Wish I Were Here

Chapter 17

W hen 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?”

It has been 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 false eyelash 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 the middle 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, but this does. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

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 promised who ?” 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 he was enough, 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. “You do ?” 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, “nobody did notice. 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’m the 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.

My phone buzzes with a text from Luca.

Still on for 5 p.m.?

I wonder if he just woke up on the floor. At some point, I’m going to need to figure out why it is he’s been sleeping there. But first I need to figure out my own life.

Yes. See you then.

I feel better after I hit send. Maybe Dad won’t give me answers, but I’m not on my own. It turns out I don’t just have a guy; I have a bunch of them. I picture Uncle Vito’s scowling face, and in this moment, I find it strangely comforting instead of terrifying. And then there’s Mrs. Flowers and the book club offering me food and advice. Fabrizio handing me a pair of scrubs in a dark parking lot. I have a whole group of people invested in helping me find my mother.

And it’s all thanks to Luca.

“I should go,” I tell Dad.

His shoulders slump. “I love you, Kitty Cat.”

I sigh, because I know he does, in his own way. It’s just not always in the way I need.

“If there’s anything else I can do,” he says, leaning over to hug me. “Just say the word.” He begins absentmindedly tossing one of the juggling balls in the air.

“Sure.” I head across the warehouse. When I’m halfway to the door, I pause and turn around. “Actually, maybe there is something else you could do for me.”

He nods eagerly.

“Can you and your friends perform at a fundraiser for the Bloomfield Community Center next week?” I wave a hand around the room. “Bring anyone you can find—acrobats, dancers. They need it to be spectacular. And it would be great if everyone could help get the word out. Share it with your networks and help sell some tickets. It’s for a good cause.”

Dad flashes me a huge grin, the relief evident on his face. “Of course I can do that. And I know lots of people who will help.”