30

“THIS IS DELICIOUS, KAYLA. REALLY,” Phil says as he slices through a seared scallop.

“All credit to my sous chef.” Mom nods my way. “Last week Drew spotted this new David Chang cookbook on display at the library. Good to try new things, right?”

Xander wrinkles his nose. “Not if the new thing smells like pee.”

“That was just the fish sauce,” I say. “I swear, not one ounce of pee in this recipe.”

“Drew!” Mom swats at me playfully.

“You know, Drew,” Phil says. “They make—” He stops what he’s saying and looks up at me right then. “Never mind.”

“No, tell me.” With my napkin, I wipe the corner of my mouth.

“I don’t want to step on your toes.”

“You’re not.” I smile to let him know I’m serious. That there’s no beef between us, no competition in the kitchen anymore. “Just say it.”

“There’s a type of fish sauce that doesn’t have that, ah, how do we say, eau de urine.” I catch Mom scrunch her nose—probably ’cause she’s about had it with our pee talk at dinner. “I’ll write it down for you.”

“Cool. Thanks.”

Mom butts in. “So,” she says, raising her fork, “what’s the plan for tomorrow?” I steal a peek at her left hand. Her ring finger is bare. But then I notice a new necklace she’s wearing. Both rings dangle from the thin gold thread, and somehow that feels right.

“You know, after a year of meandering around the country, I’m ready to take the easiest route home. Zip across I-90 over to 80. Little bit of pretty New England and then a whole lot of corn country.”

My brother sighs. “I wish we could have corn instead of this.” He pushes the Brussels sprouts around on his plate. Now, I think spicy roasted Brussels sprouts and scallops are tasty, but I guess I forget he still has the palate of a six-year-old. Which means he’d choose mac and cheese or fish sticks over a four-star meal any day.

“Try another few bites, will you?” Mom says to Xander. “And then you can go play Legos.”

With an end in sight, Xander shovels in a few bites and is off running into the living room before Mom can shout, “Wash your hands, please!” She leans back in her seat. “Ooof.”

“You two have done enough,” Phil says. “Let me do the dishes.”

“No, no.” Mom stands up and turns on some music. “The dishes are my time to unwind. Kayla’s Zen time.”

It’s just Phil and me now. That first night when he came over for dinner, I couldn’t wait to get away from the table. Phil awkwardly folds his napkin as he sets it down. I do the same. “Do you want to come out to the backyard? With me, I mean?” I ask.

“Sure thing.”

I wash my hands in the kitchen sink before leading Phil out back. We had dinner on the early side, so it’s still plenty light as we step outside.

“So,” Phil says, slipping his hands into his front pockets as we slowly shuffle across the lawn.

“Mom told me. I mean, I figured it out. About you and my dad. You were … you were friends, right?”

“From birth, practically.”

“Like me and Filipe.” The dry grass crunches under my feet. “Hold on a sec,” I say before sprinting across the yard, grabbing the sprinkler from the side of the house, and setting it in the middle of the lawn. I turn on the spigot by the house and water arcs out of the sprinkler.

“Grass looked okay by Colorado standards,” Phil says with a laugh. “Now, Kayla mentioned you do puppet shows at the library. Back when we were growing up, your dad and I were really into the Muppets. Kids still watch the Muppets these days?”

“There was that one movie a few years ago. Mom and I watched it on Netflix.”

“ ‘Am I a maaaan or am I a Muppet? Am I a Muppet?’ ” I can’t believe Phil is singing the song from the movie. And in falsetto! Phil laughs at himself. “Sorry, not really much of a singer these days.”

“You weren’t half-bad,” I say. Better than I could do.

“Thanks. That’s high praise, actually.” Phil clears his throat. “Your dad, he really idolized Jim Henson. You know who he is, right?”

“He created the Muppets and Sesame Street.” I open the door to the shed and flip on the overhead light.

Phil stops for a second, taking in everything. We cleaned up the shed pretty good, Mom and me. There’s no way he can tell what happened in here earlier today. Unless Mom told him. I search his face for a sign. No, I don’t think she did. At least, not yet.

“These boxes in the back have all the stuff from when he was younger.” I pull down the top one, labeled Middle School, and set it on the floor. “I thought maybe, if it’s all right with you, you could, you know …” I glance up at him. “Tell me about the stuff. Like, what you remember. Stories about my dad. Not all the boxes tonight or anything. Just to start.”

