Finding amos, p.22
Finding Amos, page 22
Toya was crying like a fool! That’s not what she’d wanted to do. It’s not what she wanted him to see. She turned away from him and faced the window.
“I’m sorry that I was Melba Jean’s daughter,” she said. “I’m sorry that you hated her, but you didn’t have to hate me, too. I didn’t choose you, Amos. But you chose her, and you made a kid with her. It was your job to step up and be there for that kid, and you weren’t because you couldn’t stand my momma! But that wasn’t my fault!” She turned to face him once more. To hell with him. Toya had spent a lifetime putting this man up on a pedestal and he had never deserved it. For the first time, looking at him now, she realized that.
“I don’t need you now,” she said softly. “I don’t even want you, Amos.” Toya picked up her purse and started to leave. She’d said what she had to say, and he’d had no choice but to listen. Whether he got it or not wasn’t her problem. But she’d gotten rid of it.
“Toya.”
She stopped at the sound of his voice, scratchy and hoarse. Toya refused to meet his eyes.
“Toya . . . baby.”
Why’d he have to go and call her that? A knot the size of a basketball swelled in her stomach. Toya turned around to Amos’s outstretched hand. Tears slid down the sides of his face. Her feet tried to stay cemented to the floor, but Toya tore them away and went to him, taking hold of his hand.
“I missed you,” he finally said. “I thought about you. I regretted you, but only because I knew that I could never be what you needed.”
Toya burned her face against his shoulder and cried. “I needed my father.”
“I am so very sorry,” he began to sob. “But I never knew how to be one. I knew how to woo women, how to charm them, and love them for a time, but then music would get in the way. It was my joy and my curse and it cost me. It cost me everything, even you.”
“And now it’s too late,” she said, dismally, brushing off his excuses.
“Is it?” Amos held out his hand for her to take. “I’m still breathing. You’re still breathing. And breath is everything.”
Amos
The eight-track was already in the deck, and all he had to do was push a button and wait. Not until he heard the first lick from the guitar did he even bother to turn the key in the ignition. There wasn’t a sweeter sound in the world than that opening guitar riff on Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” Amos Davis slowly pulled his black ’76 Camaro away from the curb and headed for Chicago. Linda wasn’t happy about his leaving, but then again, Linda didn’t know what it felt like to chase a dream. She had, after all, given up her dream in exchange for him.
He followed the lure of the next gig like a bee follows the trail to the honey hive. It was just instinct.
“We need you to sit in for Gus next weekend, man. Gus got problems, or problems got Gus, but whatever it is, he ain’t gonna be able to play at Izzy’s.” Amos had no idea how this brotha got his number. His name was Wayne Brown and he headed up a blues band in Milwaukee called Chi-Town Five. He’d called a week ago, asking Amos if he could do him the honor of performing with them at the Blues Festival at Izzy’s in Chicago. A week later, Amos was on his way.
Izzy’s was a dive about a hundred miles out of his way, but that was all right. Amos was just answering his calling, that’s all. They needed a piano player, somebody who could pick up where Gus left off, and Amos needed to get his hands on a keyboard. Besides, they called Amos because they knew that if anybody could come through for them, he could.
The Chi-Town Five should’ve been his band all along. Driving down the tree-lined single-lane highway from Detroit, Amos remembered the night when it all came together, everyone sitting there in Brown’s living room in his small South Side Chicago home, five men high on gin and weed, grooving to jams they made up on the spot. They were soul and funk, rhythm and blues, jazz and boogaloo all rolled up into a sound that even the angels couldn’t help but dance to. People had gathered outside the door, and before they knew it, there was a party going on in Brown’s front yard.
When all was said and done, the five of them exchanged glances, nodding because they all had been sharing the same consciousness, using one soul, blending into one sound, and had all reached the same conclusion.
Amos said it first. “I think we got somethin’ here.”
That was all that needed to be said, and from that point on, they were in business. The Chi-Town Five was born. That was six years ago. They were as good, if not better, than any group out there: Earth, Wind & Fire; the Ohio Players; Junior Walker and the All-Stars. Hell, Amos could run down a list of a hundred groups who’d signed on with the big record labels that the Chi-Town Five could play under the table. The others had just gotten lucky. That’s all. That was the only difference between playing in sold-out stadiums and playing in dives like Izzy’s, as far as Amos was concerned. Talent didn’t mean shit these days, but luck was a whole other kind of vibe.
He left the group because Linda didn’t want him playing in clubs every night, which he found ironic because he’d met her in a club. Amos was sitting up onstage, beating blood from those piano keys, his voice hoarse from singing too damn much, and there she was, standing on his side of the stage, twisting plump hips into perfect figure eights. How’d she know he had a thing for hips? To this day, he wondered.
A pretty dark-skinned girl with big brown eyes and a pretty mouth, Linda put a spell on Amos, all right, one that made it hard to be home with anybody who wasn’t her. One thing led to another, and Linda had welcomed him home with open arms.
