Until I Find You

by John Irving

  A group came from Italy. Luca Brusa (from Switzerland) wouldn't have missed it, he told Jack. Heaven & Hell came from Germany, Manu and Tin-Tin from France. The Las Vegas Pricks were there, and Hollywood's Purple Panther.

  They crammed the pews, the aisles--even the corridor, halfway to the gym. A small, frightened-looking gathering of Old Girls--Mrs. Oastler's trembling former classmates--were huddled in two front pews on a side aisle, where Ed Hardy, Bill Funk, and Rusty Savage appeared to have appointed themselves as the Old Girls' bodyguards. At least they weren't letting their fellow tattoo artists anywhere near these older women, who were (like the schoolgirls they'd been long ago) holding hands.

  Miss Wurtz had marshaled her two choirs--the boarders and the bikers--to take their positions on either side of the aisle, where these disparate groups faced the largely baffled congregation. The tattoo artists who hadn't arrived early could make no sense of "God Save the Queen."

  "Who's the Queen?" a broad-shouldered man in a bright yellow sports jacket asked Jack. He had so much gel in his hair, which stood straight up, that the top of his head resembled a shark's dorsal fin. Both the bright yellow jacket and the hair were familiar to Jack from the tattoo magazines he'd seen--Crazy Philadelphia Eddie; there could be no doubt.

  The Reverend Parker arrived late. "There was no place to park!" the chaplain peevishly complained, before he had a closer look at the congregation--the tie-dyed tank tops, the tattooed arms, the open collars of the Hawaiian shirts, the exposed chests, also tattooed. Real snakes and mythological serpents regarded the chaplain coldly; in the reptilian tattoos, there were creatures that the Garden of Eden and the Reverend Parker had never seen. There were many depictions of Christ's bleeding heart, bound in thorns--lacking the usual Anglican reserve. There were many skeletons--some breathing fire, others speaking obscenities.

  In the blaze of all this tattooed flesh, The Wurtz had outdone herself with "Lord of the Dance." The boarders, whom Leslie described as "a choir of not-quite virgins," sang all five verses--the bikers joining them for the five refrains. The wrecked blond boarder who'd lost her shoe at Emma's memorial service sang the fourth stanza solo, and a beautiful soloist she was; though they'd rehearsed this together several times already, she had the bikers in tears.

  I danced on a Friday

  When the sky turned black--

  It's hard to dance

  With the devil on your back.

  They buried my body

  And they thought I'd gone,

  But I am the Dance,

  And I still go on.

  When it was time for the chaplain to read the Twenty-third Psalm, it was warm in the chapel and some of the heavily tattooed types had taken off their shirts. They weren't all tattoo artists--there were many of Alice's clients present. Her signature work was everywhere; Jack recognized more than a few Daughter Alices.

  He also noticed that Mrs. Oastler was crying. She slumped against him in the pew, her small body shaking. That was how Alice's colleagues knew who she was. "I've got a sweetie in Toronto," Alice had told more than one of them. (As in: "No, thanks--not tonight. I've got a sweetie in Toronto.")

  "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want," the Reverend Parker began anxiously. He was thoroughly rattled by the time he got to "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will feel no evil--"

  " '. . . fear,' not feel, 'no evil--' " Miss Wurtz corrected him.

  ". . . fear no evil," the chaplain stumbled ahead. "For Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me."

  "Your what?" someone in the congregation said--a woman's voice. (Jack didn't see who said it, but he would bet it was one of the Skretkowicz sisters.) This was followed by general laughter; one of the Old Girls among Mrs. Oastler's former classmates was in hysterics.

  That was when Leslie lost it. "No praying, no saying anything!" Mrs. Oastler shouted to the chaplain. "Alice wanted just singing!"

  "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies--" the Reverend Parker mumbled; then he stopped. He saw the presence of his enemies, all around him.

  "Just singing, pal," Bad Bill Letters said.

  "Yeah--sing or shut up," one of the Fronhofer brothers said.

  "Sing or shut up!" Flattop Tom repeated.

  "Sing or shut up!" the congregation shouted.

  Eleanor, the organist, was frozen. Caroline sat down on the organ bench beside her. "If you've forgotten how to play 'Jerusalem,' Eleanor," Miss Wurtz said, "the good Lord may forgive you, but I won't." Eleanor, bless her timid heart, lurched forward; she attacked the keyboard. The organ was a little louder than expected, but the boarders' and the bikers' choir gave it their best.

