Chapter 11
The girl scowled and tucked herself deeper into the neck of her puffy coat. “That’s not funny,” she said. “This isn’t funny.”
“No,” I agreed. “I don’t find it funny, either.”
I felt numb. Maybe this girl and I were feeling disappointment with the situation, each from our own direction.
She was suffering from surprise, from the family tree seeming a little crowded all of a sudden, and maybe she thought my existence meant something for her that I couldn’t begin to guess at.
I was suffering from something else entirely, and glad I didn’t have to go into the music shop today. The smallest mercy. I grabbed the whiskey bottle to put it away.
“Can I have one?” she said. “A drink?”
I peered at her more closely. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.” Her chin jutting out.
“No, you’re not,” I said. I’d already done the math, trying to figure out when Marisa Young had pulled her life together enough to care for someone other than herself. “How about a Coke?”
“How about you piss off?” the girl said.
It was a great line, delivered perfectly, except she didn’t storm off afterward. I pulled a diet cola on the soda gun—a guess, since all the little skinny broads ordered diet—and placed that glass in front of her, too.
She shouldn’t even be allowed to sit at the bar. If Alex walked in, I was going to catch some hell. My version of hell, anyway, where Alex plunked me down in front of the Illinois Liquor Control Commission website again.
“Let’s go sit down,” I suggested.
She sipped from the soda, made a face. “I’m sitting down now.”
“If someone official happens by, my license to serve is toast. And the bar could get fined,” I said. “The owner doesn’t need that. Let’s go over there.”
Her honey hair swung over the shoulder of her coat as she turned to look, but she didn’t move.
She didn’t care if Alex got dinged, but I sure did.
I pulled a Coke for myself and walked over to the far corner to the big booth.
It was roomy. No one had to get too close or familiar.
She finally got off her stool to join me.
“I’m Dahlia,” I said. “And your name is what?”
“Sis.” She cringed and lowered herself onto the very corner of the other bench.
“I’m not calling you that,” I said.
“No, it’s—Sicily. You can call me Sicily. ‘Sis’ is just what—” She fidgeted with her glass, biting at her glossy lip.
I let the gut punch of it pass. “She calls you ‘Sis.’”
“It’s just a silly nickname,” she said. “I never thought it meant—”
“It doesn’t,” I said. “I’m sure Marisa wasn’t thinking of me when she named you.”
Sicily looked up. “Of course she was. She’s probably been thinking about you every minute of my whole life. A lot of things make sense now.”
“I bet they don’t,” I said. Then I reconsidered. “Like what?”
“Like … sometimes it just seemed like she was going somewhere else, in her mind, you know?” Sicily said.
“She always gets really sad around this time of year. Christmas is supposed to be this day of joy, right? But then she’s watching me open my presents over there trying to pretend like her eyes aren’t red and puffy.
Allergies all of a sudden on Christmas morning, right. Like I’m an idiot.”
That’s the kind of story I would have feasted on when I was a kid, when Christmas magic didn’t seem to apply to me, the foster who should be grateful to have anything at all under another family’s tree.
But being appreciative would have meant turning off the part of myself that could clock a certain strained expression on the faces of my placement parents just as the sugarplums should be doled out.
They would have been asking themselves hard questions, like …
is this grubby brat supposed to appear in our festive photos? In our upbeat family newsletters?
And then it was time to pack the garbage bag again.
I was reminded of the story Marisa had told me last night about pining for me from afar. That was the exact thing I’d always hoped for, until I’d stopped hoping altogether.
“I notice that you still had gifts to open,” I said. “From her and your dad? And Santa, right?”
I reached for my soda. What good did it do to compare my childhood with hers?
We hadn’t had the same mother, not really.
Her mother was soft and well-fed. She probably gave a lot of cuddles and said I love you a lot.
She had some kind of needlecraft hobby, maybe, a scrapbooking habit and lots of bird feeders in the backyard.
My version of Marisa had been factory original, sharp and flinty, starting fires everywhere she went.
Yeah, it’s a family trait.
Sicily was frowning into her soda, silent.
“Never mind,” I said. “All signs point to you having great holiday seasons with your loving and present mother long into the future.”
The kid studied me now, her nose wrinkling.
Look, I know what I am. And who made me that way.
But here was living proof that the same woman who had wrecked me had brought up a healthy specimen, whose bones were strong, whose teeth spoke of the miracles of orthodontia. Our mother, who had abandoned me to the elements, had tried again and this time—raised a daughter.
Now I just needed to get her out of here.
I didn’t consider it my fault that Marisa had gone missing on a trip to see me, but I did seem to be the hinge that would send Sicily back out in the world. The city of Chicago lay before us.
Where could Marisa have gone, if not straight home to the bosom of her traditional family unit?
“We have security cameras,” I said.
