Chapter 19

July 4, 2000

My sister loved fireworks. Every year, she celebrated Independence Day, “oohing” and “ahhing” over the same circular displays of explosives. Some years they threw in an American flag display that lit up the sky, or they changed the pop-pop-pop rhythm to something unexpected, but really, her fascination with pyrotechnics was beyond me.

By the time I was twenty-three, I was completely uninterested in going to see fireworks, which I made perfectly clear in the month leading up to the Fourth of July. I had successfully fought off Maren’s attempts to drag me to Grant Park for the enormous display on the eve of the holiday, but she was persistent.

“I thought we could go down to Navy Pier to watch tonight. We’ll bring everyone: Angela, Rob, R.J., Chico. It’ll be fun—our last outing for the summer.”

My sister was in town for another month before she returned to finish her last three semesters at the University of Florida. She had been working the angle that she wouldn’t get to spend much more time with me and Jamie, and she wanted to make the most of it.

“Maren, it’s only July. We can go on outings for another month.” We were sitting at my dining table in the early morning. Both of us liked to get up before Jamie woke, to have a cup of coffee in peace and discuss the day’s plans before I left for my part-time research assistant job and she spent the morning caring for Jamie. Angela took over in the afternoons, which Maren spent reading and preparing to feel nostalgic for a place she hadn’t left yet.

“But this will be Jamie’s first Fourth of July,” she wheedled.

“Not really. He was born in June 1999.”

“It’s his first fully conscious Fourth of July,” she went on, undeterred.

Now I started to tease her. “Who can really say when consciousness begins? And you know he won’t remember it. Let’s just wait until next year.”

She shook her head, her face sad. “You’re going to deny your son fireworks? What kind of father are you?”

Guilt, she had discovered, can be a powerful motivator, especially for someone whose main goal in life was to be the best father he could be. She knew very well that because of all the trouble Calvin and I had been through, I was determined to give Jamie everything I had always wanted from my own father. And apparently, my sister wasn’t above using my determination to get what she wanted: a night of fireworks.

“Ouch, the trump card. Okay, okay, let’s go. I wouldn’t want Jamie to be victimized by my reluctance to see fireworks. God knows, he’ll probably have enough other issues to deal with in therapy when he gets older,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender.

Maren clapped her hands together and wiggled in her chair. “I love fireworks!”

“You’re such a child. I thought we were doing this for Jamie.”

She shrugged. “And me. Don’t you want your sister to be happy?”

I took a sip of my coffee. “Fireworks can’t bring you happiness. I’m pretty sure someone wise once said that. Deepak Chopra? Also, if you’ve seen one fireworks display, you’ve seen them all. I think that one was from Socrates.”

Maren smiled at my grumpiness. “Don’t be such a skeptic. Don’t you remember, when we were little, Mom and Dad used to take us to the fireworks at Grant Park every year? You loved it.”

“I did? I don’t remember that at all.” It was true—I had no recollection of going to fireworks with our parents. But Maren always remembered those sorts of things when I couldn’t. I wondered why something so simple, something I had enjoyed as a child, had disappeared from my memory.

“That’s because you spend too much time thinking about all the bad stuff, and not enough time remembering that there were some good times, too.” Maren held my gaze, and now we weren’t just talking about fireworks anymore. I sighed and took her cup to refill it.

“That’s why I need you, Mare. You help me put things back into perspective.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

* * *

And so we all met at my place and traveled in a caravan to Navy Pier. Rob and Angela pushed the kids in their strollers, exchanging stories about how many times the boys suffered knots on their heads while they learned to walk. Down in the strollers, Jamie and R.J. chatted in some kind of secret baby language, shouting across the sidewalk far past their eight o’clock bedtime. Chico and Maren walked behind them, gossiping about the celebrity magazines they both loved and ignoring me when I mocked them for caring about Winona Ryder and who won Survivor.

After a while, I dropped back a few steps and watched them all walking and talking as if they’d known each other forever instead of having met over the past crazy year. It was an unusually cool night for Chicago in July, and with the breeze from the lake I felt a little chill run through me. As we walked toward the pier, I could smell the sugary fragrance of cotton candy and we passed close enough to a vendor’s cart to feel the heat of hot dogs broiling on the grill.

Once we arrived, I heard the boys squeal in joy at the sight of the brightly colored Ferris wheel that seemed to extend right up to heaven. We were early for the display but Navy Pier was packed, as it almost always was during the summer months. Usually the crowds of tourists annoyed me, but I couldn’t help but laugh at how Jamie said “hi” to everyone who approached and R.J. supplied the “bye-bye” as they passed. When they were older, we would take them up on the Ferris wheel to see the city from above, and I’d show them the life-sized maze that told all about what came before they were born.

We found a spot and made room for our gang. Jamie and R.J. crowded onto Chico and Maren’s laps, because they always picked Chico and Maren when there was a choice to be made. Rob sat next to me where he had a direct view of Maren, and from the way he looked at her, it was obvious that he had more than a little crush on her. He caught me watching him and blushed.

“I can’t help it,” he whispered. “She’s great.”

