come on,’ she said. ‘Cut the crap. You can’t have it both ways.’ She said something about stepping up, being a man.”
Yes, Fitz thinks. Yes! It’s about time. Step the hell up.
“I guess I raised my voice then,” his father says. “I just wanted to defend myself. Annie was being unfair. I can’t even remember what it was I said. I was upset. Doesn’t matter. It was loud, it was angry. The pizza box got knocked on the floor. The baby was still in his seat, right there on the couch between us. He startled. He started crying.”
“That was me,” Fitz says. “The crying baby.” He feels like he needs to remind his father. This story—it’s not all about him.
“You,” his father says. “You started crying.”
And Fitz isn’t stupid. The pizza box didn’t knock itself on the floor. Who’s he trying to kid?
“Annie snatched you up in a flash. Held you close and just like that, you stopped crying. But your face was still beet red. You gave me a look. As if to say, what are you doing here? As if to say, get lost. That’s just what you seemed to be saying. You are not needed here. I belong to her, not you. You’re the problem. You’re unnecessary.”
Of course, Fitz feels like saying. Who needs a father?
“Annie told me that it would be best if I would leave. Best for her. Best for you. Best for everyone.”
“So that’s when you walked out.”
“Stepped back,” his father says. “That’s what I thought I was doing. Just for the moment, like a time-out. A cooling-off period.”
“Stepped back?” Fitz says. Can he hear himself?
“Annie told me that it would be better for all of us,” his father says.
“Better for you,” Fitz says quietly.
“I know how it must sound,” his father says. “But it was temporary, that’s what I thought at the time. That’s what I told myself.”
The rest of the story is pretty much what Mr. Massey calls denouement, falling action. After Curtis left town, Annie moved back in with Grandpa John and Uncle Dunc. Fitz knows things had been testy at home during her teenage years—back then his mom had a wild side—which is one reason she moved out in the first place. But now, they must have come together, because that’s what you do, that’s how family works.
As soon as he got to St. Louis, his father sent a check.
“I had no intention of being a deadbeat,” he says.
Annie mailed him back a polite thank-you note. After that, he sent money every month, an amount that struck him as generous and gradually increased over the years. More at Christmas and around his birthday and at the beginning of each school year.
“While you were gone,” Fitz asks, “did you think about us? Did you think about me?”
“Of course,” he says. “Of course I did.” Those first years, he says, he was working long hours, twelve, fourteen, even sixteen hours a day, living like a monk in a tiny apartment, but still, he would remember that baby smell, the way the baby threw his arms over his head after a feeding, milk-drunk. He hoped he was sleeping better.
“I called a few times,” he says. It was awkward. Formal and polite. Annie thanked him for the checks, and he told her she was welcome, it was nothing. He asked how the baby was doing, and she said fine. She said everything was fine, and it was better this way. He agreed, and she agreed with his agreement. It was easier to believe her. Easier just to write a check, to believe he was doing the right thing.
When he came back to town once, he stopped by the house. He brought some flowers and a teddy bear. Her father was home, and he did not invite him in. “He’d had a few drinks,” his father said. “He said that Annie wasn’t home. He said that I wasn’t welcome there. Told me what I could do with the flowers. I chose not to get into it with him. I called and left messages, but Annie didn’t call back.”
One day followed the next. It’s just the way it is. His clerkship ended, and he took a job with one of the largest firms in St. Louis.
“Weeks passed,” he say. “Months, years. I made partner. I thought about reconnecting, getting acquainted. I thought about it a lot.”
“But you didn’t do it,” Fitz says.
“No,” his father says. “I didn’t do it.”
They’re both silent for a moment. For now,