People Park (3 page)

You guys excited about, Kellogg began, couldn’t think what to say, turned on the radio: static. No signal out here I guess, he said. Weird.

Pearl turned the radio off.

Gip is humming, Elsie-Anne said. Mummy, Stuppa’s humming.

Stop it, said Pearl.

The humming continued. Pearl cracked her window.

Little cold out for that yet, said Kellogg. And what about your allergies?

Pearl looked at him. He winked. She rolled up the window.

And Gip hummed.

Elsie-Anne covered her ears with both hands. The traffic jam stretched ahead, a steel-scaled python slumped over the bridge. The guy in the pickup truck stuck his head out the window, made eye contact with Kellogg, spat, and retreated back inside the cab. Nothing moved. Pearl pointed at the vacant opposite lane. Just go there.

I can’t — sheesh, Pearly, here’s a lane just for the Pooles I guess?
He checked Gip in the rearview, who hummed back. When Kellogg
spoke again his voice was oddly boisterous, infused with the forced mirth of a waiter singing Happy Birthday to a table of businessmen. Hear that, buddy? Get us arrested why don’t you! We’ll get there, guys. Look, see, cars are starting to come the other way. And hey-ho! We’re off now too.

But something was wrong: traffic was being routed back to the mainland.

A car swished past, the faces of the driver and passengers resigned. Gip’s humming stopped. The clock on the dash ticked over to 8:00. Gip unleashed a scream like a bottle hurled against a wall. No no no no no no no no no, he sobbed, kicking the back of his mother’s chair.

Kellogg cried, Wait! — but Pearl was already diving into the backseat to tackle her son. Kellogg’s technique would have been soothing, soft words and a gentle hand on his knee. Discipline was useless, he thought, watching Gip jolt and squirm in Pearl’s arms. Episodes weren’t his fault, you had to be patient — you subdued him with kindness, not force. Why didn’t the boy’s own mother understand that?

The pickup wheeled into a three-point turn and the shaggy guy absconded, spitting. In the rearview Kellogg watched Pearl cuff her son’s wrists in one hand and clamp his mouth with the
other while Gip thrashed and moaned. Hesitantly Kellogg put the
minivan in gear, pulled forward, said, Look, champ, here we go.

Gip went still. Blinked. Inhaled a trail of snot.

That’s it, coaxed Kellogg, we’re at the checkpoint, we’ll see Raven soon, don’t worry.

In the middle lane sat a man in khaki at a child’s schooldesk. Kellogg was summoned from the minivan with curling fingers.

Take Elsie-Anne, Pearl told him, still restraining Gip. Show him our permits.

Kellogg wanted to see something beyond resignation on his wife’s face — love! Instead in her eyes was the beleaguered look of someone suffering a chore. Go, she said.

Annie, come with Dad, said Kellogg, and together they approached
the guy at the desk —
Bean
, said his nametag.

Bean nodded at Harry’s plates. You have a resident in the car?

Former resident, my wife. She used to star for the Y’s?

Leafing through the papers, Bean eyed Elsie-Annie. Who’s this?

That’s Elsie-Anne — L.C
.
N., see? Someone must have —

Bean held up a hand. And Gib?

With my wife. He’s
. . .
sick.

Sir, you realize no one in your quote-unquote
family
has the same last name?

That’s maybe not our fault though?

You’re suggesting it’s ours.

No! Just a miscommunication maybe? It happens
. . .

Bean swivelled, spoke into a walkie-talkie. Took a puff from an inhaler. Eyed Kellogg with the ambivalence of a bored shopper sizing up a lettuce.

Kellogg gazed down the bridge. Along the island’s shore was more gridlock, a call-and-response of horns, long blasts echoed by long blasts, all of it useless, nothing moving.

Mr. Poole, we’re going to need you to get processed once you’re islandside. Your wife is fine — Bean stamped her permit forcefully, handed the others over — but the rest of you need special permission before you can join the Jubilee celebrations.

But! No, we can’t do that — my son, he’s
. . .
We’ll miss Raven’s arrival!

Bean checked his watch. Not much chance of you making that anyway.
NFLM
on Topside Drive are expecting you, they’ll direct you to Residents’ Control — that’s the Galleria foodcourt, five minutes from the bridge. Good lookin out!