  And did those feet in ancient time

  Walk upon England's mountains green?

  And was the holy Lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures seen?

  As they went up the aisle, Mrs. Oastler was swept into the arms of Crazy Philadelphia Eddie; she was overcome with emotion and didn't, or couldn't, resist him. All of Alice's friends had heard of Leslie and wanted to hug her. "It's Alice's sweetie," people were whispering.

  "Why do they know me?" Leslie asked Jack.

  "Mom must have told them about you," Jack said.

  "She did?" asked Mrs. Oastler, who was in tears. They were all in tears--all the tattoo artists, all of Daughter Alice's clients, and her friends. (It was a sentimental business, tattooing--as Leslie was only now discovering.)

  They were marching up the hall to the gym by the time the boarders and the bikers hit their full stride in the fourth verse; even Eleanor, with Miss Wurtz's encouragement, had kept up.

  I will not cease from mental fight,

  Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

  Till we have built Jerusalem

  In England's green and pleasant land.

  A bathtub-size bucket of ice, full of cold beer, awaited them in the gym; wine corks were popping. Huge slabs of roast beef and platters of sausages weighed down the picnic tables--not the usual cheese-speared-on-toothpicks fare.

  "Who ordered all this food?" Jack asked Leslie.

  "I did, Jack. Peewee had to make a few more trips."

  Wolverine Wally and Flipper Volkmann were having a heated argument. "A Michigan matter," Badger Schultz was saying diplomatically, as he forced himself between them. Badger's wife, Little Chicken Wing, had taken Mrs. Oastler's arm. Joe Ink, from Tiger Skin Tattoo in Cincinnati, placed his hand on Leslie's shoulder--the tattoo on the back of his hand was an ace of spades overlapping an ace of hearts.

  "If you're ever in Norfolk," Night-Shift Mike was saying to Mrs. Oastler, "I'll show you the town like you wouldn't believe!"

  "They loved her!" Leslie said breathlessly to Jack. "Invite them to stay, Jack," she added. (Slick Eddie Esposito was showing her the Man's Ruin on his belly; it was Daughter Alice's work.)

  "Invite all of them?" Jack asked Mrs. Oastler. "To stay with us?"

  "Of course with us!" Leslie told him. "Where else can they stay?"

  Maybe not the Skretkowicz sisters, Jack thought--maybe not both of them, anyway. Why not just the one who hadn't been married to Flattop Tom? But he realized you couldn't control a tattoo artists' party; you had to go with the flow, as Alice's generation would say.

  Miss Wurtz was in fine form, praising the bikers' first-time performance. Ever the nondrinker, Jack watched over the boarders like a sheep dog. But everyone was extremely well behaved, the dispute between Flipper Volkmann and Wolverine Wally notwithstanding--and not even that Michigan matter had resulted in a fight.

  It was a mild surprise that Mrs. Oastler's former classmates appeared to be having a good time, too. The Old Girls had not seen so much skin on display in a great while--if ever. The St. Hilda's gym was hopping; there was nonstop Bob Dylan on the CD player.

  From his mother's description of Jerry Swallow as a traditionalist, Jack should have recognized him. A pretty woman wearing a nurse's cap was tattooed on one of his biceps; it's h
ard to be more of a traditionalist than that. The writing on Sailor Jerry's shirt was in Japanese, as was the tattoo on his right forearm. "A Kazuo Oguri," he told Jack proudly. So Jerry Swallow had come all the way from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia--not to mention that he'd made over a hundred phone calls.

  "Old-timers keep in touch, Jackie."

  Jack thanked him for coming such a long way. "Life is a long way, young Mr. Burns," Sailor Jerry said. "Nova Scotia isn't all that far."

  Later in the evening, when Jack thought he'd introduced himself to everyone--the boarders' choir keeping him company like his not-quite-virgin guards--he spotted a recognizable presence at the far end of the gym. Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35" was booming from the CD player when Jack edged his way toward the shy, stoned figure weaving to the music under the basketball net. His dreamy countenance, the gray wisp of whiskers on his chin--as if, even in his late forties or early fifties, his beard still hadn't begun to grow--and something self-deprecating in his eyes, which were perpetually downcast, all reminded Jack of someone whose confidence in his own meager talent had never been high. (Not now, and not when he'd been Tattoo Theo's young apprentice on the Zeedijk.)

