Stray City

by Chelsey Johnson

  The day had been a good one. Even with a cancellation at the barbershop, three walk-ins had shown up and his chair stayed full: Bemidji State students back from fall break; his favorite old guy, Stan the ex-logger; and just before closing, Everett, one of his first friends in Bemidji. You never knew who would stick—people Ryan had once thought he’d know forever were long gone, and the scrappy teens from the carnival concession stand who’d offered Edith Head a hot dog were now friends he’d known for a quarter of his life. Since they’d met, Everett had grown from a bashful boy who requested spikes and streaks to a drily funny, heavyset twenty-six-year-old who kept his thick black hair tidy and lived his punk aspirations through his work. He’d found his purpose working at the juvenile residential treatment center, trying to be a role model for fellow Native kids and a gentle man to all the youth, who mostly knew masculinity as a brittle and brutal condition. And he was formidable at air hockey. Ryan had trimmed him up clean, swept the shop, and then he and Everett walked to Brigid’s Pub for burgers and a game of air hockey before Everett headed to his evening shift. Donita was bartending and gave them a cup of quarters from the till to load up the jukebox with something decent: “Gonna die if I hear Nickelback one more time.” Then Kelly had shown up, and they had a couple of drinks, and she was the one who suggested coming to his place. “Don’t you teach a nine o’clock on Thursdays?” he’d asked, and she’d said she was giving a test tomorrow: “No prep! I can just roll in there and administer.”

  Now inside the door, they shared a tipsy kiss—she always kissed better when she’d had a drink, more relaxed and insistent at the same time—and then she set about getting the planned bourbon and ice cream.

  Edith Head wound around Ryan’s legs, croaking, while he scooped a pungent lump of wet food into her dish. She couldn’t swing kibble anymore. Kelly found the bourbon in its cabinet over the sink. “Your time machine is blinking,” she said.

  “Ha ha,” he said. The telephone base was flashing 1, 1, 1. Kelly had almost given up on persuading him to get a cell phone. (“I don’t want to be found all the time,” he said. “What if I want to find you?” she asked. “You will,” he said. “I always come home eventually.”)

  Ryan cradled the phone to his ear and clicked the voice mail button as he opened the freezer. The light had been out for weeks, he made a mental note to fix it—

  The voice was a child’s. A young girl’s. Polite. Formal. A faint tremor in it.

  The cold air of the freezer ran up his arm and into his chest.

  Lucia. That was the name Andrea liked.

  Kelly grabbed his shoulder. “Dude. Are you having a seizure or something?”

  The voice mail ended and he stood in front of the open freezer, staring into the dim foodscape.

  “No, sorry.” He shut the door and turned to her. He clicked off the phone.

  “The ice cream?”

  “Oh yeah.” He opened it again and took out the pint.

  Kelly gave him that look—Sociology Eyes, he called it, when she peered at him as if he were one of her study subjects. “What’s up?”

  Ryan tried to push the voice mail into a mental drawer, shut it and go on with this night. But it wouldn’t leave. That small clear voice. I think you might be my—never mind. “Just a kind of odd message.”

  “Odd how?”

  “I couldn’t quite understand it.”

  Kelly offered to listen and reached for the phone, but Ryan demurred, said he’d listen again later. He dropped the phone on the counter and swept an arm around her waist. “You’re all I want to listen to right now, Professor. Where’s that bourbon?”

  This is Lucia.

  That night Ryan lay awake while Kelly slept soundly beside him, nude except for her wool socks. Edith snored in her bed on top of the dresser.

  He had a life now—a life in which Lucia did not exist. His mother didn’t even know about her. No one knew about her.

  In the first year or two he’d written her several letters he’d never sent. What would be the point? To mythologize himself? Set up some kind of unfulfillable longing? Creep out Andrea? The last thing the kid needed was to think she had a father out there somewhere who’d ditched her. Whatever story Andrea had told her would be one she could live with. For once he’d done the thing that would be better for someone else, or so he’d told himself at the time. He’d let it go.