Linda had something about her that just didn’t seem real sometimes. Love never had nothing to do with how he felt about Linda, but he couldn’t deny the power she’d held over him these last couple of years, either. So when she said, you need to quit gigging and stay home with me or else . . . Well, he didn’t even want to think about what “else” could possibly mean. Amos told the group he had to be there for his woman. They were disappointed, but they’d all seen Linda. They understood where he was coming from.
A long time ago some fool had had the nerve to ask him once if he knew how to read music.
He might as well have asked Amos if he could jump up and touch the moon because he couldn’t do that, either.
“Read music?” Amos asked, shocked. “Naw, I don’t read no damn music, and if you was a real musician, you wouldn’t be readin’ it, neither.”
The man looked like Amos had just said something bad about his momma.
“Music comes from the soul, son,” Amos explained earnestly. “It ain’t dots and lines on a piece of paper. Music is somethin’ you feel. You breathe and taste it. You listen for it, and if it looks like anythin’ at all, it looks like the curves on a beautiful woman, the light in a child’s eyes. Music, good music, looks like a big, thick, juicy steak.”
The man laughed, but Amos was serious. The best kind of music came from the heart, and it didn’t have nothing to do with no pen and paper.
“Sing it, man!” One boisterous voice caught his attention as he played alongside his bandmates on Izzy’s stage.
Amos sang lead on the Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” as good as David Ruffin on his best day, only he did it with more soul. Amos sang that song from that place inside him that had put him on his knees many nights, beseeching some woman in his life for forgiveness, and he didn’t need a sparkly blue two-piece suit or fancy dance steps to make sure every person on that dance floor heard him loud and clear.
Linda had thrown a fit when he told her that the band needed him to sit in for a night. He’d left her standing in the kitchen with her mouth poked out and fire in her eyes, and he knew there’d be hell to pay when he made it home. But right here and now, he didn’t give a damn. Amos had been born to be up onstage, singing and playing the piano. Factory work kept the bills paid, but it didn’t do nothing to satisfy his soul.
That dark, smoke-filled room, smelling like whiskey and sweat, was home sweet home for . . .
His eyes were playing tricks on him. Amos faltered, blinking his eyes to try to focus on what couldn’t possibly be real coming into view beyond the gyrating bodies swaying in front of him. “Miko?” he whispered in awe. Amos raised his hand to touch her face. Was she real? Was she standing there in front of him?
“Yes, Daddy.” She smiled. “It’s me. It’s Tomiko.”
Amos was confused. What was she doing here?
“Does yo’ momma know you in here? Did you sneak out?” he smiled.
She smiled back. “I followed you here. I came to hear you play.”
She was his heart. Tomiko was the perfect part of him. “Can you sing with daddy?”
“Of course I can.”
The piano in front of him wasn’t real, but Amos positioned his fingers on air, and played the melody circling in his dream and hummed. Tomiko resisted the urge to be afraid because he was living in the past and present at the same time, but there was something beautiful about this moment. He was having his cake and eating it too, living in that world where he was king and sharing it with her believing that she was six years old.
He looked up at her as his fingers moved on invisible piano keys. “You remember the words to this?”
Tomiko’s eyes glazed over with tears as she bobbed her head. “You go first, Daddy. I’ll sing the chorus.”
Amos laughed.
Amos
Three Months Later
Amos could hardly move fast enough, shuffling down that hallway at the speed of molasses freezing in the winter. Jennie V. looped her arm in his and walked with him toward the nurses’ station. She called herself his girlfriend, but that mess wasn’t even remotely true.
“Looking good, old man,” Mark said.
“They here yet?” Amos asked excitedly.
“Not yet.”
“Good.” He looked at Jennie V., who was smiling up at him.
“You could just be ready for ’em when they get here.” She grinned.
He was nervous sitting in front of that piano. Most of the residents filled the room, waiting eagerly for him to start, but he wasn’t about to begin until the girls got here. Amos took several deep breaths to calm his nerves, closed his eyes, and remembered those memories most clear in his mind. He thought back to the musky smell of cigarettes and whiskey, of perfume mixing with cologne.
He saw the lights bouncing back and reflecting off shoes polished like glass, and tapped his fingers to the rhythm Boss Man Jones plucked on his guitar to help calm his nerves before they played. Brotha Luke finished tuning his bass, while Ike Preston waited patiently holding his drumsticks, watching the room fill up with pretty girls who worshipped the ground he walked on. Making music was the only kind of magic Amos knew, and he clung to those times in his life, whether in his right mind or not.
He opened his eyes in time to see Cass coming through the door first, and not long after her came Toya, still looking apprehensive and pensive, still needing to be convinced. And finally, looking as sweet as ever, Miko came in, trailing behind the other two, and took her seat right next to them.
Mark came in like he promised, sat down next to Cass, and kissed her like he meant it. Jennie V. sat in the middle of the front row the way she always did, smiling like every word to come out of his mouth was supposed to be gospel and meant for her. Maybe she was right. Maybe today, every word was hers.
