That was it for Mom, who decided it was time for us to move on and move in. At six thirty in the morning she took off—destination Target—instant coffee in one hand, inventory list in the other. She came back three hours later with a new efficiency outfit, tons of storage gadgets, and a book about how to play the piano. Then she announced that it was time to get on with our lives, and that she had decided to take up piano lessons.
“Lessons?” Dad mumbled. He was still in his PJ’s, working on his third coffee.
“Yes, since we now have a piano.”
“We do?” Dad rubbed his eyes.
Mom smiled and looked at Dad. “We do now.”
When Dad finally realized what she was getting at, Mom was already heading for the shed. “Oh no, we don’t,” Dad roared across the yard. “Oh no, we don’t. You don’t...”
I could tell that this was going to be a long Sunday morning, so I decided to go for a ride around the lake and grab lunch on the way home.
“Noodles?” I yelled in the direction of the shed.
Silence.
“I will take that as a yes?” I yelled a little louder.
Still no answer.
“I’m leaving now.”
Nothing.
And so I left, and on my way out of the driveway—readjusting the rearview mirror, singing Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold” from the top of my lungs—I suddenly caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Somehow, I looked different. Maybe it was just the extra curly hair and the one million freckles (they multiply pretty much every summer) or maybe I really had changed? Maybe the last couple of weeks have changed me? I narrowed my eyes and looked again. Maybe not, but it sure had been the two craziest weeks ever; we had travelled across an entire country in two days, but after two weeks of living in Seattle we still hadn’t moved in. It was almost as though we had become true time travelers—not here yet here—living in some kind of Twilight Zone. But even though I missed my clothes and all my stuff, and even though I was on my third week of wearing Gold Toes and Hanes underwear, living in a house decorated with paper plates, plastic cups, take-out menus, handkerchiefs, and human-sized condoms—in a world far, far away from Maddie and the girls—I couldn’t help smiling at the face looking at me.
I grabbed my bag from the backseat. I still had all the Post-it notes Mom had surprised me with that morning in the weird-smelling motel. I smiled as I poured them all out into the passenger seat. Dad was right; Mom sure knows how to buy the right gifts – guilt tripping or not. And boy, were they feeling guilty: After two years of begging and sulking (a lot) they had finally decided (two days before we left) to buy me a brand-new laptop and iPhone, a virtual lifeline to my old life and friends. I was both thrilled and mad at the same time—thrilled because, hey, I got an iPhone and my own laptop, but mad because it just showed me they knew how much my life would change (no one gets this spoiled for nothing).
The first week, I’d been catching up with Maddie and the girls on Facebook, like, ten times a day—posting pictures of my room, Dad in his Homer underwear, Mount Rainier and, of course, white men in white socks. But into week two the newness was already wearing off a little. Somehow long-distance chitchat felt more alienating than comforting. I guess I felt even more left out, knowing all the fun I was missing out on.
Maddie had promised that she and Aunt Elly would be out here for Christmas, and we were already making plans for her to visit next summer, too. She was surprised when I told her that it has been sunny the whole time we’ve been here. “Sun, like, really?” she’d said it like the word “sun” had been erased from the Washingtonian vocabulary.
I missed her a lot. I missed talking with her, missed us completing each other’s sentences, and I missed having her and the girls around. The word “friends” was once again a reminder of how it used to be—before Maddie, before the Singer—back to the familiar feeling of the pressure to make new friends. I hadn’t really met anyone close to my age yet; I had only heard a lot of neighborhood kids splashing in the lake and having fun.
“Go over and join them,” Mom had said one day when she heard them.
“They are like ten or something,” I had said with a sneer.
“Well, maybe they have a teenage sister or brother sitting somewhere inside with a phone in one hand and computer in the other,” Mom had said, as always trying to make friends for me.
“Ha ha,” I had said with both hands virtually connected. “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll get out there at some point. Just give me some time,” I said, trying to appease her. “Besides, I’m reading.” I moved an inch closer to the screen.
“Where?” Mom had said, assuming I—as promised—was digging into my gigabytes of educational info.
“UW,” I had lied, looking at Beyoncé taking a dip in the Mediterranean Sea.
“Interesting,” Mom had said, smiling. “My new friend Kathy from just down the hill graduated from UW.”
Of course, Mom already had a new friend; while I had been busy pretending to do research, she disappeared to God knows where, making tons of new volunteer friends. This is what she always does: drinks coffee, volunteers, and makes instant friends! When I asked her how she always managed to make so many new friends, she shrugged and said, “By being me, I guess.”
