Parked

by Danielle Svetcov

  The sun is streaking the sky orange sherbet. I’m reading the part in Cheaper by the Dozen when twelve kids pile into the family car for a joyride, no seat belts, kids stacked on kids, and I’m feeling something in my chest, but I’m not convinced it’s awe. I want eleven brothers and sisters. A huge family could not live inside a van . . .

  I will admit this sunset tops the ones over the Holiday Inn in Uptown; no one pulled up a chair to watch those. Still, what I would give to be back in Chicago, defrosting a waffle over the radiator . . .

  Sandy talks in a loud voice Mom may or may not be hearing from inside the van. Somewhere nearby someone is frying bacon. Torture.

  “I’ve lived the indoor, every-day-the-same life,” Sandy says, fondling the pink petals of a potted plant beside his chair. “Too many rules. Too much clutter.” He grabs at the air. “This is freedom; this is the way. A life under the stars and sky. Nature’s confrontation.”

  Anyone who has used the cement toilets in the public restrooms and still says “this is the way” has seriously lost his way.

  He tells me he’s a serial entrepreneur and shakes his giant key ring. I think it’s more likely that he mugged a janitor. He tells me the smoothies are a “trend” investment; he tells me that the first rule of business is “buy low, sell high”; he waves to the hot dog vendor—“Bob”—who pushes past us with his cart twelve times a day, leaving a trail of salty smoky steam that smells so good, the CIA could use it to pry secrets out of prisoners; he palms a twenty from a tattooed bike messenger who lives four vans back; he raises a thumb at the man in the yellow raincoat and red boots—“beautiful day, Gus!” He tells me he plans to “pull up stakes” as soon as he can implement his “big plan”—to drive around the world with his “best mate,” leaving any day.

  “In the meantime, we are going to have a great time, neighbor,” he says. He uses “we” like Mom and I have been absorbed into a group, his group; I think he means all the people living outside. He talks as fast as a rushing river.

  “And you?” he asks, gesturing to the Carrot. He leans back in his chair.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Are you free?”

  I laugh out loud. I think I hear Mom laughing inside the Carrot too.

  JUNE 18

  Cal

  The sirens wake me. I fell asleep sketching. Now I sprint out the front door and across the street. I knew this would happen. I just didn’t know when.

  It’s nearly dark. The police have started their ticketing at the back of the line of vans, near Greenery. They’re scribbling fast on clipboards and banging on windows. I’ll just speak to whoever is in charge, explain that . . . this has to stop. I look down at the pavement and my feet walking in the opposite direction I’ve instructed them to go.

  I reach the orange van. I’m standing as far back from it as I can without stepping in the wet grass.

  I should’ve put on a sweatshirt. It’s foggy, the halo kind that’s impossible to draw.

  From up in the house, the vans look farther away, but they are so very, very close, really. Just three stories, a pebble driveway, two lanes of asphalt, two sidewalks.

  I wonder if the girl’s inside. If she cannot afford an apartment, she cannot afford a ticket or a tow. When she’s around, the big lady in the camo tank top sits on the curb sharpening knives and staring at the water. The girl just walks and reads . . . and reads . . . and reads. It doesn’t look like vacation.

  I turn back to face my house. It rises up up up into the fog. The windows are a warm, gauzy yellow, like a lighthouse.

  I knock on the van’s passenger door and then hear a voice. Someone is fumbling with the window crank.

  “What?” It’s the lady. Her face and shoulders fill the entire window. Up close, she resembles a giant, hunched vulture. But I think she’s younger than my mom. Almost no wrinkles.

  My tongue feels suddenly heavy.

  The girl peeks out from behind her. She’s got a dictionary-sized book in her hands. Her curls brush the sharp line of her jaw.

  “Tickets,” I choke out, pointing down the street. I sound like a street vendor. “Parking tickets,” I cry, this time hitting an adjective that means something. “You gotta move your van. You really shouldn’t park here.”

  “Jeanne Ann, get your head back inside!”