  "Not another broken heart," Alice had told Robbie de Wit, when she'd said good-bye. "I've had enough of hearts, torn in two or otherwise." Hence Robbie had settled for Alice's signature on his right upper arm--the slightly faded Daughter Alice that Robbie revealed as Jack approached him.

  "Still listening to der Zimmerman, Jackie?" Robbie said.

  Bob's refrain wailed around them.

  But I would not feel so all alone,

  Everybody must get stoned.

  "Still listening to den Zimmerman, Robbie."

  "I'm really not in the same league with these guys," Robbie de Wit told Jack, gesturing unsteadily toward the rest of the gym. "It didn't work out for me in Amsterdam."

  "I'm sorry to hear that," Jack told him.

  "I'm in Rotterdam now. Got my own shop, but I'm still an apprentice--if you know what I mean. I'm doing okay," he said, his head bobbing. The receding hairline had fooled Jack at first--as had the egg-shaped forehead and the deep crow's-feet at the corners of Robbie's pale, watery eyes.

  "What happened in Amsterdam, Robbie? What happened to Mom? What made her leave?"

  "Oh, Jackie--don't go there. Let dying dogs die." (Robbie meant "Let sleeping dogs lie," but Jack understood him.)

  "I remember the night she was a prostitute. At least she acted like one," Jack said to him. "Saskia and Els looked after me. You brought Mom a little something to smoke, I think."

  "Don't, Jackie," Robbie said. "Let it go."

  "My dad didn't go to Australia, did he?" Jack asked Robbie de Wit. "He was in Amsterdam the whole time, wasn't he?"

  "Your father had a following, Jackie. Your mom couldn't help herself."

  "Help herself how?" Jack asked.

  Robbie tripped forward, almost falling; he offered Jack the faded Daughter Alice on his upper right arm as if he were daring Jack to punch him on his mom's tattoo. "I won't betray her, Jack," Robbie said. "Don't ask me."

  "I apologize, Robbie." Jack was ashamed of himself for being even a little aggressive with him.

  Robbie put his hand on the back of Jack's neck; bowing, off-balance, he touched his egg-shaped forehead to the tip of Jack's nose. "Your mom loved you, Jackie. She just didn't love anybody, not even you, like she loved William."

  The Old Girls, not counting Leslie Oastler, had gone home. The single ones--especially those Old Girls who were divorced, and proud of it--took some of the tattoo artists with them. Mr. Ramsey, bidding Jack his usual adieu--"Jack Burns!"--had taken a tattoo artist home with him, too. (Night-Shift Mike from Sailors' Friend Tattoo in Norfolk, Virginia. Mike was indeed a friend of sailors!)

  Even Miss Wong, at last in touch with the hurricane she was born in, danced up a storm--most memorably losing control of herself on the gym floor, jitterbugging with both Fronhofer brothers to "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again." (Miss Wong went home with the better-looking brother.)

  Remarkably, the Malcolms stayed late--Mrs. Malcolm being unusually cheered by the presence of Marvin "Mekong Delta" Jones from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Marvin had lost both legs, and part of his nose, in the Vietnam War; he'd parked his wheelchair alongside Mrs. Malcolm's and had entertained both her and Mr. Malcolm with his hilarious stories, perhaps apocryphal, of trying to get laid when he was wheelchair-bound and had half a nose. ("Not everyone is sympathetic," one story began; he had Wheelchair Jane in stitches.)

  Miss Wurtz, who went home at a proper hour--needless to say, The Wurtz went home alone--brought the house down by singing along with Bob. Her renditions of "All I Really Want to Do" and "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" were haunting. Flattop Tom told Jack there was nobody like her in Cleveland; North Dakota Dan said there was no one like Miss Wurtz in Bismarck, either. (How, Jack wondered, had Edmonton been so blessed?)

  The Oastler mansion was a motel that night, the motorcycles stationed like sentinels on the lawn--some of them lurking close to the house, as if they were intruders seeking access through a window.

  Lucky Pierre passed out on the living-room couch, where he was covered by so many of the bikers' leathers that no one knew where he was in the morning--that is, until Joe Ink sat on him.

  Flipper Volkmann and Wolverine Wally had to be separated--that old Michigan matter again. They put Flipper to bed in Jack's former bedroom and made the Wolverine spend the night in the kitchen, where the less-good-looking of the Fronhofer brothers watched over him--the one who hadn't gone home with Miss Wong and the hurricane she carried inside her.

