Fingerprints of You (21 page)

I
SLEPT ALL AFTERNOON, DREAMING OF WATER
too thick to swim through, and when I woke sweating and breathless, I called my mother on my Byzantine Ceiling Blue cell. It was around three o’clock in California, just about the time Emmy was making her connecting flight in Dallas.

Stella picked up on the third ring and began with a hurried, “Yep, I’m here.” Behind her I heard the rattle of pots and pans in the kitchen. “I was just thinking of you,” she said. “I’m up to my ass in casserole for the Prestons. Everyone’s talking about what happened to Tony. Do people really eat casserole when they’re sad?” she asked, and I listened to her pause for a sip of something with ice cubes clinking against the glass. “It’s awful, right? Who the hell wants food that’s all melted together like this? It’s like baby food for grown-ups,” she said. “All lumps and mush.”

“You’re home? I thought you’d be heading out for happy hour.”

“Not me. Tuesday night’s my painting class. Club soda, on the rocks. I’ve got an hour to turn this casserole into something good, and then I’m out the door. Class starts at seven thirty,” she said, and I realized I didn’t know what color she’d picked for January, but before I got to ask, she said, “Is Emmy okay?” and then, “Shit, I forgot to preheat.”

“She’s on a plane heading back east,” I told her, and I sat down on the bed and pulled open the drawer in the nightstand, rummaging out of nervousness.

I listened to her take a deep suck of breath and then a huge puffy-cheeked exhale, her dramatic version of a sigh. “And that means that you’re where?” she asked, slowing down. “You’re alone out there, aren’t you?”

“I’m still in San Francisco.” I pulled the phone book out and flipped through ads in the yellow pages. Taxis and dentists and churches. Bookstores and nightclubs and AA meetings.

“Uh-huh. You’re in San Francisco. By yourself,” she said, and I imagined her eyes making the squinting face she used when she was pissed. “Brilliant. That’s genius, Lemon. Jesus Christ.”

I closed the phone book and eyed the Bible in the drawer. I couldn’t figure out why hotels bothered to put them in all the rooms; the only time I’d ever seen someone use one was back when Stella’d hand roll her cigarettes on the hard surface of the cover when we slept in motels between towns.

“And you’re planning to stay there for what, another week? A month? What, Lemon? What?” she said, her throaty voice laced with anger, heavy and thick through the telephones connecting us.

“I’m not really sure anymore.” I reminded myself she was too far away to do anything about the choices I was making. That she loved me and her anger was rooted in that.

“Here’s the deal. You’re coming home at the end of the weekend because school will be starting, because that was our agreement, and because I’m not letting my knocked-up kid hang out alone in the city for more than three—no, make that two—more days,” she said. “Your ass is on that bus on Sunday. Done.” Stella didn’t believe in negotiations, so she added, “No ifs, ands, or buts,” and I imagined her stamping her bare little foot on the kitchen floor. “I’m the mother. I’m in control,” she told me, and I wondered if she said it to remind herself or to remind me.

“School doesn’t start until the fifth,” I said.

“It’s a three-day trip, Lemon, don’t screw around. Sunday is the third of January, which means you’ll still miss two days of school,” she said, which surprised me because she was right even though I never considered her to be the kind of person who knew exactly what the date was. I actually couldn’t remember ever having a calendar in any of our houses.

But I felt like being honest. “I can’t make any promises. It just feels too soon.”

“Lemon,” she said.

“Stella,” I said back.

“This isn’t your decision to make,” she said, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying the exact same thing. “You’re just a child.”

“Not really,” I told her. “Not anymore.”

I heard the pots and pans again, the open and closing bang of the oven door.

I told her I found the house on Valencia Street, and I lied
and said Ryan was happy to see me. “I want more time with him. I want more information.”

There was a slamming of glass against countertop in the background, and I imagined the ice cubes airborne, landing on the floor and sliding across the linoleum, drops of club soda splattering on the oven top. Pace began barking somewhere in the house.

I waited and listened to her suck one deep breath after another as she tried to calm down. “You’ve got to move on, baby,” she eventually said softly.

“But I’m not ready to leave, and school’s not a problem because Emmy’ll be there to take notes and give me the assignments when I get back.” School seemed completely insignificant. It’d be a miracle if I graduated—my grades had slipped so much since the distraction of the baby, plus I hadn’t applied to colleges, so I thought it’d be better to just sit the rest of the semester out. Though I hadn’t told Stella or Emmy, I figured I would have to do a do-over, especially since I’d be missing so many days while I stayed in California. I was hoping that if I asked the administration to let me repeat my senior year, I might even have a chance of nailing Spanish the second time around.

“I’m not okay with this,” Stella said. “I want you back.” Another deep breath. “You’ve already missed a doctor’s appointment, plus you’ve got school. You’ve got to be running out of money, and I’m not sending you any, because I want you home. I want you where I can see you. Home,” she said again.

But home wasn’t really a word that meant much to me, and I imagined a foreign space, a house we hadn’t moved to yet, or another hotel. I thought of the blue-shuttered home in her painting. “It just feels too soon,” I said again.

And she said, “I miss you, Lemon,” which I believed when her voice slowed down like that, and then it got quiet behind her.

“Is he okay?” she finally asked.

I remembered the joint burning in Ryan’s hand the first time we met. A grown man costumed in a headdress with a bumblebee for a girlfriend on New Year’s Eve. “He works at the Fillmore and the Warfield,” I said, hoping I got the names right.

“Of course he does.” Her voice was sluggish, deflated. “Do what you want, Lemon, but I won’t send you money. I won’t write letters to the school. If you think you’re so grown-up, you can take care of the details on your own.”