  She has a name. Jeanne Ann.

  Jeanne Ann has leaned over the vulture-faced woman and out the window so far, only her knees and feet are still inside the van. Her head nearly grazes my arm.

  “I knew we shouldn’t ignore those sirens,” she says.

  “If you go now and come back in half an hour, you’ll be fine.” I dig out the words. “They don’t do this more than once a week. This spot gets it the worst.”

  The police are getting closer.

  “Mom!” she shouts, sliding her upper half back into the van.

  So the big lady is her mom.

  “We’re out of gas, kid; the tire’s flat.” Jeanne Ann’s mom raises her hands up and lets them drop in surrender.

  “Sometimes they tow,” I insert.

  “Crapinade,” Jeanne Ann groans.

  Crapinade!

  I shove my hands in my pockets, and when I look up again, Jeanne Ann and her mom are staring at each other—one face stony and huge, the other shuffling through a dark rainbow of scowls. Neither is leaping to action.

  “You live in one of the vans too?” Jeanne Ann says, turning toward me.

  “No.” I pivot away slightly. “I—I just see how it goes here sometimes.”

  She narrows her eyes. “Wait, I know you,” she says. “You’re the kid in brown. The sidewalk-chalk guy.”

  “It’s beige,” I mumble, not quite sure I like her descriptions but glad I’m at least sort of memorable. I look up again, just in time to see her shrink into shadow.

  A hand falls on my shoulder.

  “License and registration,” the police officer says.

  I flinch and my heart kicks up. But then I feel my feet, solid, beneath me. I breathe in—seaweed and saltwater and something sour. I stand up straighter.

  This is where I’m meant to be.

  JUNE 19

  Jeanne Ann

  Attention vibrant residents of the Green Adjacent Area! A strategy is needed to combat the aggressive ticketing tactics employed by local police. All ideas welcome.

  Meeting time: now.

  —Sandy

  I find the pink flier under our windshield wiper this morning and show it to Mom, who takes one look, then resumes staring at the Golden Gate Bridge. It smells like old gym clothes in here and recycled breath. Mom’s got her mostly empty wallet on her lap. The parking ticket hasn’t improved her mood.

  Mom’s wallet—full or empty—usually cues The Speech. It goes: If you want credit cards when you’re thirty-five, Jeanne Ann, don’t break into a convenience store and steal soda and steaks when you’re eighteen while participating in truth or dare with fellow high school dropouts. And, when you’re twenty-one, don’t make it worse by whacking the boss’s favorite bartender with a frying pan, no matter how often he tries to kiss you. Just report him.

  Credit card companies aren’t fans of felons, which is what Mom technically is. Was. They make felons check a special box on applications. Mom refuses. The past is past, she likes to say, though I don’t think she believes it. If the application asked: “Are you a totally different person from the one who committed those crimes?” it would be better.

  The absence of a credit card is like the absence of a thumb, Mom says. You can’t grip things tightly. We lived in a crummy apartment in Chicago because of the absence of a credit card. We live in this van because of the absence of a credit card. We can’t pay this new parking ticket. Missing a thumb is something you notice quick.

  She must be too tired to give The Speech, which
scares me a little. She’s exhaling in huffs.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “For sure,” she says, sounding the opposite.

  I note the return of dark shadows under her eyes. She had them in Chicago. She lost them on the road trip. There’s a new vertical line of worry between her eyebrows too.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Have a seat,” Sandy says, pulling over his spare lawn chair. I sink low. This is better than inside but only by a hair. His living room has moved to the grass beside our vans. The air smells like bacon again.

