Running Down a Dream, read the headline, and the first page of the story was a photograph of Andy winning his Olympic race, eyes shut, fists lifted, mouth open, in the instant he crossed the finish line. How Andy Landis Outraced a Rough Start to Win Olympic Gold. The piece had gone over everything I’d known about Andy—his life with Lori, the fights he’d gotten into, and how his mother had told him to channel his rage into running. I read about his paper route, his friend, Mr. Sills, his high school career, and the records he’d set. I skimmed, holding my breath, until I got to the new stuff.
Andrew Landis Senior was an athlete, too. A standout basketball player, good-looking, graceful, and fast, with a killer three-point shot, Landis Senior wasn’t quite talented enough to attract the attention of college scouts, or strong enough to resist the lure of the streets. Arrested for the first time at seventeen for selling marijuana on a corner of his Philadelphia neighborhood, Landis got in trouble for everything from petty theft and larceny to bar brawls and grand theft auto. When a judge let him choose between jail and the army, Landis enlisted and was posted to Germany. When he came home on a furlough, trouble found him again. Landis was arrested as an accessory to murder after a friend, DeVaughn Sills, shot a twenty-one-year-old former high school classmate and alleged rival drug dealer to death. Landis Senior, who’d been driving the car, was caught trying to dispose of the gun.
DeVaughn Sills. Was that Mr. Sills’s son? Had to be, I thought. How had Andy felt about that? I read the rest of it, wincing, sometimes gasping in sympathy. The reporter had found Andy’s father living in an SRO in Philadelphia. Landis Senior had watched his son’s success from afar, seeing him win his gold medal on a twelve-inch screen in his room. He had papered his walls with pictures and clippings of his son, but hadn’t tried to get in touch. “I don’t want Andy to think I’m after his money, or that I deserve any credit for his success,” he’d said. And if he could send a message to his Olympic-winning son? the story continued. Landis Senior doesn’t even have to think about it. “I know I wasn’t his father, but I’d tell him I was proud.”
Reached by telephone at the Manhattan apartment that he shares with his girlfriend, model Maisie Guthrie, Landis Junior had no comment, I’d read.
Andy. Oh, Andy. I’d rocked back and forth on the bench with my arms wrapped around my shoulders, aching for him. Aching even as I read the rest of the piece, about the endorsement deals, the friendships with the Hollywood stars and the NBA players, and the description of “the ethereally beautiful Guthrie, who has walked the runway for Victoria’s Secret and posed in some barely there bikinis for this publication.”
How had the ethereally lovely Guthrie handled the revelations? Had Andy gone to Philadelphia to find his father? My phone started buzzing in my lap. “Honey?” said my mother, on the verge of tears again, as always. “They’re saying your dress will be there first thing tomorrow, but isn’t that when you’re getting your nails done?”
Oh, right, I’d thought, getting to my feet. I’m getting married on Saturday. There is that. Send him love, I told myself, which was what my yoga instructor always said she did when someone barged in front of her on the stairs to the subway or grabbed the last quart of orange juice at the market. Send him love. He had Maisie, but I had Jay. The universe balanced. Let it be enough.
“It sounds like everything worked out,” Bethie said.
“I love living in New York. And Jay is great.” I hoped she didn’t hear what I was hearing, which was the sound of a woman who’d spent too much on an item of clothing that didn’t quite fit and was trying to tell herself that it looked fine. Jay was great. He was calm, he was kind, he was patient, solicitous, devoted . . . and if he was a little dictatorial, the tiniest bit patronizing about the stay-at-home thing, wasn’t that understandable? Didn’t it mean he would be a wonderful dad; didn’t it show that he cared?
“Jay is great,” I said again, just as he came into view, carrying two cups of punch.
“I thought you ladies might like some refreshments,” he said, and when he smiled, I decided that I couldn’t have gotten a better husband, that I couldn’t love him more.
“Jay, this is Beth—Elizabeth. Elizabeth Botts . . . Did you change your name?”
“Please. Wouldn’t you?” Bethie asked. I heard the faintest hint of the kind of sharp-edged nastiness she’d once used to deliver all of her remarks. There you are, Bethie, I thought. “It’s Chamberlain now. Elizabeth Chamberlain.”