“What?”
She gestures to my walls.
“Oh. Yeah.” She’s the first person—besides me and Mom—in here in a long time.
“That’s a lot of wings.” She’s standing in front of one of my sketches, my self-portrait . . . with wings, which is next to my Greenpeace ship with wings, and my Rosa Parks with wings. I’m still perfecting that one.
“They’re heroic,” I say. “I mean, they’re supposed to be.”
“Wings?” She sniffles.
“Symbols of superhuman strength or physical courage. You know, like Hercules, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mother Teresa . . .”
“They had wings?”
“No . . . yes . . . in spirit. Here.” It’s no fun to explain this. I’m happy she’s seeing my stuff, but I don’t want to talk about it.
“They’re kind of intense, the wings,” she says.
“I guess.”
She wipes her nose on the back of her arm and looks at me, nodding, like she’s solved something. It feels like an X-ray. I look away. I look around. I snatch up the purple skirt and matching blouse with wave patterns that Mom had in the garage in a “donate” bag. I’ve been collecting clothes, waiting for a chance to give them to Jeanne Ann. “Keep them,” I say, feeling bold.
Jeanne Ann looks down at herself.
Her face closes up and she pushes Mom’s clothes away. “I gotta go,” she says. “This was a bad idea.”
“Wait! No, it wasn’t.” She’s already out of the room and halfway down the hall. She stops and turns; she’s gone the wrong way if she wants to get downstairs. “Don’t leave.” I step into the hall. “You’ve come all this way.”
She has to slow down to go around me.
“I made a reservation at Greenery,” I continue, talking fast. “We could—you could taste what your mom thought she’d be . . . why you’re here.”
This stops her midstride.
Jeanne Ann
Cal starts talking about the Greenery menu, the dishes that Mac, the chef, makes best, and he just won’t shut up. He thinks Mom would “actually really like it.” He says it’s the sort of food Mom aspires to make.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me—I should be running out of here, but I don’t. I’m stuck. The house is warm and the rug in the hall feels like marshmallows between my toes. The bath has turned my legs to mush, and my eyes burn with too much shampoo and too much time in the van feeling sorry for myself and Mom, who will not give up but cannot win.
Mom’s washing dishes. Washing food off people’s plates that she should be making and I should be eating.
I’m hungry. For something hot, with sauce. The food Mom buys is fine, but it’s never enough and it’s cold. Cold. I don’t want to be cold anymore. Cal says if I don’t like the restaurant, if I am uncomfortable, I can just leave. He tells his mom we’re going, and she says, “Of course!” Just like that. “Of course!” She was downstairs the whole time I was in the bath—and didn’t even notice. Cal says she sometimes doesn’t look up when she’s distracted by work. She’s looking up now. Looking so hard at me, I think she sees it—what we are.
Does she pity me? Do I care anymore? I don’t think so. She’s dressed up for a fancy event and wears a gowny thing that trails across the floor. She looks like a doll wrapped in a rug. No offense. She’s hunting for her purse, so she can go. Cal pulls me aside, offers the skirt-set combo again, and I take it and change. I’m in his mom’s clothes. Something has definitely cracked inside me. I stepped into his house and now I’m on this slide that will not end, and I’m not sure I want it to.
I’m not Mom’s accomplice anymore. But I’m not sure what I’ve become instead.
Cal
“Greenery sparkles,” Jeanne Ann says, looking up from her book, elbows on table. She doesn’t sound exactly impressed. But so far: no scowls. She only agreed to come if I loaned her a book, so I found my copy of Dune. Her face got tight when she accepted it. I don’t know why I didn’t loan it sooner. She finished the library books the same day she started them.
We’re seated in the corner booth, where the floor-to-ceiling windows meet. We can see everything from here: bubbling wine in the high-stem glasses, silver buttons on sports coats, gems in ladies’ necklaces, glassy chandeliers, even the first brush of sunset glancing in.
“Yeah. I could never draw this,” I say.
I’m glad Mom’s got an awards banquet tonight—she gave her blessing and watched us walk down the driveway and across the street before she shut the front door—but I also wish she were here, refereeing the floor, so nothing spins out of control.
“Yes, you could,” Jeanne Ann mumbles, nose back in the book. “You can draw anything.”
Jeanne Ann’s wearing Mom’s wave skirt and the matching blouse, and her hair is up in a bun, curls popping out in every direction. Every few seconds she looks up from Dune and cases the restaurant.
I want to say something, but I’m not sure what, so I show her the I.D. that the middle school just sent in the mail—my eyes are closed, but my hair is over them, so it’s sort of a wash. I hope it’ll make her laugh. She cracks the mildest smile.
“We give the mayor this table when he comes,” I say, tapping my plate with my sketchbook. I can draw anything . . .
“He brings his vegetarian girlfriends,” I continue. “We’re hoping he settles down with one of them.” Jeanne Ann reaches across to my plate and places a finger on my butter tab. She stares deep into my eyes: “Don’t tell that one at your new school,” she says. “You gonna eat that?”
Jeanne Ann
The food around here looks like the pictures in Mom’s cookbooks . . . minus the steak and gravy. No one will bring me any, is the problem.
