Courtly as ever, Jay didn’t make me say it. “See you soon,” he said quietly, and turned toward the door.
“Wait.” He turned around. The hope was so bright on his face that it wrenched at me to blot it out.
“I heard someone say that people who were married are never really unmarried,” I said. “When you have kids together, you don’t get to really untie the knot. We’re family.”
He shook his head. “That isn’t what I want.”
“I’ll always care about you,” I said, knowing how limp and wan the words sounded, how they were the opposite of what he’d wanted to hear. Even rage, even fury was passion. Now he didn’t matter enough for me to be angry.
“You’ll find someone.” I made a face. “You found me, didn’t you?”
He shook his head without answering, and walked to the door. I remembered listening to him packing and leaving a week after I’d confronted him at the restaurant, the sound of his suitcase bumping down each stair. I still felt frozen, like all of this was happening in a movie that I was watching; like it was hurting, but it was hurting someone else.
In my bedroom, I took off my makeup and smoothed expensive and allegedly restorative cream on my face. The pajamas felt as good as I’d hoped that they would, and my hair, unpinned, fell in a luxuriant tumble, the curls still dark-brown and glossy. Standing in front of the mirror, I unbuttoned the two top buttons of my shirt and looked at my scar. It had faded some over the years, the livid pink softening, the raised, corded knot of it so familiar that I hardly even noticed it.
Now I touched it gently. You should have something pretty, right there, I remembered Andy saying. Did any love ever feel as sweet as first love? Were we all just damaged goods now, battered cans in the grocery-store sale bin, day-old bread, marked down at the register, hoping that someone would look past the obvious flaws and love us enough to take us home?
You could find him, the voice in my head whispered. My laptop was in my office, one room over. I could punch his name into the search bar and read a hundred magazine pieces about the doping and the disgrace. Maybe I’d find a “Where Are They Now” story, and maybe it would say where he lived, what he was doing. Did he ever think of me?
Probably not, I decided. He certainly had other things to occupy his mind. “Hello, young lovers,” I sang as I put a glass of water on the bedside table, plucked a few dead blooms out of the bouquet on top of my bookshelf, and tucked myself into bed. All of my mem’ries are happy tonight. I’ve had a love of my own.
Andy
2015
Because there seemed to be no one else available or interested in the job, Andy took the first week of May off from work, went to Philadelphia, and began the process of sifting through Mr. Sills’s belongings. He divided it into piles, sorting things into trash cans and crates—toss, recycle, donate, see if anyone wants. The old newspapers and magazines went to a used-book store, after Andy called the Free Library to make sure there wasn’t a demand for stacks of National Geographics from the 1970s. The antique teapots and china plates, the hand-painted gold-rimmed teacups, all got wrapped, boxed, and driven back to the shops from which some of them had surely come. The mirrors went to Goodwill, along with the paintings, although Andy kept the picture of the yellow parrot for himself. “It really brightens up the place,” he said when he hung it above his television set in Brooklyn. Andy found a charity that sent a moving van and three glum-looking men to collect the TV set and the furniture (he later learned that the men were doing community service after they’d each received their third DUI).
After four days, the apartment was almost empty, except for the corduroy chair that had been Mr. Sills’s favorite, the photo albums and the scrapbooks, and a few boxes that still needed sorting. Andy settled in with a contractor-sized trash can beside him, and started to page through the books. Some of them were family albums that began generations ago. Andy recognized Mr. Sills as a little boy only after he began wearing glasses. He watched his friend grow from a smiling kid in old-fashioned knee-length shorts that became long pants, to a young man in an army uniform, to a groom wearing a dark suit and a serious expression, to a new father, with his arm wrapped protectively around a pretty, slim woman who cradled a wrapped bundle in her arms.
