Catherine (2 page)

My heart sped up as my eyes traveled down the screen. So the county sheriff thought
my mom was still alive somewhere in New York! It seemed at least as likely as any
other possibility. What if all these years she’d been hoping I would figure out the
truth and come find her? Then again, why hadn’t she simply come to me? If she’d really
been alive all this time, and hiding out somewhere, why not call and tell me she was
okay?

But maybe she
had
tried to get in touch. Dad’s job-hopping and our moving around from one town to the
next would have made it hard for her to track us down. And our phone number
was unlisted (“So students won’t call and wheedle me to change their grades,” Dad
had said). Of course Mom could have found Dad’s work number online. But what if she
hadn’t wanted to talk to
him
? What if she knew he was trying to keep me away from her? He’d kept that letter from
me. Plus, the article said my mother had sent “letters,” which meant there must have
been others.

Unable to sit still a second longer, I paced the house on shaky legs, every familiar
piece of furniture suddenly strange, as though I’d woken up in somebody else’s life.
On the living room bookshelf, the framed photo of Dad and me goofing around at Wingaersheek
Beach might as well have been a photo of two strangers. Who was that man—his blond
hair dripping with salt water, his eyes the same clear green as the ocean sparkling
behind us? Some guy who had been lying to me for fourteen years straight.

At first I rehearsed the speech I was going to give when he got home, muttering the
words as I paced. I would expose him for the liar he was.
How can you live with yourself? Don’t you think it’s time you told me the truth?

But as soon as I’d figured out exactly what I would say, I realized it was no good.
I knew he’d say he’d only been trying to protect me, and I wasn’t in the mood for
his excuses. No: What I wanted was to get away from him. I wanted to find out the
truth for myself. And more than anything, I wanted my mother.

Dad stayed at his office even later than usual, so I had a long time to piece together
a plan. The first step was obvious: I had to get to New York City. I would start with
the letter’s return address, knock on the door, and figure out where to go from there.
Luckily, my seventeenth birthday was just a few days away. I knew Dad would give me
a check, the way he’d done since I turned twelve and stopped wanting Barbie and her
Dream House; I guess after that, he couldn’t figure out what to get me anymore. That
was around the time I quit doing the things he wanted me to—swim team, piano lessons,
and getting straight As—and we stopped having much of anything to say to each other,
to the point where all he ever wanted to talk about was why I hadn’t made a list of
colleges to apply to and why I didn’t already know what I wanted to major in. How
many times had I heard about my mother’s great sense of purpose and direction, how
she’d always known she wanted to be a writer and go to Harvard, and, sure enough,
she’d applied herself and gotten in? How many times had I asked myself why I couldn’t
be more like my perfect mother?

Well, the joke was on Dad. I was about to become a whole lot more like my mom. Now
I had a purpose—finding her—and a direction—as far away from him as I could get.

As it turned out, I was right about getting a check for my birthday. Dad handed me
the envelope and stood in the kitchen doorway waiting for me to rip it open. He was
on his way to his office, of course. He fidgeted in his checked shirt and dorky tie
as I read my card and examined its contents. Five hundred dollars. More than I’d expected.
I should have been glad—after all, I needed the money—but I couldn’t help feeling
let down that it wasn’t something more personal or fun—an iPhone, maybe, or a boxed
DVD
set of
The X-Files
, something that showed he had thought even the tiniest bit about what I wanted and
who I was.

Even so, as I thanked him and let him kiss me on the cheek, I felt a twinge of sadness.
I knew he would worry about me when I was gone; he
always
worried. As I inhaled the familiar scent of his aftershave, I was seriously tempted
to blurt out how I’d found the letter and give him a chance to explain himself. I
opened my mouth to speak.

But Dad stepped back, took a look at his watch, mumbled something about being late
for work, and bolted. It was my birthday, and even so he couldn’t wait to get away
from me. I looked down at the check in my hand and felt the anger flood in again.
Thanks, Dad
, I thought.
I’ll use this money to buy myself something you could never give me: a new life not
based on lies.

The very next day I slipped out of my house before dawn. That’s how I came to be stranded
in front of 247 Bowery, without a clue what to do next. Would The Underground eventually
open its doors? And what on earth would I do with myself in the meantime?

