I give up; I accept the temporary fate that finding out more about my father was not meant to be. The sky is barely light, and I press my hands against the glass walls in the living room, the ones that remind you that the only thing separating you from nature is an inch of building material. Whether framed by wood and plaster and insulation or simple glass, a house is part of a larger ecosystem. It is so foolish to think we exist unconnectedly from nature. Foolish, I say.
Don’t even ask me how my wild brain works, which points connect to the other points, but the interconnectedness makes me think of bureaucracy—I don’t know. And for some reason, a new thought beats against my temples: Where are our important documents? Our Social Security cards and birth certificates? At home, she keeps them in a safe that I have never guessed the combination to. She’s not the kind of mom who would bring filing cabinets or plastic bins with labels here to Verona Cove. But she’s also not the kind of mom who would not have them in an emergency. They’ve got to be here.
Crazed by this lead, I riffle through her other drawers. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I pillage the joint, clothes flying like I’m the tornado. Finally, in a back corner of Richard’s closet, where the rest of my mom’s clothes are hung, I find an unmarked manila envelope. Our birth certificates, our Social Security cards, a life-insurance policy in my mom’s name. And a long envelope. The return address is a lawyer’s office in Washington.
I nearly rip the birth certificate trying to read it. Vivian Irene Alexander because I’m named after my mom’s two grandmothers, and I’ve always liked that my initials spell a word. Born in Olympia, Washington, on July 23, right on the horoscope borderline of sensitive Cancer and fiery Leo. I self-identify as Leo, though, ROAR! Mother: Carrie Rose Alexander.
Father: James Bukowski.
Inhale, a gasp; exhale a gust. Chest rising and falling, pant, pant.
I’m quivering like the warning tremors before an earthquake, tears flooding my eyes faster than I can finish reading it.
. . . Am I still breathing?
Hands trembling, I slide a single sheet of paper out of another envelope. The document surrenders full legal custody to my mother, like my father can’t show up later and have some kind of claim on me. It’s notarized from the year of my birth. My father signed at the bottom, one quick swipe of ink, like he was getting it over with.
My father’s name is James Bukowski. Of Berkeley, California. My whole face goes tingly with this new information; my blood buzzes inside my veins, a hum against nerve endings. He has a name, it is James, his last name is one I never would have guessed, a last name that could have been my own had things gone differently. Does he go by Jim or Jimmy, does he live in Berkeley still, why, why, why would my mother do this to me? Why would she keep me from him? Was he a dangerous man? Was she protecting me from him?
I think, on some level, I believed I would never in my life know anything about him, and now I’m questioning whether I really ever wanted to. No, I did. I do. I don’t know. I know nothing.
As much as I loved my previous human life as a ballerina in the 1920s, I am so colossally grateful for the Internet, and I search and search, fingers typing in a frenzy of clacks. The thought often terrifies me, actually—how much personal information you can find online. But today that is working in my favor, I have to say.
There is a man in Berkeley, California, whose name is James Bukowski. All I can tell is that he works for Berkeley College, and I guess maybe my dad could be a professor of music? Like he segued his rock career into teaching—that could happen, right?
I have to know. Even if it’s not him, I have to know.
My thoughts give way to my most secret feelings, the hopes I’ve always had that I never let myself fully imagine. How my dad probably has an old record player and the coolest collection of vinyl and we’ll listen to it and dance around his living room. How he doesn’t know anything about fancy cooking but he calls scrambled eggs his “specialty” and can make a mean veggie burger in the summer, filling the whole backyard with that grill-smoke smell. How he has a collection of vintage hats—bowlers and fedoras and newsboy caps—and he’ll let me borrow them. He probably has tattoos. What kinds? I wonder. Maybe we’ll get one together, something to symbolize our free-spiritedness, how we are connected but independent and we get each other.