by London Casey
Susie stuck a piece of paper into my hand and kept walking.
As far as I was concerned, this entire day could go fuck itself.
But I wasn’t done just yet.
When I got to the counter, Danielle was waiting for me.
She looked at me over the top of her glasses. “We don’t allow people to just storm through the daycare like that.”
“When I hear my baby crying, I don’t give a shit about rules,” I whispered to her.
“Well, maybe you’ll give a … S … about this.” Danielle put a piece of paper in froth of me. “You’re behind two weeks on payment.”
“You’re really doing this now?” I asked.
“Policy. I’m really sorry.”
I reached into my bag and tossed a credit card to the desk. I didn’t even care what credit card it was. Hell, I just hoped it would swipe and clear.
Danielle swiped, did something on the computer, and made me sign two papers.
“Would you like a receipt?” she asked, all perky, trying to get under my skin.
“Save the paper,” I said.
I turned and left the daycare.
Paisley clung to my shoulder, still crying. I had my bag and her bag on my other shoulder. It was starting to rain, too. Of course it was. That’s how life went.
One night you try to help a friend out by babysitting and you’re left with her baby to take care of.
Just like one night you try to get a good night’s sleep and your house burns down and you’re the only one who survives because of a stranger you never got to thank.
The rain picked up as I got Paisley into her seat. She was still crying. I leaned into the car and kissed her.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered.
My mouth moved but I didn’t speak.
What I wanted to say was …
Mommy is going to take care of everything.
It was a little after ten when I finally was able to put Paisley down. She was fast asleep, a full belly, her fever starting to go down. I figured she probably cut the tooth but I didn’t dare disturb her by sticking my finger in her mouth to find out.
I wasn’t living large by any means at all, but my dorky side of life taught me to work hard and save money. When everyone left college and went for apartments, I had enough money saved to buy a house. Everyone said I was crazy but the truth was that by doing what I did I ended up paying less for a mortgage than everyone did for rent.
Oh, and it also worked out quite well that I had a couple extra bedrooms. You know, when I was given no notice that I would need a nursery.
I sat on the floor, my back against the dresser. I was still in my work clothes. I still had the lingering taste of failure in my mouth from what happened with Tim. Yeah, I wanted to hate the guy, but he was right. I couldn’t commit myself in the way he needed me to. Funny as it was, those words had been muttered to me by several people in my life. A boyfriend who didn’t want to take on the Daddy role. Not that I could blame him for it. He tried to stick around and lasted all of ten days. My friends all lived their lives as normal. The invites slowly stopped coming. Now, I wasn’t even included in birthday or holiday celebrations.
As sad as it was, my only friends were Susie and my lawyer, Jason. He had been carefully navigating me through these rough waters. Nothing was exactly certain yet for Paisley and I. Jason had been stalling as hard as he could while the courts tried to determine the best fate for the baby. That seemed ludicrous, especially when they wanted to find the baby’s father and give the baby to him.
I only knew what Scarlett told me. That it was a one night stand that got her pregnant. She wrote about him all the time. Story after story about this guy, this almost hero guy who she fell in love with instantly. What I didn’t get was that she took off on him that morning. If she had fallen in love, why leave? I never gave her a hard time when she said she had fallen in love with him. I believed her because Scarlett never fell in love with anyone. So if she felt something that night, it had to be real.
Even after she had Paisley, she would still write these stories about him. She would talk to Paisley, promising her that one day she’d meet her daddy. Hesitation was her curse and, for as free as she lived, Scarlett never once considered that time would could be cut short. And in her case, that’s what happened.
I had the notebooks with the stories. I had some drawings I made after reading the stories. In fact, that’s what got me through the first few months of having Paisley. On the outside, I had to show that I was strong and could handle it. I lived in fear that someone was going to take her away from me. On the inside, I was a mess. Losing my best friend. Gaining a daughter. Not knowing if I should find Paisley’s father.
The thoughts weren’t going to rest easily. I carefully climbed to my feet and left the bedroom. I had a baby monitor in the room with another in the living room and my bedroom. How mom of me, right?
I got changed and found the box of Scarlett’s stuff.
The stories she wrote. The sketches I made, a man tall and wide, clean cut, smiling. A brave man. A hero figure. But that hero never came to save the day. And the man I drew was not the man he was. Then again, the man didn’t know the truth about his daughter. He never knew Scarlett got pregnant.
Oh, did that drive me crazy that Scarlett refused to go to him about it.
As I flipped through the notebook, I shut my eyes. I could smell the ink and to me, it was smelling Scarlett. When she put her guard down and went into her writing, it was a beautiful thing.
I felt something fall out of the notebook and I opened my eyes to see a piece of paper. A ripped piece of paper. There were words written on it.
She’s everything and everywhere, as it ripples across her heart.
Wearing the day like there’s nothing else to do.
I knew exactly what it was. Scarlett told me she met him at a concert. He was a guitarist in a band. That they wrote a song together, slept together, and she left him in the morning. After falling in love with him in the same night.
