Portland Noir (28 page)
It’s snowing now, but barely, gray sleet driven up over the shoulder by traffic headed toward the 205. I think of her feet, white, delicate as eggshell. I remember the first time I saw snow, how I built a snowman that looked at me with stone eyes and one fell onto the ground. I pushed rocks into his snow mouth and they disappeared. My mother said,
Love goes like water, right through your hands.
The snow closed up. I pushed a stick right through him.
I have a good route, down to Burnside and up to Johnson Creek.
The gams of a true old-time beauty
. Lila’s suitcase was still in the corner. Her clothes on me look only approximate, like a memory.
The city wants to plant roses, up and down Eighty-second, to make it peaceful.
Later, my mother’s accordion was sold for a song to a man who slivered the keys off and carried them away in a bag, clacking like teeth. When I dream of Lila there is a tattoo on her chest, a mask, and in the eyes of the mask I am faceup over her heart.
There are sirens outside of the Tik Tok every night and I wait. The waitress refills my coffee. Across the parking lot there is always a lit window with the curtains drawn tight across it. Inside the Tik Tok, the clocks move at once, slowly, like a song written all in the same sad note.
BY
K
IMBERLY
W
ARNER
-C
OHEN
Sandy Boulevard
W
hoever said Portland was a friendly city stated it from the comfortable vantage of already knowing people. Aside from the middle-aged clerk at 7-Eleven, who smiled with yellow teeth and attempted broken conversation when she walked across the busy intersection at Eighty-second and Sandy to buy cigarettes and a Big Gulp, Kara had spoken to less than ten people since she arrived four days ago. That included the woman with an eye patch behind the desk at the Cameo (closest non-chain airport motel she could find), Kara already thinking when she paid for a week in advance that it was a mistake coming here. Shouldn’t have strayed from her habit of putting her finger randomly on an atlas and going.
Strangers didn’t start casual conversations with her in bars, usually moved a seat over. Wasn’t simply that Kara could be best described as plain, known since she could recognize her reflection that she would never be one of the blessed few who glided through life; it was the contempt in her eyes that drove them off. Being passed over was a relief, feigning interest in people’s lives irritated her. Happier to sit at the end of the row in some seamy tavern where light didn’t penetrate through grimy windows. Bartenders took pity and threw her an extra drink or two as the clock edged past 1:00 and other patrons sought someone other than her to share the night, or at least fifteen minutes, with.
Kara pulled the battered and stained white plastic fob with
17
printed on it in chipped gold paint from her back pocket, balancing her dinner: a fifth of Bushmills and a barely edible pizza from the dingy store across the street from the massive Safeway.
Would’ve eaten at the pancake house attached to the motel, where she had platter-sized portions for the past three mornings, but Kara couldn’t stand the sympathetic stares from the fat, bored waitresses anymore. Same with the bar down the block, where day workers stopped in after long hours working too hard for too little money; stared her up and down before turning back to their conversations, shaking their heads. Better to stay in the room tonight, as she jiggled the wood turquoise door open that, like all the others, looked as if it’d been kicked in during an episode of
Cops
.
She could have just as easily slept at one of the chic boutique hotels downtown, with what her parents left her. Car accident when she was thirteen, Father having too many Rob Roys during one of the many charity events they attended throughout the year. Her aunt and uncle took her in after the funeral, shuffled from one affluent suburb to another.
Aunt Suzanne was barren and they doted on Kara. Decorated her bedroom as if she was five years younger (always loathed cotton candy–pink but didn’t have the heart to say it when she saw their expectant smiles), sent her to the local prep school with the same Anglican pretentions as the last one, bought her gifts (clothes that were in fashion but never looked right on her, records for bands she didn’t like, books she’d never read). Nothing worked. Kara would smile and politely thank them, then go in her room and throw it on top of the growing pile in the back of her closet.
Suzanne’s eyebrows furrowed at Kara’s disinterest in others, especially after she read the books the shrink recommended when he diagnosed Kara with an attachment disorder. Blond sons and prim daughters were dragged over with their parents and sat in uncomfortable silence as Kara openly stared at them in the den while the adults had their digestifs. When they were called in from the parlor, none disguised their relief.
