Parked

by Danielle Svetcov

  It’s just camping . . . in a van . . . in the middle of the city . . . We won’t park here forever. We’ll move into an apartment as soon as Mom gets a job. I’ll enroll in school. Everything is going to be fine. The van is perfectly safe for now. Mom is reliable. Mom has a plan.

  I will hug my book—Dracula—and repeat these thoughts until I fall back to sleep.

  I shut my eyes. I listen to Mom breathe.

  There.

  There.

  Drifting off . . .

  HONKKKKKKKKKKKK! Screeeeeeech!

  My lids snap open and my heart jumps from one side of my chest to the other.

  The angry cars move on. Swoooosh. Then silence.

  It’s just camping . . . in a van . . . in the middle of the city . . . It’s just camping . . . in a van . . . in the middle of the city . . . It’s just camping . . . in a van . . . in the middle of the city . . . without a campfire . . . or a plan to go home.

  It’s like I’m in a game of musical chairs and I can’t find a seat when the music stops. We lived in Chicago, we bought a van, and beelined west, we ate popcorn at the Corn Palace, we counted 422 of 11,623 pipes in the Mormon Tabernacle organ, we wolf-howled at the resting place of Jack London, we sighed at the Golden Gate Bridge. And then we yanked up the hand brake.

  It was sorta fun until the music stopped.

  Now I wish Mom would squeeze my arm again.

  “I’ll make some calls tomorrow,” she whispers instead.

  I wait for a flood of relief, but it’s just a drip, a steady drip.

  I’ll take it.

  I settle my eyes on the homes across the street. To them, looking down, we’re just a shadowy crease, like in the fold of my book. Everything that matters is off to the sides of us—the water and bridge out my window, the mansions and hills out Mom’s. We’re in the no-place place.

  JUNE 13

  Cal

  Rebeautify the Marina!

  Demand the removal of curb-side squatters—vans, RVs, ne’er-do-wells—who mar our breathtaking view for months at a time. Join our monthly meeting at 200 Marina Blvd. on June 21, 5 p.m., to discuss PERMANENT eviction strategies.

  ☺ Snacks provided. ☺

  —The Marina Beautification Committee

  The flier is at the top of the morning mail stack, printed on bright blue paper. I crumple it up, then reconsider and flatten it back out. Two hundred Marina Boulevard is right next door—the Paglios’ house. I try to picture Mrs. Paglio with her wedge hair and GARDENERD smock and purple Popsicles writing this. I don’t know her that well, but I can’t really see it. On the other hand, she was throwing a lot of dirt around . . .

  JUNE 13

  Jeanne Ann

  It’s time to go, vans, RVs, and curb-side squatters.

  You’ve overstayed your welcome.

  Authorities have been notified.

  —The Marina Beautification Committee

  I find this flier tucked under our windshield wiper blade with a twenty-dollar bill. I guess this is San Francisco’s version of “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

  JUNE 14

  Cal

  It’s a little early for the doorbell to be ringing—seven thirty—and when I open it, no one is there.

  Instead, I find a five-dollar bill sticking out from under our doormat and a note from Mrs. Paglio with instructions. I’m supposed to take a pot of pink rhododendrons from outside her mudroom and deposit them directly across the street. “Directly” is underlined twice. That would put them right between the orange van and the red one behind it.

  Flowers for the vans she wants removed?

  I walk the pot across the street slowly, wondering the entire way why I’m doing it. I pause outside the orange van. The girl is asleep with her head against the window glass. Hair smashed all over. That can’t be comfortable. We have so many spare pillows she could borrow.

  This is the closest I’ve been to her in two days. I want to knock on the glass but know I shouldn’t.

  The pot has gone cold and heavy in my hands. I set it down but don’t feel right just turning back. I usually come out here with a few tea cakes from the restaurant, change for the meters, socks to give away. I’m not thinking straight.

  I tuck the five-dollar bill under the girl’s windshield wiper. Then I turn and see Mrs. Paglio watching—she’s in her green-framed upstairs window, with her hands clasped under her chin like she’s praying for something. Has she been watching the whole time? I get that heart beat-in-the-mouth feeling, like when I’m called on in class and don’t know the answer but should. I glance over my shoulder, unsure. Why didn’t Mrs. Paglio just make the delivery herself?

