My Not-So-Still Life (8 page)

In the immortal words of
Annie
, which Grampie still likes to watch with me around Christmastime even though it has nothing to do with Christmas,
I think I’m gonna like it here
.

Oscar shows me little details. The extra register tape is on the shelf by my bag. The key for the spray-paint case is in the main register’s drawer. Business picks up and he teaches me how to work the register. I get the hang of it, but I’m slow because I can’t stop checking out everything that customers buy and imagining what they’ll do with it.

Most people are eager to talk about their projects. A woman tells me that she’s doing a paint treatment on a crib that her husband built for their daughter’s first baby, who will be born any day; an older man buys clay and tells me
that he molds it to help with his arthritis; a girl about my age buys a sketchbook to bring to the museum.

During my lunch break, I buy a hot dog from the cart outside on the corner and eat it on a bench at the skate park, watching people almost fly around the giant concrete bowl, enjoying the no-drizzle, warming-up weather, and just liking the way it feels to be on a break from my job. Having a lunch break makes it feel official: I have a break from
something
. Something pretty great.

When I get back to Palette, there are a few customers but no one ready to be rung up, so I head to Maye, who’s wiping down Betty. “I clean her constantly,” she says. “Gotta keep her happy and shiny.”

“That’s a good way to be,” I say. Happy and shiny. Yeah.

Oscar comes over. “Maye, you leave at three, right?”

“By then, yeah.” She looks at me. “I’ve got a show going up at Ballard Art Collective. We’re having a little opening party. I need to get over there early to set up.”

Oscar turns to me. “We’ll close the espresso machine early today. Use the out-of-order sign. Keep the drip coffee going, though.” He walks off.

“So, are you psyched for your show?” I ask Maye.

“Oh, yeah,” she says. “These dolls have been cluttering up my apartment for way too long. I need people to fall in love with them and
buy
them.”

Wow. She’s so blasé. I’d be freaking out with excitement, and probably nerves, too.

“Dolls?” I picture Victorian statuettes, with real-looking hair in curls and dresses like doilies.

“Yep. Rag dolls. Some fairies. Just creatures from my brain. I pretty much worship at the altar of Tim Burton, so some of my stuff looks like it’d fit right into
The Nightmare Before Christmas
.”

“Cool.” Might text Nick to go to Rain City and pick up that movie with me tonight, and hunker down.

She grins. “Want to see them?”

“Absolutely.”

She goes around to the main register and comes back with her purse, red leather with oversized silver buckles, and pulls out a digital camera. We huddle together and she clicks through the images: dolls, but all so
her
. My favorite is dressed all in black and white stripes, like that cap Jewel had on for the kindergarten puddle-jumping that runs through my memory. The doll has metallic hair and her dress is poufy at the bottom, with a top like a corset. Her nose has a crystal on it, like it’s pierced.

Honestly, though, I wonder if these dolls are such a big deal. They’re mini-versions of Maye herself, and that’s cool, but I do wonder if they’re … art? I tell myself to quit judging. This girl is awesome.

“Your own show, that’s so amazing.” Now I sound like a
total fangirl. “All I’ve ever done is the school art show, whoop-de-do.”

“Hey, you gotta start somewhere,” Maye says. She’s almost as optimistic and cheery as Holly. “The Collective is no big deal, actually. It’s a small gallery. But definitely a step up from selling at the Sunday market, like I used to do. I’d sell two dolls, and then go blow the money on crepes. I couldn’t sit at the market all day smelling those things and then not get one.”

She pulls off the Starbucks apron, hangs it on the corner of Betty, and goes to the back room, reemerging moments later with Oscar.

“See you at nine,” he says, pecking her cheek.

I stand behind the main register. “Later, Vanessa,” she says, and does a little twirl on her way out the door.

I work at the register while Oscar stocks shelves and helps customers.

I could stay here all night, but too soon, it’s time to close. Oscar’s due at Maye’s opening.

When they told me about it, was that an invitation to go along?

If Oscar just says good night, I’m not invited. If he lingers, I am.

“All-righty,” he says, putting on his black denim jacket. “Schedule looks okay? Same time next Saturday?”

