Ink is Thicker Than Water (Entangled Teen)

by Spalding, Amy

  His house is bigger than Mom and Russell’s, and while it used to be entirely decorated in that modern style Sara loves, he recently switched it up to something he calls Japanese Pole House. I’m not even kidding. It’s nice, really, lots of screens and bamboo, and all the living room chairs and sofas are this beautiful jade green. The closest Dad’s been to Japan, though, is logging a lot of hours at the sushi joint near his office. Sara and I assume Jayne is to thank (or blame) for the décor shift.

  “Hey,” Sara greets me as I walk inside. We try to stick together scheduling our time at Dad’s because he’s a lot for one of us to take at a time. “Do you have plans tonight? Dad wants to take us out for dinner, but I have something scheduled already. It’ll be easier if we’re both busy.”

  “Yeah, I do have plans, and I’d cover for you even if I didn’t. You know that.”

  Sara smiles as she pours herself a glass of water. “I’d be a bad sister to drag you into a life of dishonesty.”

  “I don’t know, it sounds cool to get corrupted.” I leave my backpack and overnight bag on the floor and walk into the living room, where Dad’s working on his laptop. It’s nice, I guess, that if he can, he leaves work early when we’re coming over, but it’s not like he actually stops being a lawyer. “Hey, I’m here.”

  “There she is. How was school?”

  “It was fine. How’s the law?”

  “Very funny. Don’t report cards come out soon?”

  “I don’t know, like in three or four weeks.”

  He glances over at me. “Do you need some money to go shopping, kiddo? Those jeans look pretty old.”

  “Dad, they’re faded on purpose. I’m fine.” I sit down in the stiff chair opposite him, nervous even though one of my main reasons for submitting my cafeteria piece in the first place was Dad. “So I joined the newspaper staff.”

  “Since when do you write?” he asks. “Didn’t you get a B in English last year?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t memorize my grades, and also, English lit was really hard, all that stupid Beowulf stuff. I know a lot of people who got Bs.”

  “Your sister hasn’t gotten a B in her life,” he says as Sara walks into the room. “And a classic like Beowulf isn’t ‘stupid.’”

  “Yes, I have, Dad, in P.E. and in art, and I’ve also wondered why modern English curriculums still skew toward certain titles without incorporating newer ideas,” she says, and I wish I was that good at just shutting him down. “I talked to Kell, and she’s got plans tonight, too, so can we go out to dinner next time? Sorry, Fridays can be hard for us.”

  “Yeah, of course, girls,” he says, eyes back on the computer. Sara heads upstairs, but I stay in the chair, waiting for our conversation to start back up again. Regardless of my understanding of Ye Olde English, he must be happy I’m doing more with my life and joining up with a bunch of overachievers, right? He’s silent for what feels like forever, so I guess not. Finally I go upstairs, too, until it’s time to head out.

  When I get to Adelaide’s, I still can’t believe I’m there at all, much less on this very prime weekend night. But here is the thing: in less than a week, Adelaide has somehow become not a dorky girl I avoid but just a girl I know who seems really good at everything she does.

  “Come in.” Adelaide yanks me inside and slams the door. “Mom says moths fly into the house if the door’s open for longer than forty-five seconds. And then they might eat our good sweaters.”

  “That’s weird,” I say, like suddenly I’m one to judge about Mom Weirdness Levels. “Is everyone else meeting us here?”

  “No, everyone’s meeting us at Racanelli’s.” Adelaide ushers me right back out of the house, clearly really upholding that forty-five-second moth-flying rule.

  Adelaide drives north to University City, which despite its name, doesn’t have any more colleges than our town does. Its coolest section—called The Loop—does, however, have almost everything necessary to qualify it as cool: an amazing music store, dozens of ethnic restaurants, boutiques with ridiculously overpriced clothes I sometimes can’t help wanting even though I’m truly happy for the most part in my jeans and vintage T-shirts, vintage stores where I purchased some of said shirts, and the movie theater we’re headed to later that shows indie and cult movies.

