Paper Daughter (13 page)

"It must have fallen from her bag."

"And by now she's on her way home, probably not even realizing she's driving without a license." Deena read the address. "I'd drop it by, but it's in the opposite direction from where I have to pick up my kids."

I wanted so much to say it was in the opposite direction for me, too, or that I had someplace I had to be. But a lie was a lie, and despite what Jillian thought, not everybody told them. At least not when they didn't have to.

Although it was the last thing I wanted to do, I said, "I'll take it. It's on my way."

Jillian lived in a multi-building apartment complex, down a dusty-floored hall that smelled of food and could have used some fresh paint. A woman with her hair in a ponytail too young for her face answered my knock.

"Jilly's wallet!" she exclaimed, pulling me inside. "Now, you just come in and wait so she can thank you herself. She's gone for a burger, but she'll be right back."

As Mrs. Smythe moved about the apartment, her voice faded in and out over the sound of running water, clothes hangers jangling, and the
snap-snap
of containers of makeup.

Coming back into the living room to put on a pair of sturdy tie shoes, she said, "I'd stay and visit, except I've got a boss who'll dock you for being a few minutes late. Can you imagine? Docking somebody for ten minutes off an hour he's only paying minimum wage for anyway? And then acting like tips are skin off his nose, when he's not the one balancing trays and trying not to slip on french fries some kid's thrown on the floor. If it weren't for Jilly, I'd tell him what he could do with his job."

She sounded so exactly like Jillian I was afraid I'd start giggling, despite knowing that what she was saying wasn't funny at all. A scarred coffee table held a few magazines, and to cover my confusion, I reached for them. There was a
Cosmopolitan,
an old issue of
People
—and, under those, a literary journal with a bookmark in it.

Mrs. Smythe, who was piling things into a shoulder bag, said, "They printed something of Jilly's. Can you imagine? She's quite the little writer, though too somber, if you ask me. I like a story that's fun and takes your mind off things, the way sitting down takes a load off your feet. I tell her, 'Now, if you'd just write the way you talk!' But I suppose you don't listen to your mother, either. I know I didn't when—"

Just then Jillian came in, saying, "Hey! I've lost my wallet!" Then she saw me. "Oh!"

"You dropped it at work," I said. I stood to go, but Mrs. Smythe gave me a little push down.

"Jilly will get some lemonade—I just mixed some—and then the two of you can curl up for a nice chat. Jilly, you make your friend welcome. It's high time you had someone in."

In the sudden quiet after Mrs. Smythe left, Jillian and I just looked at each other for a moment. Then Jillian, her voice oddly subdued, said, "You don't need to stay. But if you want to, you can. I mean, I'll get the lemonade. Or there's probably iced tea, or—"

"I ought to go home," I said. "Although, first—" I gestured to the journal I'd put back on the coffee table. "Your mom said you have a piece in this. May I see it?"

Taking her shrug to mean yes, I turned to "Girl on a Doorstep," by Jillian Smythe.

Her canted eyes stare vacantly and her too-full lips hang slack. Only her right hand moves, fingers scratching across the concrete doorstep where she sits. She's long since become invisible to the boisterous, sullen, arguing, joyous packs of kids who pass by.

She waits for the big girl with the swirling skirts who sometimes stops to sit beside her. They talk with a torrent of words that cross between them on spit and air...

"Wow!" I said, looking up. "You packed a lot into that opening."

"You think it works?" Jillian asked.

"It's a picture."

"A picture is what I was going for," she said in a tone that sounded as though for once she was saying something she'd actually thought about. "Only I'm wondering now if I might have done it better with a camera. Like Lynch does."

But then she began blathering on, the way she usually did.

"A thousand words and all. Not a million. I remember. Though, really, it's not like a person can say
Here's a 1,030-word photo,
or
That one's worth just nine hundred and eighty.
"

Tuning her out, I read the rest of the piece and then on impulse said, "That girl's you, isn't it? The older girl. Unheard behind all that talk."