I looked at the words. The scribbled words. It didn’t match my drawings. How silly, huh?
Other than the lyrics, I had his name.
“Cass,” I whispered.
Some famous guitar player. But he didn’t play guitar anymore. Yeah, I had tried to look him up a few times. My research took me to a tattoo shop about an hour away. In a small town called Hundred Falls Valley. The tattoo shop was called St. Skin. The work Cass did was really amazing stuff. I didn’t have any tattoos but it was really beautiful work. I caught myself one night looking too much at the tattoo work and not focused enough on the fact that this guy was Paisley’s father. Nobody knew that but me. I worried that if the truth came out, Paisley would be ripped from me and given to him.
Then again, he was her birth father.
What made it harder was when I saw a picture of Cass, there was no denying he was Paisley’s father. Other than Scarlett’s blue eyes, Paisley looked exactly like Cass.
The battle raged inside me each and every day on what to do. And when to do it. To just show up to a stranger and say, ‘Hey, you slept with my best friend. You got her pregnant. She never told you. She had the baby. Named her Paisley. Then she died. Not the baby, my best friend. Now I’m raising the baby. And … do you want to be a father?’
The thought of the conversation made my stomach sick.
I didn’t want to lose Paisley, but doing this alone was hard. Nobody understood it.
I cleaned up the box of Scarlett and climbed into bed.
At that exact moment, Paisley woke up screaming.
Honestly, I sat on the edge of the bed for a couple minutes and cried.
I needed help.
I wasn’t cut out to be a mother.
I felt like the most horrible person in the world.
And in my gut and my heart—I wanted Paisley to have a chance to know her father.
Cass
YEARS AGO
My bassist
quit the band and I found out my drummer was banging my girlfriend before and after our practices. That meant that bitch was sleeping with Matty then cleaning herself up, coming to practice, sipping the beer I stole from the little corner store, flirting with me, kissing me, and then leaving to meet up with Matty again so he could climb right back up inside her.
I took care of Matty. I couldn’t break the drumstick over his head but I made him bleed. And I punched a hole in every one of his fucking drumheads. That’s when Crazy Mac took his bass off and shook his head. Face it, there had been tension in the band for months. I wanted to hit the streets and go somewhere big. They wanted to stay put and play the local scene. Jamming covers, drinking for free, getting paid on the weekend was fun. It really was. But there was something bigger inside me.
Two months ago, I got a call about hitting the road with a band and I shut it down. I would never turn my back on my brothers. Yet they were doing it to me. Only Stevie hung around, but then again, when shit hit the fan, he was high. Standing at the mic, swaying to a song that only he heard. He was probably still face down in Matty’s garage, sleeping and pissing himself.
I knew the rock star life had its own set of rules and heartbeat, but this?
Fuck this.
My mother was up my ass to get a real job. My father had left long before I could wipe my own ass, walk, or even remember his ugly mug. Turning eighteen was pretty damn cool. I got some ink, bought some smokes legally, and cashed in everything I had for a motorcycle and a new guitar. After that, it was all downhill.
I’d sit out on the roof outside my window at night, smoking away, a notebook next to me, knowing there was something greater. Something that had meaning. Not this high school shit that lingered. And it was only because I was too close to high school. Younger friends were still in school. We were the older kids, the cool kids who graduated and could do whatever we wanted. Fucking Matty stocked shelves at the grocery store. He had to organize fucking cat food by date of expiration. And that’s what Sarah liked? At least I worked in the local music store. Stringing guitars, working on tune ups. I even got out on the floor and sold shit too. All my money earned went right back into the fucking place though.
It was right around two in the morning.
I snuck inside to find Mom on the couch. A half full can of beer on the table, some late night show glowing on the TV. She always slept on the couch. As long as I could remember. She never slept in bed. I blamed my fucking father for that. Bailing on her after having me. I wasn’t some fucking orphan that showed up begging for food.
I pulled a blanket from the top of the couch over Mom and I kissed her cheek.
“I’m home, Mom,” I whispered. “Get some good sleep.”
She grumbled in her sleep. Probably to tell me I was a stupid asshole for being out so late.
She was right.
Cruising the streets all night, licking something which tasted like freedom. Cops chasing me with cherry lights to tell me to go home and that I was making too much noise. Crashing the local doughnut shop as they were closing because Margie (the eighty-year-old manager) would give me the leftover doughnuts before they went stale and were thrown out.
Sitting on a street corner at the bus stop, jamming my six string, singing something I wrote, earning a little pocket change.
We were scummy kids turned adults. But it worked for us.
Well, it used to work for us.
Upstairs, I climbed out on the roof and lit up a cigarette. I looked at my hands. My knuckles were aching from punching Matty’s drums. He was probably telling Sarah how I attacked him with a drumstick. And how he defended her honor and took the beating. How he survived. Shit, she was probably on her knees, taking his little peanut down to the bone.
Fucking assholes. All of them.
The small town was quiet. Everyone knew everyone’s shit.
I needed to go west.
I took a deep drag on my cigarette. I held it out and stared at it.
