Fitz Read online

  They stop at a red light, and Fitz’s father glances over at him. “So what do you have in mind? The park?” He looks worried. He probably thinks Fitz is going to shoot him there and leave his body in the shrubbery for some jogger to discover. Like something from a mob movie, some poor loser gets driven to a desolate location and then whacked. Fine, Fitz thinks. Let him stew. Let his lousy life pass before his eyes.

  But what Fitz has in mind is a different kind of movie, a movie he’s been watching in his head. In this movie, there’s no dialogue, just Fitz and his father together, doing things. It’s a montage, snippets and glimpses of a shared life. They’re fishing; they’re washing a car; they’re shooting hoops. Some of the images don’t even make sense, at least not for Fitz—he’s never had any special love of basketball, for one thing. Maybe it’s just the best his imagination can do: probably these are scenes he’s cribbed from the movies or other kids’ lives. Somehow the particulars don’t seem to matter all that much. What matters is getting what he’s owed.

  A year ago, Fitz’s mom received a good-sized check from the school where she works as a teacher’s aide: it was to make up for a pay raise she was supposed to have gotten months before. Instead of getting a little bit every two weeks, she got it all at once, a big lump of money. Back pay, that’s what it was. Maybe that’s what Fitz wants: a lump sum of his father’s time and attention. Back pay.

  “First, we’re gonna check out the zoo,” Fitz says.

  “Sure,” his father says. “Check out the zoo.”

  Maybe his father thinks he’s kidding, but he’s not. The zoo is one of his favorite places in the world. His mom used to take Fitz to the Como Zoo all the time when he was little, probably because it was free. There were animals there he grew to love—the sea lions, the bison, all the cats, especially the snow leopard. He loved the animals not as species but as individuals—that gorilla, the young male, the shy one; Buzz, the polar bear, and his brother, Neil. He didn’t just love the charismatic mammals: he loved amphibians and reptiles, too, he loved animals that were scaly and prickly, bug-eyed and menacing. Animals other kids thought were gross or uninteresting, the sloth, say, Fitz thought were simply misunderstood, as deserving of fans as their cuter fellow creatures.

  “The zoo even open today?”

  Fitz is still holding the CD wallet. He flips through to see what else his father listens to: the Clash, Dinah Washington, Lucinda Williams, 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 someone you know you’re going to hurt.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Fitz says. “What’s my favorite subject?”

  “I’m just asking.”

  Fitz feels another wave of anger wash over him. His father’s composure, his professional cool, his small talk, here and now, with a gun in his face—it’s making him crazy. “What was yours? Life-wrecking? Is that a subject? I’m just asking.”

  His father leans away from Fitz, away from the heat of his outburst. It’s how people respond to the scarily inappropriate. It’s the posture of whoa, where’s that coming from?

  But Fitz doesn’t feel like backing off. “You wanna bond now?” he asks. “Is that the idea?”

  “It’s never too late,” his father says.

  “Really?” Fitz says. “Is that what you think? You sure about that? Never too late? Really? Never? Never?”

  His father says nothing. His lips twitch and retract a little—it’s the beginnings of a smile or a smirk. He shows his perfect teeth.

  Fitz feels the sweaty weight of the gun in his hand. “What if I knock that stupid grin off your face?” Fitz says. He raises his left hand, a tight fist now, as if to deliver a backhanded blow. His father flinches.

  “We’re bonding now,” Fitz says. “Don’t you think? We’re bonding like crazy. We’re having us some special times, wouldn’t you say so?”

 
His father’s hair is messed up now. There’s a swatch that’s come unmoussed from the top of his head. It’s sticking up, like a little shaft of wheat. He exhales. It was a scared and nervous smile, Fitz realizes.

  “I understand why you hate me,” his father says quietly. “I get it.”

  “Out of the car,” Fitz tells him. He doesn’t want to have this conversation. Being understood is not on the agenda, not now, not by this guy.

  They step out and slam their doors at the same time. It’s like they’re a couple of cops on a call. Behind the conservatory, the zoo itself is out of sight, but Fitz can smell it, that familiar animal smell. Fitz can hear what sounds like a mower in the distance, but there’s no one around. After some rain the week before, the grass is greening up nicely. The yellow heads of dandelions are popping up.

