Page 56 of Wish I Were Here
Nobody wants to hear math humor except Dad.
“This place seems to serve a lot of people.” I remember Mrs. Goodwin telling me that loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking. If this community center closes down, where will the book club meet each week? And the exercise class? Will all those people just be stuck at home? Alone?
What about their community? What about looking out for each other?
“We serve over three hundred on a typical day. Plus, another hundred and fifty homebound seniors through the Meals on Wheels program. These days, Bloomfield makes the news because of the housing market.” Mrs. Goodwin drops her hands to her hips. “But they never talk about the fact that we have one of the largest populations of seniors who are aging in place. If the community center isn’t here to serve them, I worry many people will end up having to leave their homes and move to nursing facilities.”
I can’t imagine that anyone would have an opportunity to dance to Lady Gaga in a nursing facility. Again, I wish I had more to offer, but all I can do is help Mrs. Goodwin unpack the boxes and organize the donations.
And then I head out to grab the bus and find Dad, and hopefully some answers.
When I walk into ArtSpace, the familiar smell of my childhood wafts over me. It’s a bit musty, vaguely dank, and mixed with the sharp notes of oil paint and Chanel No. 5. That last scent comes from Ginger Ale, a busty redhead who rushes from her office to throw her arms around me.
“Kitty Cat!” She presses me against her bosom. “It’s been ages!”
“Hi, Ginger,” I say when she’s finally released me from her grasp. “You look gorgeous as usual.” I take in the auburn curls spilling over her shoulders, full crimson lips, and low-cut white lace blouse showing off her ample curves. It’s the middle of the afternoon, so she’s working in the office and not dressed in her burlesque costume. But as she used to tell me,A woman is always in costume, Kitty Cat.
“Oh.” She waves me off. “You’re gorgeous. Look at you all grown up. Andy says you’re a math professor now?”
Ithasbeen ages, so I don’t want to get into the whole story about my missing identity. “That’s right. Over at the university.”
“All the girls and I knew you’d accomplish great things, despite that ne’er-do-well father of yours.” She winks a falseeyelash at me, and I know she’s joking about Dad. Everyone adores him, and he’s been a staple of this place since its inception. Ginger opened ArtSpace decades ago—back when you could buy an old warehouse in Homewood practically for pennies—and she turned it into a place for artists and performers to collaborate. Her burlesque group practices here along with an aerial troupe, belly dancers, and, of course, the circus crowd.
“I’m proud of you,” Ginger says, tucking my hair behind my ear.
A lump forms in the back of my throat. There was a time when I wished Dad and Ginger would get married so she could be my mom. That was in my elementary school era, when it seemed like every other week we were making Mother’s Day crafts in art class or asking our moms to come in for story time or to chaperone field trips. I could have asked Dad, of course. But he would usually start juggling, disrupting the class, or he’d forget.
Ginger was the one who celebrated my first period with a shot of whiskey, and she took me to buy my first bra at the high-end lingerie shop with the leather and lace corset in the window. So I’m not sure she was ever going to be mom material, even if she and Dad had been more than just friends. But back then, my longing cut deep.
I swallow hard. “Is my dad here?”
Ginger gestures at the partition that separates the main warehouse from the lobby. “He’s on the stilts today.”
“Thanks.”
I round the corner and enter a vast room with high ceilings, steel beams, and a concrete floor. Though it’s themiddle of the day and windows stretch halfway up the walls to the ceiling, they’re cloudy and cracked, covered in decades of warehouse grit and plywood panels over broken sections. I blink in the dim light. When my eyes finally adjust, I spot my old homework table in the corner with its same paint-spattered surface and mismatched chairs. Ahead of me, aerial silks hang from the ceiling, and a couple of women in leggings and tank tops are practicing their spins.
Beyond them, I spot a twelve-foot man in a familiar fedora dancing to a song by Ziggy Marley.
Dad.
He spots me as I get closer, giving me a wave and holding up a finger to let me know he’ll need a minute. I watch as he totters over to a tall wooden chair, bends down to grab the back, and somehow maneuvers himself to a seated position so he can unstrap the stilts from around his overall-clad thighs. It surprises me that even closing in on fifty, Dad is still this agile, while I have a perpetual pain in my back from hunching over my computer.
“Kitty Cat!” He leans the stilts against the wall and gives me a hug. “I’m the luckiest guy in the world to get to see you so many times this week.”
He seems oblivious that anything is wrong. Given that I’ve been calling and texting him since last night, that could mean any number of things. It’s possible he hasn’t bothered to look at his phone, or maybe he lost it. It’s also possible he’s pretending like he didn’t get my messages because he doesn’t want to talk about this situation with my birth certificate and my mother. Either way, he’s not going to feel so lucky to see me when he hears what I have to say.
I take a step back and wave my file folder in Dad’s direction. “I just discovered that my birth certificate is a forgery, and the name I thought belonged to my mother is a lie. I need you to explain this.”
Dad’s eyes widen as they shift from my face to the file. “What is that? How did you find out?”
“It’s my hospital birth records.”
Dad’s face goes pale. “Where—” He blinks rapidly. “Where did you get them?”
I open my mouth but then clamp it shut again. The thing is, Dad would probably be less concerned that I obtained this file by breaking and entering than the fact that I have it at all. He’d probably want to know all the details of how I pulled it off, and I’m not about to let him get distracted. “It doesn’t matter where I got them. I need you to tell me the truth.”
He tilts his head and rubs the back of his neck like stilt walking might not cause him pain, butthisdoes. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
