Songs for a Teenage Nomad

by Kim Culbertson

  Eli sits up suddenly, “Oh my god, did you hear?”

  The stage quiets. Alexa prompts him. “Hear what?” Sometimes, Eli gets drawn into his own dramatic pauses. We wait for his next comic attempt.

  Instead of a joke, he tells us, “Cass Gordon’s mom is in town. The cops are looking for her.”

  My face goes hot. “What?”

  Eli nods. “The FBI’s here.”

  Tala frowns. “How do you even know that?”

  “Two of the officers were at the restaurant last night talking about it. You know Bo Perkins’s dad?”

  Tala rolls her eyes. “Yeah.” Bo Perkins is a linebacker on the football team. Dumb as a stump, as Drew likes to say.

  “He was talking with another cop, and one of the waiters overheard them.”

  “What did they say?” I ask, trying to appear interested but not too interested.

  “They know she’s here in Andreas Bay…They just don’t know where yet.”

  Drew whistles. “They’ve been looking for her forever. She, like, robbed a bank or something.”

  “She didn’t rob a bank,” Alexa says. “She blew a bunch of people up. Because they were ruining the environment.”

  “That’s not what happened,” Drew argues.

  “I don’t know, you guys,” Tala says, her brow furrowing. “It seems weird that they would be talking about it in public. I don’t even think we should be talking about it.”

  “Well,” Drew shrugs. “Bo’s dumb as a stump. It’s probably genetic.”

  “Genetics or not, it’s true,” Eli says. “Our own version of The Fugitive.”

  I start collecting my things. “That’s intense.” I try to make my tone sound off-handed. “Okay, well, I’m going to go.”

  Alexa looks at her watch. “Break’s not over for five minutes.”

  “Yeah.” I sling my bag over my shoulder. “I just want to do some last-minute cramming.”

  “Okay.” She looks doubtful.

  I push through the smoked-glass doors into the gray day. On the bench around the corner, I scribble a hasty note to Sam about Cass. Knowing he has his PE final this period, I wait for him by the boys’ locker room. When he finally shows, thankfully alone but well after the first bell, I give him the note.

  “What’s this?” He looks worried.

  “It’s Cass,” I tell him. “Read it.”

  I leave him unfolding the note as I hurry to beat the final bell.

  ***

  I watch the evening news and scan the paper, looking for any signs that the FBI found Cass’s mom.

  Nothing.

  Either Sam must think I’m a total idiot, or Cass was able to tell her mom to get out of town. Either way, I did something stupid or illegal. I’m hoping for illegal.

  ***

  My brief brush with crime fades quickly. The four-day weekend semester break is uneventful—no police breaking down the door, brandishing the hastily written note as evidence. No whispering phone calls from Cass or Sam. Nothing. Just a call from Drew to go see the new fantasy movie playing downtown. Like the rest of the weekend, the movie—all flash and loud music and no plot—disappoints me.

  I spend most of the weekend sleeping or listening to music or talking to Alexa on the phone. I fill pages in my song journal. Soon I’ll need a new one. The sameness of my world is strange to me. It lulls me into a haze, and I move about like a zombie.

  My mom loves her job too much to notice my funk. We don’t talk about our fight, so I’m sure she thinks I’ve forgotten about it. I haven’t. Each day, I check the answering machine and the mail. I do more Web searches. Which day will my father find me?

  She comes home Monday night from her shift pink-cheeked and babbling to me about Dave, a contractor she met at the store.

  “He thought he was buying cilantro, but he bought parsley instead,” she tells me. “Made the salsa taste terrible. Isn’t that funny?” She strips out of her jacket and hangs it on a peg by the door.

  I close the book I was reading. I have been sitting on the couch so long that I imagine my body has been fused to it, my limbs blending with the fibers. “That is funny,” I say, not very convincingly.

  “What’s wrong?” She sits down on the couch next to me, still wearing her green apron from the store, “Bay View Foods” in red script across the front.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re still mad at me about your father.”

