Who Do You Love(28)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

Andy followed Mr. Sills along the narrow pathway that led to two armchairs with a table between them. Under the table was a waist-high stack of old Sports Illustrated magazines, and Andy gazed at them with naked longing while Mr. Sills continued on. The room reminded Andy of a picture in his illustrated version of The Hobbit that showed Bilbo Baggins’s burrow. He looked around at the framed posters of old boxing matches, the piles of National Geographics and old Life magazines, and the china figurines that, even to his unpracticed eye, looked much more expensive than his mother’s. There was a chess set on the low table in front of the couch, and a grouping of what Andy thought were hatboxes, some deep and some shallow, stretching almost as tall as he was, against the wall.

“Where’d all this stuff come from?” Andy asked as Mr. Sills came back with a big photo album in his hands.

“Here, there, and everywhere,” said Mr. Sills. He sat down in the chair next to Andy, sipped from his cup, then opened the book. “Here we go,” he said. “Mrs. Sills put these together. One for every year DeVaughn was in high school.”

Andy flipped through the pages slowly. There was De­Vaughn’s class picture, which depicted a round-faced boy with Mr. Sills’s smile. Then came a shot of the freshman basketball team, three rows of boys in red-and-blue uniforms, with a list of names underneath them. Andy found DeVaughn Sills in the front row. And in the row behind him was a familiar smile and his own name. Big hands cradled a basketball, the wrists and fingers the same shape as his own.

Astonishment washed over him, pebbling his skin with goose bumps, making his mouth go dry. He skimmed through pages of DeVaughn’s report cards, a written report on the Geneva Conventions, and finally stopped on a yellowed article clipped from the Examiner. “ ‘Father Judge Falls in Semifinals,’ ” he read. “ ‘Despite the best efforts of standout sophomore center Andrew Landis, whose 28 points tied for a school record, the Crusaders were defeated by the Knights in the semifinals of the Catholic League’s basketball tournament.’ ”

With the story was a black-and-white shot of a man—a kid, really—caught midjump, with the basketball balanced on his fingertips, poised at the rim of the hoop. Andy bent until his nose was almost touching the photo-album plastic, studying every detail. His father, Andrew Sr., had the same long face, full lips, and wide-set eyes, but his nose was broader, and his hair more tightly curled. Andy saw his father’s legs, revealed in the brief shorts that players wore back then, long legs with visibly muscled calves and thighs. His father had the same ropy muscles in his arms, the same build as Andy, narrow but strong.

There you are, thought Andy, with astonishment and joy. There was his other half, the rest of him, the man who’d contributed his mouth, his eyes, his long, strong legs to his son. Andy could tell that the wedding picture showed him frozen in a moment where he’d been told what to wear and how to stand, but here he was himself, leaping into the air like gravity no longer applied, so vivid and alive it seemed as if he could continue the motion, ascending and turning his hand until the ball slid through the hoop in a perfect whoosh, nothing but net. His dad must have felt the same way about the basketball court that he did about the track or any stretch of open road. That was where he lived. That was where things made sense. That was where he belonged.

Andy flipped through the pages rapidly, scanning each clipping for more mentions of his father, finding a few. Center Andrew Landis contributed 22 points to the Crusaders’ victory over West Catholic Prep. Andrew Landis scored a record-beating 32 points. No more pictures.

“Standout center Andrew Landis,” Andy whispered . . . and then, so softly that Mr. Sills couldn’t hear him, “Dad.”

“That’s him,” said Mr. Sills. “He had that sense that the good ones have, that way of getting to the place where you need him. And was he fast!” Mr. Sills gave an admiring whistle. “When he got the ball on a breakaway, no one could catch him. But he wasn’t showy, you know? When he’d dunk he wouldn’t hang off the rim, waving his legs around, acting a fool. He’d just get the job done, run back down the court, look for the next shot.”

Andy didn’t know what to say. He still couldn’t quite believe that Mr. Sills had known his dad, that he was finally getting some information. What was his father like? Was he funny or quiet? Did he get good grades? Did he like cars or comic books or music? Did he have a lot of friends, or just a few? Had he had any girlfriends before Lori, and why had he picked a white girl to love?

“Did you ever meet my dad’s parents?” he asked.