by Mary Amato
“I’m so sorry!” she said. “I hope it didn’t have sentimental value or anything?”
Hayes laughed and waved the whole thing off. It was just a joke, ha-ha. We all laughed. Ha, ha, ha. Not wanting to look foolish, I left the stone in its snowy grave.
Cassie pulled keys out of her purse. “Anybody need a ride?”
I wanted to say I don’t take rides from people who snatch birthday gifts, no matter how small, from other people’s hands, but I kept my mouth shut while Hayes and Fin both said yes at the same time.
The sun had gone down and the temperature had dropped with it.
“We all want a ride,” Fin said, looking at me pointedly, shivering. I tried to give him a look back, but he was already getting into the car. “Come on, Minerva.”
I love Fin, but he tends to put comfort above principles. I pretended that I wanted to walk — even though the Dead Sea salt itch was still working its way out the bottoms of my feet — and headed off before anybody could see my face.
I walked a block, composing a new song in my head.
Drive on by. I’m fine.
I don’t mind being
Left on the side of the road.
I’d rather be cold
Than go with your flow.
Can’t throw away my soul—
It’ll sink like a stone.
When I opened my backpack to take out my songwriting journal, I saw the box with the necklace and the cards, and an angry black thundercloud of vermin, locusts, and murderous rage flew out.
The Kenneth Chip storm followed me all the way home.
4
MOM
“WHERE WERE YOU? I’ve been worried.” My mother pounced. “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“Fin took me to Pan Asia Café for my birthday.” The first in a string of lies.
“But I’m cooking a special dinner.”
“I only had sushi. I’m still hungry.” I stomped the snow off my boots, took off my coat, tried to smile, and told her I was going upstairs to get one little piece of homework done so I could relax.
“Where’s your sweater?” she asked.
I looked down at my green dress. “Oh … I left it in my locker. It was really hot in my last class. I think the heater was stuck in the high position or something.”
She smiled. “Well, take good care of it. That is an expensive sweater, sweetie.”
“Yep. Will do.”
I didn’t tell her about the audition because I figured I wouldn’t make it and didn’t want her to worry in advance — she would assume Get Happy was a scam — and I had no idea how to bring up the fact that my dad had sent the gift, because she would freak. Little lies buy a little time.
As I took my backpack up to my room, my phone buzzed. Text from Fin. Call me!
He started talking as soon as I called. “I’m sorry about the Cassie thing, but you did really good, and I think we’re all — ”
“Fin, I can’t talk about this,” I whispered. “I’m freaking out.”
“Why? You’re going to make it!”
“Not about that. About this whole Kenneth Chip thing.”
“I can’t believe I forgot about that!” he said. “I’m sorry. Hold on.… I’m getting my laptop.”
“Wait, Fin — ”
He came back on. “I’m going to the Shedd Aquarium Web site.…”
I closed my eyes. “No. Don’t. I don’t want to know.”
“Hold on.… Here’s the staff page.… Nobody is popping up for Kenneth Chip. I don’t think he works there. Or if he does, he’s not important enough to be listed.”
“He’s probably a custodian,” I said. “He probably empties the trash bags.”
“Hold on.… I’m Googling ‘Kenneth Chip and Chicago.’… Nothing.” He went on. “There’s a Kenneth Chip in Orlando … a plumber.… Wait, it’s Kenneth Chip Hanson. I think Chip is his nickname — ”
“Dinner’s ready!” my mom called.
I told Fin to stop looking and said good-bye. I slipped the cards and necklace into the toe of this funky sheepherder-type boot that was under my bed. My mother wouldn’t touch that with a broom. Yes, when your mom has 24/7 access to your room, you have to be creative about where you hide things.
THAT WHOLE EVENING, I acted as if nothing were wrong, but after midnight, I crept downstairs into the dark kitchen. I remember the feeling in the air: It was as if the silence were a person in the room who was watching.