  “Just tired from finals.”

  “You’ve been moping around for days.”

  I motion toward the book. “Seriously, I’m just worried about school.”

  “You always get A’s,” she tells me, rubbing my knee. “Since you were tiny.”

  I shrug. “High school’s harder.”

  “Not just the classes, huh?” My mother has a way of looking at me sometimes where I swear she sees all the way inside.

  “I guess.” I shrug again.

  “Boys?” she asks.

  “A boy.”

  She nods. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready to start having sex. We agreed, right?”

  “Ugh, Mom.” I reopen my book and pretend to read. My mother had the sex talk with me in fifth grade when I still thought boys were Martians with sweat-gland problems.

  She doesn’t take the hint. “Well, I want you to be safe. Not talking about it doesn’t mean it won’t happen.” My mom’s mom died when she was three, and her father never talked with her about sex. As a result, I get talked to about it far too often.

  “Well, don’t worry,” I say. “He has to at least talk to me before there’s sex.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Well, let’s hope so.” Getting up, she pats my leg. “I got chicken for dinner. Already roasted from the deli, so I’ll just make us a salad and some rice, okay? Dave says these are the best chickens in town.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah?” She’s already unloading the bag she brought home. I notice the tall box of Golden Grahams she sets on the counter. The kitchen, a “kitchenette” it’s called, is really part of the living room, but she still has her back to me.

  “Why did Rob call?”

  “Rob called again?”

  “No. The last time. I mean, why the warning? What did my father do that is so bad?”

  She uncorks a bottle of white wine and slowly pours herself a glass. She takes a sip, purses her lips, and then looks at me. “Your father did some things…some bad things, Calle. Things that normal people don’t do.”

  “Why was he in jail?”

  Her eyebrows shoot up. “How do you know that?”

  Flushing, I look at my hands folded limply in my lap. “Umm, I…I found the newspaper clipping,” I whisper.

  My mom plunks her glass down. “I don’t think I like this habit you’re making of going through my things, young lady.”

  Young lady? I’ve never gotten a “young lady” before. The skin on the back of my neck tingles. “Well, maybe if you actually told me the truth I wouldn’t be forced to go looking for it in your drawers.”

  She shakes her head. “Oh, no. No way. You’re not going to do that. You have no right to go into my drawers or anywhere else that’s mine. I don’t care what your reasons are.”

  “You don’t think wanting to know my father is a good reason?” I try unsuccessfully not to raise my voice.

  “I think that I’ve asked you to trust me about your father, to believe that I want what’s best for you, and clearly, you can’t do that.” She turns to the bags of groceries and begins yanking food from them.

  “I do believe you want what’s best for me, but I don’t think you necessarily know what that is.” I stop, frowning. “Or that you think you do, but I don’t think you do.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” she says.

  “You know what I mean!”

  She folds the empty brown bags in half and stuffs them under the sink. “I didn’t want you to have to know what kind of man your father is. I was protecting you.”
>
  “What kind of man is he, Mom? Why was he in jail? Who did he assault?”

  She turns, combing the hair out of her eyes with her fingers. “That time, he almost killed a man outside a restaurant. A waiter. They fought over the tip, if you can believe it. The waiter followed him outside to ask why he didn’t tip him, and your father flipped out and almost killed him. Hit his head into the cement until he passed out. That’s the kind of man your father is.”

  I can see her shaking, tears forming behind her lashes. “I was two months pregnant with you, and I watched the whole thing. All I could think the whole time he was in jail that time and after he got out and begged to come back to us, even when I let him come back, all I could think was…What if he ever turned that on you?”

  Before I can say anything, she grabs her coat. “I’m going for a walk.”

  The door slams behind her.