“Yep.” I pick up my messenger bag.

“It’s been great having you here. Have a good Saturday night!”

Not
invited.

“You too,” I say. Going to Maye’s show would definitely be more fun than going home. But I can work on something of my own, or redo my nails, or color my hair. Call Nick about watching that Tim Burton movie. See how his Superhero Origins fest was last night.

Maybe I could call Holly. I still feel tied up inside over her being upset. If it weren’t for that, I’d be at double-purple status.

I probably shouldn’t call yet. She never texted me back.

I don’t feel like going home. Standing outside Palette, I shut my eyes, smell the salt water, listen to a motorcycle go by.

I’ll pedal to Golden Gardens, to the beach. There’s time before dark.

The bike ride is like some other life; I’m drifting between eras. I’ve traveled this same path so many times, out of the shopping part of Ballard, past the rock-climbing gym, closer to the water. Up ahead, there’s the marina,
where boats live, majestic. The fish-and-chips shop with the huge soft-serve ice cream cones.

But now I ride this route as someone with a job. I picture a film in my head, showing me as a little girl, brown-haired, wearing a sweet dress that my mom found at Kidz Consign. Then the film switches to me during my Ocean Tides days, with my first bleached streaks and a string around my wrist, wearing jeans and a black tee. Then the film focuses in on me now, in brighter contrast, with my pink hair and my white boots.

I add on to the film: me, looking like Maye. Turned up a notch or ten, like a living doll.

I ride past the parking lot for the Ballard Locks, where fresh water from the ship canal mingles with salt water from Puget Sound. The canal and the sound are kept apart by huge gates on either side that reach all the way to the bottom. Boats traveling the canal have to stop between the two gates before being let out the other side. Inside the gates is the only place where the salt water and the fresh water mix.

Salmon run at the locks. The enormous schools of sock-eyes come in July, scales shimmering, returning to the place where they were born, now to spawn.

But what I love most at the locks isn’t the boats or the salmon. Those are what Mom loves, for sure. For me, it’s all about the flower garden on the grounds.

I remember being a kid on a summer day, wearing a
white dress. We passed through the garden on one of the walks Mom and I used to take. The roses were the prettiest things I’d ever seen. Looking back, I feel almost as if, in that moment, the roses could have become to me what water is to my mom. The thing that beats inside my chest. The thing that fills me up.

I plucked the top off one, right at the blossom, where there were no thorns.

Mom said, “Not for you!” It sounded harsh. She softened and said, “The flowers are here to feed the bees. We don’t pick them.”

It’s one of my earliest memories: feeling guilty for killing a flower that belonged to the bees, and not to me.

I tried to reattach the flower to its bush. I petted the petals, stroked them, willed them to reattach.

My mom got teary. She bent down, arm on my back.

“The bees, Mommy,” I said.

“They’ll be all right,” she said. “Look. More roses.”

I looked. The garden was glorious. “More flowers,” I said.

The air smelled of perfume not unlike Grampie’s pipe smoke, but cleaner.

The Golden Gardens parking lot is scattered with cars. It’s not what people in most cities would consider beach weather, but it’s not raining and there’s an edge of warmth
in the air. In Seattle, that’s enough to bring people out of their houses. Groups are having little fires as the sun sets, barbecuing, taking walks in bare feet.

I lock my bike to a bench and start toward the water.

In my boots, walking on the rocky beach is a challenge. I only get to the volleyball nets before I decide to sit on a huge piece of driftwood and stare at boats and people.

Being near the water seems like a good way to end my first day at Palette.

I wish Nick and Holly were here too.

I text Holly three times on Sunday
and call once. No response.

I think about taking the bus over to her house, but it’s pretty obvious she doesn’t want to see me. I don’t know if she’s still going to go out with Wilson. I don’t know if I should find him at school and apologize. I don’t even know if he knows I’m the one who wrote the note. All this not knowing makes me feel restless.

I finish my homework before lunch and decide to take my bike for a cruise.

I throw my jeans on under my splattered tank dress and
zip up my boots. Once I’m on my bike, I consider pedaling to Nick’s.

