Tiffany Scandal - Jigsaw Youth

The pictures of him we had, he was very young, but who really knew what that teenage boy would grow into. In several of the photographs, he had long hair and a boy’s moustache so fine you knew he hadn’t yet learned to shave. I would imagine a day we’d finally meet.

His eyes would tell me he wished the recovery of lost time. So desperately the same, a mix of memories and imagination, an inescapable bond of blood over distance and years. We’d confess that in our dreams, we’d each found life. And he’d look like me, he’d act like me. I’d be my father’s daughter.

By the time these vague ideas were on the decline, I was a young woman. I had grown tits, I’d started my period. The myth had lost its luster. I turned seventeen, and if he’d wanted to know me by now, he would have found me. In a moment of necessary catharsis, I got out the typewriter and wrote him one last letter:

Dad,

Whoopty-fucking-do.

Ella

I folded the message and slid it in an envelope. Sat on the porch and held it over a lighter and watched it turn mostly to ash, leaving only the small corner I’d been holding onto. I let the wind take what was left and went back inside.

Then I was thirty and unmarried, which in Mexican years might as well have been sixty. I had no kids. I was covered in tattoos. I’d been photographed naked, or in my underwear, for some magazines. I’d never had a real job, and rarely stayed employed more than six months of any given year, bouncing between restaurants, bars and shows. I didn’t know whether it’d ever get better than it was.

The last week of July, a woman took me to the coast. We spent the day exploring Astoria, eating sushi and browsing antique shops. Lu, short for Tallulah, was someone new, someone exciting. We bought a set of oars and drove holding them out the window like we were paddling. It was the slowest date I’d ever been on. We parked at Cannon Beach and listened to music and watched the sky go from violet-red to blue-black.

The phone vibrated in my pocket.

The name on the message sent to my profile.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. No. I’m about to freak out.”

“What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s obviously something . Talk to me.”

“I think. . I think my dad just friended me?”

“Is this bad?”

“Considering I haven’t seen him since I was a baby, it’s hard to say.”

“Whoa.”

“Hold on.”

What it said:

r u isobella maria constanza marquez? is your birthday oct 17?

I was feeling like I’d swallowed a rock.

I read it again, trembling. Lu held my hand.

“Message him back.”

“I dunno.”

“Why?”

“I’m scared.”

“What’s he look like?”

We tried to creep his profile pictures, but due to the privacy settings, we couldn’t click past the first one. In this instance, my father was a cartoon character looking for a fight.

Eventually I replied, and we started exchanging messages. We talked on the phone. It took a year before I was ready, but I was finally willing to meet him.

The day we were supposed to, I changed my outfit over and over. I was running late. Clothes scattered all over the apartment. Lu offered to go with me, but I told her it was something I had to do alone.

I drove out to Mt. Angel, where he lived, and parked the car at a low-key diner, unsure as to whether I could go all the way. I went inside and got a coffee. I sat in a booth, staring out the window at the Rambler. I was surprised it had lasted this long. My hands cupped a mug of black coffee. I imagined getting so tense that I crushed the mug to dust between my hands. Everyone else in the diner seemed happy, calm, readying to start or end their shift. An hour passed.

Everyone walking by outside was potentially my father.

Everyone I’d passed in traffic on the way down, too.

I wondered if he thought I wasn’t coming.

A man walked in. He did a lap around the seating, looking for someone. His head was shaved to the skin. Oversized t-shirt, baggy jeans. Prison tattoos scattered around his arms. He spotted me and came over. We talked about what we didn’t have in common. He kept texting someone while I was talking, and ignoring me. I asked him who he was and why it took so long to find—

The phone vibrated again. Lu calling to ask how it was going. I looked across at the empty bench in front of me.

“It’s not.”

“What?”

“I’m down the street. I’m having second thoughts.”

“You can do this.”

“I really don’t think I can.”

“This is why I should’ve come with you.”

“I wish you were here.”

“You need to do this.”

I hung up, tapping on the sides of the mug, anxious.

Kids were playing in the parking lot, shouting about imaginary wars. Pretending to shoot each other. I started wondering whether rent was cheaper here.

“The smile suits you better.” The waitress had startled me. “Need a refill?”

I slid the mug her way. “Yes, thank you.”

“Let me know if you change your mind about food.”

“Sorry, yeah. I’m just working up the courage to move on. I’m supposed to be meeting my biological father for the first time.”

What I didn’t say was I was afraid he’d be ashamed once he saw me. That it seemed strange how something could make you feel like a child again, in the worst of ways.

“Does he live around here?”

“Elm Street?”

“Oh. So you’re Pablo’s kid?”

I scrunched my face and remained quiet. How small was this town?

“There’s definitely a resemblance.”

“What’s he like?”

“See for yourself, he’s right over there.”

The waitress pointed to a man sitting alone at the counter, his back to me.

He was hunched over, elbows on the table. Untucked brown flannel. Silver-streaked hair tied back in a ponytail. It occurred to me I was supposed to be meeting him at his home, and it didn’t look like he was going to be there.

“Hey, Pablo!” The waitress walked toward him. I wondered how fast I could run to the door, if I could do it before either of them noticed. I wasn’t ready. It wasn’t like we could take back the last three decades and start fresh. That distance would always be strong.

His panic seemed to mirror mine, eyes reading a kind of terror. The waitress goaded him up, but he was reluctant and stubborn. I stayed put and looked into my coffee. Maybe he would make the right choice and leave, and we wouldn’t have to do any of this. She prodded him forward until he was moving on his own. I hoped seeing was enough.

“Isobella?”

“I go by Ella now.”

He sat down, avoiding eye contact:

“So you’re here.”

“You too.”

“Must run in the blood, huh?”

I wanted to laugh. I coughed instead.

“So what happens now?” I said.

My family, Constance Ann Fitzgerald, Ladybox Books, Rios de la Luz, J David Osborne, Rose O’Keefe, Cameron Pierce, Kirsten Alene Pierce, Erica Danger, Chrissy Horchheimmer, John Skipp, Sean Leonard, Jessica Leonard, Robert Devereaux, Brian Keene, Deanna Uutela, Living Dead Magazine, Teresa Pollack, Lucas Mangum, Nathan Carson, Spike Marlowe, Kevin Shamel, Brooks Blackhawk, Sam McCanna, Nick Gucker, Suicide Girls, Gabino Iglesias, Erika Instead, Kevin Strange, the Riot Grrrls, Violet LeVoit, JS Breukelaar, and lastly, Michael Kazepis.

Tiffany Scandal is a writer, photographer, and Suicide Girl living in Portland, Oregon. Her words (fiction and non-fiction) have appeared in The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, Living Dead Magazine, a handful of anthologies, and the limited edition Ladybox Box Set. Her photography and modeling have appeared both online and in print.