I turned on the computer and searched the Shedd Aquarium Web site. On the staff page, a dozen names were listed with their job titles, a short bio, and a photo after each name. Jane Doe, President, etc.
And then I got to this name — Keanu Choy — and I started having trouble breathing. The photo was a close-up of a guy treading water in a turquoise ocean, wearing scuba gear, smiling up at the camera, flawless brown skin, shining black hair, dark glittering almond-shaped eyes, a man who looked completely satisfied with his life. VP Global Field Experiences and Director of SOS Project. Originally from Hawaii, Dr. Choy began his distinguished career with Shedd as an intern, just seventeen years ago. Specializing in the study of seahorses, he went on to found the Save Our Seahorse (SOS) Project. The Shedd Aquarium is delighted to be the new home of the SOS Project and to have Dr. Choy back on staff.
The hair, the eyes, the seventeen years ago, the seahorses.
I sat there in the dark, staring at his photo while the refrigerator hummed and the house slept. Eventually, I texted Fin, but of course he was sleeping, too.
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke in a numb, exhausted fog. There was my mom drinking coffee at the sink, chattering about how much she liked the new color scheme at Crate & Barrel, which is where she works, and there I was, trying to pack my lunch, not knowing how to bring up the whole father subject. Then I noticed the bag of potato chips on the pantry shelf and blurted casually: “So I wonder where Kenneth Chip is these days?”
She dropped her coffee cup. With a crash, it hit the tile floor and shattered, coffee spraying the white cabinets.
“Why did you say that?” she asked, the panic on her face as obvious as the mess.
We stared at each other, not moving. It was as if I had pulled her to the edge of a cliff, and I was afraid that if I answered truthfully, it would be like shoving her off.
“I just saw the chips and it popped into my head.” It wasn’t a total lie. It wasn’t a total truth, either. I grabbed a paper towel and started wiping up.
“Be careful, Minny!” She pulled my hand away and grabbed a sponge. Her hand was shaking. “I have no idea where your father is and there’s no need whatsoever to talk about that.” She carefully pushed pieces of the cup into a pile. “He is not worth the time of day.” She pulled the trash can over, started lifting the bigger pieces into it, and asked without looking: “It popped into your head because of the chips?”
“Yeah,” I said quickly. “Just now.”
She glanced at me. “Your father is not a nice person. If you let him in, he will hurt you. Promise me you will put him out of your mind.”
I nodded.
“Good.” She took a breath and stared at the splattered cabinets. “It’s staining. Go get the cleanser from the bathroom, the green one with bleach in it. We can get this clean.”
5
COWARDICE & SNOOPING
FIN AND I SAT on the concrete bench by the flagpole. We had only a few minutes before school started.
“Tell me everything,” he said. He blew into his bare hands to warm them up. “Did you show her the necklace?”
“No. Her brain would have exploded. She freaked at the mere mention of his name. And I think she’s lying about it.”
“What do you mean?”
I took a breath, the cold air slicing into my lungs. I explained about the Web site and discovering Keanu Choy. “He’s a Hawaiian seahorse expert.”
“Hawaiian?”
“I have the same hair and eyes.” Unfortunately, not the same skin.
A bus pulled up and a load of annoyingly loud freshmen got out. I closed my eyes and pressed my mittened hands against them. “You don’t get it, Fin. He can’t be cool. Either she lied about his name to keep me from finding him, or else his name was Kenneth Chip and he changed it to Keanu Choy.”
“Why would he change his name?”
“I don’t know. To avoid paying child support?”
“Maybe he was a bad person, but he’s had a change of heart now. Maybe he was walking to work one day and God spoke to him from a burning shrub and said, ‘Contact your daughter, dude!’ ”
“He doesn’t walk to work. He sails.”
