My Stupid Girl (39 page)

“Can I see some ID please?” She held her
hand out irritably.

She might have looked a little like Lucy
but she sure didn’t act like her. 

“Sure.” I pulled out my wallet, slid my
driver’s license out, and held it out for her. She looked down at the face and
up at me, then down again at my license. Her eyes squinted, trying to find a
lie somewhere. She huffed noisily, handed me back my license, and hit a button
on her computer that made her printer fire up. I was surprised how many papers
were spilling out. A few of them fell on the floor. She stood up and walked
over to the printer to gather them. She stapled them and then walked them back
to me, her mood much more respectful, but still distant. Now she was curious. 

“Thank you.” Maybe politeness would win her
over. I knew that my appearance and the fact that I had an account I didn’t
know about was probably causing this poor girl serious alarm. I smiled kindly
at her, hoping she would feel more at ease. Her thin smile wasn’t very
encouraging. Oh well.

I looked down at the top paper in the
stack. The first date was July 28, 1992, a few days after the day I was born. A
hundred dollars had been deposited. I smiled, thinking about the man I had just
left. Here was proof in front of me that they really had planned to give me a
good life. But then it got better. After the initial hundred that they’d opened
the account with, the same large amount kept repeating down the page. It was
like someone took a stamp, didn’t bother to change it, and just started banging
it down on the paper, one after another after another. I saw, four months after
I was born, a deposit for four hundred and eighty dollars. The month after
that, another four hundred and eighty dollars. Next to each amount was the
memo, “World Life Insurance.” 

“No way.” I breathed out in disbelief. I
had become unaware of the beautiful but stiff teller still glaring suspiciously
at me but I didn’t care. Page after page sported the same numbers, mostly
hundreds, with four hundred and eighty dollars appearing on the same date every
month. On the seventh page I noticed that a thousand dollars had been deposited
on my sixth birthday. On my next birthday another grand had been put in. Mouth
open and my head reeling, I went to the last page where I saw the number, “two
hundred and twelve thousand two hundred and sixty dollars” in big, bold print.

“What?!” I said, practically yelling. My
mother must have had life insurance. The amount of four hundred and eighty
dollars had been put into my account since I was a few months old. Every single
penny from my mother’s life insurance was in my account; he had given it all to
me. Not one withdrawal had ever been made. This entire time, through each
drunken, angry outburst, having to leave and go to a foster family, my dad had
been saving money for me, building me a future.

It was becoming painfully obvious that this
was the only way he really knew how to show he cared. I would take it, though.
It was better than him not caring at all, which is what I’d thought of him when
I’d woken up this morning.

Then I looked closely at the one thousand
dollars that had been deposited on every birthday since I was six years old. I
assumed it was from him again but I couldn’t figure out why he would bump up
the amount for my birthday when he was putting hundreds of dollars in every
month already. When I looked closely at the date of my last birthday, though, a
new name shone brightly from the page: “Anthony Pfalmer.”

22. BIRTH FATHER

A thick smell of sulfur and mud filled my nose as I
walked cautiously through what looked like a thick forest. Obviously, I was
dreaming. But that knowledge didn’t really do anything for me and the feeling
of pure terror and helplessness that was growing in my chest. I couldn’t see
anything but black leaves and impenetrable trees. A light shone randomly
through the wall of leaves in front of me. I put my hand out and pushed aside
the low branches but they stung my palms. 

“Help.” I heard a soft cry from the other
side of my leafy prison and it made me push harder, despite the cuts I was
getting. The leaves must have been knives, designed to keep me in place. I
heard the cry again; it sounded like Lucy. I wanted to run, and tried, but I
wasn’t getting anywhere. No matter how hard I pushed my feet they stood still. 

“Lucy!” I screamed, still trying
desperately to shift my weight and force my feet to do what I wanted them to
do. I would get one foot up, but the other forgot to work so I was stuck with a
knee up in the air like an awkward black flamingo. 

