My Not-So-Still Life

by Liz Gallagher

  Grampie says, “Nick, sit down.”

  “I would, Mr. Almond, but we’re going to the Fremont Art Walk tonight.”

  “And here I am, being lazy on the couch.”

  “But still using that amazing brain of yours, I see,” Nick says.

  Grampie holds up his crossword. “What’s an eight-letter word for a baseball team who just can’t get it together?”

  “No idea.”

  “Ha! Mariners.” I walk up next to the couch.

  “Attagirl.”

  “He asks me that every time he watches a game,” I tell Nick.

  I can’t help but think that lately Grampie looks like a little old man. He’s retired, and he’s obviously the grandfather of a teenager, but when did he start looking old? And smaller? He’s grayer. Not just his steel-wool hair, but his skin, too. He moves more slowly.

  There’s a photo of him and my grandmother that sits on the mantel. It’s how I picture him in all the days before I was born, before even my mom was born. Grampie stands, laughing as she strikes a pose; she’s sitting on the hood of his Chevy, the one that still lives in our garage.

  My grandmother was a beautiful woman, and this is by far my favorite photo of her. She’s so full of life. She radiates energy, you can tell just by looking.

  “Nicolai says you’re off to Fremont for the art walk,” Grampie says.

  “Yep,” I say. “We’re meeting up with Holly. I’ll be back by eleven.”

  “I’ll tell your mother.”

  “Where is she, anyway?” I ask.

  As if on cue, Mom walks out of her room and slumps down next to Grampie, looking just as tired as he does. “Right here.”

  Mom works so hard at the docks. She insists on being called a longshoreman. She deserves to sit behind a cushy desk in some office filing her nails and listening to the radio, instead of checking in the cargo coming off boats and into Ballard. Instead of worrying about manifests, and stacking crates, and sometimes driving the forklift. She should get to take it easy.

  Whenever I try to talk to her about that, she says how well the docks pay, and then I clam up because I know that her having me is the reason she doesn’t have the education to get other good-paying jobs.

  “I’ll never understand why you would rather sit on the couch than get out there on the weekends,” I say.

  “Talk to me after you’ve been out there working for fifteen years,” Mom says. One of her favorite lines.

  “Grampie did it for almost fifty years. And he still has a social life.”

  He keeps his head down, as he always does when this line of conversation comes up. Nick does too.

  “I’m happy, Vanessa. I’m fine.”

  “You haven’t even had a date in months and months, Mom. The docks are your whole life.”

  Mom just shakes her head.

  Nick tugs on my arm.

  I kiss Grampie’s cheek, grab my faux-leather motorcycle jacket, and head out. I decide to try to live enough life for both me and my mom.

  Nick skips ahead, oblivious to the fact that anyone’s even aware of him. He doesn’t know it, but I admire that about him. He lives moment by moment.

  I walk behind him, let him shine.

  In Ballard, there’s salt in the air, just a hint. You know the water’s not far away, and you know that fish are swimming out there, and that this world is not a new world. It’s as old as the ocean and everything in it.

  Our street is lined with small shingled houses and messy yards, tulips in every garden, though they’re not in bloom quite yet, and cherry trees near the sidewalk. Those trees will burst into color soon. When they do, the city will feel fresh.

  With all that salt from Puget Sound in the air, Ballard can feel worn-in. Comfy, but not squeaky clean. It’s a fantastic place to call home.

  Nick’s house is three blocks away from mine and farther from the stores, much bigger than my house. When they moved here a few years ago, his parents tore down the little house on their lot to build this ultramodern thing that looks like a bank or a mini office building.

  My family has lived in the same tiny house since Grampie was a boy. He grew up there. Grampie fixed up the basement when I was twelve, to give Mom and me more space.

  My grandmother was already gone by the time I was born. We keep all the photos of her on the fireplace mantel. I think Mom looks a lot like her, but I don’t see myself in her. Mom and Grampie say my birth was the thing in the universe that balanced out her death. I like the idea. Not that she’s gone, but that I somehow make up for her death a little.