  The only thing I don’t like about U City is that everyone else figured out it was cool long ago. It gets crowded.

  The small group of who I assume are Adelaide’s boyfriend and his friends from school is already crowded around one of the tables outside of Racanelli’s (they make the best pizza in town, and even though there’s one in Webster, the U City location is always worth visiting). A guy who has shaggy dark hair and a T-shirt calling for world peace and let’s face it, is gorgeous, jumps up to hug Adelaide.

  Whoa. Adelaide Johansson has an objectively hot boyfriend, and my mind is therefore blown.

  “Hey.” The guy who has to be Byron points to me. “Your mom did my tattoo. Check it out.”

  Before I can say anything, he whips off his shirt and turns away from me. I do recognize the tiny, crisp text inked on his back from Mom’s portfolio. Also: yowza. “Oh. Cool.”

  “Put your shirt on, Byron,” Adelaide says.

  (Nooooooo, don’t! I think.)

  “Kells, yo.”

  Even though I can’t think of anyone else in the world who would ever greet me that way, I’m still surprised to see Dexter walking toward me. “What are you doing here?”

  “O’Shea asked me.” He jabs an arm at Byron. “Why’s your shirt off, good sir?”

  “You guys know each other?” I ask, even though that’s clearly a pointless question.

  “Dexter was a year behind me at Chaminade,” Byron explains.

  “Hmmm,” I accidentally say aloud, because another person Dexter is a year behind at Chaminade is Oliver. If Byron is friends with one McAuley Brother, is he friends with both? I guess it doesn’t really matter, plus I don’t know how to ask without seeming like a weirdo. So instead of sticking around to make my hmmm seem normal, I head inside.

  “So.” Dexter walks in and gets in line behind me. “What’s Sara up to tonight?”

  It hits me that Sara’s plans aren’t with Dexter if he’s here with us. “Oh, actually I have no idea. I guess hanging out with Nadia and Cass.”

  “Cool.” Dexter hooks his thumbs in his jean pockets. “So what’s up with you?”

  “What do you mean what’s up with me? Like specifically? Or in general?”

  “Either or, Kells. It’s not a trick question.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, worrying we’re treading near dangerous Oliver waters here. Does Dexter even know anything’s up with Oliver and me? I don’t know what guys talk about, and even if I did, maybe brothers have different rules. But considering I’m still nervous just to think about Oliver, I am certainly not ready to discuss my status with him with his brother…who also happens to be my sister’s boyfriend. Way too much overlap here. “The same stuff. The usual. I don’t know.”

  Adelaide jumps right into line beside me, bumps against me like we’ve been friends forever. I think of Kaitlyn and how she’d always giggle a little when doing things like that, but also how she would probably hate everything about this night, except that Byron is hot and we all got to see his chest. Maybe I should feel guilty that I didn’t even try to make time for Kaitlyn this weekend, but I guess she didn’t really try to make time for me, either. Other than when one of us was out of town, I can’t remember the last time that happened. Maybe we can hang out Sunday after brunch.

  The movie is as bad as promised, but amazingly so: two stupid kids from Moosejaw, Canada, who have the worst music act in the world somehow getting an offer to basically sell their souls to the devil. The devil forces the whole nation to listen to their crappy disco rock, but then a hippie leader saves everyone by driving them into heaven in his flying Cadillac. Even though—unlike Adelaide and Byron—I can’t sing along, I laugh at the jokes people sho
ut aloud, I laugh at the terrifying new wave costumes, and I even shout out responses to the bad dialogue a few times like I’m an old pro at this sort of thing.

  And on the drive back to Adelaide’s, I have this warm feeling like this is the kind of night I should be having more. It wasn’t a weird night filled with dorky overachievers. Everyone is just a person, and no one (as long as you don’t count Adelaide or Byron or Dexter, of course) seems that much more achieving than me.

  Sara and Dad are already in the kitchen when I head downstairs the next morning. He usually takes us out for breakfast on Saturdays, even when we were both out late the night before.

