Fitz

by Mick Cochrane

  “About what?” Fitz asks. He doesn’t want to hear about you-kids-and-your-technology. “What did you talk about?”

  “Movies,” his father says. “Books. Anything and everything. The meaning of life. How much I hated law school. We talked about that a lot.”

  Now Maddie the waitress comes back to their booth. “What can I get you guys?” she asks.

  There’s a lot of stuff on the menu—melts and combinations, specials like walleye and bratwurst—but Fitz has zeroed in on something. He says he’ll have a deluxe burger, medium—bacon, American cheese, mayo, and sautéed onions.

  “Oh yeah,” Maddie says. She nods and smiles, as if to say, of course, what else would a cool person order? It’s stupid, but Fitz is grateful for her approval.

  His father closes his menu with a kind of emphatic slap. “The same,” he says.

  “All right,” Maddie says, “you got it,” and off she goes.

  “She was a wonder,” his father says. “Never wrote anything down either. She remembered how you liked your eggs, what kind of toast, wheat or rye, dark or light, the whole bit, what you wanted on the side. She cut tremendous pieces of pie, gave you epic scoops of ice cream. It made her happy to feed people.”

  Once again, Fitz feels sort of unsettled and impressed. His father knows his mom, that’s for sure.

  She is always happy as can be in the kitchen, making a big weekend breakfast, just like a short-order cook. Frying a pan of bacon and putting it aside. Then making eggs, scrambled for Fitz, over easy for his grandpa when he was alive, with onions and green peppers for Uncle Dunc. French toast for Caleb, whose mom doesn’t cook, who barely microwaves. Omelets, pancakes, hash browns, whatever you want, she puts it together, talking the whole time, working two or three burners, a total pro.

  Fitz has always loved the cheerful, professional way his mom puts a plate of food in front of him, with a kind of stylish pride.

  “So has it changed?” Fitz asks. “Since then?”

  His father looks around. “Not much. Same menu, same booths. Really, not a bit. Just me.

  “I feel like what’s-his-name,” his father says. “In A Christmas Carol. Visiting scenes of his happy youth.”

  “Scrooge,” Fitz says. “Ebenezer Scrooge. That’s his name.” It sounds like an accusation. Which it is.

  “Right,” his father says. He says it softly, reluctantly even. “Scrooge.” When he says it, it sounds like a confession.

  Fitz knows the story. He’s seen all the different movie versions. His mom’s favorite, naturally, is the old black-and-white one, Alastair Somebody-or-Other shivering in his nightshirt. If it’s on, she’s got to watch it. Fitz likes Bill Murray. That’s his favorite Scrooge.

  “Then who am I?” Fitz asks. “If you’re Scrooge? Tiny Tim?”

  “Oh no,” his father says. “Not Tiny Tim. No way.”

  He takes a sip of water. “You’re the ghost,” his father says. “My ghost. That’s who you are. That’s exactly who you are.”

  17

  Fitz and his father both have their mouths full of deluxe burger when all of a sudden there’s a man at their booth, a guy looming over them in a black suit.

  “Curtis?” the man says. “Curtis Powell?”

  Dude looks like serious law enforcement—white shirt, close-cropped hair, a gizmo in his ear—FBI or Homeland Security or something. In an instant, Fitz can envision a chain of shame and humiliation—handcuffs, mug shots, a holding cell, a call to his mom. So this is how it ends.

  But first his father needs to finish chewing and swallow. They’ve both just taken huge juicy bites. His father raises his hand, like he’s asking for time. Fitz sees a grease spot on his tie the size of a dime.

  It occurs to Fitz that if this guy hauls him away, he’s never going to finish his lunch. Somehow, this seems worse than any dire legal consequences. Him downtown, and his burger, more than half of it, pretty much the best burger he’s ever had, and his fries, sitting on a plate in an empty booth, getting cold, getting taken away by Maddie and then tossed. It feels tragic. To go through life with this burger unfinished. How could you not feel off balance and incomplete forever afterward?

  Finally, his father swallows. “Chip,” he says. He wipes his hand quickly on a paper napkin and extends it to the man.

