I had watched from the doorway. It was as close as I could get without intruding. My heart pinched as she sang him a nursery song, the same one that she sang to him since he was a baby. When I was around. In those days, she’d pick him up during his midnight cries and whisper it, so soft and so sweet. Sometimes I’d take over, just to give her a break. I could never hit her high notes – I wasn’t much of a singer. But Ben would stop crying, just like that.
Later, when Sophia started pulling out of the marriage, out of life in general, I sang that song all the time. After a while, it stopped working. He missed his mother. I did too. And no matter how soothing I tried to sound, I couldn’t stop Ben’s tears. Things crumbled beyond repair.
Ben was a year old when I last saw him, days before the divorce was final. Though I was now looking at the face of an older boy all curled up in his bed, in some ways it was like I never left. I knew him, deep inside, and everything on the surface was slowly catching up.
He was almost asleep, round face, my beautiful boy, when he opened his eyes and stared right at me from across the room.
“Mama, who is that?” he asked, as if seeing me for the first time. It felt like I turned a tattoo machine on my heart.
She brushed back his hair. “No one you need to worry about. Sleep well, my Ben.”
Any other time, I would have said something. The words, the anger, were fighting their way out of my chest and up my throat. To be brushed aside like that. I was his motherfucking father. But now wasn’t the time for my own insecurities, for the tragedy of our family. As long as Sophia and Ben were around her traitorous brothers, they were in danger. I needed to save them first.
The technicalities could come after.
And that’s how I ended up falling asleep on the couch. Sophia retired to her room, something I had no interest in being a part of, even if the offer was on the table (which it wasn’t). I lay down on the couch and waited. Waited for people who never came. Waited for the reason to run.
“You were yelling,” Sophia said, straightening up. She started tugging at her dark hair, something she did when she was nervous. “I thought you were in pain.”
“It was a dream,” I reassured her.
“A bad dream. You cried out for that woman. For Ellie.”
It was weird to hear her say Ellie’s name. She didn’t say it with venom though, just curiosity. I couldn’t blame her. Ellie and I had quite the story and she hadn’t heard any of it. There was no point in explaining, not when the wound was still raw.
“Did I wake Ben?” I asked, suddenly worried. My eyes darted to the hallway where his door was open. His room was still dark and quiet.
She shook her head and smiled. It was a sad smile. “He sleeps in. And he sleeps through everything. Just like his father.”
I watched her face carefully for telltale signs of insincerity. There wasn’t any.
I carefully smiled back. “I’ve gotten better. I get up at nine now.”
She smirked. “Oh, nine. Must be nice being a tattoo artist, your clients are probably all hung over anyway and stumbling in at noon.”
That wasn’t exactly true but of course that was the stereotype of people with tattoos. Despite the popularity of shitty yet hot tattoo artist chicks and the locust swarm of hipsters, people still had the wrong idea about tattoos and the artists that gave them. They were untrustworthy, dirty, trashy and dishonest as a whole. Yet I’d tattooed valedictorians and soccer moms. I’d inked businessmen and actors. Reverends and teeny boppers. Tattoos were self-expression at its rawest and most permanent form. They weren’t for one set of people or another.
Despite the facts, I was used to the stereotype. It wouldn’t die but then neither would I as long as I ignored it. Even Sophia, who met me because she got a fucking tattoo, clung on to it like it was the only way to describe me.
Of course, the fact that I turned into a money launderer didn’t really help my case. I’d never much cared for what people thought of me.
“I don’t care when they stumble in, as long as they let me use their body as a canvas.” Then I would continue to be immortal. My ink, my work, my self, would live on. I didn’t say that to her though ’cause that would definitely add another bar to the my ex-husband is a nutjob scale.
Her features drew together. “So what are you going to do now?”
“Now?”
“Will you keep being a tattoo artist? Or will you try something else?”
The way she said “something else” reminded me of the way my dad often talked about my choice of career.
“One step at a time, Sophia,” I reminded her, easing myself to my feet. Sleeping on a thin couch never did my back any good and I had a strange feeling that I needed to be agile today.
“Do you want me to make you coffee?” I asked, my head starting to ache for it.
She studied for a moment before shaking her head. “Where are my manners? You stay. I’ll make it.”