Fitz

by Mick Cochrane

  Fitz thinks of those Make-A-Wish stories he sees on television from time to time. Some doomed, bald little kid spending the day with his sports hero, playing catch, getting autographs, going home with a big pile of gear. It’s supposed to be heartwarming. But what about the next day? Fitz always wonders about that. And the day after that? It just makes Fitz sad.

  “So now what?” his father says. They’re stopped at the light on West Seventh. Fort Snelling is one way, downtown the other, the river is in front of them. “Where to?”

  For a moment Fitz thinks his father is giving him a song. He tries—he likes songs with questions in them. “Now what?” That could be the title of something. He could see his father’s questions becoming the chorus in some sort of existential anthem. But his heart’s not in it. It seems like a lot of work. And for what? Scribble some words in a notebook—what would be the point of that? “Take me home,” Fitz says.

  RAINING TEARDROPS

  30

  Back on the west side, Fitz feels more like himself. On Summit Avenue, or in a downtown office building surrounded by suits and briefcases, he’s an outsider, an alien, a spy. Here, he’s just Fitz, a kid in his neighborhood.

  They pass the gas station where he fills the tires of his bike, the pizza place where he and Caleb get slices and Dr Pepper with free refills, the hardware store where his mom gets little screws and such for her projects and is always smothered with attention by the old-guy clerks.

  A few blocks away is the playground and park where Uncle Dunc used to push him on the swings, where he and his mom would spread a blanket and watch the Fourth of July fireworks from Harriet Island, where he still goes sledding with his friends in winter. Also, where he bought his gun.

  Fitz looks at his father. Does it look like a slum to him? Compared to what he’s used to, maybe it does. Does he see only chipped paint and crabgrass? Does it make him fear for his hubcaps and want to lock his doors?

  Fitz doesn’t care. He wouldn’t mind if his father felt a little bit guilty: look at this miserable life I’ve inflicted on my poor son! He would like his father to think that he’s grown up as a tough guy on the mean streets of West St. Paul, but it’s not like that, not at all.

  “Here,” Fitz says when they come to his street, but he already has his turn signal on. On this block, Fitz knows the names of every family, present and past, he knows the names of their dogs, living and dead, he knows who gives out amazing treats on Halloween (Julia, the elderly piano teacher on the corner), who gives out sketchy-looking off-brand candy (the couple that listens to opera really loud on Saturday afternoons), who sits in the dark and pretends not to be home (Mr. Muscarella).

  What does his father do on Halloween? Fitz wonders. There’s no way any kids get into that building of his to trick-or-treat. For years he’s probably been living in the same kind of place, some compound full of starched professionals, people just like himself. Does he even know what he’s missing? He probably sits inside drinking fancy French wine and trading stocks online or something. Fitz almost feels sorry for him. Now Fitz hands out candy on Halloween: he and his mom pretend not to recognize Evelyn and Vivian, the little princesses from next door; she takes pictures, and Fitz gives them huge handfuls of fun-size candy bars, the good ones, Snickers and Milky Way. Fitz has learned that being with kids on Halloween is just about as good as being a kid on Halloween. What has his father learned?

  31

  Now Fitz feels like he is stalking himself. They’re parked across the street from his own house. Fitz can see his bedroom window on the second floor. There’s an empty can of Dr Pepper on the sill.

  Fitz half expects to see himself coming up the walk from his bus stop, backpack slung over his shoulder. It’s just about that time. He’d take the mail from the box, fish inside his pocket for his house key, and push open the door. He’d text his mom, tell her he’s home. And she’d send back one of her perfectly punctuated messages telling him what he already knows: that there’s food in the fridge, that he ought to get started on his homework, that she loves him.

  They sit there, Fitz and his father, looking at the house. His mom spent the weekend working on her flower boxes and hanging baskets, white and red and purple. He doesn’t know the names of the flowers, but they look good. Their house has a kind of old-fashioned vibe he likes—the flowers, a flag and wind chimes, the open porch, the wrought-iron rail, the gray clapboard and green shutters.