“Okay,” Fin laughed. “God spoke to him from a burning whale.” He put his arm around me, and we sat for a few seconds, both of us cold, staring at a black crusted pile of snow at the edge of the sidewalk. “Let’s assume his name has always been Choy, and your mom lied to you about it. Maybe she lied because he’s great and she was afraid that you’d want to live with him in Hawaii! That makes sense.” He grabbed my mitteny hands. “If you move to Hawaii, I’m going to kill you. Wait.… He works at the Shedd. So he lives here now? You have to go and meet him!”
My head was splitting open. “No. I don’t want anything to do with him. He is a horrible, selfish person. I mean, who dumps a two-year-old kid and a wife?”
“What — exactly — did his letter say?”
I took a breath and recited it.
Fin’s eyes were huge. “You memorized it.”
“I read it a hundred times last night.”
His eyes softened. “Min, he sounds nice.”
“No. You should’ve heard my mom. ‘Let him in and he will hurt you,’ she said. He’s a loser. I wish he was a drug addict. It would be better that way.”
“How would that be better?”
“Because drug addicts are sick. They’re basically ruled by the drugs. They make involuntary mistakes because their brains are addled.”
“But it’s better this way because you can get something out of him.”
I looked at my boots.
The vice principal walked out, eyeballing us and the other vagrants who didn’t want to go inside. “School is starting, people. You have thirty seconds.”
Fin stood up and pulled me off the bench. “You have no real proof that Keanu Choy is your dad, Minerva. Your mom reacted to the name Kenneth Chip. You have this hunch … so let’s go to Keanu Choy’s office at the aquarium. You can say, ‘Hi, are you my daddy?’ If he is, then get everything you can from him and dump him. Protect yourself. You want money from him. That’s it. Be practical. You don’t want love. You just want cold hard cash.”
My feet had stopped itching, but my toes were so cold they burned. “I’m not going to do that, Fin.” We walked into school.
“Then confront your mom,” he said. “Just lay it out on the table. ‘Mother dearest, why have you been trying to convince me that I am related to a potato-based snack food?’ ”
FIN WAS RIGHT about the fact that I needed proof, but I couldn’t get the nerve to talk to my mom that night. Instead, I barricaded myself in my room. I had all this emotion inside me that wanted to come out, and I was dying to write a song. That’s how it works with me. When I’m emotional, it’s like a song is inside me, and if I can just pull the song out, the anxiety and anger and pain flow out, too. But I was ukeless, and that made me more frustrated and angry.
I got out the uke songbook Fin had given me and decided to learn some chords, but it was hard without something physical to put my fingers on. Finally, I got a ruler, covered it with masking tape, drew lines on it with a permanent marker to look like the frets and strings on the neck of a uke, and attached it to a cookie tin with duct tape. A handy-dandy DIY practice uke.
I sat down with it and made the shapes of the chords on the neck with my left hand while I strummed against the cookie-tin part with my right hand, singing along.
Okay. Truly pathetic.
SOMEHOW, I GOT through the night, and I woke up the next morning, Saturday, to find a note on the kitchen counter from my mom: Getting haircut and bagels.
If you don’t have the nerve to confront, then at least you can snoop, I said to myself.
One by one, I went through my mother’s dresser drawers. Nothing. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for — photos, official documents … anything that might help me find proof of my dad’s identity.
I scanned the photo albums in the bookshelf by my mom’s bed. She had one for every year, starting with the year of my birth. I flipped through each page of the first two books, even though I knew there weren’t any pictures of my dad in them. I’d gone through a phase, when I was eight, when I ripped a page out of an L. L. Bean catalogue, picturing a fatherly looking, black-haired guy sitting by a fireplace, and tried to convince myself it was him. I’d kept it under my pillow until, one day, I came home to find clean sheets and no trace of Mr. Bean.
