Seashell Season (18 page)

Chapter 52

I
let the phone ring three times before I answered it. I'm not totally sure why. I mean, I knew it was Dad calling, and I wanted to talk to him. I want to know some
real
things about my father, from before the moment he snatched me from my crib and his life of deception began. (Although for all I knew, he'd been living a bunch of lies since the day he first could talk.) I wanted to ask him if he had liked growing up around Yorktide. If he remembered the Nubble Light. Verity's taken me there; it's pretty famous, she said. I wanted to ask him if he remembered the name of his favorite lobster pound from when he was a boy; maybe, I thought, I'd suggest to Verity we go—if it's still around—but I wouldn't tell her why. Not that she would refuse to take me. She's so freakin' nice to me.

But I haven't asked Dad any of those things. I'm not totally sure why not, except that part of me expects I'll only hear more lies, and even if Dad did tell me the truth and answer honestly, how would I know?

So we talked about boring day-to-day stuff. Well, maybe not boring for him. Maybe day-to-day is fraught with terror for my father. If it is, he's not saying. I feel like I have less and less to say to him each time we talk. And he either has less and less to say to me, or he's protecting me from the ugliness of his life behind bars. Whatever the case, it's depressing, and I got off the phone pretty quickly. He didn't protest.

I took out the sketchbook and one of the pencils I'd cadged and began to doodle. I say doodle and not draw because while my hand moved, my mind was a million miles away; I wasn't copying something I saw right in front of me like I had been that first day in Verity's studio.

And I wondered. How did my father keep all those secrets for all those years? It's hard keeping secrets, even the ones you have to keep because if they're found out, they could hurt you, get you into trouble. I wonder if there were times when he wanted to tell someone what he had done, the truth about who he was and who I was. When he was drunk, which wasn't often, but I wonder if then, sitting at some dive bar next to one of his buddies—I wouldn't call them friends, and he never did either—I wonder if he was seriously tempted to come clean and relieve himself of the burden he was carrying. He had to have felt the burden of what he'd done all those years ago, even if he didn't actually feel guilty for stealing me away from my mother, who, it turned out, wasn't a violent drug addict bent on putting out her cigarettes on her baby daughter's arm. I mean, my mother has never smoked in her entire life. That's what she tells me, and I believe her, because from what I can see, she's not a liar. Annoying sometimes, but not a liar.

Anyway, I wonder what he's telling himself now? Himself and other people, his cellmate and the guys he sits with in the cafeteria, about what happened seventeen years ago. (Do you have to sit with the same people all the time? Or is it like on
Orange Is the New Black
and high school, people get into cliques?) Is he telling his version of the truth about what he'd done and the good reasons he'd had for doing it? That he was saving his daughter's life by taking her away from her abusive mother? Would anyone really
believe
him or would everyone nod and think,
This guy's a nut
? Probably they would think he's a nut. A sane person doesn't drop off the face of the earth with a two-month-old infant he believes is in physical danger. A sane person goes to the police or a family member or a friend,
someone
. . .

How did he keep it all a secret from
me
? I mean, my origins, my real origins. Didn't he ever feel that he owed me the truth about who I really was, at least let me have my real name? How dare he keep me in ignorance all those years, my entire life! And just to cover his own tracks. Still, I really don't believe that holding the truth from me made him feel any sense of power over me; he's not that kind of person. The kind of power he wants over people isn't a strutting power. It's something meaner. It comes from his own deep sense of weakness and need. I learned that much over the years!

I wonder if it ever occurred to him that if I ever discovered the truth—that he stole me from a perfectly good mother—that I'd hate him. I wonder if he was ever scared of losing me that way. I wonder if instead he thought I loved him so unconditionally, I'd stick with him no matter what insane crap came into the light.

I wonder if he ever truly loved me. Ever truly loved anyone. I wonder if he knows how. Because possession isn't proof of love. It just isn't.