  Fitz feels as if he ought to say something, but he’s not sure what. He feels a stupid urge to apologize, for what exactly, he doesn’t know. He knows that he says “sorry” a lot. Caleb called him out on it once after he excused himself for bumping into a chair—“Dude, relax,” he said. “It’s inanimate, it’s not offended.”

  “You get paid by the hour?” Fitz says.

  “My firm does,” his father says. “Our clients pay for the time we work on their case.”

  “Plenty, right? They pay a lot.”

  “It’s not cheap.”

  “So, like an hour with you, if I was your client, would cost me what, a hundred bucks?”

  “More than that, actually.”

  “Two hundred, three hundred?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So I’m costing you big-time. Wasting your time. I’m money down the drain.”

  His father starts to say something but then just raises his hand, palm out, fingers extended, like a stop sign, maybe, or a blessing.

  At some point, Fitz needs to get out of the car. He needs to do what one of Caleb’s favorite classic blues tunes says: step it up and go. Then it will be over. Their not-so-excellent adventure. Soon, but not yet.

  He knows there’s nothing he can say or do at this point that’s going to make any kind of difference. Earlier in the day, he had some clear goals. Revenge—that was part of the plan, to make his father suffer for being a jerk. Payback, too, that was a piece of it, getting some of the time and attention he’d missed out on over the years. He wanted some information, too, he wanted to fill in some blanks. It’s three o’clock now. Fitz is pretty sure that he’s scared his father, at least a little, and he’s heard some stories, and they’ve spent the day together. So what? Tomorrow he’s gonna be his same old drifting self, asking Google what’s the matter with him.

  If Fitz is going to resume his regular life, he needs to get out of the car, go into the house, and text his mom. He should figure out the homework that’s due tomorrow and get to work. Maybe he needs to lose his angst and stop whining and become an achiever. He should, unasked, do some household chore—start dinner, say, something to surprise his mom.

  Still, there’s a part of Fitz that doesn’t want this to end. When he was a little kid, he never wanted to go to bed on his birthday. It was something special and rare, and he wanted to make it last. The day after his birthday, just another ordinary day, with no balloons and no cake—it always seemed a little sad to him.

  “Okay,” Fitz says.

  “Okay,” his father says.

  Fitz isn’t sure how he feels about him. Maybe he really does feel a little sorry for him. He’s got a nice car, sure, and he’s a legal-eagle big shot, but there’s something sort of deficient about him, something lacking, something hollow. Fitz wouldn’t trade places with him. But he doesn’t think he really hates him. There’s certain things about him that he could see himself liking if he got to know him properly. Fitz liked him feeding sea lions, he liked him at the diner, he liked him eating pie. At the office, not so much. It all depends. Fitz knows that he has not been all that likeable today himself, waving his piece and talking tough. Under different circumstances, it would be different. Under different circumstances, Fitz can be likeable, he can be fun to be around. He wishes his father knew that. He wishes he’d made a better impression today.

  “Okay,” Fitz says again. It feels like the awkward pause at the end of a class—anyone have any questions? As a matter of fact, Fitz does.

  “Why Fitzgerald?”

&
nbsp; “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, why not Steinbeck? Why not Melville?”

  “I was an English major,” he says. “I read Gatsby in a course on the twentieth-century American novel. I loved it. I kept rereading it. I’m not sure why. It just spoke to me somehow. The language. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly … all that. It made me want to be a writer, too. It made me want to write the great American novel.” He smiles a little, as if he’s half embarrassed by the memory of his younger self, his susceptibility to beautiful language, his big foolish dreams.

  “So it was you?” Fitz says. He was the Fitzgerald fan? “I thought Mom was the one who loved his stuff. I thought Mom named me.”

  “Oh, I gave her some books,” he says. “I’m not sure she actually read them, though. I don’t blame her. It was a little obnoxious. She thought I was trying to remake her, as if she weren’t educated enough for me. But that wasn’t it. I was just sharing my enthusiasm. But it came off wrong.”

