Parked

by Danielle Svetcov

  I shake my head. I still don’t know where to go with this. I want to—

  “Mom!”

  “What?” Mom glances behind her. She looks how I feel—utterly confused. This is like being trapped in the middle of the crosswalk when the light turns green for oncoming traffic. Go back? Go forward?

  “Cal, honey. You’ve got me worried.” She edges closer.

  “What’s new?” I hold out a hand to stop her. Her words sting. As usual.

  “Mac says—I hear—I think I can help. I could—”

  “You can’t do anything. You keep trying and you keep getting it all wrong. You just—you aren’t paying attention.”

  “I’m sorry about that. We need to talk about that. But this is—different. I can—”

  “No!” I say. “You can’t.”

  She’s quiet for a second. “What hurts you hurts me, honey,” she says in a soft voice that reminds me of when I was younger. “That’s our bond. That’s my motive here.”

  What hurts you, hurts me.

  I slow the words down. Replay them.

  I understand. Too well.

  Mom, me.

  Me, Jeanne Ann.

  I feel Mom wanting me to look up at her, but I’m still buzzing.

  “Mac says you are a lifeline to that girl—Jeanne Ann.”

  “Yeah, well, she doesn’t want a lifeline,” I say, though I don’t totally believe it. “And neither do I,” I announce. I don’t really believe that either but it sounds good, and I blow past Mom anyway, unsure of what it is I’m meant to do next.

  JULY 21

  Jeanne Ann

  The air feels different this afternoon. Not biting cold, not sticky hot. Blue sky. It must be seventy degrees. Mom calls seventy degrees “God’s temperature.” She doesn’t believe in God, but I know what she means—this temperature requires no extra effort. It’s like breathing or blinking or sleeping.

  I grab a wad of paper towels from the bathroom, wet them, and wipe down the Carrot’s interior, unzipping the sleeping bags and dangling them out the open windows to air. Mom still doesn’t know the truth about Sandy. She’s been coming in too late and leaving too early for me to tell her.

  Outside, Nathan is back on top of the food cart, playing Lord of the Manor with an invisible sword. I can hear him through the window. “March on the Blueberries at dawn!”

  I think it’s maybe the reason I feel a tiny bit better.

  I am tempted to climb up there too, see how it feels to be above it all. Or at least aboveground. If the cart were a little closer to us, we could almost call it our outdoor kitchen. A kitchen that’d give us tetanus, for sure. It’s so covered in black grease and rust, shards are falling into the grass and dyeing the turf a funky orange. I’d be worried for Bad Chuck’s safety, except that I’m not his babysitter. His mom, at the shed, is, and she doesn’t seem concerned. I’m not surprised the Blueberries want it gone. I’m more curious about how it ended up with them in the first place.

  And us? How did we end up where we don’t belong? Where do we go now?

  I glance at Sandy’s van—silent for days—and at Cal, up in the Rubik’s Cube.

  JULY 21

  Cal

  “At least she’s got something to occupy her time,” Sandy says, fists on hips.

  “At least she’s not alone,” Mrs. Paglio says, tapping her mouth nervously.

  “It’s terrible,” I say, plain.

  They nod in agreement.

  We’re watching Jeanne Ann from the Paglios’ living room window, two stories up. Mrs. Paglio has served lunch—little sandwiches with the crusts removed and colored toothpicks poked through—but I’m not hungry. I haven’t been hungry for days. We’re lined up, three in a row, with a sandwich each, and I remember what Jeanne Ann said about me watching from my window. It’s not right. We should close our eyes. But that’s not right either. We have to look and listen. The details matter. And if the reason is right, we should be allowed to do something.

  “Half the Beautification Committee feels wretched, and the other half is undeterred,” Mrs. Paglio says. “It’s far more complicated when we know who we’re shooing away.”

  Sandy sighs. “You should hear yourself.”

  “I’m just reporting,” Mrs. Paglio says testily.

  “I can’t watch,” I say. I turn away from the window, but then turn right back.