The experts (like I really know; I read this online somewhere once) say that a father's relationship with his daughter—how he treats her, if he loves and respects her or if he ignores and disrespects her, if he nourishes her ambitions and interests or if he thwarts them, if he tells her she's beautiful or that she's too fat or has too big a nose—all this matters very, very much to the sort of woman the girl's going to become. Not so much the mother. The father. So where, I wonder, does this leave me? Because although my father professes to love me—and I've always believed he did, that he does still, while he's rotting away in a prison cell—he's so totally screwed up my life that it's hard to reconcile the two. How can you love someone and basically force her to live a lie of your own devising? I mean, where's the logic in that? But maybe for people like my father, logic has very little to do with love or with anything else in life. People like my father. Screwed up. A liar. So entirely self-centered that he simply can't see beyond his own whacky needs.

I looked down at the sketchbook and almost laughed out loud at what I had drawn. Weird, grotesque clown faces. Dad is afraid of clowns.

Then there was a knock on the door. I stashed the sketchbook and pencil under the couch and opened the door to find Verity. Of course. Who else would it be?

“You okay?” she asked.

It was what she usually asks after a phone call from Dad. Never
What did he say?
though I know she must be curious.

“I've been worse,” I said. “And better.”

“Any interest in going to that new ice cream place out on Rosehip Highway?”

If she was trying to bribe me with food, it was working. “Yeah,” I said. “Let me just run to the bathroom first.” That's where we keep the aspirin, and I could feel a real splitter coming on.

Chapter 53

I
t was the first time a phone call from Alan hadn't sent Gemma after me like a particularly hungry cat after a particularly fat mouse. I was happy about that, being spared an attack. On the other hand, I wondered what had been different about this call from her father to have made her less hostile to me. Had he disappointed her in some way? Was she beginning to realize the magnitude of Alan's failure?

While we were eating our ice cream cones on a bench at the top of the beach, Gemma brought up the subject of a bicycle.

“I thought about what you said, about not being able to get around too easily without wheels. So I guess I should have a bike after all.”

“Sure,” I said. I was happy she had asked me for something; it was the first time since she moved in with me that she'd asked for anything. She hadn't even asked for the real bed I'd offered. It makes me feel good to be able to give her something she wants, specifically something that will help her to gain some independence in her new world.

The cost could be a problem, but I feel sure we can find something at a yard sale or through the local papers. And Marc is an avid cyclist. Maybe he can check the bike over before we buy it and then help fit the seat to accommodate Gemma's height.

A memory came to me then, and I hesitated, unsure if I should share it with Gemma. It didn't hold particularly bad vibes for me, but who knew what it might trigger for my daughter. But then I went ahead.

“Your father and I had a tandem bike for a while,” I said. “A bicycle built for two.”

Gemma grunted. “I didn't know he could ride a bike. But I guess everyone can at some point in their lives.”

“We had some fun with it—this was about six months into the relationship—but then it was stolen, and we couldn't afford to buy a new one. Remember, I was in college then.”

“And Dad never made any real money, did he?”

I answered carefully but honestly. “No,” I said. “I don't think he did.”

“Did he ever play sports? I mean, other than cards and pool. He likes to gamble but only with pennies.”

I frowned at my half-eaten ice cream. “Now that you mention it, I don't think he did. We'd have to check with Marion about the years before I met him, but I don't recall his ever mentioning being on a team. He liked NASCAR though.”

Gemma laughed. “Tell me about it! How boring is it to watch cars go around and around a track, over and over again! It's only good when someone crashes. Well, you know what I mean.”

“I used to watch races with him, at a bar he liked. I was bored out of my mind.”

“Then why'd you go?” Gemma asked.

“He liked me to be there with him. And for a long time, I liked to be there too.”

This last admission was met with silence. I wondered all sorts of things, only one of which was: Does Gemma believe me, that I wanted to be at the bar with him? After a time she said: “That's what people in relationships are supposed to do, right? Do stuff that makes the other one happy.”

“Until it gets out of hand or abusive or until the stuff becomes something that does you harm.”

“Or until you fall out of love.”

“Or stop loving someone,” I said. “There's a difference.”

“I wouldn't know. I've never been in love.”

“You will someday.” I winced. “Sorry. I used to hate when adults would say that sort of thing to me, like they really know the future.”

“Yeah. I hate it too. Adults don't really know much more than kids, do they?”

