“Eighteen,” I say.
Then René laughs his tremendously loud and happy laugh, and Abbie and I both join in. She has these adorable freckles all over the bridge of her nose, and she steps around the counter, holding her hand out for me to shake.
“If you’re surprised by his age, wait till you check out his ride,” René says.
“You could drive a pogo stick and I would hop on. My car broke down this morning and I have to get to Portland tonight. No joke, Colby. You’re saving me.”
“No problem,” I tell her. “I have to drive back anyway.”
Then she and René launch into a conversation about a mutual friend who it seems has made it into a museum show somewhere in the middle of the country. Abbie thinks it’s Michigan but René swears it’s Colorado, and the more they talk about it the less I follow. So I take a look at the stuff for sale.
I’ve never been in a pawnshop before, and the variety is pretty awesome. You could buy an engagement ring and a television, a guitar and a knife, a stereo system and a fur coat. I wander over to the electronics to check out the speakers, and something catches my attention: a record player. It looks like an old model—a blue base with a matching top that snaps onto it so it can be moved from place to place—but, at least from what I can see, it’s in perfect condition.
Abbie calls me over to her to plan.
“So I hear you have to be back for something tonight,” she says.
I nod. “I need to get back by seven at the latest,” I say. I check the clock hanging above the counter. It’s only noon, and it’s a three-hour drive, so we have plenty of time.
But Abbie doesn’t look as relaxed.
“Thing is,” she says, “I need to swing by the place I’ve been staying, because I won’t be back in Seattle for some time.”
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll take you.”
“It’s a trek. We have to drive onto a ferry.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I’ve never had to drive onto a ferry before in my life, but then I think of where we are right now, and what a ferry probably means.
“Waitasecond,” I say. “Do you live on an island?”
“Vashon.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Vashon Island. It takes twenty minutes each way, not considering the ferry line, and then we’ll need to get to the farm to get all my stuff.”
“You live on a farm?”
René’s laugh fills the shop.
“Abbie’s full of surprises,” he tells me.
Abbie makes a phone call to tell someone she’s closing the shop early, and she turns off the lights and locks the cash register so quickly that I don’t even get a chance to ask about the record player. But then, as we’re heading out the door, I catch sight of it again and can’t help myself.
“That record player over there?”
“Uh-huh?”
“How much is it?”
Abbie walks over and checks it out. She stands for a moment, thinking.
Then she picks it up and says, “It’s a ride to Portland,” hands it to me, and locks up the shop.
Here I am, with a girl who isn’t Bev, traveling to an island I hadn’t planned to visit. I know it isn’t Stockholm but I can almost pretend it is as I inch Melinda forward onto the ferryboat.
We park and turn off the engine and the ferry leaves the dock, and then we are on the water, slowly passing the islands of the Puget Sound.
“Want to get out and look?” Abbie asks.
“Yeah,” I say. We lock up the car and head to the top of the boat where the view is better. The sun is shining but with the breeze off the water it’s almost cold.
“How did you end up on a farm?” I ask.
She reaches into her bag and pulls out a scarf. “I’m learning how to do it.” She ties the scarf around her neck. “Farm,” she adds.
I’m impressed. But I mean I guess it’s logical that most people who live on farms work on them, too.
“How long have you been there?”
“This one, only a month. I’ve been moving from place to place for the last six months, though. I’m from Seattle, so I was glad to get back here, but now I’m leaving again.”
“René said you were in his crew, so I thought you did street art.”
“I mostly gave it up. Sometimes, though, if the feeling strikes me, I’ll go lay something down.”
“So are you going to Portland for a piece?”
“No, not this time. My best friend is getting married and I’m throwing her bridal shower tomorrow morning. From there I’m heading to a farm outside Bend. I have a farm stay set up for August. But first I have some flower arranging and champagne pouring to do. And a toast.”
“Wait,” I say. “So you’re like, moving? Right now?”