  “Curtis,” the man says. “I knew it was you. You still downtown? Still with Daugherty?”

  This guy is no cop. A Bluetooth, that’s what he’s got in his ear. Just a telephone.

  “Still with Daugherty,” his father says.

  “Working downtown but coming here to the diner for lunch,” this Chip says. “Classic. That’s what it is. I love it.” He glances at Fitz.

  “Let me introduce you,” his father says. “Chip Slocum, this is Fitzgerald.”

  Fitz has wiped his chin and his hands. He’s ready. “Pleased to meet you.” He thinks he likes it that his father has gone with just the one name, like Madonna and Prince, Bono and Flea—Fitzgerald, the one and only. It makes him feels like somebody.

  He feels at a disadvantage, though, sitting down, talking up, but there’s no way to squeeze out. Turns out it doesn’t really matter. Chip is not especially interested in him. Fitz thinks he might wonder what occasion would bring two such unlikely companions together—Take an Urchin to Work Day?—but the man seems to show no curiosity whatsoever.

  “And you?” his father asks. “Still at Cooke?”

  “Yup, yup,” Chip says.

  “Business good?” his father asks. “Life good?”

  “All good,” Chip says. “No call for your expertise. Thank goodness. No offense.”

  “None taken. I’m happy to hear it.”

  “No more issues on that front,” Chip says. “Knock on wood.” He makes a show of rapping on the wood-looking edge of their table.

  His father touches his own fist to the laminate in solidarity. “That’s great,” he says.

  Fitz notices that his father’s demeanor is different now from what it’s been with him. He seems stiffer somehow, more brittle, but also less substantial, less present. It’s like he can see him fading around the edges. Like a hologram. He doesn’t like it.

  “Well, listen,” Chip says. “I’ll let you get back to your lunch. Say hello for me to your colleague. The tall fellow. And your nice assistant.”

  “Jerry,” his father says. “And Sheila. Will do. Absolutely.”

  Chip departs then, strolling toward the back of the restaurant, his head swiveling, looking to see who else he might know.

  “You his lawyer?” Fitz asks. He picks up his burger and takes a bite, a modest one.

  “I did some work for him,” his father says. “We represent his company.”

  “What did he do?” Somehow Fitz can easily imagine this guy needing to get all lawyered up, guilty of something somehow, doing a perp walk for some corporate crime. “What was the issue?”

  “Wrongful termination,” his father says.

  “He killed somebody?”

  His father laughs, emits a series of soft little syllables of amusement, for the first time today. It makes Fitz feel good, proud even, that he can make him laugh. He’s funny, he wants his father to know that about him. It’s one of his best qualities. He cracks up his mom a couple of times a day.

  “Fired somebody,” he says. “That’s what he did.”

  “You get him off?” Fitz asks.

  “It’s not like that,” his father says. “It’s civil, not criminal. And it wasn’t him personally who got sued, it was his company. The corporation.”

  “So did you get them off, the corporation?”

  “We settled.”

  “Paid ’em off.”

  “Something like that.”

  “He seems like a jerk,” Fitz says. There was something about the guy that just wasn’t trustworthy. For one thing, Chip doesn’t seem like a serious name for an adult. Plus, Fitz hates middle-aged guys with earpieces. Plus, the idea of a settlement burns him. It’s a
little too close to home.

  You can treat someone badly, then give them money, how is that okay?

  “What if they’re guilty?” Fitz asks. “The corporations you represent? What if they’re evil? What if they’re, like, terrible polluters? What if the company is spewing poison into the air, cutting down the rain forests? Or what if they discriminate? What if they treat their workers like crap? What then?”

  “If you get sued, you have the right to tell your side of the story. There are two sides to every story. You know that.”

  There are two sides to every story, Fitz’s grandpa used to tell him. And then there’s the truth.

  “I help them tell their story,” his father says. “It’s how the system operates. Somebody’s got to do it.”