  JUNE 14

  Jeanne Ann

  We’re turning into Popsicles on the sidewalk. I fold and unfold the five bucks I found on our windshield this morning and fantasize I’ve swapped it for a scalding hot cocoa topped with a skyscraper of whipped cream. The money is jammed into one of my overalls pockets along with my freezing right hand. I just want to go inside. Any minute, someone at this joint is going to yell at us to quit breathing on the windows and get lost. I’d yell at us if I thought Mom would listen. But she doesn’t want to be hurried. On the other side of the window glass—cut to look like a porthole—cooks in white jackets shake pots, wave tongs. They appear to be vibrating. It looks warm in there. Sweaty-upper-lip warm.

  “Let’s go in,” I say, “let’s get Sam.” And the keys to his apartment . . . and blast the heat to eighty degrees. We’re going to stay with this Sam person till we’ve got enough money to pay for our own place—Mom doesn’t want another day in the van any more than I do now. Thank you, thank you, thank you, God.

  But she hasn’t moved any closer to the door. “It’s one of the best restaurants in the city,” she says for the third time, rubbing my free hand between hers. Each time, she says it with a little less pep than the last. The waiters passing through the kitchen all wear camouflage baseball hats, like as uniforms. It’s a little cheesy. So is the restaurant name: MEAT-HED. “You see how that guy is holding his knife?” Mom raps her knuckles on the window. “He’s gonna cut off one of his fingers doing that. None of my boys would ever cut like that.” By “boys” she means all the cooks she trained at O’Hara’s House of Fine Eats in Chicago. Like Sam. “I can’t believe he works here.”

  “Mom?”

  “What?”

  I make a shoving motion toward the door. She tucks in her lips, like I’ve annoyed her but she’s not going get into it with me, then turns back to the kitchen window.

  We’re twelve blocks from the van. The wind is picking up confidence and, with it, bits of trash, blowing it around our ankles. This is San Francisco’s version of summer? At this hour, back home, Chicago is so hot, you can smell the chemicals steaming out of vinyl siding.

  “You see that? That big haunch?” Mom taps at the window. “That’s venison. Fancy name for deer. I always wanted to serve it at O’Hara’s. People woulda loved it. Deer. What’s more American than deer?”

  “I dunno.” Hot dogs. Ketchup. Chicago. I wanna go home.

  While I shiver, I try to remember this Sam guy. Cooks at O’Hara’s were pretty much a revolving door. But if you were good, Mom fought for you to stay. If Mr. O’Hara threatened to fire you, Mom would stand like a shield while the Hydra spat. If you burnt a nine-dollar steak into coal dust, Mom would take the blame. If you were kicked out of the house by your parents, she’d let you sleep on our floor. Sam must’ve been good.

  “Nobody helped me out when I was that age, when I was a mess,” Mom would tell me when I’d complain about visitors. I didn’t want more people in our place. It was tight enough with just the two of us.

  I think Sam stayed with us once. I think he’s the guy who folded our laundry. He put my socks together into matching sets. I thought socks were meant to live mi
smatched at the bottom of a drawer, so his approach was memorable, even if he wasn’t. I think that was Sam. To be honest, I try not to remember the good boys. They always left eventually. And every time they did, Mom would come home and say “There’s been another prison break.” She’d get kinda sad for a week, drag her feet across the apartment. Then she’d forget them, or pretend to.

  But this Sam guy, he’d sent Mom a letter after he’d gone. Blue envelope, blue stationery—postmarked San Francisco. This is the paper falling apart in her back pocket. Mom has never read it to me, but I’ve gotten the gist from her since we’ve been parked: It’s raining kitchen jobs in San Francisco . . . seven days a week; the sun never stops shining and everybody’s smiling; slay the nine-headed snake and come on out.

  “Mom.” I want to point out that it’s five p.m., June, and the sun is not shining. I can’t feel my right pinky toe.

