Fitz Read online

  “Five minutes.”

  “What about me?” Fitz asks. “You crack a window and leave me in the car like a dog?”

  “No,” his father tells him. “No, no, no. Of course not. You come along with me. I can show you around. After that, I’m all yours.”

  “Sure,” Fitz says. “Five minutes.” His father’s face brightens. He looks as happy as he has all day. Fitz really has done him a favor. It’s just not the one he wanted.

  25

  The firm of Plunkett and Daugherty takes up the entire twelfth floor of its building. They enter through two heavy, carved wooden doors, church doors. In the reception area, there are plants, muted abstract oil paintings on the wall, leather chairs, architectural magazines fanned out on a coffee table.

  Here, Fitz feels dirty and disreputable, unkempt and unwashed. With his backpack slung over his shoulder, he feels homeless, a guy toting his belongings with him wherever he goes. In the car, back in the parking ramp, his father straightened his tie and fixed his hair in the rearview mirror. He put on his suit jacket, and now, fully wardrobed in his lawyer getup, he seems completely at ease.

  The receptionist is a young woman in a black blouse wearing a headset, her hair pulled back austerely in a bunnish configuration. “Hello, Mr. Powell,” she says. She pushes a button in front of her. “Plunkett and Daugherty,” she says. “How may I direct your call?”

  Fitz’s father gives her a little wave and motions to the left, this way. Fitz follows him down a long hallway, past offices, some with their doors open. He catches a glimpse of a silver-haired man in a bow tie and suspenders talking on the phone—he looks like the popcorn guy. They pass a kitchenette smelling of garlic, a little like his mom’s homemade red sauce.

  His father pauses then and opens a door on the left. This is his office, his natural habitat, his lawyer lair. It’s more modest than Fitz imagined. He’s been picturing his father seated in some kind of padded, spinning leather throne, his desk ornate and expansive, the kind of place where sinister moguls in movies devise their evil plans. In fact, the office is neat—tasteful and understated.

  There are framed diplomas on the wall and a painting of a sailboat. On the desk, there’s a computer monitor, a calendar, a leather cup full of pens. There’s a tall bookcase full of legal volumes, a credenza with a neat stack of file folders on it. No souvenirs, no knickknacks. No photographs. Nothing that implicates him in the life of another human being.

  Fitz’s father stands at his desk and pushes a couple of buttons on his phone. He picks up a pen and makes a note on his calendar. His face takes on that half-abstracted, mildly impatient look people get when they listen to a recorded message.

  His mom’s space at her school—it’s not quite an office, a kind of cubby really, just a desk and bulletin board in the back of a classroom—is full of personal stuff, most of it Fitz-related: primitive animal drawings he made back in elementary school; a full set of his school photos, before and after braces, his hair changing gradually, growing out from a buzz cut to its current style, Sgt. Pepper–era Beatles; a flyer for a coffeehouse gig that Fitz and Caleb were going to play except the place closed down first. It’s almost embarrassing. Like a museum exhibit: Fitz Through the Ages. But really, if it all disappeared somehow, if he ever came in and discovered that she’d remodeled and upgraded, replaced his ragged art with some framed sailboats, it would be upsetting, more than upsetting, it would be wrong.

  Fitz wonders if his father’s apartment looks like this on the inside. Generically neat and professional, like something from one of those magazines in the lobby. Not like the mess that’s always fermenting at his house. The dining room table full of Fitz’s schoolbooks—Homework Central, his mom calls it—alongside her latest school project—construction paper and stencils, glue and glitter. The kitchen counter piled high with secondhand books from the latest library sale. The fridge entirely covered with magneted stuff, a crazy paper tree in full bloom: report cards, school notices, a snapshot of Uncle Dunc with a monster muskie he landed years ago, pictures from newspapers and magazines Fitz and his mom have cut out and posted over the years for no apparent reason—B.B. King, Kaiser Wilhelm, Toni Morrison.

  A woman comes into the room. “There you are,” she says. She’s aiming for his father but pauses when she notices Fitz, who is just sort of standing there, lurking.

