One last “Andrew,” and he was out on the sidewalk, the cold air stinging his cheeks, head down, arms pumping, running past the row of school buses idling by the curb and racing around the corner. Down Castor, then right onto Kensington Avenue, where the streetlamps were decorated with Christmas wreaths. A train rumbled overhead as Andy ran, arms swinging, knees lifted high, weaving in and out through the people on the sidewalks, the high school kids, the homeless men, the drug dealers. The coat that had started all the trouble was still on his back. Andy ripped it off as he ran and tossed it at a trash can without missing a step.
He knew he was in trouble. Sister would tell his mom about the fight, and he’d be grounded or worse. Maybe his mom wouldn’t even give him his Christmas presents . . . but for now, no one could stop him, no one could touch him. For now, he was free.
One of the first things Andy Landis could remember in his entire life was his mom on the phone, his beautiful mom with her red-lipsticked mouth and her hair that fell in ripples down her back, and the gold chain, fine as a thread, that she wore around one ankle. “You know how boys are,” she was saying, “you’ve got to run them like dogs.” When he was little, they’d go to a park, a big rectangle of grass in the middle of their neighborhood with a swingset and slide at one of the rectangle’s short sides. The edges of the park were studded with broken glass, empty bottles, and sometimes needles, but the middle was a long, unbroken swath of green. Andy would race from one end to the other, faster and faster, finally running back to his mother, running right into her arms, smelling her perfume and cigarette smoke, Camay soap and Jergens lotion, until she patted his back and let him go. The sunshine would sparkle on her gold anklet and in her hair, and he would think that he had the most beautiful mother in the world.
But that was when he was just a baby, not even in kindergarten. Now he was a big kid, tall for his age, already wearing men’s-sized shoes. “I don’t know what to do,” his mother would complain, talking on the phone to Sharon or Beth, her work friends. “Every six months his pants are too short and his shoes don’t fit.” Sometimes she’d sigh when she looked at him, the same way she’d sigh at the bills that came in the mail, but sometimes she’d smile, pulling him close until his head rested on her shoulder. My little man, she would say.
Andy still ran at the park sometimes, but he liked the street best. After school, when his homework was done and the table was set, he would put on his sneakers and his 76ers jersey, the one that had been his father’s. In the winter he’d pile on layers, sweatpants and sweatshirt and a hat. In the summer, he’d just wear shorts. The only thing that never changed was the shirt. The ’Sixers had been his dad’s team, and now it was Andy’s. He’d start off at an easy trot, warming up his muscles, running from Kensington to Somerset, then turning east, past Frankford and Aramingo and Allegheny, racing along the sidewalks, past bodegas and hardware stores, pharmacies and doctors’ offices, gas stations and storefront churches and the vacant lot where the vendors were selling Christmas trees, until the street curved into the on-ramp for I-95. That was the three-mile mark, where he’d turn around and head back home.
His gym teacher hadn’t believed him when Andy told him how far he could run. He’d taken Andy out to the soccer field and made him do laps until he’d run one mile, then two. “Let’s stop now,” he’d said, but Andy had said, “I can keep going,” and he had, and ever since then Mr. Setzer would let him skip calisthenics and volleyball so that he could go to fields and run.
Swinging his arms in big, high arcs, eating the distance up with each stride, for once not thinking about the nuns hissing at him to stop fidgeting, not worrying about knocking over one of his mother’s china figurines, or bumping into the table, or having her glare at him and say, “Jesus, can’t you sit still?”
At first his feet were so light it was like they were floating, and the air slipped like cream down his throat. Then he’d start to sweat, and his legs would burn and his breath would come in gasps that tasted like hot pennies. He welcomed the pain, letting it in, then pushing through it, getting past it, savoring the cramps and the fire in his thighs until he was past hurting, until his vision narrowed to just the squares of the sidewalk and every other thought had vanished from his head. Faster and faster, knees lifted to his chest, hands curled into fists, running past the memory of lunchtime at Holy Innocents, when the kids with the free and reduced-price lunch cards like Andy had to get in line ahead of the kids who paid full price; the Winter Concert and the science fair and the Celebration of Learning, when almost every other kid had a parent there and Andy had no one, because his father was dead and his mom had to work, because money doesn’t grow on trees, because someone’s got to pay for all of this, even though all of this was a crappy one-bedroom apartment where the ceiling dropped chunks of plaster on you when you were sleeping and the windows didn’t open because the windowsills had been painted so many times and you had to jiggle the toilet’s handle just right if you wanted it to flush.