  Bad Bill Letters and Slick Eddie Esposito slept head-to-toe on the dining-room table, where their conversation about Night-Shift Mike, the sailors' friend, was overheard throughout the house. "You'd have to have your eyes in your asshole, Bill, to not know Night-Shift was a fag," Slick Eddie said.

  "Eddie, if you had your eyes in your asshole, you'd be the first to know Night-Shift was a fag," Bad Bill told him.

  "You're an asshole, Bill," Slick Eddie said.

  "Of course I'm an asshole!" Bad Bill replied. "Tell me somethin' I don't know." But Slick Eddie was fast asleep; he was already snoring. "Sweet dreams, assholes!" Bad Bill cried, as if he were addressing everyone in the house.

  "Sweet dreams, assholes!" Badger Schultz and his wife, Little Chicken Wing, called from the laundry room, where they were sleeping on the floor on an antique quilt.

  "Great party, huh?" Jack whispered to the Skretkowicz sister he was sleeping with in Emma's bed.

  "Yeah, your mom woulda loved it!" Ms. Skretkowicz said. She was, alas, the one who'd been married to Flattop Tom. She also had a fabulous octopus tattooed on her ass; it completely covered both cheeks. "Flattop Tom's work," she admitted a little sadly. "Not to take nothin' away from the octopus."

  Down the hall, Leslie was in bed with the other Skretkowicz sister. "She was a real sweetie," Mrs. Oastler would tell Jack later. It was no surprise to Leslie that the other Skretkowicz sister had never been married--not to Flattop Tom or to anybody else. (Her biting Jack's earlobe had been insincere.)

  Jack was awake for a long time, not only because of the tender ministrations of the former Mrs. Flattop Tom. Emma used to say that Jack's more than occasional sleeplessness was the plight of a nondrinker in a world of drinkers. (Jack doubted this.) It is fair to say that what the heterosexual Skretkowicz sister could do with the octopus on her ass would keep anyone awake for a long time, but Jack had more on his mind than that interesting octopus.

  He regretted, again, his bad behavior with Robbie de Wit, who had come all the way from Rotterdam out of his love for Alice. Understandably, Robbie would never betray her--to use his word for it. If Jack wanted to know those things his mom had kept from him, or how she'd distorted his dad's story in her telling of the tale, Jack needed to do his own homework--to make his own discoveries.

  Jack needed to take that trip he'd threatene
d to take when his mother was still alive. Not to find William, as Miss Wurtz had urged him--at least not yet. Not that trip, but the trip Jack had taken with his mom when he was four.

  Allegedly, when Jack was three, his capacity for consecutive memory was comparable to that of a nine-year-old. At four, his retention of detail and understanding of linear time were equal to an eleven-year-old's--or so he'd been told. But what if that wasn't true? What if he'd actually been a normal little boy? A four-year-old whose memory was as easy to manipulate as that of any four-year-old, a four-year-old like any other, whose retention of detail and understanding of linear time were completely unreliable.

  That was why Jack was wide awake. He suddenly knew it was a joke for him to even imagine he could remember what had happened to him in those North Sea ports when he was four, almost thirty years ago! That was the trip Jack needed to take--alone, or certainly not with Leslie Oastler. It was not only a trip he'd already taken; it was possibly a trip he'd largely imagined, or it had been under his mother's management and she'd imagined it for him.

  It was not the time to look for his father; it was the time to discover if William was worth looking for.

  They'd gone to Copenhagen first. His mother hadn't manipulated that; at least Jack knew where their trip had started, and where he would soon be returning. "Copenhagen," he said aloud--not meaning to. As unlikely as this may seem, Jack had forgotten about the Skretkowicz sister, whose strong thigh gripped his waist.

  She'd kicked the covers off; maybe the word Copenhagen had triggered something, because her hips were moving. Long-distance motorcyclists have a certain authority in their hips--in the case of Jack's Skretkowicz sister, even in her sleep. A green, somewhat startled-looking sea horse was tattooed on her forearm, which was flung across Jack's chest. The sea horse stared unblinkingly into the flickering light from the weather channel on Emma's small TV, which was on mute. The Skretkowicz sisters had a long ride ahead of them in the morning; the former Mrs. Flattop Tom had wanted to know the forecast for Ohio.

  There was a storm story on the weather channel. Palm trees were snapped in half, docks had been swept away in high seas, a small boat was smashed on some rocks, breakers were pounding--all without a sound. The blue-green light from the television illuminated the tattoo on Ms. Skretkowicz's hip; the light threw into relief the barbed dorsal spines near the base of a stingray's whiplike tail.