.jpg)
“So, here’s what I was thinking.” Ram spun the pad around to show me his proposed tattoo.
It was an equilateral triangle with the words “wisdom,” “courage,” and “serenity” in calligraphy inside the triangle; I recognized this design as a fairly common one among recovering alcoholics, and I appreciated what he was doing by incorporating it. Around the outside of the tattoo, on each face of the triangle was a large, stylized R, each one slightly different from the others.
Using the pencil, he tapped the R that matched up to wisdom. “That’s Ram.” He tapped the R that corresponded to serenity; “that’s me,” and finally, the last R, above courage, “and that’s Rome.” He shrugged. “At least, that’s how I envisioned it. Each can mean each of us, or whatever. Meanings are usually more in the eyes of the beholder.”
I let out a breath, looking at it. “Wow. That’s perfect, Rem. I love it.”
He eyed me. “Yeah?” He glanced down at it. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want a sobriety tat, or if it was just a general new phase of life thing.”
“It’s everything, Rem. Sobriety, health…you boys.” I traced the words inside the triangle. “Those are the center points of AA, but I guess the further down this path I go, the more those three ideas, wisdom, courage, and serenity, become important to me beyond just being sober.”
Rem glanced at the back of the room. “We have a private room, if you’d rather go in there than be out here.”
I shook my head. “Nah. Out here is fine. Nothing I have to say can’t be said while you’re inking me.
The man in the chair getting inked by Tomás nodded at me, and lifted his arm; he had a full sleeve, with Tomás working on the other arm. He tapped a spot on his bicep. “That tat, there—the triangle. AA and NA. How long you got?” He was a burly, bearded guy wearing a biker gang cut on a leather vest; he was about twenty years younger than me, but looked like he’d lived just as hard as I had.
“A little over a year,” I said.
He nodded again. “Six years for me. Best thing I ever did. I’d be dead or in jail if I hadn’t gotten clean. Good work, brother.”
“Thanks. You too.”
I sat down in Remington’s chair while he transferred the design to tracing paper, and then moved to sit on his rolling stool.
“So, where you want it?” he asked, holding up the tracing paper. “It’s kinda big. Had to be, to fit the words and the R’s.”
I held out my right bicep. “Here? Nice classic spot.”
Rem nodded. “Easy enough.”
And so, he got to work tracing the design onto my skin in a tattoo artist’s marker, showed it to me for approval, and then began inking it.
I waited a while, until I’d gotten used to the stinging of the needle and the noise of the gun. He was leaning close enough that I wouldn’t have to speak too loudly to be heard over the gun or the music; I waited, too, because it was Rem I was most worried about, in terms of reaction and potential rejection.
After twenty, almost thirty minutes, Remington paused, pulling the gun away and looking at me. “This really about the tat? Or you got something on your mind?”
I sighed. “Obvious, huh?”
“Well, you said it was important.”
“It’s about the tattoo, but there’s other stuff I want to say to you. Things I’ve had on my mind for a while.” I hesitated. “Having you do a tattoo on me, that one in particular, it’s…it means a lot to me, son.”
Remington took his time answering. “I’m glad to see you staying sober.”
“Had doubts it’d stick, huh?”
“Of course I did,” he said with a shrug, wiping ink away. “Who are you sober for?”
I watched him work as I answered. “Myself. Had to be. But it is also because of you three.”
“So it ain’t about that woman? Olivia?”
“Rem, I couldn’t have gotten sober for anyone if it didn’t start inside me, not even the three of you boys, let alone a woman I barely know. Yeah, she may have been part of the inspiration to start workin’ out and getting healthier, but I was a year sober when I met her.”
“You could still relapse, though.”
“I wish I could be bitter about that statement, but I don’t have that luxury,” I said, sighing. “You got every right to feel that way.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Let me ask you this, though: how many times did I ever try to get clean?”
He paused, wiping ink away, and then glanced at the ceiling. “Ummm…none, that I know of.”