“David, help me!” She sounded even more
terrified. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to advance, one foot in front
of the other. I was moving slowly but I was getting there. I didn’t care how
long it took. I was going to get to her. I pushed against the sharp leaves,
blood spilling out of my hands, but it dried before it fell from my fingers,
like it was mocking me, saying that it didn’t matter how hard I worked, I would
have nothing to show for it.

Eventually, the light got brighter and the
leaves became fewer. The smell got more pungent and my eyes burned from the
heat, but I dug deep and continued. Two suspension bridges appeared, side by
side. I couldn’t see where they led. They looked endless. Beneath the bridges
was a ridiculous, cartoonishly deep chasm. Peeking from mist in the bottom were
sharp rocks, many stories high, sharp points glistening in the light.

One bridge looked slightly more stable than
the other. Of course, then I noticed Lucy standing on the one that was
dilapidated, crackling, and swaying. Seeing her knocked my legs back into
“move” mode, so I ran to the end of the bridge she was on and called out.

“Lucy, come back. We can take the other one
together.” I beckoned to her with my arms wide and my fingers outstretched but
when she tried to walk back the wood under her feet would crack in protest. She
looked up at me with her piercing blue eyes, hollow with fear. I didn’t know
what to do. If I went out on her bridge we would both fall. If I didn’t, Lucy
would be lost. I couldn’t save her. 

“Lucy, try to climb on the rope!” I
shouted, putting my hands out to indicate that I would catch her. She put her
leg over the rope and it instantly vanished, leaving her in midair with nothing
to hang on to but pieces of wood, dancing around her. And then she fell.

I sat straight up in my bed, drenched in
sweat. My arms were still out in front of me in a beckoning position. I
breathed a deep sigh of relief when I saw my clean room in front of me and felt
my warm bed beneath me. I crumpled back into the sheets and shuffled my legs
irritably. Stupid girl. Only Lucy would pick the bridge that wasn’t safe. Even
in my dream she wasn’t observant and careful. I smiled and closed my eyes to
properly picture that face. Round and freckled. Full lips and to big teeth that
hid behind them. Sparkling blue eyes surrounded by dark, long eyelashes. 

I missed her. It had been months since Prom
Night, months since we had spoken. I thought about her often, I missed being
around her, but something kept me from calling her. Maybe my pride but I didn’t
know. I didn’t have any great desire to talk with her. It was almost like I
just wanted the memory that I had created in my mind, not the real one. Every
time I thought of calling her, I remembered the intense desire to put a fist on
her face, and I knew without a doubt she was better off without me.

I sighed and rubbed at my eyes, trying to
erase the image of Lucy falling. It didn’t work. The only comfort I found
lately was that she was free to find a person who was better for her: a
Christian guy with the same morals and beliefs. Someone who understood the whole
God thing. Although, I wasn’t sure if that would do a whole lot of good, since
I wasn’t sure she really understood it herself. But what did I know? I was out
of that loop.

I looked over at the clock on my side table
and jumped with excitement. It was 5:30 on a Saturday morning. Today was the
day I was going to meet my birth father. I had thought of nothing but him in
the many weeks since I’d found his name on my bank statement. 

I’d gone over and over in my mind the pros
and cons of trying to contact him. No matter which way I thought, he had been
making an effort to be a part of my life. I bombarded my adopted father, asking
him how I could get a hold of Anthony Pfalmer. I knew that he had to have
gotten my bank information from somewhere. Dad gave me a “last known” phone
number with no hesitation. 

I agonized for three months on whether I
should call or not. It was a hundred million times worse than wanting to call
Lucy. I almost drove Grandma crazy by voicing every uncertainty that my brain
could hold. She about called him for me to end her suffering, and that’s when I
finally decided I had to just get it done.