  “…just a lot to deal with,” I hear Sara say as I walk into the room. Her voice is a little shaky, a quality I rarely hear from her. “The timing—”

  “Something about timing,” Dad says. “It’s rarely good. Trust me.”

  My foot accidentally collides with the open dishwasher door, which is loud enough as it is without the sound of me yelping.

  “Hey, there she is,” Dad says. “If I make it up to you, kiddo, would you mind a rain check on breakfast? Sara and I just have a lot to talk about, uh, with college, you know.”

  “Dad, we can talk about college in front of Kellie,” Sara says. “It’s boring but not private.”

  “We should keep your sister’s feelings in mind,” he says. “She’s just not going to have the opportunities you do, with her grades and all.”

  “I’m fine staying in,” I say, even though I do mind, in that part of my brain that understands just how disappointed Dad is that I’m not more like Sara and less like myself. I’m too old to act like it, though, and at least Sara shoots me an apologetic look, so I wave them off.

  Just as I’m ready to settle with a bowl of cereal on the chocolate-brown living room rug (I get too nervous about spilled milk, literally, to sit on that jade furniture) and the start of an America’s Next Top Model marathon, my phone rings.

  “Hey, baby, did I wake you?”

  “No, I’m up. What’s going on?” I try to sound calm, even though Mom rarely interrupts Dad days. “Is everyone okay?”

  “Yeah, baby, everyone’s fine. Do you have plans this morning? Jimmy just called out sick for the day. If you’re still interested, Russell and I thought you could stop by, learn the ropes, help out a little.”

  “I can have the job?”

  She pauses, which I know in Mom Language means she’s holding back from saying what she really means. Which is likely no. “How about a trial basis?”

  Obviously, within thirty-five minutes, I’m walking inside The Family Ink.

  “Kell-belle.” Mom beams up at me from her workstation, where she’s sketching out the city skyline. “I’m so glad you could make it. I know it sounds like a lot of work to be the only one making appointments and getting the phone, but I know you can handle it.”

  “You’re the one who didn’t want me to have the job. I also know I can handle it.” I walk into the tiny back room just long enough to dump my purse on the floor and help myself to a jelly-filled donut. “Where’s Russell?” I walk back into the main shop area after having shoved the donut into my mouth in two and a half bites. Disgusting but impressive. “Doesn’t he have appointments?”

  “He’ll be back soon,” Mom says. “Did you do anything fun last night?”

  I lick the tips of my fingers, still coated with sugar, and wait for Mom to scream about cleanliness and respect for the work environment. She does, I wash my hands at the sink, and I mention the movie like maybe my whole social circle didn’t just shift.

  Russell is there within a few minutes, with coffee for him and Mom and hot cocoa for me. Hopefully it’s just my imagination, but Russell’s expression is kind of downturned today.

  “Full beverage service!” I announce, and he laughs and claps me on the back.

  Russell’s first appointment is a lady around Mom’s age and a total mom type with a nice little helmet of highlighted hair and a sweater featuring three embroidered autumn leaves, who is getting a totally clichéd butterfly on her back. I take her deposit and copy her ID and get her to fill out her paperwork like I’ve done this a million times before. As far as jobs go, I haven’t hit the proverbial jackpot or anything, but it’s still a pretty swank gig. Mom and Russell don’t care if I kill time on the computer as long as I’m attentive when there are actually people who need my help.

  “You’re free until noon.” I walk over to Mom’s station after checking the appointment book. Her station is decorated mostly with pictures of all of us, but also some of the designs she’s working on (currently a flaming cup of coffee and a quote about a mortal coil I’m pretty sure is Shakespeare). “You know what you could do? If you’ve got extra time to tattoo…?”

  “No,” she says firmly, taking down the coffee design and erasing the top section of flames before redrawing them. When Russell draws, his movements are slow, methodical, but Mom’s pencil just flies across the paper.

  “Well, I have an idea,” I say like I didn’t hear or understand her. “You could give me a tattoo. You can even take it out of my first paycheck.”

  “First of all, Kellie, your first paycheck isn’t going to cover my rates. Secondly, you know how I feel about this. It isn’t happening.”