Thanks, said Kellogg, and headed back to the minivan wondering what he’d thanked him for.

Elsie-Anne raced ahead to the bridge’s railing, hopped up, leaned
over. And went rigid. Dad, she called, pointing below. Look.

A naked woman was walking — precariously, slowly — out onto one of the iron trestles that extended from the structure’s underside. Two hundred feet below lay the river, a ruffle of black silk spangled silver, and as the woman stepped, one foot then the next, the wind tousled her hair like the hand of some benignly drunk uncle. Pigeons burbled somewhere, but Kellogg couldn’t see any pigeons.

The woman seemed oblivious to everything: to the traffic, to Bean and his flares, to Kellogg and Elsie-Anne, to the world and all that was in it. Her back was hunched, her buttocks alabaster. At the end of the trestle she stopped, arms extended for balance. If she were to jump it seemed she would be leaping not down, but outward, into open space.

Oh my god, said Kellogg. Elsie-Anne, get in the car.

Dad?

Kellogg snatched her by the chin. You listen, if that person jumps and we’re the only witnesses, it will
ruin
our vacation. You won’t get to swim, Gip won’t get to see his magician — we
’
ll be at the morgue, answering questions. They might even blame us! So forget you saw anything. Get in the car. Say
nothing
to your mother. Hear me? Nothing.

Elsie-Anne nodded.

Good girl, said Kellogg, knuckled her cheek, slid open Harry’s door, ushered her inside, slammed it closed — and looked over the railing. The woman hadn’t moved: a porcelain, otherworldly figure who seemed to float in the brisk morning air.

Kellogg opened his mouth to call to her, to tell her — what? But it was too late: a great tumble of hair, and the trestle was empty.

Trembling, Kellogg rushed to catch the body’s splash or see it swept away in the current. But Bean was calling him: Sir, sir, in your car, please, sir. So Kellogg stopped, apologized, returned to the minivan. In the backseat Pearl, sniffling, stroked Gip’s hair. Elsie-Anne stared vacantly into her purse. Okay, said Kellogg, moving his foot from brake to gas. The engine vroomed, he pressed harder, Harry went nowhere.

You’re in Park, said Pearl.

Oh, said Kellogg, shifted to Drive, and lurched another ten feet closer to the island.

III

Y TEN-THIRTY
it was all over. Raven stepped into his trunk, waved a brochure from the Grand Saloon, said, I believe this is where I’m staying, and closed the lid on himself. A moment later the helicopter seemed to come alive of its own accord, lifted up from the common, looped over Crocker Pond, and landed atop the hotel. The doors to the penthouse suite opened and Raven stepped onto the balcony, blew six kisses at the crowd, bowed, and ducked away.

The trunk sat innocuously in the middle of the stage.

There was nothing else to look at.

And so with a collective sigh people began to shuffle back to their lives.

From the top of the northern hillock the protestors withdrew, trashed their placards out back of Street’s Milk & Things. Today Debbie, Pop and the two Island Institute students whose names Debbie kept failing to learn were joined by the most militant members of the Lakeview Homes Restribution Movement: a man called Tragedy — walleyed, squat, and gnomish, smelling of salsa — and his lean, lisping, wispily bearded friend, Havoc. They’d shown up to their first meeting only two weeks prior and pulsed with something weird and feral that might euphemistically be described as energy.

Debbie watched the crowd thin and scatter, far below. You wonder if anyone even knows we’re here, she said.

The one who hit me with a snowball did.

Here were the students, clasping hands.

That sucked, said Debbie. People just don’t think sometimes. You okay?

The girl nodded shyly, the boy shook his head. A patchwork of cause-oriented pins covered her knapsack. Over his woolly jumper hung a pendant in the shape of a fist.

Down the path to the common Tragedy was trying to tear a Silver Jubilee banner from a lamppost. He was too short though, and couldn’t get decent purchase: he jumped, clutched, flailed, swore, sulked. Havoc lisped, Let it go, man, it’
θ
only a
θ
ymbol. Be real.

Meanwhile Pop was heaving himself up the steps of his houseboat, which presided on the lip of the clearing over People Park. He was in his sixties, and large, flabby even, somehow yellowing, every breath was a gasp.

