I kept looking at the picture, asking myself what had been in my head. How could they know me? They couldn’t tell if I was thinking about the letters to my mother, about what she’d do if she saw them. You can’t know someone from a picture. I had taken Shane’s picture around in Golden Gate Park and no one knew him.
The last week of class the teacher put up fliers in the building inviting everyone to a party. “Come meet the artists,” it said. She chose one photo from each of us and tacked them all on the wall, with little tags that had titles and our names. My picture was the one of Root, caught in the act. It had no title because I didn’t know what to call it.
The day of the party the teacher wore a long black dress and black scarf with dangling threads. She put out grape juice, pretzels and cheese cubes, and a book where people could write comments. I wore a clean shirt and jeans because I had found the washing machine, in a small room behind the kitchen. Cade came over and congratulated me. She probably was relieved I was still there, taking a class like I was supposed to. I stood next to my picture while she went to look around.
Ash came and stuck with me when he wasn’t grabbing handfuls of food. I’d taken so many pictures of him, straight and stoned, in front of the smoke shop, up at 40 Hill, lying on the grass when he didn’t know I had the camera, but I hadn’t shown those to anyone. I was trying to figure them out. I thought if I looked closely enough, I could understand what was going on with him and why he wanted to keep moving from one place to another. At night I stared at them, especially the ones where he was looking at the camera. I could tell he liked the photographer enough to stare right at her, looking uncomfortable and needy.
“Your picture is the best one,” he said, and put his arm around me. It wasn’t true because everyone had taken pictures that showed things about themselves that they weren’t saying out loud. Ash wanted to know why I hadn’t given it a title. I said it was because I still didn’t know what the picture said about me.
Ash tore a piece of paper out of the comment book and held it against my back while he wrote, like I was a table. I could feel the tickle through my shirt, but I couldn’t tell what he was writing. Ash taped the paper underneath my picture, a title in the blocky black letters he used for his signs. girl with family. I looked away from him.
“You’re sure not in there,” I said.
“It’s just a picture, Maddy.” He put a finger through a loop on the waist of my jeans.
The teacher tapped her hand on the wall a few times to get our attention and started in on a speech about how well we’d done, that it was a process of exploration that she hoped we’d continue. The pictures showed tiny moments that would ripple out through time. She went on like that. I missed the rest because I was thinking how I didn’t know anything about the future. That was left for me to figure out.
Ash helped clean up, even though I could tell he was ready to go. Every time he looked at me, he nodded his head in the direction of my room, like he couldn’t wait for the party to end so we could go up to my room and get into bed. The teacher came over and asked if she could keep my picture and enter it in an art show at the airport. If I won, I’d get a little bit of money. I couldn’t imagine people getting off planes and stopping to look at Root standing on my bed eating a power bar. They might think of me like those people the teacher had photographed with everything they owned piled in front of them.
“I guess so” was all I could get out because I had too many thoughts going on at the same time. She shook my hand and told me I should consider taking another photo class.
Back at my room, Ash lit a joint and handed it to me. Root, lying on the floor near the bed, raised his head like we were going to pass it to him. Ash sank on the bed. I fell back on his lap and kissed the small tattoo loop in the crease of his arm.
“Infinity,” he said. “My mother would shit if she knew she paid for it. But it kind of makes sense. Everything keeps moving forever, then goes back on itself. You can’t get away from that.” He took another hit and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know what I’m saying.” I took the joint and stubbed it out on the floor, where it left a burn spot that was probably going to get me in trouble. I didn’t want to be high right then.
“I’m going to Los Angeles. Root and I are.” As soon as I heard myself, I knew I meant it. I’d spent all that time writing to her, but I had to see her.
Ash sat up fast and put his arms around my waist. I rested my face against his neck. I said my mom was still in Los Angeles. Dave and Marva found the place where she lived, but they didn’t see her. I was talking into his chest so I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Maybe he couldn’t hear. I said my mom had something wrong with her brain. It happened so slowly I almost didn’t notice, until one day she could hardly get out of bed. They took her to the hospital and the last time I visited she was too hollowed out to talk to me.
I talked quickly, hoping that would make me seem less hopeless. I said I might wake up and be like her. No warning. One minute I’d make sense and then I would be off somewhere in my head, psychotic. I thought about the map of the park I’d divided into sections. This one would be bigger, less knowable.
“We’ll come back. They’ll let me keep my room if I’m just gone for a week.” I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t tell him that.
Ash said he could go with me, like it was no big deal I had a mom who was out of her mind. But I told him I had to go alone. He became still, the way he was when he was hurt and didn’t want anyone to notice. I told him he could stay in the room while I was gone. He said that was not going to happen. Then he pulled me up and said we should take a walk.
Downstairs, everything was cleaned up. The security man, staring at his phone, didn’t look at us when we left. Most of the stores on the street were dark, but a few blocks away a blue neon sign glowed on the door. A bell tinkled when Ash opened the door. He slapped shoulders with the guy at the front desk, who asked us what we wanted.