  Fitz looks at his father. At one time, this guy dreamed about being a writer. He cared about words. Maybe he scribbled in a notebook, too. There’s more to him than Fitz suspected. If they sit here long enough, there’s no telling what he may discover about him.

  “I’m pretty sure she read those books,” Fitz says.

  32

  There’s someone coming down the street. Even before Fitz sees his face, he recognizes Caleb’s familiar walk. It’s a slow shuffle, slower than you’d expect a young person to walk, as if he isn’t really all that keen to reach his destination.

  He’s got his guitar in one hand, his amp in the other. There seems to be something coiled around his neck, nooselike. It could be some insane kind of goth choker, but that isn’t Caleb’s style. It could be a bike lock, but Caleb doesn’t ride a bike (too dangerous).

  “That’s my friend,” Fitz says.

  Fitz lowers his window and leans out. “Hey, Caleb!” he shouts. “Caleb!”

  Caleb just keeps walking, same glacial pace. It’s impossible that he hasn’t heard—they’re no more than twenty feet away from each other. But Caleb doesn’t even turn his head. “Caleb!” Fitz yells again, even louder this time. Still no response.

  “I’ll be right back,” Fitz says to his father. He opens the car door and puts one foot on the curb. He pauses. He looks at his father. The key’s in the ignition. The motor’s idling. What if he drives off? Fitz has already as good as said goodbye, handed back his father’s phone and wallet, but still, the prospect of his taking off, of watching his taillights disappear at the end of the block, it fills Fitz’s stomach with something like panic.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” his father says.

  “Okay,” Fitz says. “It’ll only be a minute.” He crosses the street and intercepts Caleb.

  Caleb is still moving forward. He looks like someone moving across thin ice, that cautious. What he has around his neck, Fitz sees, is a super-duper guitar cable, something he’s been talking about getting for weeks.

  “Caleb!” Fitz shouts. He is maybe three feet away from him.

  Now, finally, Caleb stops and turns slowly toward Fitz.

  “What is up with you? I was calling your name. Didn’t you know it was me?”

  “I knew it was you.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I thought maybe you were trying to lure me somewhere.”

  “Why would I want to lure you anywhere?”

  “You tell me. You’re the predator.”

  “Cut it out.”

  “Who’s the guy in the car?”

  “That’s my dad.”

  “Dude, you don’t have a dad. That’s like one of your trademarks. It’s one of the things that makes you interesting.”

  “Everybody’s got a dad.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Caleb sets the amp down and turns toward the car in a way he must imagine is casual. It’s not. “He’s wearing a tie.”

  “I know,” Fitz says. “He’s my father, and he’s wearing a tie.”

  “That’s a really nice car,” Caleb says. “Are you sure he’s not an A&R guy? That’s what he looks like.”

  “I’m sure he’s not an A&R guy. He’s a lawyer.”

  “Because we are nowhere near ready to sign with a label.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all day,” Caleb says. “I sent you about a thousand texts. You’ve gone dark, dude.”

  “So here I am,” Fitz says. “In the flesh. We can communicate in real time. What’s up? You got the Monster—very cool.”

  “This is way beyond gear, Fitz.”

  “Okay,” Fitz says. “What? What’s worth a thousand texts?”

  “Nora,” Caleb says.

  Nora? The sound of her name perks Fitz up a little. “What about her?”

  “She’s coming over.”

  “Nora Flynn?” Fitz says. “Here? When? When is she coming over?”

  “Right here, right now,” Caleb says. “Any minute.” He smiles, a little wickedly.

  “Get out.”

  “I saw her at lunch and asked her if she listened to the CD. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Loved it.’ ”

  “She loved it.”

  “She loved it. You should have heard her, going on and on about Ruth Brown. She was obsessed. So I’m like, ‘You wanna sing with us?’ ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Absolutely.’ ‘Like when?’ I said. ‘Like how about this afternoon?’ she said.”

  “I don’t know about this,” Fitz says. “I’m not sure if this is such a good idea.”

  “Since when are you anti-Nora?” Caleb asks. “Since when are you not her biggest fan?”

