Fingerprints of You (9 page)

That weekend, Stella decided we would spend the day at the mall choosing gifts to mail to various friends she’d kept in touch with over the years. Laura Sanders in New York, who worked as a catalogue model and a waitress. Tony Neilson at the Jersey Shore, “my boss with the tattoos,” she reminded me as we got into the car and headed for Morgantown Mall.

“Julia Reeves was the dancer in Maryland who helped us pack when we decided to leave,” she said as we stood in Victoria’s Secret and searched through a sale bin for bras and underwear. “Don’t you remember?” she asked. “Julia, with the fingernails,” which brought it all back, the long red pressons she used to slice through the tape as we sealed up our belongings in big cardboard boxes.

In J.C. Penney we picked out a new watch for Simon, and Stella flirted with the guy behind the men’s jewelry counter, testing to see if she could get a discount on the Seiko, but all J.C. Penney made me think of was her job back in Virginia and the smell of witch hazel and skin at the tattoo shop.
Eventually we stopped for lunch at a small grill and pub in the mall, so I could eat again.

“I’d swear you just downed two eggs and a quarter pound of bacon,” she said as she flagged down the waiter.

“Yeah, like, three hours ago.”

After she ordered a vodka tonic, I shot her a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-it’s-only-midafternoon look, but she shrugged and said, “What? It’s happy hour a few hours east of here,” which was true, plus I figured she might take the news of my trip a little better after a drink or two. This was the day I had to tell her: I was running out of time. Emmy had broken the news to her mother earlier that week, and even though she flipped at first, eventually she caved. I think she knew how depressed Emmy had been about her dad, how badly she needed to get out of town, to do something exciting. I also think she was too distracted by the holidays and too worn down by having Emmy’s dad stuck in Afghanistan to argue with Emmy for very long.

I used my thumb to push the last of my mac and cheese onto my fork, a habit I knew Stella hated.

“Don’t use your fingers when you eat, Lemon. It’s trashy.”

She talked for a while about her and Simon and how he thought it’d be good for her to take an art class at WVU, and then I talked for a while about how bizarre the last week at school had been, how obvious it was the students were cashed and the teachers were too burned out to care.

“Cliff Granger brought his iPod and a docking station to the cafeteria last week and blasted the Yeah Yeah Yeahs the entire lunch period,” I told her as I pushed my plate out of the way and reached for the dessert menu. “No one batted an eye,” I said, and wondered if she would call me out if I
ordered a piece of chocolate cake
and
a slice of apple pie. “Our whole class has senioritis. It’s like we’re all just waiting to get out.”

And then I put the menu down, took one deep breath, and finally spit out the news I’d been practicing. I’m not sure exactly how I started, but I remember the words coming quickly once I began.

I told her about the bus route and about how sad Emmy had been before we started planning the trip, which was true, but it didn’t help to change that angry look pressed on her face when I admitted I’d already bought the ticket for the Greyhound. “I’m practically eighteen, a legal adult,” I said, which was nine months short of being the truth.

She waved away the waiter when he came by to take our dessert orders and finished her cocktail as she measured me, silent and listening.

“I promise we’ll be safe,” I said, but she narrowed her eyes as if imagining all the trouble Emmy and I could get into in a place like San Francisco, maybe remembering all the trouble she got into herself. “And we’ve already picked out the hotel,” I told her. “Travelocity gave it five stars,” I said, which wasn’t even close to being true, but we had a budget and had agreed not to splurge on a fancy room since we wouldn’t be spending much time at the hotel anyway.

I worried she might start yelling before I gave all the excuses as to why we’d chosen California, but she didn’t say a word, not until after I told her how I had wanted to go to San Francisco since I was a kid, since I knew that’s where she’d been when she found out she was pregnant. Finally, I ended with a line about having roots in California, about feeling connected.

“It feels important,” I said. “I have to see it for myself. I have to go.”

She said, “No way in hell,” which I had heard before. And then, “You’re pregnant, Lemon,” which was obvious. “You’re just a kid,” she said, which I didn’t agree with, and finally, “You don’t have any money,” which wasn’t true at all.

The last time I counted, I had almost four hundred dollars left after I bought the bus ticket, and I figured Simon would slip me a bit more for Christmas.

And then we sat there for a while and didn’t say anything. I never mentioned my father, and I never told her how long I was planning on staying, but I guess she probably knew anyway, because eventually she put her drink down, pushed her chair back, and walked to my side of the table. She tugged me to my feet even though there wasn’t much space in the restaurant, and she hugged me tight, tighter than she did at my grandmother’s funeral ten years earlier, tighter than the time she thought she lost me at the pool hall back in New York, tighter even than the night she finally snapped out of the depression after Denny and realized I’d been taking care of her all those days at the hotel.

