“I thought you said you wasn’t her type,” Amir said.
“I wasn’t. I met a couple of her exes after we started dating. Very square and very successful. I know they wasn’t sleeping in their cars.”
Amir took a sip of water and raised his right eyebrow at his father, a thing Alonzo usually did to him; a kind of playful, questioning judgment. “And what were you?” he asked.
“I already told you. I was a mess,” Alonzo laughed. “I had plans, but I had almost as many jobs. Some days I felt like a chicken with its head cut off. But when I met your mother, I was still too terrified to want anything more than what I knew. Writing freelance was like having one foot in the door. I knew I wanted to get on staff, but I was too damn scared to let myself hope that I could before that weekend. And far as I could tell, your mama did not have time for brothas like me.”
“Brothas who were still getting their sh— stuff together?” Amir put an emphasis on that first word and sounded nearly exactly like him.
Alonzo grinned at Amir’s almost-curse. “Yeah, brothas like that.”
“So, can I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
Amir rolled his eyes and smiled. “I’m gonna ignore your corny joke. If you weren’t her type, why was she running such a smooth game on you?”
Alonzo laughed. “Running game? Busting my balls, more like.”
Amir shrugged. “Everybody’s game ain’t the same. That’s what you always told me.”
He sat back and looked at his father, studying him. He didn’t know what he was looking for at first, but eventually, he realized that he was trying to see him not as the older man in front of him but as the young man Alonzo had been. He didn’t have to conjure that image whole cloth. Their house had been full of Ada’s photographs, framed and hung around on nearly every wall to catch the best light, or lovingly placed in family photo albums on a tall shelf in the living room, or hung on a line drying in the garage Alonzo had converted into Ada’s darkroom.
Ada took all kinds of photographs — events, nature, family portraits, still life — but Ada Reid’s favorite subject was her husband by a country mile. She loved her kids, but they did not love the camera, and the older they got, the less willing they were to let her turn her lens on them. Alonzo had no such qualms. He loved nothing more than making his wife happy, and if taking pictures of him made Ada happy, then he’d been more than willing to sit for her all day.
Based on all the pictures he’d seen of Alonzo throughout the years, Amir knew that his dad had been tall but not too tall, skinny but not lanky, with an afro bigger than his head. There were far too many photos of him in bellbottoms and ugly sneakers. He had big hands, a wide smile, and more often than not, a pencil tucked behind one ear.
But no matter how his fashion changed or his hair grayed, one thing remained the same. Alonzo’s love for Ada was in the way he looked at her when they were standing next to one another as if the camera didn’t exist, and the way he looked at the camera when she was behind it. After she died, Amir had gone through Ada’s work, trying to discover some hidden depths of her through her work. What he’d found was no surprise. Ada had loved to photograph Alonzo because she had loved him with her entire soul. Her cameras had captured her husband — the depth of him, all his kindness and promise and beauty and softness — because she saw him that way. Their love was all over Ada’s photography. The body of her work was a testament to the life she’d built with him.
So Amir was having a hard time believing that Alonzo hadn’t been her type. “I bet mama had you wide open from jump,” he said.
Alonzo wiped his mouth with a napkin and grinned at his son. “From the moment I met her. I might not have been her particular cup of tea, but she was mine, and I was willing to put in the work.”
“All done?” their waiter asked, pointing at the table where Amir and Alonzo had already stacked their dishes.
“Yeah. Thanks,” Amir said, sliding the check with a few bills on top toward him as well. “Tip’s in there too.”
“Thank you.”
When the waiter was done, Amir turned back to his father. He looked contented, full, and a little livelier as he let his food settle. He hated to ruin the serenity of the moment, but they really didn’t have that much time left in the house, and the issue of those records wouldn’t solve itself.
“So y’all met at this festival, and the records are like…what?” Amir asked as gently as he could.
Alonzo shook his head easily. “Ain’t done with the story yet.”
“I get the gist.”
“Can’t get the gist of love, knucklehead.” Alonzo rolled his eyes and turned to scoot out of the booth. He was grumbling lightly as he did so, but he held his breath as he pushed to his feet.
Amir held his breath as well. “Didn’t mama used to say something like that?” Amir asked.