“Do they always make you wait so long for food?” I’m chomping on ice from my water glass. I’ve eaten all the butter slabs on the table. Cal says I was supposed to wait for the bread. Whatever.
I adjust my skirt. It’s too small; I have to leave it unzipped at the top so I can breathe, but the zipper is itching, and my feet are hot in my high-tops. At least there’s the book—Dune. I can’t decide if I’d rather live on a barren planet and wear a suit that recycles my pee, or in a van, on Earth, with no good place to pee.
Cal’s introduced me to the waiter—or as he calls him, “the server”—the busboy, and the person in charge of wine, who has a serious winking problem.
I unroll the paper menu. The main dish is called fricassee. It sounds like a disease, but I bet it will taste good. I get to finally try gorgonzola.
“You okay?” Cal asks.
I am weighing the differences between the bag of non-perishable grocery-store food under the front seat of the Carrot and this menu. I wonder what Mom would say if she were here, with us, if she’d admit she liked it. Or if she’d say one thing and mean another.
“Hungry,” I say. “So hungry.”
“I can fix that,” he says, waving his arms. “I can actually fix that.”
Cal
Mac sets down two salads—fluffy mounds of green dotted with slices of grilled peach and chunks of blue-veined gorgonzola. I love this salad. Mac makes it look like art. She gave us extra-large servings. We are doing this!
“Nice to see you again,” Mac says, beaming at Jeanne Ann. Mac knows everything. Yesterday, when I asked her why a great cook would ever take a job as a dishwasher, she looked at me cockeyed and then slurped up a big sip of coffee to give herself a second to think. “‘If I can succeed, I can fail—dodging one means skipping the other,’” she said, like she was quoting someone. I didn’t understand what she meant, but when I told Jeanne Ann, afterward, her mouth opened slightly and she asked me to write Mac’s exact words down.
“On a date with our patron saint.” Mac pats my back now. “He’s not the greatest at counter service, but man, can he take care of a gal.”
My toe connects with her shin too late.
Jeanne Ann
“It’s not a date,” Cal says again. He’s repeating it for me and Mac, the chef lady, and anyone nearby who will listen. “Not a date.”
His squirm is a tiny bit hilarious. He’s sucked his head so deep into his neck, I think it’s going to disappear entirely. While it’s out of the way, I get a clear view of red and blue lights, blinking and swirling on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling windows. They’re reflecting off the window glass like fireworks.
I stand and lean forward for a better look. The lights are so urgent.
“It’s not a date,” Cal says again, tugging my sleeve. “Really. I mean—well, Mom says it is, and it can be, if you want, but . . .”
I pull away and take a step toward the windows. Mac turns to look out the windows too.
“Let’s just eat. The food’s getting cold. Ha. The food is already cold.” Cal scoots out of the booth to come around to my side. “Please.”
I can hear him saying something else, but it’s crossing and snagging with the . . .
Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no!
I dodge past the wine server who winks too much and tear out Greenery’s front door.
“Stop!” I yell, flying over faded chalk arrows, now pointing in the wrong direction. “Don’t tow us!”
I wave my arms, jump into view. The man inside the tow truck sees me and hears me—I know he does—but he rolls up his windows. The front of the Carrot has already been raised; it’s attached to a giant metal hook; only the van’s back wheels touch the ground. “Please!” I bang on the door of the tow truck. “Just give us a ticket like last time! Don’t tow us.”
The driver revs his engine and begins pulling away from the curb. I have to jump onto the sidewalk to avoid getting my toes run over.
A traffic cop pulls into the lane behind the tow truck and gives me the barest sideways glance, his flashing lights spinning circles, reflecting off the water and every remaining pane of glass.
Cal
The air’s gone still and sticky. Even the passing cars seem to glide by in slow motion.
I sit beside her on the curb.
I let another van get towed.
This is my fault. If we’d been with the van instead of at Greenery, I would’ve talked the tow driver down. I would’ve bribed him. I would’ve . . . done something. I don’t know what, but something.
Jeanne Ann
“I have to wait here,” I say to Cal, twisting to look at the streetlight above. It can’t decide if it wants to be on or off; every ten seconds, I lose sight of my hands.
“Until your mom gets back?” Cal says.
I nod.
“I’ll wait with you.”
No. “Your mom will worry if you don’t go home.”
He thinks about that.
“Come with me, then. We can keep watch from my room.”
I sit up straighter. “I can’t. My mom has to see me—here.” I point to the ground at my feet. She has to see me, and I have to save the spot. This is our corner of everything.
Cal digs something out of his pocket and hands it to me. Two slices of fresh bread wrapped in a napkin, two tabs of butter, and the menu. “Mac has doggy bags with your name on them.”
“Thanks.” I should not have gone to his house for a bath. I should not have accepted his invitation to dinner. “That happened so fast.”
He stands, shuffles.
“Yeah,” he says.
I find myself staring at his ankles.
“I’ll stay,” he says.
“Okay.” He’s wearing tan loafers with lime-green socks. “If it’ll make you feel better,” I whisper, studying the folds in his socks, the inward turn of his feet, the warmth of his night shadow over me. I think I have never paid closer attention to anything in my life.