I knew everyone in the restaurant was watching and that they probably thought she was drunk or crazy, but even though I could feel their eyes on us it was nice to settle into her arms and let her hug me like that. It felt good and familiar, like bare feet in the summertime.

She held on for a while and whispered, “Tell me you’re coming back before school starts again.”

“I’m coming back before school starts again,” I said even though I’d bought a one-way ticket.

Eventually she pulled away and repeated it as a stipulation.
“You’re coming back before school starts again,” she said, and I nodded, smiling like a kid stoned off a Halloween sugar high.

But then I looked at her face, really looked that time, and I realized her skin seemed looser than before, that her mouth was slack and worried and her eyes were glazed under tears.

I asked if she was mad, but she said, “I should have seen it coming. You are your mother’s daughter,” and then she put her palm on my cheek just for a second before she returned to her side of the table, pulled herself together, and slid into her seat. “Fine,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”

And eight days later Emmy and I boarded a Greyhound and headed for California.

Nothing we do is inevitable, but everything we do is irreversible. How do you propose to remember that in time?

—Joy Williams,
The Quick and the Dead

I
WAS DETERMINED TO MAKE LEAVING
my mother a remarkably easy process. I folded and stacked my clothes, neatly packed the travel-size soap and toothpaste and miniature shampoo bottles into various pockets of my backpack. I chose a list of songs about road trips and freedom, and Emmy downloaded them onto the red iPod her mom gave her for Christmas. Dylan loaned us a copy of
On the Road
even though I told him I’d already read it a million times, and Stella gave us her credit card for emergencies only, which I thought was pretty generous.

We’d booked evening-departure tickets, and the day I left for California Stella and Simon took off from work and milled around the house while I finished packing.

“Hey, kiddo,” Stella said as she watched me from the hallway, halfway in my room, and halfway not. “Anything you need help with?” she asked, but I shook my head.

I’d washed my backpack with a load of laundry, organized my wallet and purse, and carefully chosen which books to take with me. We’d be reading
Lolita
in class next semester, so I checked it out from the library along with
The Red Tent
, a novel my English teacher recommended before school let out for break.

“It’s a good fit for you, Lemon,” Ms. Ford said after the bell rang the last day of class. Earlier that week I mentioned needing some recommendations for the vacation, so she hovered by my desk citing titles while I loaded up my backpack. “Now that I think of it,” she said, and cocked her head to the side, waiting for me to pay attention, “it’s the one that you should read most. Scratch the rest if you don’t have time.”

Chloe Ford was one of the youngest teachers in school, a slow talker and a published author with willowy limbs and long dark hair she kept pulled back in a loose knot. I’d noticed the thin lines of tattoo ink on her wrist as she handed out a test earlier that semester, and when she caught me eyeing it as she placed the paper on my desk, she shrugged and winked. Quick and stealthy, a secret exchange. Afterward, I Googled her and tracked down a story she had published in
McSweeney’s
, a hip little magazine I’d never heard of before. She was by far my favorite teacher, and I would have read anything she recommended. Emmy joked that I had a girl crush on Ms. Ford, but really I just liked the books she picked for us to read and the way she cocked her head and nodded when I had something interesting to say in class. She was one of the few teachers who actually listened when we talked—this and the fact that she had a tattoo and that I knew about the tattoo even though she had to hide it at school made me feel like we shared something significant, common ground.

“It’s about this amazing woman, about her family and her struggles,” Ms. Ford said. “About a voice that almost was forgotten.” She tucked a loose piece of hair back behind her ear.

All around me kids gathered their books and moved toward the door, but a few Art Kids and English Nerds lingered, watching us. Maybe they wanted book recommendations too, or maybe they just wanted one last chance to talk with her before they left for break. She was known for making you feel like you mattered, like what you did and said made a difference.

“
The Red Tent
,” she said again, and she took my pen off my desk and produced a yellow Post-it notepad from the back pocket of her boot-cut corduroys. She bent over and scrawled the title and author onto the paper before handing it to me. “You’ll love it,” she said.

I also packed
Into the Wild
because I still hadn’t read it even though Emmy and I were mildly obsessed with Eddie Vedder and had been listening to the film sound track incessantly since the movie came out, and then I threw in
Dharma Bums
to round off the group with my favorite Beat writer. The books were in a pile next to the stack of sweaters and pants on the floor, and Stella frowned at them as if they’d just come to life and said something wildly offensive. She and Simon had sprung for a cell phone for me for Christmas, and she nodded toward my night stand, where it sat hooked to an electric socket, charging.