfixed. Fitz has wanted more than anything else in the world to get the man’s attention and now, he’s got it, undivided.

  “You can have my wallet,” his father says. “There’s cash in it.” He reaches slowly into his back pocket and produces a billfold. He holds it out to Fitz, a shiny black leather offering.

  “Help yourself,” his father says to the gun. “There’s a hundred bucks, something like that.” Fitz is still standing, leaning into the car, trying to use his body to shield the gun from the sight of anyone who may drive down the alley. Fitz grabs the wallet from his father. His father hands over his phone and Fitz snatches that, too. Under normal circumstances, he is a polite young man, no grabber, never was, but now it seems, hooded and armed in this alley, he is apparently someone else, someone other than who he thought he was.

  It’s a little disconcerting, hearing his father’s voice. Fitz has heard it on his office voice mail—brisk and confident, away from his desk but eager to get back—and he’s overheard him making small talk at a cash register—thank you, have a nice day. But now, directed at him, it’s a different thing entirely.

  “I don’t want your money,” Fitz tells him.

  “You don’t,” his father says. “You don’t want my money.” Fitz expected his father to be something of a fast talker, but right now he is speaking very slowly, choosing his words carefully, the way a rock climber chooses his next step, slowly and deliberately, as if a single misstep would be deadly.

  Fitz can imagine what his father must be thinking. The kid seems like he’s on something. He’s jumpy and nervous. He’s sweating. It could be meth, the schools are full of it, he knows that, he reads the papers, kids getting high between classes, even in the suburban schools, especially the suburban schools.

  The gun looks genuine. It’s no water pistol, not a cap gun. He has no idea whether it’s loaded. Maybe, maybe not. There’s no way of telling. Fitz sees him still studying it.

  “It’s real,” Fitz says.

  “Of course it’s real,” his father says. “So is my money. But that’s not what you want.” He sounds irritated. Exasperated with this kid who doesn’t seem to know how to conduct a proper holdup. Of all the muggers in the city, he gets the one who doesn’t understand the object of the game. “What do you want?”

  5

  Fitz slides his backpack off his back, sets it on the floor of the car, and slips into the passenger seat. He holds the gun in front of him, not quite pointed at his father. When he imagined this, Fitz didn’t consider he’d be so close, in such physical proximity. He can smell him—pungent and clean, his shower soap, his aftershave, some designer fragrance.

  When he was very little, Fitz wanted more than anything to be close to his father. Like all kids, he learned at an early age to recognize and point to the daddies in his picture books—playing peekaboo with their little ones, giving them piggyback rides. He can’t remember when he learned his family was different. At one point he started to call his beloved uncle Dunc, his mom’s brother, “Daddy.” It would have been an understandable mistake. It was Dunc who took him to the library, who peeled his apples, took him to breakfast on Saturday mornings, buttered his bagels and cut his pancakes and poured his syrup, who helped him in the bathroom, who roughhouse-wrestled with him when he came over, who let him strum the strings of his guitar as if he were playing. But someone corrected him, set him straight. It was his mom. The tone of her voice let Fitz know that it was a serious mistake to call Dunc “Daddy.” She didn’t have to tell him twice. He learned to say “Uncle Dunc.”

  Fitz always understood that he had a father, but that his was elsewhere. He was “away”—that’s how his mom put it. She was an expert dodger of his questions.

  Where is he?

  Away.

  When is he coming home?

  Soon.

  Tomorrow? On my birthday?

  We’ll see.

  Later he learned that his mother and father hadn’t been married. He learned the name for a kid like him.

  “Keep your hands on the wheel,” Fitz tells his father. “Don’t try anything.”

  His father obeys. He looks frightened, and Fitz doesn’t mind. There’s a weird power that comes with scaring someone, and right now Fitz is feeling it.

  Mostly it wasn’t so bad, he told himself. You get used to anything. It never felt tragic. Lots of kids had it worse. Fitz didn’t feel entitled to feel sorry for himself. It wasn’t like they were poor. He tried not to imagine what his life might be like if he had a dad. He thought if he did try, it might seem as if his mom wasn’t great, which she was. But still. There was a hole. He didn’t talk about it, but it was real.

  Sometimes, it was just embarrassing. But over the years, Fitz developed various stratagems for handling father situations. When, for example, his friends’ parents innocently ask, “What does your dad do?” he’s learned to say quietly, “My dad’s not with us anymore.” He arranges his face into what he believes is an expression of respectful, wistful bereavement, and at those moments, he really does feel something like sadness for a father departed. “I’m so sorry,” the adults inevitably say, a little flustered, and he forgives them their awkwardness, and they move on, and you can be certain that the topic of fathers does not come up again.