  Fitz thinks he should maybe lock the car, but he doesn’t want to have to fish in his pocket for the keys and mess around with the buttons. He steps around the back of the car, comes up on the driver’s side, and stops just a couple of paces from his father.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Fitz says. He motions with his gun. He looks over his shoulder—there’s no one in sight.

  Fitz sees his father glance at his suit coat hanging in the back of the car, his briefcase resting on the seat.

  “You’re not going to need that,” Fitz says.

  “Sure,” his father says. “Of course not.” He stands there, looking awkward, waggling his arms a little, sneaking another glance toward the backseat.

  Fitz realizes that his father must feel naked—without his phone, his keys, his wallet, without his standard props, his usual gear, without his suit jacket and briefcase. Fitz imagines going further: making him take off his watch, his silk tie, his crisp white shirt. He imagines stripping him to his shorts, leaving him to wander the park grounds in his boxers. Would he even know who he was?

  “Come on,” Fitz tells him. “Forward march.”

  Fitz directs his father to head back on the access road toward the Frog Pond. They walk, and Fitz thinks about what his father told him in the car. I understand why you hate me. It bothers him. Hate is just not a word Fitz would usually associate with himself.

  During Spirit Week at school, they were supposed to work up a rabid hatred for their oldest football rival. There were slogans and posters and a lumpy dummy wearing their opponents’ jersey hanging in the commons that kids would elbow as they walked by. As if the other guys were real enemies and not just kids like them who happened to live in a different district. It was stupid and a little frightening. In Mr. Massey’s class, they’d been reading 1984, but no one else seemed to make the connection. It was just like Hate Week. Same thing exactly. At the Friday pep rally, everyone got all whipped up, even the teachers, especially the teachers. Fitz remembers looking around and seeing Mr. Weber, a harmless, chalk-stained guy who taught geometry, King of the Sweater Vest—his face was all red from shouting, he was inflamed with it, he was on fire. At the time, Fitz judged Mr. Weber: to be so hateful was unattractive. Fitz must have thought he was somehow exempt from that kind of thing, above it.

  “Walk toward the water,” Fitz tells his father, and he does as he’s told. Steps over the curb onto the grass, walks along at a nice clip, not too fast, not too slow, Fitz following behind, his eyes on the back of his father’s head, the gun now tucked in the pouch of his sweatshirt. If his father takes off running, if he makes a break for it, Fitz wonders, can he pull the trigger? Does he have it in him?

  They stop at the water’s edge, under the cover of a couple of trees. It would be a good spot for a picnic. There are little ripples in the water, fish coming up to the surface to feed on insects. Fitz can see the granite bullfrog in the middle of the pond, sitting on his concrete slab, looking, as he always does to him, Buddha-like, serenely calm and self-contained. Fitz used to skip rocks at him. Now the bullfrog looks on, a silent witness to the drama being played out in front of him: a boy, a gun, and a man, two wildly beating human hearts.

  They stand together for a moment, not speaking, hypnotized a little maybe by the water, feeling it, thinking their own thoughts. And then his father makes a slow pivot with his shiny black shoe, starts to execute an about-face.

  “Don’t,” Fitz tells him. “Don’t turn around. I don’t want to see your face.” He takes the gun from his sweatshirt.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way,” his father says. “We should have talked a long time ago. I know. It’s all my fault. I don’t know if I can make it up to you. But I can try. Let me try. Give me a chance. That’s all I’m asking. A chance.”

  The possibility that now—now!—his father might be offering what he’s longed for his whole life—it’s too much to bear. It’s not to be endured. Fitz has heard that a starving man offered a big meal will choke on it. What you most need, too much, too late, it could kill you. It makes perfect sense to Fitz. Of course.

  “I promise,” his father says. “I swear to God.”

  Promise? What good is a promise made at gunpoint? Fitz knows if they’re scared enough, if they’re terrified, people will confess to anything, promise anything.

  “Shut it,” Fitz says. “Shut your lying mouth.”

  “Hurting me,” his father says, “isn’t going to make you feel any better, Fitzgerald.”

