Who Do You Love(87)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

He shuddered as he felt the day suddenly turn cool, and the applause from the crowd turn into a dim, muffled sound, like waves slapping senselessly onto the sand. His body became flesh again, leaden and heavy and pebbled with goose bumps, and the familiar sorrow rose up to engulf him. He had taken every ribbon, won every prize, even this one, the ultimate, the gold medal. He had sacrificed so much—love, friendship, leisure, ownership of his own body and time. And now? What if not even all that was enough to quiet that voice, which sometimes sounded like his mother’s and sometimes like the father he’d never known, the voice that said, You’re not worthy, you don’t deserve it, nothing you do will ever be enough.

Then his mother was shrieking in his ear, and he could hear the crowd chanting his name.

Mr. Sills, resplendent in a USA sweatshirt that stretched tight over her belly, kept lifting up his glasses to wipe underneath his eyes. Maisie wouldn’t let go of his hand. “You’ll need an agent,” she said that night, and when Andy had looked at her, still dazed from the win, Maisie had kissed him and said, “You just leave everything to me.”

•••

Back at home, the medal went into a velvet-lined box, and Andy began his new life. First came the print ads for the sneakers he’d worn in Athens. Then came the Vanity Fair profile (the sneaker ad ran right next to it, which made Andy wonder about the way those things worked). He and Maisie posed in People magazine’s Most Beautiful edition. (“I’m not beautiful,” Andy had said, to which Maisie had answered, “Sure you are . . . and I am, sugar, and this is publicity that all the money in the world can’t buy.”) More ads; more endorsement deals; his first pro-am golf tournament, where he played in a foursome with the world’s top golfer, a network news anchor, and a basketball star he’d grown up watching. Maisie told him he needed a stylist, and he reluctantly agreed—it was easier than spending hours in stores trying to figure out what looked right. His publicist got him into the New York Times, just on the basis of his new look. Maisie had pouted when the photographer told her politely that she just wanted a shot of Andy, but cheered up when the piece on athletes as fashion trendsetters mentioned her by name and called her a supermodel.

Finally came the one thing he’d been hoping for, the call from Sports Illustrated. Their track reporter was a guy named Bob Rieper, known to the runners as the Grim Rieper. Bob was lean and tall and stooped, with a narrow rectangle of a face, dark hair that hung past his eyebrows, and a low, sonorous voice that seemed made to deliver bad news.

Bob had been in Athens to watch Andy win his medal. He’d seen him work out in Oregon, where he still stayed and trained at the camp, and in New York, where he’d gotten a place with Maisie. Bob had talked to him about the 2008 games and had accompanied him on a trip back to Philadelphia, where Andy spoke at an elementary school, introducing Bob to Mr. Sills and to Lori. In all that time, Andy had never heard him laugh, never seen him smile.

It was Bob’s voice on the phone that morning, waking him up from a dream, where he’d been back in Philadelphia, chasing a woman wearing Rachel’s blue cowgirl boots down Frankford Avenue.

“Hey, man, what’s up?”

Bob did not believe in small talk. “I need to run something by you.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s about your father.”

Andy felt nothing but mild curiosity as he got out of bed and walked to the window, asking, “What about him?”

“You told me that he died in Germany when you were a baby.”

“That’s right.”

“And that you don’t remember him at all, and you never tried to find out any of the details.”

“Uh-huh.” Across the room, Maisie was looking at him, eyebrows lifted. Andy held up a finger—one minute. Maisie nodded and rolled over as Andy said, “What’s up?”

“This is hard,” Bob said. “I’ve never had to tell anyone anything like this before.”

“Tell me what?” When he paused, Andy realized that he was bouncing up and down on his toes and drumming his fingers on his thigh.

Across the line, Andy heard him sigh. “The fact-checkers found out that there was a guy named Andrew Landis who went to Roman Catholic, who graduated when your father would have graduated and whose enlistment dates line up with what you’ve told me.”

“Okay . . .”

“But that guy’s not dead.”

Andy had been pacing, the way he always did when he talked on the phone. When he heard the words not dead he stopped, frozen.

“You’re kidding,” he said, in a voice that didn’t sound like his own.