In the afternoons Keeley would come over, or I’d sit with Nadio or both of them and they’d go over assignments with me. Once it got warm, we sat on the porch and they told me about what was happening at school, how Jessica Marino was kind of crazy and no one really wanted to be around her (she looks bad, Nadio said, like messed up). They told me about Model U.N. and how maybe next year they’d get the school to host a conference. I didn’t really care about Model U.N. but I liked to hear about it. It felt normal. Keeley and I were okay. My brother and I were okay. And I was okay with them, now. Everything was different, and sometimes I felt so lonely it made my chest hurt, like I was sitting on the fringes of everything. But other times I felt like I had this strength that they had no idea about.
There is a certain strength in being alone.
I felt like something was missing though, like I needed one last thing to start this new self. Sometimes Parker’s tattoos would show up in my dreams; never his face, never any more of him really, but the lines and curves and shapes of his tattoos, and all of the stories there on his skin. I couldn’t stop thinking about them—all beautifully out there and perfectly engraved.
I needed my own.
I knew exactly what I wanted to get. It was a quote from a book Lace always used to read to us. It would be a reminder, like my journal, only on my skin.
Noelle was quiet in the car. Keeley drove. I sat in the back seat. I watched the back of their heads. Black and gold and still. Noelle kept reaching behind her, tentatively touching the bandage that peeked out above the neck of her sweater. She’d asked me to go into the room with her at the tattoo place. They’d only let one person in with her. Keeley was sitting in one of the leather chairs, holding a binder spilling out pictures of tattooed strangers.
I’ll wait here, she said.
The tattoo artist looked at me. He was stooped over, tall with a long gray beard.
Well? he said.
I followed my sister into the room. She took off her sweater and laid down on the weird tattoo chair. The bearded guy looked down at the piece of paper Noelle had handed him. They whispered more to each other. I felt a little nauseous.
Over here, he said to me.
There were two stools on either side of Noelle. He sat in one. I sat in the other one.
Hey, Noelle said.
Are you nervous?
No, she said. Are you?
Yeah.
I looked at the bearded guy. He was messing with a few bottles and something that looked like a drill. I decided to look at my sister instead. She reached out for my hand.
For a long time there was the buzz of the needle and the grip of Noelle’s hand. I stared at her white knuckles. Her eyes were closed. I gripped her hand back. I closed my eyes too.
Nothing can be normal the way we once thought of normal, but these last few months had felt right. The three of us had found our footing. My sister lost her anger. But she’d become distant too. As if all of this had forced her to give less out. Even here in this chair, gripping my hand, I could feel that her strength was bigger than all of ours, and I could feel that part of that was everything she didn’t say out loud. She’d never say that really hurt. She’d just bite her lip and grip my hand.
All right, he said.
I opened my eyes. It was hard to tell if it had been five minutes or forty. Noelle opened her eyes. They were red and tears smudged the side of her face.
Well? he said.
I looked at my sister’s back. Just above the line of her tank top, in small black letters, her skin said,
I remain
Mistress of mine own self
and mine own soul
You like it? Noelle asked. She was watching me.
I knew the quote. When we were growing up, Lace used to read us The Foresters by Tennyson. I was never convinced of Robin Hood as a hero, but Noelle always liked Marian. Read her again, she’d beg Lace. She liked to see Marian stand up to the villains.
Yeah, I said. It’s a good thing.
Now in the car, she suddenly seemed older. She and Keeley both seemed, as I watched them from the back seat, like they’d stepped into a new part in their lives. In front of them the road wove gray, signs of spring on both sides. The ever-familiar, bike-worn, foot-worn road. Noelle reached over and switched on the radio. She turned the dial. A hum of static.
Wait, Keeley said. Go back.
Static rolled backwards, and then Noelle’s hand stopped on the dial.
Something familiar. A song Lace used to play over and over when we were kids. The rhythm of it, less than the words, rolled a slide show of memories into all of our heads. The day rushed by outside the window. The song rolled louder, filling the car, remembering out loud.
Noelle and Keeley laughed into the lyrics. I cracked the window, sticking my arm out. The air was almost warm. Noelle and Keeley were singing. I rolled the window all the way down. Their voices got louder.
* * *
Dear Dario,
I’m done with all of this. This is going to be my last letter. I think part of me thought I needed you so I could get through all of this. I wondered if I could write through what you might tell me. But I actually never needed you.
Lace keeps a real eye on us now. She’s been teaching Noelle from home all semester and working on top of that. She’s been doing the job of mom and dad and teacher now. For every space you left empty, she’s trying to fill it twice.
Noelle is okay. She’s going to go back to school in the fall. She got a tattoo, which I really don’t understand. But it was important to her. And she got a job baking. She bakes all of the time. She feels really good about creating things and I think she likes that the results of her baking sort of please people. She and I were always very different in school. We were both fine—but Noelle was never very into any one thing. Maybe baking is her thing. I don’t know how you did in school. Lace is always telling me she was never as smart as I am—that she doesn’t know where it came from. I know I care about history and I care about the rights of people whose government isn’t supporting them. I know I want to do something that helps people who can’t really raise their voice. I don’t think I got this from you because I’m pretty certain you don’t care about anything but yourself.