“Exactly. I never tried. I never cared. I was…too fucked up in the head to even think about sobriety.”
“What’s your point, Dad?” Rem asked, going back to inking.
“My point is, this isn’t an attempt to get clean, this is me, now. I don’t ever want to go back to how I was. Living alone in that shitty fuckin’ trailer in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, drinkin’ my fuckin’ life away. Killing myself. You boys hating me, me hating myself.” I growled. “I feel good now for the first time in my life.”
“Good, huh?”
I nodded. “Damn good. I’m losing weight, getting strong again, I got ideas for what I want to do in the future, and shit, I have a future, now. Something to look forward to besides an endless retirement of bein’ wasted and alone.”
“What future?” Rem asked.
“Ehh, that ain’t important now. What matters right now is that I got ideas. I’m healthy, I’m sober, I’m…well, you’re the only one I’ve told this to, but I’m actually seeing a therapist.”
Rem jerked the needle away from my skin, glancing at me in shock. “No shit?”
I nodded. “Yep. Talking’ through all the bullshit I put myself and you boys through, my childhood, the story I told ya’ll. All of it. Getting down into the nitty-gritty and workin’ on being a better person, not just the same fucked-up bastard I’ve been.”
“Admirable goal,” Rem said, his voice still neutral.
He spent a while in silence, then, working on my tattoo, and I let the silence stand, digging deeper for the apology, to gird myself for the harsh and unwelcoming reaction I was anticipating. I watched him finish the lettering inside the triangle, and then when he paused to wipe ink away, I caught his eye.
“Remington.”
He set the gun down, sitting upright and stretching his arms and back. “What.” His voice was flat.
Third time, last time…the hardest one of all. “This is a me thing, not just an AA thing, or a therapy thing. Okay? Keep that in mind. I owe you an apology, Rem. I was a terrible person and a worse father to you boys. I…” I swallowed. “Shit, this is hard. Sayin’ I’m sorry isn’t enough. Asking you to forgive me…that ain’t enough.”
He stared at me, eyes hard, unforgiving. “No. It’s not.”
“I can’t change the past, can’t undo what I’ve done.” I blinked back emotion, swallowed it, remembered Ramsey’s advice about letting emotions exist instead of choking them down all the time. “All I can do is fix what I can fix—meanin’ me—and move on with my life, try to be a better person, and…and hope you can forgive me. Someday.”
Remington rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist, eying me with a carefully blank expression. Then, without a word, he went back to inking me. I sighed, closed my eyes, leaned my head back against the headrest, and let the silence ride.
Another fifteen minutes of silence as he finished the tattoo—agonizing, excruciating silence. When he was done, he set his gun aside, wiped the ink away, rolled his stool backward, and gestured at the mirror.
“Take a look,” he said.
I examined the tattoo—he’d embellished it beyond what he’d sketched out for me, making the calligraphy work on the R’s more elaborate and stylized, turning the triangle into braided knots, and doing for the lettering inside the triangle the same as what he’d done for the R’s.
“It’s amazing, Remington. I love it. Thank you.”
He indicated
it. “It ain’t done—needs some finishing touches, shading, shit like that, but that’ll be a separate session. I got a client waiting. Come back next week, Wednesday, say, maybe…three o’clock. I’ll finish it then.”
“Rem—”
He glanced up at me, frustrated. “I need time, Dad.”
“I just—”
He held up a hand. “Dad, please. I heard what you said, and I know you’re looking for an ‘I forgive you’ or something, some sort of immediate resolution, but I can’t give you that. I just need time, okay? You’re trying, and I recognize it. But you fucked things up for us so bad, and I can’t just wave that away. This shit runs deep for me, okay? Real deep.” He gestured at my new tattoo. “That there…that’s a big step for me. Putting that on your body. Take it for what it is—it’s the most I can give you right now.”
I nodded. “Yeah, okay. I get it.”
He wrapped the tattoo, handed me a salve of some kind, and gave me basic care instructions, and then I stood up and headed for the counter.