Phil clears his throat again. I think he’s tearing up, but maybe it’s just all the dust in here. “I’d love that, Drew.”

I remove the cover, and for a moment we’re just staring at the jumble of items until I make the first move, reaching my hand in there. I pull out one of those thick plastic envelopes from CVS. Inside are dozens of photographs. “Do you know what these are from?” I hand the stack to Phil.

He flips through them, letting me look along with him. A bunch of them are out of focus, a blur of flesh and black. Man, my dad was a terrible photographer back then. “Why are these so blurry?”

“Oh man, Drew. Don’t even ask.” Phil chuckles. “If I remember correctly, your dad wanted to see if he could take a picture of the inside of his nose.”

“What?” That sounds like something Filipe and I would’ve done.

Finally we flip to a picture that’s more obvious: a crisp shot of the Washington Monument.

Phil peers at the photograph. “The eighth-grade class trip!”

“You went to Washington, DC?”

“We fund-raised all year for this. Now, you asked why the photos are so blurry. That’s because, shock of all shocks, back then we couldn’t see what we were taking a picture of.”

“What do you mean? Of course you could see it.”

“Nope.” Phil laughs, shaking his head. “It’s not like it is with your smartphones. Back then you had to put a roll of film into a camera and actually look through the viewfinder. You couldn’t zoom or focus. You never really knew how things would turn out until you dropped the film off and got the photos back a few days later.”

“That’s crazy.”

“That’s growing up in the nineties for you.”

We flip through a bunch of out-of-focus shots, a few photos taken outside the White House, and then we get to one that makes Phil yelp so loud I almost jump. “What?”

“I haven’t thought about her in years. No—decades.” The girl in the picture is off to the side, wearing a big teal-and-purple sweatshirt and braces.

“Who is she?”

“Heather Spencer. The crush to end all crushes. Or so I thought.”

I squint to try to see it, but no, that girl just looks weird. “Was there anyone my dad liked? You know, a girl?”

“Oh, believe me. I know.” Phil flips through the photos again. “Renée Cassidy.”

Never heard of her, but I guess that’s not a big surprise. “Did she like him back?” Phil throws his head back and laughs. “So no?”

“Well, maybe? Let’s just say we never got to the bottom of that question. Back in seventh grade, Jimmy was way, way too shy to ask a girl out. Not that I didn’t try to make him.”

“You did? How?”

“This probably sounds like ancient history to you, but back in the nineties, we didn’t have Snapchat or Instagram, so it was all about notes. Handwritten notes.”

“Like the ones at the bottom of this box?”

“Exactly. You know what? He probably saved some good ones. Luckily for him, Jimmy didn’t stay shy forever.”

Jimmy. It feels weird to hear him call my dad that. Like he was a whole different person back then. But then, maybe he was.

We finish flipping through that set of pictures. Before I decide on the next thing, I clear my throat. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure thing.”

“I don’t really know how to say this. I mean, it might be rude to ask.…”

Phil shakes his head. “Shoot.”

“What happened to your brother? He and I, we have the same name, right?”

“You do. Well, he went by Andy.”

I repeat the name quietly. “Andy.”

“Andy was two years younger than me. He was my shadow, you know? Well, of course you do—you have Xander. Andy died of brain cancer the summer before I started eighth grade.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“Me too, Drew.” Phil runs his hand through his hair. “When you’re young and someone dies—especially someone that close to you—it shapes you. I had to grow up real fast. One day I was still a kid and the next, I wasn’t, you know?”

The thing is, I do.

“I don’t know who I’d be if Andy were still alive.”

“You think you’d be different?”

“All the choices I’ve made since then, I feel like I had to really live my life. Not just be a passenger along for the ride. That’s why I traveled for so long. It’s why I bike. The bike ride this summer, it was a way to honor Andy’s life by raising money for cancer research. There have been a lot of medical advances since Andy died, but we still have a long way to go. This summer is the thirtieth anniversary of his death. Thirty years.”

It’s only been three years since Dad died. Well, three years, five months, and—counting the days is too hard. Thirty, though. One day it will be thirty years since Dad was gone. That feels like so many.

“Do you think my dad—do you think he named me after him?”

“I’d like to think he did, but to be honest, Drew, I don’t know for sure. You could ask your mom, though. Your dad and I hadn’t been in touch for so long.” Phil takes in a slow breath. “Look, I want you to know, if you ever want to talk about your dad, if you’ve got questions about anything from back then, anytime, I’m just a phone call or video chat away. For you, and for Xan.”

