How They Met, and Other Stories(24)
Author: David Levithan

“I’m a lucky man,” Mr. Schwartz said, putting his hand on my arm. “One of my old pals from the airline is the boss out at the airport here, and he lets me walk around sometimes, talking to people. And, believe me, I’ve heard stories of other ticket counter personnel finding out about what I did and trying it out themselves. You’d be surprised, I tell you, the number of people who meet on airplanes.”

I thanked him for seeing me, and then tried to thank him for what he’d done ten years before.

“It was—and still is—my pleasure,” he interrupted. “Say no more. Just drop me a line every now and again. Bring your wife by if you’re ever in the neighborhood.”

I promised I would. We made a little more small talk as he walked me to the door. We said our good-byes, and then, just as I was walking through the door, Al Schwartz asked me one more question.

“Just out of curiosity,” he said, resting his hand on a photo of his wife, “did you change your lucky number?”

“No,” I told him. “It’s still seventeen.”

“Good,” he replied, visibly pleased. “You should never change your lucky number.”

I made in onto an earlier flight home. At the ticket counter, I was sure to be friendly, and sure to show my wedding ring. I got to our house a little later than I would have from school. Rory’s car was in the driveway. When I got inside, I called out to her. She called back from the kitchen, saying she was on the phone.

I put my bag down, home for the day, and went to where she was. She smiled when she saw me, then went back to talking to a fellow teacher about faculty-room gossip. The phone must have rung as soon as she got in the house. Her shoes were off, but they were still at her feet. She kicked them lightly as she talked. She took off her earrings.

I felt love. Right there, in the kitchen. And I felt relief. Because a part of me had worried that the truth would somehow change things. But now I saw her and knew that nothing had changed. Nothing would change. Only the story would change.

When she was off the phone, I was going to tell her about the beginning we’d never known we’d had.

I was going to tell her a story of how we met.

ANDREW CHANG

I guess I’ll start with this fact: I still to this day have no idea what my father does for a living. I’m sure he and my mother would say that this is a failure on my part. My brother would know, because they would tell him and not me. When I was a kid, I was told that my father was in “import/export.” From what I could tell, the only thing he exported were long-distance phone calls, and the only thing he imported were business partners.

The only way I could tell the difference between the business partners in China and the business partners in America was the amount of static on the phone when they called. And they called almost every hour of the day. Every time I used the phone, my parents looked at me like I was jeopardizing the family business. Whenever the call waiting beeped, I knew I’d have to get off the line. Because it was always Mr. Chen or Mr. Yang or Mr. Wei or some other monosyllabic partner. They never acknowledged my existence—they simply said my father’s name and held there until I got him.

It bothered me without ever interesting me. I would complain to my brother, and he would tell me that there were worse things to suffer than call interruption. He was a year older than me and reading Camus at that point. He had promised my father he’d go to business school, and that was all he needed to get a free pass for the rest of his senior year.

My life and my father’s business would have never intersected, except one night at dinner my father made an offhand comment about Mr. Chang having a son named Andrew who lived three towns over.

“He is your age,” my father said, and the way he said it—as if this was a sign of some kind—made the alarms go off in my head.

“I don’t know him,” I said. “Hey, did I tell you we’re going to Philadelphia on a field trip?”

My brother smiled snidely as my mother picked up my father’s conversational thread.

“You should meet him,” she said. “You could be friends.”

This was particularly special coming from a woman who didn’t seem to believe that any boy I knew could be anything other than a sex-starved boyfriend. Every time one of my male friends called—especially the white ones—she would look concerned, as if a phone call was one short step away from impregnation.

For some reason, I felt that if I simply ignored my parents, the topic would go away, even though there was no evidence of this ever having worked in the sixteen previous years of my life. I started chattering about the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. My brother continued to smirk and my parents waited me out, gazing at me attentively, knowing I had steered myself onto a tangent that could only last for so long.

Right after I dropped the big news that we’d be riding commuter buses instead of school buses on our field trip, I quickly asked, “Can I be excused?”

In answer, my mother said, “He really is a startling boy.”

Startling could not have been the word she meant to use; I knew that. Still, it startled me into temporary submission. If she’d said nice or intelligent, I probably would have found the strength to get up from the table and leave.

“We would like you to meet him,” my father said. “The Friday after next.”

“I can’t,” I told him.

“Why not?” my mother asked.

“I’m busy,” I said, sure that I could find a way to be busy with a week and a half’s notice.

My mother stood up and walked to the refrigerator door, where she kept a calendar of her two children’s activities.

“With what?” she asked. “I checked. You are free.”

“Fine,” I said. “Fine.” It took too much strength to argue, and I needed some pluses in my column for future minus situations.

Both of my parents smiled—and, believe me, that was something very rare for my father.

I clung to the hope that it was just a friend thing.

Until, of course, I realized my brother hadn’t been invited along.

I didn’t think much about it. My mother fussed over me in a nicer way than she usually did, and I figured I could definitely use a week and a half of that. When I told my friends about it, I told the story like it was a joke that was waiting for its punch line. I’d already dated a guy named Andrew, so whenever I talked about my date-to-be, I called him Andrew Chang or, sometimes, Mr. Chang’s Son.