This was before the fissures had formed, before it had become her and Mom and Orr against Dad, a truth none of them wanted to admit.
“What’s this?” she asked Orr about the brochure on his desk—when was that? Last night? The night before? It feels as if days have passed.
“Boot camp for Bonzo,” Orr answered, making a monkey sound.
“Oh, you’re definitely a menace,” she said, flopping onto his bed. “All those Redwall books and the classical music. Not to mention the chess.”
“Dad’s having buyer’s remorse,” Orr said, scooting his foot away from hers.
When they were little, Iph used to tease that he’d never be able to get married if he couldn’t stand a little footsie. Orr maintained that foot-to-foot contact was vile. Iph still finds it funny to push it a little, scooting her always-cold feet toward his always-warm ones.
“He thinks he can send me back to the factory and exchange me for a real boy.”
“Real boys are overrated,” Iph said, getting up and grabbing fresh Walkman batteries from his desk recharger. “Want me to talk to him?”
Orr didn’t reply. Since he was a toddler, he simply ignored the things he wouldn’t consider doing. You knew by his silence what was a no-go. But Dad has been blown off one too many times. And now Orr is paying for it. They all are.
“I’m telling Mom,” Iph yelled at Dad mid–Frank Sinatra. She hadn’t raised her voice to him since she was four. It was about Orr that time, too, the first and only time Dad had ever tried to spank him. She didn’t just yell back then. She bit, right on the spanking arm.
“We have to go get him,” she said, pulling Dad from the dance floor. “Right now!”
But Dad shook his head with maddening calm.
It was then that Iph pushed him, pushed her father, pushed away the image of Orr being touched by strange hands, Orr without his Walkman and headphones, without his EpiPen, his anxiety pills, his special pillow. She pushed him and yelled, “What were you thinking?”
“Lower your voice,” he said. He never yelled anymore. Not even at home. He’d taken classes for that.
“How could you?” Iph cried. She always cried. He wasn’t looking at her, but over her head at the cluster of wives watching them. He sent them a look that said, Teenagers—what can you do? with his tan handsome face. The look he got in return made Iph want to barf. Women were always like that with Dad. Not that it did them any good. They could be as shiny blonde and jazzercised as humanly possible and Dad would never give them a second glance, because none of them were Mom.
That was Iph’s thought when he asked her to the party. She’d go in Mom’s place, a worthy understudy. In the dress, she really felt the part. What was that saying Mom hated? Pride goeth before a fall? There was a babysitter at some point, an after-school lady so Mom could take a dance class in Portland, who said stuff like that all the time and tried to teach Iph and Orr stories from the Bible. Mom fired her after four-year-old Orr started rambling about Adam’s rib and the curse of Ham and pride before falls.
“Pride is good,” Mom said, raising Orr’s little fist.
“Brown power!” she said.
“Brown power!” Iph and Orr had chorused.
“Brown power!” Dad said in solidarity.
That’s the thing with Dad. Iph knows he wants to do what’s right. But sometimes, his version of right seems so wrong to the rest of them. The truth is, things have mostly been done Mom’s way: no spanking, no yelling, no forced eating of hated foods. Mom grew up in a controlling religious family. Iph and Orr have pieced that much together. She was determined to do things differently with her own children. Iph felt sorry for Dad. Sometimes it felt like he was only along for the ride. Seems like he finally got sick of it.
After Mom left for Santa Cruz, when Orr stopped talking, Iph tried to explain it to Dad: Orr needed some time. She should have tried harder. And tonight—what if she hadn’t flipped out? Maybe she and Dad would be in the car right now, speeding to Orr’s rescue.
As it is, she’s the one who’s been rescued, and Orr is someplace far away in the care of adults whose job it is to kidnap and institutionalize unwilling teenagers.
Iph is sick with the wrongness of it. It goes against everything her family is supposed to be about—they are antiwar, feminist, democratic. Iph shakes her head even though there’s no one there to see it. She balls her fists and presses them to her stomach. How could Dad betray them? Had he wanted a different family all this time? Normal kids, a regular wife? The kind of family who went to sporting events and knew all the words to the national anthem?