That phone call was the greatest I ever had
in my life. When I heard the clear “hello” on the other end I couldn’t help but
smile. He sounded just like me. It sounded like my own voice was talking back
to me. Once I told him who I was he begged me to come and see him and meet his
family. He had a son who was three years old and a wife named Marty. I was sad
for a moment, remembering Lindsey Hurst’s name on my birth certificate,
thinking that him and my mom might have stayed together if they’d kept me. But
then I figured that was a long shot. Couples who had been through way less
broke up every day. Lucy and I were an example of that. Besides, I was trying
to avoid spending time and mental energy on “what ifs” these days. It is what
it is, and that was more than enough.

Anthony Pfalmer wanted me to come and visit
them in Washington state that weekend, and I instantly agreed. I could not
wait. As soon as I got off the phone with him, I got on my computer to look at
plane tickets. I purchased my round trip ticket within a few minutes and
started packing. When I went back to my computer a few hours later to check my
bank account, I saw that, along with the ticket debit, a credit of a few
hundred dollars had appeared, making my balance even higher than it had been
before my first major purchase with the big account. That evening I got a text
from my birth father telling me the money was for the ticket, and whatever was
left over was for travel expenses. It was kind of weird to have him explaining
deposits, after just having wrapped my mind around the idea of years of
anonymous donations.

I was excited, then nervous, but never
uncertain or regretful that I had decided to go see him. I wondered what we
would talk about, what he would look like, how I would feel seeing him with
another son. A son that he’d kept. And I wondered about my mother. 

It was the slowest week of my life. The
days dragged on and my clock moved slower than usual, but Saturday morning had
finally arrived. On the heels of a terrible dream.

My plane was leaving in a few hours, so I
just decided to get up. I wasn’t falling back asleep. I spent some time getting
my appearance as first-meeting-awesome as it could get. The white short-sleeved
shirt that Lucy loved highlighted brightly colored tattoos. Some “normal” jeans
that had been sitting in the back of my closet for a while still fit, and
actually looked really good. For some reason, my snake-bite lip rings had never
made in back into my face, although the eyebrow ring still sat boldly above my
eyes. And I was silently thanking myself that I had finally gotten a haircut
that made me look (just barely) like a normal person. It was still long, just
past my ears on the sides, and down to the middle of my neck in the back. It
was layered and fell neatly just enough in front of my eye to make me
comfortable but it didn’t block the right side of my face completely like it
had before. I found that my scar didn’t bother me as much as it used to. To my
surprise, I didn’t get as many questioning looks as I’d always feared I would.
I guess I made it out to be worse than it was. Finally, I put on some eyeliner,
only a little. Giving up all makeup would probably never happen. Plus, the
black eyeliner made my green eyes pop.

I went out into the kitchen and made a pot
of coffee for my grandma before I left. She was so tired lately. She kept
getting smaller and weaker. I had a lot more time to help her, lately, and I
tried to make the most of it. The woman hardly had to do anything around the
house, anymore. I either took care of it or paid to have someone do it. 

The financial freedom to help Grandma do
things she needed help with was one of the greatest gifts my two dads could
have given me. 

* * *

I sat next to a beautiful blond girl with
deep brown eyes on the plane. She was short and her personality was like a
million firecrackers going off at once. She wanted to sit next to the window,
even though I had paid for a window seat. She was not shy in asking me to
switch with her. 

“I’m pretty sure the window seat is more
expensive,” I teased her.

“But I bet you’re probably the nicest guy
around and don’t even think about stuff like that. Plus, I get sick if I’m not
next to the window seat. That would be terrible for you!” She stood in the
aisle with her arms crossed, smiling. 

“You make a valid argument, ma’m. You may
sit here.” I got up and let her practically walk over my long legs to get to
her new seat. 

“Thank you--” She held out her hand and
waited for my name.

“David.” 

“Thank you, David. I’m Brandy.” She smiled
again and revealed a mouth with too many teeth. She probably had to smile all
the time just to make those teeth worth it, although I’m sure the rest of her
beautiful face helped a lot. I felt shy talking with her, but she made it easy.
She jabbered away, barely even noticing the scenery in the window she’d needed
so badly. It was nice to talk to someone my own age, though. I’d spent most of
the last few months talking with Grandma or just in silence.