  She folds her arms across her chest, deciding something. “Sam must be in the walk-in fridge.” She doesn’t see him through the porthole. She takes a step toward the door. Thank you, god of small merciful acts. This, I’ve decided, marks the real beginning of our time here, a new Day #1. Because of you, Sam, I will never have to use an ice-cold cement toilet at six o’clock in the morning or fall asleep an inch from a fire-truck siren. I promise to remember your name.

  “That kid loved to take breaks in the walk-in fridge,” Mom says, leaning closer to the porthole glass to make sure she’s not missing anything. “He runs hot, like a lava monster.”

  “Uh-huh.” I am rocking foot to foot, rubbing my arms. This whole town is like a walk-in refrigerator.

  “Okay. Okay.” She yanks open the front door. “This is gonna be great. He’s never gonna believe I made the move.”

  She’s gone for less than two minutes. “His day off,” she says, blowing back through the doors. She stands close to me, closer than she needs to.

  “I thought you said he works seven days a week.”

  “Musta got one off,” she says. “Lucky him.” Which by the inverse property means: unlucky us.

  JUNE 15

  Cal

  “I need you, Cal!” Mom shakes me awake.

  A counter-person has quit at the restaurant, she says—and I’m needed to fill in . . . for the rest of the summer.

  A smock lands on my head. Then a jacket I’ve never seen before. I think it’s leather. We don’t even believe in leather.

  Mom’s restaurant—Greenery—is across the street, down a block. We’re in the intersection before I fully digest what Mom’s said: “The rest of the summer.” I slow my pace and fall in step behind her.

  I think this is more “consequences.”

  The trees by the water slap their limbs as the wind picks up. I glance at the line of vans, cold and quiet. Does Mom even see them? Does she know there’s a bearded guy in the red van? He lies in the sun when it’s warm and gets lots of visitors. Or the couple in the RV at the end of the block? I’m pretty sure they’re students—they’re always at a picnic table with a stack of highlighter pens and a textbook between them.

  I stop for a second at the orange van. It’s sunk deeper into its flat tire. I reach out to touch the worn rubber but am clipped by a runner dashing by. There’s a race on—there’s always a race on—and the area is swarming with athletes who’d prefer the rest of us get our soft bodies out of their way.

  Inside Greenery, sun is blasting through skylights, making all the silverware shine. The counter-staff is stocking pastries and waking up the espresso machine. It doesn’t look like we’re short a server. I point this out to Mom.

  “This’ll be good for you. Just a few mornings a week. You’ll stay busy. New scenery, I mean, a new perspective—from behind the counter. I’ll get you a cell phone so you can reach me . . . or anyone.”

  She’s behind me now, pushing. I turn to face her.

  “I don’t want a cell phone.” She knows this. I’m the one who convinced her to put up tasteful PHONE-FREE ZONE signs in the restaurant. Not that it helped. The phones still creep out of purses and pockets, like spiders, ruining the main reason a person comes to a restaurant—to notice everything with all the senses. Mom caved to customer pressure recently and took the signs down. She said, “We should stop fighting the modern way of the world.” So I adopted the color beige. Why bother with bright colors if no one sees anyone anyway? Now I just blend in. I put color into my portraits instead. And I put my portraits where a person can’t look away. Or I was trying to.

  Mom strides to the counter, rubbing clear a smudge on the display case with the edge of her sleeve. This is the side of the restaurant that sells to-go items for people who don’t want a sit-down meal in the main dining room. Usually, I admire the case—a little thatch village of sugar and fat—and compliment its brilliant creator—Mom—but not this morning.

  I’ve only worked behind the Greenery counter once before, and the staff and I agreed we should never try it again.

  “Maybe you’ll see an old friend come through,” Mom says, brushing my bangs out of my eyes, “or make a new one.” We stop to stare at each other. We have the same eyes, blue-gray with long, blond eyelashes that Mom says make us look a little dopey.

  “Maybe.” Or maybe I’ll turn into a dragon and spit hot whipped cream out of my nose.

