My halter dress was entirely wrong. When I took it from the hook on the back of my mother’s bedroom door, I’d pictured her in it, wet from a shower, reading on our postage-stamp porch with her coffee, looking fresh and pretty in the morning sun. Exotic was my hope as I slipped it on. But the girls at the dance were zipped into pastel velvet dresses with Peter Pan collars and they wore ballet flats, the efforts of their curling irons wilting against damp necks. Yolanda wore a long-sleeved peach dress, lace collar stark against her caramel skin. She was dancing to Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World” with Anthony Mendoza, the boy all the girls wanted to like them back.
Doug Jordan with the nickel-size nostrils pulled me from the line of timid observers. He danced the funky chicken with his hands nested in his armpits, elbows flapping and feet stomping. I smiled to be nice when he gripped my hand, and then, after our dance, while I waited to be asked again, I smelled my fingers, just to know.
Pretty much that’s how it went at the eighth-grade dance on the night before I was to board a plane and fly to meet my father for the very first time. Yolanda and Anthony clutching each other, and me standing by myself at the opening chords of each song until Doug Jordan bloomed in front of me, his damp hand extended.
At ten thirty he led me out to the bike racks. The fog had finally seeped in, moist and fat after the crackling heat of the Santa Anas. I breathed in the changed air, felt the coolness against my skin, while we talked about the digestive-system test and shoplifting. He told me he’d stolen a flashlight from Woolworth’s and used it to creep around the bushes of his house and spy on his family.
“They look so different from outside,” he said. “Like people I don’t even know.”
Me, I regularly stole from World Imports, hooking earrings into the rubber band around my ponytail. I’d smile and always say thanks as I drifted toward the door.
“Never sneak out,” I advised.
Doug Jordan stepped closer to me. His Stan Smiths pressed against my toes. I pretended it was normal, standing this close to a boy, but my armpits prickled to attention. I was fourteen and counting. I’d kissed exactly two boys; one named Raymond, who smelled of animal crackers, a babyish smell for a teenager, and whose sliver-lips vanished when he smiled. In exchange for the kiss I made him promise to quit following me to the Dumpster at our old apartment building, but we moved before he had a chance to prove he would stand by his word.
Trembling in my mother’s dress, I arranged my face and waited for Doug Jordan to lean in. He reached for my diamond-tipped earlobe, pinched it softly, as if he were touching some private part of me.
“Did you steal these?” He leaned closer to my upturned face. His nostrils were cavernous from that angle.
“My dad gave them to me. They’re real.” I almost never talked about my father, but the words felt solid in my mouth, hard as my diamonds.
Then Doug kissed me, his fingers still pinching my earlobe. His salty tongue, the texture of sautéed mushrooms, flicked all around my mouth. I closed my eyes, searched for any agitation in my body, and felt nothing besides slight revulsion. After, he slung his arm over my shoulder as if he had done it a thousand times, as if his arm and my shoulder had a history.
“We should see a movie tomorrow?”
“I’m going to a jewelry convention in Chicago.”
He nodded one backward nod, first up and then down, as if it didn’t really matter. Then he slid his hand down my arm to cup my elbow and I let him pull me even closer. The warmth of his hip against mine, the Fifth Dimension song “Up, Up and Away” spilling out the gym doors behind us, the streetlights illuminating individual drops of moisture as the fog drifted past seemed like gifts for me. As I stood there with a boy’s arm claiming me, knowing where I was going tomorrow, it felt as if the doors of my future were thrown wide open.
“When you come back,” he said.
“Maybe.” My mom had rules, and one was to always leave a man wondering.
Mr. Hernandez did pick us up in his squad car. He came around and put his heavy hand on Yolanda’s head when she climbed in, guiding her like a perp. The sour laundry smell of captured men lingered in the back. I imagined criminals slumped on this same cold vinyl seat.
“Finally, the Santa Anas are finished,” Mr. Hernandez said.
I rolled down the window, bathed my face in the fog. A sign
—IT’S HERE! PUMPKIN ICE CREAM
—glowed orange from the Baskin-Robbins on our corner. Yolanda pointed to a dark smudge on her neck, the bud of a hickey. I nodded yes, I could see it, and she began to softly cry. Her dad would freak when he discovered it. I brushed my hand over my own neck, wondering about my father, how he might feel if a boy left his mark on my body.