  I’ve brought along a book, a pen, the flier, and another peanut butter sandwich—I’m averaging two a day since our falafel feast. We’ve got bread again thanks to the smoothie money. I’m reading The Outsiders, starring Ponyboy, the gang member with a heart of gold. He would know what to do in my situation; he’d get all the greasers together and rumble till somebody felt bloody but better. I want a gang. Instead I’ve got:

  $5.45: amount remaining in Mom’s wallet

  $150: cost of parking ticket

  45+/-: number of days till summer is over and I’m officially a 7th-grade dropout

  0: number of jobs for Mom

  2: number of people who’ve shown up for this meeting

  “Tea?” Sandy nods at a blue teapot on his table. “A kukicha blend. Not my best stuff, but it does the job. Pairs well with indignity.”

  “No thank you,” I say.

  He pats the teapot, as if I’ve hurt its feelings.

  “Do you think they got your flier?” I say, tipping my head in the direction of the other vans and RVs.

  Sandy cleans out a fingernail with a dented pocketknife, then leans back in his lawn chair to get a better view of the vehicles behind his. Several of them have cracked windshields and tinfoil radio antennae. “Swing shifts, medical exams, muscle fatigue, retirement”—he points to the vans behind me as he goes down his list; he makes my nearest neighbors sound almost normal. “Yes, I do, but, they’re not a ‘right now’ kinda crowd.”

  He slices a peach into four wedges with his pocketknife. He sees me staring. I can’t help it. I now think with my stomach all day.

  “How many tickets have you gotten since you moved here?” I manage to say.

  Sandy laughs quietly. He’s wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt that hugs his belly. It reads: I SWALLOWED A SEED AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED.

  “I could pay your way through college with the money I owe the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency,” Sandy says.

  “You never pay?”

  He shakes his head.

  I guess that makes sense. Why would a criminal pay his parking tickets?

  “So why do you need a strategy to combat ticketing?”

  He sits up straighter, pulling his suitcase close. “They don’t ticket those people in the houses across the street for blocking sidewalks with their hired cars. They ticket us, and sometimes they tow us too. And when that happens, we have to fork over real cash to get our vehicles back. Hundreds of bucks to get our homes returned. It’s not right. The whole city is against us. You can’t park anywhere long-term. Not this block. Not any block. You must sometimes fight the principle of a thing, not just the thing itself.”

  Sandy pats my hand. “Relax your eyebrows. You won’t get towed. I can teach you a few tricks. We’ll be careful together.”

  We will? I don’t even know this person. I pull my hand away and begin folding the flier into smaller and smaller squares, as if I can make it disappear, along with the police, our ticket, this entire month . . .

  I look across the street at the houses—the glass Rubik’s Cube, the green layer cake. Chicago had fancy houses too, but they weren’t across the street from our creaky two-flat, looking down at us all day.

  Sandy has followed my gaze. “They’re ornaments that people live in.”

  “Yeah.” I sigh. “I’d like one.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. They’re filled with stuff that will ruin your life.”

  “Like couches?”

  “And self-timing ovens that cost six months’ mortgage, and armoires from France, and TVs bigger than king-sized beds, and antique vases that can’t be moved except by professionals with insurance.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “You can’t leave. You’re constantly worried about your stuff—if you have enough, who has more, where to get the best. And you forget to go outside and breathe.”

  “The couch sounds nice.”

  “They’re not happier, those people.”

  I look at the limp peanut butter sandwich in my hands and at Sandy and his peach. How would he know if they’re happier? “That’s baloney,” I say; it’s a favorite expression of Mrs. Jablonsky’s.

  I take a bite of the sandwich, gag a little, then swallow. I wish this sandwich were baloney.

  By the time I look up again, Sandy has disappeared into his camper van. The meeting attendance has now shrunk to one. I push up out of the lawn chair and am, in four steps, at the door of the Carrot.

  “Wait, wait,” Sandy calls from his passenger window. He’s got a bulging plastic bag in his hand and shakes it. “For you.”

  I trudge back to him. He has exited and emptied the bag’s contents into a lawn chair.

  Four peaches.

  One half loaf of bread.

  Two smocks.

  One bag of brown dirt marked TEA. IMPORTED.

  “You’ll need the smocks Sunday,” Sandy says.

  “We will?” Sunday is six days away.

