Who Do You Love(127)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

Forty-one, Andy thought, flipping past another blank page. The next picture he saw was his own. It was wintertime, judging from his coat and hat, and there was a skinny twelve-year-old Andy, with two canvas bags looped, Indiana Jones–style, across his chest, grinning at the camera.

He didn’t remember Mr. Sills ever taking his picture, but here was the evidence. Andy turned the pages and watched himself grow up. High school cross-country, the first race he’d ever won, the first time he’d made the All-State team. Mr. Sills seemed to have a record of every race, and he had an entire album devoted to the Olympics, where news stories and professional photographs alternated with the snapshots he’d taken of the Acropolis and the Parthenon and Hadrian’s Arch.

Andy flipped back to the first picture, that big, hopeful smile, how skinny his chest had been, how big the bags of papers were. He’d been so lonely. He wasn’t black; he wasn’t white; he wasn’t allowed to have friends. He hadn’t had a father; he’d barely had a mother. One pair of grandparents had been evicted from his life, the other two he’d never met. What would things have been like if his father had been there? Would he have pushed himself as hard as he’d pushed, would he have made it as far? Maybe not. Or maybe he would have ended up a championship runner, only one with the good sense to have retired after Athens. He knew that he couldn’t blame an absent father for his bad choices—taking steroids, letting Rachel go. What would have happened if he’d gone to her, that terrible day that Bob Rieper had told him that his father was alive? What if he’d gone to her and asked her to call off her wedding and told her We belong together?

He found that he was pacing, and probably had been for a while, walking back and forth in Mr. Sills’s almost empty living room, imagining impossible futures. He had a life now, just a different kind of life; one where he made sure the top shelves got dusted and the bathrooms were cleaned, that Paul didn’t forget to punch his time card and that Martin, who now ran the paint department, didn’t curse in front of the customers. In this life, he’d been a good friend and a good worker and, now, a good boss. Maybe it wasn’t much, but it wasn’t nothing . . . and he could look in the mirror again.

He flipped through the albums one more time, to see if he’d missed anything . . . and, sure enough, after he’d pried two blank pages apart, he found it—a single picture with two words underneath. In the shot, his father stood beside DeVaughn, the two of them looking at the bundle in Andy Senior’s arms. Andy could just see the top of his bald, newborn head, and his little clenched fist waving like he was giving the world the black power salute. His father’s gaze was tender, his mouth open, like he’d been saying something to his friend. Mr. Sills stood beside them, one of his hands on DeVaughn’s shoulder, the other on Andy Senior’s back.

My Boys, Mr. Sills had written.

Andy’s car keys were on the spindly legged black table that was still standing by Mr. Sills’s front door. Andy took them, carried a pair of boxes out to the car, and drove as if he’d made the trip a hundred times before, from I-95 to Vine Street to Spring Garden. It took just fifteen minutes to cross the borders that divided the gentrifying neighborhoods from the edge of Center City. He parked and looked around, seeing the kind of neighborhood that was politely called “in transition,” with treatment centers and halfway houses for drunks and addicts, and then a diner that had gotten a great review in the Examiner and hosted a DJ and dancing on the weekends. There were gas stations and quick-lube spots, a little Colombian restaurant with its front painted bright red and orange advertising gourmet hot chocolate, a Spaghetti Warehouse, and a tired-looking church where people were lined up for free lunch.

Maybe he’s not home, he thought. It was a Sunday in May, a few puffy clouds drifting in the bright-blue sky, people pedaling along the bike lanes, the weather warm but not humid; a perfect day to take in a ball game or go for a stroll by the river. With his throat constricted and heavy and his heart pounding hard, Andy checked the directory and walked up two flights, then down a hallway with worn tanned carpet and walls painted institutional beige. He smelled canned soup and Bengay, and heard the sounds of televisions coming from underneath the doors, the Phillies’ play-by-play announcer, and then Marvin Gaye. “You know, we’ve got to find a way, to bring some lovin’ here today.” Your father always loved that song, his mother had once told him. Tell me, Andy had asked. Tell me what else he liked, tell me who did he love, tell me who he was. But her face had closed up, and she’d turned away and hadn’t told him anything. Not then. Not ever.