“Tat is free, Dad,” he said when I dug out my wallet.
I stared at him. “Your time is valuable, Rem—I wasn’t angling for a freebie just because I’m your dad.”
He nodded. “I know. And like I said, I heard you. I can’t give you what you want right now, but I can give you that much,” he said, gesturing at my arm. “And coming from me, that’s a lot.”
“I’ll take it. Thank you, Rem.” I swallowed hard. “I love you. Ain’t been great at sayin that or showing it, but I do.”
“I know.”
Nothing back.
But then, I’d gotten far more than I had ever expected.
I went home, then, and thought about…a lot of things.
12
Liv
I sat in the waiting area outside our gate at Charles de Gaulle airport, sipping an espresso, munching on pain au chocolat, reading a New Yorker article. Cassie was beside me, head tilted toward my shoulder, snoring softly, a paperback copy of American Gods by Neil Gaiman in her hands, her thumb holding her place, the book slowly slipping out of her hands. We had arrived at the airport three hours early, anticipating a heavy line for security and check-in, but there’d been nearly no one here for international departures, so we’d breezed through and arrived at our gate with more than two hours to spare. We’d shopped the duty-free stores, had a leisurely breakfast and then, still with forty-five minutes before boarding even began, we’d gotten coffee and a pastry; Cassie had devoured her pastry and slammed her coffee, then promptly fell asleep.
Which she definitely needed—in the month and a half I’d been in Paris with her, Cassie had only been able to sleep sporadically, a few hours at night and catnaps throughout the day. She claimed this was normal for her, but it made Mama worry.
She had needed plates and screws in her leg, and weeks of physical therapy before she was able to regain full mobility, or anything close to it. Because her dance troupe was based in Paris, her surgery and subsequent PT needed to happen here in Paris, where the union doctors and therapists were located. Now, however, she’d regained enough mobility that she only needed to continue the protocol and have follow-up sessions with a physical therapist in the States. She was officially retiring as a dancer, however, and with no backup plan in place, was moving in with me until she could figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, now that professional dancing had been taken away from her—even Rick, her fiancé, had been taken away from her. First by the coma, and then, once he had come out of it, he hadn’t been the same and had broken up with her shortly after emerging from the coma—to focus on healing and being with his family, he had said. A devastating blow to Cassie, just to add insult to injury.
I was worried about my Cassie. She was depressed, angry, bitter, confused, and prone to emotional outbursts. Being a passionate, high-octane, high-energy, highly emotional person anyway, this wasn’t entirely unusual, but she had always been a relentlessly positive person, able to find the good in just about any situation. Now, though, she seemed to be slipping faster than I knew how to handle.
She was leaving her friends in the troupe—as much a family to her as her sisters and I—leaving her life as a dancer, losing her career and the one thing she’d worked for since she was three years old. She was leaving Europe where, from the age of seven, she had always insisted she would live.
Basically, her life was as shattered as her leg had been. But, rebuilding her life wouldn’t be as simple—not to say easy—as a couple of surgeries and a few weeks of PT.
I sipped my coffee and munched on my pastry, worrying about Cassie instead of reading.
I was worrying about my life, now that I would have a daughter with me again. I was just starting to adjust to life as an empty nester. Selfish of me, I know, but it was reality. My life was going to change, at least until Cassie figured out a new life for herself, and was able to find a new normal.
I also worried about Charlie, and Poppy. On top of being with Cassie all day every day, helping her to PT, and helping her move through the basics of day-to-living with the challenge of limited mobility, I had spent a lot of time on the phone and video chatting with each of my daughters. Charlie had officially left her position with the law firm, had sold her condo, and was living in a loft apartment on a month-to-month lease, living off the savings she’d been socking away for a house in the suburbs—or that had been the plan, she said, assuming she and Glen were going to get married and have children.
Now, though, she was living off her savings, doing a lot of yoga, running, and what she called “introspection”, and which I called pouting and feeling sorry for herself. Which, I assumed, meant she was going to find her way to Ketchikan, at some point.