Iph remembers a fight her parents had years ago, before couples therapy taught them to disagree instead of battle. As always, the fight was about Orr.
“You sound like my father,” Mom said in the coldest voice Iph had ever heard her use with Dad. “Don’t you have any compassion?”
Dad’s bitter laugh ran through her, even now. Karma for listening—she still wishes she never heard this fight. “Sometimes I feel like you don’t even see me,” he said. “Like all you see is the past.”
Iph doesn’t remember Mom’s response.
Her throat clenches. For a second, she’s worried she needs her inhaler, far away in the jumble of her nightstand drawer at home. Then she realizes it’s not her asthma at all. It’s that her family is falling apart.
Iph is standing. How did that happen?
She has to get to a phone. There has to be a way to fix this.
She fumbles for the thick-framed glasses. It’s so dark in the hallway, Iph lets her hand trail the wall. The textured wallpaper is sticky in places, rough in others. She turns the corner to the main room. It’s dark, too, but there are windows. A streetlight does its best to get in through the blinds. Everything, even the light, takes on a furtive feel.
George is on the sofa, covers kicked off. Scout is splayed on the rug, paws in the air, snoring. Iph takes the flashlight from the coffee table and walks backward into the bedroom.
The nightie she’s wearing was Nana’s. It’s thin and a little pilled, see-through even in the dim apartment, but it will have to do. Iph finds her bra and hunts in the closet for shoes. She finds a neat row of canvas sneakers, all sized for the tiniest feet. Right as she’s giving up, she notices a backpack in the corner, a beat-up green JanSport like the ones most kids use for school. Inside is a copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and a pair of boots. The flashlight shines a ta-da light on the miracle of them—Doc Martens, size eight, black, adorned with hand-painted roses. Iph is a seven and half, but with the fuzzy socks, they feel great. Her blisters only hurt a little. She’s sure George won’t mind. A long crocheted cardigan completes the outfit. In the mirror on the closet door, she looks greenish and strange in her getup, with her wild curls and rose combat boots and old-man glasses.
She tiptoes past George and Scout, down the stairs and out. It’s a little before daybreak, a time of day Iph knows well as an insomniac, though it’s different being outdoors on her own. These boots are made for walking. The song repeats in Iph’s head as she picks a direction that feels right. It’s a favorite of Mom’s, one that appears on most of her housework mixes. The tune of it marches Iph down the empty street. The rain has come and gone again. Everything is clean. It’s dark, but the sky is showing signs of morning around the edges. Here and there, an early bird chirps, then quiets.
She passes a few houses, inhaling the sweetness of their jasmine-clotted porches. There is a Japanese restaurant and a few empty storefronts. A hardware store. An incongruous adult theater next to a new-looking coffee shop. Finally, the corner of a large street with the occasional car and a gas station. A pay phone! She still has the quarters from the lost and found, taken from the kitchen counter and slipped into Nana’s nightgown pocket.
She’s shaky as she puts the coin in its slot. She needs to keep it together. To find the magic w
ords that will make Dad relent.
The phone rings. The answering machine clicks on. It’s Dad’s deep voice instead of Mom’s usual greeting.
“Hello, you’ve reached the Santos Velos household. If this is Iph, sit tight and leave a number where I can reach you. I’ll call as soon as I can. Anyone else, please leave a message.”
She imagines the night that led up to this—Dad trying to act normal at the party, then finally giving in to his worry and heading out to look for her. Yanking his tie loose in a familiar pissed-off gesture that says, You kids never face the consequences of your actions. She imagines him giving up, heading home, thinking maybe Iph got a ride with someone from his office, speeding toward Forest Lake half-ironically praying to whichever Greek Orthodox saint keeps you safe from getting a ticket. At home alone, he’d last an hour, maybe two, his leg jiggling as he tried to distract himself with Star Trek reruns. Finally, he’d discover the off-the-hook phone, call the hotel, and learn she’d been there and gone—and totally freak out. He’s probably downtown right now. Or at a police station.
