Mom’s first audition was here. This is where she made the killer eggs that didn’t win her a job. Or maybe did, but she definitely didn’t take it. Or did she?
I plunk my elbows on the front desk. This is the place connected to the phone number Mom left. Cal made the call, took down the address. It is not a dump. It is not a restaurant to be ashamed to work at.
“Is there another place with your same phone number?” I ask the guard-dog lady. This just has to be a mistake.
Cal steps up beside me. “We’re trying to find someone who works here,” he says, for the fifth time—she has kept us waiting while she answers the phone and smiles for patrons who carry thick wallets. He doesn’t give her a second to answer this time, just grabs my arm and tugs us through to the dining room.
The main restaurant is small and windowless, with high leather booths in four corners and four small tables in the center of the floor. All of the tables are filled with diners eating lunch, and everyone is whispering and sitting straight, like sharpened pencils.
Cal appraises the place calmly. He grew up in a dining room not so different, just bigger, with better light.
A waiter blasts through, carrying a steaming tray of something.
Cal looks from the waiter to me, then nods in the direction of the swinging kitchen door. He leads as we slip through, nearly colliding with a chef, his frying pan, and a blue flame that has leaped off the stove on the other side.
The kitchen is a quarter the size of Greenery’s, with low ceilings and a gray-green glow emanating from the floor. I don’t remember it feeling this small before, but maybe that’s because there were only three of us in it the last time. It feels a little like a spaceship cockpit, crammed to capacity with bodies and knives.
“Get those kids out of here!” someone barks. I turn in time to see the chef with the too-short legs striding toward us with a serving fork that resembles a spear.
Maybe we should’ve thought this through.
I do my best to look around while running, but I don’t see anyone who looks like Mom.
Cal hits the exit door in back before me, and I only get a second’s glance at the little room we’ve just passed through, a kind of storage area where shoes are piled against a wall and a large woman with her back to us leans over a steaming crate of plates, one hand wiping remnants of food into a bucket, the other blasting water into an open dishwasher.
I know those legs, that back, that ponytail. I know this woman.
The fork-wielding chef is within striking distance. Cal is calling to me to follow him; he’s tugging at my overalls.
I don’t remember how we made it out or down the hill. I don’t remember opening the door to the Carrot. I don’t remember falling asleep, or pulling Mom’s cookbooks on top of me. But they’re here now, and they’re making it very hard to breathe.
JULY 10
Cal
Someone is leaning on the doorbell. By the time I race downstairs, it’s jingled about fifty times.
I throw open the door. The afternoon light is blinding. I blink, squint, and just make out the blurry outline of a lump on the doorstep and a figure standing behind. “Jeanne Ann?” I say. She hasn’t spoken to me since we found her mom yesterday afternoon, washing dishes.
“Why can’t I stay and play with the Giraffe?” the lump wails. It’s not a girl’s voice. “He likes me. He doesn’t like you. He told me.”
“Shhhh,” pleads the figure behind the lump. And, then the scene comes into focus. Mrs. Caspernoff is standing over Nathan, fingers clamped to his shoulder. “Hi again!” She lifts her eyes to mine, shows me all the teeth in her head. She’s gotten adult braces since the last visit, or maybe they were hidden before. They make her look more ruthless. “I was hoping to speak to your mom again,” she says, “on behalf of the Marina Beautification Comm—”
I slam the door.
“Who was that?” Mom pops her head into the living room from the kitchen.
“No one,” I say, which seems to satisfy her, because she ducks back into the kitchen, just missing the howling that has begun outside: “Yay! Slam it again! Do it again!”
JULY 11
Jeanne Ann
JA, if I had my own restaurant? It’d be tiny, a few tables. Far from anyplace, so you’d have to really want to get there. There’d be a piano in one corner and only two items on the menu. Everything would be cooked by one person—me. I’d walk the food out to the tables. I’d watch the customers take their first bites. They’d know my name.
—Mom
P.S. You’ll be there too.
