Page 26 of Wish I Were Here
“There’s been a little hiccup with my position at the university.”
“Does this have to do with your boss I met a couple weeks ago? Maybe he had a bit of a stick up his butt…” Dad turns to Luca and holds his hands about a foot apart to show him the approximate size of the stick. Luca nods like he can believe it. “But he thinks you’re pretty smart, so he seemed A-OK to me.”
I fondly remember the days when my biggest problem was that Dad had embarrassed me by sharing my mortifying potty training stories with Dr. Gupta. Was that only a couple weeks ago? And was it really only this morning when I learned my identity had disappeared? It feels like ages ago already.
I try to look on the bright side. At least I won’t have to track Dad down at his apartment. “Hey, Dad, is there any chance you have the original copy of my birth certificate?”
If I wasn’t looking right at him, I probably would have missed the way Dad’s shoulders jerk up, just slightly. For a moment, his face goes pale. But then he shakes his head. “Nope.”
He answered that awfully quickly. Very decisively. That’s so unlike him.
“Are you sure?”
“Yep, I’m sure.”
“How do you know? I found a copy in a box when I was in college. Maybe the original is in another box? Maybe it got mixed up in one of the moves?”
“No. It didn’t.”
I study Dad’s face. He’s looking down at the juggling clubs in his hand, not making eye contact. Something strange is going on. “What are you not telling me?”
“Nothing.” Dad gives an exaggerated shrug, and I remember why his foray into community theater was short-lived. He was always a better circus performer. “It’s just that I’m sure I don’t have it.” Dad is the most noncommittal person I’ve ever met. He’s neversureof anything. You could probably talk him out of his own name, and he’d just go along with it and let you call him Doug.
“But how do youknow?”
It seems that Dad has lost interest in juggling—also strange—because he bends over and starts packing the clubs into his tote bag.
“Dad?”
Finally, he stands upright, leaving the bag on the ground. “I know I don’t have it, Cat, because your mother has it.”
“My—my mother?” My voice wavers, and Luca must pick up on it, because he takes a step closer to me.
Dad doesn’t talk about my mother. He’s never talked about her. This is the most information he’s given me in almost thirty years. Dad isn’t just a clown for his job; he’s a clown in real life, too. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way, I mean he really has the personality of a clown. Fun loving, goofy, perpetually happy. Just about the only time I’ve seen a break in his demeanor is when I ask about mymother. His face goes dark, and he refuses to talk about her. It’s so disorienting to see him shut down that I learned years ago to stop asking. All I know is that she’s still alive, and I’ve never met her. Well, except for the day she gave birth to me, obviously. But then she left me with Dad, and neither of us has seen or talked to her since.
From my birth certificate—ironically—I’m aware that her name is Michelle Jones. My dad was only eighteen when I was born, and I think my mom was young, too. Which means she could be doing anything, living anywhere now.
Here’s a fun fact. Michelle was the third most common baby name in the United States in the mid-1970s, around the time I think my mom was born. There are 18,825 people named Michelle Jones living in the United States. When you googleMichelle Jones, you get 164,000,000 hits. I don’t need a PhD in mathematics to know it would take me half a dozen lifetimes to sift through that much data.
I went through a dark phase in my early teens when I wondered if something terrible had happened. Had my mom murdered someone? Had she tried to murderme, and Dad had to take me away? He swore up and down it was nothing like that. And then I began to wonder ifhehad murdered someone, and we were on the run. But I quickly realized that if someone wants to hide, they generally don’t spend their days juggling in plain sight.
So the sum total of what I know about my mother is her name and that she’s probably not a murderer. The fact that Dad just voluntarily shared this little tidbit leaves me stunned.
“How—how do you know she has my birth certificate?” I finally manage to choke out.
Luca is right beside me now, and I can feel the heat of his arm against mine. I lean sideways, just a tiny bit.
“Well, I don’t know for sure she has it,” Dad admits. “But she used to have it, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she still does. Your mother… she was… very organized.”
I grasp that information like it’s a life preserver and I’ve spent my life adrift at sea. “She was?”I knew it.I knew that’s where I got it from. “How can I reach her to get it back?” And then I’m seized with larger possibilities. Is this my chance to finally meet her? To find out the truth about who I am?
To finally—
I yank the steering wheel before I can head down that road. Going there will only lead to heartache. It’s been almost thirty years, and she left me. I need to focus on the problem at hand.
Dad turns away from me and picks up his hat and tote. He dumps the tip money into the bag—just mixes it all in with the juggling clubs—and flips his hat onto his head.
“Dad? My birth certificate?”
