Fingerprints of You

by Kristen-Paige Madonia

  She didn’t say, This will turn out for the best. I believe in you. She never said, I understand.

  “It won’t be long,” I repeated, thinking if I said it enough times one of us might begin to believe it. “I’ll call again soon,” I told her right before she said she loved me.

  Afterward, I read for a while, dozing in and out of sleep, but then the couple in the room next to mine started up again, the woman groaning and the man crying out in staggered rhythms. I didn’t want to hear their thumping and clawing on the other side of the wall—it sounded lonely and desperate—so I took a shower and decided to walk to the purple house even though I’d already missed dinner. I arrived around seven, and when Cassie opened the door she just looked at me and shrugged.

  “We already ate,” she said, which made me feel like crap and wasn’t exactly an invitation to come inside, but I followed her up the stairs anyway and into the living room again, where the air smelled like burgers and hash browns.

  Ryan and Cassie were both on the couch, so I sat in the recliner across from them and apologized for missing dinner. I said something lame about it having been a really long day, and Ryan took one look at me and asked, “So are you a troublemaker? A delinquent?” which seemed like a pretty hypocritical question coming from a guy who had been at the same New Year’s party as me the night before.

  Cassie said, “Ryan, don’t,” but I couldn’t let it slide.

  “I’m not confident enough to be a troublemaker,” I told him. I wasn’t bold enough to earn the label, even if I did look like one to Ryan and Cassie as I sat across from them.

  “Does Stella know you’re here?” he asked, and I nodded. “So you’re sixteen and knocked up, and you came to San Francisco with some friend on the ’hound?” His voice was flat, cold. “Shouldn’t you be in school or something?”

  I nodded and said, “I turned seventeen in September,” and he looked at the floor, embarrassed, maybe, that he’d gotten the math wrong. And then I added, “My friend left today. Emmy went back east this morning.”

  Cassie sighed and leaned forward, perching her elbows on her knees, and Ryan said, “Holy shit.”

  I tried to think of something to say that would make my situation sound less desperate than it was. “Her dad is on his way home from Afghanistan because he got his leg blown off. It’s okay, though. I don’t have to leave yet as long as I can pay for the hotel,” I told them. I eyed the blue and green striped fish swimming in its bowl on the bookshelf next to me.

  Ryan said “Jesus Christ” that time and slumped into the couch, and I figured he wished he had that joint again, but he reached over and put his hand on Cassie’s leg instead, leaned his head back against the wall, and looked up at the ceiling.

  Cassie said, “Well,” and I thought she was going to say something important like, Well, we’re glad you’re still here, or maybe even something not that important like, Well, we’ve got leftover burgers if you want them, but she didn’t say anything at all for a while as I listened to the lightbulb buzzing in the fixture in the hallway. It was horrible really, that kind of silence sitting on top of us like that, crushing the space separating them from me.

  “Well, you can’t stay in that hotel alone,” Cassie finally said, and I was thankful she thought to say something mildly adult-like, since all I was getting from Ryan was a bunch of cuss words. “She can’t stay in the Mission alone, Ryan.”

  His eyes had been closed for a while, and I was worried he might have nodded off, but then he said “Jesus” again.

  I thought they might offer to pay for a nicer hotel with thicker walls so I wouldn’t have to listen to all that sex next door, but Cassie said something about an air mattress and that I should save my money for groceries. “You’re only here for a little longer, right?” she asked, and I nodded like I had a plan. “So, fine then. That’s fine.” She looked at me but moved her hand on top of Ryan’s where it rested on her leg.

  Ryan didn’t say anything until I got up to leave, when he shook his head and offered, “Come by tomorrow afternoon. We’ll get this sorted out.”

  I let myself out, and when I was back on the street I looked at the purple house and tried to imagine what it would feel like to wake there in the morning, to call it home, but I couldn’t. Of all the places I had moved, I’d never expected to move in with him.