  “Okay,” Fitz tells his father. “Let’s hit the road. Back the car out.”

  “The car?” his father says. “Is that what you want? Because you can have it. Be my guest.”

  “You think I want to jack your car?” Fitz says. “Is that what you think?”

  “Tell me what you want,” his father says. “Just say the word.”

  “Okay,”
Fitz says. “I’ll tell you what I want. I’ll say the word.”

  Fitz feels his heart beating in his chest. This is the time to say something, but what? He hasn’t rehearsed this part. He has something to say, a little announcement to make, but he doesn’t know the words. “What I want is to spend some time with you,” he says at last. “You know, quality time. A little father-son time. Dad. That’s the word.”

  Now his father is looking at him, not at his gun but right at him, as if for the first time. “Fitzgerald?” he says.

  6

  “Listen, Fitzgerald,” his father says. He’s steering the car up Grand Avenue, away from downtown and his law offices, just as Fitz instructed. It’s the first thing he’s said since he figured out who Fitz was.

  “Nobody calls me that,” Fitz tells him. It’s rush hour; traffic is heavy. There are people waiting at a bus shelter, drivers sipping from paper cups. Fitz glances at the clock on the dashboard: it’s almost nine. On an ordinary day, he’d be in Mr. Massey’s homeroom, probably listening to Caleb go on and on about some obscure bottleneck-guitar player from West Texas. But this is not an ordinary day. Fitz is still holding his gun, keeping it low, out of sight.

  “I see,” his father says. Fitz assumes he’s making some calculations, thinking things through, trying to read the situation. This alleged son of his, this Fitzgerald person, what’s the matter with him? Is he high? Crazy? He has no idea.

  Fitz sees a coffee shop on the next block. It’s his father’s favorite—he’s seen him carrying their cups. “Turn in there,” he tells his father. “Get in the drive-through line. We’ll get you some coffee.”

  His father does as he’s told. There are a half dozen vehicles ahead of them in line, mostly SUVs, one nicely dressed person per car. Fitz thinks of his mom, how she likes to make fun of people who drink fancy overpriced coffee concoctions—the venti-soy-caramel-pumpkin-macchiato lattes, or whatever they are. The more complicated the order, the bigger the jerk—that’s her theory. She used to be a waitress and knows all about customers and their orders. You can tell everything you need to know about a person, she says, just from watching how they behave in a restaurant, how they treat the help. When the two of them go out, his mom tips crazy amounts—the grubbier the place, the more she leaves—because she knows what it’s like.

  When they pull up to the speaker, Fitz hides the gun under his sweatshirt. His father rolls his window down. He glances at Fitz. “And what about you?” his father asks. “What would you like?”

  “Hot chocolate,” Fitz says, without thinking. The words just jump out of his mouth. It’s what he wants, what he gets at a place like this, but he hasn’t thought about how it might sound, what it would look like. The little gangster sipping his cocoa. He watches his father’s face and thinks, Don’t laugh at me, don’t you dare laugh at me. He’d rather his father shoot him than laugh at him.

  His father’s face shows nothing. If he’s amused, he keeps it to himself. He leans into the speaker and places their order. Fitz notices that his father is pleasant and polite. The girl has to interrupt him and ask him to wait a minute. Then she mishears him and he has to repeat himself, twice. She’s having a hard time, but he’s the one who apologizes. He thanks her for taking his order. It surprises Fitz a little. Especially now, under the circumstances. Because he wears a suit, maybe, because he seems like a boss, Fitz has imagined his father ordering people around at work, being abrupt with underlings. But he doesn’t bark at the girl. He’s gracious. His mom would give him points for that. He has good manners, he is capable of kindness.

  And yet, somehow even this, especially this, bugs Fitz. The man can be nice to a stranger, a voice on a speaker, but he ignores his son? All these years, what prevented his father from being nice to him? Why didn’t he knock on the door? Why didn’t he pick up the phone and call? Why didn’t he write a letter? Why? Why? Why? It is the central mystery of his life. The unanswerable question. Fitz did not agonize over the existence of God; he didn’t ponder the origins of the universe. Sometimes he would look at himself in the mirror, an expression of pathetic eagerness on his face. He was a dog in the pound, wanting to be adopted. He’d smile. What father wouldn’t want this boy?

  They edge toward the window. “So what do they call you?” his father asks, his eyes straight ahead.

  “Huh?”

  “If not Fitzgerald. You said nobody calls you that. You must have a nickname or something. What do they call you?”