  The bus stop is at the corner of Twenty-Sixth, just a couple of blocks back from Market Street, where Ballard stops being residential and starts being citylike.

  Nick gets there first, and when I join him he says, “I love Fridays.”

  “Me too.” I put my arm around him, and we stand there looking like two wild teenagers waiting for something to happen. Something more than a bus showing up, headed toward Fremont.

  But sometimes, a bus and your neon friend are enough.

  “I’m glad you’re getting to know Holly,” I say as we get off the bus across the street from Caffe Ladro, our first stop on the art walk.

  “She’s a sweetheart.” It was Holly’s sweetness that made us into friends the first week of sixth grade. I was terrified to talk to anyone, but Holly marched right up to me during “nature exploration”—Ocean Tides Middle School code for “recess”—to ask if I wanted to build fairy houses with her.

  Holly lives in Fremont—right next to Ballard but with a different vibe, less about the water and more about creativity and Thai food. Her house is taller than mine, but still shingled. Her yard is even tinier than mine, her house closer to the road.

  Holly practices the cello from six until eight every night, even Friday and Saturday. Even on the days when she’s got organized practice after school and has already played for two hours. Practice makes perfect, and Holly’s driven; she doesn’t want to accept less than perfect when it comes to her music.

  We’ll meet up with her right after Ladro. We have just enough time to pop in.

  We cross the busy street in the dying light of springtime. I catch a whiff of Indian spices from the restaurant by the bus stop.

  “Wonder who’s exhibiting this month,” Nick says, holding the door for me. As if we’ll know the artist. An exhibiting artist wants nothing to do with two high school kids.

  Even if I’m the best artist at school, I’m nothing out here in the real world.

  There’s a long line for coffee, and the shop is pretty crowded, people mingling and eating free snacks. When I see the photos on the wall, I realize that we do know the artist.

  It’s Jewel. The reason my insides are twisty. The cause of my one stint with the black string. He’s a high school sophomore, like me. But he has this show. And I have … what?

  “Let’s just go meet Holly,” I say.

  Nick doesn’t question. He can radar that I’m uncomfortable.

  Nick and I weren’t that close yet when Jewel mashed my heart into my toes last fall. In fact, less time with Jewel was the start of more time with Nick. Friend-dating is so much easier than dating-dating.

  “Sure,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  I want to. But I don’t turn to leave.

  Jewel’s biting into a cookie, standing in a huddle with his overalls-wearing mom, and with Alice Davis, whose ponytail looks as perfect as ever, and her folks, who are wearing conservationist tees I know they screen-printed themselves. Alice wears one too. Hers and her mom’s have a tree with roots, and her dad’s has a dolphin. Back when Alice and I were in elementary school, before I went to Ocean Tides, Alice gave me one about saving bees. I wore it forever.

  She and I have a tiny friendship, a sort of understanding or respect, because we were friends as kids. But lately, due to Jewel, our good thoughts and feelings about each other are this cactus we’re both afraid to touch.

  Jewel looks to see who Mr. Da
vis is waving at. His eyes—his amazing eyes that seek and find beauty in every little thing—glint as he locks on me. I feel zapped. As if there’s light, sound, and this. Jewel’s electric gaze.

  Alice notices me. She gives me that look. The one she’s been giving me since the fall, simultaneously sweet and kind of cruel, because we both know Jewel wants her and not me. She has him. She gets to be happy about that. And I get nothing.

  Jewel smiles. My hand rises as if I’m a marionette, and I manage to wiggle my fingers.

  I am my own puppet master.

  I just hope no one else can see how those strings are the only things keeping me standing and smiling.

  Three

  I can’t leave now that they’ve seen me. I would be running.

  I take Nick’s hand and lead him to the snack table, where there’s raspberry fizzy water for us youngsters. I’m tempted to sneak some white wine instead. Escape.

  Nick drops my hand and pours us each a paper cup of the fizz, and we look at the work on the walls. I keep my back to Jewel, but it’s like he’s true north to my body’s compass. I sense where he is.