At the United gate, a trio of slim stewardesses in navy uniforms strode past, wheeling efficient bags behind them. I waited alone by the window facing the plane and the calm day outside while my mom went for more coffee. She’d already gulped two cups and dressed by the time I’d awoken. I found her drumming her fingers on the arm of a chair in the living room as if she hadn’t slept. She wanted to know what I’d packed, insisted I wash my hair and part it on the side, and asked the departure time twice. She rifled through my school bag for the tickets, and then picked at the stitches around the Funky patch I’d sewn on the front. When I asked what she was doing, she practically cried out, “You can’t take this piece-of-shit bag,” and dumped her purse onto the kitchen counter—cigarettes, Bic lighter, keys, tampons, Doublemint gum, checkbook, mascara, and Tabu perfume clattered on the Formica.
Whenever my mother started dumping things out, I got nervous. “Here,” she said, then zipped my tickets, a tube of lipstick, a twenty-dollar bill, the gum, change for a phone call, and a hairbrush inside the bag. I pictured myself walking off the plane with her fringed suede purse on my shoulder. As much as I wanted to go, as often as I’d imagined my father’s life and how I might fit in, holding her purse, I missed her already.
On the tarmac below me, two men with large black headphones and tangerine jumpsuits tossed baggage from a conveyor belt into the belly of the plane. I watched for my suitcase with the rainbow shoelace tied around the handle as if I couldn’t recognize it by its shabbiness, by the diaper pin holding the zipper together. The suitcase was the same age as me. I’d known the story since I was old enough to ask. When he left, Marco brought all of my mother’s clothing, folded neat as you please, in that Samsonite. My father left it with a nurse in the hospital lobby when I was born. It wasn’t specifically me, my mom insisted, it was the
idea
of me that scared him away.
Was the idea of me different now? I’d written him, care of his mother, on my fourteenth birthday, just a note.
Hi! How are you? I’m fourteen now and I was wondering if maybe, could we someday meet? I am fine and I live in Los Angeles. Write back if you want!
Love, Nora (Hargrove)
My mom had asked if I was sure I wanted to go down that path and I shrugged like it was no big deal either way. Remember,
that bastard left us.
He answered with diamond earrings and, later, airline tickets—Miss Nora Hargrove, LAX to O’Hare, seat 28D—as if he’d been waiting fourteen years to hear from me. I’d tucked the tickets inside my diary and marked the date on my calendar. My mom said he always knew where we were. She kept his mother up to date on our addresses in case any of the Gianettis wanted to go Dutch on my upbringing. I don’t know what I was supposed to do with that information, if I was supposed to feel sorry for me or sorry for her.
My mom returned to the gate with both hands wrapped around a large Styrofoam cup. She sighed like it was already the end of a long day and sank into the plastic seat behind me.
“Did Mr. Hernandez pick you up in the police car?”
I nodded.
“Fathers can be a real pain in the ass.” She held her coffee just below her lips, the steam rising and opening her pores, a coffee facial. I sat next to her, reached for a sip of it, but she shook her head. “I’m having a Ray Charles.”
“You’re not supposed to drink out here.”
“For Christ’s sake, it’s in a coffee cup.”
She squeezed my hand, chattered on about what she would do while I was away: have a long spa weekend with manicures, pedicures, luxurious baths. Really she’d just be in our same bathroom with the lime-green plastic shower curtain our landlord bought and left on our doorstep with a bow around it. Landlords were always leaving things for my mother: new plungers, doormats, their home and office telephone numbers in case
anything
needed looking at.
Her coffee was nearly gone. Once my plane took off she’d drive home alone. I’d been in the car plenty of times with her loose from a cocktail, me stiff and upright on the edge of the seat, watching both the road and her hands tapping the wheel, ready to grab it in a heartbeat, though so far that hadn’t happened. “How do you know Ray Charles even drinks those?” I snapped because now the morning was all about her.
She ignored me, went on about a juice fast and some article she’d read by Linus Pauling about direct sources of vitamin C linked to youth and healthy skin. Maybe she would buy a juicer. “I’ll be so gorgeous when you get back, you won’t recognize me.” She leaned back in her seat, sipped coffee, and closed her eyes, all the time holding on to my hand. “You haven’t told me a thing about the dance.”
