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  “Eat ice cream, take some pills. You’re living the dream, girlfriend.”

  “No, no. Well, I mean sure – I’ll take the ice cream cake in the freezer. But I’m more concerned about life. I can’t be a stripper; I’m no good at it. I haven’t gone to college. I’m twenty-six. I don’t know what’s next.”

  “What’s next is the ice cream cake.” Meg stood and stomped out of the room. “We can’t have any serious life discussions without cake.”

  Meg was gone for a solid ten minutes, during which time I heard a variety of thumps, cracks, and cuss words I refuse to repeat. I’d forgotten she had locked the ice cream cake in the freezer to prevent me from OD’ing on sugar before my stripper routine. It was her rather brute-force method of making me practice self-control.

  I hadn’t argued with her. I didn’t particularly want any more gut than I already had. I especially could have done without it while on stage in nothing but my undies. It got exhausting sucking that shit in.

  And now, apparently, she’d forgotten the code to the freezer lock. Meg reentered my room a good amount of time later, whistling as if nothing had happened. She sat on the edge of my bed.

  “The cake?” I asked.

  “How about we talk about that little thing called ‘life,’” she said.

  Padlock: 1, Meg: 0, Lacey: -1.

  “So?” Meg asked. “What are you good at?”

  “Nothing! I can’t even climb onto a stage.”

  “But you got hoisted onto a stage like no ho’s ever been hoisted before.”

  “Heave ho is not a saying about the person.”

  “I don’t get it, then,” Meg said. “But that’s not important. We’re focused on the thing—"

  “—thing called life,” I said. “I know. What ideas do you have?”

  “I’m on unemployment right now. You shoulda gotten fired so you got a severance package like me. ‘Cause after that runs out I’m gonna be a bartender. I’m gonna own my own place.”

  “Want to hire me?”

  “Not particularly.” Meg raised her eyebrows in an offended expression. “What? You don’t know shit about booze. Well, except that you like it. You couldn’t be a guard since you couldn’t bounce your way into a twerking set, and you can’t carry yourself onstage, let alone a tray full of drinks. No offense.”

  “No,” I sighed. “None taken. You’re right. I’m a failure.”

  “Maybe you should do something with your mind,” Meg said, as if the idea has just dawned on her for the first time. “You know, a doctor or something.”

  “Nah,” I said. “My mom was a stripper. I thought maybe I could follow in her footsteps. But I’m too old for college now. I blew my chance.”

  “First of all, you’re never too old for nothin’. I’m gonna drive cars and have sex and eat hamburgers till the day I die, no matter what anyone tells me, friggin’ cholesterol and all. But in all honestly, it’s a bummer you don’t have more family,” Meg said. “If you knew what your real family did for a living, maybe you’d have a better idea for yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, sometimes families are like, all doctors, or all lawyers, or they all went to Harvard or some crap like that. Every once in a while you get a special duck, like your mom – God rest her soul – who marches to her own drumbeat. That beat just happened to be coming from the speakers of the strip club. You know, telling her to shake it like a Polaroid picture.”

  I reached down and fiddled with the chains still attached to my leg. Apparently Meg hadn’t thought to put me in something more comfortable before dumping me onto my bed.

  I heaved out a big breath of air. “My mom always said we never had any family.”

  “You ever wonder why your mom decided to be a stripper?”

  “No, not really,” I said. “She was good at it. I thought maybe it was her calling.”

  “You’re sure?” Meg leaned over and her breasts nearly popped out of her bustier. But the look on her face was serious, so I tried to focus on her eyes.

  “Yeah.” I shrugged, thinking back. “Except there was this one time—"

  Meg interrupted. “It’s just weird, you know? If her parents had died, why wouldn’t she have told you?”

  I gave a noncommittal nod.

  Meg shifted on the bed. “I mean, maybe they were ashamed of her. I know weirdos like that who don’t appreciate the art of strippin’. But do you really think that’s the only reason? Don’t you think her parents would get over it to see their granddaughter?”

