I’m wearing a little cap thing.”
“With a blue ribbon on it.”
“You know that picture.”
“I know it.”
“Someone’s holding me in that picture. You can see his hands.”
His father sets his bottle of water on the ground. He holds his hands out in front of him, palms up. Just the way you would cradle a newborn, his long fingers extended, his right hand raised slightly to support the head. Except that his hands are empty. Fitz and his father stare into those empty hands, hands holding nothing, holding an invisible baby, holding the baby that Fitz used to be. Fitz can almost, but not quite, see his baby self.
Those hands, his father’s empty hands—they may be the saddest thing Fitz has ever seen. But for the first time today, the first time ever, Fitz knows it—he feels it. This is his father.
13
They’re still sitting on their bench. The sun is higher in the sky now. It’s warming up. If Fitz didn’t have a gun stuck in his waistband, he’d think about pulling off his sweatshirt. His father has picked up his bottle of water, and they’ve each been sipping, listening to the growl and whine of construction, thinking their own thoughts.
“She says you were young and foolish,” Fitz says at last. “Young and foolish. Like it was the name of a soap opera.”
“The Young and the Foolish.”
“Were you?”
“Oh yes,” his father says. “I was. I’ll speak for myself. I had a starring role in that show.”
Fitz wants more but isn’t quite sure how to draw it out. He knows that stories can be cautious animals, like chipmunks or rabbits, and Fitz doesn’t want to scare this one away. He decides just to hold still, wait.
“It’s none of my business, I know,” his father says. “I have no right to ask. But I wonder if you have a girl. You don’t have to answer.”
Fitz thinks about Nora. He actually had a conversation with her after school the day before. Supposedly about singing in the band now that the spring musical was done. He didn’t tell her that whenever he heard her sing, no matter what it was—could be a spiritual, could be a corny show tune—he felt something. Her voice seemed to know things—there were secrets in it. Instead he just handed her a blues mix Caleb had burned for her and told her a little bit about the singers on it—Etta James, Ruth Brown, Koko Taylor. Just some secondhand tidbits and anecdotes he’d picked up from Caleb. But Nora was into it. She wanted to know more. She listened so intently—forehead scrunched in concentration, nodding as he talked, as if she were keeping the beat—it was a little unnerving. But he liked it. It made him feel interesting. Talking to Nora, he didn’t feel adrift. He felt if only she’d listen to him long enough, he might figure out who he was.
“Not really,” Fitz says.
“But there’s someone. Maybe someone.”
“Well sure, maybe,” Fitz says. He feels himself starting to blush. “And your point?”
“My point is,” his father says, “I wonder if this girl, this maybe girl, if she’s ever made you foolish.”
Nora is his maybe girl. Has she made him foolish? Not much. Not unless it’s foolish to stare at the back of her head in biology class, to follow the ever-changing configurations of her amazing red hair, the complicated female business of holding it in place with an arsenal of bands, ties, and clips. Not unless it’s foolish to study her picture in all his yearbooks, all the way back to elementary school, to follow her year-by-year transformation from gawky little girl into her current self. To memorize her schedule so that he can position himself at strategic locations throughout the school where she passes by. To imagine that they might someday study biology together, just the two of them. To hope. Is that foolish?
Because they have bottles in their hands, Fitz feels like there might be some kind of bar-room camaraderie between them, a couple of guys knocking a few back and talking about women. He almost says something about Nora. Almost. But stops himself.
Because he doesn’t know this guy, not really. Maybe he was in the delivery room. So was the doctor. What does that prove? Anybody can hold a baby.
“I want to talk about you,” Fitz says. He tries to put an edge back in his voice. “Your foolishness, not mine.”
“Okay,” his father says. “Sure.”
“Did you guys, like, go out on dates? You and my mom?”
“Sure we did,” his