  CHAPTER 21

  WHAT A GOOD BOY

  I catch my mom staring at a picture of herself with Ted Number 2, both tan, both in Hawaiian-print bathing suits, margarita glasses toasting the camera. It was taken at a party two weeks before he ran off to Hawaii. I remember them posing for it, Bare Naked Ladies blaring from the speakers, my mom’s head bobbing in time to the music. Ted mostly watched a girl in a white bikini all night. Sensing me behind her, my mom tucks the picture under the sofa cushions…

  “Here’s your hot cocoa.” The twenty-something girl in a Felix the Cat T-shirt sets down a steaming mug on the table next to me. I turn it so the logo of Insomnia, my favorite café, is facing toward me.

  “Thanks,” I say, breathing in the faint scent of cinnamon. I want to shed my day into the coffee-infused threads of the stuffed chair I’m sitting in. This morning my mom wouldn’t talk to me, and at school Sam was suddenly ignoring me again. Good times.

  I pull out my book. We’re just starting Friday Night Lights in English, and I’ve never read it.

  “Getting in some quiet reading time?” I look up at Mr. Ericson, who is standing in front of me with a to-go cup of coffee.

  I smile. He looks at home here, the New York Times tucked under his arm, the REI jacket over his slacks and shirt, the steaming coffee in hand. “I’ve never read this one,” I tell him.

  “You’ll like it, I think. It’s nonfiction, which we haven’t done yet this year.”

  I nod, study the cover of the book. Sometimes it’s weird to see teachers out of school, even Mr. Ericson. Like he might grade my beverage selection or something.

  He takes a breath and looks around. Sips his coffee. “Have you found anything yet? About your dad?” He lowers his voice a little, and the concerned look is back on his face. I don’t want him to worry about me, but it’s kind of nice that he does.

  “Nothing yet,” I say. “But my mom and I are talking more.” That’s not a total lie.

  “That’s great, Calle. You know, these things take time.” He smiles. “Well, I’ll let you get back to your reading. Enjoy.”

  “Thanks.” I watch him push through the doors and out onto the street. The wind catches his hair and ruffles it, and he hurries a little. He’s cute. In a booky, English-teacher sort of way. He passes by the window, sees me watching, and gives a little nod with his paper cup. I wave.

  These things take time.

  I pull my headphones back on, Zooey Deschanel’s soft voice in my ears. Sighing, I return to my book. I don’t really want to think about my mom or my dad or Sam or Mr. Ericson or anything at all. I just want to sit here and read.

  Mom works until close tonight, so I’m on my own for dinner. Tryouts for the spring play aren’t until next week, and the teachers haven’t given us a lot to do. They’re probably still grading our finals. I sip my cocoa and open my book.

  A few pages in, I’m aware of someone staring at me through the glass of the coffeehouse window. I peek up from my book. A man. Dark, shaggy hair, a worn raincoat. My stomach flutters. Something about the angle of his shoulders holds my attention. Framed in the O of Insomnia’s, he shifts slightly and his face falls out of shadow.

  Jake Winter. He’s just missing the pea coat. I guess sometimes things don’t take as much time as you’d think.

  When he sees me see him, he bolts. Tossing the book in the chair, I race outside. I look both ways. No one. Was I imagining things? Hearing my heart in my ears, I take a left around the corner just in time to see a flash of raincoat disappear down a side street.

  I follow it.

  “Dad?” I try, and it sounds all wrong in my mouth. “Jake Winter!”

  He stops and slowly turns around.

  We study each other for a minute. We are only steps from each other, but we could probably jam the Grand Canyon in between us. He is much older than his picture, graying at the temples, deep lines around his eyes, but he has the same broad shoulders, the same line to his jaw.

  “Hey, kid.” His voice shakes a bit. I notice a gray stubble of beard on his jaw. It makes him seem older than I know he is—thirty-nine. I figured out that much from the newspaper article. He tries a smile. “I, uh…I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that. Did I scare you?”

  I shake my head. My voice, it seems, has been left somewhere behind me.

  “I didn’t mean to if I did.”

  I drink in the timbre of his voice, low and strange. The faint, almost sweet smell of garbage next to the side door of a shop drifts across us, and I don’t know if it is this smell that nauseates me or the sound of his voice for the first time. Its softness.

