Until I Find You

knew where to look for him. “We’re both music students,” the short one told him. “I’m studying church music, both choral and the organ.”

Alice stopped on the staircase as if she were out of breath. The two girls caught up to her on the half- landing between the first and second floors. Jack stood waiting for his mom on the second-floor landing, looking down at the three of them.

“Hello, Jack,” the tall girl said to the boy. “I play the cello.”

She wasn’t as tall as Ingrid Moe—nor as breathtakingly beautiful—but she had the same long hands. Her curly blond hair was cut as short as a boy’s, and over a cotton turtleneck she wore a grungy ski sweater with a small herd of faded reindeer on it.

The other girl, the short one, was plump with a pretty face and long, dark hair that fell to her breasts. She wore a short black skirt with black tights, knee-high black boots, and a black V-neck sweater that was too big for her. The sweater was very soft-looking and had no reindeer on it.

“Music students,” Alice repeated.

“At Sibelius Academy, Jack,” the tall young woman said. “Did you ever hear of it?” The boy didn’t answer her; he kept looking at his mother.

“Sibelius …” Alice said—in a way that implied the name hurt her throat.

The short, plump girl with the pretty face looked up the stairs and smiled at Jack. “You’re definitely Jack,” she said.

The tall one came up the stairs two at a time. She knelt at Jack’s feet and framed his face in her long hands, which were slightly sticky. “Look at you, Jack,” she said; her breath smelled like chewing gum, a fruit flavor. “You’re a dead ringer for your dad.”

Jack’s mother came up the stairs with the short girl beside her. “Take your hands off him,” Alice told the tall girl, who stood up and backed away from the boy.

“Sorry, Jack,” the tall girl said.

“What do you want?” Alice asked the music students.

“We told you—a tattoo,” the short girl answered.

“We also wanted to see what Jack looked like,” the tall young woman confessed.

“I hope you don’t mind, Jack,” the short one said.

But Jack was four. How is it possible that he remembered, with any accuracy, what Tall and Short truly said? Isn’t it more likely that, for days—for weeks, even months— after he met these girls, he would ask his mother the meaning of that conversation on the stairs in the Hotel Torni, and his mom would tell him what she wanted him to hear? It might not be Tall’s and Short’s actual words that he “remembered,” but Alice’s unalterable interpretation of William abandoning them.

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.