Even a self-contained and watchful kid like Apollo could end up running with a crew. He had two best friends and did well in American history with Mr. Perrault. Lillian had passed her classes to become a legal secretary and found a better job at a law firm in midtown Manhattan. But the work had her keeping even longer hours, not getting home until eight o’clock sometimes. Latchkey kid was the term. Adults lamented this new reality on the Donahue show. They scolded working mothers who were damaging their poor kids by their need to make a living.
Apollo spent that afternoon as kids do when they don’t have to be home right away: dipping into the nearby diner to play a few quarters’ worth of Galaga, then off to the bodega for quarter waters and chips, looping around the corner to Colden Street, where a game of running bases had popped off. He played for an hour or three, then headed upstairs. It had been—in all honesty—a day or two since he’d had a shower, and the game worked up a funk even he couldn’t ignore. Apollo turned on the shower and had stripped halfway down when he heard heavy knocking coming from the far end of the apartment. When he ignored it—probably just a neighbor looking for his mom—the pounding only got louder. The hot water in the shower started to form steam. When Apollo walked out of the bathroom, it looked as if he’d stepped out of a cloud.
He’d made it halfway across the apartment before a prickly feeling ran across his neck. The knocking at the door continued, but he looked behind him to find the steam in the bathroom flowing out into the hall, as if it was following him. Apollo felt woozy just then. As if, without knowing it, he’d taken a step into someone’s dream. His own dream. He felt jolted by the realization. He’d had this dream, night after night, when he was young. How young? Three or four? There had been knocking at the door, and the sound of running water, the apartment dense with fog and…
He ran for the front door. As soon as he got close, the knocking stopped abruptly.
“Wait for me,” he whispered. He felt stupid when he said it. Even stupider when he repeated it.
His father was not on the other side of the door. His father was not on the other side of the door. His father was not.
And still Apollo snapped the locks open. He felt as if he was shrinking. How had he opened the door in that dream? How had he reached the top lock when he was only a small child? Anything was possible in a dream. How about now then? Maybe he’d fallen asleep in the bathroom, sitting in the tub, and some random firing of electricity in his brain had helped this fantasy resurface. Apollo decided not to care. There was a certain freedom in knowing you were in a dream. If nothing else, he might open the door and see his father and be reminded of the man’s features. He couldn’t remember them anymore. But when he opened the door, his father wasn’t there.
Instead a box sat on the threshold.
Apollo leaned out, as if he’d catch a glimpse of his dream father, maybe farther down the hall. Nobody there. He looked back down at the box. Heavy cardboard, one word written on the lid in black marker.
Improbabilia.
Apollo went down on a knee. He picked up the box—it wasn’t heavy—and brought it inside with him. The contents of the box shifted and thumped. He sat on the carpet in the living room. He opened the lid.
“THAT WAS YOUR father’s box,” Lillian said.
Apollo didn’t notice the sun had set, didn’t hear his mother enter the apartment. It was only when she touched the back of his neck that he became aware of anything else at all.
She dropped her purse and crouched beside him. “Where did you find all this?” she asked.
“Someone left it at the door,” he said.
Apollo had spread the contents out on the living room carpet. A pair of movie ticket stubs, the headshot of some young white woman, the rental agreement to an apartment in Jackson Heights, the bill for an overnight stay at a hotel on Ninth Avenue, right near Times Square, a small stack of receipts for takeout food, a marriage certificate for Brian West and Lillian Kagwa, and one children’s book.
“What are you talking about?” Lillian whispered as she scanned the collection. “My God,” she said even more softly.
Apollo turned to look at her, and she reared back, standing straight, trying to recover. “Tell me the truth,” she said. “Was this in my closet? Did you go through my things?”
Apollo pointed to the front door. “There was a lot of knocking. I thought—” He stopped himself. “I didn’t know who it was. I was about to take a shower.”
This was when Apollo registered the running water, still going. He got to his feet and sped to the bathroom. Because of the slow drain in their apartment, the tub had overflowed, and the bathroom floor showed puddles all over.
“Apollo!” Lillian shouted when she found the mess. She pushed past her son and turned off the water. She pulled towels down from the rack and laid them on the floor. “I have to go check with Mrs. Ortiz and make sure we didn’t leak through her ceiling.”
Despite this impossible box in the living room, there were some concerns no parent could ignore; for instance, did her son just cause a major accident for their downstairs neighbor, a kind old woman who used to babysit this thoughtless child? And how much might it cost her to fix Mrs. Ortiz’s ceiling?
Lillian left the bathroom, and Apollo followed her. On her way to the door, she glanced back to the box, the items on the carpet, and quickly returned to them. She leaned over and snatched up one piece of paper, turned, and left the apartment. Apollo returned to living room. Lillian had taken the receipt for the overnight stay near Times Square. She thought she was hiding something, but it didn’t matter. In the time that he’d been sitting there, he’d basically committed all of it to memory and tried to connect the items to the stories he knew about his mother and father. One of the things he hadn’t been sure of was the bit his mother just confirmed.
How could a man who held on to all these things just abandon his wife and child? And how had all this evidence ended up at Apollo’s front door? He looked at the lid of the box again and read the word etched across the top. Improbabilia.
His mother would have to explain what most of the items signified, but one seemed easier to grasp. The children’s book, Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak. Apollo opened it. He’d been hoping to find a special note, a dedication of some kind, from father to son, even just evidence of his dad’s handwriting. None of that, but the pages were well worn, the upper-right corner of each page faintly smudged, the spine of the book showed cracks. This wasn’t for display; this book had been read many times. Apollo imagined Brian West—maybe sitting on this very couch—reading the book aloud to his child. Now he read the first page aloud to himself.