“I can draw her name right on your heart,” he said. “Or on your arm. Some guys don’t like it on the heart. You tell me. All my work is custom. You won’t go out looking like anyone else.”
I told Ash it was stupid, having my name on him. I didn’t want to have to think of it there, forever. How did I know what was going to happen? And why would he spend money on something like that? Ash said not to get worked up, he didn’t plan to put my name on his heart. He wanted to know why I always tried to ruin everything. I didn’t try, I said, it just happened. Ash went over and picked up a thick notebook with pictures of tattoos.
“You see something you like, let me know,” the guy said.
I turned to him and held out my arm. “Same as his,” I said.
Ash looked like he didn’t believe me, but he held Root’s leash while the guy settled me in a chair and angled it back.
“Tell me about your tolerance for pain,” he said. He told me I’d need to take some deep breaths when he started with the needle. Some people jumped out of the chair or fainted. But that was rare, in his experience. Most people were up for the hurt. Every spot on his arms was covered, a huge ruby rose, a woman’s head with hair made of snakes, a field of black crosses, all shimmering under the bright light. I closed my eyes while he got ready and Karen’s words kept repeating in my head. You will be damaged goods.
“No,” I said, sitting up. “I’m not up for hurt.”
The guy’s goatee was right above my arm, where he was sketching the tattoo with a marker. He stopped and pushed his chair away.
“You get another one, if that’s what you want,” I said to Ash.
“You’re not coming back from Los Angeles,” he said.
“This is going to make me want to?” I climbed out of the chair and took Root’s leash from him. “Besides, it’s your tattoo. It has nothing to do with me.”
“I got it when my grandfather died,” he said. “He had cuff links in the same shape. I wasn’t ever going to wear those.”
The guy went to th
e front desk and said to come back when we figured out what we wanted. Ash rolled his sleeve back down over his tattoo and I felt a small ache that he could see a sign of his grandfather every day. The guy stood by the door and crossed his illustrated arms in front of his chest when we walked out.
Ash said we should walk the whole way to Los Angeles. He knew people who’d done that. You could follow the freeway or, if it was too hot, you could hike along the ocean. It might be possible to swim the rest. Once you got halfway there, the water would be warm. He kept talking, as if he thought we were already on our way.
When we got to my room, I reminded him that he was not coming with us. He sat on the bed with his back against the wall, watching me stuff extra clothes and food for Root in my pack. I’d tell him in the morning that Cade already bought me a bus ticket, both ways. It had nothing to do with him. Ash got under the covers.
“Wake me up when you finish packing,” he said.
Then he was out, like he’d turned off a switch. I thought about taking the letters, dumping them in my mom’s lap, here’s the truth about the twelve years you missed. But I knew I’d leave them hidden. I’d written them for myself. I put my pack by the door, climbed in bed next to Ash and held on to him, telling myself, for one minute, let this feel like home.
Acknowledgments
Over years of living and working in San Francisco, I’ve watched several cycles of boom and bust, each one carving a deeper economic divide. This is a work of fiction, not based on actual persons, but I want to acknowledge individuals on the city’s streets, in the park, and in shelters who spoke with me, as well as people working to help them. Certain facts and events are true: It has gotten harder to afford a stable life in the city. In California, a state with the world’s fifth-largest economy, the number of unsheltered people reportedly grew by 16 percent from 2018 to 2019. When community groups gathered one chilly December night in 2019 for a yearly vigil to remember those who died homeless or in marginal housing, they called out 275 names. And all of this was before the COVID-19 pandemic, which landed more people on the streets.
I am deeply grateful to Barbara Kingsolver and the judges of the PEN/Bellwether prize for believing in this book. And huge thanks to my editor, Kathy Pories, for her invaluable insights, to the whole team at Algonquin Books, and to my agent Danielle Bukowski.
Thank you to Fenton Johnson and Jo Kaufman for reading early versions of the book, and to Candy Cooper and Bob Weisbuch, who listened to the first chapter around their kitchen table many years ago. I am grateful to the many colleagues, editors, and longtime friends who have supported me along the way. Thank you also to the wonderful community at the Writers Grotto in San Francisco, which made me feel like I wasn’t alone. And I will always be grateful to John L’Heureux, a legendary teacher who was the head of Stanford’s Creative Writing Program.
Thank you to my parents, Dorothy and Ewing Seligman, my sister Ginny, Rich Strock and the entire Heiden family for all their support. And, above all, thank you to Matthew and Halle for inspiring me every day, and to David Heiden, whose words and love give me hope.
About the Author
Katherine Seligman is a journalist and author who lives in San Francisco. She has been a writer at the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, a reporter at the San Francisco Examiner and a correspondent at USA Today. Her work has appeared in Redbook, Life, Money, California Magazine, the anthology Fresh Takes and elsewhere.
Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2021 by Katherine Seligman.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034563
eISBN 978-1-64375-115-3
At the Edge of the Haight Page 23