  I didn’t want to admit it, but the thought had often niggled in the deepest depths of my mind. I’d wanted a family as a child; a gray-haired, jolly grandpa to bring to piano recitals, a grandmother who made delicious-smelling cookies, and cousins who could talk girl-talk with me during our sleepovers.

  Meg was a good placeholder for the latter, but still, I longed for the F-word.

  A family.

  ** **

  A family.

  My thoughts often wandered into dangerous territories: was I really so untalented that my mom didn’t want to introduce me to my grandparents? Sure, I didn’t make the kickball team. The jazz band laughed when I showed up, and I couldn’t even tell you where the Mathletes crunched their numbers. But I’d won a spelling bee once in eighth grade – didn’t that count for anything?

  “Hang on. What were you saying before?” Meg asked.

  “I guess my grandparents didn’t care much about meeting me, either. They could have found me,” I said, feeling a bit glum.

  “No, hang on. What were you gonna say before, when I interrupted?”

  “I don’t know. I forgot.”

  “Well, I’m gonna make you remember,” she said.

  “No torture techniques today, please,” I said tiredly. “I’m not in the mood. I’ll just take some more Vicodin and hit the hay.”

  “Not torture,” Meg said. “At least not the evil kind.”

  She waved a forkful of ice cream cake towards my mouth. After a battle of epic proportions with the fridge, she’d wrestled the entire door, padlock and all, right off its hinges.

  “Open sesame,” Meg said.

  I took a bite of the heavenly cake, letting the cold chill my tongue, the creamy ice cream melding with the cookie crumbs in a mind-blowing mixture.

  “Good girl.” She patted my head, which hurt like a b—

  “—that was just a teaser. Now, I know you remember what you were going to tell me before – that thing about your mother. You got that look in your eye. Tell me before you forget,” Meg instructed, ever so close to handing me the full piece of cake.

  The girl knew how to strong-arm me into talking. Withholding cake was worse than waterboarding in my book. But it worked, and I remembered. Giving Meg a smile, I reached for the cake. “Once, my mom told me that she took the job because there wasn’t much of a paper trail.”

  “Bingo.” Meg flicked the spoon and a blob of ice cream landed right on the lump over my eyebrow. The coolness felt surprisingly good, at least until it started dripping into my eyes.

  “Bingo, what?” I asked, trying to catch the drops of frosting with my tongue.

  “Bingo, that. What you just said.”

  “The paper trail? Why on earth would she not want a paper trail?”

  “If you don’t want someone to find you, the first thing to do is get a fake name, fake papers, and work somewhere that people don’t ask questions,” Meg said with a shrug. “Sounds a helluva lot like what your mom was up to.”

  “Dang,” I said. “You’re totally right. Have you done that before?”

  “I’m not answering that.” Meg looked down. “Anyway, this might be the key to your secret family. If you want to find out what you should be good at in life, trace back your mom’s history. Do some digging. There’s gotta be something. And I’m betting it’s juicy.”

  “Where do I even start?”

  “You got her stuff locked up somewhere?”

&n
bsp; I pointed around the apartment. The place was three months old to me, but it’d been built around the time Columbus stumbled upon America. I’d moved here a few weeks after my mom died, and I was still content pretending that it was a temporary stop before moving home.

  “Yeah, I shoved all the boxes into the spare bedroom when I moved. I haven’t had the guts to clean it out yet.” I wasn’t ready to unpack the boxes and resign myself to an apartment with orange floors. I didn’t do orange floors.

  “Bingo,” Meg said again, except this time the spoon was in her mouth.

  ** **

  The next morning, we started going through my mother’s belongings. A tear rolled from my eye and down my cheek as we unearthed the first boxes. I brushed it away quickly, hoping Meg didn’t notice.

  I cracked open one of the brown packing boxes – an old liquor carrier probably ‘adopted’ from TANGO. I pulled out one memento after another, and the tears fell harder as each item revived waves of memories. I realized now that it wasn’t photos of fancy vacations or expensive things that made up my childhood.

  No, my childhood had been filled with the stuff dreams were made of – a truly magical happiness that was now but a golden whisper, a flitting glimpse of the past. My heart ached for that time – the years filled with the naïve belief that everything was right in the world.