I’d known for months that Rob had a crush on Maren but I hadn’t said anything. It wasn’t my place to protect her—she was twenty-one and had become quite good at fending for herself. Rob was a nice, funny guy who had become the first man I could honestly call a friend. Maybe it was because we were both fathers at a young age, or maybe it was because we saw each other as support instead of competition. Whatever the reasons for our friendship, I couldn’t think of anyone I’d trust more with my sister.

“I know she is.” I nudged him to let him know that everything was okay. Just at that moment, R.J. decided that he should eat a chunk of Chico’s hair. Chico tried to pull it away while R.J. gave a fake frown and bit down harder, and Jamie squawked with laughter.

I shook my head at Rob. “What’s wrong with your son?”

He shrugged. “Probably his mother’s DNA. At least he’s not laughing like a hyena, unlike your kid.”

At thirteen months old, Jamie’s personality was very well-developed. He had a mouth full of tiny, square teeth that he flashed whenever he wanted to be charming, which was often. He learned early on that with a grin and a tilt of his head, he could get just about anything he wanted. With his chubby cheeks and a head full of loopy curls, Jamie had me, his mother and everyone who knew him at his beck and call. Some might say he was spoiled, a term I don’t really like because it implies a kid is ruined forever; after all I’ve been through, I believe in the power of change, not just for kids, but also for adults. Anyway, I don’t think you can spoil a one-year-old kid. If you can’t have what you want when you’re one, when can you? The world would try to set all sorts of limits on Jamie soon enough.

He was sweet and gentle, a good listener who understood far more than I thought he should at his age, and maybe that made it easier to let him charm us. He didn’t whine when he wanted something, because he seemed to have an intuitive knowledge that a smile would get him much farther than a frown. His grouchy moods were rare enough to seem funny rather than frustrating.

Even the husky sound of his voice and the way he struggled to pronounce words fascinated me. He toyed with “Da-Da” before settling on calling me “Poppy.” He could say the names of his favorite foods: cheese (“chee”), blueberries (“bloobs”) and Cheerios (“seereeios”), but he wouldn’t say goodbye, only “hi.” I attributed this to his inner compassion, which made him only willing to welcome people rather than send them away. Further evidence of Jamie’s cleverness included a special bottom-wiggling dance he did whenever “Bye Bye Bye” by N’Sync came on the radio. No matter how much I discouraged his love of boy bands, nothing made Jamie laugh and dance like that song. At one, he was already a man who stuck to his convictions.

When we weren’t rushing from place to place, I liked to take time to catalogue all the things that made Jamie the most brilliant kid alive. I imagine that every father thinks his child is perfect, especially at this age. Thirteen months old is a magical age of discovery, a time when Jamie began to understand the possibilities of his body and mind, and every new experience was a delight.

Sometimes Rob mentioned something from his own list about his son R.J., and I would nod and smile while thinking that although R.J. was cute, he was no match for Jamie. Of course, this was not something I said aloud to Rob. I’m sure Rob also secretly congratulated himself on not gloating about his own child to me. It was what fathers did.

Jamie taught me a lot during his first year. I had always thought that friendship was a choice people made because they liked to talk to a certain someone, or they had similar interests and values. But Jamie and R.J. had loved each other since the moment they became aware of each other as separate beings, right around four months old. When they learned to roll over, it was only so they could face each other and giggle when we put them in the playpen together. Crawling was a way to get close to each other and exchange pacifiers so that none of us could tell whose was whose. Walking facilitated forays into forbidden territories like cabinets and underneath beds, where R.J. would find something to destroy while Jamie laughed and seemed to egg him on. Angela believed that Jamie’s first word was “Mama,” and Rob and I agreed not to tell her that he had pointed at R.J. and squealed “Jay-Jay” a week before. R.J. returned the favor and only wanted “Jay-Jay” when he was tired or hungry. It would make for an interesting dilemma when they grew older—who would lay claim to the nickname? Or, the way things seemed to be going, maybe they would share the name the way they shared everything else.

“Umm, is anyone going to help me out here?” Chico whined. Rob and I looked at each other.

“No,” we said in unison.

Angela jumped up. “Sorry, Chico. Apparently Rob is raising his son as a cannibal.”

After Angela freed Chico from R.J.’s grip, Rob shrugged, took R.J. into his arms and turned to Maren to talk. Angela sat next to me and smiled.

“This is nice.”

I nodded. We were still figuring out our relationship and we had decided to take things slowly. But I took her hand in mine.

“I’m glad we’re here. Together,” she said.

I looked around at the group, all the people who had somehow become a part of one big, unconventional family. Rob, Chico, Maren, R.J., Jamie. We had been through so much: deaths, births, divorce. And none of us was older than twenty-four, so there were bound to be more struggles ahead. I felt as if I had everything, but it was balanced very carefully on a wobbly foundation. I supposed I’d have to build that foundation, make it stronger so that it would hold us up, no matter what. I wished for the ability to see the future, to know what would happen to all of us, to know that we’d all find our way in life, together. But as I looked at the faces around me, I thought that maybe knowing the future would take all of the magic out of life.

I looked back at Angela. Her hair blew around her face and her eyes sparkled with the reflection from the bright lights of Navy Pier. She smiled, and for the first time I noticed that she had a tiny dimple in her right cheek. I reached out and touched it with my fingertip.

“Me, too.”

We looked at each other for a long moment and then turned our faces to the sky. The fireworks had begun.