  The way he had trained himself to think about the kid was as if he had given it up for adoption, to Andrea. Women weren’t expected to talk about the pregnancies they’d terminated or babies they’d given up, so why should he? From the stories Everett told from the juvenile center, well, it was clear that no dad at all was better than a bad one.

  Would he have been a bad one? He’d have cheated on Andrea, most likely. He usually did cheat on women back then. And he’d never had much interest in preverbal humans. Though he did like how psychedelic and freaky they were in that little-kid stage, he wanted nothing to do with meltdowns and high volumes and excretory fixations and mollifying snacks. Teenagers were all right. If anything interesting in them survived the sausage factory of public schooling and consumer culture, that’s when it revealed itself. For some reason he had pictured the kid finding him at eighteen. A near-grown girl. He pictured her with black hair pulled back messily, or maybe cut short and bold. Inexplicably, his imagination sometimes put fingerless gloves on her.

  This version of her was tough and cool. Impervious to doubt and hurt. Didn’t need or miss or want something as conventional as a heterosexual white biological father. She would just be . . . curious. She’d pull out a cigarette and offer him one. He’d say no thanks, and then remember to scold her. Except at eighteen, it would be her right to smoke, and not his to parent her; she’d be her own adult person then. They could see eye to eye.

  But ten years old? Too soon for him. He needed at least eight more years to be ready for this.

  He padded out to the cold kitchen and listened again to the message.

  I’m looking for Ryan Coates.

  Fuck.

  Underground

  A GRAY SATURDAY MORNING. HER MOM AND BEATRIZ HAD gone to get groceries at Fred Meyer, leaving Lucia on the couch with a blanket and her book. Lucia waited until the house was entirely hers for ten minutes—no emergency returns.

  On the second try, the call went through. Lucia stood at the sound of his Hello? on the other end. A man’s voice. Medium deep.

  “Hi, it’s me. Lucia. I left a message?”

  “Yeah, I heard it.”

  “Is this . . . Are you . . .”

  “Have you talked to your mom about this?”

  “A little.”

  “Does she know you’re calling me?”

  Lucia headed toward the basement door. Even though no one else was home, it seemed safer to go underground. “Yes?”

  “Be honest.”

  “Not really.” She descended the wooden steps. The basement smelled dark and cool. The dehumidifier hummed busily in the corner. Bullet stopped in the doorway at the top—the stairs were hard on her joints now—and lay down at the threshold, watching Lucia.

  “Okay, we probably shouldn’t be talking until I’ve had a conversation with her.”

  Lucia pulled the chain on the ceiling light. “I have your guitar.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. The one that was on the record cover.”

  A little laugh of disbelief. “Do you play it?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m in a band.”

  “No way. You’re in a band.”

  “With my friend Sydney. We met at rock camp. We’re called the Tiny Spiny Hedgehogs.”

  “Wow. Do you, like, play shows?”

  Lucia sat on a storage trunk next to the clothes dryer and toyed with the latch. “We played at the rock camp showcase, at our friend’s birthday, and at a pizza place,” she said. It didn’t seem right to mention Beatriz and Uncle Topher’s wedding—her mom had stressed that she had to be very careful about that u
ntil the green card was issued. “We have, like, eight songs now.”

  “That’s impressive. Maybe you should make a record.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” He seemed to think better of it. “Actually—you don’t want to become a novelty band. You don’t want too much too soon or you’ll never want to play music again. Those kids with stage moms—speaking of which, I really shouldn’t—”

  Lucia said quickly, “Are you in a band? I saw a video of you playing on TV.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. My band broke up, the one I cared about. And then I didn’t want to be in a band I didn’t care about. It’s easier when you’re young, you’ll play with anyone just to try it out.”

  “I like playing with Sydney, but we have some creative differences.”

  “Oh really?” He laughed. Lucia flushed with pleasure. Usually Sydney was the funny one.

  “That’s what my mom calls it. But at least we have fun. My first year at rock camp I was in a band with four other girls and we fought every day. One of them hit another one over the head with the mic.”

