Fingerprints of You (24 page)

W
HEN
I
WOKE IN THE MORNING,
Ryan was still sleeping on the couch, and Cassie was in the kitchen making coffee. She filled a mug, sat at the table, scanned the
San Francisco Chronicle
, and settled on an article about a peace rally scheduled for later that week. I hovered and read over her shoulder, and thought of Emmy’s dad and of Nelson and Bobby Elder’s family. The article listed the streets in town that would be closed and the alternate bus routes to use on the day of the protest. I had never been in a place that actually had peace rallies, and it was pretty remarkable to see how organized and calm the city was about the whole thing. I moved to the fridge, got a glass of milk, and thanked Cassie for the doctor’s number.

She closed the paper. “Did you make an appointment?”

“I left a message yesterday,” I said, and took a banana from the counter and held it up, asking permission.

She nodded, so I tore open the bruised yellow skin and took a bite.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Full,” I said automatically. “Like a shoe a size too small for the foot that’s wearing it.”

She smiled. “I like that. You’re funny,” and then she got up and went to rinse out her coffee mug as I sat down at the table. “I was pregnant once,” she said when the water was off again, and she turned to me and leaned her back against the sink. “I lost it, though. Didn’t last the first trimester.” She was looking past me then, over my shoulder and out the window, maybe at the fire escape designated for emergencies only. “I always figured Ryan could make a beautiful baby,” she said just before her face shifted, the muscles flat and tight as her eyes returned to me. “I didn’t know he already had.”

I imagined her colors mixed with his, a flawless cinnamon child, smooth skin, dark eyes, and a tiny perfect nose.

“I’ve got a photography class all day, but Ryan’ll be around.” She picked up the paper again and folded it. “It’s Sunday so he’ll be heading to the Haight. You should go along.”

I waited in the kitchen until I heard her shut the front door, and then I found Ryan in the living room,
Less Than Zero
in his hands. “What’s his name?” I asked as I leaned against the door frame and looked at the fish swimming circles in his bowl.

Ryan’s hair was parted down the middle and hung messily around his face, framing the creases in his forehead. “Blue Heaven, for a place in Key West, a bar I went to once.”

He was thin shouldered and thin waisted, all sharp edges and ninety-degree angles stooped on the couch. My height was his, but my curves were Stella’s.

“Sleep okay?” he asked as he traded the book for a glass of water on the table.

I nodded and searched for similarities between him and the other men Stella had been with. He seemed careless and casual with his long, knotted hair and his face tanned and stubbled. Denny had been all tattoos and mustache, and Rocco was hair product and cheap business suits, a gold chain hanging from his neck. Ryan looked more like Simon than any of the others.

“I kind of got a job,” I said. “A bookstore. A few shifts for a few weeks,” I told him because I wanted him to know I’d be staying for a while. I couldn’t leave until he gave me something to convince me we’d been better off without him. Or even something to convince me we hadn’t.

“You didn’t have to do that. We can pay for what you need,” he said. “It’s no big deal.”

I thanked him but said I was glad to have something to keep me busy while I hung around. I looked at him and he looked at the floor, my mind coming up empty when I tried to think of something else to say.

“I play music on Haight Street on Sundays,” he said eventually. “You can come along,” he offered, “if you don’t have plans.” He said he had a trumpet and he’d been playing every weekend for as long as he could remember. “I do it on the street so Cassie doesn’t have to listen,” and then he smiled.

“She’s really beautiful,” I told him.

He said they met down at the bus stop on Fillmore back when he was twenty-eight, and I nodded like I knew him then. “She’d just lost her little brother, a hit-and-run in Bakersfield,” he told me, and I tried to imagine her when she was young and suffering through grief. “She was pretty beat
up about it when I met her, and had fled to San Francisco to distract herself.”

Just like Stella, I thought, and I wondered what Ryan had fled from, if he had done the same. I wondered if he had been Cassie’s rescuer or the other way around.

“We take good care of each other,” he said. “I still can’t believe she puts up with me. I’m lucky to have her as my partner in crime,” and I nodded as if I understood what it was like, to be in a relationship that made life easier to endure.

We agreed to leave around eleven for Haight Street, and then I asked if it was okay to use the phone to call my friend in West Virginia.

“I’ve got my own cell, but the battery’s dead,” I told him.

“Mi casa es su casa,” he said.

The cord on the kitchen phone was long enough to stretch into the dining room, where I sat on the air mattress and punched the number for Emmy’s. I had found the toy car from Jonah the day before when I unpacked, and I rolled it across the blond floorboards between my legs while I waited for Emmy’s voice to break the distance. She picked up on the third ring, and her breath was quick and hurried like she’d just come in from being somewhere else.

“Hey there,” I said, and then she said, “Lemon Raine, my personal superhero,” which meant she was in a good mood, that maybe she’d already forgiven me for the one-way bus ticket. She told me she’d just gotten in from Dylan’s—he was helping her prep for a chemistry test—and it was the perfect time for me to call.

I asked how she was doing.