  I turned six the year my mother packed us up for the first time and announced that we were moving from the only home I’d ever known. I had spent my entire life in my grandmother’s house, and I didn’t understand what moving meant. I thought we were going on a trip. I thought we were taking a vacation, maybe because that’s what she told me—I don’t remember how Stella explained it the first time she moved us. I just remember my grandmother crying as my mother sat on the floor labeling cardboard boxes. SUMMER CLOTHES. PHOTOS. ELECTRONICS. LEMON’S TOYS. We left at night, and it was hot in the car, the trunk tied down with black rope and the windows wide open as we backed out of the driveway. I could smell my mother’s shampoo from the backseat when the wind moved into the car, the heat of summertime mixing its humidity with the drugstore scent of garden flowers. She was crying a little, too, I saw it in the side-view mirror when I leaned my head out to wave good-bye to Nan, and when I pulled back in and buckled up like she told me to, Stella reached behind her seat and held my hand.

  “We’re going to live in a big, beautiful castle,” she said, “and I’m going to have a big, beautiful job.” She wiped her tears off her face with the back of her wrist and told me about the coin-operated carousel out front of the grocery store we’d go to from then on. She said we would be fine. She said we would be happy. Just the two of us. “New York’ll be the start of wonderful things for us, me and you, Lemon,” she said, and I believed her because I trusted her with the kind of blindness only children have.

  Back in the hotel room the couple next door were quiet, and I began taking my clothes from the dresser and folding them into neat stacks that would fit easily into my backpack. I thought of how much I loved Stella back then, before the woman in the photo in the shoe and the woman who was my mother did not seem like such different people. She was probably scared when we drove away that night. It was the first time she’d be responsible for me alone, having left my grandmother in the driveway, but mostly I remembered her being happy, the way she drove with one hand and rubbed my leg in the backseat with the other until I fell asleep. She laughed a lot that trip, sang along with songs on the radio, and told me stories from when she was a kid. She was still young then, and I remembered thinking, as a six-year-old, that she would be my greatest friend, my partner. Maybe all children feel like that when they’re little, when they don’t know better yet. I remembered the distinct comfort of knowing that she loved me, that she had chosen to take me with her, and that I belonged to her. That first move was the only move I remembered making with a sense of security and excitement. With trust. Maybe because it was back before I understood what moving meant. It was before Stella had gotten beat down and sucked up by the job of being a mother, back when she thought raising me might be an easy and adventurous thing. I folded my sweatshirt, the one with the kangaroo pockets, and pressed it into the backpack before cinching the top closed. And I realized that the next day I would move into the first place I chose to live without Stella: my father’s home.

  The following afternoon I checked out of the hotel and met Aiden at a taquería in the Mission before he had to go to work. We ordered at the counter from a big-boned woman who spoke broken English, and then sat down at the table. I had my backpack with me, so he asked, “You running away again?” with a smile.

  I told him about Cassie and Ryan’s offer. “I guess I’m moving in with them after lunch,” I said, and realized how completely ridiculous it sounded.

  “Does your mom know?” Aiden asked.

  The woman brought us our foil-wrapped burritos in yellow plastic baskets, and the food smelled so good I almost hated to eat it.

  “She kno
ws I came to look for him,” I said, which didn’t really answer his question. “She gave me his address.”

  “So they’re friends.”

  “She knew him when she lived here back when she was young. But now he’s just another guy she used to sleep with.” I unwrapped my burrito and used the plastic knife to slice into the tortilla. Red salsa burst from the skin, and the smell of chicken and cheese rose to my face in the steam. “He’s just like the rest of them, all the men she’s screwed around with.”

  “Except he gave her you,” Aiden said.

  “Except for that, I guess. But she moved us to Pennsylvania before I was born. He never met me before this,” I told him.

  “I can’t figure it out: Which one is the bad guy?” he asked. “Your mom or your dad?”