Uncle Phillip hid the coroner’s report between the pages of a treatise by Hobbes. Edge of the envelope stuck out, Kara found it the first time she was in the library alone. Detailed how Father’s broken rib punctured his heart as he slammed into the steering wheel. Mother was nearly decapitated when a piece of windshield glass cut through her trachea as the car smashed into the tree, only thing holding her head to trunk were neck vertebrae. When Phillip realized Kara took it, he explained that they hid the details because they thought she’d be traumatized; troubled when she wasn’t perturbed. Since she’d found out what her parents kept from her, Kara had no use for them.
When she was twelve, six months before they died, Kara had nightmares that woke her up every few hours. Always the same, being ripped apart by her mother and another woman whose face was shadowed. Once she was torn, her other half became a mirror image. For weeks her parents looked at each other and made sympathetic noises. Scared to dream, she would sit in the rocking chair, listening to silence until she nodded off. After one morning when she got three hours of sleep, Kara told them hysterically at breakfast she couldn’t take it anymore. Father looked at Mother, who brought out the locked box from their bedroom closet that Kara wasn’t supposed to know about.
Sat her in the formal living room (knew it was serious), box on the end table between them. Father tapped his foot and both began talking at the same time, tripping over each other’s words until Mother touched Father on the knee, her way of shutting him up. Didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long time. Why was she about to cry? Did someone die? What did that have to do with her dreams? “You had a sister.”
“A twin,” Father interjected.
In the time it took for her mother to pat him again, all became clear. No wonder she couldn’t make friends, why no one understood her. Someone did, once, more intimately than anyone ever could. Mother only carried her, Father donated the sperm. Kara rubbed the fingers of her left hand together. “Tell me everything. Start from the beginning. She’s identical, isn’t she? What’s her name? Where is she? You were holding back, all these years. I knew I couldn’t trust you.”
Mother nodded, swallowed hard, tears. “Kaya is, was, your identical twin; born first by six minutes.”
The part of Kara’s brain that had suppressed the memories cracked, flooded her temporal lobe. Snatches of playing with pastel wood blocks in their nursery, patty-cake, sleeping with limbs entwined. “What happened?”
“You were so adorable in your matching dresses, running through the house, always laughing. You’d only sleep in the same crib and we had to have a custom double-highchair made or you wouldn’t eat. Do you remember, Steven?”
Father nodded gravely, stared at the rug.
“What
happened
, Mother?”
“It was in the park. Your nanny—”
“I had a nanny?”
“Ursula, from Sweden, very nice girl. She never forgave herself.”
“How old was I … were we?”
“About to turn four. You were on the jungle gym and skinned your knee. Ursula was putting the bandage on; her attention was only away for a moment.”
“And?”
“And somebody took your sister.” Tears made tributaries through her foundation.
Kara concentrated on her breath to keep the red in her periphery from closing in. Hate (just as much at herself for being the distraction) surging through arteries and veins instead of blood, pure white light. “Did you look for her?”
Father, allowed to speak, “Of course we did. Police, FBI, private investigators. It all happened so quickly, none of the other nannies saw anything unusual.”
“Was there a note? A phone call?”
“There was never any communication. They said that it was probably a mother who’d lost her child and wanted another.”
“So Kaya could still be alive?” Her tongue knew the name, slid from her lips like she said it all the time.
“We’ve tried so many times over the years, and nothing.”
“What’s in the box?”
“We shouldn’t have taken it out.”
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know.” Mascara streaked her face. “In case you didn’t believe us.”
“Did you think you could keep this from me forever?”
“You took it so hard at first, we didn’t want you to get upset all over again.” That was their way, forced forgetfulness. Soak your tears on fine linen and it won’t sting as bad.
Kara wanted details, but her mother faked a crying fit and hurried (never ran) out of the room. Father doggedly followed, telling Kara they’d talk further, soon, and left her with the box. Waiting for the soon that never came, Kara would lock her bedroom door and pore over the yellowed news clippings, police and PI reports. Memorized and read again.