That afternoon, still in his school uniform of khakis and a blue button-down, Andy ran to the three-mile mark before slowing from a sprint to a jog to a trot to a walk, the sound of his shoes on the pavement softening from slaps to pats. Usually, he would be able to hang on to some of that sensation of rightness, that place past thought. For at least another hour, sometimes for the rest of the afternoon, he would feel good in his body, at home in his skin.
He and his mother lived on the first floor of a row house in Kensington that had been split into three apartments, one on each floor. Andy armed sweat off his forehead and pulled out the house key that hung on a cord around his neck, unlocking the door and stepping inside, releasing the gentle sigh he always gave when he realized that he was alone. A single woman, a widow, lived on the second floor, but Andy hardly saw her, and the landlord kept the third floor mostly empty, using it for cousins and grandchildren when they came to visit. Andy Landis didn’t spend much time at other kids’ houses when their parents were home, but he was starting to get the idea that not every kid had to be as careful to avoid the lightning flashes of a parent’s temper, that other moms were different from his. It wasn’t like Lori hit him or ignored him for the few hours between dinner and bedtime when they were together, but sometimes he thought that his mother just didn’t like him very much, that if some genie or fairy godmother showed up and promised to take Andy somewhere else, to give him to other parents, Lori would agree without hesitation. But then he would tell himself that Lori worked hard, sometimes six days a week, on her feet for nine, sometimes ten hours, and that he always had enough to eat, and clothes to wear, even if the clothes came from thrift shops or the church donation table, and he was the one who cooked the food and did the dishes afterward.
Three weeks ago he’d been doing his math homework at the kitchen table when his mom had handed him a gray-and-white ski jacket that she’d picked up at church. “It’s still got a lot of wear in it,” she’d said, sounding proud. Andy had seen the tag with Ryan Peterman’s name sewn on the back of the collar right away, but when he’d pointed it out, he’d kept his voice quiet, not wanting to hurt her feelings, not wanting to make her mad.
Lori had sighed, then had looked at him, looked right in his eyes, holding his gaze with her own so that he couldn’t turn away. “I can’t buy you a new one, and you’re too tall for last year’s,” she’d said. “This one’s almost good as new.”
You can buy me a new one, Andy thought. You can, but you won’t. He knew about what she called her “mad money,” how there was a chipped mug all the way in the back of the kitchen cabinet that was full of quarters and bills, ones and fives and tens and twenties. Every few months she’d ask the Strattons if Andy could sleep over and she’d take a bus to Atlantic City with her girlfriends. Sometimes she’d come back laughing, her wallet full of crisp new bills, but mostly she’d walk right past him into her bedroom and shut the door without a word.
Andy had st
uffed the jacket in the darkest corner of the coat closet, but that morning, finally, it had started to snow, and Lori had insisted that he wear it, had even walked with him to school to make sure he didn’t take it off.
Ryan Peterman hadn’t wasted a second. “Hey, asswipe, that’s my old jacket!” he’d shouted, loud enough for the rest of the fifth grade to hear.
“Fuck off,” said Andy—that being, of course, the only acceptable response. Ryan had yanked down the collar to show the other kids his name. Andy felt the world narrowing, the way it did when he ran, only this time, instead of just the street or the grass or the sidewalk, all he could see was Ryan Peterman’s big, stupid pale face as he drew his arm back and started pounding Ryan, on his cheek, his head, his shoulders and chest and sides, hitting and hitting until Ryan’s nose was dripping blood and he was crouching down with his arms over his head, screeching “Get him off me! Get him off me!” and the Sisters had come with their habits belling out behind them, rulers at the ready.