I opened my mom’s closet. Pink plastic storage boxes were stacked on the shelf above the clothes rack, all labeled in her neat handwriting. CDS. COSMETICS. DVDS. EYEGLASSES. GIFT CARDS. HAIR SUPPLIES. OFFICE SUPPLIES. I opened the boxes, careful to put them back exactly where I found them, not finding any surprises. Big storage containers were under the bed, one labeled FALL/WINTER QUILTS — empty now — and the other labeled SPRING/SUMMER BEDSPREADS, which had our lightweight blankets in it. Clearly, if my mother ever lost her job, she could get one as a professional closet organizer. I peeked between the stored bedspreads, just to make absolutely sure nothing was hidden there.
“What are you doing?” My mom was standing in the doorway.
Talk about shock. I tried to smile innocently. “I didn’t hear you come up. I was looking for my red sweater.” I slid the storage box back under the bed. “I wanted to wear it, but it’s not in my room.”
“I don’t store sweaters under there. Your room is a disaster, Minny. It’s no wonder you can’t find anything.”
“Did you get bagels?” I asked to change the subject.
“Yes.” She glanced at herself in the mirror.
“Yum. Thanks, Mommy. Hey, your coif looks great. Nice color.”
Her face perked up. “Thank you, honey. That was nice of you to notice.”
A horribly cheap trick — throw a compliment at your mom to make her go away.
Who am I?
I thought I had a clue.
Now I find someone new
Is hiding in my DNA.
What’s a girl to do?
Call Nancy Drew?
Become a spy?
Hire a private eye?
Call the FBI?
Reply or say good-bye?
Cut the ties
And everything that implies?
Does someone
Who denied my life
Deserve a second try?
It’s a twisted staircase
I have to climb,
A twisted staircase
Inside my mind.
6
GETTING THE JOB & MAKING A DECISION
“YOU JUST NEED one little thing to hold on to and you can get through the day.”
That’s something my aunt Joan said. One year when she and my uncle George were visiting his family, half their ranch in Colorado got swept away in a mudslide. My mom and I went out to help with the cleanup. I remember the smell of the damaged house, damp and moldy, and how sad it was because so much of Aunt Joan’s stuff was ruined. She’s a quilter, and her bedroom and sewing room had both collapsed, with everything in those rooms just sliding down the mountain. On our second day there, we discovered a plastic box that had somehow stayed watertight. When she opened it and saw scraps of fabric she had been saving to make a new quilt, she said that quote about needing one
thing to hold on to and cried. Watsons don’t cry in front of people, so the moment was seared into my brain.
I was remembering it because that Sunday, Joy Banks called and offered me a job at Get Happy, which gave me something to hold on to. The call came while I was in the bathroom, just getting out of the shower.
“Aren’t you happy?” Joy asked.
“Absolutely. Thanks.” The relief felt sweet, all the way down to the soles of my wet, itch-free feet.
“I know this is all very quick, but the first gigs are February second. I’ll send an email with your training packet and your script attached. Print everything out. I’m hoping to have our training session next Saturday. Can you make it?”
I wiped the steam off the mirror. Minerva Watson was going to be an actual employee. Get Happy, Incorporated, was going to pay me to make parties fun. I smiled. Employment looked good on me.
“Can you make it?” she asked again.
“Yes, I’d be delighted,” I said with a new professional lilt in my voice.
“Excellent. Welcome to the Get Happy family. Look for the details in your email, okay?”
“Okay. Wait! Who else made it from the audition?”
“Actually, I’m adding all four of you to the roster. I’m calling Finnegan O’Connor next.”
I dried my hair and put together a genius outfit — employment is inspirational! — waiting to call Fin until I thought Joy would be done. Fin beat me to it.
“We got it,” he whooped. “I wasn’t even awake when she called. But then she called the home phone, and my mom woke me up and I was like, ‘Joy who?’ ” He started laughing. “This is going to be hilarious! You can’t be mad at me anymore. See, I knew you’d make it. You’re just as good as Cassie Lott.”
I laughed.
“We’re going to make us some money, sweetcakes,” he said. “I’m coming over so we can rehearse. I want to show you clips of Get Happy parties that I found on YouTube last night.”
