Amir pulled his car into a parking spot on the edge of Jack London Square, just down the street from the Amtrak station. The overflow parking lot had the most unobstructed view of the water as he could get. Every now and then, a person strolled in front of the car, but Alonzo didn’t seem to mind. If he saw anything at all, Amir imagined he saw his late wife in his mind’s eye on so many of the trips they took down here, which were too many to count. They used to come here for a date night to Yoshi’s to hear some jazz and have a few drinks. They brought the kids to one of the restaurants for a special seafood dinner when they made honor roll. Or hell, maybe he was remembering the night of Amir’s junior prom when he and his best friend Jay somehow ended up at Jack London in the middle of the night, tipsy and confused about which night bus would get them home.
Amir remembered that night a little too often for his liking. Ada had been silently furious in her disappointment in the front passenger seat. She’d expected better of him and couldn’t imagine that he hadn’t expected better of himself. Her silence was a heavy thing, and it started burning through the alcohol left in his blood. Alonzo was not the silent type. He’d looked in the rearview mirror at the boys and told them to, “Get ready for some manual labor this summer,” with a good-natured chuckle. And then he’d pulled into a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s to buy them some food while squeezing Ada’s knee with his free hand.
He’d been too drunk and tired and young to think about it at the time, but in hindsight, Amir had come to reconsider Ada’s rage. The disappointment was real, but as an adult, he recognized her uncharacteristic silence for what it most likely had been. Fear. Ada hadn’t had a problem expressing herself, but fear could be paralyzing. Amir knew that now, every time Alonzo stumbled over a curb or laughed so hard, he wheezed. He wished he could go back in time and tell his mother what he’d learned.
He also wished he could find a space in the city that didn’t trigger these kinds of memories, but that was impossible because Ada was everywhere in this city, memories of her threatening around every corner. For as long as he was here, he knew he would never stop missing her. He’d never get past his grief.
Alonzo sure hadn’t.
He turned to his father and lifted his eyebrows.
“Alright, so who was playing at the concert?”
“Festival,” Alonzo corrected.
“Festival,” Amir said with a shake of his head and a shrug because what was the difference? Not that he would ask his father that question for real. That would only get him the most boring semantics lecture ever. He’d sat through more than a few of those in his life, and he did not care. It was so much easier to just capitulate and move the story along.
“It was the Sixties,” Alonzo said. “Summer of Love. The lineup was eclectic, you know. Simon & Garfunkel, the Steve Miller Band, The Who, The Grateful Dead.”
“Doesn’t really sound like you and mom’s style.”
Alonzo shrugged. “Lou Rawls, Otis, and Jimi were there, too, but people are complex, ‘Mir. Don’t you forget that. Me and your mama weren’t always your parents.” He frowned through the front windshield for a second and then undid his own seat belt. “Anyway, we were there for work. We didn’t need to like the music to do our jobs. And let me tell you, your mama was all about her money in those days.”
Amir scoffed. “In those days? You know it was easier to prove I could pay my mortgage to the bank than convince mama to let me borrow five dollars.”
Alonzo chuckled softly. “I know that’s right. You know, when I asked your mama to marry me, she said yes, on two conditions.”
“Oh, yeah?” Amir had never heard this story before.
Alonzo nodded, still looking out of the window at the bay. It wasn’t the prettiest bit of water, but it was home.
“I was running around for a full two weeks trying to get everything together. I wanted to make it special for her. Told your Uncle Toonie to spend the weekend with whoever the hell he was dating then. Got a fresh cut. Cleaned the house. Cooked her dinner.”
Amir shifted his body toward his father and rested the side of his head on the headrest to watch him, trying to imagine these events playing out in real time.
“And she showed up, pretty as you please, of course. Afro all big, just a little bit of makeup, not that she ever needed it. And I said, ‘Ada Carr, will you spend the rest of your life with me?’ as soon as she walked in the door. Didn’t even let her put her purse down. Didn’t even let her see the food I’d been cooking for her all day. I was so nervous and excited, I couldn’t wait.
And she looked at me for a few moments that felt like an hour. She was doing that thing where she squinted at you and looked you up and down, you know?”
“Oh, I know,” Amir said. “It was like you were transparent, and she could see every thought you were having or had ever had.”
Alonzo laughed as he continued. “She could make your knees turn to jelly with a look. And finally, she said, ‘Alonzo Reid, I’ll accept your proposal, but I don’t ever wanna be poor. I been poor. I’m only a block away from poor now, but I ain’t having kids in poverty. I want my kids to have more than me. And if you ain’t ready to do what it takes to make that happen, then maybe we aren’t heading down the same path.”
