She nodded and put her arms around my waist, pressing against me. “I understand. And I don’t mean to be inconsiderate and shit. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. And I don’t want you to get hurt. I will kill the next person who hurts you, I swear.”
“I know you will, baby,” I said, pulling her even closer and laying a hard kiss on the top of her head. “That’s one of the many, crazy reasons why I love you.”
It was hard to break the connection and warmth our lips were giving each other – something about the last few days made me feel like I was falling, tumbling, in love with her all over again.
She smiled up at me, sweet as sugar, and said, “You have my support, no matter what. If you want to go find him, then we’ll try and find him.” A devious glint came across her eyes. “Just don’t forget I have ninja moves.”
I held on to her hand and together we walked down the street, heading to the nearest subway station.
“Hey,” I said, “how did it go with your mom? I saw you guys hugging but wasn’t too sure what that was about.”
“You couldn’t hear the thoughts I was sending?” she asked rather innocently.
I shook my head.
She grinned, pleased with herself. Then the ends of her smile quirked down. After a pause she said, “I just told my mom the truth. About why she was seeing things. How I found her pills.”
“Was she mad?”
“Yeah. She was. But, more hurt I think.” Her eyes darted to me sheepishly. “Anyway, she understood. She said she was glad I did it. That it got her to see what she’d been missing. Obviously none of what she’s been seeing has been very pretty. I don’t know if she can see everything we can. I mean, she can see major things. Everything that happened in the house, she knows it. But she hasn’t been visited by any ghosts.”
“Well that’s good.”
“Yeah,” she said, swinging our arms in the air for a few steps. “It’s good. I just hope it doesn’t get worse, you know? I don’t wish our…problem on anyone. I know my mom has kind of been horrible these last few years but she’s still my mom.”
I nodded. Oh, I knew how that went. No matter how badly they treat you, no matter how much you fear them, they are still your mom. You love them despite all that. You hurt despite all that. It really fucking sucks.
“So,” she continued, trying to keep her voice light. I could tell she was close to crying. I didn’t mind if she did, she had a lot to let out. We both did. She cleared her throat. “I am really sorry I switched the pills, but I don’t regret it. Does that make sense?” When I told her it did, she said, “For you too. It made you move in a certain direction, made us move in a certain direction.”
“It brought us together,” I told her matter-of-factly.
“And I think it will do the same for my mom and me. She’s already different around me, you know? I think…I think maybe she’ll finally really get to be my mom. I’ll feel like I have a mother that loves me. Not to say she didn’t before, but you know how different it is when you feel it.”
I did. And I only knew it for a brief moment, in that last dream my own mother was in. But it was enough.
After that we walked like any couple in New York, stopping for hot dogs and complaining about the heat and stink while taking in the sights. Okay, maybe we were like any tourist couple in New York but that was fine with me. Seattle was my home now – our home – and I was content to see this city briefly before saying goodbye. I couldn’t say I ever wanted to return. My memories here only worsened. It wasn’t just the place where my life went to shit…it’s where my new life went to shit as well.
But we were going to come out of it, like a fucking Phoenix out of the ashes. Or at least like Phoenix in X-Men. She was hot as fuck and a badass motherfucker.
We didn’t even make it as far as city hall, though. We stopped into a trendy coffee shop for yet another hit of espresso – both of us had trouble keeping our eyes open, I guess after being so close to death we wanted our hearts to beat into oblivion – and Perry sat down at one of the iPads they had at their tables.
It only took her about five minutes of searching the net while I was in the bathroom taking a leak for her to locate my father.
When I got back to the table, she was wriggling in her seat like a puppy, like she was about to lead me to a boy trapped in a well.
“What is it, Lassie?” I asked.
“I found him,” she said excitedly.
I don’t know what expression came on my face. Probably fear.
“Timmy O’ Toole?”
“No,” she said, holding up a napkin with writing scribbled on it. “Your father. He’s in Queens.”
I tugged at my eyebrow ring. “Interesting. Are you sure?”
