The green bell pepper resisted the blade of my knife before giving way with a quiet, wet snap against the maple cutting board. On the radio, the local weather reporter was predicting another week of dry heat for Oak Creek, but the only sound that mattered in my kitchen was the steady, low rattle of the refrigerator I bought back in nineteen ninety-eight.
Dustin came through the back entrance without his usual heavy-footed stride, his boots barely making a sound on the linoleum. He stood by the bread box with a wide, bright grin that looked too large for his face, his right hand clamped tightly over his left forearm.
“Look at this, Mom,” he said.
He pulled his hand away and rolled his sleeve up past the elbow, exposing a thick band of clear plastic wrap taped over his skin. Under the shiny film, the fresh black ink looked raised and angry, surrounded by a ring of scrubbed pink flesh that smelled of green soap and ointment.
It was a detailed portrait of a woman with high, sculpted cheekbones and short, feathered hair, her eyes angled slightly upward as if looking toward a kitchen window.
“Why is Barbra’s face on your body?” I asked.
My voice came out flatter than I intended, the word Barbra landing like an old coin on the counter.
Dustin rubbed his forearm right above the plastic wrap, his fingers leaving small white imprints on his skin before the color rushed back.
“She is family now, Cara,” he said, using my first name the way he only did when he was trying to sound like an adult who made his own decisions. “She has been good to me.”
I set the knife down and took off my glasses, wiping the lenses with the hem of my apron because the glass had started to fog from the steam of the stove. When I put them back on, the tiny black lines of the tattoo remained exactly where they were, permanent and sharp.
“She has been in your life for eighteen months, Dustin,” I said, counting the weeks in my head as forty-one-year-old medical billing clerks always do. “Your skin is going to be there for fifty years.”
