Fitz

by Mick Cochrane

  Now, finally, his father reaches into his cup, boldly grabs a big piece, as if to show how not grossed out he is. He tosses it off with a certain jaunty style, backhanded, with a flick of his wrist, like a Frisbee.

  Fitz has always loved the sea lions. He loves their speed, their unapologetic appetite, their slickness, their capacity for mischief. He can’t prove it—and he knows a zoologist would probably scoff—but Fitz is convinced some animals have a sense of humor. Not giraffes—too nervous—not sloths or boars—too sluggish and slow-witted—but lemurs, say, otters for sure, and sea lions.

  The zoo is still pretty quiet. They’re nearly the only ones around. In an hour or so, the school field-trip kids will be here, with their name tags and bag lunches, getting herded from exhibit to exhibit. But now, it is basically just the two of them and a few khaki keepers sweeping and hosing, one sleepy-looking guy picking up garbage with a sharp stick, a few gulls perched on the ledge of the sea lion enclosure, eyeing the fish but keeping their distance. Fitz and his father are out in the open, in public, but they’re alone, too. It feels private. It’s the kind of time and place that spies in movies meet to exchange their secrets.

  “Okay,” his father says, “okay, big guy. You next.” He is talking to the most boisterous sea lion, who is sitting on the rocks directly beneath them, yapping up at them, head tilted back, looking like a goofy earless dog.

  “All right,” his father says. “Here you go—a nice juicy piece.”

  Fitz and his mom always talk to the animals, and sometimes his mom makes them talk back. She’s got a whole repertoire of cartoonish voices: squeaky and manic for the monkeys, deep and ponderous for the elephants.

  Fitz almost talks back to his father in his mom’s gruff and gargoylish sea lion voice—“Thank you, friend, much obliged”—but catches himself just in time.

  Did they ever go to the zoo together? Fitz wonders. Young Annie McGrath and Curtis Powell? He can’t quite picture it. His mom and this guy, the two of them a happy couple, smiling, holding hands maybe. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. No matter what, it pleases Fitz that his father is talking to the sea lions. Maybe it’s a good sign.

  His father is leaning on the wall of the enclosure, resting on his elbows. “Where to begin,” his father says. He is looking down at the sea lions, but now he is talking to Fitz.

  Fitz doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. Begin at the beginning—that sounds stupid.

  “I don’t know how much you know,” his father says. “I don’t know how much she’s told you.”

  “She?”

  “Your mother,” his father says. “Annie.”

  “What’s to tell?” Fitz says. “You knocked her up. You couldn’t be bothered. A kid wasn’t on the agenda. You had other plans. So you were, like, goodbye, good luck, check’s in the mail.”

  “That’s what she told you?”

  Actually, it isn’t. Not at all. It’s more like the story he’s been telling himself lately. At least it is a story. Maybe it’s miserable, but at least it makes some sense. It’s something solid, something you could hold on to. What his mom gave him wasn’t even a story. It was something else. A puzzle, a mystery, a crime scene.

  From his mom he never got a straight story. Over the years, he’s tried, really tried, to get some answers. His dad’s last name—he learned that from the return address on an envelope when he was maybe eight years old. There was something about it that made him think it was special. The way his mom took it out of the mailbox and quickly slipped it into her purse, where he found it and studied it when she was out of the room. It came from Missouri. The printing on the envelope was precise. “Who’s Powell?” he asked her that night at dinner. “It’s my dad, right?” Somehow he just knew. She wouldn’t tell him much else. Why was he writing? Business. Was it about him? No. Was he coming to visit? No. He found another letter in the mailbox a couple of years later and held it up to the light. It was a check. By then he understood about child support. What he didn’t understand was why his dad would pay for him but not visit him.

  What happened? Who was his father, really? How did she feel about him? How did he land outside his dad’s reach?

  He could never get his mom to budge beyond her standard spiel. Once, when Fitz was pestering her about the possibility that his dad might be famous—a rock star, say, or a professional athlete—she admitted that he was a lawyer. But mostly, it was dial-a-cliché. They were just kids back then, she told him once, young and foolish, babies, how could it last, it wasn’t meant to be, his father was a good man who always wanted what was best for Fitz.

  When Fitz tried to follow up—when he asked why, for example, if his father was such a good man, he didn’t come around—she’d smile, a little sadly, and stonewall, patient as an all-day rain, shut the door with some evasion or non sequitur. “He’s in St. Louis,” she said once, as if that explained everything. St. Louis, where good men are kept from their kids. Or she’d give him some pseudo-profound, fortune-cookie philosophy: “Love is a crooked road.” Finally, as a last resort, when all else failed, she’d flip into monster-mom mode, start grooming him, straightening his collar, spit on her finger and mess with his hair, and tell him what a fine young man he was, how proud she was of him.

