Mr. Sills shook his head.
“Or any of his friends?”
Another headshake.
“How about your son?” He struggled for the name. “DeSean? Were he and my dad friends?”
“DeVaughn,” said Mr. Sills, and then he went quiet, lacing his hands over his belly, staring at the wall. Finally he said, “I don’t mean to pry, but what has your mom told you about your father?”
“Nothing!” The word came out so loud that it seemed to bounce off the mirrors. “She hasn’t told me anything. Just that he went to the army, to Germany, and he died in an accident.”
Mr. Sills nodded and put down his cup and got to his feet. “It’s yours, if you want it,” he said to Andy, pointing at the photo album.
“Thank you,” he said, remembering his manners. “Thank you for breakfast. Thank you for everything.”
Mr. Sills waved one big hand. “It’s nice to know you actually can talk,” he said. “Don’t be a stranger now.”
I am a stranger to everyone, Andy thought. That’s what my mom wants. He clutched the album to his chest as he ran home. His plan was to ask his mother questions, ask her if she’d seen his dad play basketball, ask her what she remembered, and how they’d met, and what he’d said to introduce himself. What he’d said the very first time they’d met. But the door was locked, the lights were off, and Lori’s car was gone.
Andy let himself in, turned on the lights, and went to the kitchen. He spotted a note on the table, next to a surprise—a little stack of pictures. Andy, the note began. Lori never bothered with Dear. I found these when I was cleaning out my closet.
Then there was a space, as if his mom had stopped to think, or maybe to gather her strength.
It’s hard for me to talk about so please don’t ask questions. No signature. No Love. No mention of where she’d gone or when she’d be back, either.
Anger rose inside of Andy, squeezing up from his belly, burning in his throat, making his hands clench. Please don’t ask questions. But this was his father, the man who’d given him half of what he was, and she’d never told him anything, except sometimes, accidentally. A Marvin Gaye song would come on the radio and she’d say, Andrew used to love that one. Or, once, Andy had found a busted clock radio in the corner of their closet, and she’d sigh, Oh, your father always said he’d fix that. Things would slip out, then she’d press her lips together tight and sometimes cross her arms on her chest so her whole body said, Don’t even ask.
Andy sat down and looked through the sad little stack of pictures, faded square snapshots, some of them yellowed and sticky, like they’d been stuck in an album, then pulled out. There was the one from their wedding that he remembered, and a picture of what must have been high school graduation, with Andrew in a cap and gown, grinning at the camera. There was a recklessness in his smile, a tightly coiled energy that Andy could sense in the set of his shoulders, the way his arms were raised. If the picture had shown his feet, Andy bet that his father would have been on his tiptoes, bouncing the way that Andy bounced, barely able to hold still, like if he didn’t move he’d burst out of his skin. There you are, he thought again, and wasn’t sure if the you meant his father or himself.
Next came a Polaroid that someone had taken of Lori, with her belly bulging under a blue-and-white-checked top: 9 mos, someone had written—his grandmother, Andy thought. At the very bottom were a few pictures of little Andy, a squinting bald bundle swimming in a blue one-piece thing with a little lamb printed on the chest . . . and, finally, baby Andy in his father’s arms. His dad was holding him, one big hand, with its bulging knuckles, cupping Andy’s head, touching his nose against Andy’s. His white undershirt showed his corded forearms, and his biceps made the sleeves bulge. He imagined that he could hear his father’s voice. Don’t worry, he was saying. Your mom loves you, even if she doesn’t do a good job of showing it. You’re a fine young man. I’m proud of you.
Andy fanned out the photographs like a hand of cards. He arranged them in a square, then a row, then picked up each one again for careful review. Finally, he slipped them under the plastic of the two empty pages in Mr. Sills’s album and put the album in his closet, where he kept his clothes and comic books in boxes, and his bedding folded up during the day.
Slowly, over the spring, he and Mr. Sills became friends. When summer came and Miles’s parents sent him to camp, and the weather got so hot that most people just stayed in the air-conditioning, Andy would accompany Mr. Sills on jobs. He’d hear the rattling blue truck with CARETAKING & REPAIRS painted on its side pulling up to the curb and sometimes driving over it, and he’d come out of the house or run down the street, so that when the truck was parked he could open the passenger’s-side door and either take out the heavy toolbox or climb in for the ride. He learned to do a dozen different things—unclogging toilets, rewiring blown fuses, scooping dead leaf-goop out of gutters, patching up roofs when they leaked. “My assistant,” Mr. Sills would announce, leading Andy into each new house.