I see why she was checking her watch earlier. I pull out my phone and look at it now. It’s past one already.
“Yeah, but I don’t have much. Don’t worry,” she adds. “We’ll get back in time for your thing tonight.”
Once we pull into the dock at Vashon Island, the drive to the farm is short. We turn into a narrow driveway and up to a house.
“Is this where you live?” I ask as we walk toward it.
She shakes her head. “The owners used to live in it but they had to rent it out to make ends meet.” We curve up a path. “Now they live there,” she says, pointing to a tiny structure. “The husband and wife and their two kids. It’s a studio.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. It’s a hard life.”
“And you’re choosing it?”
She shrugs. “Can’t help it,” she says. “It feels right.”
Now we’re really in the farm. To the right, in a fenced-off area, are chickens. To the left are rows of tomatoes and squash and lettuce, and lots of other plants that I can’t identify. There’s a greenhouse. A couple of goats, chewing on grass. I don’t see any other buildings, though, and I don’t know where Abbie is taking me until we reach a tent.
“A tent?”
She laughs. “Yeah. Luxury, right? My stuff’s all packed.”
She unzips the side of the tent and I lean over to peek in: an enormous backpack, a rolled-up sleeping bag, and a pair of heavy boots.
I grab the backpack and hoist it onto my shoulders. Thing’s so heavy it could drag me down this hill.
“What’s in this?”
“Everything I own.”
“Jesus,” I say, trying to get the weight balanced.
“Imagine walking a couple miles with it,” she says. “That’s what I would have been doing if you weren’t here to save me.”
She picks up her boots and her sleeping bag and nods.
“That’s it,” she says.
We make our way back toward the driveway, and on our way we pass a tan woman on a blanket in the grass, her two children on either side of her.
“This is it,” Abbie says to them. “I’m going.”
I continue down the dusty drive, past a farm stand with fresh vegetables and eggs, until I reach Melinda. I ease Abbie’s backpack off of my shoulders and onto the middle seat. I wait, give them a few minutes to say good-bye.
“So, wait,” I say to Abbie as we leave Seattle. “Where does the pawnshop fit into all of this?”
Abbie is leaning back on the seat and looking out the windshield with me, taking in what lies ahead. She’s part exhausted, part alert. This is a limbo I recognize.
“I really love farming,” she says. “But it isn’t easy. Not even for the farmers. It pays nothing. You have to believe in it or else it’s not worth it. Some gigs are cushier than others, and my first few were nice. I had roofs, and even a bathroom at one of them. The place I was before this one had plenty of food, but when I got to Vashon Island there was a huge sack of rice and some pasta and that was supposed to feed me for a week. We’re surrounded by all of this food but we aren’t supposed to take it. After the first week there, I started fantasizing
about sneaking into the chicken coop in the middle of the night and stealing a chicken. That’s when I called my uncle to see if I could work a day at his shop once in a while, just so I could make enough to buy myself some stuff to keep in the refrigerator. Cheese and beans, you know, just enough to keep me feeling good.”
It’s 3:15 now, so unless we hit a lot of traffic, we’re doing fine on time. But tomorrow we’ll wake up early and our trip will be over. We’ll be heading back to San Francisco, and I still don’t know what I’m going to do then. So listening to Abbie talk about her life, the choices she’s made, feels important. Becoming a farmer, no matter how pure and good and close to the earth it is, isn’t something that I ever see myself doing. But still. I feel like there’s something buried in all of this that I need to find out.
“What made you decide to learn to farm?”
“A few things,” Abbie says. “My family doesn’t understand it at all. You know, they live in Seattle. Uncle owns a pawnshop. Farming isn’t exactly the family business. But I’ve always found myself in unexpected places. For a while I worked at a fire lookout on top of this hill in the middle of a forest. It was great up there. I drew a lot, taught myself the guitar, built planter boxes on the deck and grew lettuce, and then I realized that I was watching my lettuce grow way more than looking out for fires. Plus I saw a ghost one night and it freaked me out.”
