Lettie
A few weeks ago I was hanging in Riley’s bedroom like my eight-year-old self, and suddenly I’m riding shotgun in her fancy BMW acting as her navigator.
Whatever. Life’s weird.
We’re on our way to see a woman named Monique LaSalle who lives in Revere. We’ve been getting DNA match results back at a steady clip. According to one of the ancestry companies, this Monique lady might be a direct relative of Riley’s bio-dad, but because of privacy settings we don’t have any contact information for her.
Naturally, we looked the name up online and found six possible matches, but only one in Massachusetts. We had a town, but no physical address. From my research into DNA ancestry tracking, I knew we’d get a better response making contact in person, so Rye and I decided on a surprise visit—but first we needed that address.
I turned to Google and found there’s this thing called the White Pages. I told my dad about it—not everything, just the White Pages—and he laughed. He said it used to get delivered to his house.
“They printed a book of people’s phone numbers and addresses?” I asked, horrified.
“Even better—you used to be able to call a number and they’d tell you the time.”
Wow, his life might have been even weirder than mine.
As it turned out, the online White Pages were quite useful. I put the name “Monique LaSalle” into the search field and the town of Revere. For five bucks we could look up twenty names, which made my dad’s printed copy clearly a bargain.
“North of Boston I’m okay with, but I’m not flying to Wisconsin or anywhere else to meet the other Moniques,” I told Riley. “If this lead is a dead end, we’ll stick to the phone, okay?”
Riley nodded.
“Remember, there might be some reason why she might not want to give up your bio-dad’s identity. But once she sees your best pleading look, I’m sure she’ll change her mind. Speaking of which, let me see you plead.”
Riley makes a face that looks like she just stepped on a Lego.
“Okay, maybe just smile politely,” I suggest.
“Thank you again,” Riley says, her eyes brimming with gratitude. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be going to some sketchy ’hood in Revere, that’s for sure,” I say, and we share a little laugh.
We have a long drive ahead of us—over an hour—and unfortunately that gives us plenty of time to have nothing to say to each other. We may have a shared mission, but that doesn’t give us a bond like Elliott and E.T. I’m not looking forward to a long stretch of doing nothing and saying nothing, so I suggest a Starbucks stop. If the Starbucks Corporation hadn’t committed to a resource-positive future, with a stated goal to cut its carbon, water, and waste footprints by half, I would have gone elsewhere.
Fifteen minutes later, we’re feeling the first sugar rush from our vanilla lattes (almond milk for me).
The next thing I know, Riley brings up Dylan. “How’s he doing?” she asks.
I don’t pull any punches. “He’s an absolute mess,” I say. “Not eating. Not sleeping. He quit the wrestling team, too—my uncle’s pissed about that. He’s hurting. Basically, it sucks for him.”
Sucks for me, too, because I feel responsible.
Riley turns her head so I can see the pain in her eyes. “I feel sick about it,” she says, sounding like she means it. “I wish I knew who sent him that picture. I’d kill him.”
I’m thinking: Get in line. I haven’t spoken with Jay since I confronted him. Obviously, I can’t let Riley know I was in the car with him that night, but now I can talk openly about Umbrella Man.
“So who is the lucky guy in that picture with you?” I ask. “Someone at our school?”
“No—he doesn’t go to school. He’s, um, older,” she says hesitantly.
“College?” I ask.
Riley gives me a telling look but says nothing more. I’m thinking about the second time I saw Umbrella Man, in the lobby of a hotel. I didn’t get a good look at him then, either, but something tells me he had his college diploma already in a frame.
“Riley, you need to be careful,” I say.
“I can handle myself.” She says it quickly, like a lie she keeps rehearsing.
“Older guys have a different agenda,” I say. “They want one thing.”
“I already gave that up,” Riley says.
I can’t help but laugh. “I’m not just talking about sex,” I say. “I’m talking about your emotions, about protecting yourself. These guys will use you and dump you like trash.”
Riley goes quiet for a time, lost in thought. Eventually she breaks the silence. “Are you one?” she asks me.
“One what?” I reply.
“A virgin.”
“A virgin?” I scrunch up my face at the word. “Honestly, that’s such an archaic concept. It’s just another way society labels women according to their sexual behavior.”
“Oh, give me a break with your causes, Lettie. Just answer the question. Have you or haven’t you?”
Since she’s being truthful, or so it seems, I decide not to lie. “No, I haven’t,” I tell her.
Riley doesn’t appear to pass any judgment. “That’s cool,” she says. “It’s good to wait for the right guy.”
“Or girl,” I remind her.
Riley eyes me crookedly. “Are you—you know, into…?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not. At least I don’t think I am.”
Riley laughs. “Well, it’s cool if you are,” she says, and pauses before tossing out, “So are you into me?”
I roll my eyes. “Does everyone have to be into you, Riley?” I crack a smile, letting her know I’m joking, and we both laugh a little.
“But I’m serious,” I say. “I’m worried about you. This older guy—can you give me a name?”
“Call him Guy,” Riley says, and there’s light dancing in her eyes that I think is the look of love.
“Okay, well, Guy makes me nervous,” I say.
“I can handle myself.”
There she goes with that lie again.
“Can you?” I ask, pushing because I’m genuinely concerned.
“I can.”
I let it go because we need to focus on getting to Revere.
About an hour later we’re driving down a narrow road with small houses crowded together. It’s nothing like Meadowbrook, with its wide leafy streets and lawns cared for like golf courses.
Eventually we pull up in front of a single-story white house that looks like it could use a new coat of paint … and a new driveway, new fencing, shutters, and some window treatments, but I’m not here to judge. I’m here to find a father.