The entire crowd stirred as two older men strode into the room. Amos blinked several times, not sure if what was happening sprang from his diseased mind or if he really was seeing two of his longtime band mates swaggering their way toward him. Boss Man Jones and Ike Preston still looked mighty dapper, even if their faces were craggy and their hair was white.
Chortling at the huge look of surprise on Amos’s face, Mark came forward as the three old friends shook hands. “Man, you need to tell your friends where you’re at,” Mark told him. “As soon as I called them, they both said they wanted to come see you.”
“And here we be, you old son of a gun,” said Boss Man. “What, you can’t pick up a phone?”
The three men laughed together, and when the uproar died down, Amos announced, “You know something? I’ve been doing some new writing these days. I got a new song I want to play for you.” He looked past them and pointed at his three daughters. “And especially for them. Because the song’s about the new start in life that they’ve given to a lonely old man.”
Amos had come to realize that he got more than he deserved. His girls might never forgive him for everything he did wrong, but they forgave him enough to be here now. Cass caught his eye and winked at him. Toya gave him as much of a smile as she could muster, and Miko stared at him the way she used to when she was a small girl, sitting on his lap and singing right along with him.
His girls had become his inspiration. Instead of his music pulling him away from them, he was going to sing a song he’d written for them:
Wish there was a way to turn back time
Wish there was a way to right past wrongs
But there are no do-overs in life and so I sing this song
To tell you what I feel in my heart is true
To tell you that I love you, really I do.
Acknowledgments
FROM J. D. MASON
My dad inspired the idea for this story. He passed away some years ago and, along with him, some unresolved issues between the two of us passed away, too. I loved him more than I think he knew, and he loved me more than I believed he could. I miss him. The last message he left me on my phone before he died he said, “Hey, J.D. This is J.P. Call me. I got something to tell you.” I didn’t get a chance to call him back. Despite his shortcomings, he was the first man I ever loved. His smile was infectious, he told the best jokes, and boy could he sing!
Reading Group Guide
Finding Amos
Introduction
When Amos Davis finds himself in a nursing home after a car accident, he is saddled with the news that he suffers from Alzheimer’s disease—and the chilling realization that there is no one to care for him. Alone, the once-famous musician must confront the consequences of his years spent womanizing. His only hope for a family is in the three daughters—by three different women—that he abandoned years ago.
Up until now, Cass, Toya, and Tomiko were only connected by the heartbreak caused by their absent father. Now, they must reconcile their painful pasts with their present opportunities to connect and forgive—in the hope of rebuilding the family they never thought they’d have.
Discussion Questions
1. The novel opens with Amos daydreaming about the past. In the memory, his father tells him he is not a “real man” because “a real man works. A real man’s hands got calluses. A real man’s got a crooked back from being bent over all the damn time workin’ in them fields.” Do you think that Amos ever considers himself a “real man”? In the end, how might Amos redefine what a real man is?
2. Discuss the structure of the novel. Do the changing points of view make this story equally about all of the characters—Amos and his three daughters? Or does this story seem to belong to one character more than another?
3. On pages 109 and 110, Max’s wife, Jewel, confronts Toya in her home, and Toya is reminded of scenes from her childhood between Melba Jean and Amos. “Like mother, like daughter,” she thinks to herself. Do you think Toya is likely to suffer the same fate as her mother? Is confronting her estranged father the remedy she needs to overcome the cycle of self-abuse? In your response, consider how Amos’s other two daughters, Cass and Tomiko, are like or unlike their mothers.
4. Examine as a group Toya and Max’s relationship. Is Toya in love with Max, or with the idea of Max? What does he represent to her? Do you think that their relationship could ever work? Why or why not?
5. What do Cass, Toya and Tomiko have in common? Do you think their shattered relationship with their father has made it difficult for these three women to find love? Is one more successful in love, or life in general, than the others? Is one the most damaged?
6. “If you go see that man, don’t expect any miracles from him, Toya . . . he can make you believe in ’em, but Amos ain’t never been good at deliverin’ on ’em,” Melba Jean tells her daughter. Do you think that the ability to change—or the inability to change—is a theme of Finding Amos? In the end, does Amos change? Does Toya? Do Cass and Tomiko?
7. What symbolism can you glean from the title Finding Amos? Who is finding Amos? Is this person or persons seeking Amos physically, mentally, or both? Do you think the title might also refer to Amos finding himself ? Why or why not?
8. “You can’t disappear into a kitchen or lurk around in the corner of a room for the rest of your life,” Alma tells Cass. What does Alma represent in Cass’s life? Do you think of her as a help or a hindrance to Cass’s growth as a character?
9. Revisit the scene, beginning on page 170, when Tomiko FaceTimes with Amos. How does she feel about seeing her father again after so many years? In your opinion, does it make sense that Tomiko wonders why “that love was nowhere to be found”? Do you think it’s possible to love someone even when they don’t deserve it? Why or why not?
10. Consider the role of gender in Finding Amos. How do the women function in relation to the men in the novel? Is it notable that Amos has only daughters? Consider the bond of female relationships in your response, particularly between mothers/daughters, and the daughters and their close female friends.