I looked around, taking inventory. Across Bowery, well-lit and glowing like The Underground’s
polar opposite, stood a health-food café. I crossed the street and ducked through
the door. Behind the counter a youngish woman with crayon-red hair and hennaed hands
was manning the juice machine.

I waited my turn, ordered a banana-coconut smoothie, and asked, “So, that place across
the street? Is that some kind of restaurant?”

She gave me a look as if to say
Well, duh.
“That’s The Underground. THE Underground.”

“Oh. Right.” Apparently I was supposed to have heard of this place because, after
all, New York is the center of the universe, and THE Underground is the center of
New York. “When does it open?”

She shrugged. “Different times. Six, maybe. Or seven thirty.”

Great. It was only noon. The guy in line behind me was breathing down my neck, and
I could tell the girl wanted me to move along, but I had about a thousand questions.
“Do you know who owns it? And how long it’s been there? Like if it’s been there about
fourteen years or more?”

“Of course. It’s been open since the seventies.” She sighed and turned away from me,
firing up the blender and drowning out any further conversation.

So much for that strategy. If I wanted to learn more about The Underground, I was
going to have to find it out on my own. I took my smoothie and set up shop at a table
in the corner. Luckily, the place had free WiFi. I googled
The Underground
and clicked on the first hit. Punk rock started blaring out of my speakers, drowning
out the café’s wind chime-and-synthesizer mood music. One table over, a lady with
floaty gray hair and pink overalls shot me a dirty look. The website’s jagged silver
lettering—just like the lettering across the street—told me I’d found the right place.

I plugged in my earbuds and clicked to enter, and a collage bloomed in front of me—picture
upon picture, all of punk rockers. I’d never seen so much leather, so many tattoos
and body piercings and Mohawks in one place. Had my mother grown up in a punk nightclub?
This didn’t mesh with what little I knew about her—mostly the things my dad had told
me. She’d had a 4.0 average
at Harvard before she’d left school to have me. She baked sourdough bread and made
birthday cupcakes from scratch. Most of all, she’d married my dad, who listened to
Bach and Brahms and whose idea of a wild night was having a glass of red wine before
he dozed off in front of
Law & Order
reruns.

I examined the evidence in front of me—a sea of unfamiliar faces sprinkled here and
there with one or two I recognized: Blondie, The Ramones, Green Day. A link took me
to The Underground’s history, a formidable block of text in red letters on a black
background.
The Underground has outlived its competition—even the famous CBGB—and remains THE
place to catch cutting-edge underground music….

This was all very interesting, but I was scouting for information I could actually
use. I found it in the second paragraph.
Visionary founder Jim Eversole
… Could that be an uncle of mine? I did the math quickly and realized he was about
the right age to have been my grandfather.
After Jim’s untimely death, the torch was passed briefly to his son, Quentin, who
remade the site into an upscale steak house. But The Underground’s original vision
was revived by its current owner, Hence, former frontman for Riptide….

What kind of name was Hence? Was he a relative of mine, too? I scanned the screen
for my mother’s name but didn’t see it. No matter. I had a strong feeling I was on
the right track. I couldn’t waste the rest of the afternoon waiting around for The
Underground to open. After all, how much time did I have before my father guessed
where I’d run off to and came looking for me? I’d been careful not to leave any clues.
Still, I could imagine Dad getting home from work, finding me gone, and going on a
frenzied search. How long would it be before he thought to look for the letter, found
it missing, and guessed where I’d gone?

Back at The Underground, I tried pounding on the front door until my hands ached.
Nothing. I walked around to the rear of the building, stepping over fast-food wrappers
and broken beer bottles. I found another door with an actual doorbell beside it. I
pressed it and heard a buzzer ring inside the club. No answer. I rang again.

Just as I was about to give up, the door opened and I came face-to-face with a guy
exactly my height and slender, with brown bangs that fell in his eyes and splotches
of pink on his cheeks. We stood for a moment, staring at each other. This couldn’t
be the club’s owner; he was too young—around my age, or a little older. He wore paint-stained
cargo shorts and a faded purple T-shirt with black letters that read
PUNK’S NOT DEAD
. Head cocked questioningly, he looked at me, not saying anything.