  I try to focus on the moment, the way Nick can. Breathe. Sip.

  The first photo we check out is of the Fremont Troll, a sculpture that lives near Jewel’s house. It’s all big and creepy and weird. That’s what he loves about it. Me too. This photo is a close-up of the troll’s eye, a hubcap.

  We drift to another photo. A snail’s head. Black-and-white.

  There’s something gorgeous in that snail. I stare.

  “Wishing you had a shell to hide in?” Nick asks.

  “That would be nice.”

  “Come on,” he says. “You don’t cower.”

  He’s right. “I’m gonna go say hi.”

  As I step toward Jewel, he breaks from his group to meet me. If I could fall into his arms right here, I would. In front of everyone. In front of Alice.

  “Nice stuff,” I say.

  “Glad you like it,” he says. “Your hair looks awesome. Doing the walk tonight?”

  I touch my hair without wanting to. Smile. He knows I do the walk every month. We’ve done it together. I nod. “And meeting a friend.”

  He knows Nick is gay, but maybe he’ll think the friend is another guy. Maybe he’ll think I’ve fallen for someone else.

  “Gotcha,” he says. “Thanks for stopping by. Have a good night.”

  “I will.” I turn and go out the door with Nick.

  It kills me that no night without Jewel will ever be as good as the few we spent together.

  *

  Nick and I get to the gelato shop before Holly. I send him in to grab a table while I wait for her outside, leaning against the brick building and watching the neighborhood breathe.

  Lots of people are out tonight, strolling with dogs, doing the art walk, browsing the shops, eating at the Thai restaurants, and starting to crowd the bars. The sun is low, but the sky’s not completely night-black. Some blue survives.

  I relax to the music of car engines and car tires and car doors as people get out and join the night. I don’t know how I’d ever survive living anywhere but the city. Everywhere else is too quiet. In the country, if you stop to think about a boy who broke your heart, you might never get jolted back into life.

  Headlights swim past. People laugh. A dog barks. I stand straight: Girl Waiting for a Friend. Not Girl with a Mashed Heart.

  Here comes Holly, bouncing. The girl is a true light. She’s got long blond hair and big blue eyes. She’s as perfectly gorgeous as the cliché, classically beautiful and tall in a flowery skirt and a ruffly yellow top under her denim jacket. If she went to public school with me instead of Saint Agatha’s, she’d probably be prom queen.

  Her school doesn’t have a prom, let alone a queen. Her mother thinks dressing her in a uniform and forcing her out of the sight line of boys will keep her pure or something. It’s kind of working. Girl is innocent.

  She’s the only person from Ocean Tides I still hang out with on a regular basis; we’ll always be tight at the core.

  “Love the pink!” She gives me a hug.

  There’s definitely something to be said for the Ocean Tides brand of hippiedom, where we got to go skiing Fridays in the winter and cook lunch for ourselves whenever we wanted, with an oven and using real knives, and where we were encouraged to spend time and energy on the things we were naturally drawn to.

  I bet I wouldn’t know anything about Jackson Pollock or Duchamp or modern art if not for Ocean Tides. Holly spent half of middle school in the music room with her cello.

  I often wonder how much more free I’d feel if there had been a high school version of our school.

  I squeeze her.

  Pulling back, she says, “I only have an hour.”

  “Inside, pronto.”

  We find Nick sitting with a coffee at the table by the back window, perfect for people-watching. Holly waves at him, and he lifts his cup.

  We wait behind a family with three kids who can’t make up their minds.

  “I’m feeling chocolate tonight,” I say.

  “Me too.”

  “So how was your week?”

  A magazine-ready grin stretches across her face.

  “What’s up?”

  “Last night was practice for the city youth orchestra.…” Holly’s in three different orchestras, but this smile is so not about the cello.

  “A guy?”

  “I’m totally crushing.”

  “Sweet!” I say. “Tell me.”

  “His name’s Wilson.…”

  The family’s done paying, and the old guy who owns the gelato shop is standing there in his black T-shirt and orange apron, holding little pink sample spoons. We usually try a few flavors—Holly always dares me to try the weird ones, like rose and persimmon—but tonight’s quick.

