Who Do You Love(26)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

But that morning he was starving, and he knew they were out of both cereal and bread for toast. “Let me check,” he said, and before he could lose his nerve he raced back to the row house with Mr. Sills’s truck rumbling behind him.

“Hey, Mom!” he called.

“Hey is for horses,” she called back, the way she always did.

“Can I go get breakfast with Mr. Sills?”

He heard her sigh and got ready for her refusal, but she said, “If you aren’t back in an hour I’m calling the police.”

He washed his hands and face and changed his shirt. Mr. Sills was parked out front in his old blue truck, and Andy climbed into the passenger’s seat, which had been cleared off. There were four or five mugs rattling around underneath his feet, along with old copies of National Geographic.

He’d been worried about conversation, but Mr. Sills talked enough for both of them—about why the new washing machines broke down so often, about his niece, who’d just had a baby. “Nine pounds, nine ounces. A bruiser!” Andy didn’t say much, but he didn’t mind listening. The cab of the truck was fragrant with tobacco and coffee. The empty mugs on the floor rolled around and clinked softly whenever they came to a red light.

At the Country Club Diner, they settled into a booth. “I’ll have the usual, sweetheart,” Mr. Sills said to the waitress, who seemed to know him and filled his coffee cup without being asked.

“How about you, hon?” she asked Andy, her hip cocked and her pen hovering over her pad.

“Just some toast.” Andy swallowed hard. He could smell eggs and bacon, and he could see a pile of French toast as a waiter carried a platter to the next table.

“That’s it? Anything to drink?”

Andy looked at the menu. Orange juice was $1.25 for a small cup, which was ridiculous when an entire half gallon only cost $1.99. “Just some water,” he said.

“He’ll have the Hungry Man,” Mr. Sills said, then looked at Andy. “How do you like your eggs?”

The Hungry Man was so much food that it came on two plates, with a dish of grits on the side: a stack of pancakes, two eggs over easy, bacon and sausage, and crisp white toast cut in triangles. Andy dumped syrup on his pancakes, slathered butter and jam on his toast, sprinkled hot sauce on his eggs, and ate all of it, remembering to say “Thank you” when Mr. Sills added a large orange juice and a hot chocolate to the order. He ate and ate and ate, and when he stopped he thought he’d never been so full, not even after Christmas dinners at his grandparents’ house.

Mr. Sills, who’d had only poached eggs and rye toast, had kept up his steady patter throughout the meal. Andy was happy to learn that he, too, liked the 76ers, especially Charles Barkley. “The Round Mound of Rebound,” said Mr. Sills, patting his belly. Mr. Sills was round himself—round face, round stomach, and big, thick fingers. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, and his skin was medium-brown, not as dark as Mr. Stratton’s, but not as light as Andy’s. Andy’s dad had been medium-brown, too, and sometimes Andy wondered how he’d ended up looking so much like his mother, at least in terms of color. Lots of times, when he was with his mother, white people thought he was white. Sometimes they’d even say bad things about black people to his face, like once when Andy had said where he lived to a lady who worked at the shoe store, and she’d crinkled her face and said, “Why would you want to live in that neighborhood with all of them? You aren’t black.”

“No,” Lori had said, smiling sweetly, pulling Andy close, “but his father was,” and the woman had backed away, looking shocked.

“You like basketball?” Mr. Sills asked him.

“It’s okay,” he said, and used his napkin to make sure he’d gotten all the syrup off his chin. Mr. Sills was looking at him carefully, in a way that made Andy think that there was still some left, when Mr. Sills said, “Your dad played, you know.”

Andy was too shocked to say anything. Nobody ever talked about his father. Nobody even said the words your dad to him. Lori had hardly told him anything. “He went into the army and he died. End of story,” she would say, the handful of times Andy had gotten brave enough to ask. He knew that his father’s name had been the same as his, and that his father was black, and had gone to Catholic school, and that he’d gone into the army after Andy was born and he couldn’t find a job. He’d been stationed in Germany, and he’d said he would send for Lori and baby Andy, but then he’d been killed in an accident. Where in Germany? What kind of accident? Where were his parents, and had they ever met Andy? He would ask, and Lori would shake her head, looking so sorrowful it was almost as if she was shrinking, disappearing into her black clothes right before his eyes. They didn’t approve of me, she said, in a way that made Andy think that they didn’t approve of him, either.