  “That’s it,” Sandy says. “I’ve got to get back down there.” Sandy’s been sleeping at home—his big home—to give Jeanne Ann space to cool off. It’s made Mrs. Paglio happy. It’s made Sandy anxious. They watch Jeanne Ann together from their big window, ready to pounce if even the wind blows her hair the wrong way.

  “If you go back out there, you’re not setting foot in this house again,” Mrs. Paglio says, stretching her body straighter.

  “Is that an ultimatum?”

  I don’t like it when the Paglios fight. I wish they’d remember their big wet kiss from five days ago.

  “She needs a basket of hot rolls with butter,” Mrs. Paglio says. “I can send her those. You stay here.”

  “That came out hard-hearted, dear. She needs a lot more than hot rolls.” Sandy, without his grin, is a very unpleasant sight.

  “I am the furthest thing from hard-hearted! You know what I mean. We can do just as much good for her over here.”

  The Paglios are glaring at each other.

  “You see why we prefer Morse?” Sandy whispers, leaning toward me. “Talking, texting, calling—it’s all too fast. You jab back before your thoughts are together. Deadly. Change the subject for me, would you, Cal, before I say something I’ll regret?”

  “Why was there a food cart in the shed?” I say. It was already on the tip of my tongue.

  Mrs. Paglio chuckles. “We were supposed to clean it up and sell it, twenty years ago. One of many ill-formed ideas.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” I say, watching Jeanne Ann. We are all looking at her again.

  She’s got both hands pressed against the food cart, as if feeling for a pulse, and her lips are moving, like she’s giving it advice.

  Somehow, the sight is reassuring.

  JULY 18

  Jeanne Ann

  “Here’s the thing,” I coo, holding a hand to the black and sticky griddle. It reminds me of some of the greasy surfaces at O’Hara’s House of Fine Eats, which I officially miss. What were we thinking, giving up that security? “I didn’t like the looks of you at first. But you’ve grown on me. You saw a lot of bacon in your day. We’d have been good friends.”

  JULY 22

  Cal

  Jeanne Ann: meet me at greenery 9:30 am. I want to show you something. It’s important.

  Jeanne Ann: meet me at greenery at 11 am.

  Jeanne Ann: meet me at greenery at 3 pm

  Jeanne Ann: i’m sorry for everything.

  She’s ignoring my notes. She’s ignoring me. I don’t know what to do. I am standing in front of the bathroom mirror, looking at myself. My bow tie is crooked and rumpled. I slept in my clothes last night. Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill—heroes—wore bow ties. I bet they didn’t sleep in them. Or maybe they did. They had bad days. They made mistakes too.

  I drag myself to the kitchen to assemble a care package Jeanne Ann won’t accept. The sunlight coming in through the stairwell windows is too bright. Maybe I could offer the care package to someone else across the street. Gus, maybe. All this focus on Jeanne Ann, I should focus on other people again too. Ask them what they need.

  I pass Mom on the living room couch, elbows on knees, opera glasses pressed to her face, staring out the big front window. I rub my eyes to make sure I’m seeing correctly.

  “What are you doing?” I stand over her.

  “Where’s her mom?” Mom says, making a note on a pad of paper
. It looks like a log.

  “Whose mom?”

  “Jeanne Ann’s? I never see her mom out there.” She adjusts the focus on the opera glasses, stands, walks to the window.

  “Her mom works. She’s washing dishes. What are you doing?”

  “Paying attention.” She lowers the glasses, looks at me, then raises the glasses again. “I’m a little nervous about the cart. She seems—”

  “Attached.” I join Mom at the window, but keep a few bodies’ distance between us.

  “Very.”

  “Yeah.” We stand there quietly looking. Just looking.

  “She glances up at my room sometimes,” I say.

  “That’s encouraging.”

  “Is it? Maybe she just has a cramp in her neck and turns her head this way to stretch it.”

  “Maybe . . .” Mom says.

  “Probably she’s looking.”