  So he was left with only hints, echoes and glimpses, scraps and shards.

  Her books, for example. She was just now about to graduate from college, cramming four years of higher education into twelve, she liked to joke, taking a night class for as long as Fitz could remember, lugging one fat textbook or another around with her yellow highlighter. But beyond that, besides her studying, she was always reading, not for school, just for fun, for pleasure. Mostly paperbacks she scooped up at garage sales and then lined up on the cinder-block shelves in her bedroom—so many books, Fitz had a hard time believing she’d read all of them. He used to quiz her. Who wrote East of Eden? Death Comes for the Archbishop? She always knew.

  There were a bunch of books on her shelf by F. Scott Fitzgerald, his namesake, of course. In February, when Mr. Massey assigned The Great Gatsby in English 10, Fitz read her copy. The stuff she’d underlined made him wonder. Nothing that would help you on a quiz, just random words and phrases: “wild unknown men,” “warm human magic,” “purposeless splendor,” “I hate careless people,” “tragic arguments,” “a decade of loneliness,” “his ghostly heart.” It was like some kind of coded message, a secret story.

  And then, in one of her books, A Farewell to Arms, a book she seemed to be reading for about the third time, Fitz found something. On the inside cover, written in neat blue printing: Powell. So, one of her books, one of her favorite books—“a tender tale of love and war,” the back cover called it—had his name in it. She never returned it, never threw it out. She kept reading it, again and again. That meant something. But what?

  Fitz has tried to solve it himself, piece it all together. Figure out how he fits in. Build it himself—the skeleton of his parents’ lives. Play CSI: Mom and Dad. He’s tried and tried and tried and never cracked the case. He is a lousy investigator.

  “She hasn’t told me very much at all,” Fitz says. “Not really.” He feels like he should be saying something more combative, something provocative. Maintain the attitude, keep playing the role of his father’s worst nightmare. But it’s getting harder to do.

  Fitz’s meanness this day, the real nastiness, has been a little like a presentation or a speech, something he’s been working on for a while, something rehearsed and recited. It’s been aimed at the guy on the law firm’s website, aimed at the guy who lives in a big apartment and drives a fancy car, aimed at the idea of his father. But in front of him now is no idea—it is a real man. His father doesn’t look much like his picture now. He’s got some gray hairs at the temple, a worried crease in his forehead. Fitz feels like he’s losing his bad-guy script now, forgetting his lines.

  “Practically nothing,” he says. “That’s what she told me.”

  “Did
she tell you who was in the delivery room when you were born?” his father asks. He straightens up now, stands and turns toward Fitz. “Did she tell you who cut the cord? The first face you ever saw? Did she tell you who that was?”

  Fitz looks down. His paper cup is empty. His hands stink. The sea lions have moved on—they’re in the pool, dipping and diving, doing what looks like the backstroke. He envies them. Suddenly what Fitz wants more than anything else is to wash his hands.

  11

  CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH. That’s what it said on the top. That there was another kind of birth was not something he wanted to think about.

  The first time he knew there was such a thing as a birth certificate was when his mom needed to bring a copy to his peewee soccer coach as evidence that he really was eight years old. He can’t remember thinking much about it one way or the other. It was just an official piece of paper, something to be handed in, like a permission slip.

  But six months ago, when he needed the birth certificate to register for driver’s ed, he got real interested in it. In social studies, they were always doing DBQs—document-based questions. This was the real thing, an actual document, only this one wasn’t about the Great Depression or the Civil War. It was about him.

  It came at a weird time for Fitz. He’d been in to the guidance counselor’s office just a couple of days before. She wanted to get acquainted. “What makes you tick?” she asked with a big smile. “What are you all about?” Ms. Perkins was cool. Everyone loved her. She wasn’t trying to put him on the spot. She just wanted to get to know him. But he was flummoxed. He came up empty, drew a blank. Everyone else seemed to have some kind of signature style, some brand. He got red in the face. He stared at his shoes. He managed to say something, finally, stuttered something out, and she took some notes.

  What was he all about? He had no idea. He was no athlete. He studied but really wasn’t a great student. He played music, but he wasn’t a musician, not like Caleb, not a singer like Nora. He wasn’t an outlaw or rebel, not that things didn’t bother him—but he didn’t act or protest, more out of inertia. When Ms. Perkins left the room to get some literature about a test she thought he ought to take, he looked at her notes. Seems somewhat adrift. That’s what she’d written. It was terrible, because it felt true. It described perfectly how it felt to be him—drifting, floating away, no anchor, no control, no destination.