  “My name is Sheila,” she says. She says this toward Fitz, in his general direction. He recognizes her name. It’s the woman that Chip at the diner wanted his father to greet. She’s older than Fitz expects an assistant to be, not old-old but older than his father. She looks like a fifth-grade teacher, a nice one.

  Fitz expects his father to come in at this point, but there’s an awkward pause. For a moment, Fitz thinks his father is going to deny any knowledge of him, act like Fitz just followed him into the office, a stray. But then he speaks up. “And this,” he says, pausing just a beat, “is Fitz.”

  In his father’s mouth, his name sounds good. He hasn’t always loved his name—he downright hates being Fitzgerald on all the official class rosters—but even corrected, reduced to a single memorable syllable, it sometimes seems too odd. He is always the only one. But now, when his father says it, it has a certain dignity. Right now, it makes him glad, even proud, to be Fitz.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she says. She smiles. She looks genuinely pleased. If she is repulsed or frightened by his grubby self, she doesn’t show it.

  She turns to his father then. “This has all the changes,” she says, and hands a sheaf of papers to him.

  His father stands there reading, turning the long legal sheets, making little sounds of approval, Sheila watching him read. There are little arrowed transparent thingies sticking out between the pages, marking the spots, Fitz supposes, where he’s supposed to sign.

  Fitz walks over to the window. It’s an amazing view. He can see people on the sidewalks below. From this distance, they look like miniatures, like toys—cute little people going about their little lives. He remembers a story Caleb told him once about a friend of his who worked as a salad boy at a downtown hotel and used to go up on the roof late at night and throw vegetables at pedestrians—two, three blocks away, some guy would get nailed with a cherry tomato and have no idea where it came from. Now, standing here and looking down at the world, Fitz can maybe understand the urge. If he had an open window and some veggies at hand, no telling what he might do.

  Two blocks away he can see the top of a metro bus making a wide turn. It’s one of the new green buses, just like the one he boarded this morning. It’s hard for Fitz to believe that it was only hours ago. It seems like that was another year, another lifetime. In a space between two other buildings, he can see the Mississippi again. It’s the third or fourth time he’s seen it today. Every time, it looks different. It changes color, like a mood ring. Now the sky is getting overcast, and the water looks gray.

  Across the river is his house, his neighborhood, his life. Somewhere over there, his mom is working. Caleb is at school, in sixth-period study hall now, a little annoyed with Fitz probably for his no-show.

  He can almost imagine himself there, too. Across the river. Going about his business. Some other version of himself, not his gun-toting, outlaw self—his everyday self, his law-abiding, rule-respecting, good-kid, low-maintenance self. Yesterday, that kid was sitting at a desk, doing his homework, following directions. And tomorrow? Is he going to step back into that life as if nothing happened? It doesn’t seem possible.

  “Okay,” his father says. “Our work here is done.”

  Sheila’s got the papers back in hand now, she’s clutching them. “Nice to meet you,” she says to Fitz. “Enjoy your day.”

  26

  Back in the elevator with his father and a couple of other well-dressed business types—a man and a woman, each with leather bags, facing the same direction, watching the numbers above the door—Fitz feels different. Despite his jeans and sweatshirt, he feels professional, imp
ortant even. He must be breathing in some secondhand confidence. His father looks pretty pleased. He’s not literally whistling, but he may as well be: he has that kind of self-satisfied air. Fitz can hardly blame him. It’s good to be him. A guy with his name on the door and a personal assistant. A guy who can sign his name and make something happen. It occurs to Fitz that this place is his father’s stage, it’s where he performs. He must feel like himself here, only bigger maybe.

  They step out of the elevator into the lobby. “So what was that about?” Fitz asks. “Back in the office. The thing you signed.”

  “You really wanna know?”

  “Yeah,” Fitz says. “I wanna know.”

  “A motion,” his father says. “That’s what I had to sign. A motion to compel interrogatories.”

  “What does that do?”