  Now, now Fitz feels it, the real thing, no rah-rah, pep rally synthetic. The genuine article. Hate. He can feel it, he can practically hear it sizzling in his blood. He hates his father’s know-it-all psychology. He hates his white shirt and the smell of his cologne. He hates that he is still calling him Fitzgerald, and he hates that even now, he’s still talking, still pleading, still litigating. And deep down, probably, Fitz knows his father is right, and that makes him hate him even more.

  “Shut up,” Fitz says.

  “Listen,” his father says.

  “I don’t want to listen to you.” Fitz raises his arm and points the gun at his father’s head. “I want you to shut up.”

  Fitz can imagine it. Not just see it but feel it. A loud report, the gun’s kickback, this man crumpling, blood on his beautiful white shirt.

  It sickens him. He’s always been squeamish. Blood, cuts, wounds, his own or in movies, it turns his stomach. He has to look away. In his whole life, Fitz has been in all of one fight, a stupid altercation over a Pokémon card with a kid from down the street, and when Stuey first shoved and then punched him in the stomach, he hardly fought back—the kid was an idiot, but Fitz didn’t want to hurt him.

  Killer instinct? He doesn’t have it. As an assassin, he’s a complete failure.

  “Bang,” Fitz hears himself say. “Bang-bang.”

  9

  The world seems to resume now, at full speed. For a moment, it slowed and then stopped. Fitz has almost done something, but the world hasn’t noticed. Fish are still feeding in the pond. The lawn mower is still rumbling in the distance. There’s a woodpecker somewhere jackhammering a tree. The Buddha-bullfrog is still looking on.

  His father has turned around, and Fitz is down now, on one knee. He can’t remember dropping, but here he is, kneeling. It feels like a good, solid position. He feels anchored, grounded. The gun is still in his hand, he’s lowered it, but it’s at his side, pointed down.

  His heart is pounding, his hair is wet with sweat, but he feels better somehow. He feels as if he’s thrown up, emptied himself, expelled something poisonous. The heat of his hatred seems to have been short-lived, a two-minute hate at best.

  What comes next? Fitz thinks. After hate?

  When it occurs to Fitz that this could be the germ of a song (“What comes after the hate?/Something something too late?”), that’s when he realizes he must be okay. The demon who possessed him must have departed, he understands, left him, like a fever, sweating and weak and a little disoriented but restored. He is himself again.

  “Okay,” his father says. His tie is askew, his belt buckle off-center. He makes a cautious palms-out gesture, just the way you show a s
trange dog you mean no harm. He looks vulnerable, defenseless, he looks suddenly unarmed, unprotected, uneverythinged.

  Something has passed between them, they’ve shared something, whatever it is, something that can never be put into words. Fitz knows he will never really write a song about it. There’s no word for what just happened, and nothing rhymes with it.

  “So,” his father says. He looks as if he’s aged somehow from the time he stepped out of his building, lost some of that youthful buoyancy. He doesn’t look like a tennis champion now. He doesn’t look like an ace litigator. He looks like, like what?

  “So,” his father says again. “Now what?”

  A TALE OF LOVE AND WAR

  10

  “So, Curtis,” Fitz says. It’s easier than he thought to call his father by his first name. But why not? It’s a little late to be worrying about social niceties. “You’re not grossed out, are you?”

  They’re holding paper cones full of diced fish parts. Below them is a rowdy pack of sea lions jostling each other, trying to establish a position, barking up at them.

  Back at the Frog Pond, they reached an understanding. Fitz agreed to put the gun away, his father promised to be an agreeable companion, no back talk. No shooting, no bolting, that’s their deal.

  “No,” his father says. “I’m not grossed out.” He’s unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and turned up the sleeves and has been looking into his cup. It is a smelly, fish-flavor snow cone, full of scaly chunks, some eyeballs, too. He gives it a little shake. But he hasn’t picked up anything yet.

  Fitz has already tossed off almost half of his, aiming for one sea lion in particular on the periphery, a teenager, Fitz imagines, not so fat, a little less pushy. So far Fitz has made two successful long throws that have carried over the main gang and landed directly in this fellow’s mouth. Fitz feels a connection with him, like they’re buddies, a kind of team.