  There was something about my mother passing away that cemented the fact I was now an adult. There was nobody to take care of me. No family to watch out for me. If I passed away tomorrow, I’d have a total of three people at my funeral: Meg, Luscious, and Greasy Gary.

  I pulled another crumbling box towards me. On top was a ratty flannel blanket. It was from one of the times my mother and I didn’t have enough money to buy groceries for dinner. Somehow, though, she’d still made the evening a fun one. We’d dug around and scrounged up a few bucks. She’d managed to make the entire night an adventure, complete with a picnic in the parking lot at TANGO and a dollar menu hamburger from McDonald’s. To me, it had been the best meal of my life, cozied up in her arms, slurping my very own vanilla shake.

  Next, I found a homemade fly swatter that Meg and I had invented out of straws. It’d been three a.m., and we were ten-years-old, alone and scared during a blizzard, while my mom finished her shift. (We were convinced it’d make us a million dollars. Newsflash – it didn’t).

  I set the flimsy swatter aside to show Meg once I stopped sniffling. At the bottom of the box, I choked up after finding my mom’s first stripper thong. Sky blue and sequined, it was a beauty.

  A hiccup rocked my world, and I told myself to soldier on, Lacey! Pushing away the fond memories of my childhood, I kept on thumbing through the tubs of old accessories. Three boxes into our search, I found the mother lode of all boxes.

  Glancing up, alarmed at my finding, I was relieved to see Meg busy examining the stiletto collection in the corner, oblivious to my leaky eyes. She’d been the one saving grace during the most depressing period of my life.

  After my mom passed away, the months whirled past in a blur. I’d never known my dad, let alone any other member of my family, but Meg had never wavered in our friendship. She’d taken care of me at my worst – feeding me ice cream on the even hours and shoving extra strength Tylenol down my throat on the odd ones. She put cucumbers on my eyes and washcloths on my forehead. She even tried to apply mascara to my lashes during rather deep, drug-induced sleeps. I loved the girl.

  I reached for the promising package on top and wrenched it open. I pushed away all the negative thoughts that’d been drifting through my mind and focused on finding my family. I almost had dry eyes when one of my mother’s favorite nipple tassels fell out of the box and landed in my lap – I couldn’t hold back my gulp of a sob.

  “It’s okay,” Meg said, lumbering over and patting me on the back. I’m sure she meant to be gentle, but it felt more like a slap from a polar bear as I lurched forward, the contents of the FedEx box spilling all over the floor.

  “What’s this?” Meg reached forward, accidentally clapping the side of my head with her elbow.

  “Ow!” I shouted.

  “Sorry, but look—" Meg held up a small picture.

  “Whoa…” I kept one hand pressed against the side of my head, trying to ease the pain. The throbbing steadily subsided as I retrieved the old, weathered sheet of paper from Meg’s hand. “I think that’s her.”

  I pointed to a small girl with a raggedy softball jersey and scuffed up knees. I’d never seen the curious smile peeking out the corners of her mouth or the shy look with which she gazed at the camera, but I’d recognize those beautiful hazel eyes anywhere. It was my mother, without a doubt.

  There was a gaggle of other people in the picture; it looked like the scraggly makings of a family picnic during which someone had insisted on a photograph during a pickup ball game. A short man with a no-nonsense line for a mouth rested one hand on my mother’s shoulder. His gaze was possessive and powerful despite his small stature, and he wore a suit on what looked like a balmy summer day. His hair sat dark black on his head, combed to a tee, lips set in a stern line, intelligence and menace seeping through the ink on the faded photograph.

  Who was he? I wondered. Could he be my grandfather? Was he the one who’d pushed my mother away until the day she died?

  “Well, one thing’s for certain,” Meg said, interrupting my thoughts.

  “What’s that?” I peeked at the other children, mostly boys, who surrounded the small girl wearing jersey number seven. They all had a similar Mediterranean skin tone, dark eyes with variations of hair color running the gradient from sandy blond to inky black.

  “Your mom was a ladies man,” Meg said. “You see this? I bet she played on the boys’ team.”

  “I’m pretty sure you said that backwards. She was not a ladies man.” I looked up. “And I’m also guessing that she’s related to those boys.”