  I shook my head because that’s why I was there: to decide and finally have a place to put the blame. “I hate that I never knew him,” I said, “which is her fault for making us leave.” I forked a piece of chicken into the tiny plastic cup of sour cream we ordered on the side. “But he didn’t follow us, which is his fault for being selfish.”

  “Burritos aren’t for utensils,” Aiden said and stabbed at my fork with his, flirting.

  “I don’t actually want to like him, you know?” I said. “Ryan’s supposed to be this loser who wouldn’t have been good for us. He’s supposed to—” I stopped and tried to work it out. “Meeting him is supposed to prove that Stella and I were better off without him, that we didn’t need him. That my mom and I turned out just fine.”

  “Just like you don’t need the father of your baby?”

  I nodded. “Ryan’s supposed to show me I’m going to be okay without the dad, without Johnny Drinko,” I said.

  Aiden lifted an eyebrow, picked up his burrito, and peeled the top half of the foil off in one long strip. He took a monstrous bite but stopped midchew to ask, “Why don’t you just show yourself you’re going to be okay? Why do you need your dad to prove it?”

  But I didn’t have an answer. At the counter a guy with a buzz cut ordered for himself and a waify girl who stood with her arm slung around his waist. He bent over and kissed her while he waited to sign the receipt.

  “Okay,” I said, and took a sip of my Sprite, “your turn. What’s the story with your family?”

  “It’s boring, really,” he said. “Dad’s a doctor in Tiburon. Mom’s a painter who teaches workshops. Only child. Well, there was one after me, but he didn’t make it, and they never tried again.” When he finished his food he crumpled the leftover foil in his fist. “Most of her paintings are sad and angry landscapes, lots of blues and browns. My dad is half-retired. He only sees patients in his office and doesn’t take calls anymore. He spends a lot of time at the racetrack.” He reached for the soda we were sharing. “Boring and functional. We’re normal—if normal exists.”

  But normal was exactly what you grew up with until you were old enough to recognize that nothing was actually normal. My normal had been suitcases and road trips, new towns and fresh starts. It had been my definition of ordinary.

  “How long are you planning on staying?” he asked, changing the subject from him to me. “The band leaves tomorrow for a quick tour up north.”

  I thought it was his way of telling me he was leaving town. He would abandon me in the city just as I moved in with Ryan. First Emmy, now him. I felt all those beans and cheese and rice hit the bottom of my stomach and settle there like concrete.

  “If I can figure out how to finance it, I’d like to stay for a month or so,” I told him, realizing it as I said it out loud. “The baby isn’t due until July, so I have plenty of time.”

  “You should get a doctor then, right?” he said, which I thought was sweet, and I told him I planned to find one as soon as I got settled. “Want to walk me to work?” he eventually asked.

  Outside, the air was cold and the city was loud as we walked by flea markets and stands selling seaweed and dumplings and knockoff designer handbags. Aiden carried my backpack as we navigated through the crowd.

  “What about school?” he asked, and I told him I was a senior, and that I should have been graduating that spring.

  “I’ll have to make up the semester if I stay here, but it doesn’t really matter. I wouldn’t be going to college next year anyway. Not with the baby.”

  We crossed through an intersection, and Aiden moved in closer to hear me over the sounds of the street. “I think kids in America go to college too young,” he said. “I’ve got friends who went right after high school, not because they were ready but because that’s what they thought they were supposed to do. But they got there and screwed the whole thing up,” he said. “In Europe it’s called a gap year: the time between high school and college when you figure out what you want. I like that,” he said, and he pulled a cigarette out of his pack and held it up to me. “Is this okay?” he asked, and he lit it with a red lighter after I nodded.

  “Is that what you’re doing, a gap year?” I asked even though I knew most kids graduate when they’re eighteen, and Aiden was twenty-one.