Amir’s heart clenched.
Alonzo smiled and turned to look at his son. “Of course, I agreed. What else was I gon’ say? ‘No, actually, I want my kids to struggle like we did?’ Money wasn’t the point. She just never wanted you to struggle. Maybe we coulda been clearer ‘bout that last part.” Alonzo shook his head and reached out to gently pat his son’s face. “But her second condition was the important one. That was the one that mattered most to both of us.”
Amir moved his hand over his father’s and held it to his face, imprinting the feel of his rough, calloused palm on his skin. He couldn’t remember the last time Alonzo had touched his face like this, and he didn’t want to forget. He couldn’t forget.
Alonzo’s eyes were wet, shimmering with tears and emotion that Amir couldn’t fathom. His own vision began to blur.
“Your mama said every day with me had been like a love song on repeat, and she made me promise that we’d build a life like that for our kids. And we did that. Didn’t we?”
Amir nodded, tears falling down his face. “You did, pops,” he said, his voice breaking on a choked sob. “You did.”
Amir had still been a skinny kid with ashy, knobby knees when he realized just how singular Alonzo was. When he looked at his friend’s fathers, so many of them were loving in the kind of terrified way that needed to prepare their children for the harshness of the world. But Alonzo was nothing but warmth. He was the kind of parent who sat his kids down and talked them through their punishment in excruciating detail. He cried every time he listened to Sam Cooke with a glass of Hennessy. And the only time Amir could remember Alonzo yelling was in the bleachers at an A’s game. Alonzo and Ada knew how hard the world could be on two Black kids, and so they gave them nothing but softness and love. It made Amir’s heart clench to know that love and security had been their only plan.
Amir’s phone rang, and he pulled himself together enough to lift his hips and pull his cell from his back pocket.
Alonzo’s hand fell away from his son’s face. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his face.
“Ah, shit,” Amir breathed when he saw the name on the screen.
“Language,” Alonzo muttered.
Amir used his shirt to dry his own face as he answered the call on speaker.
“Where the hell are you? And where the hell is dad?”
“Language,” Alonzo said, loud enough to be heard.
“Sh— Sorry, daddy. I was just worried,” Amaya replied.
“Mmhmm,” Alonzo muttered, but there was already a smile on his face. “We went to Mama Rae’s for lunch, we’re on our way back now.”
“And y’all didn’t call me?” Six years ago, Amaya would have said something like that with a big smile on her face and a spoiled gleam in her eye, all that hurt nothing but a gentle tease. But ever since their mother had died, Amir had noticed the way her smile dimmed and her gaze sharpened in these moments where she felt left out. She hadn’t said it in so many words, but Amir knew his sister’s heart as well as he knew his own.
When Ada was alive, Amaya had felt as if she had a place. She was Ada’s legacy like Amir was Alonzo’s, but Ada was gone, so where did she fit now?
Certainly, it was much more complicated than that. They’d both gotten their parents’ love of art but translated it in their own new ways. Amaya painted and every now and then dabbled in writing poetry and prose to channel her creative energies, which made Alonzo very happy. Amir had gone into graphic design, a thing Ada had been surprisingly proud of and awed by.
“My baby is making real money with his art,” she’d said because that was a very Ada thing to say.
But Amir and Amaya had inherited so many other things from their parents. Amaya had Alonzo’s fat knees and big laugh. Unlike Amir, who seemed to grow into his father’s twin more and more each day physically, someone who knew could look at Amaya and just as surely pick out Alonzo’s blueprint as Ada’s. Once upon a time, Amaya had loved that; she had reveled in being the best of both of her parents. But now that Ada was gone, Amaya seemed to be looking for their mother in herself more and more each day. For five years, she’d been trying to figure out how she fit in their shrunken family as if Ada had been her anchor in a way no one — not even Amaya — had realized until she was gone.
“Lena gave us a cobbler,” Alonzo said.
Amaya’s voice brightened. “I love cobbler.”
Alonzo laughed. “I know you do, baby girl. And I’m pretty sure I got some ice cream in the freezer.”
“I’ll check,” she said, hurrying off the phone.
Amir turned the key in his ignition. Before he put the car in drive, he turned to his father. “Pop, are you good with this move? I know it’s late, but still.”
Alonzo was watching the water again. “First time I ever danced with your mama — properly — was to Otis Redding. We was high as hell, and it was the first best night of my life. I had so many damn good nights with your mother long before that house.” He reached over to pat Amir’s forearm without looking. “I’m just fine. I promise.”
“Language,” Amir teased as he pulled out of the parking spot.
Alonzo’s laughter sounded a lot like a sigh.