“Right now,” I whispered.
I killed the cigarette on a shingle and flicked it into the yard. Mom would flip when she found butts in the yard so I had to make sure to cut the grass and chop them up before she found them.
But that was it, right then, it was decided.
I was leaving town.
Right then.
I climbed through the window and started to pack my shit. All I needed was a bag, my guitar, and all of my cash. I’d walk to the next town over and catch a bus. Those buses ran west. I’d just keep going until I hit the west coast. I read enough rock star stories to know that’s how it was done. Step off the bus in L.A. and get fed into it all.
Fuck Matty. Fuck Sarah. Fuck Crazy Mac. Fuck Stevie. Fuck this town.
It took ten minutes to get ready. I wrote a quick note to my mother. I’d stay in touch with her. She’d be pissed at me, but she’d get over it.
I left the house and hit the sidewalk.
A dream in my eye.
My life would change that night.
But I wouldn’t leave town … because a mile away the most important moment of my life was waiting.
Cass
NOW
I stared at my reflection in the red-bodied SG style guitar. First time I played that guitar on stage it was in front of thirty thousand people. An hour long set, running across the stage, corner to corner, fully embodied in the reputation I had somehow grown for myself.
Now the guitar was nothing but a cool memory. Hanging on the wall above my station in St. Skin. I looked down at all my supplies one more time. I still had the traces of a hangover nagging at me from the night before. Maddox and Prick had a little get together that turned into something wild. I remembered going to bed with one woman and waking up next to a completely different one.
I looked at my sketch one more time for my next tattoo. A twist of two roses, red and pink. It was going on a woman’s leg. I had everything ready to go.
I turned and walked through the door and pointed to a woman who looked nervous.
“You ready, darlin’?” I called out.
She looked at me. Brown eyes. Dark hair. Fear. “Yes.”
“Come on back. I don’t bite any harder than the needle does.”
She laughed.
I helped her into the chair. She was well prepared and wore a skirt. I had her lift it up far enough for me to work. When I touched her leg she jumped and gripped the arms of the chair.
I showed her my hands. “No needles.”
“I know, sorry. I’m nervous.”
“What music do you like?” I asked.
“Country.”
“Ah, shit, no,” I said. “You listen to that stuff?”
She bit her lip. “Yeah.”
“I have one rule. No country. So that means we’re going to have to talk through this one together. It’s your first one, right?”
“Yeah.”
I got the design ready and applied it to her skin. I tried to move stealthily and keep them looking around. The best thing was when they came prepared and shut their eyes and had music for themselves.
Once I was ready to go and she approved the placement, I sat there, needle in hand. I pulled the trigger, getting the few buzzes out of the way.
“Tell me the story,” I said.
“The story?”
“There’s a story behind every tattoo. Don’t just tell me you like roses. Tell me why. Tell me why red and pink. Tell me everything, darlin’. For the record, when I start here, I don’t stop. And I certainly don’t judge. You need to cry, you cry. But tell me the story.”
It was the undying lyricist inside me. I wanted to know everyone’s story. I believed we were all made up of stories. Too bad I didn’t give a damn about the stories unless I was inking someone up. You think I’d break the ice of all those awkward moments after a one night stand with talking about stories. By then, I just wanted to be left the hell alone.
There was silence.
I started tattooing
her and she winced a little. They always did. I would take it nice and slow, picking a piece of the tattoo that could withstand the movement. Last thing I needed was to fuck something up on a tattoo. It was very different than missing a note on stage. Rock n’ roll was about soul. Tattooing was about stories of the soul.
“Your name is Mandy, right?” I asked.
I kept inking her.
“Yeah,” she said.
“So you have a thing for roses,” I said. “Personal? Family?”
“Family,” she said.
I kept going. I took my time the best I could but I couldn’t be there for eight hours. I stopped after a few minutes and looked at her. Christ, she had the deer in the headlights look going on with the big doe eyes.
“You’re doing great, darlin’,” I said. “Now I’m going to finish this. You know what it feels like. And I still want that story.”
I went back to work on her.
The outline was done in no time. I started to slip away, getting into my zone. My tunes were sliding out of the speaker with a comfortable sound. I was calm. Relaxed. I was in my place right where I belonged.
There was only one other time I felt like that in my life.
One night … with the right woman … the one I never saw again.
I wiped her leg down and inspected my work. Was it worthy of being promoted on the site and social media? Probably not. But I’d never tell Mandy that. This ink meant something to her. The proof in that came when she finally was able to get a good look at it. She threw her hands over her mouth and let out a gasp. Her eyes instantly filled with tears.
I was used to it. It happened a lot.
I pushed back in my chair and gave her a little space. I kept quiet because I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable.
“My mother and my grandmother,” she finally said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The story. I never told you. I was terrified of this. I hate needles. But I lost my mother and my grandmother in the same year. Worst year of my life. Last year, actually. Sometimes I talk about it like it was ten years ago. I trained myself to push it away. My mother loved pink roses. My grandmother loved white roses. I wanted something to really remember them by.”