  “Orphan Boy,” Fitz says. “That’s my handle.”

  Fitz isn’t sure where it’s coming from, this attitude, this hostility, whatever it is he’s channeling, exactly. It’s like he’s possessed by something, speaking in evil tongues. Normally, he’s respectful to adults. His ordinary, everyday self makes eye contact and never interrupts or mouths off—usually he’s a regular please-and-thank-you machine. A pleasure to have in class, that’s the box all his teachers check. Maybe he’s trying to make up for the hot chocolate, proving he’s still a tough guy. Maybe he’s tapped a deep well of something black and nasty, like some underground oil deposit, buried deep in his soul.

  “What right have you got to even say my name?” Fitz says. “Tell me that.”

  “None. None whatsoever.” His father raises his hands off the steering wheel then, and Fitz tenses, but it’s not an attack, just a gesture, a mini-surrender: he shows his palms and returns them to the wheel.

  At the window now, there’s a perky blond girl wearing a headset and an apron who tells them what they owe. Fitz remembers that he’s got his father’s billfold jammed in his hip pocket. He pulls it out and extracts a ten. He gives it to his father, who thanks him and passes it up to the girl.

  She makes change and hands it to his father, who in turn passes it to Fitz. She hands over their drinks next, two tall, lidded paper cups. His father sets his in the console’s cup holder between them.

  The girl gives them a big smile and tells them to enjoy their day. Maybe she imagines the two of them are on some nice family outing, Take Your Son to Work Day or some such.

  Which reminds Fitz. “You need to call your office,” he says. He’s thought this through and has a kind of outline in his head, but he’s let himself get flustered and forgetful. He needs to get back on track. He needs to stay focused. “Tell them you’re not coming in today.”

  “They’re gonna want to know why.”

  He pulls his father’s phone out of his pocket and thrusts it at him. “Tell ’em you’re sick,” Fitz says. There’s a word his mom likes. “Tell ’em you’re indisposed. Tell ’em whatever you like. I don’t care. Tell ’em you have plans.”

  “Because you have plans for me,” his father says. “Is that right?”

  “Oh yes,” Fitz tells him. “Most definitely. I have plans. Big plans.”

  7

  Fitz has always been fascinated by fathers—the various types, their behaviors. When he visits his friends, he studies their dads, like a zoologist doing field research. He likes to catalog the various species he observes. There are the lawn-and-garden dads, guys who smell like gasoline, who spend the weekends mowing and edging, blowing leaves and whacking weeds. There are hunters and fishermen, the ones with camo jackets and tackle boxes, boat hitches on their trucks. There are the sports guys, coaches and superfans, sitting on the sidelines in their portable chairs, hollering encouragement and advice. Dads read the paper; they grill meat; they pay bills. They drink beer and watch football, remotes glued to their hands. That’s how they are on television anyway. Most TV dads are a little clueless, big kids. Bad dads turn up mostly in movies and lit class: the Great Santini, Huck’s dad—they’re angry and mean and sometimes drunk.

  But this man at the wheel, his dad, is not so easy to classify. He’s got his eyes on the road, headed down Lexington Avenue now, just as Fitz instructed him, toward Como Park. If he is a bad dad—of course he is!—it is a different kind of bad. He is quietly, almost invisibly, bad. If he were a disease, they’d call him a
silent killer.

  Now that phrase, it occurs to Fitz, could make a good blues song: You’re a silent killer, baby. It’s crazy to be thinking about songs now, in the front seat with his dad, his hand on a gun, but it’s just how his mind works—he can’t help himself. He thinks up a good phrase, hears some choice expression, he wants to write it down, fiddle around with it, see if it turns into anything worth showing Caleb.

  Fitz wishes Caleb could be here with him. Caleb is peculiar and superstitious, full of tics and rituals and crazy fears—there are certain streets he doesn’t like to cross, some chords he seems to dread—but he’s shrewd, too. He sees into people. Caleb would have some take on his father. He could help Fitz see beyond the briefcase and cell phone, help him see what’s in the suit.

  What’s he listen to? That’s what Caleb would want to know. When he talks, Caleb puts a little spin on certain words—it’s like he speaks in italics. He can be so serious sometimes, people think he must be joking. But Fitz understands. That’s what makes him Caleb. Check out the man’s music, Caleb would tell him.

  Fitz looks around and finds a wallet of CDs above the visor. He takes it down and flips through it. On top is Rubber Soul. It’s a record that Fitz owns and has listened to for years: the Beatles are one of the bands Fitz and his mom agree on. The Beatles—that’s their common ground.