Until I Find You

Nova Scotia. A woman, maybe Jerry’s wife, answered the phone. Jack asked her to please tell Jerry that Daughter Alice had died. To his surprise, the woman asked him where and when there was going to be a service. Jack gave her the details over the phone—little suspecting that Sailor Jerry, and all the rest of them, would show up.

Jack didn’t call Tattoo Ole or Tattoo Peter—they were both dead. Tattoo Theo wasn’t on Alice’s list; probably he had also died.

Doc Forest was the second tattoo artist Jack called. Doc was still in Stockholm. Jack recalled Doc’s forearms (like Popeye’s) and his neatly trimmed mustache and sideburns—his bright, twinkling eyes. Jack remembered what Doc had said to him, too—when Jack and his mom were leaving Sweden. “Come back and see me when you’re older. Maybe then you’ll want a tattoo.”

Doc regretted that he couldn’t come such a distance for Alice’s service, but he said he would pass along the sad news. Jack thought it must have been simply a courtesy on Doc’s part—to even mention undertaking such a journey. Doc had last seen Alice at a tattoo convention at the Meadowlands, in New Jersey. “She was a maritime girl,” the former sailor told Jack, his voice breaking—or maybe it was the long-distance connection.

Jack next called Hanky Panky—the tattoo name for Henk Schiffmacher—at the House of Pain in Amsterdam. Schiffmacher had written several books, the famous 1000 Tattoos among them; many of the illustrations in that book were collected at the Tattoo Museum in the red-light district. Alice had believed that Hanky Panky was one of the best tattoo artists in the world; she’d met him at any number of tattoo conventions, and she’d stayed with him and his wife in Amsterdam. Henk Schiffmacher was sorry he couldn’t come all the way to Canada on such short notice. “But I’ll pass the word,” he said. “I’m sure that a lot of the guys will show up.”

It was only later—actually, on the night before Alice’s memorial service at St. Hilda’s—that Leslie informed Jack that she’d called a different threesome of tattoo artists. Alice had given Leslie another list; this one also had “just a few” names to call.

“Who were they?” Jack asked Mrs. Oastler.

“Jesus, Jack—I can’t possibly remember their names. You know what their names are like.”

“Did you call Philadelphia Eddie?” Jack asked. (Make that Crazy Philadelphia Eddie.) “Or maybe Mao of Madrid, or Bugs of London—”

“There were three guys,” Leslie informed him. “They were all in the United States. They all said they’d pass the word.”

“Maybe Little Vinnie Myers?” he suggested. Or Uncle Pauly, Jack imagined—or Armadillo Red. He’d never met them, but he knew their names.

“Well, they won’t come, anyway,” Mrs. Oastler said, but she didn’t sound so sure.

“What’s the matter, Leslie?”

Mrs. Oastler was remembering what one of them had asked her, when she’d given the guy the bad news. “Where’s the party?” the tattoo artist had inquired.

“He said ‘party’?” Jack asked Leslie.

“Isn’t that all they do, Jack? At least that’s my impression. All they do is party!”

This gave them both a bad night’s sleep. About 2:00 A.M. Mrs. Oastler got into Emma’s bed with Jack, but she wasn’t interested in holding his penis.

“What if they all come?” Leslie whispered, as if Alice were still alive or somehow capable of overhearing them. “What will we do?”

“We’ll have a party,” he told Mrs. Oastler, only half believing that it might be true.

In the morning, while Leslie was making coffee, Jack answered the phone in the kitchen. It was Bruce Smuck, a Toronto tattoo artist and a good friend of Alice’s; she’d liked his work and had been something of a mentor to him. He’d already called Leslie and offered his condolences; now he was calling to ask what he could bring.

“Oh, just bring yourself, Bruce,” Jack answered cluelessly. “We’ll be glad to see you.”

“Was that Bruce Smuck again?” Mrs. Oastler asked, after Jack hung up the phone.

“He wanted to know if he could bring something,” Jack said, the gravity of Bruce’s offer slowly sinking in.

“Bring what?” Leslie asked.

Bruce must have meant booze, Jack thought. Bruce was a nice guy—he was just offering to help out. Obviously Bruce expected a mob!

Jack called Peewee on his cell phone and increased the original liquor-store order from a case each of white and red wine to three cases of white and five cases of red. (From what Alice had told Leslie, the majority of tattoo artists were red-wine types.)

“Tell Peewee to go to the beer store, too,” Mrs. Oastler said. “The bikers drink a lot of beer. Better fill the fucking limo with beer—just in case.” Leslie was sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, inhaling the steam from her coffee cup; she looked like someone who’d recently quit smoking and desperately wanted a cigarette.

Jack poured himself a cup of coffee, but the phone rang before he could take his first sip. “Uh-oh,” Mrs. Oastler said.

It was a Saturday morning—Alice’s evensong service was scheduled for five-thirty that afternoon—but Caroline Wurtz was calling on her cell phone from the St. Hilda’s chapel, where she and the organist and the boarders’ choir were already practicing. When Jack answered the phone, he could hear the organ and the choir better than he could hear Caroline.

“Jack, a quandary has presented itself—in clerical form,” Miss Wurtz whispered. She sounded as if she were in Emma’s bed with him—as Jack had so often dreamed—and his mother was within hearing distance, down the hall.

“What quandary is that?” Jack whispered back.

“The Reverend Parker—our chaplain, Jack—wishes to lead the congregation in the Apostles’ Creed.”

“Mom requested no prayers, Caroline.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I told him.”

“Maybe I should tell him,” Jack said. He’d met the Reverend Parker only once. Parker was a young twit who’d felt excluded from Emma’s memorial service; hence he was inserting himself in Alice’s.

“I think I can negotiate with him, Jack,” Miss Wurtz whispered. In the background, the organ was fainter now—the girlish voices from the boarders’ choir were less and less distinct. The Wurtz must have been retreating from the chapel with her cell phone; Jack could hear the squeak of her shoes on the linoleum in the hall.

“What might be the terms of your negotiation?” he asked.

“Let him lead the congregation through the Twenty-third Psalm, since he evidently wants to lead us through something,” Caroline said more loudly.

“Mom said nobody should say anything. Aren’t psalms like prayers?”

“The Reverend Parker is the chaplain, Jack.”

“I like the Twenty-third Psalm better than the Apostles’ Creed,” Jack conceded.

“There appears to be another small quandary,” Miss Wurtz went on. Jack couldn’t hear the organ or the choir at all. Caroline must have walked all the way down the hall to the main entrance, yet he was having trouble hearing her again; this time, it wasn’t the organ or the boarders’ choir that was causing the interference. “Goodness!” The Wurtz exclaimed over the throttling engines, a near-deafening sound. (Another quandary had presented itself—this one, Jack guessed, was not small.)

“What is it?” he asked, although he already knew. At the tattoo conventions, his mother used to tell him, the bikers always arrived early; perhaps they wanted to be sure they had a good place to park.

“My word, it’s a motorcycle gang!” Caroline cried, loudly enough for Mrs. Oastler to hear her. “What on earth is a motorcycle gang doing at an all-girls’ school?”

“I’ll be right there,” Jack told her. “Better lock up the boarders.”

“Your mother has cursed us, Jack—this is just the beginning,” Leslie said, still holding her head in her hands.