“Dex,” she huffed out in annoyance, getting to her feet. “You’re the one who wanted to hunt him down. We’ll we hunted him. Or I did. He’s in Queens. I found him first in the paper for winning a regatta off of Long Island. Then I traced him through the online phone book. He looks, well, he looks like you, Dex. Or at least you when you’re older. Do you want to see?”
I didn’t think she could tell any better than I could about whether the guy looked like my father or not but before I could say anything, she was pulling an article up on the iPad.
And there was picture of Curtis O’Shea. My father. He hadn’t even bothered to change his name.
I frowned, trying to feel something between me and the pixelated face staring from the screen. I don’t know if I felt anything, though I had to say there was some resemblance between me and him and more than that, well, it was him. I may have been a teenager when he left, but he was in his forties. Now he was in his sixties and the aging process had been kind to him.
He had salt and pepper hair, but it was still thick and worn parted on the side. His face looked saggy but his eyes were dark and sharp, framed by impressive eyebrows. He could have given Jack Nicholson a run for his money.
It was my dad.
I rubbed my lips together and looked away. Okay, maybe this wasn’t a good idea right now.
“Hey,” Perry said, hand on my forearm. “Let’s just forget about it. You know he’s alive. He’s out there. And if you want to say hello one day you have that option. But you don’t owe him, or me, or yourself, anything.”
I nodded and sighed. I knew all of that. “Let’s do it.”
She studied me for a moment, perhaps trying to figure out if I was in fact Dex Foray and not someone else. I couldn’t blame her.
“Let’s do it,” I repeated, putting my hand on her shoulder and squeezing it. “Let’s go meet my dad.”
She gave me a small but supportive smile and nodded her head. We left without talking, the air heavy around us as we navigated the subway system that I still knew like the back of my hand. The closer we got to Queens the more she started to wriggle around again. It was so fucking cute. I would have banged her in the nearest disgusting washroom if we weren’t about to find my father.
It wasn’t long until we were walking down the street that she had mapped out for us. It was a nice neighborhood. Not as posh as the one on the upper east side, but it was one of the nicer ones in Queens and the townhouses and duplexes would have fetched a lot of money.
It was a workday so I wasn’t completely sure if we’d find him at home, or if he even had a job. The newspaper article didn’t say much except he had a boat and was an avid sailor. I know I wanted to find him, to see him, to make some sort of amends for things that weren’t my fault, but I wasn’t about to go hunt his saggy ass down at an office or anything like that. I would give, I would put in effort, but at a certain point I stopped. There were only a few people who I’d give all for and they weren’t my father.
“This is it,” Perry said as we stopped in front of a brownstone. In some ways it looked like the one I grew up in but for the most part it was different. The ceilings were shorter, giving the house a crouched appearance even with two levels and there seemed to be an expansive side yard. There were a bunch of flowers in the front, carefully arranged into terracotta pots. I wondered if my father had a green thumb – my memories pulled up that he did – or if he had remarried.
Shitballs, he might have had a whole new family, a new son, a new life.
“Maybe this was a mistake,” I said to Perry just as the front door opened and a woman stepped out. She had grey hair piled into a bun and was wearing a Native American poncho, jeans and Crocs.
“Are you Charles?” she asked in a very Katherine Hepburn accent, all nasally and raised chin.
“Uh, no,” I said, looking at Perry for reassurance, as if she was going to tell me that I wasn’t Charles. “We’re looking for Curtis O’Shea, though.” I said. Saying his name out loud kind of felt like saying Bettlejuice.
But as far as I knew, my father was not going to appear as Michael Keaton in a black and white suit. Though, knowing my family, I wouldn’t hold anything past us.
“Oh,” she said with a raised brow, looking us over. Well, she was wearing Crocs so she couldn’t talk. “Who might you be? We aren’t expecting anyone but Charles. He’s our new nurse. Or caretaker, as Curtis insists we call him.”
Nurse? I wondered what was wrong with him.
While I pondered that, Perry spoke for me. “We’re…interested in his boat.”
Okay, that wasn’t exactly what I would have said but I went with it. It’s not like we came up with coherent plan on the way here.