John Irving - Until I Find You

There would be times when Jack Burns felt he was still on those stairs—not only because the elevator was more than temporarily out of service, but also because Jack would spend years trying to discern the difference between his mother’s version of his father and who his father really was.

Jack did remember this: when his mom started up the stairs again, he had not let go of her hand. The music students kept pace with them, all the way to their floor. Jack could tell that his mother was agitated because she stopped at the door to their room and fumbled around in her purse for the key. She’d forgotten that Jack had it—that was part of their routine.

“Here,” he said, handing the key to her.

“You could have lost it,” she told him. Jack didn’t know what to say; he’d not seen her so distracted.

“Look, we just wanted to meet Jack,” the tall young woman went on.

“The idea for the tattoo came later,” the short one said.

Alice let them into the room. Again it seemed to Jack that his mom already knew them. Inside the room, Alice turned on all the lights. The tall girl knelt at Jack’s feet once more. She might have wanted to take his face in her hands again, but she restrained herself—she just looked at him.

“When you get older, Jack,” she said, “you’re going to know a lot of girls.”

“Why?” the boy asked.

“Be careful what you tell him,” Alice said.

The short girl with the pretty face and long hair knelt at Jack’s feet, too.

“We’re sorry,” the two girls said, in chorus. Jack couldn’t tell if they were speaking to him or to his mom.

Alice sat down on the bed and sighed. “Tell me about this tattoo you want to share,” she said, staring at a neutral zone between the two young women—purposely not looking at either one of them. Alice must have sensed an aura of wantonness about these brave girls, and she knew Jack was affected by them.

The tattoo Tall and Short wanted to share was another variation of a broken heart—this one torn apart vertically. The left side would be tattooed on the heart-side breast of the tall young woman; the right side would go on the heart-side breast of the short one. Not a very original idea, but even Jack was learning that there was little originality in the instinct to be tattooed. Not only were broken hearts fairly common; the ways to depict them were limited, and the part of the body where a depiction of a broken heart belonged was self-evident.

In those days, a tattoo was still a souvenir—a keepsake to mark a journey, the love of your life, a heartbreak, a port of call. The body was like a photo album; the tattoos themselves didn’t have to be good photographs. Indeed, they may not have been very artistic or aesthetically pleasing, but they weren’t ugly—not intentionally. And the old tattoos were always sentimental; you didn’t mark yourself for life if you weren’t sentimental.

How could tattoos be original, when what they signified was something ordinary? Your feelings for your mother; the lover who left you; the first time you went to sea. But these were mostly maritime tattoos—clearly sailors were sentimental souls.

So were these music students, Tall and Short. They may have been vulgar, but Alice didn’t seem to hate them—and they were old enough to be tattooed. Even to Jack, they were noticeably older than Ingrid Moe.

The tall one’s name was Hannele; under her faded-reindeer sweater and the cotton turtleneck, she wasn’t wearing a bra. Despite Jack’s precocious interest in breasts, what struck him most about Hannele was that her armpits were unshaven. She was a broad-shouldered young woman with breasts not much bigger than Ingrid Moe’s, and the astonishing hair in her armpits was a darker blond than the hair on her head. Over her navel, like a crumpled top hat the color of a wine stain, was a birthmark the shape of Florida.

When Alice began with the Jonesy roundback, Hannele pursed her lips and whistled. Jack had trouble following the tune over the sound of the tattoo machine. Hannele had placed herself on the window seat, with her legs spread wide apart. It was a most unladylike position, but Hannele was wearing blue jeans and she was, after all, a cellist; no doubt she sat that way when she played.

Years later, when a naked woman played the cello for Jack, he would remember Hannele and wonder if she’d ever performed naked for William. Jack would again feel ashamed that he might have such a moment in common with his dad. He would understand what must have attracted William to Hannele. She was a brave girl, without question; she went right on whistling, even when Alice’s outline of her half-a-heart touched her rib cage.

While Alice was shading Hannele’s broken heart with the Rodgers, Jack sat on the big bed with the short, plump girl. Her name was Ritva; she had bigger breasts than Hannele, and Jack was trying to stay awake until it was Ritva’s turn to get her half-a-heart.

He must have looked sleepy because his mom said: “Why don’t you brush your teeth, Jack, and get into your pajamas.”

The boy got up and brushed his teeth in the sink, where he was repeatedly told not to drink the water. Alice kept a pitcher of drinking water on the washstand, and Jack was instructed to rinse his mouth out with the drinking water after he brushed his teeth.

He put on his pajamas while hiding behind the open door to the wardrobe closet, so that neither Ritva nor Hannele would see him naked. Then he got back on the bed beside Ritva, who pulled the bedcovers down. Jack lay still, with his head on the pillow, while Ritva tucked him in. There was only the sound of the tattoo machine and Hannele’s faint but brave whistling.

“Sweet dreams, Jack,” Ritva said; she kissed him good night. “Isn’t that what you say in English?” she asked Alice. “ ‘Sweet dreams’?”

“Sometimes,” Alice said. Jack noticed the truculence in her voice; it seemed unfamiliar to him.

Maybe “sweet dreams” was a phrase William used. It could have been something he’d said to Alice and Ritva and Hannele—because Hannele’s brave whistling stopped for a second, as if the pain of the shading needles on her left breast and that side of her rib cage had suddenly become unbearable. Jack guessed it was the “sweet dreams” that had hurt her, not the tattoo.

The boy was fighting sleep; involuntarily, his eyes would close and he would reach out his hand and feel Ritva’s soft sweater and the fingers of her warm hand closing around his smaller fingers.

Jack might have heard his mother say, “I don’t suppose you know where he’s gone.”

“He didn’t tell us,” Hannele may have answered, between whistles.

“He’s got you and Jack hounding him,” Jack distinctly heard Ritva tell his mom. “I guess that’s enough.”

“He said ‘hounding,’ did he?” Alice asked.

“ I said it,” Ritva told her.

“We say it all the time,” Hannele said.

“Wouldn’t you agree that Jack is his responsibility?” Alice asked them.

They both agreed that Jack was his father’s responsibility, but this was one of those Helsinki conversations that the boy at best half heard in his sleep. Jack woke once and saw Ritva’s pretty face smiling down at him; from her expression, he knew she must have been imagining his dad in the unformed features of Jack’s face. (Even today, Jack occasionally saw that pretty face in his dreams—or when he was falling asleep.)

He never did get to see Ritva’s plump breasts—or learn if her armpits were unshaven, like Hannele’s. When he woke again, Hannele’s sleeping face was on the pillow beside him; she was wearing the cotton turtleneck but not the ski sweater. She must have fallen asleep while she was waiting for Alice to be finished with Ritva’s half-a-heart tattoo. Jack could hear the tattoo machine, but his mother blocked the boy’s view of Ritva’s breasts and armpits. Over his mom’s shoulder, Jack could see only Ritva’s face; her eyes were tightly closed and she was grimacing in pain.