Wilco, the Replacements, Bob Marley.
“I’m in a band, you know,” Fitz says.
“Really,” his father says.
“Really.”
“What’s it called?”
“Creative Destruction.” Fitz and Caleb went around and around trying to come up with a name. At one point, they had more than a hundred possibilities. Creative Destruction was something Fitz heard on the radio. He didn’t know what it meant, but he liked the sound of it. Caleb had been holding out for Osgood-Schlatter, which is a disease but sounds like a person. Nora Flynn was with them after school that day in the commons. They’d been trying to recruit her to sing with them, so when she said she liked “Creative Destruction,” that sealed it.
“Cool,” his father says. Fitz looks at him. Is he humoring him? Being smart? Yanking his chain—like Dominic at the playground? Fitz has no idea. He can’t read him. He regrets telling him that much.
“Yeah,” Fitz says. “Groovy.”
Fitz wonders if his father even likes his music all that much. Probably these CDs are just fashionable props, like his briefcase, a bunch of titles recommended in some slick men’s magazine.
Fitz slides the Dinah Washington out of its sleeve. He’s heard the name, probably from Caleb, the music encyclopedia. He slips it into the player, and the first track starts just as they see the first sign for the zoo. There’s some strings, then Dinah starts singing, belting it out in this amazing voice: “What a difference a day makes/Twenty-four little hours.”
8
“Pull over,” Fitz tells his father.
They’re on the park grounds now, just passing the Frog Pond. Fitz can see the dome of the conservatory, a huge, humid greenhouse full of exotic flowers, shrubs, ferns, and even trees. Fitz thinks of his mom—the Como Conservatory is one of her favorite places in the world. They’ve been visiting together for years: even if they come to the park for the animals or the rides, they usually stop in at least, pay a quick visit. She loves it, and he endures it for her sake. She can look at orchids forever, and Fitz sort of understands—here, she is like how he and Caleb are at the music store. If you know the stuff, flowers or guitars, it doesn’t matter, if you love them, they are all fascinating and beautiful, the colors and shapes and smells of them. He and his mom usually talk a little about what they’re looking at, take turns playing the teacher, so now his mom knows the difference between a Les Paul and a Strat, and Fitz has learned some basic flower names. Fitz has, though he would never admit it, grown especially fond of the crooked little bonsais, the Japanese trees in pots, which seem to him to have distinctive personalities, some of them looking feisty and defiant, others sad and apologetic.
Where does a guy like his father go to lose himself? Fitz wonders. What does he look at to cheer himself up? What makes his tail wag? Sports cars, maybe? Italian suits? Fancy watches? Fitz has no idea.
His father slows the car down a little, but he doesn’t stop.
“I said, pull over.” Fitz raises the gun again. “Now.” His father covers the brake, checks his mirror, and parks at the curb. He glances at Fitz then, as if for his approval: Fitz feels like the most hard-core driving instructor in the history of the world. The gun, it occurs to Fitz, is just like the conch, the shell that the wild pack of boys in Lord of the Flies uses in their councils—as long as you’re holding it, people listen to you. Fitz holds it now, and he’s not about to let it go.
“Okay,” Fitz says. “Turn the car off and hand me the keys.”
His father obeys. He takes the keys from the ignition and holds them out in the palm of his hand. Fitz grabs them and pockets them with his left hand, the gun in his right hand, at his hip.
His father is looking at Fitz now in a way that seems almost clinical, studying him, as if Fitz is a client or even a patient—he’s silently taking him in, taking his measure, forming some kind of judgment or diagnosis.
“So,” his father says. “What’s your favorite subject?” He sounds like a school nurse making small talk while she’s preparing to take out a sliver, that same tone of voice, kindly in a sort of abstracted, generic way. It’s how you talk if you get paid to be nice, if you don’t want to scare