I turned Katy P up to max volume, picked out a pink Post-it, grabbed my pen, and wrote: “Seattle One: Thanks for having the coolest Mom in the whole world. She rocks the piano.” I grabbed a blue one and wrote in capital letters. “Seattle two: Maybe I should try not to be so much like me.”
The Post-its were back. I was back. Now the only thing I needed to find was “me” in Seattle ... and all of our stuff, of course.
WHEN I GOT BACK WITH Thai food and the beginning of my new Seattle Post-it note phase, I found Mom and Dad and half an empty bottle of Chianti in the kitchen. They both looked calm. Dad was setting the table while Mom flipped through her new Piano for Dummies book. No one said a word.
“Anyone want spring rolls for starters?”
No one looked up.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then. Again,” I added.
We all sat down, but still no one was saying a word. Rolls and noodles were silently exchanged across the table.
Finally, Mom broke the silence. “We, well, that is, I have decided, and your father agrees,” she looked at Dad and grabbed his hand, “right?”
“Right.” He sighed and took up a fight with a stranded noodle.
“We have agreed that since our own stuff apparently is history, for now, and since we really can’t afford to buy more new stuff right away, well, we just have to go ahead and live with the stuff in the shed. I mean, no one seems to be missing it anyway, so why not?” She shrugged her shoulders and looked at Dad.
I grabbed a noodle and pointed my chopsticks at her. “But I thought you said that it was old people’s stuff, like ugly lamps and things?”
“We don’t have a choice. And for the record, I didn’t say it was ugly, just different and old. It’ll only be on a “need-to-home” basis for now. We need some kitchen stuff, beds, a proper dinner table, some chairs, and a few couches. We haven’t quite decided whether the piano applies yet.” She grabbed a roll and dipped it in hot sauce. Dad looked at Mom and raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to go on. “I would say it does,” she said a little hesitant, “I mean, we need to make this our home. A place we love. And why not get the best out of it?” She looked at Dad and then at me.
Dad glanced at me with small eyes. “What do you say?”
That I want my things back or I will go on a sit-down strike until it all somehow turns up miraculously? I looked at Dad and swallowed a big drunken noodle. “I guess there’s really nothing else we can do,” I said, not letting my little inner rant surface.
Mom smiled wide at both of us. “I’m so happy we got that sorted out. Now, you-” She pointed at me. “-you can sleep on that yellowish sofa bed we unwrapped in the shed yesterday. It kind of goes with the old flower wallpaper
in your room, right? She looked at me and nodded.
“Yeah, as in both are old and ugly,” I teased.
“Ella?” She looked up from over the top of the noodle box. “Ella?” She repeated with her parental voice.
“It’s cool, Mom. It’s cool.” I threw a sly smile at Dad, and he returned the gesture.
She clapped her chopsticks together. “Everyone happy then? Hon?” She looked at Dad, batting her eyelashes like a butterfly in spring.
Dad nodded. “Cool, Miss Mozart,” he said, smiling.
Mom smiled back at him. “Yes!” She leaned over and kissed him, her eyes still on me.
She looked so happy. I guess even though she had been trying not to bitch too much about it, it had been pretty tough for her, living like this—being an organizer at heart. Now she finally had a house to organize and arrange ... a house to make her home.
The mailbox
I was in charge of the kitchen—tracking down boxes containing pots and pans, plates, forks, knives, glasses, and other kitchenware. It wasn’t really that hard since all the boxes had been neatly organized with intricately detailed labels. I grabbed the “lower cabinets” and “upper cabinets” boxes, and in less than an hour I was done putting it all away.
Later, when I threw myself on my new soft yellow sofa bed with the portable TV in my lap, I could hear Mom and Dad upstairs—probably still trying to figure out where to put the master bed. Apparently, it was the work of an engineer—attempting to fit a monstrous, king-sized bed into a tiny bedroom. I heard a lot of bumps and moaning and Mom laughing her I’m-too-tired-to-even-say-my-own-name laugh.
It was all so familiar; Mom and Dad moving around with the furniture in the middle of the night. Dad pushing and working at it while Mom was trying to fill the role of interior decorator, laughing half her good ideas off. The outcome was always the same: the furniture pretty much ended up the same place as before.
There was another big bump followed by Dad’s deep voice saying something and Mom laughing. It was such a soothing sound, the sound of Mom and Dad.
