Who Do You Love (35 page)

“Then I'll see you,” said DeVaughn.

•••

On Friday morning, the church was packed with people, hushed and dim, with the sunshine filtered through stained glass, and it smelled like dusty carpet, old paper, and the lilies in the flower arrangement that decorated the handsome brass-trimmed casket that stood in the front of the room. It was closed, per M
r.
Sills's request. “Let 'em remember me living, not dead,” he'd told Andy, and Andy had been the one to bring the clothes his friend had chosen to the funeral parlor and tell the director there to skip the cosmetics.

He spotted DeVaughn right away, standing in the back of the church and looking so much like his father that
Andy's
heart almost stopped. DeVaughn wore a black suit, a white shirt, and a dark-gray tie. His hands were free, but when he walked, Andy saw the shackles around his ankles, and then he spotted the corrections officer who stood by the door. He felt his eyes welling, and wondered if DeVaughn even had gotten a chance to say goodbye.

The first row was filled with boys and young men, some in suits and some in collared blue shirts and khakis. A few of them were crying. Lori had left him at the doorway and had gone to sit beside a tall man in a dark suit. Andy looked at him, then looked away.

After Mr. Sills's favorite hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” the preacher stepped up to the lectern. He bowed his head for a long moment, then began. “Our friend is gone,” he said.

“Yes, Lord,” said one of the ladies Andy recognized from Mr. Sills's house, an older lady in a pink suit and matching hat.

“Whose lives did our friend Clement Sills not touch?”

“That's right,” called another woman.

“Our friend was a humble man. A man who knew how to fix what was broken. He came into our homes with his box of tools and the young man he'd taken under his wing, and he fixed things. Fixed broken windows, leaky faucets, furnaces that didn't want to heat and air conditioners that didn't want to cool. But more than that, he fixed those young men. He saw what was broken in each of them, and he fixed it.”

“Praise Jesus!”

“He was kind.”

“Yes, God!”

“He was a father figure to the young men whose daddies couldn't or wouldn't be there for them. By example, our friend Clement showed each and every one of them what it was to be a man.” The preacher lowered his head again, as if lost in thought. Then he raised it and looked at the crowd.

“There's a young man here who's a lawyer. Another two go to Temple on scholarship. Up front, we got Terrance Parker, who's a vice president at Comcast. You got a problem with your cable bill, go talk to him.” Laughter rippled through the audience. “In the back, I see a young friend of Clement's who became an Olympic runner.” Andy froze, mortified, as he felt every eye turn toward him. He hung his head.

“All these men learned how to live their lives, how to make their way in the world, but more than that, even more than that, every single one of them learned how to love.”

The room exploded with shouts of praise, to God, to Jesus, with cries of “Tell it!” and “Preach!”

“They learned how to love,” called the preacher. He raised his hands and, immediately, the din dropped away. “And that, my brothers and sisters, is the true measure of a man. Not money.”

“No, sir!”

“Not success.”

“That's right!”

“Not job titles. Not degrees. Not even gold medals.” The preacher's voice dropped to a whisper. “The measure of a man is, does he know how to love. Clement Sills knew how to love. That's what he did. That's what he taught every single one of us who were lucky enough to know him.”

In the back of the room DeVaughn was crying. Andy saw the corrections officer hand him a handkerchief, as the pastor invited anyone who wanted to speak to come to the podium and send their friend on.

The young man who'd become a lawyer thanked Mr. Sills for showing him another path, “because I so easily could have walked down the wrong one.” The Comcast vice president talked about how he'd been so shy as a little boy he'd barely opened his mouth in the classroom, and that his teachers thought he was slow until Mr. Sills started bringing him around to antiques stores and restaurants, making him talk to the salesladies and the waitresses until he could speak up a little better.

“When things got noisy in my house, Mr. Sills let me come over and study, as long as I could find room for my books,” one of the Temple students said, to smiles and laughter, as the audience members recalled Mr. Sills's hobbit warren of a house. A single mom remembered how when her young daughter had broken her leg, Mr. Sills had been there, morning and night, to carry the girl down the stairs, and then carry her back up for bedtime.

Then the preacher called Andy up to the podium, introducing him as “Andy Landis, the gold-medal-winning Olympic runner,” and asked if he wanted to speak.