Iph can’t remember how long it’s been since the answering machine beeped. She has no phone number and even if she knew the address, she can’t have Dad bursting into George’s secret hideout. She hangs up and instantly regrets it—yet another instance where she acts before she thinks. When will she stop being such a drama queen? She should at least let him know she’s safe, that she’ll call again in a few hours.
She goes to slide her last quarter into the slot, but misses. It drops and rolls under an ice machine, totally out of reach. She’s furious. Predictably, she starts to cry.
A little bark stops her.
“How did you know I was here?” Iph crouches and holds out her hand.
The dog’s eyes are the exact color of maple syrup. Her coat is a mix of mink brown and ink black. She tilts her head as if she intends to speak.
“What?” Iph says.
Scout play-bows, circles three times, and trots over to the ice machine. Flattening into a small brindle pancake, she does an awkward scoot like something a seal might do on land and pushes herself underneath. She grunts as she scoots back, a movement she seems to manage with her whole body at once, and emerges, clearly pleased with herself, popping up like a jack-in-the-box to reveal Iph’s lost quarter under her chin.
“You’re a genius,” Iph says. She’s dropped any kind of dumbing-down she was doing before for the dog’s sake. “Thank you so much.”
She bends to pick up the coin and gets a surprise kiss attack. Scout seems determined to lick up all traces of her tears. After leaving a semi-sane-sounding message on her home answering machine, Iph takes a second to breathe. The sky is rosy pink and feels a little closer to earth than it does at home.
Scout’s shoulders twitch as she trots up the block in a different direction than Iph came. Iph follows. They walk less than half a block up Southeast 39th and turn onto a narrow street crammed with tiny houses and outrageously lush gardens. What kind of story would you set in a place like this? What would her story be like if she’d grown up here, with neighbors so close you’d have to close the curtains to get dressed and whisper if you wanted to talk about them?
Scout zigs, then zags, taking them in what feels like the direction of Taurus Trucking with a few detours so they can see the best yards. The birds are in full morning mode. Chickadees sing their names to each other from the tops of wide-hipped maples with leaves as big as Iph’s head. A hummingbird dives face-first into a fat purple flower. Iph wants to dive with her, to taste what the tiny bird tastes.
From a house ahead, a small stucco bungalow covered in pink climbing roses, piano music spills from an open window. Iph stops in the middle of the street to listen. A line of crows bob above her. Scout dances around her ankles. Iph is still, trying to will the peace of this morning, the joy of this music through the ether to Orr. She’s crying a little and laughing a little at the crows because it seems like they’re laughing at her. “Tell Orr I’m coming,” she tells them softly. “Don’t forget!” she calls as they caw at her and fly away like maybe they understand.
The piano music swells. A jazz standard, something familiar. A window down the street slams shut—not a morning person, perhaps.
Who plays the piano this early? Probably an insomniac like her who sleeps best at sunrise. Iph knows that if she lived here on this narrow street in one of these dollhouses—maybe the cream one on the corner with peeling paint and a tilting porch that seems to be held up by thick vines of passionflower and clematis—she would never be angry at the early-morning music. She’d let it slip into her sleep. Let it move her, change her, the way art is supposed to.
10
Units and
Objectives
George is waiting, sitting at the top of a staircase leading directly to the apartment, when Iph follows Scout up a side street to the small parking lot behind Taurus Trucking. There is no mention of Iph leaving or Scout bringing her back, just a quick glance down at the boots she borrowed and a brief nod.
“They’re never up this early on weekends,” George whispers, nodding at the small house that shares a back fence with the lot. “Normally, I use the side door closer to the street.” It takes Iph a minute to remember about the neighbors and the need for secrecy. “C’mon.” George motions her inside.
