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cloud,” I said. “Then your life is over.”
    “That’s … very creative,” my father said. “But you need to see what the people were thinking were their reasons for the war, too.”
    He always mumbled when he wasn’t sure of himself. In a way I liked that about him. And what I said about the cloud wasn’t creative. It was stupid and we both knew it but there we were. I was on the East Coast and he was on the West.
    He ordered a tuna salad platter and I ordered a burger deluxe.
    “By the way,” he said, holding up his fork with a piece of tomato on the end of it, “I called your school about two weeks ago. Just thought I’d see how you were doing.”
    “Why didn’t you ask me?” I said. “Or Mom.”
    “Well, sometimes it’s good for the school to know that both parents are interested,” he said. The tomato disappeared into his mouth.
    “And what did the school say?” I asked.
    “Said that you were among the brightest and the best,” he said. He pronounced his
T
’s like he was announcing something. “But, somehow, your grades don’t reflect that.”
    “I’m working on that,” I said.
    “I’m wondering if you might be better off in a school in the Seattle area,” he said. “There are some great schools in the U district.”
    “U district?”
    “University district,” he said. “Lots of kids whose parents teach at the University of Washington or some of the other schools. Lots of competition. Think you could stand being around a lot of brainy young people?”
    “Don’t want to go to no Seattle,” I said.
    “You know, Alexander …” He had his fingers together in front of his nose as if he was going to say something deep. “Sometimes we don’t always know what’s best for us. You only get one chance at a good education and you have to take advantage of it. If you’re not doing well living here in Harlem then you have an obligation to yourself to be someplace else.”
    “Mom is here in Harlem,” I said.
    “Your education is not about your mother and it’s not about me, frankly,” he said. “It’s about you and your chances in life.”
    “You got Mom really upset when you sent that thing—the subpoena,” I said. “Why you have to do that?”
    “Because I care for you and I want answers, not promises,” he said. “As I said, it’s not about me or your mother. And I didn’t send it as just a guy who lives an awfully long way from a son he loves very much. I sent it as a father who would just hate to see that son throwing away his talent because he’s not being closely supervised. Did I tell you that Carrie is a teacher? She could really help you get back on track.”
    “Who’s Carrie?”
    “Oh, uh, your stepmother,” he said. “You didn’t remember her name?”
    Her name was Carolyn and I did remember it. I also remembered what she looked like because he sent me a photograph of her. She was young looking with a round face and reddish-brown hair. Mom and I drew a mustache on her before we threw the photograph away.
    “I’m not going to Seattle,” I said.
    “We’ll explore all of our options,” he said.
    He switched the conversation to basketball and asked me what position I was playing. I told him I was playing forward and he said I would be tall enough soon to play center.
    “I don’t want to play center,” I said.
    We didn’t talk much after that and I thought he was glad when the lunch was over. He asked me if I needed cab money to get home and I told him I was going to walk.
    “I’m taking a cab downtown—corporate offices. I’ll drop you off first uptown,” he said, standing on the sidewalk.
    “I’m walking.”
    We did our firm handshake bit and I watched as he hailed a cab and started downtown.
    I wished things were different, that he and Mom were together. But they weren’t, and that was the way it was. I thought about LaShonda. Her parents had been really young when they left her with an aunt one day and just never come back. At least I