Andy had gripped the edges of the lectern. He thought about how long it had been since people had looked at him with anything but disdain. Enough time had passed so that, at least in some places, sometimes, he could just be what he'd
become
—the manager of a home-goods store, a so-so basketball player, a son, a coworker, a friend. “I grew up without a father,” Andy began, “and I wasn't the greatest kid. I got in fights at school. Threw a brick through someone's windshield. I almost got sent to juvenile hall for that one,” he said as some of the boys up front nodded. “Mr. Sills saved me. He made me feel like I was worth something. Nothing I did, nothing I had . . .” His voice caught, but he made himself push through it. “Nothing I achieved would have been possible without him.”

Afterward, a few of the attendees came to introduce themselves. More than one told him how Mr. Sills had always talked about Andy, the way he'd run his paper route, how he'd been such a quiet boy, and how he'd flown Mr. Sills first class all the way to Athens, Greece, so he'd be there to watch Andy win his gold medal. “I think it was the highlight of his life,” said the young man who'd gone to law school, and Terrance Parker had nodded and said, “He told me that, too.”

Finally, Lori's aisle-mate, a tall, stooped man with a bald head and glasses, came over. He stood shyly a few feet away from Andy, the way autograph-seekers once had when they were waiting for a signal or permission to approach him.

Andy knew who he was; knew in his bones, knew from the way the other man was looking at him, and the shape of his face, and his hands.

“Hello,” said Andy. He held out his hand to the man who he'd seen only in pictures and carefully his father shook it.

•••

In the car, on the way home, his mother was quiet. It wasn't until they pulled into the driveway of the house she shared with her new husband, a retired police officer named Tony Lucrezi, that she said, “He wants to get to know you. He's sorry for
everything
.”

“What's everything?” Andy felt furious, and he welcomed the feeling that pushed aside the sorrow. It felt good, he thought, to be angry at someone other than himself. “Which part is he ashamed of? The drugs, or the being an accessory to murder, or the part about lying to me for my entire life?”

Lori looked into her lap. “I'm not saying that the way he handled it was right, but we did it for the best reasons.”

Andy just stared at her, not trying to disguise his skepticism or his disgust, and, instead of meeting his anger with her own, Lori continued to talk, her eyes on her lap as she stumbled through an explanation.

“Your father and DeVaughn were friends. They grew up together; they played sports together; they were high school basketball stars, the big men on campus.” She smiled a little, remembering.

“So how'd they get from there to jail?” Andy asked.

Lori shut her eyes. “Once high school was over, and I was pregnant, there were a lot of temptations in the neighborhood. A lot of ways to make easy, quick money. Your dad wanted a house for us. He thought if he could just do one big thing, just one time, we'd move to Haddonfield, near my parents, and he'd learn a trade. He was doing okay in the army. They were training him to be a mechanic. He figured he'd stay a few years, learn how to do it, and when he got out he'd get a job. But he came home on a furlough, and DeVaughn had this idea, this great idea about how they were going to each get ten thousand dollars . . .”

“By robbing a friend,” Andy supplied.

Lori shook her head. “It was stupid. They thought it was a Robin Hood thing, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor. Which was the three of us.” She looked at him, her eyes wide and beseeching, an unfamiliar pleading tone in her voice. “They never meant to hurt David. They weren't like that. They just thought they'd roll up, stick the gun out the window, and he'd give them the money, and that would be the end of it.”

“You're kidding.”

“Andy, they were teenagers. They weren't criminal masterminds.”

Andy shook his head. He was trying to make sense of it, to put it all together, his father and DeVaughn Sills, who'd driven the car, who'd used the gun.

“Mr. Sills lied to me,” he said slowly. “He said he didn't know my father that well. And he sure never told me that my dad was alive.”

“He didn't know your father that well. He only knew him as DeVaughn's friend. And he wanted to tell you. He thought that even having a father in jail was better than no father at all. He only kept quiet because Andy and I—your father and I—had asked him to. He was always looking out for us,” Lori said. “He felt responsible. He thought that if he'd been a better father to DeVaughn none of it would have happened. It was stupid,” said Lori, her voice catching. “It was stupid and awful, and it ruined so many lives, but, Andy, it's over. It's in the past. It was a long time ago, and you've got a chance to get to know your father now.” She touched his hand. Her voice was gentle. Maybe her new marriage had softened her. Maybe it was just time. “If you can find it in your heart. But he'll understand if you can't.”