I don’t know what day it is when I finally stumble outside. The sun is starting to fade, pulling at the shadows. Sandy is squatted by his camper van, cringing at a yellow clamp attached to his right front wheel.
“What is that?” I say, my voice scratchy and kind of flat from too much solitary confinement. I step closer. Am I dreaming or awake? I think I spoke to Mom in the middle of the night. I think I said, “You smell like dish soap” and she said, “No, I don’t.” I definitely remember her coming in. She placed her hand on my head and held it there. I remember dreaming that we lived at the bottom of a well, with no bucket to ride to the top. I think that was a dream. But it’s true. We’ve reached bottom. Or maybe we’ve always been down here and I’ve only just noticed.
The yellow clamp on Sandy’s wheel looks like a giant can opener.
“The Pretty Committee got its way today.” Sandy swings his arm out toward the swarm of Blueberries congregated in the grass near the bacon-scented shed. Every few seconds a member of the committee carries an object out of the shed—a wicker basket, a bag of potting soil, a shovel, a string of lights, an urn—and deposits it on the lawn under the sign that reads PRIVATE: MARINA BEAUTIFICATION COMMITTEE GARDEN SUPPLY ANNEX. Bad Chuck, nearly hidden behind a rusty bird bath near the shed, leaps out and points his water gun at a wooden duck. His mom appears a moment later, her ponytail whipping around with her head, and yells something that causes Bad Chuck to drop the nose of his gun. The committee must be prepping for its yard sale/protest against us.
Sandy sighs and holds up a slip of paper and reads from it: “A vehicle with five or more delinquent parking citations may be temporarily immobilized, also known as ‘booted.’”
I kneel for a closer look. “You can’t move?” My head is too foggy, I can’t figure out if a boot would be bad or good for us.
“I cannot move the camper till I pay my outstanding tickets. And if I don’t pay soon, they’ll impound it.” Bad for us. Definitely bad.
“They can do that?” I slept through this? I’ve been mostly hiding out since I found Mom washing dishes.
Sandy lowers himself into a lawn chair beside his table and slides a peach in my direction. He’s had fruit and bread and scraps of food for me every day since Mom started her job. Even “booted” he’s giving me food.
Bad Chuck suddenly appears at my side, a warm, dirty hand on my leg: “My mom says you live out here.” His water gun hangs limp from its strap as he looks back toward the Blueberries. His mom is shouting after him. “She says I’ll end up living outside if I keep being bad. She says you’re here because you got in lots of trouble.”
Sandy, listening, dumps a cup of tea on the ground. I’ve never seen him waste tea. “This is all very upsetting,” he mumbles over Bad Chuck’s head, in the Blueberries’ direction. “They’re poisoning the minds of youth.” He sets down his cup with an agitated clang.
I sneak a look at the other vans—eerily quiet and still like usual—and fall into Sandy’s spare chair.
“You like it out here, right? That’s why you’re here?” Bad Chuck says, tugging on my overalls, his eyes pleading.
I can’t deal with this.
I shift over slightly to eyeball Sandy’s suitcase, which is always somewhere near his right hip. “How will you take you
r trip if you’re booted?” I ask him. “Does your friend have a camper van too? You could just leave your van here and bring your . . .”
His arms are crossed high on his chest, but he follows my gaze to the suitcase. “My tea?”
I must not hide my surprise well, because his eyes grow wide. “What did you think was in here?”
Stolen watches. Gold ingots. Tens and twenties wrapped in rubber bands. I don’t answer.
“Cereal,” Bad Chuck shouts. “I think, cereal.”
Sandy picks up a magazine, sets it down, rubs his nose, tugs at his fingertips, coughs. He looks like he’s suddenly fighting off a case of hives. “I should probably tell you something, Jeanne Ann . . .”
“It doesn’t smell like cereal, though.” Bad Chuck is on his knees, sniffing the zipper of the suitcase.
“Nathan!” His mom is standing about twenty feet away with her arms out, like she would like to tear her son away from us, if only she could reach. “Come here this minute.”
“His name is Nathan?” I whisper to Sandy.