At the bottom, under Kaya’s birth certificate and Social Security card, was a thin envelope of photos. Like Mother said, always in matching onesies, pajamas, dresses; holding hands and smiling. Searched all the hiding places she could think of, looking for more the next time they went out, but nothing. Did they care enough to burn them, or were they just shredded and tossed? Late nights running her finger over pictures of her and her mirror image.
Strange looks from Phillip and Suzanne began during the first dinner, night before the funeral, when she brought Kaya up in the middle of their coq au vin. Suzanne spit out a little of her merlot, stammered the same flimsy lines her parents did. After that, Kara caught the sideways stares, pauses as they considered how to phrase conversation, guard up. She made them nervous, Kara liked the power.
Morning of her eighteenth birthday, before the sun or the servants were up, she packed a bag, placed a note in the drawing room thanking her aunt and uncle for taking care of her, and left. Took the bus to Richmond, then Amtrak to Tampa, flight to New Orleans, short stay in Lubbock. After that they melded. At first Kara called to let them know she was all right; that dwindled as she lost herself in a sea of roads, train stations, highways. Always on the lookout for Kaya.
Decided on Portland instead of leaving it to chance this time because of a small article she read in one of those “Spotlight” columns in a free travel magazine, mentioned how many young people had been flocking to the city in the last few years. It was as good of a lead as any of the few she found. The city was still small enough to search, big enough for there to be the chance that Kaya was there; if she’d been kidnapped, maybe her home life was bad enough for her to flee.
Kara stared at the crack in the ceiling by the bathroom and took another swig. Didn’t want to think anymore and lay on the polyester and particle board bed, finishing the bottle, and tumbled into a dreamless sleep, easily ignoring the fistfight in the room below.
Sky was a lesser shade of gray the next morning and Kara dressed in dirty jeans and a brown sweater long past stretched out. The lack of sun was getting to her, didn’t know how people could handle it for months at a time. Usually didn’t go outside during daylight, but it was nice to know that it was there.
She weaved through kids by the bus stop in front of the 7-Eleven, either dealing or really bored, and into the too brightly lit store to get her nicotine and corn syrup breakfast. Kara passed the motel, wandered further down until she reached the strip club shaped like a huge whiskey jug,
Pirate’s Cove
emblazoned on a red-and-white backlit sign, and under that,
Wet Panty Party 2nite!
Loved the anonymity of a cheap titty bar, but there were too many cars outside for the space; nowhere to hide.
Retraced her steps and turned on a side street across from Ed’s House of Gems, pine and concrete glorified shack fashioned to resemble a barn, complete with the Wild West white mural and dusty windows. Thought about going in, run her eyes over the Fool’s Gold or maybe some onyx and hematite, but a sour middle-aged man in a flannel shirt stretched over a belly made huge from years of cheap beer was standing by the door, glaring at nothing.
Instead turned left, down one of the residential side streets. Liked how nothing matched, everything shabby around the edges and thrown together, moss growing in between the sidewalk cracks and roof shingles. Even in the chill, front lawns were teeming with green.
Kara zigzagged around corners and up avenues, streets looked identical in their individuality, until she realized she was halfway to the airport; continued past houses progressively more run-down, a mini-mart that was filthy, cement lots.
Another strip club ahead, couldn’t miss the neon sign with letters burned out so it read,
Th_ La_d_ng St_ _p
; nothing beyond that but hotels and car rentals. Much bigger than the other place, though no less decrepit, parking lot half-full. Perfect.
Kara swung open the flimsy glass doors and into the dark, stopping on the carpeted ramp to adjust her eyes. Nose hit full force with the harsh odor of baby lotion, cheap powder makeup, and desperation; same as any other strip club she went into. Main illumination were strings of lights in plastic tubing that hung on the stage, bar, crisscrossed the walls; popular in the ’70s and hadn’t been updated since. Black plastic tables, indiscriminately placed violet plush seats.