“I'll think about it,” Andy said . . . and he had, for months, considering each piece of the story, the new facts, trying to understand why they'd done what they'd done, and how their choices had shaped his own life. He had been so lonely as a kid. No friends, because his mother had wanted his strongest—his only—connection to be to her. When he was being charitable, he thought that she'd lied because she'd wanted to keep him safe, away from the influences and the kinds of people who had caused his father to make such bad choices. When he was angry, he thought that she'd kept him so close because other people in the neighborhood had to have known the truth . . . and that she hadn't noticed, or hadn't cared, about the way he was always on the outside; how he'd never really had friends.

A dozen times he sat behind the wheel of his car or climbed the steps to the El with a token in his hand. But he never turned the key, never boarded the train. He wished he could have done it all differently. Maybe he would never have agreed to the doping. Maybe he'd never have met Maisie. Maybe he could have had the life he'd imagined with Rachel, a quiet, happy Act Two, with his medal on the mantel of some cozy little home, kids playing in the yard, Lori visiting, and his father, too. Rachel would have known how to navigate the situation; she'd have made arrangements and made jokes and helped him figure out how to talk to a ghost that was now flesh and blood. But now he'd have to figure it out alone.

Rachel

2015

J
ay had called me at the end of March, on a Thursday afternoon almost a year after I'd found out about Amy. On Thursdays, the girls had dance lessons. Delaney was enthusiastically attempting ballet—mostly because she loved the pink leotard and white tights, and she knew that if she made it to the recital, she'd get a pink tulle tutu—while Adele was the least energetic hip-hop dancer in the history of hip-hop. “I was wondering if I could come to the Seder.”

I tamped down my first instinct, which was to ask why he and Amy hadn't been invited to celebrate with anyone. He'd moved into her place in Brooklyn Heights, just a few subway stops away from where we lived. I had seen the outside of their building but had never stepped inside. I hadn't seen Amy, either, since the night she and Jay had made their confession. She'd left FAS, and I'd never found out where she'd landed. The girls would mention her occasionally—as in “Amy came with us to see
The Nutcracker,
” they'd say, or “Amy bought us sparkly shoes”—but I curbed my curiosity and never permitted myself to ask about her, or about them.

Per our divorce agreement, Jay got the girls for two nights during the week, plus the twenty-four hours from dinnertime Friday until dinnertime Saturday. Even after her departure, Amy must have put in a good word for me, because they'd approved my request to trim my hours from nine to three Monday through Friday, then work a long day every other weekend. Every weekday afternoon I'd dash to the subway to arrive at the girls' school by the time the dismissal bell rang. Together, the three of us would go to the park or shop for dinner or pick up our clothes at the laundry. We'd go to the shoe store or the bookstore or to dance class, to Adele's oboe lessons or
Delaney's
playdates. I would make them dinner, and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays Jay would arrive at seven, and I'd send the girls out the door, each with their backpacks and a school lunch in their hands.

I thought that it was working as well as arrangements like these could work. Half the time, Delaney would cry on the way out the door, wailing, “I will miss my bedroom!” or, worse, “I will miss my mom!” Meanwhile, my super-organized Adele began forgetting things—her math binder, her sheet music—at Dad's house, maybe, I suspected, in an effort to get the two of us in the same place as often as she could. I held it together for the hand-offs, but it had taken me a few months to stop being a wreck once they were gone. These days, I felt guilty about how much I enjoyed my kid-free hours. I could watch whatever I wanted, read a book uninterrupted, even go out for an eight o'clock yoga class, or to sit in a coffee shop if I liked.

I tried to make it painless, to assure the girls that Daddy and I might not live together but would always be their
parents
. . . but every time Jay took them, it felt like pulling a bandage off a half-healed wound, making everything bleed again. It hurt, sometimes in a way that felt unendurable. I blamed Jay. I blamed Amy. I blamed myself, too, sometimes, thinking if I'd only paid more attention to him, if I'd only worked less, if we'd only made love more.
It should have been Andy,
a voice in my mind would whisper when I'd think that way.
You shouldn't have settled—
even though I'd never thought of marrying Jay as settling at the time.
You should have waited for him.

“So, just you?” I asked my ex.

“Just me,” he said. “I already mentioned to the girls that I'd be asking. Just a heads-up.” Which meant, of course, that it was a fait accompli. As soon as school ended and Delaney came running toward me with her curls and backpack bouncing and her big sister following, walking and reading her book at the same time, the assault began.

“Mommy, Mommy!” Delaney said. “Daddy wants to know if he can come for Passover. Can he? Can he please? I want him to hear me do the Four Questions.”

“We were going to do them together,” said Adele, closing her book. She'd discovered
Little Women,
one of my favorites at her age, and was reading it for what had to be the third or fourth time.