I scan over the boxes in front of me, all of them packed to the brim. Each item with a story, a memory, something about Dad I’d probably never know otherwise. I want to know it all, but it’s not something we’re going to do tonight and be done with. I’ll be unpacking these boxes for weeks, months. Years? I’ll be unpacking Dad forever.

I reach in and pull out a small, slightly wrinkled trifold. A playbill for Aladdin. “Our first play,” Phil says. “Well, just children’s community theater. No Broadway for us.”

There are signatures—sorry, autographs—from the cast members. I open it up, searching for the cast list. “Who was Dad?” I ask. But before Phil answers, I see it. He was Aladdin.

“The man, the myth, the legend. Aladdin himself.”

“Wait, and who were you?” I have to keep going down the list a while until I see Phil Pittman listed. Street urchin.

“I was more of a behind-the-scenes guy, to be honest. Loved making the sets, plus hanging out with everyone.”

My dad was the star. “How about my dad?”

“Well, I’m not sure Jimmy always believed in himself, which is crazy to think about because he was talented. He could sing and act, the whole package. Well, minus the dancing. Oof. He sure could test the choreographer. No, your dad had this special charisma. You couldn’t not watch Jimmy McCormack onstage. But even offstage, at least then, he had this nervous energy about him. I think that’s true of a lot of actors.”

My eyes smart for a second. I wish I could see it, that I could’ve been there somehow to see that version of my dad.

“You know, he’s probably got a recording somewhere.” Phil digs through the box a little. “Yup!” He pulls out a VHS tape with Aladdin written on the yellowed tape down the side.

“I don’t think my mom has anything that can play it.”

“Oh, there are plenty of old VCRs floating around. I’m sure Kay can track one down on Craigslist for you.”

I’d be able to see him. The real him. Jimmy McCormack, back when he was my age. But am I ready?

I put the VHS tape back in the box for now and glance out the window. The sun’s almost set, and I really should move the sprinkler to a new spot so that it soaks the whole yard. But there’s one thing I still have to ask Phil about.

“Did you and my dad ever have fights? Like, when you were my age, I mean.”

“Yeah, of course. We butted heads about all kinds of things.”

“No—” I shake my head. “A real fight.”

“Jimmy wasn’t much for confrontation. And I usually tried to keep the peace too. But, you know, even if it feels like it’s been a while, it’s never too late to say you’re sorry.”

“Even if the other person started it?”

“You need to ask yourself what’s important to you. And if that friendship is important to you, then you do what it takes to make things right. Apologize, but don’t be afraid to explain why what your friend did was hurtful. You need to be able to have a real back-and-forth. That’s what makes a good friendship after all, right? Honesty.”

I haven’t exactly been super honest with Filipe lately.

“Do you wish you and my dad had stayed friends?”

“Let’s put it this way: I sure wish I hadn’t thrown away all those years of friendship over a girl.”

“Hey,” I say, suddenly realizing what he’s saying. “That’s my mom you’re talking about.”

Phil laughs. “I know. But you understand the sentiment, right? We should’ve been able to get past that. At least, I should have.” He glances out the window. “You know, it’s been a real trip these past few weeks, getting to spend time with you and your brother. Jimmy’s boys.” He shakes his head like it’s hard to believe that the person he knew as a kid could have ever grown up to be a dad. To be my dad.

And then he goes quiet for a second, and I wonder what other thoughts are running through his head. When he and my dad were my age, did they ever imagine this far out?

Phil sniffles and runs his hand through his hair. “If only I’d been around. If I hadn’t been so far away. If I’d just stayed in touch.” He lets out a sigh and then turns back to me. “You know, you and Xander remind me so much of Jimmy. Both of you. You’ve got his smile and that creative streak, Xan’s got his sense of humor and, I swear, the exact same cowlick. There’s more, of course. You got different parts of him … the best parts.”

I’d never thought of it that way before. Assumed being Dad’s son was an all-or-nothing deal, but it’s not. Of course it isn’t. He had good parts and bad parts like anyone else. It’s just, ever since he died, it felt like the bad parts overwhelmed the good ones.

Just then the outside lights turn on and my mom steps out onto the deck. “Xander’s demanding a bedtime story and says I don’t do it right. Any takers?”

I put the top on the box. As Phil and I step out into the yard, I hear the faint bop-bop of a basketball across the street. Phil and I eye each other. “You know what, you should take a stab at it,” I say. “But get ready, because Xan’s got some high standards.”