There were hundreds of pictures of the family of three throughout the years, at a dozen different occasions, church picnics and parties and trips to the shore. Andy wondered if there’d ever been an attempt at other children, but Mrs. Sills hadn’t appeared pregnant in any of the shots, so maybe she’d never conceived again, or maybe they’d decided that one was enough. Within the jumble of images of a small family enjoying the pleasures of a happy life in the city—block parties and fireworks viewings, boys in drooping swimsuits splashing in the kiddie pools or, later, graduating to the deep end and cannonballing from a diving board—there was one shot that was always the same. Every April 14, Mr. Sills and his wife would pose with DeVaughn on his birthday.
Andy watched DeVaughn grow from a baby cradled in his mother’s arms to a toddler who stood, holding her hand and looking up with adoration, to a little boy with a Wiffle bat, to a bigger boy with a bike. He saw the pictures go from black-and-white to Polaroids to color. Mr. Sills grew an Afro, and wore a succession of eyeglasses, each pair more enormous than the last, while his wife traded her ironed dresses for bell-bottoms and turtlenecks. The pictures all had the same thing written underneath them— DeVaughn Anthony Sills, April 14, our “pride and joy.” They went all the way through 1978, when the pattern broke. There was the April shot, with DeVaughn smiling as he put one large hand on his father’s shoulders and the other one on his mother’s back. Then there was another picture, taken only a couple of months later. Same spot on the street, in front of the house where Andy was now sitting, same arrangement—son standing between mom and dad—only this time, DeVaughn was in a cap and gown. The cap seemed to float on top of his cloud of hair, and the robe was dark-purple with gold accents, Roman Catholic’s colors. Mr. Sills was smiling so broadly that his glasses had been lifted to eyebrow level, and Mrs. Sills, in a brightly colored patterned shirt that Andy thought was called a dashiki, held a white handkerchief in one hand. “High school graduation, 1978,” Mr. Sills had written.
There were no more pictures after that one, just a blank page, followed by a single clipping from the Examiner: Arrest Made in Murder Case.
A 19-year-old man has been charged with murder in the wake of a shooting in Kensington. DeVaughn Anthony Sills was arrested Monday in connection with the October slaying of David Cassady, who was found mortally wounded on the 200 block of East Indiana Street at 4:29 a.m., police said. Cassady, 19, had been shot once in the abdomen, and was pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital later that morning. Eyewitnesses say they saw a dark-colored sedan drive up Indiana. The driver then rolled down his window and shot Cassady, police said. They are now searching for the car’s passenger and the murder weapon.
My father, Andy thought. His knee was bouncing, faster and faster, causing the plastic-topped pages of the album to bounce against his other leg.
He turned the page. On November 26, 1980, a Common Pleas Court jury convicted DeVaughn Anthony Sills and Andrew Raymond Landis in the 1978 slaying of Kensington native David Cassady.
Andy stilled his leg and his drumming fingers and made himself get up, go to the kitchen, find a glass, and drink some water. Change the setting, change the mood, his therapist, the one he’d seen for a year, used to say. When he got stuck in the spiral of feeling insurmountably embarrassed, she’d taught him to make himself go outside if he was in, or inside if he was out, to interrupt the plummet with something as simple as making a cup of tea or spending a few minutes working on a crossword puzzle. He’d downloaded apps for Sudoku and Whirly Word on his phone and had stocked his cabinets back in Brooklyn with a dozen different varieties of herbal tea.
Back in Mr. Sills’s living room, he sat
, thinking. The windowsills were lined with potted plants, a half-dozen orchids with white and pink and purple blooms, succulents and aloe plants and cacti that Andy hoped he could convince some of the neighbors to take. He imagined his old friend cutting these stories out of the newspaper, centering them on the page, annotating them in his own handwriting—DeVaughn was all he’d put beneath the article. How had it felt to write his son’s name there, the way he had for each of the birthday shots, and the pictures of DeVaughn on his bike, at his T-ball and softball games, at a dozen birthday parties and Christmases? What had it cost him, to put those letters down on paper, underneath the stories about the awful things his “pride and joy” had done?
For years following DeVaughn’s conviction there were no pictures at all. Mr. Sills had left a few blank pages, as if he and his wife and his imprisoned son had disappeared, had fallen down into the hole of their grief and pulled the manhole cover up over the top. Andy wondered if he’d gone to visit his son and what that had been like, and whether anyone had thought to bring a camera.
