Get Happy (16 page)

“Minerva!” she squealed, and stepped up to the sink next to me. “Look at you with your uke! How fun! What are you doing here? Are you going to the lecture?”

Of course she would be here. I don’t know why I was surprised. I rinsed the soap off my hands. Words came out: “My bio teacher wanted us to come, but I didn’t reserve a space.” I heard myself laugh at my own stupidity.

“It’s packed!” she said. “If I had known you were coming, I could have saved you a seat up front with us.” She leaned over the sink to wash her hands, and a pendant that had been stuck under her shirt came free and swung forward.

I stopped midbreath.

It was a seahorse. It was
my
seahorse on a black silk cord.

My mind tried to make sense of it. Perhaps the
necklace had fallen out of the garbage truck, and, in the strangest of all coincidences, Cassie found it on the street. Or maybe a friend of hers found it, and knowing that she loves seahorses, gave it to her. I asked, full of genuinely innocent wonder, “Where did you get that?”

She lifted the pendant and smiled. “This? My stepdad.” She let it go and pulled lip gloss out of her back pocket and leaned even closer to the mirror to put it on. “He’s the one giving the lecture.” She smiled at herself and smacked her lips. “Didn’t you know that? Keanu Choy.”

My stomach dropped, and the color must have drained from my face because she asked if I was okay. A stall opened up. Fortunately, the line was gone, so I turned and walked in. As I twisted the lock, I managed to mumble something about how I had eaten something that was making me feel sick.

Through the crack in the door, I saw her finish up in the mirror. “Sorry,” she said. “Hey, do you want me to see if I can get you in?”

“No,” I said.

“Okay. I have to go. Hope you feel better. See you next Saturday.”

She left and more people came in. I stood in the stall, staring at the door, feeling as if the room were tilting back and forth.

Images were flashing through my mind. A young Cassie and her divorced mom living in California. Cassie and her mom hanging out at the beach. Cassie and her mom meeting Keanu Choy, hitting it off, having so much in common. Vacations together. A marriage. Trips to Hawaii, Fiji, Bermuda. The job offer in Chicago. The decision to move. Enrolling Cassie in Parker, nothing but the best.

Through the crack, I saw a mom and her kids lining up at the sinks, two girls and a little boy. “What did you like best, guys?” the mom asked.

“The seahorses,” one daughter said.

“The rays,” the second one said.

“The hot dogs,” the boy said, and the mom laughed.

Someone from the line knocked on my door.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” I said.

A little kid in the stall next to me was talking to her mom nonstop.

I walked out of the stall, avoiding eye contact, washed my hands, and left. The doors to the auditorium
were closed and a sign read:
LECTURE IN PROGRESS
. A red velvet rope blocked the entrance.

I turned to leave and thought I was headed to the aquarium exit, but I was funneled into an S-shaped room lined with small tanks, photos, and facts on every wall. The Save Our Seahorse special exhibit. The last place I wanted to be.

Moms and dads and kids and single people were all shuffling along, waiting their turns to get closer to the tanks, or stopping to read the stuff on the walls, or listening to the recorded tour on their smartphones.

A different species of seahorse was in each tank. The creatures looked powerless and sad, with their tails curled around strands of seaweed or floating through the water, their faces expressionless, their bodies rigid, even when moving, their bony plates like primeval armor: tiny, armless, aimless toy soldiers.

Hot, unable to breathe, I pushed against the flow, trying to get out in the direction that people were coming in. As I was entering the last curve of the room, the only opening in the flow of people was closest to the wall. On it was a display explaining the SOS Project, with photos from my dad’s research and dives. The
time line was in reverse for me, so as I moved forward, my dad was getting younger in the pictures. There was a photo of a whole group wearing SOS polo shirts on a large sailboat with Keanu in the center, and a younger Cassie was in the shot with what looked like her mom standing next to her.

I kept moving forward, not wanting to look at the photos but unable to look away. The last photo stopped me. It was the same picture I had printed out and brought with me, the picture of my young dad and me surrounded by the blue of the grand rotunda, except they had cropped me out. The picture was just a head shot of my dad, and the caption said,
SOS FOUNDER KEANU CHOY AT SHEDD DURING HIS INTERNSHIP.

If you looked very closely, you could see that my chubby little arm on his shoulder had been erased.

Something inside me, some inner rope that had been holding me, snapped. I took the printed photo out of my backpack and threw it away. Then I walked from the exhibit to the lecture hall. The museum guard who had been standing in front of the auditorium doors was gone. I unhooked the velvet rope and simply walked in.

The stage was lit up with a projected image of seahorses, and there he was, talking. Keanu Choy.

I stepped to the side and stood against the back wall.

He was handsome and confident, wearing black jeans, a crisp white shirt, and a headset microphone, walking around the stage and using his arms to punctuate his remarks with robust enthusiasm, sleek, graceful, the kind of man who never trips over a word or a crack in the sidewalk.

“Thanks to the efforts of marine conservationists, more seahorse habitats are being protected, but we still have a long way to go, my friends. For those of you who are divers, please help us by contributing to our seahorse survey project. If you see a seahorse in the wild, be a marine detective. Try to notice everything you can — weather conditions, habitat, size of the seahorse, distinguishing marks, spots, speckles, stripes … behavior — Is it clinging to a holdfast? Is it holding an umbrella?”

Everybody laughed.

“Send us your description and a photo or video.” He smiled. “Make sure you use an underwater camera, though!”

More laughter.

“Seriously, though, if you do photograph seahorses, please, please refrain from excessive flash, and if they move away, let them go. Like many of us, they don’t want their faces to be plastered all over YouTube.” More laughter. “Protecting and preserving these creatures is always our main goal. Questions?”