Poppy had decided to finish the semester at Columbia and reassess after that—which, again, I assumed meant finish the semester and then move to Ketchikan until she decided to pursue art full-time like I’d told her she should do months ago.
The only two daughters I wasn’t currently worried about were Lexie and Torie—Lexie was at a liberal arts college in upstate New York, majoring in journalism and women’s literature, and very literally burning bras and marching for women’s equality and social justice campaigns of various kinds. She’d settle down eventually, I figured, but for now, she was a social justice crusader with a burning passion to right all the wrongs in the world, all by herself.
Torie…was the exact opposite. Laconic, easy going to a fault, difficult to rouse to excitement about anything, she was still living back in our erstwhile Connecticut hometown, living an apartment with four other girls, attending community college, working at a cafe as a short order waitress, and probably smoking a lot of pot and watching indie films at the local theater. I wasn’t sure at all where Torie would end up in life, and while I wasn’t worried about her in the sense that she wasn’t currently in crisis, she was the child I worried most about in general, because she seemed to have no passions and no particular talent, nor any kind of drive to find one. She was content to wait tables, take two or three classes a semester at the community college, smoke pot with her friends, and watch movies. Which, being just barely nineteen, was fine for now, especially since she was supporting herself. But I just worried that she would never find her niche, and while I wanted to push her to look, I knew I couldn’t. Torie was like water—you couldn’t force her to do anything, or to go anywhere; the harder you pushed, the more she would slip and shift away from where you wanted her to go.
I sighed, wondering if I was going to end up with all five daughters around me again. While I relished the thought of having them near me again, as I missed them each dearly, and missed our camaraderie as a family, I had been enjoying my independence.
Which I felt guilty about, in a lot of ways. My independence had come at the cost of my husband’s life—not that I’d wanted to trade his life for my independence, but I’d only found it after his death. I missed him dearly, and I’d trade my life now—or rather,
how it had been before Cassie’s accident—to have him back. In a heartbeat.
But I couldn’t have him back—I couldn’t go back, so I had to move forward and try to find joy in my life where I could.
Cassie stirred, murmured in her sleep, and her book flopped to the floor between her feet. I left it, and gently eased her down so her head was resting on my lap; she folded her hands under her cheek, on my thigh, stretching her still-healing leg out along the empty seats.
I’d sent Lucas another postcard the day before yesterday, letting him know I was finally coming back to Ketchikan…with a stowaway.
I had been shocked to discover how much I ended up missing that man. How much of my mental space and emotional energy had been spent on wishing I could see him, wondering what he was doing, hoping he’d continued his journey toward health and wellness, and that he was repairing his relationships with his sons.
Truth be told, in the deepest darkest parts of the night, when I was more asleep than awake, and my mind spun impossible fantasies that were more than dreams yet not really daydreams, I thought of Lucas. In the last several years I had purposefully forgotten about the importance of sex, and what having a physical relationship could mean to me. I’d woken up more than a few times with my thighs clenched together, my core aching, nipples hard, and mental images of him and me entwined and naked dancing through my mind.
The feeling of his hand in mine was seared onto my soul.
The sound of his rough, gravelly, southern drawl and vulgar expressions were emblazoned on my heart.
I’d managed to keep such things under some kind of control when I’d been around him every day, but now that I’d spent nearly two months away from him, all I could think of was him.
And the longer I went without seeing him, talking to him, being around him, the more intense my feelings grew …and the more wild my thoughts.
I sighed, staring into space, letting my mind wander:
How long had it been since I’d last had sex? It had been with Darren, obviously, and he had died three and a half years ago…closer to four, now. And, before his death, things had been…sort of cool between us, sexually. I don’t mean cool in a colloquial sense, but in a temperature sense. We’d gotten lazy and complacent, and he’d thrown out his back putzing in our garage a good six months before he passed, which meant it had physically hurt him to have sex. So…nearly four years since his death, plus probably four or even six months before that?