The houseboat was a boxcar on blocks, scabbed with rust and flaking paint. Maybe she’d help fix it up sometime, often thought Debbie, and felt guilty now having only ever thought this thought. Pop unfolded a lawnchair and plopped into it. One minute, he said, wheezing. Yet in his eyes, as always, was that manic glimmer. When three years prior Debbie had come to interview him for
In the Know
he’d stormed out of Street’s Milk & Things ranting about
restribution
, every few sentences screaming, Get this word for words, reporter! After a four-minute diatribe he’d announced, I have to work, and disappeared into the store. Debbie, assigned to write about Mr. Ademus’s mysterious and hugely popular sculptures — the Things he sold, the Things of Milk & Things — had written nothing.

Lark, called Pop from his lawnchair, arms raised, poncho spread (
RESTRIBUTION!
markered across the chest). Gather!

Debbie pushed close with her notebook and beamed at him with what she hoped passed for reverence.

In the baritone of a preacher Pop began: Thank you all for attendenating
here with me today. The city’s going to hear us! — Tragedy responded, Fug yeah! — We may be small, but we’re big. This Mayor, this
NFLM
, this
Jubilee
, they envision our spirits as flattened as they flattened Lakeview Homes? That a quartered century hencefrom we’ve forgotten this so-and-so-called park was once impersonated by
people
? Say it with me: No!

No fuggin way, said Tragedy.

Feverishly, Debbie took notes.

No! Not this time. Not any time. Not
this
time!

Shame, warbled one of the students — the girl. Shame, echoed her boyfriend.

Shame! Pop pointed at them, eyes narrowed. You’ve said the magical word. It
is
a shame. What transposed here, a quartered century hencefrom — a bloodied shame.

Bloody fuggin cog
θ
ugger
θ
! screamed Havoc.

And they think they can just erect a memorial to make it okay-dokay? A
statue
?! Well I’ve got a statue of limitations for that sort of thing!

Pop’s eyes gleamed.

The memorial unveiling’s tomorrow, added Debbie. Hope everyone can come?

Pop saluted, hoisted himself to his feet, howled, Restribution!
and waddled off, puffing, to open Street’s Milk & Things for the day.

A pigeon wheeled overhead, perched on the roof of the houseboat, eyed the gathering, scratched itself under a wing with its beak. Tragedy threw a rock, which went sailing into the bushes. The bird shat a greenish dribble onto the roof and glared defiantly back.

Guess that’s it for us then, said Tragedy, lighting a wilted Redapple.

Some halfhearted goodbyes were offered (
Θ
olidarity, proposed Havoc unconvincingly, and passed around a fist-bump) and he and Tragedy, swapping the cigarette between drags, took the path down into the common, past an elderly man caning his way up the Crocker Pond Slipway to Parkside West Station.

The students hung around. Debbie wished she’d been more like them in her twenties: all secondhand alpaca and shy, dreamy ideals. Instead she’d been an athlete.

Thanks for coming, guys, she said.

We saw the posters on campus, said the girl, at the Institute.

We didn’t know anything, said her boyfriend, about this. Before.

But we’re glad we could come.

The boy shuffled, his girlfriend nudged him. He spoke: We
wanted to tell you, though, we’re leaving town. Tomorrow. We won’t
be around for the rest of the weekend.

It’s just, we’re going camping. Back home.

Can you tell Mr. Street we’re sorry?

Oh, that’s okay, said Debbie, feeling flattered. Just nice you came out today, right? And have a nice time camping, that’ll be fun for you guys.

Yeah, we feel bad is all. There aren’t a lot of people out.

Most kids we’re in school with are happy to just party at the Dredge till they’re sick.

And watch themselves after on
TV
.

We’ll totally be up for whatever when we’re back. With the um, Movement.

We’re just a little worried.

What about? said Debbie.

The boy and girl exchanged looks. We’ve heard Mr. Street tends to —

Kick people out. Of the Movement. For disappointing him?

Like almost everyone?

Yeah, sighed Debbie, that happens. We’re currently in a rebuilding
phase.

A second pigeon joined the first: an elderly couple, grey and waiting.

Hey, said the girl. We heard you’re writing a book about him?