  “Yeah, probably.” We rest our foreheads on the cool glass. “They picked a beautiful place to park,” Mom says.

  “That’s why they stay.”

  Mom doesn’t say anything.

  “And maybe for a few other reasons,” I add.

  “Maybe.”

  “They don’t want to be rescued,” I say. “It’s not something people plan on wanting. They’re not . . . projects.”

  “That’s true.” Mom pauses, then hands me the opera glasses. “And sometimes people don’t even know anything is wrong.” I think she’s staring at me, but I don’t look.

  “That’s what I painted—at Point Academy—on the wall.” I tap the window. “It was big. Six feet by five. The vans. And the water and the bridge. And some wings. Jeanne Ann wasn’t there yet, so her van isn’t—wasn’t—in it. There was a green van, with a parrot, in that spot. Before.”

  Mom is quiet for a while.

  “How long have you—how long has all this been going on, Cal?”

  I smile. “Remember when I wore those footie pajamas?”

  Mom’s mouth falls open.

  “Cal—”

  “They’re out there! We’re in here!” I let that sink in. “With the mural, I wanted you to see what I saw. You and the whole school. It was going to be this big reveal. Get people talking—”

  Mom puffs out a tired sound. “It was a big reveal all right.”

  I give her the stink-eye, something I picked up from Jeanne Ann. Mom gives me the stink-eye back. Hers is almost as good as Jeanne Ann’s.

  “It still revealed kind of a lot,” I say. “Like, you don’t know me very well.”

  “You hid something big for a long time, Cal,” she says, “and then you sprang it on me and expected me—everyone—to get it.”

  “And then you totally overreacted.”

  “I acted on the advice of your dean and my instincts as a mom.” Her voice is starting to go up.

  “I don’t even have that dean anymore! That’s how much you overreacted!”

  Mom pinches the top of her nose, like I’m giving her a headache. “Okay. Tell me: What about your friends?”

  I raise the opera glasses and fidget till the view is blurry. “I don’t think they were friends. I think we were all just waiting in the same place, at the same time, to find friends, and the waiting near each other looked like friendship.”

  “That’s a very interesting theory.” Mom’s crossed her arms.

  “It’s Jeanne Ann’s.”

  “Smart girl.”

  “She hates me now. So . . .”

  “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “She should hate her mom. Her mom planned really badly.”

  “Yeah, she did. But I bet her mom hates herself plenty without Jeanne Ann piling on. Or you.”

  That’s an interesting theory.

  “Jeanne Ann needs to go to school, and I got her registered. But I didn’t ask her first.”

  We hold each other’s gaze. “That doesn’t sound so bad. I’d have done the same thing,” Mom says.

  “Yeah, that’s the problem.”

  JULY 22

  Jeanne Ann

  Bad Chuck is standing so close, I can feel his hot breath in my ear. I’m leaning against one of the Carrot’s wheels, unfolding Cal’s paper birds. Some have notes inside, others don’t. I’ve counted fifty so far. I think I’ll leave a few intact and perch them on the windshield next to Mom’s notes. Extra pairs of eyes.

  “Nathan! Nathan!” Bad Chuck’s mom, down by the piers, has just finished stringing up a new BEAUTIFY THE MARINA sign, and is looking for her son. One more turn of the head, and she’ll see.

  “Where’s the Giraffe, anyway?” Bad Chuck says, trying to read what Cal’s written. “He’s more fun. He’s never around anymore.”

  “You shouldn’t call him that.”

  “Giraffe? Why not?” Bad Chuck yanks up a fistful of grass and throws it.

  I squint at him and at the afternoon sun that’s set the water behind him ablaze. He’s really not a “Nathan.” “I dunno. Maybe you should.”

  He swings himself around and lies flat in the grass, his head near my hip. “My mom says I can’t live out here with you. It’s no fair.”

  “Nothing’s fair.” I glance at Sandy’s van. He’s back, but he’s avoiding his outdoor living room, which is just fine with me. He can go to his big house if he needs a living room.

  “She doesn’t know what I need.”