  “Medium chocolate, please,” I say.

  “Make it two.”

  We go sit with Nick with our scoops.

  Nick opens his mouth, but I say, “Wait! Holly’s telling us about a boy.”

  She’s still sparkling. “Wilson. He plays violin. So good. And so adorable! Super-short hair. Cute Harry Potter glasses. And he wears this T-shirt that looks like a Boy Scout shirt.”

  “Ironically or earnestly?” I ask.

  Nick says, “I know that guy. He’s in my gym class. He’s a junior.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Do I know him?”

  “Wilson! Brown hair?” Holly asks. “Dimples? The glasses?”

  “You’ve seen him around, I’m sure,” Nick says.

  “Gah!” I don’t remember him. “I’ll have to keep an eye out.”

  “I can’t believe this! I knew he went to public school, but not where. Nessie, why don’t you come to our concert next week? I promise it won’t be too boring,” Holly says. “You too, Nick. It’s on Friday.”

  “Not sure,” Nick says. “That’s the start of Superhero Origins Weekend on the SyFy channel. I want to check out the movie lineup.”

  “Text me the details,” I say. “I’d love to go.”

  Nick’s got a far-off look. “Small city,” he says.

  “A nice city, too, but tell that to my mother,” Holly says. “To hear her tell it, we live at the crossroads of Hades and Gotham. Evil.”

  “Oh, your mom isn’t that bad.”

  “She can be,” Holly says.

  “Besides, small places can be evil,” Nick says.

  “For example, Gates High,” I throw in.

  “Not to mention Saint Agatha’s,” Holly says.

  “I’m sure,” Nick says, with a sparkle in his own eye. “All those girls. Not a single prospect in sight for any of us. Real tragedy.”

  “As if we have any prospects now,” I say. “Except for Holly and her Wilson.”

  “My Wilson. I wish.”

  Nick doesn’t say anything. He’s got this thing about how he won’t date until college, or after. He’s not the only guy at school who’s out, but
he’s not into any of the others. He says they’re boring.

  “So, what do you have going on this weekend?” Holly asks.

  “Nada mucho,” Nick says.

  “I’ve got my interview tomorrow,” I say. “You guys. Imagine—it would be perfect. My first job. In the art store I’ve loved my whole life. I’d get a discount on all those beautiful supplies. I could make cash and hang out at Palette.”

  This job would be the first step to my dream: the true life of an artist in the real world.

  “You’ll get it,” Holly says.

  “I hope so, because Palette’s the only place I want to work, and I need to start earning some cash. I want to save for my tattoo.” They don’t know how much I want to help Mom with bills, too. So she can work a little less and live a little more.

  “Like I said. Don’t worry,” Holly says. “A tattoo … Not me. My parents would freak.”

  “Grampie has one. A sockeye salmon on his bicep. So he can’t complain.”

  Nick asks, “What about your mom, though?”

  “We’ve talked about it. She doesn’t like the idea, but what’s she gonna do?” I shrug as I lick my spoon.

  They exchange a look. Holly says, “Um, say no? Ground you?”

  “I told her I’ll wait till I’m eighteen, but I’m not sure I can.”

  “I’m going with you when you get it.” Nick’s excited now.

  “Oh, me too!”

  “You are both cordially invited.”

  Holly and I enjoy our gelato, Nick sips his coffee, and I savor this window of time: there’s art waiting to be seen, I’m with my friends, love’s on the horizon, and maybe a dream job, too.

  I’ve managed to push my mashed heart far away from my brain, although I’m not sure it’s a good idea to try and forget a thing like that.

  After Holly heads home, Nick and I art-walk for another hour. The glass studio has a show of huge paintings, all at least seven feet tall and wide, abstracts with blues and greens. They look alive. They look as if they’re breathing.

  “Kind of like Pollock,” I say.

  “Him again?” Nick knows I really love Jackson Pollock. “Will you ever get over that guy?”

  “Probably not. He’s pretty much perfect.”