  “It’s part of the discovery process,” his father says. “Before we go to trial, there are some things we need to know.”

  That phrase, discovery process—it registers with Fitz. He likes the sound of it. “Questions you want answered.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So this stuff that your guy—”

  His father corrects him. “Our client.”

  “Stuff your client needs to know. Stuff you need to know because, like you said, you have to tell his story.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the other guys, what do you call them?” They push through the revolving doors, his father in the lead, so Fitz has to wait to hear his response.

  “Plaintiffs.”

  “Plaintiffs. They gotta tell you, right? They gotta answer your questions. You’re compelling them.”

  “The judge will—we hope—but sure, that’s how it works.”

  “Under oath?”

  “Yep. Sworn statements.”

  “Because your client needs to know the truth. Has a right to know, isn’t that so?”

  They’re on the sidewalk now, headed for the ramp. Maybe his father is surprised by Fitz’s sudden interest in the workings of the justice system, by his passion for his case. But that’s not it. That’s not where he’s going with this.

  Fitz wants his own discovery process. He has some questions he wants answered. When they’re back in the car, his father’s jacket hung up, Fitz’s backpack positioned on his lap, seat belts buckled, that’s when Fitz says what’s on his mind.

  “You’re all mine now, right?” he says. “That’s what you said. If I did what you wanted. If I did you that big favor. Which I did.”

  “Okay,” his father says. He says it slowly, the drawn-out anticipation of something crazy.

  “I just want you to answer some more questions,” Fitz says. “That’s all. I wanna do the interrogatory thing. With you.”

  Fitz has enough questions to fill up one of those long legal sheets. He could go and on.

  “Questions,” his father says. “Like?”

  “Like, what happened? With you and Mom? With you and me.”

  Out of nowhere, Fitz feels himself choke up. He doesn’t think his father notices, but it’s those words, simple as that, you and me. The two of them stuck together like that. He turns away, looks out the window. He can’t cave now. He didn’t come all this way to go soft and blubber.

  He can find his edge. He touches his backpack on his lap, feels the hard outline of the gun. He can compel. He remembers when he got in the car that morning, all snarly and full of attitude, his father thinking he was getting jacked.

  “Come on,” Fitz says. “One day you’re thinking there’s no one like her, and next thing, you’re mailing it in from St. Louis. What’s up with that? Something happened. Tell me what happened. That’s all I’m asking.”

  His father’s hand is on the shift but he hasn’t put the car in gear.

  “I wanna hear it,” Fitz says. “The whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

  “All right,” his father says. “You wanna hear about that? Fine. I can tell you that story.”

  27

  “You were a good baby, a beautiful baby,” that’s how he starts. That’s his once-upon-a-time. He says that Fitz was healthy, bright-eyed, curious. He had amazing blue eyes. It’s just that he didn’t sleep, at least not for long stretches. Two hours max, that’s how long he’d stay down, often less than that, and then he’d be wide awake, demanding attention. Sometimes he’d be down for just a few minutes, then go off like a fire alarm, crying so hard that his face, even his head, turned red. Singing, rocking, jostling, walking—nothing seemed to help.

  Annie was beyond exhausted, his father tells Fitz. “She was sleep-deprived. People say the words, but the real thing, it’s hard to comprehend. How bad it is.”

  “Like torture,” Fitz says.

  “Exactly,” his father says.

  She wasn’t getting a lot of help either. Her brother came over when he could. He had a good heart and a talent for goofy faces, but he was a teenager, his real world was somewhere else—the next date-dance, homework, hockey practice. One of her girlfriends from the diner used to stop by. But just like Dunc, she had a life outside of Annie’s apartment.

  “Annie never asked her dad to help, and he never offered,” his father says.