  That night he put some questions into a search engine: What’s wrong with me? What makes me tick? He felt crazy and ashamed doing it, but curious, too. But it didn’t help. He still felt indistinct, somehow, blank, undifferentiated. He couldn’t help but feel that it was connected to his father’s absence. That hole he felt but never talked about. He couldn’t help but blame this guy.

  On the birth certificate there was his full name written out: Fitzgerald John McGrath. Fitzgerald John, like the president, only backward, which was clever, Fitzgerald for his mom’s favorite writer, John for her dad.

  For something like thirty years, his grandfather worked at the Ford plant in St. Paul, “on the line,” he used to say, though Fitz was never quite sure what that meant. One thing it meant was that they always drove Fords. Uncle Dunc is still driving a ten-year-old Crown Vic. His mom drives a Focus now because of her dad. He died years earlier, when Fitz was six, after a short and horrible descent into cancer. Fitz remembers him, at their dining room table, looking shrunken and scared, staring at a heaping plate his mom prepared for him—as if you could cure cancer with mashed potatoes and gravy—and looking at his favorite food as if it was something he’d never seen before, something completely strange and foreign.

  But Fitz remembers him best with his tools and gear, working on some household project his mom assigned him: installing a ceiling fan, putting a new roof on the garage, building shelves for his bedroom. When he was really little, Fitz just trailed after him, watched, toting his own plastic tools.

  Fitz loved it when his grandfather would stop, put down his tools, and announce that it was time for a coffee break. They’d sit together at the kitchen table, a plate of his mom’s homemade cookies between them, usually big, chewy molasses cookies, which were his grandpa’s favorite. Coffee for his grandpa, milk for Fitz. Fitz learned from his grandpa to dunk his cookies, a habit his mom pretended to think was disgusting, and her disapproval made it even more enjoyable. Fitz missed those times with his grandpa. He kept his hammer in his room—it was better than a photograph—and when he needed to write out his full name, it made him happy to write out John; it pleased him to see it on his birth certificate. He wanted to believe that there might be something of his grandfather in him—his patient skill maybe, his ingenuity.

  His dad’s full name was on the birth certificate, too: Curtis Ward Powell. With that, he was able to find him. There’s a lot of Curtis Powells in the world but only one with that name practicing law.

  More than once his mom has told Fitz about his birth: he was in a big hurry to come into the world. That was the theme of the story as she told it. She had a few contractions, drove to the hospital, and then, practically before they could get her wheeled into the delivery room and the doctor was suited up, there he was. That’s what she told him. According to his mom, he’s always been that way—eager, in a hurry.

  There’s a photograph taken on the day he was born. It’s in a little wood frame and has been on the top of his mom’s dresser for as long as Fitz can remember. In the picture, he—Baby Fitz—is wearing a miniature knit cap adorned with a little blue ribbon. It’s very stylish, Fitz has always thought, a good look. He wishes he still looked that good in a hat, but he just doesn’t.

  His face is red and scrunched, but his baby eyes are open—deep blue pools taking in this big strange world. His head is being held up, of course, supported. In the margins of the picture you can see a little bit of the forearm of the person who is holding him. And who is holding him?

  He’s never really thought about whose arm, no more than he ever considered who framed the picture or who put the little hat on his head—it never crossed his mind. But it’s clearly a man’s arm, muscular and covered with dark hair. Before today, if he’d been asked, if it was a question on some crazy test about himself, he’d have said Grandpa John. Or Uncle Dunc, or maybe a nurse, some hospital aide.

  It could be his father in the picture. It’s possible. What he said. That he was there that day, in the delivery room, when Fitz made his famous fast entry into the world.

  But so what? If his mom’s story was not the whole truth? If the mystery arm belonged to his father? What then? Would it even matter?

  12

  Fitz looks at his father’s arms, his hands. They’re sitting on a bench across from what is going to be a new polar bear habitat. Fitz and his father have been to the men’s room and have washed up. In the dark mirror of the zoo’s bathroom, Fitz’s reflection didn’t look quite like himself. He looked scared and menacing, slightly crazed.

  Fitz bought a bottle of water for each of them from a vending machine. He’s not really thirsty, but it gives them something to do. They sip, they spin the bottles in their hands, they look at the labels. His mom is all about proper hydration, she would approve.

  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 mo
m 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.”