  He did it again, laughed. “Ouch.”

  “Some people should not be allowed to have microphones.”

  “You could say that about half the people I played with.”

  At the top of the stairs, Bullet scrambled to her feet, ears up. Lucia heard the back door creak open, and the dog whined and started to wag. “I gotta go,” Lucia said. “They’re home. Bye.”

  She hung up.

  “Luz?”

  “I’m in the basement,” she hollered back. She stuffed her phone into her hoodie pocket and took the stairs two at a time. It came to her as she rounded the corner: “I was looking for my horse T-shirt.” She knew the T-shirt was in Beatriz’s drawer—Beatriz loved that shirt and had borrowed it from her. It was the first time she felt a lie come so easily. If you thought ahead for a few seconds, and grafted it to a truth, you could slide right through.

  Beatriz unwrapped her scarf and said, “Desculpa. I have that one.”

  “Thief!” her mother said to Beatriz.

  “It’s okay,” Lucia said with an angelic smile. “I like when Beatriz wears it.” Her mother’s eyes went soft and she kissed Lucia’s head. Lucia felt guilty and pleased at once.

  Her pulse beat hard and she felt heat around the edges of her vision. She had a secret—a huge one. And she’d made Ryan Coates laugh. His number was now a song in her head.

  The Bill Comes In

  ANDREA NEVER LOOKED AT THE CELL PHONE BILL, but this month, she’d gone over her daytime minutes and Verizon had charged a ridiculous fee. The table held stacks of bills. For almost all her adult life, she had barely squeaked by at best; she’d had to declare personal bankruptcy when Luz was eighteen months just to clear the credit card debts. Then she landed the teaching job—which was at a private school, so the pay was low, but for the first time she had a salary and benefits. Half the kids blew off art class, treated it like a joke, plaster penises and crappy drawings of cartoon characters, but they were easily outweighed by those who realized art class was a refuge: the ones who had real talent and the misfits who took their lunches to her classroom to eat. Every cent of her money had gone toward absolute necessities and Lucia’s day care, but she had learned how to survive.

  Now, with Beatriz’s part-time income and share of the rent and utilities, the weight had lessened—they squeaked by more easily—but Andrea still tracked every dollar, and forty cents a minute for going over was a stab in the gut. How could they have been so careless? Had Beatriz called Brazil? Or was it Beatriz’s work? They would have to increase the minutes on their family plan.

  She pored over Beatriz’s call log. There were a few ten- and fifteen-minute day calls that added up. Nothing international. She glanced at the log of Lucia’s—usually it was only a few numbers, hers and Beatriz’s and Sydney’s.

  But what was this? A 411 charge, and two calls to a 218 number.

  Where the hell was 218?

  Lucia crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I didn’t know 411 calls cost money.”

  “Luz, you should have asked me first. Us first.”

  “Would you have let me?”

  “Probably not!”

  “See?”

  “What did he say to you?”

  Lucia’s voice got small. “He said . . . Sydney and I should make a record. Then he changed his mind and said we had to be careful not to be a novelty.”

  Beatriz nodded, but Andrea said, “Career advice? That’s rich. Did he say anything about me?”

  Lucia shook her head.

  “What are you looking for, Luz?” Andrea dropped to her knees in front of her daughter. “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  Lucia said, “I want to meet him.”

  Andrea sat back on her heels. “What?”

  “For my birthday. It’s the only thing I want. The only thing.”

  Andrea couldn’t speak.

  Beatriz stepped in. “You’ve thought about this, Luz? Or are you just saying this now?”

  “I’ve thought about it a lot. All week. I wouldn’t ask for it if I didn’t mean it.”

  Andrea found her voice. “We’re not enough?”

  Beatriz touched her shoulder. “I don’t think it’s about that, Andy.”

  “I mean, what do you think he’s going to give you? He left. He left before you were even—”

  Beatriz gripped her shoulder harder. “Babe! Stop.” Andrea covered her mouth. She’d almost said the unforgivable, the thing she never wanted Lucia to know. Bad mother.