“What did you think it was?” Sandy whispers back.
I shrug. Not Nathan. Not tea in the suitcase either.
“Young man!” his mom yells again, more panicky. “I’m counting to three. One . . .” She pauses as she looks us over. I’m tempted to give Bad Chuck a hug and really freak her out.
The kid plops to the pavement at my feet, arms crossed, legs crossed, like in protest. His mother crosses her arms to match. I cross mine. It’s a standoff I’m not that interested in winning. But I don’t want her to win either.
With one eye on Bad Chuck’s mom and one on me, Sandy continues to whisper, “I’ve wanted to broach this for a while, Jeanne Ann . . .”
Something tells me I don’t want to hear whatever it is he wants to get off his chest.
I hold up a hand to cut him off. I wave to Bad Chuck’s mom with the other. Her face kinda freezes.
Sandy reaches over and sandwiches my hand between his palms. I get an up-close look at his fingernails—clean, trimmed neatly. Hmmmm. “Here I am, finally committed to leading the life I’ve always wanted,” he goes on. “Nothing in my way. I’ve retired. Responsibilities begone. I’ve revved my engines. All I need is my friend, my companion to decide she wants it too. And then, unexpectedly, I find myself sidetracked by something bigger than the open road. Something right in front of me. And there it is: If you are alive, you are responsible, and if you have your eyes open, you don’t get to choose what you see.”
He peers through his fur, a heavy look. I’m having a hard time meeting his eyes. They’re clear and fully concentrated on me. They don’t seem like the eyes of a man giving a nonsensical speech. They seem like the eyes of someone who sees me.
I take a giant bite of peach and turn away. The juice goes all over the place. I lick my wrist to catch some. It tastes like heaven around a pit. Sandy drinks tea, donates food, cares about my well-being. And, then . . . lives outside, gets “booted.”
I can feel Bad Chuck’s mom watching me. I can feel Sandy watching too. “Good peach?” he says. I nod. All of Sandy’s donated fruit is amazing. I sneak a peek at his face. He’s pulled up just the right side of his smile, and the serious look from a moment ago has slid off, replaced by his grin. He brushes his own hands together like he’s just made a decision about something. “I got halfway through my speech. That’s a decent night’s work,” he says. “I can continue it some other time. You’ll listen some other time, won’t you?” He lowers back into his chair. “I always say, do not disturb a good peach.”
I nod for lack of a better response. Maybe he’s the Robin Hood of San Francisco, a good criminal . . . Maybe I’ve been too hard on him . . . Or maybe my brain is too jangled to think straight.
Bad Chuck is tugging on the cuff of my pant leg, trying to get my attention again. His mom is still twenty feet off, but her attention is diverted. “The Blueberries are moving the big thingy!” Bad Chuck bounces on his butt a little. “I saw it. I think it’s a spaceship. It smells like breakfast too. But not cereal. Mom kicked it earlier. It was stuck inside the shed.”
“On three, heave!” A group of five Blueberries push a huge tarp-covered box out of the shed. The ladies just make it through the shed door, then collapse on the grass. Someone’s taped a sign to the “big thingy” that reads: $4 OR BEST OFFER.
With the money they raise from all this junk, the committee will double down their efforts to get rid of us.
Sandy peeks around his magazine to glance at the commotion. He pats Bad Chuck on the head. “Did I mention your friend Cal has come by a few times?”
“My friend?” Bad Chuck says.
“My friend,” I bark, then surprise myself further by crossing the street and banging on the Rubik’s Cube door. When it swings open, Cal is there, a pencil smudge on his nose. I’m not sure why I’ve come and then I’m suddenly absolutely sure. “I thought we’d—I’d—lose too much,” I’m saying, “coming into your house. But I woke up just now”—I breathe deep—“and realized we’d already lost it.”
Cal
“Don’t say anything,” Jeanne Ann orders, pushing past me into the house.
