I took it.
My hands were shaking.
“Ethan,” I said. “You’re her grandson.”
He looked at the rose in my hands.
“I know,” he said. “I know that now. But I only got fourteen months.”
He looked at Glenn.
“I didn’t come here for the house,” he said. “I didn’t know about the house. I didn’t know about the box. I came because Susan said Grandma used her teacher voice.”
Then, very quietly:
“I don’t want anything from you,” he said to my brother. “I never did. I just wanted to know who my father was.”
He picked up his backpack.
“Now I know,” he said.
He walked out.
He left the box on the table. The photographs. The letters. The key on its red ribbon.
He left the house keys Mr. Feldman had set out for him.
He just walked out of the conference room in the borrowed jacket. With his green backpack. Down the hall.
The elevator dinged.
Nobody moved.
Then Glenn picked up the photograph.
Dad on the bench in Long’s Park. With the baby in the blue blanket.
E.J. — 3 weeks — April 2002.
He looked at it for a long time.
Then he looked at me.
“Where does he sleep?” Glenn asked. “Now. Tonight. Where will he sleep?”
“Under the King Street bridge,” I said.
My brother closed his eyes.
He went to the King Street bridge that night.
At ten o’clock. In the rain. In his gray suit and his Rolex. With a sleeping bag from his garage.
He told me later.
He found Ethan under the bridge. On a piece of cardboard. With the navy blue scarf wrapped around his neck. Reading Little Women by the light of a streetlamp.
Glenn stood there in the rain for ten minutes before Ethan noticed him.
Ethan looked up.
He didn’t say anything.
Glenn didn’t either.
He just sat down. On the wet concrete. In his gray suit. Next to his son.
He put the sleeping bag down between them.
They sat there until three in the morning.
Glenn told me they didn’t say much. Ethan read. Glenn listened to the rain.
At three, Ethan closed the book.
“Beth dies,” he said.
“I know,” Glenn said. “Mom read it to us every December. Susan cried every year.”
“Grandma cried too,” Ethan said. “She couldn’t finish it. When she read it to me.”
Glenn didn’t say anything.
“I finished it for her,” Ethan said. “At the library. After she died.”
He looked at Glenn.
“I wanted to know how it ends,” he said.
Ethan didn’t move into the house right away.
He wouldn’t. For three weeks.
He said it wasn’t his. He said he hadn’t earned it.
I went to the King Street bridge every day. With food. With coffee. With Mom’s note.
Use my teacher voice.
I used it.
“Ethan,” I said. On the twenty-first day. Standing under the bridge in the snow. “My mother left you that house. She changed her will. She wrote you a letter. She asked you to plant tomatoes.”
He didn’t answer.
“It’s January,” I said. “If you want Better Boys by August, you need to start the seeds indoors in March. In the kitchen window. Where Dad did.”
He looked up at me.
“You need a kitchen window,” I said.
He looked at me for a long time.
Then he picked up his green backpack.
He moved into the house on Chestnut Street on January sixth.
I gave him the keys.
He stood on the porch. On the steps he’d fixed. Holding the keys in his palm.
He didn’t go in.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He looked at the front door.
“I’ve never had a key to anything,” he said. “Not a house. Not an apartment. Not a car. Nothing. My whole life.”
He looked at the keys.
“I don’t know how to be somebody who has keys,” he said.
I put my hand on his shoulder.
“You learn,” I said. “One day at a time.”
He unlocked the door.
He went inside.
He went straight to the garage.
To the pegboard.
He stood in front of it. Looking at my father’s tools. Every one in its place. Outlined in black marker.
The level on the first hook.
He reached up. He touched it.
“The level gets the first hook,” he whispered.
That was fourteen months ago.
Ethan lives in the house on Chestnut Street.
He’s twenty-six now. He works for Kemper Construction. Glenn offered him a job in February. Ethan said no. Three times.
Then Glenn said, “I’m not offering you a job because you’re my son. I’m offering it because you rebuilt Mom’s porch steps with Dad’s tools and they’re still level after two years. I’ve got guys who’ve worked for me for ten years who can’t do that.”
Ethan took the job.
He’s an apprentice carpenter. Twenty-two dollars an hour. He’s good. Really good. The foreman says he measures everything twice.
He says that’s what Grandpa taught him.
Glenn and Patricia separated in April.
They’re trying to work it out. They’re in counseling. Patricia told me at Easter that she’s not angry about the girl in 2001. She was twenty-two. People make mistakes.
She’s angry about the box.
“He knew,” she said. “For fourteen years. He knew his son was out there. Ten years old. And he put the box back on the shelf.” She shook her head. “That’s the part I can’t forgive. Not the mistake. The silence.”
Glenn goes to the house on Chestnut Street every Thursday.
At two o’clock.
Ethan’s idea.
“Grandma always said Thursdays,” Ethan said. “So. Thursdays.”
They don’t talk much. Glenn says Ethan doesn’t trust him yet. Glenn says that’s fair.
They work in the garage. On projects. They built a bookshelf for the living room. A bird feeder for the backyard. A new railing for the back porch.
Glenn told me Ethan still won’t call him Dad.
“He calls me Glenn,” my brother said. “That’s okay. I haven’t earned Dad.”
“Will you?”
Glenn was quiet for a long time.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m going to show up every Thursday. Until I do. Or until I die trying.”
Ethan planted the tomatoes in May.
Better Boys.
He started the seeds in March. In the kitchen window. In little peat pots. Where Dad started them every spring for forty years.
He put them in the ground in the garden behind the house. Where Dad’s garden used to be. Where Mom hadn’t planted anything in fourteen years.
He put in twelve plants.
Glenn helped.
The first tomato came in August.
Ethan picked it on a Thursday afternoon. He carried it into the kitchen in both hands. Like it was made of glass.
Glenn and I were sitting at the kitchen table.
Ethan set it on the table between us.
Red. Perfect. Still warm from the sun.
He sliced it with Mom’s old paring knife. He sprinkled salt on it. He put three slices on three plates.
We ate them standing at the counter.
Nobody said anything.
Then Glenn put down his plate.
He went out to his truck.
He came back with something. A photograph. In a frame.
Dad and an eight-year-old boy standing next to a tomato plant. Behind an apartment building. By the dumpsters.
E.J. — first tomatoes!
Glenn had taken it from the box. Had it framed.
He hung it on the kitchen wall.
Next to the window. Where the seedlings started.
Ethan looked at it for a long time.
“He’d be glad,” Ethan said finally. “That they’re back in his garden.”
“He’d be glad you’re back in his garden,” Glenn said.