“What do you guys think?” I asked.

“It would be great!” said Delaney.

“You're only saying that because Daddy gives you ten dollars if you find the
afikomen
and Mom only gives us five,” said Adele.

“Ten dollars?” This was the first I'd heard of it.

“I am not!” Delaney said. “I am not saying it because I'm greedy! I just want Daddy to be here!”

I reviewed the guest list. My parents and Nana were flying up, as they did every other year, alternating New York with Los Angeles, where Jonah, who'd astonished everyone by excelling in law school, had passed the California bar on his first attempt, becoming a successful entertainment lawyer and marrying one of his law-school classmates, a coolly pretty and extremely businesslike woman named Suzanne. Brenda, who'd become a Seder regular, would be attending, along with Dante, one of my professional victories, who was getting ready to graduate from Cornell.

“You know you always tell, like, everyone in the world to come,” said Adele. “Remember the year we left the door open for Elijah and Mr. Hammerschmidt from across the street wandered in?”

“
Wandered
is kind of judgmental. How about we go with
came in
?” Mr. Hammerschmidt had gotten a little forgetful since his wife had died, and one of the things he sometimes forgot was which front door was his.

“And that creepy little kid from two years ago. What was his name? Jason?”

“Jared.” Jared was the five-year-old son of that rarity in my line of work, a single father. After we'd explained about the
afikomen
—how a grown-up would hide it, and how the first kid to find it would get a prize—Jared had, very solemnly, followed Jay out of the room and refused to return to the table, even when we explained to him that witnessing the hiding made the finding sort of beside the point. “And he isn't creepy, just little.”

My eldest gave me a very adult expression, a little incredulity, a twist of disdain. I suspected I'd be seeing a lot of that look as she entered her teenage years.

“So if you let anyone in the neighborhood just show up, why can't Dad come?”

“Let Daddy come! Let Daddy come!” Delaney chanted.

“The Haggadah says you're supposed to welcome the stranger,” Adele pointed out. “It says, ‘Let all who are hungry come eat.' ”

“Let me think about it,” I said. Once we were home I retreated to the little room right beside our bedroom. It had been the nursery, but once Delaney was out of diapers, I'd moved her into a bigger bedroom and turned it into a small office, with a little antique desk and a pink-and-green rug on the floor, and on the walls, the pictures I'd had a photographer friend take of a three-year-old Adele holding her newborn sister in her arms.

I talked with Marissa, who now ran a bakery in Burlington, Vermont. I spoke with Sharon, a colleague at FAS, who'd become my yoga buddy and post-Amy New York City best friend. The verdict: can't hurt. “You should at least find out what's on his mind,” Marissa said. “It's good for the girls to see you as a team,” was Sharon's take.

So, grudgingly, feeling conflicted in direct proportion to which Delaney and even Adele were excited, I draped the rented tables in the lacy white tablecloths Nana had given me for my wedding, and set them with the china that Jay and I had gotten for our wedding that he'd graciously agreed to let me keep. The girls helped me prepare the Seder plate—bitter herbs for sadness, salt water for tears, a mixture of apples and nuts and honey and wine to represent the mortar with which the Jews had built pyramids for the pharaoh, matzoh for the bread that hadn't had time to rise. Nana was in the kitchen, tasting her brisket, my mother was stirring the chicken soup that I'd made and frozen the weekend before, and my father was setting out napkins and silverware and sneaking peeks at the score of the basketball game on his iPhone when the guests began to arrive. Brenda and Dante, who now towered over his mom, came first, then Jared and his father, Ron, and Taneisha and her daughter, Sondra, a poised and elegant twelve-year-old in a belted white dress and matching sandals. Delaney's eyes lit up when she saw a big girl. “I will show you around,” she said, grabbing Sondra and, I suspected, dragging her to her room to show her each of the dozens of stuffed animals that she'd collected and named.

Nana untied her apron as I looked for serving pieces. “You look lovely,” she said. I thanked her, hoping it was true. I hadn't agonized over my outfit, but I had spent some time thinking about it, determined not to wear anything more special than usual just because Jay would be there, but wanting to look good, to show him what he was missing. Ten minutes before the doorbell started ringing, I'd settled on a dress I'd bought on sale at Saks, a tube of coral jersey, and a pair of sand-colored sandals with a little bit of a heel. The dress had three-quarter-length sleeves and my preferred high neckline, but it was clingier than the things I normally wore, tight enough to show my shape. I had finally shed the last few pounds of baby weight after Jay had left when, for the first time in my life, I'd become a woman who forgot to eat.