Debbie laughed — a sharp, awkward bark. Well it started as a script but my boss didn’t want it. I mean, you can’t really capture Pop Street in a four-minute segment.

That was for Isa Lanyess? You write for
In the Know
, right?

Not that we watch it, clarified the boy.

Yeah, said Debbie, though I only do occasional stuff now, got to pay the bills, right? Mostly I run a program in Blackacres, for neighbourhood kids. Out of the Room?

The students stared back. Were they judging her? What was their judgment?

She plunged ahead: But yeah, I have all these notes about Pop and the Homes and everything, and
someone
should write about this stuff, it’s just so hard making it all come together, right? We should get a cider. I could tell you more about it, about the book.

We’ve got class.

We would though, totally. Otherwise.

Oh I didn’t mean now, ha. A bit early for drinks! Just sometime, anytime — whenever! You guys should give me your number. So we can stay in touch. About Movement stuff.

The girl said, Not sure I’ve got a pen, and dug around in her knapsack: no pen.

From the houseboat, the birds cooed in chorus, ruffled their wings. Their poop was an eggy froth baking in the sunlight.

Debbie said, Okay, off with you then, get to school. She tried to sound light, but it came out hurried, dismissive. And when they left, Debbie felt abandoned — and embarrassed, she still hadn’t gotten their names. The students were heading the same direction as her, toward Parkside West Station, but she hung back, didn’t want to sidle up alongside them after saying goodbye. It’d seem too desperate, even pathetic, and too much like pursuit.

YELLOWLINING WESTBOUND
on a packed train Debbie got out her notebook. On the first page were a few attempts at a prologue:
For twenty-five years Pop Street has been camped out behind his old store in a
stoic
steadfast protest against People Park, living out of the houseboat he used to keep at the Bay Junction piers, the ceiling so low the man has developed a permanent hunch
. . .
Or:
For most islanders, People Park is a place we only associate with joy: it’s where our kids go to daycamp, where we go on dates for picnics, enjoy the Summer Concert Series at the gazebo — but for one widely misunderstood former resident of Lakeview Homes, it’s a monument to forgetting, and a place that embodies everything that is wrong about this city
. . .
Or:
What is justice?

Though like many of her teammates she’d majored in Communications at the Institute, Debbie had never considered a career in journalism, the accountability made her nervous. But when Isa Lanyess, a star from the pre-Y’s era of the Island Maroons, saw her We-
TV
fixture,
In the Know
, become the island’s preeminent news source, she hired a few ballers who weren’t turning pro to write her scripts. I’m the Face of this thing, Lanyess told them, so think of yourselves as my makeup artists. And what’s a makeup artist’s job? To make the face look good. And also? To make their own work invisible. All anyone should see is my face.

It was a job. For a year Debbie churned out reports on local goings-on with the mechanical proficiency of a windup clock, yet failed to find satisfaction hearing her words spoken on
TV
by someone else. But the meeting with Pop left her feeling forced to the edge of her own life: she stood there peering down into it, blank and bottomless. When she’d returned to Isa Lanyess’s downtown office, Debbie suggested a piece about the Homes might be more interesting than one on Pop’s Things.

Lanyess gave Debbie a withering look. People don’t care about that guy, she said. Unless
he’s
Mr. Ademus. Is he? No, right? Mr. Ademus and the Things are
hot
. So how the fug did Pop Street, who’s never been
lukewarm
by anyone’s measure, become the guy’s dealer?
That’s
what people want to know. So
that’s
, are you listening, what you, who I hired, write about. Not some fat loser living in a trailer who can’t forget the past.

I just thought there was a bigger story here, said Debbie. Right?

Wrong, said Lanyess. I brought you on here because you struck me as a hard worker, someone who knew how to be part of a team. Was I mistaken?

Debbie had stood there, fists clenched, heart pounding. Lanyess had a way of speaking to her that made her feel not only indebted, but small and young. Like a scolded child, in hateful silence you could only wait until it was over, she told Adine that night, drinking ciders on their couch.

Fug Lanyess, said Adine. Fug that show. I mean, props to Pop Street for making bank selling it, but trash nailed together into funny shapes? That’s art now? I guess, according to the superdooshes of this dumb town who buy it up like it’s gold.