Fitz can’t think of anything else to say.
“Every day you don’t do something,” his father says, “it’s easier not to do it the next.”
28
“You have a kid there?” Fitz asks. They’ve been driving around more or less aimlessly while his father talks. They’ve been out as far as the airport and the megamall, and are in Highland Park now. Edgcumbe Road. They’ve just passed the golf course and the theater where Fitz and his mom sometimes go to see second-run movies.
Fitz is trying now to keep the story going, trying to keep poking and prodding, trying to keep the ball in the air. But he’s running out of gas. His father’s story is slowly working its way through his insides, making him feel something. It’s like a spiked drink, he’s afraid, it’s starting to make him woozy. Or maybe it’s more like he just swallowed some broken glass—any minute, his insides are gonna start bleeding. Later, there’ll be time to sort it out. Like one of the poems they read in Mr. Massey’s class, he can chop it up, weigh and measure every little bit, analyze and interpret it, but for now he just wants more: more details, more words, more anything. “You got a kid in St. Louis, too?”
“No,” his father says. He looks surprised. “No kid in St. Louis. No kid anywhere else.”
“And you’ve really never been married?”
“Never.”
They’re at a four-way stop, and he motions for a momish woman in a minivan to go first. He may be a terrible father, but he’s a courteous driver—Fitz has to give him that much. Go figure.
“I think maybe some people are just not cut out for that,” his father says.
“For what?”
“You know—for that life. I think I’m one of them. I guess I’ve learned that much about myself.”
Fitz wonders if it can really be that simple. Some people have a marriage allergy? Maybe. What about his mom? She went out on dates, more it seemed when Fitz was little. He can remember her primping, he can remember shaking hands with a few guys, playing the little gentleman, being interested in their cars, them being nice and kindly in an exaggerated way, trying to show his mom what good guys they were. There was Philip, who lasted longer than any of the others, who became a kind of regular around the house with his pressed jeans and full packs of sugarless gum. He was a computer expert, with a monster laptop Fitz played games on. Fitz liked him, but he stopped coming around eventually—not so much a breakup as a fade-out. His mom seemed kind of relieved. Recently Fitz even had some hopes that his mom and Mr. Boudreau, his French teacher, might hit it off on parent-teacher night. But she’s never seemed especially eager to hook up with someone. She sure isn’t one of those desperate middle-aged singles. Maybe she’s got the allergy, too? Fitz wonders if you can inherit something like that. He wonders if he is doomed to be a serial loner, too.
29
They’re still driving, on Snelling again now, passing a string of funeral homes, where they were about ten minutes ago—it’s like they’re in a holding pattern, waiting for permission to land somewhere. Fitz has a kind of movie in his head taking shape from his father’s story. The scene of his father walking out, leaving him and his mom behind—Fitz knows already it’s the one that’s going to stick with him, it’s the one he’s going to come back to and watch again and again. He can almost hear the door slam.
In a Hollywood movie, Curtis would leave, but it wouldn’t end there. There’d be another act. Later, he’d come back, and there’d be a tearful reunion. They’d both realize how stupid they’d been. But in real life—his real life—it never happened. It’s not like his father was Bogey in Casablanca either, saying goodbye for some honorable motive. It was selfish, he basically said so himself. As if copping to that wipes the slate clean. It reminds Fitz of some politician’s feeble blanket apology: sorry if I offended anyone, now let’s turn the page, let’s put this behind us. Meanwhile, whoever it is he’s cheated is like, wait a minute, not so fast.
What really bothers Fitz is how easily his father seemed to step aside. He and his mom exchanged words, okay, they got worked up and said some things, he can understand that. She tells him, get out and stay out, etc. He goes to