“Hello, ladies!” Enter the ex
.
My mother kissed his cheek and my dad looked up from his phone long enough to deliver a baleful, albeit brief, glare. The girls mobbed him,
Delaney
sprinting down the stairs to throw herself against him, Adele permitting her father a single hug and kiss. Once Jay had greeted them, he approached me, with flowers in one hand, candy in the other. “You look beautiful,” he said.

“You look nice, too.”

It was true. Jay wore a slim-cut single-breasted suit of fine gray wool, a tie in alternating stripes of burnt-orange and gold, and lace-up wing tips polished to a high gloss. In our year apart he'd become significantly balder, a development that had revealed the rectangular shape of his skull, making him look a little Frankensteiny. He'd also gained the seven or eight pounds I'd lost. When we'd met, I'd been struck by his smile, his expressive mouth, the way he'd use his hands when he told stories, and I couldn't wait to feel those hands on me. Maybe it was love that had made him look more attractive than he was. The man standing in front of me now was just another well-dressed guy with good taste, not anyone I would have taken special notice of if I'd seen him in a subway car or in line for a latte at one of the six sustainable coffee shops that had arrived in our neighborhood. Now Jay resembled his father, kind but phlegmatic, without much of a sense of humor, a man you'd want probating your will but not at your table during the last round on Trivia Night at the bar. Not in bed, either.

“These are for you.” The flowers were peonies, my favorite, and the candy was dark-chocolate-dipped orange peel. “Why'd you get that?” Delaney complained. “Nobody eats it but Mommy.”

“Maybe Mommy deserved a treat, after working so hard to get everything ready,” said Jay. He wore the look he always gave me since we'd split, soft-eyed and apologetic, only now I thought I saw something else in his expression . . . Was it hope? Desperation? Actual sadness?

I gave him a polite smile and thanked him, and instructed the girls to put coats in my bedroom, relishing the way Jay stiffened when I said
my.
Delaney, who loved dressing up, was arrayed in a pink party dress with crinolines under the skirt, white tights, and pink patent-leather Mary Janes and a pink bow in her hair. Adele detested waistbands and collars, and had avoided pants with zippers ever since she was five and had an accident because she couldn't get out of her snowsuit fast enough, but I'd managed to get her to agree to a pair of black leggings and a long, silky white tunic. She'd even consented to a sparkly black band in her hair. Delaney, of course, had begged for a fancy 'do, and I'd watched YouTube tutorials until I could approximate the fishtail braid she'd requested.

With so many children at the meal, and, usually, at least a few adults who weren't familiar with the Passover rituals, I'd condensed the Haggadah to a twenty-minute highlight reel. Wine was sipped (grape juice, in the kids' cases), the Four Questions were asked, all the foods on the Seder plate were explained, and the story of the Exodus was read, round-robin-style, with everyone at the table who could read taking a turn. This year, Dante got the conclusion. “ ‘Once we were slaves, now we are free,' ” Dante read, looking meaningfully at his mother, who smiled proudly—which meant, I thought, that she'd dumped yet another loser boyfriend. “ ‘This year we are here, next year in Jerusalem.' ” We sang “Dayenu,” and I was reminded that Jay's voice was surprisingly tuneful, and that the song was annoyingly long.

As soon as the final verse of “Chad Gadya” had been completed, Nana and my mother and I went to the kitchen to serve the gefilte fish and chopped liver. Delaney took orders, and she and Adele delivered the plates to the table. “Delicious!” Jay exclaimed, even though I'd never known him to be a gefilte fan. “These are just as good as I remember them,” he said of Nana's matzoh balls. “Bernie, can I give you a hand?” he asked my dad, taking over the turkey-carving duties.

When I announced I was going to hide the
afikomen,
Jay gave me a private eyebrow waggle, the same one he'd done ever since I'd told him I thought that “hide the
afikomen
” sounded like a euphemism for sex. When the meal was over, Jay helped pack the leftovers into Tupperware to-go containers and bundle them into bags for everyone to bring home. He stayed until the last salad fork and soup spoon had been put in the dishwasher, and the Seder plate, the one Adele had made in Hebrew school, was washed and dried and restored to its spot in the cabinet. After my parents and Nana went back to their hotel in Manhattan and Brenda, my last guest, had hugged me goodbye, Jay was still there.