“Well, I’m not lying facedown in the bathtub, if that’s what you mean. I’m not sticking my head in the oven,” she said,
and I imagined her in her bedroom, sitting on the floor, the tan carpet stretched around her like a field of sand. “Give me some good news. Are you banging the pizza boy yet?” she asked.

“Jesus, Emmy, no. I just met the guy.” I paused and tried to figure out the best way to tell her how much he was starting to mean to me without sounding totally squishy and lame. “It’s been good to have him around. It’s like he actually enjoys keeping me company. He’s pretty incredible, really,” I told her.

“Lucky Lemon,” she said. “You know, I can actually hear you smiling,” and then she added, “Dylan and I can’t keep our hands off each other now. He quit smoking pot and now he thinks he loves me. He’s gone all straight edge, but it’s really kind of sweet,” she said. “I think he felt shafted when we didn’t invite him to California. He missed us a ton while we were gone,” and the way she said “we” made me realize that aside from being Emmy’s boyfriend, Dylan was a good friend to me too. Someone who’d be there waiting when I decided to go back.

I told her about moving into the eggplant-colored house and about the temp job at the bookstore.

“Tell me it’s not a chain,” she said.

“I’m not that desperate for money. Yet. Aiden set it up, so I’m guessing it’s an indie that sells books and novels by amazing authors most people have heard of.”

“That’s my girl,” she said.

I didn’t mention Ryan’s books, since I wasn’t sure yet how I felt about knowing he had kept them all like that, about the discovery that my mother had imagined traveling with him, all the places she had wanted to go. It seemed to be another
thing I’d stolen from her, the possibility of touring the world with Ryan, of being independent and free, and that made me feel guilty somehow. Every book she bought for him was her way of planning their future together, of picking new places for them to go to. But then she got pregnant and just walked away.

I told Emmy I found out Ryan played the trumpet, which seemed a little lame since I’d imagined him a drummer.

“So he’s full of surprises. You think he’s a loser just like Stella told you?” she asked.

I said I hadn’t decided yet. “I’m not sure what’ll be worse, really. Liking him or not. If he turns out to be wonderful, I’ll never forgive my mother,” I said. “And if he’s a loser . . .” I tried to find the words, but Emmy finished for me.

“It’ll break your heart,” she said, and I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. Eventually I asked about her dad, who’d arrived at Walter Reed.

“My mom’s in D.C.,” she told me. “Dad’s had one surgery so far, but he needs one more. They say he’ll be there for another month or so, and then he’ll get a leg. A plastic one, I guess.” She stopped and I waited, listened to her breathing. “After that it’ll be all outpatient, learning to walk again and stuff.”

I could hear Ryan in the kitchen, on the other side of the wall, as he opened a cabinet and put a dish on the counter. I pushed Jonah’s car away from me and watched it bounce off the molding and flip over on its side.

“Mom and I saw Stella walking the other day,” Emmy said, shifting the subject.

“Walking where?” I asked, and I imagined her car broken down on the side of the road, my mother stomping through
snowbanks on her way home with grocery bags or a new set of paint from the art store.

“No, just walking,” Emmy said. “Like Forrest Gump or something. Walking just to walk.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I told her.

“I’m serious. We pulled over and asked if she needed a ride, but she said something about getting fresh air, about exercising. I swear to God, Lemon, your mother was wearing tennis shoes.”

I tried to imagine it, but it was hard. I’d never seen Stella in tennis shoes before, and I had definitely never seen her voluntarily break a sweat, let alone exercise in the middle of the winter.

“She also said she misses you like crazy, Lemon.” There was a long pause before Emmy told me she had to get going, which I hated, but then she added, “I miss you too, just like family.” And when I couldn’t say anything because I almost started crying, she said, “Make sure you come back eventually. I just might slit my wrist if I have to make new friends,” which made me laugh. I found my voice and told her I’d call again soon.

We left the house at eleven and found two seats in the back of the bus. Ryan sat in front of me with his black trumpet case propped up next to him and said he liked to play the horn for extra money, liked to have somewhere to be on Sundays.

“It keeps me out of trouble on Saturday nights.” He smiled. “Can’t be up playing music in the morning if I don’t keep tabs on myself the night before.” We moved north away from the Mission, and he sat sideways, leaning against the window with his arm lying across the headrest between us.

Eventually, I leaned forward and asked, “Where did you grow up?” It was something I should’ve known.

He shrugged as if he couldn’t remember and looked at the exit door on the other side of the aisle. At the next stop, a hippie in a patchwork skirt slid in without paying. She flipped the middle finger to a man on the curb with a grocery cart before the door shut and we pulled away.

“Mother pisser,” she said loudly.

I looked down at a chewed-up piece of gum wedged into a crevice on the floor.

“Montana,” he said finally. “You’ve got no grandparents left on my side, but that’s where they used to live.”

I’d never thought of grandparents or of being related to people related to Ryan. “What’d they used to do?” I asked as I imagined cattle and cowboys, rows of cornfields, and tomatoes the size of softballs.