Jillian's eyes widened with a
caught
look. But then she laughed. "No way. You should try writing fiction sometime. I mean, sticking to facts can be such a pain, even though there are places, like the newspaper, where—"

"Jillian! Stop!" I said. "Just..."

I almost left without finishing my thought, which was that I wished she'd shut up rather than ruin the spell cast by her writing.

But maybe because of what she'd written, I didn't leave.

I told her, "If you can write like that, if you can see things that way, then you ought to let people know. You don't have to go around disguising yourself as a total airhead."

Her face told me I'd gone too far, and I braced myself for a stinging retort. I was sure she was framing one. But then, looking unexpectedly vulnerable, she asked, "Do you think Lynch would laugh if I told him how much I like photography? If I promised to stop talking and to listen, if he'd just keep me on and teach me some?"

"He might laugh," I said. "But he might take you at your word, too. I think you should take a chance."

She studied me a moment before saying, "Maybe I will. Now I'll get us the drinks and you can tell me your secrets. Or don't you have any?"

"Not really," I said, but that made me feel guilty, because she'd been honest with me.

I began telling her that I'd embarked on a genealogy project, making it sound like I'd taken it on as a way to remember my father. But it was such a relief to finally be talking to someone, I ended up telling her the truth. I wanted to find his birth family because they were my family, too, and different from the one I'd always thought I belonged to.

"Telling it, it doesn't sound very important," I said. "Lots of people don't even know their fathers, much less their father's family."

"It's important," Jillian said. "Even though they were made up, those people you believed in were a part of you. And now you must feel like you don't know yourself."

Which said so completely and exactly how I did feel that I couldn't respond.

"It must have hurt when you found out your father lied to you," Jillian said. "But I bet he had a really good reason."

And then, suddenly, we both seemed to know it was time to stop talking.

We promised to keep private what we'd said, and I walked to my car not sure why I'd told Jillian, of all people, about Dad.

But at least I had one mystery solved. I now knew why the
Herald
had hired Jillian. She could write, and she had worthwhile things to say.

***

When I got home, I found a message from Mom stuck to the hall mirror. "Running errands. A casserole's in the oven. I'll be back by the time it's hot."

The house smelled of the basil tomato sauce Dad had loved, and for a few moments I let myself pretend that time had rolled back. That Dad would be coming home any minute, calling,
Where're my girls?
He'd have hugs for us both, and pieces of a world bigger than ours would be clinging to him.

I wandered through the house, wanting, missing, wishing things could somehow turn back to the way they'd been. Before secrets. Before wondering. Before anything—anybody—had gone missing.

I rested my hand on the back of his favorite reading chair. Touched a geode he found the summer we tried rock hounding. Stopped in the hall to examine a photo I took of him and Mom the day we explored Puget Sound by ferry. I knew in my heart it was a true picture that said how much Dad loved all the good times we'd had together.

I suddenly thought about Jillian, always putting herself so
out there,
seeming to say whatever clueless thing came into her mind but never mentioning her writing, or how she saw the world in pictures. All that chatter just to keep private—maybe protect—the serious, mattering things inside her.

And I thought about Dad. Could that be why he'd made up a story about himself? To protect something too fragile to risk sharing?

And if so, what?

Mom was still in the kitchen, about to leave for school, when I got up the next morning. "You look happy," I said.

"Starting Chaucer in my survey class, and I think I may have some students who'll appreciate him! What are you up to?"

"I'm going to enjoy my day off, though I'll pay the bills first."

"I've got them set up for you."

***

While eating breakfast, I paged through the newspaper till I found Harrison's follow-up to the Galinger story. It was short, and the only new thing in it was a statement from the mayor. Apparently he'd decided his original
no comment
stance hadn't cast him or his city in a good light.

"We have a fine town run by a hard-working, honest government," Harrison quoted him saying, "and I'm certain that when all the facts come out, you'll find there's not been a breath of wrongdoing. But meanwhile, I want the citizens to know that my office will cooperate fully with any official investigation into any alleged possible improprieties."