Andy went to the kitchen, cracked ice cubes out of their battered metal tray, wrapped them in a dish towel, and held them against his knuckles. When the ice melted, he helped himself to a bowl of Cheerios with cut-up banana while he watched cartoons. They didn’t have cable like the Strattons, who lived down the street in a row house that looked just like theirs, except it wasn’t apartments and the family rented the whole thing, all three floors just for them. Miles Stratton was in his class at Holy Innocents, not exactly a friend, but friendly. Sometimes Andy would go over in the afternoons and they’d watch The Dukes of Hazzard and Three’s Company. Here, he was stuck with a choice between Looney Tunes and soap operas. He watched the Road Runner chase Wile E. Coyote off cliffs and under trucks filled with dynamite while he slurped the last of the milk, rinsed the bowl and spoon, and put them in the dishwasher. He made sure he returned the milk to the fridge and the cereal to the cupboard, checked to see that the tiny square of their table was wiped off and the rickety wooden chair was pushed in, before he went back outside.
“You’re so considerate!” Miles’s mom always said when he came over. “My mom always says it’s the maid’s day off,” Andy would tell her. It was one of Lori’s refrains, one that she’d repeat if she ever saw Andy’s dirty clothes on the bathroom floor or if he’d forgotten to put the seat down. Mrs. Stratton was always nice to Andy. She’d ask him to stay for dinner and she’d always bake something for dessert and give him some of it, a big chunk of cake or a slice of pie, to bring home. “Tell your mother hello,” she would say, but Andy never would, and he’d throw the sweets in the trash can by the bus shelter before he got home. The Strattons were black, like Andy’s father; like Mr. Sills, the handyman who came around every week or two, tightening dripping faucets and oiling squeaky doors; like most of the people in the neighborhood. They were black, and Lori was white, and he was pretty sure that Mrs. Stratton didn’t really like her. Once, when he’d left Miles’s bedroom to use the bathroom, he’d heard Mr. Stratton, who worked for the gas company, talking down in the kitchen. How come she moved here? How come she’s not back with her own? Mrs. Stratton had murmured something—Andy had heard his own name and nothing more—but then Mr. Stratton had said, “Well, how sure are we about that? She wouldn’t be the first bird to try to slip an egg into another man’s nest.” “Stop,” his wife said in a cold voice Andy had never heard her use. After that, Andy had never felt like just a regular friend of Miles’s, a normal kid from school. Instead, he’d thought that they looked at him as the kid with the white mother and a black father, half one and half the other, a kid who didn’t belong.
Mrs. Stratton was a stay-at-home mom, but Andy’s mom worked at a beauty salon called Roll of the Dye in Rittenhouse Square, which was Philadelphia’s fanciest neighborhood. She left the house at nine-thirty Tuesday through Sunday and came home at seven, smelling like perm solution and cigarette smoke, with sneakers on her feet and her high heels in her purse. Andy had to have the stoop swept, the floors vacuumed, the couch pillows smoothed, the table set, and dinner—boiled noodles with canned spaghetti sauce, or frozen pizza or pot pies or a Swanson Hungry-Man for him, a Lean Cuisine for her—heated up and ready. By second grade, he knew how to use the microwave and the oven, and Lori had taught him to run the dishwasher and the washer and dryer. Most kids aren’t responsible enough for this, but I think you are, she’d said, and Andy had been glad to learn, proud that he knew something other kids didn’t. It wasn’t until that fall, when he’d read the part in Tom Sawyer where Tom tricks the other kids into whitewashing the fence, that Andy realized, with a feeling that made his face and ears get hot, how his mom had
fooled him.
He looked over the kitchen again, the linoleum in front of the sink worn to translucence, the sputtering olive-green refrigerator, the stick-on pine paneling that was peeling off in strips from the walls. Mr. Sills had said he could fix it, could make it look like new and it wouldn’t take more than a day, but Lori had told him thanks but no thanks. “You do enough as it is,” she’d said, and Mr. Sills, looking sad, had shrugged, then packed up his toolbox. “Call me if you need anything,” he’d said, and then looked at Andy. “That goes for you, too, young man,” he’d said. Andy knew that he would never call. We don’t take charity, Lori always said. Andy thought that maybe she paid Mr. Sills, when he wasn’t looking, to change the lightbulbs that she couldn’t reach and fix the basement window after it had cracked, which made it okay.