We ring the doorbell. My heart is pounding in my chest. I can only imagine how Riley is holding up. I put my arm around her shoulders to give her a brief reassuring half hug. She looks at me gratefully.
“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her. “We’ll just introduce ourselves, explain who we’re looking for, and that’s it. Worst thing that happens is we have the wrong Monique.”
Riley steadies herself. She wipes her hands on her jeans. Sweaty palms. Nervous. We both are.
“Guess I’m more worried that we have the right Monique,” Riley says.
Moments later, the door comes open and we’re standing face-to-face with a woman in her sixties (maybe).
“Monique LaSalle?” I ask.
“Yes. May I help you?” She sounds ready to be annoyed if this is a solicitation that she’s not interested in hearing.
I’m looking at her closely—studying her, is more like it. There’s almost no resemblance between the two potential relatives. Monique has dark hair, thick cheeks, and some extra weight on her short frame. I look more related to Riley than she does.
“I’m Lettie Fox, and this is Riley Thompson. We’re from Meadowbrook, Mass.”
“Meadowbrook? Okay, that’s a long way to come to sell cookies.”
Riley and I look at each other, perplexed. Then we break into uneasy laughter once we finally catch on.
“Oh, we’re not Girl Scouts,” I say. “We did a DNA test.”
Monique’s face goes slack. It appears she’s put the pieces together rather quickly. “You got my name from the ancestry match. Is that right?”
We both nod.
“So which of you am I related to?”
“Me,” Riley says in a tiny voice. “I think we’re related.”
Monique invites us inside. It’s nicer than I expected—homey, even. I take note of too many figurines on display and too much floral-pattern furniture for my liking, but we’re not here to assess the home decor, either.
We settle ourselves in the living room and pull out some of the online reports we printed to make the sharing of information that much easier. Monique studies the paperwork for some time while we sit on cushy armchairs, drinking soda water flavored with cranberry juice.
“So I think I got it,” Monique says, but she doesn’t sound particularly pleased.
“Do you know him? My father? It says here that you’re a close relative.”
“I think, looking at this report … well, I’m really sorry to tell you this, Riley. But I think your father was my nephew Steve.”
I immediately key in on the word was and my stomach tightens.
“Steve was my sister’s only son,” Monique continues. “He passed away suddenly in a motorcycle accident five years ago. Heartbreaking for us all.” Her eyes glisten with emotion.
Riley sits very still, her expression impassive. Maybe it’s shock, I think.
“Steve was a truly wonderful man, troubled in some ways, with a touch of a wild streak. But he lived life to the fullest. I hate to be the one to tell you that he’s gone. I’m sure he would have loved to meet you. I know it’s not much consolation, but I’ll answer any questions you have.”
The next twenty minutes or so is a blur of the life of Steven Wachowski—aka Stevie the Wookiee, or Wookiee if you knew him well. We look at pictures in photo albums of Stevie in his younger days, looking all eighties hair band and dressed in tights that reveal way too much of the Wookiee for my innocent eyes.
“He loved his guitars—had about twenty of them that we eventually had to sell, couldn’t find a place to store them all. My sister didn’t have much room in her home to keep them, and what would she do with them all anyway?”
The weight in Monique’s eyes seems to drag her gaze to the floor. “Stevie would have wanted them to be played. I’m really sorry, because I would have given you one to take home with you.”
“That’s okay,” Riley says, “I don’t play any instruments.”
I have a passing thought about nature versus nurture. Might Riley have played something if Stevie had been around to guide her?
As we peruse more photos of Bio-Dad prancing about onstage, swilling beers at picnics, riding his motorcycle, and cavorting with all kinds of interesting tattooed types (many female and many young), it becomes increasingly obvious to me that Riley is struggling mightily.
It’s hard enough to discover that you have two fathers, but to find out one of them is dead and was named the Wookiee would be hard for anyone to process, let alone someone not quite eighteen. It may well be that the Wookiee provided Riley with half her DNA, but based on these photos, it was a half well-hidden. Maybe Riley got the shape of her eyes and lips from her father, but that’s about it. Certainly she didn’t inherit his love for rock, kegs, or tats.
We end up leaving Monique’s place with a copy of the Wookiee’s one and only professionally produced CD, an album titled Slather It On Thick. The cover shows a shirtless Steve standing in front of a white background, a close-up of his bare chest covered in finger paint being applied with gusto by a group of hand models. Neither of us can play CDs, but we don’t tell Monique this. We simply say thank you, exchange contact information, and away we go.
Riley is quiet on the drive back to Meadowbrook. I’m doing the driving because Riley’s too rattled to be safe on the road. I appraise her gingerly while she holds her gaze forward, avoiding any eye contact.
Finally I break the silence. “How ya doin’? Wanna talk about it?”
She gives me a cool sideways glance. “Definitely not,” she says. “Talking isn’t what I need.” Riley begins rummaging around in her bag. Eventually her hand emerges holding a pill bottle. Off comes the top and in goes a pill, which she chases down with a swig from her now-cold Starbucks drink. She puts the pill bottle back in her purse, knowing better than to offer me one.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Something to help me,” she says.
I won’t tell her that I already knew about her habit, but I won’t let it go, either.
“Are those prescribed?” I ask.
“To someone they are,” she says.
I think of Riley’s dad, Evan, and his red-rimmed eyes, and have an idea whose prescription it might be.
“I know the pills seem helpful, but you’re just masking the problem. Drugs aren’t a solution.”
“No offense, Lettie, but you don’t really know what I need right now.”
“No offense taken,” I say softly.
We barely speak for the rest of the drive home.
Riley gives me a hug in her driveway. “Thank you,” she whispers. “You’re the best friend I have.”
I’m sure she’s high. She’s not in her right mind. But that doesn’t stop me from hugging her harder.