  “Six a.m. Be up. Be dressed. Be limber.”

  “For what?”

  Sandy disappears into his van again and returns to the window with something wrapped in waxed paper. “You’ll need some cheese with that.” He points to the loot he’s already given me. “It’s sheep’s cheese, from Spain. Smells like farts, tastes great.” He tosses it onto the pile in the lawn chair. “And the tea is just to get you acquainted. We can discuss its unique qualities after you’ve tried it.”

  I hesitate, then blurt, “Is it legal, the thing Sunday?”

  He brushes the question aside with a hand. “Just be ready. I’ll pay you each twenty dollars. Easy-peasy.”

  I look down at my chair full of food and back to his face. I don’t understand our neighbor. Every crease and wrinkle in his hairy grin hides a story, I think.

  I grab a peach from the pile and rub it against my shirt, then look back at the Carrot to make sure Mom isn’t watching.

  She is, though. Hunched in the window. I quickly set the peach down in the chair. I watch Mom pull in a big breath and hold it. Then she nods—the slightest downward bow—and turns away.

  I look back to the peach, grab it.

  Now: Eat or save, eat or save?

  Oh ha. I take a bite.

  JUNE 20

  Cal

  “Visitor!” the bearded guy shouts as Jeanne Ann exits the van.

  I stand up from the curb so fast, my backpack slips off my lap.

  Jeanne Ann pauses in the doorway, sniffing the cold morning. Her cheeks are still puffy with sleep.

  “No thank you,” she says in my general direction, hugging a book.

  The bearded guy grabs the sides of his lawn chair and stills his bouncing legs. “Hey, it’s sweet. An admirer,” he says to her, a bit more adamant than I expect. This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to him. He’s shaped sort of like a butternut squash. His clothes are rumpled but not dirty, and he smells more like spearmint than trash. The stuff that looks like dirt from my window is just lots and lots of untamed beard. Even his voice surprises me—it’s deep and kinda musical, like someone who reads the news on the radio.

  I throw the backpack over my shoulder, stick my hand out toward Jeanne Ann, wonder if it’s too formal, and shove it in my pants pocket. “I’m,
I mean, my name is Cal.”

  She half meets my eye, half looks right past me.

  “Go home. Please, go home.” Her voice cracks, tired.

  I point across the street. “I was just there. That’s my window.” It feels like a lot to reveal. I glance at the bearded guy again, worried. He’s studying his teacup, like there’s a mystery to solve at the bottom. I try to inspect his face without staring. I can’t remember exactly how long he’s been out here. But he’s become familiar, a real neighbor.

  Jeanne Ann mutters something. It sounds like: “Rubik’s Cube.”

  I pull my sketchbook out from my back pocket and tap it against my thigh. “I was just . . . I wanted to make sure you were . . . after the ticket . . .” My tongue feels like a flopping fish in my mouth. I can’t make it work.

  She replies with her nuclear scowl.

  “No thank you,” she says, firm and flat.

  I look out to the bay for assistance. It shouts back: If nothing else, tell her she has to move the van!

  She’s crossed her arms.

  “I brought chocolate.” I reach back into my bag and pull out two bars. Thick ones. Made by hand. Mom serves this chocolate in the restaurant. “And milk.”

  Off to the side, the bearded guy flaps his arms. “First rule of business,” he says, “accept freebies. Let the boy swoop in, Jeanne Ann. Take the chocolate, take a walk!”

  Jeanne Ann

  “The chocolate,” I say when we sit down, shoving out a hand.

  I eat half the bar in about thirty seconds, only remembering to keep an eye out for Mom after I’ve let out a satisfied moan. I have a feeling I’m going to regret this. I know Mom would not approve. Food from Sandy? Maybe. Food from this kid? No.

  We’re sitting at a picnic table down the shore from the van—there’s nothing between us and the water but a square of cement, a pile of rocks mixed with sand, and a seagull pecking at a shell. The sun is trying to find its way through the fog.