Andy counted each ring of the church bell and was surprised that it was only three o’clock. He walked to the closet, planning to put on his shoes and go outside again, when he heard a key in the door. He froze, head down, as his mother stormed into the room, home from work four hours early. Her blond hair, which had been gathered into a high ponytail that morning, was falling down, tendrils hanging against her cheeks, and her hands moved in angry jerks as she unzipped her coat, fake shearling, with the white lining already turning yellow, and tossed it on the couch.
Andy hurried to hang it up. Lori stood there, unmoving, just looking at him. All the stylists at Roll of the Dye had to wear black, which for Lori meant black jeans and either a black blouse or a black jersey top, always tight, always unbuttoned or cut low enough to show the smooth skin of her chest and the tops of her breasts. Aspirational, Andy had heard her call it, which meant that she had to look pretty so the women who came to the salon would want to look like her and that even the old ones or the fat ones would think that they could if they let Lori do their hair.
“I got a call from Sister Henry,” she began, her voice deceptively soft. He saw how her hands gripped the edge of the couch and how her skin had gone pale with red splotches underneath her makeup. “What happened with Ryan Peterman?”
From his spot in front of the closet, Andy said nothing.
“This is the second time this year,” his mom said. “One more fight and they’ll expel you.”
Andy didn’t answer. In September, Darryl Patrick had called Andy an Oreo, black on the outside, white on the inside, “except you don’t even look black.” That wasn’t exactly an insult, but he’d fought Darryl anyway, in the playground after lunch, and when his mom had asked what had happened Andy had just said, “He started it,” and had refused to tell her anything else.
“Andy?” Lori asked. “Andy, what are we going to do about this?”
Andy put his hand in his pocket and crossed his fingers, hoping that if he kept quiet she’d let it go, but Lori kept on.
“What were you fighting about?” Andy didn’t answer. His mom kept right on going. “Because you didn’t want to wear his old coat,” she said. Andy gave a tiny nod. She sighed, lifting her hair off her face, then letting it drop. “Honey, I told you. If I could buy you a brand-new coat, I would. I’d buy you a hundred coats if I had the money.”
No, you wouldn’t, he thought. The pit of his stomach felt cramped, and his face felt like it was on fire. If you had the m
oney you’d go to Atlantic City and play roulette with your friends.
“And now,” she said, “I’ve got to call the Petermans and apologize.” She stomped into the bedroom, locking the door behind her, except the door was a cheap, sad thing, like everything in this cheap, sad place, and Andy could hear what she was saying. That shouldn’t have mattered, and A jacket is a jacket, Andy wears hand-me-downs all the time, this wasn’t any different. Then there was a pause, and then Lori said, Oh, no, I couldn’t . . . No, really, it’s not necessary . . . No, Andy can’t be rewarded for this, he needs to understand that what he did was wrong. Then a lot of uh-huhs and I sees and then, finally, a thank-you. He stood behind the kitchen table, waiting, one leg jiggling until he pressed down hard to make it stop. Finally his mother emerged.
“What happened?” he asked. He’d gotten a scraped cheek and a black eye in the fight. Lori reached across the table and touched his face.
“The Petermans understood why you were embarrassed,” she said. “Ryan wants to use some of his allowance money to get a coat for you.”
“Oh, no,” Andy said. He was horrified. The only thing worse than wearing Ryan’s old coat would be wearing a new coat that Ryan had bought especially for Andy. That was when Lori put her hands against her eyes and started to cry; not the big, showy sobs she sometimes did, but just sitting there silently while tears rolled down her face.
Andy hated when she cried. It made him want to run out of the house and onto the street and sprint, all-out, until he was as far away from her as he could get. He made himself stand up and pat her shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. When he tried to hug her, it was like trying to put his arms around a bundle of sticks. She didn’t move to help him, didn’t do anything except sit there and cry. He leaned down, resting his cheek on her head, smelling shampoo and hair spray and Jergens lotion, the cigarette that she’d smoked on the walk from the train to the house and the Tic Tac she’d sucked to cover it up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I promise I won’t get in any more fights.” He patted her shoulder some more, and brought her a glass of water that she didn’t touch. Outside, he heard a bus wheeze by, and voices, two ladies talking about getting their Christmas shopping done.
Who Do You Love Page 4