There are three phone books on the kitchen table beside a piece of binder paper and a pen. George and Iph search for Meadowbrook in the cool light seeping through the yellowed window shades. Either Iph isn’t remembering the name on the brochure correctly or the place isn’t listed in metropolitan Portland. In any case, George woke up with a plan, and the phone book is only phase one.
It’s too early for phase two, so they doze on the sofa, Scout between them, and wake up in the heat of early afternoon. It’s so hot a cold shower feels good. George has given Iph the okay to raid Nana’s wardrobe. She finds a pair of overalls good enough to fight for if someone else tried to nab them at a thrift store. The denim is worn soft and paper-thin. The legs are loose and hit Iph at the ankle. With an undershirt of George’s, her hair piled in a bun on top of her head and secured with a pair of take-out chopsticks, and the clunky black glasses, Iph has managed to be both on the lam and actually cute. Not that it matters. She shakes her head at herself in Nana’s vanity. Pretty is as pretty does, she tells herself. Or maybe Nana’s telling her that, because it’s not a thought she remembers having before.
The wait for the neighbors to leave is a metal-on-metal grind Iph feels in her intestines and back teeth. What is Orr doing at boot camp? Surely he’s been up for hours. Maybe the place isn’t so bad. Maybe they’re hiking or trying to force Orr to do crafts. Maybe they will let him do a trail run. He loves to run through the forest.
The street below Taurus Trucking is quiet. The businesses in the neighborhood don’t seem like they’ve ever been very busy. It’s the back neighbors George worries about, a nice family of four who might be concerned about a lone teenager squatting at the vacant tow truck place. So they wait, George narrating the family’s exodus.
“They load the kids up first. Mom will get in and remember the stuff she forgot. This happens between one and four times before she’s good to go. The dad blasts the tunes on his way home from work in the evening, so when the mom turns the car on in the morning, it’s like a rock concert—Red Hots, Bad Brains, Fishbone. The mom turns it down and switches it to NPR, but the kids make her change it back so they can sing. They know all the words. It’s pretty cute.”
Iph laughs, watching Scout’s ears telegraph the steps a second before they happen. Kids in, a mumbled swear from the mom, screen door slamming open, screen door slamming shut. The music blast—Nirvana this time. Iph misses Orr even more hearing the kids scream-singing the words to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” out the open windows as their mom drives away. Nirvana was Orr’s first independently discovered teenager thing. I
ph sort of misses the owlish little classical music snob he used to be.
In the bright heat, Taurus Trucking shows her age: blue paint faded to white in places, duct tape over the cracks in a window, rust on the metal garage door. Gripping the seat while George stands to pedal is easier since Iph ditched her party dress and can straddle the bike with these Rosie the Riveter overalls. She’s getting used to the Orr-shaped pain in her stomach, and the hunger, too. George offered her Cheerios with bananas and soy milk, but Iph could barely manage a few bites.
Southeast Portland is thick with crows and roses and families out walking their dogs and toddlers. They fly down side streets and over the Hawthorne Bridge, pacing the seagulls, the river sparkling summer blue below. Iph puts a hand on the messenger bag to feel Scout’s solid body. Downtown, they stop, and Iph hops off a second before George does, almost graceful.
They walk together, pace for pace. Today George wears jeans cut off at the knees, a short-sleeved shirt buttoned all the way up, and a mustard cardigan, even in the heat. Iph recognizes Pioneer Square. Once at Christmas, they’d come to Portland, all four of them, to see the massive tree lit up and have dinner at a restaurant at the top of a bank building.
Today the square is empty except for a group of ragged shirtless hacky-sack boys and some shopgirls drinking iced coffees on their cigarette break. Even without the bow and arrow, George heads into the square like someone who patrols the streets at night to protect wayward girls. Scout whines to be let out of the messenger bag and runs over to a black lab Iph hadn’t noticed dozing in the shade. The two frolic with the boys, who play their game around them, a laughing mass of dog and boy and summer.
Summer in the City of Roses Page 5