Noelle and I are going to be seventeen soon. You and Lace were seventeen when you met. This is hard to imagine. But I realize that you probably couldn’t have been in love with her. You didn’t know what that meant. You’re not capable. And I’m fine with that right now. Because I know now I love Keeley. And we are pretty young and we might break up one day because our lives go in different directions or things change, but even then, I’d never be able to just walk out on her. Even then I’d always know I loved her right now.
What I’ve learned without ever knowing you is that I’m nothing like you.
I didn’t know what kind of man I could be when this whole year started. I thought maybe that was because I’d never had a dad. But I think that is exactly why I know what kind of man to be. Just this one—who is about to start track season and is thinking about going to Princeton and wants to take his girlfriend to see the house he built in Virginia and is going to cook dinner tonight so his mom doesn’t have to and can’t wait to try the pear tart his sister is bringing home from work.
That’s who I am.
When I was with Parker, I used to pretend to fall asleep for the feeling I’d get when he watched me with my eyes closed. That spring, I started to sleep so hard. Keeley was right. I didn’t stop thinking about him, but it lessened.
I started working in a bakery, too. I really like it. I can’t get rid of this idea that making food is an art in its own way. I have no idea what I want to do, but I love the smell of sugar and apples. I love adding the wrong spice to something and seeing if it works. I love kneading cold floury doug
h over and over with my knuckles. I love handing someone a box of frosted vanilla cupcakes, being a part of their secret guilty pleasure.
The thing about a bakery is, you have to get there really early in the morning, like five o’clock, before the sun comes up. But I have my license now, so I drive. I have to park in a lot across the street, and that is where I saw him.
It was so early in the morning it was still dark out. Even though the bakery is on Division street, which has all kinds of shops and restaurants, nothing was open yet. I was crossing the deserted street when I saw him, the outline of him really, coming down the street. His hands in his pockets, his bony elbows angled out, his faded jeans loose and baggy. I had the bakery keys in my hand, shaking. He must have been coming from a party somewhere. I knew he’d been up all night.
We were standing in front of each other on the dark sidewalk. His eyes wide.
Whoa, he said. Hi.
Hi.
What are you … he stopped. He hugged me. I could feel his heart beating into my forehead.
I work here. I gestured at the bakery window. He looked up at the bakery but I don’t think he saw it. He looked back at me. His eyes were watery. He was drunk.
How … he looked around. He put his hand on my elbow and nodded toward the bench in front of the bakery.
Can you sit down a minute?
I checked my watch, pretending time was important. I knew no one else would be arriving for another half an hour. I knew I had to sit down.
Okay.
We sat down. Parker put his hands over his face and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked up.
Listen, Noelle, I …
I realized just then that I had no idea if he knew what had happened, if he knew I’d been in the hospital, or if he just thought we broke up. I didn’t want to know.
It’s okay, I said.
No. I’m just … you’re a really incredible girl and I shouldn’t have—
Seriously. It’s okay.
He looked at his lap, then at me.
No, he said. It’s not all okay. I wasn’t good to you. You were so honest all the time and I just, you know, I should have been better to you.
I took a deep breath. It felt so strange to see myself through him. I realized I had always wanted this regret from him. For everything I remembered and tried not to, that regret was what I wanted.
Then I thought of something.
Can you take your jacket off? I asked.
What?
Please.
He looked at me for another long second, then he shrugged out of his jacket. I took his arm in my hands. I suddenly felt so strong, holding his arm, my finger tips just barely touching the skin.
I remember this tattoo, I said to him, but it doesn’t look like I remembered it. I pulled back the sleeve of his T-shirt and looked from his shoulder to his wrist.
And this one …
Yeah, he said.
There was something else there now, deep colors and fuller designs reaching to the crook of his elbow.
He looked down now at the bend of his wrist.
I had it filled in, he said. This one I had filled in.
I remembered it different, I thought out loud.
He looked at my hand holding his arm.
I’d remembered it all different—the shape and stretch of these tattoos that now seemed to fill in all the places on once-familiar skin. And in their shapes and colors lay none of the designs I remembered and everything I wanted to see.
The tattoo I remembered best was the serpent that wound up the inside of his forearm, from wrist to the crook of his elbow. That first night, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. But later, I thought maybe I’d seen it in a movie and not on this skin—there is nothing like it there now, just a twisting blend of colors, just a spread and mesh of designs. But something I do remember, something that is still there, is the dirt under his fingernails—the dirt of the kitchen where he works still, the grease from the kitchen hood and the remnants of dishes he cooked for someone else, the food they swallowed with sighs and whispered about later, the taste they still remember today while never knowing the shape of the tattoos on these arms, the shapes I should remember but can’t because they’ve changed.
I thought about Keeley and what she said to me in my room.
What? Parker said into the silence.
We come back to the same people to learn something about how we have changed. We want to be assured that we have changed. We so want our pictures to paint differently than they do.
But I didn’t say any of this out loud.
I have to go, I said, dropping his arm into his lap. I stood up.
Noelle—
It’s good to see you, I said. It really is. But I have to go.
He was sitting there as I walked around to the back door of the bakery. I think he watched me walk away. But when I went into the store and turned on the lights and looked out at the bench, he was gone, and the sun was coming up and the street was gray-pink and deserted.
About the Author
Heather Duffy Stone writes stories and essays that are mostly inspired by high school—either her own or someone else’s. This Is What I Want to Tell You is her first novel. She has lived in Vermont, England, Los Angeles, rural New York, and Rome, Italy. For now she cooks, sleeps, explores, writes, and teaches in Brooklyn, New York.
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