Which seemed fair enough. I looked at the stained floor and dug my toe into the carpet. “It won’t be long. Another week, maybe two,” I lied.

“Find a doctor at least. You’ll need another ultrasound eventually. You’ll be able to find out the baby’s sex next time if you want.” It still surprised me that Stella was tracking the baby, and it made me miss her even if she hadn’t said exactly what I wanted.

She didn’t say,
This will turn out for the best. I believe in you.
She never said,
I understand.

“It won’t be long,” I repeated, thinking if I said it enough times one of us might begin to believe it. “I’ll call again soon,” I told her right before she said she loved me.

Afterward, I read for a while, dozing in and out of sleep, but then the couple in the room next to mine started up again, the woman groaning and the man crying out in staggered rhythms. I didn’t want to hear their thumping and clawing on the other side of the wall—it sounded lonely and desperate—so I took a
shower and decided to walk to the purple house even though I’d already missed dinner. I arrived around seven, and when Cassie opened the door she just looked at me and shrugged.

“We already ate,” she said, which made me feel like crap and wasn’t exactly an invitation to come inside, but I followed her up the stairs anyway and into the living room again, where the air smelled like burgers and hash browns.

Ryan and Cassie were both on the couch, so I sat in the recliner across from them and apologized for missing dinner. I said something lame about it having been a really long day, and Ryan took one look at me and asked, “So are you a troublemaker? A delinquent?” which seemed like a pretty hypocritical question coming from a guy who had been at the same New Year’s party as me the night before.

Cassie said, “Ryan, don’t,” but I couldn’t let it slide.

“I’m not confident enough to be a troublemaker,” I told him. I wasn’t bold enough to earn the label, even if I did look like one to Ryan and Cassie as I sat across from them.

“Does Stella know you’re here?” he asked, and I nodded. “So you’re sixteen and knocked up, and you came to San Francisco with some friend on the ’hound?” His voice was flat, cold. “Shouldn’t you be in school or something?”

I nodded and said, “I turned seventeen in September,” and he looked at the floor, embarrassed, maybe, that he’d gotten the math wrong. And then I added, “My friend left today. Emmy went back east this morning.”

Cassie sighed and leaned forward, perching her elbows on her knees, and Ryan said, “Holy shit.”

I tried to think of something to say that would make my situation sound less desperate than it was. “Her dad is on his way home from Afghanistan because he got his leg blown off.
It’s okay, though. I don’t have to leave yet as long as I can pay for the hotel,” I told them. I eyed the blue and green striped fish swimming in its bowl on the bookshelf next to me.

Ryan said “Jesus Christ” that time and slumped into the couch, and I figured he wished he had that joint again, but he reached over and put his hand on Cassie’s leg instead, leaned his head back against the wall, and looked up at the ceiling.

Cassie said, “Well,” and I thought she was going to say something important like,
Well, we’re glad you’re still here
, or maybe even something not that important like,
Well, we’ve got leftover burgers if you want them
, but she didn’t say anything at all for a while as I listened to the lightbulb buzzing in the fixture in the hallway. It was horrible really, that kind of silence sitting on top of us like that, crushing the space separating them from me.

“Well, you can’t stay in that hotel alone,” Cassie finally said, and I was thankful she thought to say something mildly adult-like, since all I was getting from Ryan was a bunch of cuss words. “She can’t stay in the Mission alone, Ryan.”

His eyes had been closed for a while, and I was worried he might have nodded off, but then he said “Jesus” again.

I thought they might offer to pay for a nicer hotel with thicker walls so I wouldn’t have to listen to all that sex next door, but Cassie said something about an air mattress and that I should save my money for groceries. “You’re only here for a little longer, right?” she asked, and I nodded like I had a plan. “So, fine then. That’s fine.” She looked at me but moved her hand on top of Ryan’s where it rested on her leg.

Ryan didn’t say anything until I got up to leave, when he shook his head and offered, “Come by tomorrow afternoon. We’ll get this sorted out.”

I let myself out, and when I was back on the street I looked at the purple house and tried to imagine what it would feel like to wake there in the morning, to call it home, but I couldn’t. Of all the places I had moved, I’d never expected to move in with him.

I turned six the year my mother packed us up for the first time and announced that we were moving from the only home I’d ever known. I had spent my entire life in my grandmother’s house, and I didn’t understand what moving meant. I thought we were going on a trip. I thought we were taking a vacation, maybe because that’s what she told me—I don’t remember how Stella explained it the first time she moved us. I just remember my grandmother crying as my mother sat on the floor labeling cardboard boxes.
SUMMER CLOTHES
.
PHOTOS
.
ELECTRONICS
.
LEMON’S TOYS
. We left at night, and it was hot in the car, the trunk tied down with black rope and the windows wide open as we backed out of the driveway. I could smell my mother’s shampoo from the backseat when the wind moved into the car, the heat of summertime mixing its humidity with the drugstore scent of garden flowers. She was crying a little, too, I saw it in the side-view mirror when I leaned my head out to wave good-bye to Nan, and when I pulled back in and buckled up like she told me to, Stella reached behind her seat and held my hand.

“We’re going to live in a big, beautiful castle,” she said, “and I’m going to have a big, beautiful job.” She wiped her tears off her face with the back of her wrist and told me about the coin-operated carousel out front of the grocery store we’d go to from then on. She said we would be fine. She said we would be happy. Just the two of us. “New York’ll be the start of wonderful things for us, me and you, Lemon,” she said, and
I believed her because I trusted her with the kind of blindness only children have.