  Fitz gets that. He’s not naive. He understands the system. But still. It’s disappointing. There’s a lot of stuff that’s got to be done. But you don’t have to be the one who does it. Fitz thinks of one of his mom’s favorite expressions, what she tells him when he tries to get away with something—using SparkNotes, say—because other kids do it. You’re better than that. That’s what she tells him.

  “He is a jerk,” his father says. “You got that right.”

  Fitz looks over his shoulder and sees the back of the Chipster’s bullet head a few tables away, talking in the direction of a couple of guys who already look bored and tired of him.

  “Maybe, if we’re lucky,” Fitz says, “he’ll stay away. Maybe we won’t have any more issues on that front.” He raps the tabletop with his right hand, and for the second time his father laughs.

  18

  They both order apple pie for dessert. Maddie brings it to them warm, with ice cream. The pieces are huge, tall slices of apple layered in some geologic way, crumbly stuff on top. Cinnamon, apples, brown sugar, vanilla—it may be Fitz’s favorite smell in the world. He leans over it and inhales. If this were a drug, he’d be a junkie.

  His mom bakes pies just for special occasions—Thanksgiving, Uncle Dunc’s birthday—sometimes blueberry, but usually apple, always with little pictures or messages etched into the top crust: a turkey, a heart, a smiley face.

  Fitz thanks Maddie, picks up his fork, and digs in. He finishes his pie in less than a minute. When he’s done, he feels a little out of breath. But he can’t help himself. It is awesome apple pie.

  When Maddie swings by their table to see how they’re doing, how they’re liking it, Fitz is embarrassed. His mom is always on him to slow down. He knows it’s rude to bolt down your food.

  She looks at the apple and ice cream smear on his plate. “You know what you need?” she asks.

  Fitz is afraid that she’s going to say something like “better manners.” It will kill him if she shames him.

  Maddie puts a hand on her hip and turns toward his father. His piece of pie is still more or less intact, just a couple of neat forkfuls removed from the edges. “You know what he needs, don’t you?”

  “I know.”

  She points at Fitz, a kind of Uncle Sam gesture, only infinitely cuter. “You need another piece of pie.” She consults his father again. “Am I right?” she asks. “Or am I right?”

  “You are so right,” his father says. “Right as rain.”

  “Because he’s a growing boy,” she says. “And he’s starving.”

  “We need to do something,” his father says.

  “More pie,” Maddie says. “That’s what the boy needs.”

  All of a sudden, they’re double-teaming him. They’ve formed some kind of alliance, reached an understanding, and the basis of it, the core principle, is that he, Fitz, needs more of what he loves. He feels himself blushing. He’s not really used to being the center of attention, not like this.

  A second piece of pie, in a restaurant—it just never even occurred to Fitz as a possibility. It violates some iron law, some rule so fundamental and obvious and universally accepted that it never needs to be spelled out: each diner may order one, and only one, dessert. But today that rule doesn’t apply. Today, all bets are off.

  In just a couple of minutes, Maddie is back with another piece of pie, more ice cream. “Okay, champ,” she says. “Dig in.”

  Fitz looks at his father. “You heard her,” his father says.

  It seems to Fitz now, at this moment, with his father and a pretty girl smiling at him, a gorgeous piece of apple pie in front of him, that no matter what happens to him afterward, even if he is arrested, cuffed, expelled, no matter what punishment he suffers for his crazy stunt today, no matter what, it will have been worth it.

  His father has his fork in hand. He’s doing some excavating and rearranging on his plate, but mainly he’s watching Fitz. It looks like he’s enjoying Fitz’s enjoyment, feeling his pie pleasure once removed.

  Before he starts in on his pie, he wants to tell his father something. “Fitz,” he says. “That’s what they call me.”

  19

  Fitz reaches across the table and picks up the check that Maddie left in front of his father. He calculates what would be a generous tip and pulls his father’s wallet from his hip pocket.

  He almost feels as if he should keep it hidden from his father. It’s wrong that he has it. Fitz knows that. It’s a reminder, pie or no pie, of how things stand between them.