No. There’s somewhere else I want to go. I start pedaling.

I’m off to the gallery, Ballard Art Collective. It’s closed on Sundays, but I want to peek in at Maye’s work.

I roll up onto the sidewalk and sit there, looking in.

Maye’s dolls are meticulously made. Each one of them has its own personality. They’re bigger than I expected, each about three feet tall.

It’s like they’re alive. Some are sad and some are delighted and at least one is in love.

Still, I wonder. If I didn’t know Maye, and I was just passing by, would I be impressed by what I’m seeing through the window? Would the dolls make me think? Make me feel?

In a way, they’re not much different from a still life. They represent different moods, and they’re well made, but are they really art? Do they have layers? In a way, it’s kind of like they’re the same thing as my strings, only on a larger scale.

Part of me wishes they could talk or something. After spending time learning about the Guerrilla Girls and Jason Sprinkle, I’m beginning to see that messages matter.

What’s Maye saying with these dolls?

I sit still on my cruiser, feet to the sidewalk, just looking.

When I get home, I check my phone again.

No messages.

*   *   *

Monday comes too fast, as always, but this week I don’t mind. The faster Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday pass, the sooner I get to go back to Palette.

I wake up with this weird feeling because I still haven’t heard from Holly. I want to tell her about Palette. It was killer waiting around all day Sunday to hear from her.

I miss her. So much.

I tie on a yellow string and pedal off through the mist.

When I meet up with Nick outside of school, the first thing he says is, “Holly told me about the note.”

When did they even have this conversation? I don’t think they’ve ever hung out before, or talked, or anything, without me.

It’s so none of his business. I hope I look … tough. Annoyed. “And?”

“And what were you thinking? You went way too far!” Outraged. As if I haven’t already heard this from Holly. And Mom. And in the back of my own head.

“You know as well as I do that she wasn’t going to do anything on her own. She was wasting time.”

“If she didn’t do anything, she would’ve had her reasons.”

“You knew about the plan! You’re the one who helped me figure out who Wilson even is!”

“I thought you were planning something low-key, like
running into him somewhere. Something natural. But this? A declaration of her feelings? Without even talking to her about it? Maybe she wasn’t ready.”

“It wasn’t a declaration! It was subtle!”

But she
should
be ready. She’s great; can’t she see that? I can. Nick can. Now Wilson can too.

I get to class early, plop into my seat, and think.

People need to open their eyes and look at themselves. If Holly were confident, she’d have Wilson
and
she wouldn’t be mad at me. If Nick could get over being different or whatever, he wouldn’t be waiting for college to find a boyfriend. If Mom would stop seeing herself as old before her time, she could have a life. Grampie’s pretty much the only person I know who does mostly what he likes, when he likes. And he looks like he might be forced to slow down soon.

Me? I need to go after James. He’s like sunshine to me for a reason: I don’t know him, but I sense that we’re perfect for each other. It doesn’t matter that I’m a little younger. I’m ready for him. I’m ready for anything.

I’m not even sure
if Nick will show up for lunch, but then he sits with me at our usual table, and says, “About Holly. I understand you didn’t think you were doing anything wrong.” I can tell he still thinks it was wrong, though. “Man, I hate to see you with that yellow string. Are you okay?”

“I will be.”
Let it go
. I don’t need two friends mad at me.

“Holly will forgive you.” He pops open his soda. “If you apologize.”

Maybe I should. Just get past it. But that would mean admitting I was wrong, when I think good things will probably come. Wilson did ask her out. “We’ll be fine,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “You guys have been friends for a long time.”

I really do not want to talk about Holly with Nick. He and I are already dangerously close to another argument. “So,” I say, biting my apple. “Someone put up a poster at Palette on Saturday. In the window, you know? Pride Parade is coming up.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I saw that in the
Weekly.”

“Let’s go.” I don’t know if he’s ever been to a Pride event, but it’s the perfect opportunity.

I can’t read his face. But he nods. “Could be fun.”

Grampie’s in a great mood this week, happy that he can get outside and garden. It may not seem like your usual hobby for a career longshoreman, but Grampie loves working with the earth almost as much as he loved working near the water.