His father was breathing a little harder than Amir thought he should. He wanted to ask if he was alright, but he figured Alonzo wouldn’t like that, so he gripped his thighs under the table. He watched his father’s hands intently as they grasped the table and back of the booth. He held on as he caught his breath.
Alonzo took a few slow breaths before he responded. “How she say that when I just made it up?”
Amir rolled his eyes. “I said something like.”
Alonzo turned to him and stared for a few seconds before his face lit up, and he shook his head. “You’re thinkin’ of that Supremes song. She used to dance around the kitchen, making pancakes on Saturday morning, playing one Supremes record after another. Remember that?”
Amir felt his chest relax as he nodded because, yeah, he did remember that. He could probably close his eyes and smell those chocolate chip pancakes and hear his mama’s voice, beautiful but just a little bit off-key. And suddenly, he was blinking back tears.
Alonzo nodded. “Your mama got every record Diana Ross ever released with the Supremes and after in that living room,” Alonzo said, but then his face fell. “Had,” he corrected. “They’re still there, but I mean—”
“I know what you mean, pops. It’s okay.” Amir felt as desperate for his father not to have to stumble through the rest of that sentence as he was not to hear it. Alonzo had a way with words. When Amir was a boy, he used to love sitting at his father and Toonie’s feet while they talked about…everything, weaving stories about their youth and their old neighborhoods that were so vivid Amir could see them in his mind. But for the past five years, Alonzo had been tripping over his words whenever he talked about Ada, fudging the present and past tenses as his mind struggled to describe life without her only to retreat into the past where he didn’t have to pull such cruel phrases together.
It was painful to watch.
“Oh, good. I caught y’all.” Kayla was rushing toward them with a plastic bag in her hands, and Amir stood from the booth.
“Lena wanted me to give this to you.”
“That a cobbler?” Alonzo asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, sir,” she beamed.
“Alright now.”
“We can’t—” Amir said.
“The hell we can’t. Take the cobbler, boy.”
Kayla giggled and stretched her arms toward Amir.
He sighed as he took the pan from her. “Let me pay for it, at least.”
“It’s a gift, boy,” Lena called across the restaurant. She was behind the counter, cashing someone out but still managing to keep an eye on them. A few people stopped eating and turned to see who she was yelling at, but for the most part, Mama Rae’s was full of regulars who just assumed that whoever Lena was calling out deserved it.
“I tried to tell him,” Alonzo said.
When Amir turned, Alonzo was halfway toward the door, moving slow but steady on his way.
“Pop,” Amir said, walking after him, his heart pounding. “Slow down.”
Alonzo waved over his head. “Can’t get no slower than me these days.”
Amir rolled his eyes, even though he was right; he caught up with him in a few steps. They both waved to Lena, and Amir pushed the door open for his father.
Outside, it was a perfect Bay Area day; overcast, warm, but not hot. Mild. Alonzo stopped, put his hands on his hips, and stretched his back, closing his eyes as he lifted his head toward the sky.
“You alright?” Amir finally allowed himself to ask for the hundredth time today. He braced himself for the sound of his father sucking his teeth, annoyed, but it didn’t come.
“I’m fine, Amir. Just old. We all just getting older and older every day. That’s life.” He sighed, and the contour of that sound was like a punch to the gut.
Alonzo was right; Amir knew that. Every day he knew he had less time with his father than the day before, and one day, it would all be gone. One day, he’d lose Alonzo like he lost Ada, and all that would be left were those pictures and Alonzo’s books and wedding bands he’d probably wear on a chain around his neck. It wouldn’t be enough. Those pictures wouldn’t suck their teeth or remind him to watch his language. Those books couldn’t place a big hand on his shoulder and squeeze, reassuring him that he’d made a good choice and that his father was proud of him. There was a lump in Amir’s throat, and he looked away, closing his eyes against another all too sudden wave of tears.
When his father’s hand settled on his right shoulder, Amir swallowed a sob.
“Come on, let’s get back to the house,” Alonzo said gently and squeezed. “We got cobbler to eat.”
Amir nodded.
“I’ll tell you about your mother getting me high,” Alonzo offered in a light voice as his hand slipped away.
Amir turned to him with a frown. “She’d never.”
Alonzo’s laugh was so loud he seemed nearly a decade younger. “The hell she wouldn’t. That woman was always corrupting me. Not that I minded.”
“Pops. No,” Amir said as he followed his father to the car.