She loops through our living room, then back to the staircase by the front door, pausing to scowl, then marching up. I follow her as she mutters and grrrs, moving in and out of rooms upstairs, finally stopping inside the door of Mom’s bathroom. She gives me a look that makes my tongue tuck in at the back of my throat. Then she shuts the door and the water starts to run in the bath.
She pokes her head out a second later and looks at me for several seconds, not speaking. Steam rushes out over her head.
“You changed your mind about coming inside?” I say, careful not to sound too happy. I am so happy.
She shakes her head; she can peel off a layer of skin with that stare.
“No. I didn’t change. Everything else did.” She closes the door.
I have many more questions, but I don’t ask them. I just sit. “I’ll be right here,” I say. “Anything you need.”
Jeanne Ann
I’ve used four kinds of shampoo, and three conditioners.
I’ve emptied the tub and refilled it twice.
I am scrubbing till I can see a reflection in my skin.
“Everything okay in there?” Cal yells through the door.
Yes. No. I’ll never be this comfortable again.
The tub is the size of a small indoor pool, tiled white. There are shiny pendants dangling from a chandelier above and a paradise of blankets and cushions and overstuffed chairs in the attached bedroom—his mom’s, I assume.
“I’m fine.”
He’s just outside, probably with his ear smashed against the door like an octopus sucker.
There’s a moment of quiet, and then he says, “Jeanne Ann, are you . . . is your mom in trouble?”
I swat at a large bubble floating across the water, sending it airborne. It lands on my pile of dirty clothes by the toilet.
I hear a thud on the other side of the door. “That was me,” he says, “kicking myself. It’s none of my business.” Another thud. “But she could be . . . you know, on the lam,” he says. “And you could be, you know, her accomplice.”
I smile half-heartedly. He’s seen too many movies. But I suppose I am an accomplice. Was one. Coming here, to his house, feels like breaking away.
“Yeah? What crime did we commit?” I say.
He thrums his fingers against the door.
“Maybe you robbed a series of banks in Utah and Nevada. You dressed as nuns. And . . . you’ve got all the money in your spare tire . . . which you’ll soon trade with a smuggler, who will take you across the Pacific to Hawaii . . . in a speedboat.”
He’s trying to make me laugh. “I’ve always wanted to see Hawaii.”
“ . . . And, you want to be near
the money at all times, so you live in the van . . .”
I rub the soap into my too-long fingernails.
“Why are you living in a van?” Cal asks. How long has he waited to ask that hot potato? He taps out a new rhythm on the door.
I wash between my toes for the fifth time, then behind my ears for the tenth time. Would it be so bad if I pocketed a toothpaste tube from that overstocked cabinet above the sink? Would they even notice in this giant house? Does that even count as stealing?
“Jeanne Ann?”
I don’t answer.
“Did you hear my question?”
“Yes.” But it’s my question. I ask it in my sleeping bag every night, staring at a rusted ceiling. I ask it every morning when I wake up, stiff on a deflated pad. I ask it when I’m trudging to the public bathroom with the overflowing garbage cans and the sinks that only run ice water.
“I like your version of things,” I say, bursting a bubble with a slap. I’m adding to the waterworks, suddenly. I knew this would happen. “Let’s stick with that.”
Cal
How will I explain this to Mom if she walks by? She is just downstairs, working in the kitchen. I will probably tell her the truth. It’s way overdue.
Jeanne Ann exits the bathroom in her overalls—she’s back to the overalls—with a towel wrapped around her head. She sniffles, rolls her eyes upward like she’s praying for something. I think she’s trying not to cry.
“It’s okay,” I say. But is it okay? A crying Jeanne Ann?
“No, it’s definitely not okay,” she snaps. Her eyes are really red. Maybe she already cried. “We left Chicago . . . we lived like this . . . for nothing.”
“Not nothing.”
“My mom’s a dishwasher. She’s supposed to be a cook. At least in Chicago she was a cook.”
I want to say: If you hadn’t left Chicago, I wouldn’t have met you, but the best I can do is open and then close my mouth.
I get her to follow me to my room, point her to a beanbag chair. She sits—“Oh”—and then abruptly stands.
Parked Page 17