  Moms.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see one of my van neighbors, the bike messenger, whacking a small carpet against his fender, dust flying. Sandy introduced him to me—Horatio. I look at the rusty cart I’ve taken under my wing and wonder how it might look without the top layer of crud. Cleaning helped the Carrot.

  “Mom says I can’t take care of myself. She says running fast is useless unless you’re a puma,” Chuck says.

  “Or a bank robber.”

  “Did you know there’s no dessert or TV out here?” he says.

  I nod. “None.”

  He shoves his finger in his nose. “That’s terrible.”

  I nod.

  We both stare at the sky over the water. It’s ridiculously beautiful. I can’t stand it.

  Crapinade.

  “You’re the only one who tells the truth, Chuck.”

  He’s simple. I know what I’m getting.

  “Yup. I’m the good guy,” he says, beaming his gap-toothed smile out over the bay. “Who’s Chuck?”

  JULY 23

  Cal

  Sandy finds me at Greenery, folding and unfolding napkins behind the counter.

  “Listen, Cal, I need to do something. I’m leaving you in charge.” He slides a five-dollar bill across the counter and points to a croissant under the glass.

  I just stare at the money. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I have to go someplace for a few days.”

  “Now?”

  “Day after tomorrow. You can handle things. I’ve just come to tell you. And to get a croissant. Mrs. Paglio will do whatever you say. She’s a very amenable person when I’m not involved. I’ve prepped her. You’ll see.”

  “But . . .” I consider grabbing ahold of his wrist.

  “A day, maybe two. Up the coast. I think it’ll be good for everyone. If I’m missed, wonderful. Maybe things will repair themselves. If I’m not, well—we know which way destiny was leaning.”

  Mac walks by, sees the five dollars on the counter in front of me, and stops. Sandy knocks on the glass again to indicate which pastry he wants. Mac looks at me, looks at Sandy, waits a beat, then grabs the croissant and puts it in a bag.

  “Jeanne Ann won’t talk to me ever again,” I say, resting my elbows on the counter and my chin in my hands.

  “Doubt that. Jam, please. Raspberry.”

  Mac looks to me, sighs, then places
a plastic container of jam in Sandy’s bag. She takes the cash to the register.

  “Helping is so complicated,” I say.

  Sandy reaches across the counter to pat my hand and grab a napkin. “Most people never even try.”

  “We were becoming friends,” I say.

  “You were already friends. You are still friends,” Sandy says.

  Mac brings Sandy his change, and Sandy drops it in the tip jar. Clink clank clank.

  Sandy looks back at the long line behind him. “Trust me on this.”

  “I don’t know what to do.” I lean over the counter. I must look desperate. “Don’t leave. It’s a terrible time for you to leave me in charge.”

  “First rule of business: Go back to what worked before.”

  “But nothing worked.”

  “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if nothing worked. You just hit a snag. Don’t hit it again.”

  JULY 24

  Jeanne Ann

  Mac, the chef at Greenery, shows up with a toolbox in the morning. “I hear you’ve got some bad wiring.”

  “I do?” I look at the Carrot. I’m sitting in the grass, tearing up an old T-shirt for a rag.

  Mac nods at the rusty cart that’s turned my hands gray and permanently sticky from all the scrubbing. I think it’s always going to resemble something dipped in a deep fryer and left out in the rain for twenty years. I’m not making much progress. The soap from the bathroom isn’t industrial strength. It barely cleans me.

  “Who sent you?” I say.

  She doesn’t answer, just nudges past me to the cart, which she proceeds to push farther into the green, away from the shed, like it’s a big bag of paper towels. Then she stands beside it with her legs spread wide, arms crossed.

  She spends the next several hours tinkering with mechanical parts under the griddle. I scrub away at the tiny floor space behind the griddle and the hatch, and pretend not to watch her. The bacon smell is everywhere now. Gus in his yellow raincoat sits on a nearby bench and watches for an hour, while clicking knitting needles together. I can’t tell if he’s making oven mitts or amoebas.