  Lucia’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know why! I just want to. I just want to see him in real life.”

  Beatriz let go of Andy and wrapped her arms around Lucia. “We’ll talk about it, Luz, okay? It’s a lot to think about. Give us a little time. Okay?”

  Lucia began to cry openly. “He was really nice.”

  “Oh Jesus,” Andrea said.

  Beatriz shot her a look that was part compassion, part warning. “We’ll figure something out.”

  Still on her knees, Andrea fought the urge to beg Lucia to—to what, feel differently? To not want what she already wanted? To not wonder what she of course wondered? For the first time in years Andrea was angry at him, she realized, furious that what he’d given—what he’d left behind—he could also take away. He couldn’t take custody, not that, but something nearly as frightening: he could seize Lucia’s imagination, her heart. She could come to believe in him. He could leave her now too.

  Don’t be your mother, she thought. Don’t push her away. She breathed deeply, in, out. “It’s your life and your decision to make,” she said. “Beatriz is right. We’ll work it out for you.”

  On the Road

  FOR TWO WEEKS ANDREA BEGGED THE SKY FOR A SNOWSTORM, prayed for impassable Rockies, hoped the car might break down irreparably on the way home from school, or the immigration office would schedule an interview for the day before Thanksgiving. She checked the weather in Spokane, Missoula, Bozeman, Dickinson, and Bismarck every day, eager for a meteorological disaster that would foreclose on the imminent possibility of their own. But no. The weather moved on, the roads remained open. Andrea took the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week off from school. Since flights to Bemidji, Minnesota, inexplicably cost more than flights to Paris, they would make a road trip.

  Beatriz and Lucia planned the route on Google. They sat on the living room couch with the laptop while Andrea wrote lesson plans for the substitute teacher. Neither Beatriz nor Lucia had ever been to the mountains or the Midwest. They wanted to visit a concrete dinosaur park, they wanted to go skiing, they wanted to see bighorn sheep and mountain goats.

  “How can you be so excited about this trip?” Andrea asked Beatriz.

  “What’s my other option? Dread and fear?”

  “That’s where I am.”

  “I
know. And Luz is gonna pick up on that and then how’s she going to feel? If you make it weird, it’ll be weird. Do I want to go meet the guy whose sperms hatched in your egg or whatever?” Beatriz flapped her hand like a cat swatting at a bug. “Not really. Does Lucia? Yes. Do I want to take a crazy long road trip with the girl I love and the other girl I love and see a lot of weird shit and different lands? Yes.”

  Early on a Saturday morning they packed the Corolla wagon. As she shut the trunk, Andrea felt like they were leaving for good, like they would never return to this: this little shingled bungalow, this life, this perfect three of her, Beatriz, Lucia.

  How briefly she had gotten to have everything she wanted and loved. Her mopery about the wedding now seemed so petty. She would have married herself off to anyone necessary to keep this unbearably sweet life intact. Playing gin rummy around the coffee table. The mornings when Andrea would get up to make coffee and return to the bedroom to find Lucia in her place, chatting with bed-headed Beatriz. Camping out in the Mount Hood National Forest—okay, they’d only done it once, but they were planning to go again next summer and this time they’d rig a bear hang for their food like they were supposed to. Making pancakes. Beatriz teaching Lucia a Nirvana song in the living room, Lucia concentrating on the plaintive guitar riff as Beatriz sang the verses, until the chorus, where they both laid into the chords, and Lucia howled, “In the sun, in the sun I feel as one,” in her fearless clear voice, and all three of them hollered, “Maaa-rried!”—and then Andrea would thump out the drum fill on the table or counter—“Buuuu-ried!” Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

  Thunk. Click. Their duffels and backpacks and a booklet of CDs and a Harry Potter audiobook from the library. That’s what they had now. And a road atlas in which Andrea had traced their route in highlighter so Lucia could follow along, a sheer blue line like a vein, pumping them from home to wherever the fuck they were headed.