Cal
We sit back to back at first. Then side to side. Then she rests her head on my shoulder. I don’t like the circumstances, but I like this feeling. A white parking ticket flaps at us from under Sandy’s windshield wiper. Is he home with his wife tonight? I hope so. I hope they’re together, making up.
“Cal?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re a really good person.”
“Nah.”
“Don’t argue.”
“Okay.”
“Promise me, when you start middle school, the first week, you won’t speak to anybody unless they speak to you first. Don’t try to make a friend. Don’t stalk. Just observe. Draw. Keep to yourself. Be mysterious.”
“Okay.”
“It’s all gonna work out.”
“Sure.”
Her head gets heavier on my shoulder. But I can handle it.
JULY 12
Jeanne Ann
It’s four a.m. by the time we board the 30 bus, switch to the 19, and wait while the night-shift driver is replaced by the morning-shift driver. Mom sits upright and at attention, with her purse propped up at her hip, a corner of dishwasher smock hanging out the top.
She hasn’t said much since she found me sitting on the curb. She sent Cal home, pulled me up by my armpits, and walked us to the nearest bus stop.
“We should’ve listened to the kid,” she says now, as the new bus driver revs the engine, adjusts his mirrors, makes the sign of the cross. We’re in a row near the front. There are three people napping in the bus’s way back.
“Yeah,” I say, leaning against her. “They really do tow.”
Our seats vibrate as the bus rumbles through a tunnel.
“This is it,” Mom says over the noise. “This is it, for now.”
It’s the answer to almost every question I’ve got.
The bus grinds uphill like it’s using muscle to climb—just like Cal and me on bikes—then whooshes and shudders on the down-slope. We pass through neighborhoods I’ve never seen before. They look nothing like the neighborhood we’re living in. Each one could be its own city. One stacked with skyscrapers framed in lights and the next stair-stepped with skinny houses in rainbow colors. Every hill we slip down makes me wonder where the bottom of the city is, when we’ll hit it. Have we already?
We sway in our seats. Mom’s hand rests on top of mine.
“What’s with the outfit?” she says.
I look down at myself.
“I got invited to dinner.”
She snorts. A comforting sound. “I wasn’t sure what to be more worried about when I found you—the van or your clothes.”
She gently turns my chin toward hers. She inspects my face, neck, arms.
“I’m fine,” I say, rolling back and away.
She touches the fabric of my skirt. “A loaner, from his mom,” I say.
She raises an eyebrow.
I pull the menu from my pocket.
She tucks it in her purse, occasionally pulling it out to read, occasionally looking out the window, occasionally flicking her eyes in my direction.
“Fricassee is old-school. It’s basically leftovers in a dressed-up stew. French. The French get away with everything.” She puts the menu away. Takes it out.
“I had to leave before it was served.”
“And the salad?”
“Doggy-bagged.”
She nods. “Too bad.” She sounds sincerely sorry.
“How come we never eat food like that?” I ask.
She covers her mouth with the menu. I think she’s not going to answer, but then she says, “Don’t want you to get a taste for something I can’t provide.” It comes out quick but sure, like she’s known this for some time, and it makes me wonder what else she’s going to reveal. She sets down the menu and rubs the corners of her eyes.
The bus stops, and we step out into the gray light of early morning.
The pay window, a block on, i
s pocked with dents and scratches; it has met its share of angry visitors. A small pane slides open as we approach.
The total bill comes to $844—the tow plus the previous two parking tickets. They won’t give you back your vehicle if you have outstanding tickets.
All of our money—from the books, the windshield, Mom’s job—is stuck in the van in my overalls, where Cal and I stopped to unload before dinner. But if Mom got paid tonight, if she worked overtime—like eighty hours instead of forty this week—then maybe . . .
She slides a wad of cash through the slot.
I hold my breath and close my eyes. If we can afford to pay to get our van back, I won’t eat anything but peanut butter for the rest of my life, and I’ll never leave the van without our savings on my body . . . I shouldn’t have in the first place.
When I open my eyes, a voucher appears through a slot near her head, accompanied by the sounds of a printer, powering up and down.
Mom says we have enough to retrieve the Carrot, get the tire patched, buy a gallon of gas, cross town, and re-park. “Ninety-eight dollars in tips,” she says, explaining. Saved by tips! I’m going to be the biggest tipper if I ever have the chance.
But we’re no closer to that $1,500 rent, plus down payments.
No closer to a couch.
Much closer to pb&j for the rest of my life.
This is when Mom should say we’re going back to Chicago, when she should say this isn’t working.
I wait for it.
I wait for it.
I wait for it.
JULY 12
Cal
“I go home one time,” Sandy says, holding up a finger to the yawning moon, “one time, and look what happens.”
We’ve moved his lawn chairs to the vacant spot, on top of the motor-oil-stained cement, and are seated in them. It’s so barren and cold without Jeanne Ann’s van here. The sun is just starting to raise its orange eye.
“They’ll come back,” Sandy keeps repeating. It’s been four hours since they left. How long does it take to get across the city from the tow lot?
Parked Page 18