  “Oooooooh,” Meg breathed. “I see it. They all look alike. I thought that was a weird co-in-kee-dink.”

  “Help me look for clues.” I put the photo closer to my face. “There’s gotta be something we can use from here.”

  Meg put her palm against my cheek. Slowly, she moved my face further away from the photograph. It seemed like she didn’t think I’d notice her hand on the side of my face.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, my cheek squished. But I was afraid to move for fear she’d bump my aching head again by accident.

  “Couldn’t see a damn thing with your swollen noggin in the way.”

  Together, we peered over the photograph, pointing out trivial details here and there, but nothing stuck. The park looked like one of a million. Minnesota was riddled with parks on every block, so that wouldn’t help. There were no names on the jerseys, no coolers stenciled with a family name, and definitely nobody holding a sign with a working phone number on it.

  “There.” I finally pointed out a small emblem on the sleeve of my mother’s jersey. “See that? I can’t read it. Maybe it says something, though, like a name, or…”

  “Oh hey, hang on a minute.” Meg stood up.

  I ignored her and scrunched my nose trying to read the small patch. It was impossible. The photo was too old and worn down and crumpled. Even if I could have somehow gotten it digitally enhanced, I feared it was gone forever.

  I gently set the photo on top of the box and lay back against the floor, resting my head on the carpet of my new, rather sad, apartment. I was fairly certain the last woman in here had lived in the place for eighty years and hadn’t redecorated once. The carpet was not only orange, but it also managed to smell like mold. Plus, the counter tops were missing so much plastic that the brown splotches looked like a map of the world. I think she may or may not have left her cat in the attic. I hadn’t ventured up there, yet.

  The next thing I knew, someone was suffocating me. I screamed, trying to sit up, flailing my arms. My pounding head bounced against the stupid orange carpet and my hands were tied up in fabric. I coul
dn’t see. I smelled mothballs. My heart raced.

  “Chill, girl,” Meg said.

  I calmed down, my breath still sounding much heavier than normal. “What? I thought someone was attacking me.”

  “Then you must’ve been having a nightmare, because I just threw you a miracle.”

  I opened my eyes, and realized that the thing that had been attacking me was no more than a piece of fabric, red and dusty, which had landed on my face as Meg tossed it across the room.

  “Meg!” I screamed again, this time my tone leaning more towards thrilled than scared-out-of-my-mind. “You did it!”

  “I thought I’d seen that sucker somewhere.” Meg grinned broadly. “I tried it on, but I only got it around one boobie, so I set it in the ‘give away’ pile. Good thing it didn’t go anywhere.”

  Good thing, indeed, I thought. Before me, fully intact, was the jersey from the photo. And best of all, the patch was right where I’d hoped, the letters clear as day.

  “Marinello’s?” I shrieked the name of our local restaurant, disappointed that we’d found nothing besides the name of a lousy sponsorship after all that work. Nobody there would remember a measly jersey from a million years ago. “What the fu—"

  “Slow your roll,” Meg said. “Look on the tag.”

  My ears burned as my emotions swung from one end of the spectrum to another like a pendulum in double time. An insanely fortunate miracle had almost turned flat. Marinello’s was the name of the best Italian restaurant in all of St. Paul, but still, I’m sure the corporation had sponsored hundreds, if not thousands, of little league teams over the years since my mom had been a child. It would’ve been no help whatsoever.

  I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I read the name on the tag inside the shirt.

  Cagnolini.

  “Hey, Meg, can you translate this for me? I’m guessing it’s Italian, if Marinello’s sponsored the team.” I spelled it out for Meg.

  “Little Dogs,” she said, looking up from her phone. “How adorable.”

  “Bingo, the little dog,” I said. “We have our starting place.”

  “Sweet,” Meg said. “I’m assuming you wanna go to Marinello’s. And if so, I’ll go with you on account of my stomach is devouring itself. But if that guy is there…” She pointed to the man behind my mother, who I strongly suspected might be my mom’s father. “If he’s there, I’m leaving. Cause he looks like one mean, big, scary dog trapped in a Chihuahua’s body.”