  “Why not?”

  “What tattoo do you want?”

  I shrug. “Something cool, maybe on my ankle, even though I know that’s totally a sorority girl place, only slightly better than your lower back—”

  “If you aren’t one hundred percent sure, baby, I’m not doing it.”

  “It isn’t fair. Don’t millions of people come in here and just pick out something crappy off the wall? Do you question all of them?”

  Russell looks up from the butterfly that was picked out from the designs on the wall and mouths we don’t insult the flash customers, which is one of his big policies. Flash is what all the ready-made designs are called. Since Mom and Russell prefer to do their own designs, it’s cool of them to make boring people feel at home, too.

  Still, I am making a point.

  “Kellie Louise, the difference is that I’m not any of those people’s mothers. When you’re eighteen, you can go to anyone and get something on the spur of the moment, but I won’t be the one to do that for you. When I ink you someday, it’ll be for something you know you’ll want forever.”

  The thing is, even though I don’t want to admit it, Mom is right. Not long ago I thought it would be cool to put a line from my favorite Beatles song around my wrist, and then after sitting in Oliver’s car after our awkward non-sex, I’m pretty sure I’d hate to look at those words every single day.

  “It’s so cute your whole family runs this shop,” says the woman mid-butterfly. “I just love family businesses, don’t you?”

  “They’re my favorite.” Mom tacks up the coffee cup sketch before getting out a fresh piece of paper and pulling down a book of fonts from her reference shelf. I’ve pointed out only twenty-seven million times she could be using a computer for stuff like that, but she swears it’s better this way. “I count my blessings all the time that Russell and I made this place work.”

  Mom says that a lot. It’s even quoted in the article from the Riverfront Times that’s framed here and also at home, “The Family that Inks Together Stays Together,” which features a huge picture of Mom and Russell at work in the shop, as well as them with all of us at Tower Grove Park, down the street.

  The article had unintentionally stirred up tons of drama, considering none of us knew Dad had kept pretty quiet about the subject of his divorce. It made it tricky for him to explain why his supposedly current wife was in the pages of the local alternative weekly next to his daughters, another man, and a punk rock toddler who wasn’t his.

  Mom is in the midst of telling Her Story to the butterfly woman, something else I’ve heard millions of times by now. “I’d just left my paralegal position because I couldn’t imagine doing that a minute longer. I was still so
rting out my life, looking for my raison d’être, you know. One afternoon after I had lunch with my sister at a café off Delmar, I was walking around, passed this tattoo shop, and just found myself going in.”

  At this point Mom always pulls back the left shoulder of her shirt, shows off the bluebird in flight inked in exuberant blues. I’ve asked Mom about the meanings of a lot of her tattoos (which is how I found out the snowflake on her forearm is for me, both because of my January birthday and apparently, my uniqueness, and the owl on her bicep is for Sara: wise and beautiful, I figure) but I never needed to with this one. Freedom.

  “By the time my artist”—Mom and Russell share a smile here—“had finished, I’d sorted it out.” Mom knew what she wanted in life: both the job and Russell.

  One part of the story she always leaves out was that she was still Melanie Brooks then, had still been Dad’s wife, had only been gone a day from the law firm where she and Dad had met. At home she’d prepared dinner like it was any other day.

  I can’t blame her for editing; the story is much sweeter her way.

  Russell jumps in right where he always does. “I had ten years of experience on her, but no one’s a natural like Mel. Most talented artist I ever worked with.”

  That’s actually my favorite part of the story. If Mom hadn’t known her real talent until she was over thirty, maybe there’s hope for me, too.

  “And you fell for her!” exclaims the butterfly woman, like this is the best love story she’s ever heard. Lady, see more movies.

  “How could I not?”

  I roll my eyes, because even though of course it’s the sweetest thing in the world, I understand the part I play at the shop. And teenagers are supposed to roll their eyes upon such utterances.

  After he puts the finishing touches on the butterfly, Russell and I walk down the street to pick up lunch. Even though it may not be my business, I decide to ask about the sadness that I swear has settled on him again.