When the pages started to fill again, Mrs. Sills’s hair had been cut very short and was starting to go gray. Mr. Sills had put on perhaps twenty pounds, and had shaved off the extravagant mustache he’d worn during DeVaughn’s high school years. Andy noticed the way Mrs. Sills’s mouth always turned down at the corners, where previously she’d greeted the camera with a sunny smile, and the way Mr. Sills’s eyes looked weary behind the lenses of his glasses, as he and his wife posed, arm in arm, at picnics and weddings and family reunions in Fairmount Park, at anniversaries and retirement parties and christenings. Midway through 1982, there was a picture of a niece’s Sweet Sixteen. Then another blank page. Andy’s fingers began drumming as he flipped and saw, under the plastic, not a photograph but, instead, a black-bordered program. Lavonia Rita Sills. 1942–1983. There was a picture, a black-and-white shot of just her face in profile, centered beneath the dates, and then the words Who can find a virtuous woman, for her price is far above rubies. Strength and honor are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.
Forty-one, Andy thought, flipping past another blank page. The next picture he saw was his own. It was wintertime, judging from his coat and hat, and there was a skinny twelve-year-old Andy, with two canvas bags looped, Indiana Jones–style, across his chest, grinning at the camera.
He didn’t remember Mr. Sills ever taking his picture, but here was the evidence. Andy turned the pages and watched himself grow up. High school cross-country, the first race he’d ever won, the first time he’d made the All-State team. Mr. Sills seemed to have a record of every race, and he had an entire album devoted to the Olympics, where news stories and professional photographs alternated with the snapshots he’d taken of the Acropolis and the Parthenon and Hadrian’s Arch.
Andy flipped back to the first picture, that big, hopeful smile, how skinny his chest had been, how big the bags of papers were. He’d been so lonely. He wasn’t black; he wasn’t white; he wasn’t allowed to have friends. He hadn’t had a father; he’d barely had a mother. One pair of grandparents had been evicted from his life, the other two he’d never met. What would things have been like if his father had been there? Would he have pushed himself as hard as he’d pushed, would he have made it as far? Maybe not. Or maybe he would have ended up a championship runner, only one with the good sense to have retired after Athens. He knew that he couldn’t blame an absent father for his bad choices—taking steroids, letting Rachel go. What would have happened if he’d gone to her, that terrible day that Bob Rieper had told him that his father was alive? What if he’d gone to her and asked her to call off her wedding and told her We belong together?
He found that he was pacing, and probably had been for a while, walking back and forth in Mr. Sills’s almost empty living room, imagining impossible futures. He had a life now, just a different kind of life; one where he made sure the top shelves got dusted and the bathrooms were cleaned, that Paul didn’t forget to punch his time card and that Martin, who now ran the paint department, didn’t curse in front of the customers. In this life, he’d been a good friend and a good worker and, now, a good boss. Maybe it wasn’t much, but it wasn’t nothing . . . and he could look in the mirror again.
He flipped through the albums one more time, to see if he’d missed anything . . . and, sure enough, after he’d pried two blank pages apart, he found it—a single picture with two words underneath. In the shot, his father stood beside DeVaughn, the two of them looking at the bundle in Andy Senior’s arms. Andy could just see the top of his bald, newborn head, and his little clenched fist waving like he was giving the world the black power salute. His father’s gaze was tender, his mouth open, like he’d been saying something to his friend. Mr. Sills stood beside them, one of his hands on DeVaughn’s shoulder, the other on Andy Senior’s back.
My Boys, Mr. Sills had written.