  Fitz is trying to find some words to explain what’s going on with him, how he’s spent his day, why this may not be the best time to audition a singer, when he notices Caleb suddenly stiffen.

  33

  Fitz’s father is standing there, smiling pleasantly. He’s taken off his tie and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was All-American Dad, home from work early.

  “Hello?” Caleb says.

  “Hello,” he says, and extends his hand.

  Caleb gives Fitz a quick glance and then takes it. He gives it a shake. “I’m Caleb,” he says. “Pleased to meet you … Mr. Fitz’s dad.”

  “Call me Curtis.”

  “Okay,” Caleb says, but he doesn’t.

  “You’re in the band,” Fitz’s father says.

  “Well, yes,” Caleb says. “Actually, right now Fitz and I are the band.”

  “I like your sound,” Fitz’s father says, and Caleb gives Fitz a triumphant look, as if to say, told you so, and Fitz suspects that now he will never be able to convince him that his father is not really a record executive.

  “We need a drummer,” Caleb says. “But it’s not easy to find one.”

  “Drummers are famously problematic, aren’t they?”

  Caleb gives Fitz another look. What planet is this guy from? “Oh yes,” he says. “Famously.”

  In fact, drummers have been, what he said, problematic. Fitz wonders how his father knows. He can’t imagine that he’s ever been in a band. In the past year they’ve played with only two human drummers: one was a kid with a fancy kit but absolutely no sense of rhythm, the other a kid they recruited from jazz band, who was always so busy with extracurricular activities and lessons—student council, Model UN, you name it—he was never available to hang out, much less practice.

  “This is a big day for the band,” Caleb says. “Today we’re going to audition a vocalist. And I am pretty sure she’s going to take us to the next level.”

  “Really,” Fitz’s father says. “That’s exciting.”

  “I don’t know about this,” Fitz says. “I don’t think this is such a good time.”

  “What do you mean?” Caleb says.

  “I mean,” Fitz says, “there’s a lot going on. Could
n’t we do this some other day?”

  “Let me give you a hand,” Fitz’s father says, and picks up Caleb’s amp. Caleb can be touchy about people handling his stuff, but this he doesn’t seem to mind. “Thank you,” he says, and leads the way, guitar in hand, up the walk to the front porch.

  They’ve played out here before, Fitz and Caleb, sitting in a couple of lawn chairs. Maybe if Fitz’s basement weren’t a dank dungeon, they’d rehearse down there. Maybe not—Caleb loves playing outside. He thinks fresh air is good for musical instruments. And he doesn’t mind a little ambient noise mixing with the music—likes it, really. If there were a train rumbling by, he’d be ecstatic. That would be pure Clarksdale. But even the ordinary clatter and hum of Fitz’s neighborhood, he welcomes it into the sonic stew—a car horn, the sound of an airplane overhead, the click-clack of somebody trimming a hedge.

  The problem with jamming out here is the electronics—how to plug in. There’s no outlets on the porch. When Fitz’s mom hangs Christmas lights, she does it with a complicated jerry-rigged network of extension cords that doesn’t strike Fitz as entirely safe. Not that he’d ever tell her that.

  Caleb tried once to run his amp’s power cord into the house through the mailbox slot, but then was stuck in the corner of the porch, away from the chairs. Which is the point of Caleb’s new heavy-duty, extra-long cord.

  Caleb looks up at Fitz. “Don’t just stand there, dude,” he says. “Go inside and plug me in. And bring out your acoustic.”

  34

  Fitz turns the key and pushes the front door open. Nothing has moved since this morning, of course, nothing has changed, but things feel different somehow.

  It feels like a snapshot of a life—his life—that has been interrupted. On a bench in the front hall, there is a stack of his textbooks and notebooks, a folder containing the geometry proofs he dutifully completed last night, his thoughtful-sounding responses to Mr. Massey’s questions about a poem by John Donne. Fitz was planning to skip, but he did his homework anyway. What did that say about him? It’s hard now to imagine himself taking such pains again, working his way through another problem set tonight, adding and subtracting angles, trying to describe the speaker’s tone, all that work, for what? Points?