  “I left Tiburon and moved to the city after high school.” He smoked with one hand and used the other to nudge me around the corner when we turned onto Valencia Street. “I took a couple of classes but never committed. I don’t know what I want to study, so for now I’m happy just to work. I really like writing music reviews and managing the band. The pizza gig’s not that bad either. Good leftovers,” he said. “It’s nice just to be on my own, to give myself some time to figure out what I want.” He took a slow drag and blew the smoke toward the street. “I don’t know why people are in such a hurry,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he meant the crowds moving by us on the sidewalk or the kids who went to college right away. “You should finish high school, though. When you can, you should go back. It’d be a rip-off not to. You deserve to finish,” he said. “You’re so young after all, still just a minor,” he teased. “You’ve got lots of time to decide about college, but everyone needs a high school degree.”

  We were about a block from the pizza shop by then, and I recognized the Victorians like Ryan’s and the cafés and markets of the neighborhood.

  “The band leaves tomorrow for a quick tour up north,” he repeated. “The keyboardist works for his uncle at a bookstore down on Twentieth, and I usually cover his shifts if I don’t go on tour, but I thought maybe you could do it. Since you need the money.”

  “Are you going too?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Can’t take off from work,” he said. We were in front of the pizza place by then, and he gestured to the door. “The boss just fired a cook, so he needs the help.” Then he explained that since the owner of the bookstore was the keyboardist’s relative, he didn’t care who worked the shifts as long as someone covered them. “If you can work a register and the numbers even out at the end of the day, he couldn’t give a shit,” he said. “The boss pays my friend, and my friend’ll pay me, and I’ll give the money to you. I can even pay you up front if you’re interested,” he said, and I told him that I was.

  It was time for him to leave me, and I hoped he might kiss me right there on the sidewalk, the pizza shop on one side of us and Ryan’s house on the other. I wanted him to close those green eyes and put his hand behind my back, pull me to him so our faces merged and our mouths intersected. I wanted to taste him, to smell his skin mixed with mine as he kissed me. But he didn’t.

  Instead he slid the backpack off and said, “Hang in there,” and looked at the purple house across from us. “I’m here if you need me,” he said, and he tilted his head down so that our foreheads met, his eyelashes brushing mine. “I’m right here,” he said again, and I believed him.

  The world will freely offer itself to you. To be unmasked, it has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

  —Franz Kafka

  CASSIE ANSWERED WHEN I KNOCKED, and she was wrapped in a towel, her long legs disappearing beneath a strip of cream-colored fabric that barely
covered anything. Her face was dewy, her cheekbones flushed with heat, and her afro was wet and matted to her head.

  “I figured it was you,” she said, and then, “I had to shower, and Ryan’s gone to work.” She backed away and made room for me inside. “I don’t usually answer the door half-naked. Just for the record.”

  I followed her up the stairs and kept my eyes on the grimy carpet as we moved to the second floor, the stains littering each landing like birthmarks, or scars of nights from the years they had lived there. She left me in the living room so she could get some clothes on, and I put my backpack on the couch and looked through the bookshelves while I waited for her to return. I ran my hand along the spines of hardbacks written by people I had never heard of: Walker Percy, Henry Miller, Annie Proulx, D. H. Lawrence, Charles Bukowski. I tapped my fingernail on the fishbowl. It didn’t seem right only having one fish there in the bowl moving aimlessly among plastic plants, and I wondered if he was lonely. Cassie came out of the bedroom then and stopped in the doorway, eyeing me by the books.

  “I keep meaning to weed through them and get rid of the ones we don’t need, but Ryan won’t let me. He says he wants to keep them, even though he’s read them all a million times.”

  I backed away from the shelf and looked at her, nodding as if I already knew about Ryan’s love of books.

  “You can borrow any you like. Most of them were here when I moved in.” She shrugged. “Want a tour?”

  She showed me their bedroom at the end of the hall, a small space with a bay window, a bed with sheets untucked, and a dresser painted forest green. I could feel the heat of her shower still hovering in the bathroom when we got there, and she pointed out an empty shelf in the medicine cabinet she’d cleaned off for my stuff.