Andy’s car keys were on the spindly legged black table that was still standing by Mr. Sills’s front door. Andy took them, carried a pair of boxes out to the car, and drove as if he’d made the trip a hundred times before, from I-95 to Vine Street to Spring Garden. It took just fifteen minutes to cross the borders that divided the gentrifying neighborhoods from the edge of Center City. He parked and looked around, seeing the kind of neighborhood that was politely called “in transition,” with treatment centers and halfway houses for drunks and addicts, and then a diner that had gotten a great review in the Examiner and hosted a DJ and dancing on the weekends. There were gas stations and quick-lube spots, a little Colombian restaurant with its front painted bright red and orange advertising gourmet hot chocolate, a Spaghetti Warehouse, and a tired-looking church where people were lined up for free lunch.
Maybe he’s not home, he thought. It was a Sunday in May, a few puffy clouds drifting in the bright-blue sky, people pedaling along the bike lanes, the weather warm but not humid; a perfect day to take in a ball game or go for a stroll by the river. With his throat constricted and heavy and his heart pounding hard, Andy checked the directory and walked up two flights, then down a hallway with worn tanned carpet and walls painted institutional beige. He smelled canned soup and Bengay, and heard the sounds of televisions coming from underneath the doors, the Phillies’ play-by-play announcer, and then Marvin Gaye. “You know, we’ve got to find a way, to bring some lovin’ here today.” Your father always loved that song, his mother had once told him. Tell me, Andy had asked. Tell me what else he liked, tell me who did he love, tell me who he was. But her face had closed up, and she’d turned away and hadn’t told him anything. Not then. Not ever.
He held his breath and knocked. He won’t be home, he thought. He isn’t here. Then the door swung open, and there was his dad.
He wore a plaid shirt and khaki pants and bright white athletic socks. It was the socks that undid him, that untied the knot that had bound his heart forever. He could imagine his father, who, clearly, didn’t have much, walking to one of the stores on Chestnut Street or maybe even more than one of them, looking carefully through the merchandise, carrying his selection to the cash register, counting out exact change with dollar bills and pennies.
You can stop running now, he imagined he heard Mr. Sills saying.
“Andy,” said his father, and held out his hand.
Rachel and Andy
2015
The telephone rang, jolting me out of a dream about college, where I’d signed up for a class that I hated but had forgotten to go to the registrar’s to drop, and now it was the day of the final and I hadn’t even bought the books. Next to me was Delaney, who’d fallen asleep in what she called “the big bed” wearing nothing but a rhinestone tiara and a pair of Hello Kitty underpants, with Moochie, the little terrier we’d adopted for her birthday, asleep in the crook of her arm.
“Hello?”
“Rachel?” I sat up, with the last shreds of the dream evaporating.
“Brenda? What’s wr
ong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said indignantly. “Jesus. If I hadn’t known you for so long I’d be insulted.”
“Well, it is . . .” I glanced at the clock, preparing to scold her for how early she’d called, except it was almost nine, which was a long way from ridiculous. “Saturday!” I finally remembered.
“I know it’s Saturday. But I just got off the phone with Dante, and he wants me to come up for parents’ weekend, except I already told Laurel that I’d babysit for her, and also . . .” Her voice took on a familiar, good-natured wheedling tone. “That’s a long-ass bus ride up there.”
“That it is.” With the phone against my ear I slipped out of bed. Moochie opened one eye, considered her options, then recurled herself and went back to sleep. I walked downstairs in my white cotton nightgown, which covered me right down to my toes and had pockets. Now that I was officially man-less, I could wear whatever I wanted to bed, and cover up anything that I didn’t feel like shaving or waxing. “But it’s a pretty drive, especially when the leaves are changing.”
“Don’t give me ‘pretty drive,’ ” Brenda said. “Isn’t there some kind of fund for poor single mothers whose kids got into Ivy League colleges, and they want to go visit them, only they don’t want to take the bus?”
“I believe we call that fund ‘my credit card.’ ” I used my shoulder to keep the phone in place while I started a pot of coffee, put four slices of bread into the toaster, and wondered, again, whether it was time to repaint the first floor. I’d done the bedroom over the summer, going from the light blue that Jay had chosen to a creamy ivory, with new curtains and a new bedspread to match. New pillows, on which he’d never slept, and new sheets. Bit by bit, I was reclaiming the house for myself and the girls, turning it into an increasingly girlie little nest.
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