I know this story because I was that godfather. It's not that I didn't want it. First I couldn't, then I stopped knowing how, and by the end it was too late to explain anything.
My name's Robert. I live in Scranton, on the fourth floor of a building on Adams Avenue, across from a bakery that's only smelled like anything on Sundays for the past five years, because the owner cuts corners on yeast. I work as a mechanic at a garage near the Greyhound station. Twenty-three years in the same spot, the same two service bays, the same grease under my fingernails that won't come out even with Lava soap.
When Chris and Amy asked me to be godfather to their son, I said yes right away. Chris and I went back to elementary school. We sat at the same desk, then he went off to college in Philadelphia and I stayed to help my dad at the shop. Chris came home for the holidays and always brought back beer you couldn't get around here. Then he met Amy. They got married at St. Peter's Cathedral, and I stood off to the side, because I was fresh off a divorce, wearing a rented suit that pinched under the arms.
Godfather isn't just a title. That's how I understood it. I was supposed to be the one who'd catch the kid when he stumbled, the one who'd tell him the truth when nobody else would. A gift wasn't enough. But gifts were the first thing Amy noticed.
For Andy's first birthday I brought a toy workbench with plastic tools. I saw it at a stall at the flea market off Cedar Avenue and thought: the kid should have something from me that isn't a stuffed animal. Amy opened the box, said thanks, but then I heard her in the kitchen telling Chris, "A toy hammer? Is he trying to give him ideas?"
For his second birthday I brought winter boots, size 8 toddler. Good ones, leather, bought at the shoe store on Wyoming Avenue, cost me forty-five dollars. Amy checked the sole, looked inside, set the box on the counter, and didn't say another word to me the rest of the party. Chris said the kid already had boots, that they'd gotten some at the mall.
For his third birthday I didn't show up. I called that morning and said there was an emergency at the shop, that I had to stay. Not true. I sat at home, drinking tea with lemon, staring at my phone. The gift sat on the table — a remote-control dump truck with a working crane, fifty-eight dollars, ordered online because the toy store on Main Street didn't carry it. I never brought it over. I set it on top of the hall closet and looked at it every day on my way out to work.
I went to Mass on Sundays, like I was supposed to. We stood on opposite sides of the aisle. Amy held Andy's hand, and I watched the boy get taller and taller, but I only knew it from a distance, from twelve pews back. Chris never called. Neither did I.
I ran into him once at the Giant Eagle on Moosic Street. He was standing by the dairy case holding a yogurt, checking the expiration date. I walked over. Said, "Hey. How's Andy doing?" He said, "Fine." Silence hung there. Then he put the yogurt back, grabbed a different one, the pricier brand, and said he had to run because Amy was waiting in the car. The car sat in the lot, a gray Honda, parked crooked, one tire up on the curb. I remember that detail because I had nothing else to hold onto.
Later I got a text. From Amy. That Andy was making his First Communion and that I shouldn't embarrass anyone if I didn't plan on bringing a decent gift. I wrote back: "What should I bring?" She wrote: "A card. Two hundred bucks minimum." I still haven't deleted that message. It's sitting in my phone, under it a bunch of invoices from the shop and a photo of my dad holding a pipe wrench, back in the eighties sometime.
I didn't go to the Communion. That day I sat in the garage, taking apart a transmission off an Audi some customer had dropped. Took it apart even though there was no real reason to. Put it back together, replaced two gaskets, charged fifty-five dollars. I put the money in an envelope, wrote "Andy" on it, drove it to the post office on Lackawanna Avenue, and mailed it certified. No note.
A week later Chris texted: "Got your envelope." I wrote back: "It's for Andy." He wrote: "Amy said to send it back, because that's not a gift from a godfather, that's a handout." I never responded.
Three years later I ran into Andy by chance. At the bus stop near the station, in the evening, in November. He was standing with a friend, laughing, earbuds around his neck that looked like the two-hundred-dollar kind from the commercials. I watched him from a distance. Didn't walk over. Didn't have the right to.
Andy's sixteen now. Last week he found me on Instagram. He wrote: "Are you my godfather?" My heart stopped like someone had killed the engine in the middle of an intersection. I wrote back: "Yes." Nothing for a long while. Then a message came: "Mom says you're a cheapskate who gives boots instead of money."
I didn't answer. I sat there with the phone in my hand, grease still on my fingers because I hadn't washed up after work. I went into settings and blocked him. Not out of anger. Let him think whatever he wants. I'm not going to make his mother out to be a liar.
Yesterday I went to the cemetery, to my father's grave. Lit a candle. Set down next to it a small decorative license plate I'd taken from the shop — a magnetic one, with "Robert" stamped on it. My dad always wanted to put a name plate on his truck. Never got around to it. There's a lot I never got around to either.
I won't answer the question, because I'm not fit to. All I can say is that gifts are the least of it. What's worse is when you stop calling and nobody ever asks why.