Still smiling at the qualifications
—alleged, possible
—I started in on the work I'd told Mom I would do.

Using a couple of the signed checks she'd left me, I paid the utility and garbage companies. I paid the phone bill and made a note to ask Mom if we should go to a cheaper plan. Without Dad making calls, we had hundreds of unused minutes.

Bills done, I read through several text messages from Bett and Aimee and sent a long e-mail answer back. "Yes, my job is going better. Mostly. Yes, I am getting along better with the other intern. Yes, I do wish I was in the San Juans, at least today, which I have off. Some fun with no unsettling questions would be really nice."

I deleted that last sentence so they wouldn't call asking
What unsettling questions?
and sent it off.

And then, with all that behind me, I turned to the bigger task I'd set myself: trying to track down Dad's high school.

I'd been mulling it over, and I had a plan. Mr. Ames said he was sure that Dad was from a city, because he had street smarts. That sounded like a big city to me. So I'd start with the biggest, Los Angeles, and work down.

And I'd call only public schools, since if Dad had been as short on money as Mr. Ames said, a private school probably wasn't likely.

I thought fleetingly of the letter Mom had received from the private eastern prep school Dad had
not
attended: the letter that had started everything. Maybe a public school wouldn't even have written.

***

I didn't finish with Los Angeles till after lunch, and by then I was thinking my plan could use revising, if I could just figure out how.

But then I got lucky. On my third San Francisco call I reached a new clerk who was eager to help and was befuddled by the workings of the school's computer system. "It's all being redone," she said, "and all I know is I'm not supposed to type anything into anything that might change anything."

"I don't want you to," I said. "I'm just trying to find the high school my dad graduated from, probably in 1978. If you could just check..."

Within moments she read Dad's name back to me.

"If you'll tell me how to get in touch with any teachers who might remember him, I'd like to talk to them," I said.

"I don't know the teachers yet, since it's vacation. And anyway, probably I'd have to get their permission to give you their names. Because of privacy, I mean. Actually, I don't know if I should have even—"

"It's okay," I said. "You've been great."

Thanks to working with Harrison, I didn't have to think twice about what to do next. I went online, where I learned that the clerk's worry about privacy wasn't shared by the school's alumni association. It had posted entire sections of several yearbooks, including the one from Dad's senior year.

There was his name, "Steven Chen," under a photo in which he looked very young but was definitely Dad. But it was the text under his name that got to me. "Does anyone know this person? Newspaper. National Honor Society. Lives in library. Knows all the world's capitals. Ambition: to be a writer. Biggest distinction: invented the word
loner.
"

What a snarky, mean, backhanded blurb,
I thought, angry and aching for him at the same time. No wonder Dad had wanted people to think he'd had a life different from the one he'd really had.

But a loner? My dad?

If it weren't for the picture, I'd think I had the wrong Steven Chen.

***

I stroked Pepper's head and replayed in my mind all I'd learned. I didn't want Dad to have had an unhappy past. Not the dad I'd known and not the stranger dad, either.

Then I called Bill Ames once more, reaching him just as he got home from work.

I apologized for bothering him again. "But I wondered—did Dad have a good time in college? Have people to hang with?"

For several moments there was silence on the line. Then Mr. Ames said, "You remind me of him, wondering about the strangest things. But to answer you, I don't think so, not real friends. Though I sometimes thought Steven was trying to learn how to make them."

"And no girlfriends, either?" I asked.

"Just one that I knew of, for a brief time our senior year. He fell hard for her and was shocked when she broke things off. Crushed, too."

"Do you remember why she did?" I asked.

"He didn't tell me. Just said he'd always wonder if they were meant to be together and if she'd left before they had a chance to find out."

***

By the time I got off the phone with him, I had so much churning through my mind. Strands I wanted to pull out and think about. Questions I wanted to ask Mom.