A woman in a navy blue aquarium blazer stepped forward and invited anyone with a question to stand at either of two microphones that were set up toward the back of each aisle. Several people lined up.

“Dr. Choy, I loved your talk and found it so interesting that the male delivers the babies, so to speak,” a woman gushed. “You said that the father carries the fertilized eggs in his pouch. Do they have many partners or do they mate for life?”

“Seahorses often mate for life.” He smiled. “They don’t swim in schools, the way other fish do. They are generally loners, but they have this beautiful little ritual. Every morning, the female visits her male mate. They just hang out together. It’s like mom and dad eating breakfast and reading the paper.”

More laughter.

He held up his hand. “And here’s the sweetest part.
They often change to a brighter color when they are together. Beautiful, right?”

The audience loved it.

My heart pounding, I walked down the aisle toward a microphone and stood in line. I could see Cassie, or rather the back of her head, sitting in the front row, the woman next to her most likely her mom. Three people in line asked questions, and I couldn’t tell you what they were about or what my father’s answers were. And then suddenly, I was standing in front of the microphone, and the woman was calling on me. She said something about how happy she was that young people were curious, and Keanu nodded yes, isn’t it wonderful to see young people here today?

Words just walked out of my mouth, the strange calm of my voice amplified. “I have a comment and a question. You obviously care a lot about seahorses. It must make you feel really good to know that you are helping to protect them.”

He smiled. “Yes, it does make me feel good,” he said. “We can all help. I hope you’ll go to the SOS Web site and check out the resources. There are lots of ways to get involved.”

“My question is, how do you feel about the fact
that you abandoned your own child? Do you feel good about that?”

Dead silence.

The flicker of recognition in his gaze.

I didn’t flinch. Yes, Keanu, I am your daughter.

The eyes of every person in the auditorium were on me. I turned and walked away, my footsteps silent on the carpet. Someone coughed. I pushed open the door and walked out into the busy aquarium. A family went by, pushing a stroller. I walked around them and ran for the exit.

Outside, the sight of the giant cardboard seahorse, the families streaming up the broad steps, and the beautiful expanse of the lake beyond made me feel even sicker. I yanked the seahorse loose from its sandbag, turned it sideways, and ran down the steps with it.

I struggled against the wind, shifting the seahorse, running past the joggers and families, all the way to the edge of the lake. The wind was cutting across the water, the waves crashing at my feet. I hoisted the seahorse, trying to throw it into the lake, but a gust got under it and slammed it back in my face, pushing me backward onto my backpack. I heard a loud
crack.

I tore off my backpack and pulled out my uke. The neck was snapped in two pieces, the body cracked, the strings slack.

A yell came from behind, and I turned and saw a museum guard jogging toward me. I left the uke on the cardboard seahorse and took off running.

When I got to the El station, I ran over to a trash can and threw up.

21

T
HERE SHOULD BE
a place you can go when you need it. A rip in the fabric of time that you can slip through. It should lead you to a nice room with a bed and a quilt and a little thermos of tea. Maybe a fresh cinnamon roll, a book you can read to take your mind off everything, a recording of your favorite song to play.

I managed to get myself onto a train to Evanston, but I couldn’t walk down the station stairs and go home. At that point, I had only two choices: (1) Tell my mom the truth or (2) fake that nothing had happened. Neither seemed possible, so I boarded another
train, took it as far as it went, and then returned. Each time the train stopped at my station, I got off, but then I just kept getting onto another train.

After an hour or two, I opened my cell phone. There were messages and texts from my mom, as I knew there would be. Keanu would have called her.
Hey, Pat, just wanted you to know that your darling daughter humiliated me in public. Great job raising her.
Fin and Hayes texted, too, and there were three calls from a number I didn’t recognize. My dad? I didn’t read or listen to any of the messages.

The sky was darkening with late afternoon thunderclouds. Another hour passed and then another and another, until the streetlights came on. I was so hungry I thought I might faint, but if I left the station, I’d have to pay to get back in, and I was afraid of running out of money. Finally, I got off at LaSalle, found a convenience store, and inhaled a candy bar. I had enough money for one more trip. As I walked back to the station, the rain started, heavy and hard.

Drenched, I got back on the train, leaned my head against the glass, and watched the rain pour. The lights of the shops and cars had that sad, beautiful look they
get in the rain, the lengthening reflections of all the colors in the water on the street like long wails of reds, and yellows, and blues, and greens.

The guy behind me asked if I knew the time and when I looked at my cell phone and told him, I realized that the open mic at Ray’s was about to start. Hayes must have figured out I wasn’t coming.

It was around 7:20 when I got off the train in Evanston and heard my name. Fin’s dad rushed up the platform steps. He was wearing a raincoat with the hood up and his big green gardening boots. The lenses of his glasses were streaked with rain. “Min darlin’! We’ve been looking all over for you.”

I did what I’d been doing for the past few hours: I walked over to a bench and sat down. My body had turned into a shell; even though I was soaked, I swear I couldn’t feel it. The track was silent, so I looked down and found a cigarette stub to stare at, wedged in the widest part of a crack in the cement.

“Are you okay?”

I felt myself nod.

He joined me, the wet green of his boots coming to rest with a rubbery thump as he sat next to me.
“We split up to look for you. Everybody’s worried.” He took off his glasses and wiped them on the dry hem of his shirt. “Fin is walking around downtown Evanston. Jenny and the boys are over at your house, waiting in case you come home. Your mom is driving around. She called the police.”

My green dress was clinging to my thighs. My left knee was bruised. I wondered where that came from.