“Oh, yeah?” I say, curious.
“People don’t believe me but I have fifteen pictures to prove it. Here’s what happened. I was just up late one night, cooking pasta, and the place that I lived, it had windows on all sides, because, you know, it was a fire lookout, and all the windows were fogged up because of the water I was boiling. I was just messing around, waiting for my dinner to be done, reading this book about country life which is actually really funny because before then I had only lived in cities, when I looked up and there was this face in the glass.
“It was in the condensation, but not like a smiley face, like a real face. It was this old man, looking off to the side of me. Because of the angle only one of his eyes showed all the way but the eye was real. I draw well, but not that well. I wish I had the photos here so you could see them. Anyway, I held it together okay that night. I’m kind of okay with that stuff—ghosts, the afterlife. I’m not afraid of it. But all week I dreamed of ghosts and when the season ended I had to say good-bye to the lettuce I planted. By the time I got out of the forest I decided that I wanted to be a farmer. I do better with the kind of nature I can cultivate. And people. I like having people around.”
“So you’re an ex–street artist, ex–fire lookout farmer who works part-time in a pawnshop.”
“That’s about right.”
“I know someone who would love you,” I say, and tell her all about Alexa’s notebook.
“Oh, interesting,” Abbie says. “To have that be a goal, jumping around from one thing to another. I don’t really see myself like that. I want to find the right fit. I’m getting closer, but I also know that I might never really have everything figured out. I might be searching forever.”
After a while, Abbie pulls out her speech, and I let myself fall into the rhythm of driving and thoughts of all these people I’ve encountered. The farmers, who rent out their house so they can stay afloat, and sleep all together in a studio, but spend their days off outside on a picnic blanket, living the lives they want to live. Drew and Melanie, with their two homes and their horses and their love story. And René, traveling across the world, painting temporary masterpieces. Even my uncle Pete has something good worked out with Melinda and his day trips and his best friend, my dad, who has a nice small house in San Francisco and a dozen neighborhood vendors who know him by name. And me. A son he’s proud of no matter what.
All of these different ways of living. Even Sophie, with her baby in that apartment, with her record store job and her record collection. I imagine her twirling with her baby across her red carpet with Diana Ross crooning, the baby laughing, the two of them getting older in that apartment, eating meals on the red vinyl chairs. Walt, too, as pathetic as his situation is, seems happy in his basement, providing entertainment to Fort Bragg’s inner circle. All of them, in their own ways, manage to make their lives work.
We enter Oregon, and I glance over at Abbie.
“Hey,” I say. “I have this idea for something. I could use your help if you’re up for it.”
“What is it?”
I reach back with one arm and feel around the middle seat for The Disenchantments banner I painted this morning. I hand it to her.
“I want to graffiti this,” I say. “Somewhere in Portland. I don’t really know the city.”
“How big?”
“Big.”
“You leave tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Early.”
“Have you ever done anything like this before?”
I shake my head and grin, because even though she hasn’t said it, I can tell she’s thinking about how we’re going to do this, not whether it’s possible.
Abbie asks me a few more questions, and then calls her best friend from the van.
“Hey,” she says. “So I’m getting a ride down from this kid and he has an idea for a pretty big piece. He needs help. What do you think?”
She listens for a moment. I change lanes to go faster, past the field with the old planes that I saw this morning, now on my left instead of my right.
“Oh, yeah. I’m in for sure,” Abbie says. “We just need one more artist.”
Past the same evergreens and cranes and water towers.
“He’s staying in Northeast, so I’m thinking somewhere off of Ainsworth.” Then, “Yes,” she says. “Tonight. I’ll see you in an hour. We can scout it out.”
She snaps her phone shut.
“It’s a plan,” she says.