  “You’re so big,” he says.

  I flush, thinking he must mean my big bones, my baggy sweatshirt. “It’s your genes,” I say, more sharply than I intend to.

  He looks flustered, realizes his mistake. “No…not that kind of big. I mean, you just look so grown up. You’re fifteen now, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And pretty. I have a pretty daughter.” He smiles again. “Which doesn’t surprise me at all. I can see your mom in you.”

  Sadness creeps across his face, and something else. Maybe regret?

  “I have some of you,” I say.

  He seems happy about this. “My eyes,” he nods.

  What next to say? I bite my lip. “Where are you staying?”

  “A motel out by the ocean,” he says, his hands stuffing the pockets of his raincoat. “It’s a cool place you got here. Remote.” His eyes darken. “Hard to find.”

  “How did you find us?” My online searches had turned up nothing on him. And I knew his last name. Maybe I just suck at online searches.

  He shrugs. “It’s lucky really. A funny story. I met a guy in a bar in San Diego. He knew your mom’s new guy—what’s his name. Rob? So this guy was looking through a bunch of pictures his girlfriend had taken at a party. His girlfriend had just gotten them developed and wanted him to see them. One of the pictures was of Rob and his new wife. You can imagine my surprise when I recognized her. I pieced it together from there. I’ve gotten good at finding you guys—just my timing needs work.”

  Rob’s phone call comes back to me. He always finds us. “We move a lot.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “I know.”

  I’m cold, having left my jacket inside on the chair. Inside with my book, with my hot chocolate, cold by now—inside with my life before. Now I am cold. And I have a father.

  “Mom doesn’t think I should see you.”

  He nods. “I know,” he says again. “She…” he pauses, his eyes drifting past me, somewhere over my head. “She doesn’t trust me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Listen, Calle.” He stops. “Wow, that’s the first time I’ve said your name to you in almost fifteen years. Calle.” He takes this in, this name he gave me.

  “I’m listening,” I say.

  “I’m a good guy. I am. Your mom and I just didn’t…I don’t really know how to explain it.” He shrugs.

  “Try.”

  My assertiveness startles him; and then he laughs. I like its sound. “Well
, you got the frankness gene from me, that’s for sure.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  His smile fades. “She talks about me to you?”

  My turn to shrug. “Sometimes. When I ask her.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear,” he says. “Your mom didn’t leave liking me too much.”

  “Obviously.”

  “You ever listen to Paul Simon? He wrote a song once that said ‘people only hear what they hear’—you ever listen to that song? Paul Simon?”

  I love Paul Simon, but to him I say, “Never heard of him.” That was lame, that lie. But he can’t just show up in an alley and say “Paul Simon” and we’re instant family. He can’t do that. Besides, he totally mangled the lyric. That is not what that song says.

  He shrugs as if he knows I’m lying to him. “Anyway, great songwriter. I’m a lyrics guy. You like music?”

  “Sure.” I think about my song journal inside in my bag in the coffeehouse, the warm coffeehouse.

  “You get that from me too.”

  “Mom likes music,” I argue. “A lot of people like music.”

  “Yeah, but with me, it’s in my blood. I can’t live without it. I think you’re probably like that too.” His words seem rushed, like he’s trying too hard to connect us.

  I rub my arms against the cold. “It’s cold.”

  He takes a small step toward me. “We could go inside, get some coffee. We could talk.”

  Here it is. An invitation. A cup of coffee with my father in a nice warm coffeehouse. Not here in this cold alley like some sort of drug deal. I could ask him about the jail stuff, about his music, about when he was with my mom. We could talk.

  But I say, “I kind of have a lot of homework to do.”

  He looks hurt, his eyes dimming. “Yeah, no…I kind of caught you off guard. I really didn’t want to do that.”

  I don’t want to chase him away, but I don’t want him any closer. We just stand here between garbage cans. Water drips somewhere, a hollow, vacant sound. I have no idea what to say to him.