He was probably just an employee, but my hopeful side wondered if he could be related
to me—maybe a long-lost cousin? “Hello. I’m Chelsea Price.” Would my name mean anything
to him?

It didn’t seem to; his head remained cocked. “We’re not open yet.”

“I’m looking for the guy who owns this club. Is he here?” When he didn’t answer, I
tried again. “Hence. That’s his name, right?”

“He’ll be in later tonight,” he said, reaching for the door. “I’m not sure when.”
And he started to close the door on me.

“Wait! Please…” I could hear my voice getting higher, the way it does when I get upset.
“I took a bus all the way from Massachusetts
to see him. I’ve been dragging this backpack around since five this morning….”

He hesitated. “I don’t think Hence would like me to let you in.”

But something about his hesitation gave me hope. I leaned forward a little, so that
to close the door he’d have to slam it in my face. “My pack is heavy,” I said. “And
it’s so hot out.”

The guy sighed, but he didn’t shut the door on me. “You want to fill out an application?
I’ll give it to him when he gets in….”

“No! I’m not here for a job. I’m looking for my mother, Catherine Eversole.”

The expression on his face changed.

“You’ve heard of her?”

His response was tight-lipped. “I know the name.”

“You do?” I asked. “Is she related to the guy who founded the club? She’s his daughter,
isn’t she?” I was pretty pleased with myself for having figured this out, but he didn’t
answer. Still, he swung the door open and let me in.

I followed him down a long hallway that reeked of fresh paint. We passed a door that
led into an industrial-looking kitchen and another that opened into a room stacked
high with mixers and musical equipment, its walls smeared with graffiti. So this was
what a nightclub looked like.

“This way.” He opened another door and flipped on a light switch, illuminating a steep
staircase to the basement. I followed him down the creaky steps. At the bottom he
clicked on a bare lightbulb dangling by its wire from the ceiling.

The basement’s floor and walls were stark cement, adorned only by a poster of some
band I’d never heard of called Black
Watch—three bare-chested guys in eyeliner and tartan plaid pants. A metal cot was
covered with a few scratchy-looking blankets and a lumpy pillow. Against the foot
of the bed leaned a battered electric guitar. “You can stay here until Hence gets
in.” He turned to leave.

“Is this where you sleep?” I asked his retreating back, not wanting to be left alone
for God knows how long. “Wait!”

He paused. Before he could disappear again, I asked, “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Cooper,” he said. “Coop.”

“Are you Hence’s son?”

He laughed, as though I’d said something funny. “No. I work here. And I need to get
some painting done. I’ll let you know when Hence gets home.” He took the stairs away
from me two at a time.

When he was out of earshot, I allowed myself a heavy sigh. I perched on the cot’s
crinkly mattress, with nothing to do but wait. The small, ancient TV in the corner
got about four stations, all of them too staticky to watch. I thought of the phone
in my pocket, but I couldn’t exactly call anyone. Larissa was still on the Cape, and
even if she hadn’t been, I couldn’t trust her not to crack under my father’s interrogation.

After at least an hour had passed and I was about to die of boredom, I started poking
around Cooper’s stuff. Not that there was much of it—a heavy English lit textbook
under his cot, and a battered trunk plastered with stickers and stuffed with a tangle
of jeans and T-shirts with names of bands I’d never heard of. I fought the urge to
fold his clothes for him—that would have just been weird.

Instead, I picked up his electric guitar, slung the strap over my
shoulder, and stood in rock-star stance, giving it a strum. Not that I knew how to
play. Those piano lessons Dad had forced me to take revealed I wasn’t the prodigy
he’d hoped for, and in a few months he’d gotten tired of nagging me to practice. Now,
wondering if my mother had been musical, I ruffled my hair and drew my lip back in
a sneer, trying to look like the pictures on The Underground’s website. I gave one
last muffled, tuneless strum. According to my watch, it was five thirty. What if Cooper
forgot his promise to come and get me? Would I have to stay trapped in this basement
all night?