Page 57 of Wish I Were Here
I drop the file to my side. “What do you mean, you can’t? How can you say that?”
“I’m sorry, Kitty Cat.” Dad pulls two balls from his pocket and begins rotating them in his hand. He’s done this my whole life. When he’s not actually tossing juggling balls in the air, he’s fidgeting with them. Right now, his fingers twitch as he spins the blue and green orbs in his palm. He doesn’t meet my eyes, staring out across the warehouse as if he might find a way out of this conversation in the dust swirling through the streams of sunlight. Finally, he sighs. “I can’t tell you anything. I promised.”
“You promisedwho?” But then it comes to me, and my heart pitches. “My mother? You promised my mother?”
He looks away, which basically answers my question.
“But—why?” I demand. “Why would you promise that? And why would you still keep it up thirty years later?”
“I can’t tell you that, either. But please listen to me, Catherine.”
My head jerks up at the sound of my full name. He never, ever calls me Catherine.
“I promise you it’s for your own good.” Dad shoves the juggling balls back in his pocket and takes me by the shoulders. “Please believe me when I tell you not to contact her.”
“Is she a criminal?” I ask, my voice shaking. “A serial killer?” Maybe he really has been protecting me all along.
“No, it’s nothing like that.” Up close, I can see tiny sunspots on his face, the effects of decades of performing outside in parks and on street corners. When his brow furrows, the lines deepen across his forehead. For the first time, my young, vibrant dad looks older. Tired. That realization tugs at my heart, and the anger seeps from my rigid shoulders.
“Then… why can’t you tell me?”
“Look, Kitty Cat,” Dad says, his eyes sad. “I know I wasn’t a great father to you. I let you down a lot.”
“You—did?” I whisper as I’m hit with a wave of emotion. Surprise that he’s actually thought this deeply about his ability to parent me. Regret that I’ve put that shattered look on his face. I open my mouth to argue with him, to tell him hewasenough, just to see his familiar smile again.
But then a few feet away, his stilts start to slide from their place against the wall. One knocks into the other, and they both crash to the floor. I jump out of the way before they can land on my foot.
“Sorry.” He hurries over to pick them up and lean them in the exact same spot where they were when they fell the first time.
I’m reminded of growing up in apartments with all the tricks of his trade: juggling balls and Hula-Hoops, stilts and fire sticks. Pile of hats, suitcases, and other props lying scattered across the couch. My chest squeezes with that familiar anxiety. “I could lose my job. I could lose everything.” My voice breaks at the end.
Dad presses his lips together, and for a moment, I think he might be wavering. But then he says, “Look, if all you need is a birth certificate, I know a guy.”
My head jerks up. “Youdo?” Fleetingly, I wonder if Dad’s guy is named Vito.
Dad nods. “When your mom and I had that copy made, it was thirty years ago. Technology is so much better now. They can make you a perfect dupe of a birth certificate, one with the same information you’ve been using all this time, but with the stamps and embossed seals and all of that. And then we can put an end to this.”
I open the folder and pull out the copy with Michelle Jones’s name on it. “Didn’t you think anyone would ever notice this was a fake?” Maybe it was only a matter of time before this happened. It’s not just the past couple of days that my identity has been missing. It turns out I’ve been walking around this way for my entire life.
“Well, to be fair,” Dad says, “nobodydidnotice. When you went to school and they needed a copy of your birth certificate, I sent a photocopy. Nobody ever asked for the real thing. If it weren’t for this weird glitch in the system, nobody would have ever been the wiser.”
I stare down at the cut-rate copy of my birth certificate. Maybe Dad’s right. If I really want my job back, if I really want to put an end to this, I know a guy, too. I bet Uncle Vito could get me an indistinguishable forgery of a birth certificate before I could even say “Pasta fazool.” But it’s not just about saving my job anymore.
“I’mthe wiser,” I whisper.
The thick, humid air of the warehouse surrounds me, more oppressive back here away from the door. My skin is clammy, sticky, and with that feeling comes another, equally familiar one. That constant ache in my gut telling me I don’t belong. That I never fit. As I stand here in ArtSpace, while my whole life hangs in the balance, it all comes rushing back. Studying on that table in the corner while acrobats sailed overhead and stray juggling balls landed on my textbook. The constant thump of music vibrating in my chest as I tried to focus on my work. How I longed to be a normal kid with a normal kitchen table to do my schoolwork. And for a parent who cared if I actually passed the test.
Maybe it would have been different if I’d had friends at school who understood me. But to the smart, hardworking students, I was the weird clown’s kid who was always missing school because I was off at a music festival. And to everyone else, I was the goody-goody sitting at the front of the class.
From somewhere far away, I hear the echo of my earlier conversation with Mrs. Goodwin. And that’s when it hits me.
The loneliness.
My eyes burn for that kid just trying to hold it all together and wishing for someone who understood. And for the adult version who’s spent most of her life doing pretty much the same. If loneliness is as bad for you as smoking, I feel like I’ve had a pack a day for three decades.
The stilts on the wall start to slide again, and those fantasies of my mother come back. The wild hope that someday we’ll meet, and it will all make sense. She’ll understand me, and I’ll find where I fit.
Is this my chance? I can’t smooth this over with another forgery. I need to know the truth.