“Some do,” I said. “I'd like to think I've learned a few lessons over the years. But it's true there's always more to figure out. Growing up never ends in some ways.”

“It sounds tiring.”

I laughed. “It is!”

“By the way,” Gemma said, wiping her hands on a paper napkin, ice cream cone gone. “What are we having for dinner?”

Chapter 54

M
y new bike is pretty cool. It's a Tyler, which isn't a big famous brand, but I don't care about that as long as it works. Yeah, I know I said I didn't want a bike, but I figured, what the hell? While I'm here, I might as well have my own transportation so I don't have to rely on Verity for everything. I don't want her to think I really need her or anything. What I need is independence.

What I also need is to be forgiven, something kind of new to me. No, let's be honest. Something entirely new to me.

I leaned the bike against the Strawberries' house and knocked on the front door. The Strawberries have one of those old-fashioned knockers. It's in the shape of an anchor, I guess because they live close to the water. (We all do here in southern Maine.) Anyway, I can't be sure, but I thought I saw a curtain in the living room twitch, as if someone was deciding whether or not to open the door, based on who was out there. A Jehovah's Witness? Don't answer, though I have to say I've met a few, and they've all been very nice. A guy with a big cardboard check from the lottery? Answer. I was about to knock again when the door opened and there stood Cathy. Before she could say something like,
I hate you; get out of here,
I said:

“I want to apologize again for what I did at your parents' party. It was stupid, and I'm really sorry.”

Cathy half smiled and shrugged. “It's okay,” she said. “I forgive you. Come in.”

I followed her inside and to the kitchen. Why does everyone always end up in the kitchen? I'm not complaining. It's where the food is kept.

“Just like that,” I said. “You forgive me?”

She shrugged again and opened the fridge. “Yeah. Anyway, I've been thinking about it. Jason should have just walked away when you pretended to flirt with him. I'm thinking I should break up with him.”

“Don't break up with him just because I was a jerk!”

“I'm not.” Cathy took a pitcher of lemonade from the fridge and two glasses from a cabinet over the sink. “My mom made some awesome granola bars,” she said. “Do you want one?”

I'm not a fan of health food, or, as Dad calls it, “nuts and bolts,” but I said sure. Sometimes granola bars have chocolate in them.

Cathy put a sealed plastic container on the bar top, along with the lemonade and glasses. I peered through the wall of the container. I was pretty certain I saw chocolate chips. But I waited for Cathy to open the container and offer me a bar. I mean, I'm not a total cretin.

“A few friends are coming over tomorrow night to hang out,” she said then. “Just girls. Why don't you come?”

It's kind of the last thing I want to do, hang out with Cathy's friends, but right then I felt that if our truce was going to hold, I should probably say yes. So I said, “Okay.”

“Good. You'll like my friends. I've known Hildy, Becca, and Melissa since I was a toddler.”

To hell with the truce. Instant regret for agreeing to join them. Talk about being an outsider. But before I could voice some lame excuse for backing out of the invitation, Cathy was babbling on. I should be nice and not say she was babbling.

“Do you know there are families in Yorktide and Ogunquit and Wells that have lived here for generations? Hundreds of years, in the same houses, on the same land. That's pretty amazing, isn't it? I mean, to grow up with such a sense of belonging to a place. To have roots.”

Honestly, I'd never thought about it—not even when that Matilda Gascoyne, from one of the old families, had said hi to Verity and me in town—and I said as much. By the way, there were chocolate chips and what I think were dried cranberries or cherries in the granola bars. They were amazing.

“Well,” Cathy said, “think about it now. Think about how you'd probably feel sort of special, knowing that someone way back in say the early 1800s looked out of her bedroom window, which is now your bedroom window, and saw pretty much exactly what you're seeing right now, in the twenty-first century. The same trees, the same ocean, even some of the same houses. It kind of blows my mind. I wish I had that sort of connection to the past. I think I'd feel sort of indestructible somehow, like a part of me would always be in the
present
, even the present a hundred years from now. People would always know that Cathy Strawbridge was a person. I'd be alive in memory.”

