After school, I found Grandpa sitting on a playground swing. We walked home, picking up some litter on the way.
Mom was still at work. Grown-up couples came to see her during office hours. I thought she was a wedding planner. As soon as her last customers left, she was all over the house, then all over me.
“Honey, are you all right?” She was down in a crouch, holding me at arm’s length, looking me over.
I’d changed out of my Cubs shirt to keep it fresh. “Sure, why not?”
“Why not?” Mom said. “Here’s why not: Jackson Showalter pulled a knife on you at school. A knife!” Mom’s eyes sizzled.
“Mom, how do you even know this?”
“Because Lynette Stanley saw you get a restroom pass, and she knew that Jackson Showalter was wandering the halls. Lynette got a restroom pass herself and went straight to the security guard.”
“Andy,” I said.
“Whoever,” Mom said. “And he found you with the Showalter gangster holding a knife to your throat. Lynette told her mother. Her mother called me.”
I stubbed a toe in the rug. “I told Lynette not to.”
“Not to what?” Mom said.
“Not to save me.”
“You can thank your lucky stars she did,” Mom said.
Stars reminded me of Jackson’s arms.
Mom couldn’t let it go. “Archer, honestly, I don’t want to be a pushy parent. I don’t want to be Elaine Schuster. But I have half a mind to go to Mrs. Bird and tell her if she can’t manage her students—first graders—she may be in the wrong business.”
“Mom, don’t. Nobody can control Jackson. Nobody, Mom.”
Then my uncle Paul walked in. He drove out from the city most Friday nights for dinner. He and Dad cooked, and Uncle Paul brought pizza for me.
It was the best night of the week. Uncle Paul filled a door almost like Andy. He was six-four. He’d come from work—dark suit, medium blue dress shirt. No tie. Wing-tipped shoes. No socks. Sharper than the knife in Jackson’s hand.
He was carrying a pizza box and another authentic, scaled-down Chicago Cubs home jersey with the Wrigley Field hundred-year patch.
Wait a minute. “Mom, did you tell Uncle Paul about . . . you know what?”
“I told him you were assaulted with a knife.”
“Mom, why?”
“Because I tell him everything that matters to me. We have no secrets. He’s my brother.”
They were looking at each other over my head. Uncle Paul set down the pizza but not the shirt. “Want to go for a ride?” he asked me.
“Can I drive?”
“In about nine years.” Uncle Paul fished out his keys. “But not my car.”
I forget what he was driving—something cool, and low. It’s possible that I wasn’t quite big enough to ride up front beside him. But there I was, which was great. Everything was. For one thing, Uncle Paul was the kind of grown-up who never asks you how you like school.
We pulled into a driveway that turned in a circle in front of a big house, a real McMansion. Not Grandpa Magill’s kind of house. We got out, and Uncle Paul reached back in the car for the Cubs jersey.
When we were up at a big double door with carriage lights, a guy as tall as Uncle Paul opened it. He squinted at us, and there was something familiar about that squint. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Don’t tell me. Paul Archer.”
Uncle Paul put out a hand, and the guy grabbed him in a big hug. They tussled. Then Uncle Paul said, “This is my nephew, Archer Magill.”
The guy reached down to shake my hand.
“Archer, this is Mr. Showalter,” Uncle Paul said.
Whoa. I was ready to run.
“Come on in,” Mr. Showalter said. “You just caught me. I’m here to pick up my son, Jackson. I get him weekends. Every other weekend.”
A big, glittering chandelier hung over us. Who knew Jackson Showalter was rich?
“Jackson! Get down here,” Mr. Showalter bellowed up the stairs. “We’re going. I’m counting to three. Bring your stuff.”
He turned back to us. “Kids. Right?”
We just stood there until Mr. Showalter said, “So, you went on to Northwestern?”
Uncle Paul nodded.
“Sigma Nu?”
Uncle Paul nodded again.
“And you didn’t go the hedge fund route or I’d know,” Mr. Showalter said.
“No, something a lot more fun,” Uncle Paul said. “I do public relations. Wrigley Field’s a client.”
“No way,” Mr. Showalter said. “And still single?”
“Still single,” Uncle Paul said.
“You were always the playboy.” Mr. Showalter gave Uncle Paul a little biff on the arm.
And here came Jackson Showalter down the curving stairs with a backpack and a sleeping bag. I was kind of lurking behind Uncle Paul. Jackson saw me and stopped.
Mr. Showalter said, “Do these boys—”
“Archer and Jackson are in the same first-grade class.” Uncle Paul’s hand just touched my shoulder.
Jackson was up there, holding on to the banister. His starry arm looked spindly.
“Then they’re friends already,” Mr. Showalter said.
“No, they’re not,” Uncle Paul said. “I doubt if your boy has any friends. That could be one of his problems.”
That stopped Mr. Showalter cold. “Wait a min—”
“He’s brought at least two knives to school,” Uncle Paul said, “one of them bigger than he is. And today he pulled a knife on my nephew.”
“That’s a big lie,” Jackson hollered from the stairs. “Didn’t happen.”
“Jackson, go back upstairs and get your mother. I want to know if she’s been hearing from school about you,” Mr. Showalter said. But Jackson just stood there. “I’m counting to three,” Mr. Showalter said.
Uncle Paul walked over to the stairs. He held up the Cubs jersey.
“Come on down and get your shirt, Jackson,” Uncle Paul said, and waited. Jackson wanted it and didn’t want it. He hung there in space. Then he started down the stairs. The chandelier glared on his skinned head.
It was real quiet. Jackson reached for the shirt. Uncle Paul handed it over. “What do you say?”
“I say that kid was the one who pulled a knife on me,” Jackson said in a high, squeaky voice, not looking down at me.
“Try again,” Uncle Paul said.
Finally Jackson mumbled, “Thanks.”
It was time to go. Uncle Paul said to Mr. Showalter, “It wasn’t the shirt he wanted, Bob. Try to figure out what he does want.”
We were in the car and halfway home when I said, “Were you and Mr. Showalter friends in high school? Like best buds?”
“Not especially,” Uncle Paul said. “He was an all-around jock. He played first base and outfield and pitched eight one-hitters in his senior year. He could have gone pro, but he blew out both his knees.
“Everybody had a crush on Bob Showalter,” Uncle Paul said, turning into our drive. “I think I had a crush on him.”
A what? “You mean, like a bromance?” Which was really a fifth-grade word. I must have got it off TV. Dad and I watched a lot of TV down in the garage.
“Not even,” Uncle Paul said, and killed the engine.
“What’s Jackson really want?” I asked.
“For starters, a full-time dad,” Uncle Paul said.
“I’ve got a full-time dad,” I said.
“Yes, you’ve got a good dad.”
“Remember the LEGO Ferris wheel?” I asked.
It was supposed to be a scale model of the first Ferris wheel ever, from the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. It took over half of the garage, Dad’s office part. He built it through a winter when I was in preschool. Uncle Paul helped. Grandpa Magill supervised the job. They sort of forgot I was there, but it was awesome. All kinds of stuff happened in the garage.
“You’ve got a great dad,” Uncle Paul said. “You just better hope he never grows up.”
“You think you’ll be a dad someday?”
“I don’t know,” Uncle Paul said. “First things first. But yes, I’d like to be a dad.”
“And another thing.”
Uncle Paul waited.
“If what Jackson wanted was a dad, how come you gave him the shirt?”
“Because now that you’ve been in his house, he’ll leave you alone.”
Then we got out of the car into the long-shadowy evening just as Dad came out of the garage with Grandpa behind him:
Dad
Uncle Paul
Grandpa Magill
These were the three I wanted to be.