  A wallet is personal, intimate even, and Fitz tries to respect that. There’s some credit cards in there, maybe some photographs, who knows what else, but he doesn’t look. He extracts a few bills as dispassionately as he can. For his part, his father doesn’t betray any emotion. He doesn’t look pained or outraged or violated in any way. His expression is completely neutral. Fitz wonders how you do that, imagines it must be a lawyer thing.

  Fitz drops the bills on the table. It feels good. To have the dough. To know there’s more where that came from. It’s not like when he and Caleb go out for French fries and Dr Peppers with their pockets full of change, worrying that the sales tax is going to bust them.

  Maybe this is what it feels like to be Dad. The man with the wallet. At the same time, he’s worrying about where he’s taking this show next. He’s feeling the weight of being in charge. Maybe that’s part of the dad equation, too. He’s picking up the tabs and calling the shots. He’s the man. He can see how you might love it, and also how you might get tired of it.

  He thinks about asking his father, is that what it feels like? But really, how would he know? He’s the wrong guy to ask.

  20

  Fitz excuses himself and hits the restroom. The men’s is down a long hallway in the far back of the restaurant, marked by a Ken doll stuck on the door, which Fitz thinks is a nice touch. Ken is shirtless, displaying impressive plastic pecs, sporting plaid shorts and sandals.

  While he’s washing his hands, Fitz imagines that they might become regulars here, he and his father. Maddie would remember him, the apple pie boy. They might strike up a little friendship. Why not? He looks in the mirror and fluffs his hair a little. Anything is possible.

  When Fitz comes back out, their booth is empty. There’s a guy in an apron loading their dishes into a big plastic tub. He can see the ravaged, smashed remnants of his father’s pie. His father is nowhere to be seen.

  Fitz feels a flutter of panic in his gut. All his stuff is in the car. The gun is in the car. He has his father’s wallet and phone but he let him keep his car keys. How could he be so stupid?

  He scans the place—people are eating, studying their menus, Chip is gesturing at someone in a semi-threatening way with a fork. Fitz moves quickly between the booths, stifling his urge to run, keeping himself in check. His father’s not at the front of the restaurant near the register. He’s not in the foyer.

  Fitz steps outside and looks up and down the block. The kid with his backpack is still standing there at the bus stop. He gives Fitz a look: Do I know you? Am I supposed to know you?

  Fitz goes back inside. He returns to their booth, which is clean and set up now, shiny and empty, as if they’ve never been there,
as if the lunch never happened. He feels like the sole victim in some scam or prank everyone else is in on. He feels like he’s wandered into The Twilight Zone.

  Just then Maddie the waitress comes by with a tray full of water glasses. She smiles, looking genuinely happy to see him, which is a little gift he’s too upset to appreciate right now. Then she seems to take in his distress. Her face gets serious. “You forget something?”

  “I’m looking,” he says. “I’m looking for him. Did you see him leave?”

  “Your dad,” she says, and he doesn’t contradict her. She makes a kind of thinking face. Then she brightens. “He’s on the phone,” she says. “Thataway.”

  “Thanks,” Fitz says. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Just doin’ my job,” he hears her say as he turns in the direction of the back of the restaurant.

  Sure enough. He’s standing there, hunched, turned away, a telephone receiver held tight to his ear. Fitz must have walked right by him on his way out of the men’s room. The last pay phone in America, and he’s found it.

  His father sees Fitz then. He holds the receiver away from his ear and rolls his eyes a little. He doesn’t look especially busted, not at all apologetic.

  “I thought we had a deal,” Fitz says. He hears his voice catch a little. He’s in the throes of some weird new emotion, some blend of betrayal and relief. It must be how a parent feels when a lost child has been found. You wanna hug ’em, and you wanna smack ’em.

  “Just checking my messages,” he says.

  “Right,” Fitz says. Now he’s feeling it again, something simpler, what he felt back at the park, the slow boil. “And now you’re done checking your messages. It’s time to go.”

  21

  “Just drive,” Fitz told his father when they got in the car outside the diner, and that’s what he’s doing. They’re on the River Road now, the Minneapolis side, following the curves of the Mississippi, seeing the joggers and walkers and bikers on the path.