The look of hope on Sicily’s face made me want to fling things, throw my glass to the floor. But for a moment, Sicily reminded me of someone. Marisa probably, or Lemondrop, when she would do anything for a treat.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s look at the recordings.”
I led Sicily down the hallway to the office, flicked on the lights, and hit the power button on the old computer to let it cycle through its startup and software upgrades. The room smelled stale.
“There’s nowhere else she would go?” I asked. “Friends? Boyfriends?”
Sicily stood in the doorway, studying the wall over my shoulder. “Is that … you?”
It was a framed poster for a gig at McPhee’s, Squad Goal’s first-ever show. The photo of the band was from a rehearsal, and I’m front and center, mouth wide, eyes dark and sparkling. I’m a deity brought to earth, fire incarnate.
Alex had put in the stage, had done up promotions, made a big deal. Then he’d framed one of the notices for the office like it was the college diploma I’d never attempt. I didn’t blame him for taking the opportunity. A life like mine came with few frame-worthy artifacts.
I hadn’t seen the point of canonizing the moment. I’d assumed, I guess, that it was a short road up the food chain to a bigger club, a larger stage, to fame.
The frame was furry with dust.
“That’s me,” I said.
“You’re the lead singer, right? That’s pretty cool,” Sicily said begrudgingly. “I couldn’t imagine standing up in front of people and singing. Standing up in front of people and doing anything.”
“Stage fright,” I said. “You get over it.”
“Not if you’re not any good,” she said. “I’m not good enough at anything to want to do it on a stage.”
“I’m sure you’re good at stuff,” I said. “Maybe nothing you need a stage for.”
Or maybe her childhood hadn’t turned her into a whore for attention, a gaping open wound needing to be filled with applause and validation. Maybe she could work in an office, get by with a hot cup of coffee and a rich inner life.
The computer was still churning. I sighed over the keyboard. “You can sit down,” I said.
Sicily picked her way across the room, took a stack of papers off the chair across the desk from me, and sat tentatively.
But then we were face-to-face, just sizing each other up without trying to seem like we were. In the next room, the dogs’ nails clicked on the floor as they explored the bar for errant tater tots. I’d never swept the floors the night before, I realized. I had no doubt that Alex would notice.
“So,” I said. “Tell me about … you?”
It was like a job interview. The kid chewed her lip. She wanted the job, whatever it was.
“I go to Northwest Illinois?” she said. “The college?”
“Freshman?”
She’d realized her mistake. “Senior.”
“Freshman,” I said.
“Okay, sophomore,” she said. I looked hard at her until she finally said, “I had some advance credits.”
“Studying what?” This kind of thing was a mystery to me, but that was what you asked, wasn’t it?
“Accounting,” she said.
“Really,” I said, without actual enthusiasm.
“Yeah, it’s…” She couldn’t even finish the sentence. “They said I should have a skill.”
“Like your advisor, you mean?”
“My … parents,” she said. “They both went to Northwest Illinois for undergrad, and they—”
I burst out laughing.
“What?” she asked defensively.
“Your mother told you she went to college?”
Sicily frowned at her fingernails, chewed at a cuticle. “She did, though.”
“She didn’t,” I said.
“That’s where they met,” Sicily said.
“Maybe she worked as a janitor there, but your mother—our mother—went to the school of hard knocks with a major in teen pregnancy and a minor in slipping comatose on the floor of a shooting gallery.”
All I got was a blank stare.
“She was a drug addict,” I said.
“That’s a lie.” The chair scraped as Sicily leapt up, knocking a pile of stuff off the desk to the floor.
She lurched to the door and turned back, pink spots on her cheeks.
Disney rage. “What is this? Some kind of joke? If you didn’t want to help me, why make it all up that your … that my mother … Why not just say so?”
“It’s the truth. You can ask her when she eventually turns up. Probably high—hey, maybe that’s what happened. She relapsed.” I realized I sounded flippant, even victorious, as though that loss was my gain, but that wasn’t true, either. I didn’t wish that on anyone. “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it.
“Is this all some kind of game to mess with me? What’s the con? I don’t have any money—”
“Holy hell, Crystal Gayle, will you sit down? I am your—whatever. Half. I am,” I said.
“And she was. An addict.” The computer was finally grinding to a reluctant readiness to serve.
“But maybe Marisa also got herself together and now lives the life of a saint in the suburbs. I have a hard time imagining how those two crazy coeds your parents met, but both of our versions of Marisa could be true. Let’s see where she went when she left here last night, just a start. ”
I made room on the chair behind the desk, next to me.
“I’ll never believe it,” she said. She scraped up the pile of mail she’d knocked over and tossed it on the desk as she came around.
“Then don’t believe me,” I said. “But you came here for some help, right? You came here to track down your mama, right? So let’s bring her home, country roads.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s find her.”