I thought about Doug’s proprietary arm. Doug spying through the windows at his own family, the view up his spacious nostrils when he leaned down to kiss me, the salt of his tongue.
“I kissed a boy,” I told her, trying out the words.
Her eyes half opened. “Do you like him?”
“He likes me.”
“That’s not enough, Beanie. Lots of boys are going to like you.”
Though nothing in my life so far pointed to the accuracy of her prediction, I felt a quickening when she said it, a hopeful glimmer.
We stood when they called out for unaccompanied minors, and my mom hugged me close. “I’ll save you some avocado facemask.”
I started to pull away but she held on and I hugged her again, not wanting to be the first to let go, not wanting to leave her disappointed at the gate. They made the announcement again, and she pressed her lips to my ear, so close I smelled her mix of coffee, cigarettes, and perfume, so close I felt them moving. “Be careful. He can be charming.” Then I was walking away with the other passengers.
“I’ll see you in a couple days,” my mom sang after me. “He’s really tall.”
When the plane began its final descent through the clouds, approaching skyscrapers, treetops of rust, green, and gold, I still hadn’t decided whether to rush out to the gate or leave him wondering while passengers filed out. Waiting felt contrived, like something my mother would do.
When the plane eased into its slot, we passengers leaped up before the seat-belt light clicked off. Then I was thanking the pilot and moving toward the gate. I slung my mother’s purse over my shoulder, scanned the crowds for someone tall striding down the beige walkway. People happily called out to one another, arms circled waists, hands reached for luggage handles, but no one seemed to be looking for a fourteen-year-old girl. I tried not to look anxious as I sat waiting in a plastic chair, but the arrival gate continued to empty, and my palms grew moist.
I chewed my gum completely flavorless. He was fifteen minutes late and it seemed like an hour. I thought about having him paged. “Marco Gianetti, please meet your daughter at United gate twenty-two.” Would it sound too desperate? The loudspeaker announced new flights and destinations. Flight 484 bound for Tahiti boarded at gate eighteen. Ten more minutes, I decided, before I called my mother. I could already hear her:
I told you he was a colossal waste of time
.
.
. That’s what I was thinking when I saw his back and knew, immediately, that he was my father. He stood in the middle of the next gate. His white shirt stuck to him as if he’d been sweating, and you could see where his undershirt sleeves stopped at his biceps through the thin cotton. His pants were gray, serious, crumpled. The cuffs skimmed a pair of shiny alligator cowboy boots. A stuffed panda bear hung limp at his side.
If he hadn’t come, I could have continued believing everything my mother told me. I could have boarded a flight home and nothing would have changed.
That bastard left us.
Only, he had come. He’d brought me a panda bear.
My father walked toward the window, placed his hand flat against the glass, looked down at his boots. Right then I stood and moved closer. I was afraid his next step would be to turn away without me; afraid I might recognize relief on his face.
“Marco?”
He turned. I could tell by the way he held his mouth—lips parted, perhaps releasing a sigh—and by his half-closed dark brown eyes, but mostly I knew he’d been drinking by the way he slowly dragged his flat palm down the window, leaving behind a smeared trail.
“I’ve been waiting . . .” my voice squeezed out. So far, my parents had two things in common, drinking and me.
“For you.” He held the panda across the foot of space between us.
Its button eyes reflected the fluorescent lights as Marco waggled its head back and forth in front of me and then nudged it into my arms. It smelled of cigarette smoke, and I imagined it slumped next to him on a stool in the airport bar. Maybe he’d confided in the bartender about how anxious he was, meeting his daughter for the first time. Maybe the bartender offered one on the house, congratulating him, wishing him luck and making him late. “Thank you.”
“Do you have any bags?” His voice was buoyant, hovering just around my shoulders, as if he trusted that everything between us was going to work out just fine.
“I was afraid to go get it. You know, that I would miss you.” I wanted him to take out a cigarette or something so I could stare at his face while he was occupied with lighting a match, but he didn’t. His hair was the exact walnut brown as mine, and longish. It was slicked back to skim his collar and had a bit of gray at the sides, like he’d been sugared. He was handsome. I could imagine my mother in love with him. Marco and Ruby. Ruby and Marco. When Ruby decided to keep me, this was what she had given up. I was walking close to him now, and his smell—beer, peanuts, and something else, something I couldn’t name, not like Doug Jordan’s at the dance, something his alone—seemed exotic.