When I get back to the hotel, I get the guy working in the office to unlock the theater for me so I can pin up the banner. I step back, admire it. Then I head to the main wing to look for the girls. I find Alexa, sitting alone on one of the benches in the hallway.
“You aren’t getting ready for the show?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I think I’m fine like this.”
I sit down next to her.
“I met this awesome girl today,” I say. “She reminded me a lot of you.”
She looks interested, but she’s so quiet, seems unlike her usual self, so instead of going on about it I ask her if anything’s wrong.
“I’ve just been thinking. I know what I’m going to write about. I’ve finally decided.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to write about Heart.”
“The band?”
“Sort of. I’m still figuring it out. Partially about the band. Alisha and Sara are going to be great leads, and they both can sing. So it’ll be loosely based on the band. But also just heart. You know? Like how it feels and what it means to make music, and to be on the road, putting yourself out there. What it means to be sisters, to be friends.”
She turns to me: black hair, blue feather earrings, dark eyes, and a soft, unsmiling mouth.
“I’m just feeling a lot right now,” she says. “It’s too much to not make something out of it.”
I think of that day on the apple farm when Alexa told me that these would be the last days with her sister, of Walt’s basement when she fell in love with Heart, of the time she spent on her own when we got to Meg’s dorm and how she returned to us so self-possessed, so ready for whatever would come next. I wonder about all of the experiences she had when I wasn’t looking, what she was thinking about during all those hours she sat quietly while Meg played the entertainer and Bev and I fought our way through so many things.
“I want to read it,” I say. “As you write. I want scenes or fragments or anything. Will you let me see it?”
She says yes, and I start thinking about all of these moments in life that could inspire moments in the play, and I’m still sifting through it all w
hen Alexa stands up and says, “Maybe I will change after all,” and she gives me a quick hug and disappears down the hallway.
When the three of them emerge from Meg’s room, they are the most glorious creatures I’ve ever laid eyes upon. Bev is in shiny, skintight black pants, high heels, and a thin white shirt with its sleeves cut off. Her eyes are ringed with dark, shadowy eyeliner and her lips are pink and glossy. Meg wears bright red lipstick and a blue dress she hasn’t worn yet on the trip, tighter than her others, showing off her hips and her breasts. Alexa has pulled her hair back, away from her perfect face, and wrapped it in the chiming headband. Her feather earrings move when she walks—she looks like she’s flying—and she’s wearing a silky green dress.
“Oh my God,” I say to them.
“We look hot,” Meg says. “We know.”
“I made you something,” I say. “You’ll see it in a minute.”
Bev asks, “How was the tattoo?”
“Worth the drive,” I say.
And then, without thinking, I say, “Worth all of it.”
Bev looks at me curiously and then they head down the hallway, and I’m left to myself, to try to figure out what I mean.
I sit down in an oversize soft chair in the clean, dim theater. When the girls see me they gesture to the banner stretching across the stage, the letters and silver eyes sparkling. Alexa blows me a kiss. Meg gives me an exaggerated thumbs-up. Bev smiles and lifts her hand in a wave.
Slowly, people trickle in, and soon a group of men and women sit on the couch next to me.
“Do you know anything about them?” one of the men asks me, nodding toward the stage where Meg and Alexa and Bev are setting up.
“Yeah.”
“Are they good?” the guy asks.
Onstage Meg tunes her bass, and Alexa sets her crash cymbal in place, and Bev connects cords that lead from the microphones to a power strip. And even though I know that soon the sound they create will make people cringe, I feel proud that these girls are my friends.
So I say, “Not really. But whatever, you know? They want to make music, so who cares if they don’t know how.”
These girls are amazing, whether they can play or not. Even if the feedback is so brutal I want to cover my ears. Because they have beautiful muscles in their arms and determined looks on their faces. Because Bev’s voice is the best medicine. Better than Xanax or whiskey or all the rest, all anyone would need to keep her calm or help him sleep.