Into all this, Spider’s truck returns from its extended scouting mission around two in the afternoon, but I don’t go outside in daylight. I stay here, in the damned house. I go out at dark. I go out when I can walk fast and be largely unseen. I want to go immediately, so I can talk to him before the rest turn me into the villain, and I actually get as far as the door, but I don’t. They’ll all know what I’m up to. It will just make it worse.
It takes Spider ten hours to respond to my text, my simple, Hey, when you get settled, come up to the house and hang. And when he does, Spider’s message is just Come down, man.
Spider sits on his trailer’s steps, playing his accordion again, managing to keep the song going as he talks.
“What happened while I was gone? Everybody looks like they saw a ghost!”
He’s been waiting all day to say this line, and from the way he laughs it met expectations. He’s gotten better. On the accordion, in just a few weeks’ time. The notes don’t come between labored pauses.
“How was Creole country? Must have been nice to have a paid vacation.” I’m not sure that Roslyn funded his trip until he says, “I know, right? It was sweet! I guess things are going well here, but even so, I’m definitely headed back. Already got a gig, too. No matter what, we should take a road trip. Just you and me. Dude out. You need a break.”
“I think I already broke.”
“Shut up. You lost your shit. I’ve lost my shit, found it, and lost it again a dozen times. And this whole mixed thing, it’s like racial sacrilege. Especially for the sunflowers.” He leans forward, lowers his voice. “For the Oreos, I think it’s a little easier, because they got a bit of that white entitlement in them, and they think they’re allowed to do whatever they want.” Leaning back, he returns to full voice. “Or that just might be my vestigial prejudice talking.”
I take a seat next to him, and a beer when he hands one over. We drink. Then I drink, and he plays the accordion some more. A sad song. “O, bonsoir Moreau,” he sings to me, and some other lyrics I don’t have the language to understand. I shoot the beer down before he finishes, grab another from his cooler. I am going to get drunk now. Since Tal’s gone.
“You want to find your shit?” Spider asks me, a six-pack in.
—
We are at Sunita Habersham’s trailer. It’s not that late, it’s only just after midnight, but the shades are drawn. Still, you can see the lights are on. It even comes through the doorjamb. Spider decides to go in on his own, have me wait outside, which is fine considering the delicacy of the situation.
He’s in there long enough for me to doubt he’s coming back out. I think, They’ve won him over, he’s gone to the other side, back to the feminine, away from me. But the door opens.
“What?” Tal asks me. Not even Hello. Not even, I missed you. “Spider says you have an eighteenth birthday present for me. I don’t believe him. I don’t believe you anymore.” Her last sentence, I don’t believe. She can barely say it. I grab Tal into a hug, and she’s not expecting it, almost falls over. I hold her steady and whisper, “I love you and will always love you and you can always trust that,” and don’t let go till she nods. And then I step back, and continue the previously scheduled performance.
“I have a present for you!”
“I don’t see any presents, Pops.”
“This!” My arms go out, up. I motion, circle, get a little dizzy, stop. “You see all around you. All this is yours! I am signing over Loudin to you. I’m signing the inheritance over to you! To do as you like! As long as that’s selling it and taking the money and going to Whitman College! And giving me the rest to live on!”
Tal looks around, caught for a moment, then says, “Wait, you were going to pay for the college anyway. That’s not really a gift.”
“But now you’re going to pay for it!”
Tal starts to walk away. I look up, at Spider, leaving Sun’s trailer, alone. The door shuts behind him. Spider shrugs. At least I got one of them, his gesture tells me.
“What do you want from me?” I yell after my daughter and it sounds annoyed and I don’t mean that so I try again with “Whatever you want, I’ll give you whatever you want,” which I immediately realize is something that should never be said to a teenager but, there, I’ve already done it. And this gets Tal to stop.
When she looks at me, I know she doesn’t know what she wants. Or she does, but they are not things a mortal can do. She waits it out though, thinks on it. I’m proud of her for that. The genie has granted the wish. She is trying to think of an answer better than “Three more wishes.”
“I want my Sesa tattoo. I’ve earned it.”
“You’re not eighteen yet. I said when you’re eighteen.”
“Dad. My birthday was two days ago.”
—
Tal’s arm is swabbed and prepped and Spider seems very professional about it, and I don’t want to be here. I want to end the day, admit defeat, call it a night. I want to end the month. I want to end the life. I can’t end my life because Tal needs me and that hurts, the lack of chance at the alleviation of pain, but she needs me. And I need to be a good father. I will never be a good father, though, so I just want to be a better father. The kind of father who buys a calendar and puts important dates on it. At least that kind of father.
“I’m so sorry,” I say one more time, then again with another “so” in it. I’m building a mountain of apologies. Tal isn’t answering me, she’s not talking to me at all, but I’m going to climb the mountain of regret and reach her someday, so it has to be tall.
Spider lays a stencil on her skin, presses it down, and I know that soon he will take a needle and pour ink into her bleeding flesh. There’s giggling from Tal as she’s branded with the preliminary etching. I don’t find it funny, because soon it will be permanent. To Spider she talks, even smiles, when he holds up her temporary design, the swirl outline with the Star of David on the inside.
“I was hoping you’d at least throw a little Gaelic twist in there, for your old man.” I try to play along.
“Do you want that, sweetie?” Spider asks Tal directly.
“No,” Tal says, so I know she can hear me.
After the design is pressed on wet paper to her skin, Tal looks at it in the mirror like it’s a good thing it will soon be made to last the rest of her life. Spider has the needles. Spider has the true ink. Permanence comes with pain, as always.
“Okay, now here’s the big question,” Spider says to her. He’s holding up what looks like an airbrush gun in one hand, and a ruler-sized wooden rod in the other. “Do you want to do this modern style, or do you want me to go the traditional hand-tattoo route?”
“Spider, you are not needling my daughter with a stick.”
“It looks primitive but actually hurts a little less. A little.”
“Honey, listen to me. This thing, it’s forever. Are you sure you really want this on your body forever? Are these people that important to you? This Mélange thing, I know you love it, but it’s only going to be a couple months in a long life. You’re off to college, then you have your whole—”
“Poke me with the stain stick,” Tal tells Spider.
“Is that okay, dad?” Spider asks me, and takes my shrug.
Tal flinches at the initial piercing. I go to her before I even think of doing it. Kneeling on the floor, I pat Tal’s head, transitioning from my hand to a towel when I feel the sweat beading on her brow.
“Pops? You have no idea how bad this stings,” Tal says finally. I don’t know. I am the last untattooed man on earth. I am He Who Has No Ink. Everyone else has made their decision, has chosen their totems. The lack of paint on my skin at this age — where it seems like even babies are written upon in the maternity ward — has made me the last of my own clan. We, the undecided.