  Mom reaches one hand up to my shoulder and beckons Mac over with the other. Mac is our head chef, Greenery’s unlicensed plumber, and my surrogate aunt. She’s got pink hair and lipstick and clogs to match (against the all-green Greenery dress code). When she’s annoyed—which she must be now—she stands with her legs wide, hands on hips, like she’s about to demonstrate a wrestling move.

  If Mac’s a bowling ball, Mom’s a marble.

  Mac took charge of Greenery when I was nine months old, approximately eleven years ago. Instead of cooking, Mom handles “diplomatic matters” now—training servers, making sure farmers give us their best stuff, guiding patrons by the elbow to the tables they love best. She also passes through the kitchen a few times a day, sniffing and tsk-ing and pointing out things she’d do differently if she were still Greenery’s head chef.

  “What’s this doing in here?” Mom mutters to no one in particular now, removing a tray of powdered snickerdoodles from the case. “These get stale quicker inside the case.” Mac watches, shaking her head and letting her eyes drift up to the ceiling. I think she wishes Mom would take up a hobby in Patagonia or Alaska or Timbuktu.

  With her free hand, Mom presses me forward. “Here he is!” She sets down the tray of snickerdoodles and laces one arm through Mac’s, releasing mine. Mom leads her to the very end of the counter to conference in private. They’re only two feet away.

  “Is this really necessary, Lizzie?” Mac mutters, looking over Mom’s head and making a funny gag face at me. I guess they discussed this in advance.

  “New scenery will be good for him,” Mom says.

  “I can hear you!” I shout. And it’s not new scenery!

  Mom tucks in her lips, like she’s trying hard not to reply. She nudges Mac toward me, or tries to. “I’m going to let Mac address that.”

  Mac comes to stand by me. “I’m so confused,” she leans close to whisper, scratching her pink head. “You’re a twelve-year-old boy. She’s your neurotic mother. You’re supposed to be pushing her away, not the other way around.” I halfway shrug. “We’ll make this good,” she says, “somehow. And, if not, there’s free brownies.”

  I jam a hand into my pants pocket and feel the seam rip. I thought this couldn’t get worse, but it has. I love my mom. I don’t want her to take up a hobby in Alaska. But she’s got this all wrong.

  JUNE 16

  Jeanne Ann

  “What’re you doing?”

  The tall kid with the floppy hair from the other day is squatted on the sidewalk near our front fender, a leather bomber jacket over his head like he’d r
ather not be seen, and a piece of chalk in each hand.

  “Um.” He swallows, looking up. Except for the jacket and bow tie, he’s dressed in brown again. His skinny arms and legs really do look like a bundle of sticks.

  I’m hanging out the van’s open window above him. Mom’s gone already, doing her thing. The van’s doors are locked. Usually, the windows are up. But I don’t think this kid is a risk.

  “Decorating?” he says. He looks unsure. He slides the jacket off his head.

  “At seven in the morning?” I smell breakfast cooking nearby—bacon. It’s like Chicago has come to San Francisco in the form of a pig.

  “I was on my way to . . .” He gestures to someplace down the road. “And the sidewalk looked”—he remains crouched as he shoves chunks of chalk into his pockets—“sad.”

  I can’t argue with this. The sidewalk is littered with half-gnawed chicken bones, empty bottles of Gatorade, Popsicle sticks, and trash I can’t even identify. I push open the passenger-side door and stand beside him. We study his work. He’s managed to swerve his chalk lines around the garbage. Impressive. But also super weird.

  “Streets are cleaner in Chicago,” I volunteer.

  “Are they?” He stands. “There’re supposed to be great restaurants in Chicago . . . My mom says it’s too cold for vegetarians, though. We’re vegetarians.”

  I raise my eyebrows. Weirder.

  “That’s a lot of butterflies.” I point to the many sets of orange-and-purple chalk wings, running from our van to halfway down the block. He must’ve been here, drawing, for an hour.

  He shifts from foot to foot, considering his work. “They’re not butterflies. They’re arrows . . . with wings.” He scuffs at one with a shoe.

  “Oh.”

  He looks down at himself, wipes his hands on his jacket, sneaks one last look at me, and skulks in the direction of his arrows, then doubles back the other way. He drops a quarter in our meter as he passes.