Boy,
I thought,
is this chick a romantic.
But I thought about what she'd said. I thought about the way people in Yorktide stare at me, how they think they know all about me, The Little Kidnapped Girl, and I thought, living in the same town where your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents lived and died must be the most claustrophobic thing ever. You could never be yourself, could you? You'd always be so-and-so's child, grandchild, great-grandchild. Everything you did or said would be compared to everything your ancestors did or said, and you'd be judged accordingly. There would always be someone else's reputation, good or bad, to exceed or to live down.

“I think it sounds really suffocating,” I said. What I didn't add was that I was probably the last person to have any real understanding of the benefits there might be to sticking around the old family homestead for any length of time. Not with my past, never staying in one town or apartment for more than a year.

I went home soon after that and after thanking Cathy for the snacks. I think she was disappointed with my failure to share her excitement about, I don't know, family history or whatever. When I got home, I turned on the TV in the living room, and even though there's, like, a million things to watch at any given time, I couldn't find one show or movie I wanted to watch. So I turned it off, and I thought about my life with Dad.

For a long time I didn't have a sense that we were running from something, Dad and I, when we moved to a new apartment in a new neighborhood, or even the time when I was very little, maybe second grade, when we moved from New Mexico to Arizona. Well, the reason I was oblivious that time was because I was really young, maybe seven or eight. But the other times after that, no, I guess I mostly just accepted Dad's vague explanations, which could range from,
It's time to skedaddle
(said with a smile and a wink), to the more prosaic explanations like,
The landlord is raising the rent, and we can't afford to pay more than we're already paying
. I heard that sort of explanation often enough, that someone was basically persecuting us, so at some point along the line, I can't remember when exactly, I decided there was something iffy about Dad's claiming we were the victims of yet another—let's call it conspiracy. Or, more specifically, that
he
was the victim. When I finally stopped to think about it, I realized that every single time he left a job—either because he quit or because he was fired—it was because his boss was a jerk, his coworkers were idiots, he was too smart for the job and his colleagues were jealous. On and on and on.

But like I said, it never really occurred to me that behind or at the bottom of all the moving around was a big dark secret that, if found out, could stop me and Dad from being a family. I see now that Dad worried that the longer we stayed in one place—or he stayed in one job—the better the chance someone might recognize him from the Wanted posters (where do people put those things, besides the post office?) or he might make a verbal slip and accidentally reveal that he wasn't who he said he was, Jim Armstrong, with a daughter named Marni. Now, that's not to say maybe Dad wasn't legitimately fired a few times—he could be a real whiner at home and with his passing acquaintance buddies, so why not also on the job?—but mostly it must have suited him to be let go.

Anyway, whenever Dad made the announcement that we were moving to a new apartment and sometimes a new town, there was the hurried packing of our stuff into pillowcases, an old sleeping bag he had gotten somewhere, a few battered old-fashioned suitcases (the kind without wheels, like the one I brought with me to Maine), and what cardboard boxes he could coax from the local grocery store's loading guys. We didn't have very much, so it never took very long to get ready to leave, which we invariably did crammed in someone else's car if ours was “acting up” at the moment (which it often was; maybe Dad had no money for gas that week) and once, in a flatbed pickup truck Dad rented from a guy who lived next door, and on we went with our clothes; some books (mostly mine); a toaster oven that always burnt the toast and whatever else we tried to cook in it because something was wrong with the wiring; two small cacti we had for a while, until we forgot them during one move; and a random collection of what I now see as crap but that for a long time as a child I saw as treasures—an aqua-colored plastic vase; a picture showing the desert at sunset (torn from a magazine and taped onto a piece of stiff cardboard); a small ceramic statue of a coyote in a slinking posture. None of those so-called treasures exist any longer. They got lost or badly broken along the way, but I still sometimes think of them, especially the slinking coyote, the visual opposite of that old cartoon character Wile E. Coyote from the Bugs Bunny programs. My coyote was magical, like the coyote often is in Native American legends, sometimes a hero, sometimes an antihero, and sometimes a comic trickster. Sometimes, he's all three at once. Crafty, intelligent, stealthy. That was my coyote. He was the closest thing I ever had to a pet, I guess. Or a real friend. Wow, that sounds pathetic. Forget I said that.

I turned the TV back on and found something to watch after all. Some cartoon show about wrestling.