  Fitz could believe it. His grandpa was old-school. He couldn’t imagine that he’d do diapers. You weren’t going to catch him warming a bottle. From listening to his mom and uncle talk, Fitz could tell that his parenting style, if that’s what you’d call it, wasn’t suited for babies. He had the no-nonsense manner of an Army sergeant, which is what he’d been. They used to hold out their plates and he’d scoop food onto them. He called washing dishes KP. He wrote their names on cups and on every article of their clothing. Fitz knew that wouldn’t work with a baby. Babies didn’t care about keeping everything shipshape; they didn’t come with a field manual; they showed no respect for standard operating procedure.

  “What about you?” Fitz asks. “Were you still going out?”

  “There’s no going out with a baby,” his father tells him. He says that he would stop by every couple of days, usually in the early evening before heading off to the library to study. He was trying his best to keep his head above water academically. He had finals and then, after that, the bar exam. He was sending out résumés. Still, he wanted to do the right thing.

  But the baby scared him a little. He was so small, so delicate—so alien somehow. He’d hold him, but as often as not, as soon as he picked him up, the baby’s lips would quiver and he’d start to cry. He was nervous and self-conscious, Annie watching his every move.

  “I felt so awkward,” his father says. “Totally inept. I had no real experience with babies.”

  Fitz imagines he’d never been really bad at anything before. He probably never received a failing grade in his life. Welcome to the human race—that’s something his mom likes to say.

  “I’d fumble with something, forget to support the head, and then Annie would step in. ‘Here,’ she’d say, ‘let me take him,’ and I’d hand you off.

  “Back at school, in my study carrel,” his father says, “things made sense. There were precedents, rules of evidence. There was a sense of order.” He didn’t love it, but he could do it. He could read through a case and identify the issues. More and more, he liked to argue, he enjoyed the back and forth, the give and take. Because he’d confided the fact of his fatherhood to only a single classmate, his study partner, Rory, he was able to keep it walled off, hidden away in a kind of bottom drawer of his life. In the middle of his familiar school routine, he could almost forget about it.

  Fitz is trying his best to lean into his father’s story, to meet him halfway. The bottom drawer—maybe that’s where he’s been keeping his dad these last few weeks.

  “Kind of like a double life?” Fitz asks. “Like being undercover?”

  “Yeah,” his father says. “Something like that.”

  In Annie’s apartment, his father says, nothing made sense. For one thing, Fitz had somehow mixed up days and
nights. At three in the morning, the lights would be blazing, there’d be music playing, and he would be wide awake, wanting to play. In the middle of the day, the place would be dark, the blinds drawn, Annie sleeping in a chair, the baby on her chest. The sink was full of dishes. She ate mostly peanut butter sandwiches, one slice of bread, folded over, food you make with one hand and eat standing up.

  “I tried, I really tried,” his father says. “I brought over Chinese takeout and some chocolates and once, a couple of books about babies. Dr. Spock, stuff like that. How-to books. I figured they might contain some helpful hints, maybe some advice about the night-and-day business.

  “But Annie looked at me as if I were out of my mind. ‘You think I have time to read?’ she asked. ‘Do I look like someone with time for leisure reading?’ She didn’t. Honestly, she looked a little crazed. More than a little crazed. Her hair was wild, and there were circles under her eyes. Makeup was a thing of the past. Mostly she wore the same plaid nightgown and a pair of woolly socks. Day and night. I started to wonder, do I even know this person? Who is she?”

  Fitz feels defensive of his mom. He’s not sure he likes hearing her being talked about this way. “What about your parents?” Fitz asks. “Did they know?”

  “I meant to tell them,” his father says. “I really did. I called one Sunday with just that intention. Annie was big as a house, and I felt ready to share the news. We’d found a crib at an estate sale and set it up in Annie’s apartment. I was feeling optimistic, exhilarated even. For the first time in my life, maybe, I was doing something daring.

  “Still, I knew it wouldn’t be easy to tell my parents something they didn’t want to hear. So I prepared and rehearsed—same as I would for an oral argument. I made notes. But when my mother answered, when I heard her voice, all that went out the window. I got as far as saying that there was a girl—kicking myself for calling her that—and that we were getting serious.

  “ ‘How serious?’ my mother asked. She didn’t ask the girl’s name.