I MUST HAVE DOZED OFF for a few hours because when I woke up, it was almost pitch dark. Someone—probably Mom—had taken my shoes off and covered me with a blanket. The portable TV and the cast of Glee had been turned off, the remote carelessly placed on the floor on top of a pile of t-shirts. I looked up at the ceiling. Besides Dad’s snoring, it was quiet throughout the house. I guess Mom and Dad had finally found the right place to put the bed. I searched for my phone to see what time it was, but I couldn’t find it, and after looking for it in all the unlikely-places-to-put-a-cell-phone, I realized I might had left it out in the moldy old shed, when going through the boxes of kitchenware. Great, I have to go all the way out to the shed, at night, alone, in the dark, in the wet grass. I tiptoed to the kitchen and grabbed the flashlight from the “new” cedar wood secretary—Mom’s new favorite organizer unit—and headed for the shed. As I stepped inside the shed and turned on the flashlight, the very first thing I saw was the word “LETTERS.”
I COULD ALMOST HEAR my heart pounding as I turned on the “new” night lamp I dug out of the shed earlier. It sure was ugly—brown and yellow with a dusty shade made out of some old stocking or something—but it had a very cozy night-club kind of light to it—very appropriate for what I was about to do.
I ran my fingers over the letter box. It was smooth and cold. A warm sensation surged through my body and my nerves went into overdrive. While holding my breath, I grabbed the little hook and opened the lid. Dad was right on so many levels; this was trespassing, this was private property, this was not for me to read. But I just wanted to read one more, one more letter just to find out where this Frederick person had gone.
Carefully, I poured out the neatly wrapped stacks of letters onto the bed. I grabbed stack “one” and took out the letter—following the one Dad had read out loud. It was dated March 3, 1981 and it started where we had left Martha last time—all alone and miserable ... and sleepless in Seattle.
Dear Martha, my love.
What can I say? I miss you more than words can say. Thinking of you is what makes every moment worthwhile. I have to keep reminding myself all the time that I’m doing this for us, for our future and our future family. God how I miss you, miss your arms around me, miss you by my side in bed. That said... I’m doing just fine. The shipping colleagues at Maersk are a bunch of nice young guys (only one woman in our department—the office receptionist/secretary). I think they kind of feel they have to take care of poor little me so far away from home. Last night one of the guys, Lars, invited me to his home just north of Copenhagen. His wife Linda made a wonderful traditional dinner, some kind of pork roast with potatoes and red cabbage. It was delicious! After dinner we (me, Lars, Linda, and Mads, who is six and missing half of his teeth) went to Tivoli—one of the oldest amusement parks in the world. It is an amazing place and we had such a great time. Only thing missing was you. I keep wishing that someday we will experience this beautiful city together. You would love Denmark, especially the radical women here. They are out of this world. A lot of them don’t even wear bras, not that I’m looking. It’s just a matter of fact.
Got to run, it’s three AM and I have to get up around six. Not much sleep tonight! Give all my love to your parents and Jeff and tell him The Beatles are still huge in Denmark. He will love that. Well, yes, and you too, of course.
And you, my love, I love you more than life itself.
Talk to you soon.
Yours forever,
Frederick.
So, there it was—in black and white. He had gone to Copenhagen, Denmark, of all places—the place one eighth of me has always wanted to see.
See, three lifetimes before Art Fry invented the Post-it note, Mom’s great grandparents had emigrated from Europe, more specifically Denmark. “The land of fairytales,” my grandpa always used to say. I never really understood how my ancestors could be from a land of fairytales, but I figured it all out in seventh grade, when I read my first H.C. Andersen fairytale, “The Ugly Duckling.” It was a little eighteenth century tale about this outcast duckling that eventually turns into a beautiful white swan. It’s apparently also a tale oozing with social realism and thus an obvious case study in literature interpretation. My seventh-grade teacher Miss Kim, a tiny and particular woman, who I swear you could see right through given the right light, was a devoted Freud fan, and everything we read during our three Kim-years was dissected and made Freudian. “The Ugly Duckling” was no exception.
Grandpa, who also had many fond memories of his grandmother reading “The Ugly Duckling” as a bedtime story, found our Kim slash Freudian interpretations rather perverse. “Somebody should tell that teacher of yours that H.C. Andersen is a widely known and respected author throughout the entire world. Teachers today have no respect for history outside the US,” he said on more than one occasion. What Grandpa didn’t know was that Miss Kim was a forty-seven-year-old Chinese woman, who had spent over half of her life in China, had earned a degree in eighteenth century European literature, and was a very devoted Andersen fan. To cool things off a bit (he was threatening to call her and “set her straight”), I decided to please my Grandpa and write a very non-Freudian essay on European writers and their influence on American literature—not a single word of penis envy.
Other than H.C. Andersen, I didn’t really know much about my ancestors or Denmark. My great-great-granddad had died early on and my great-great-grandma was a quiet woman who didn’t talk much—particularly not about Denmark. My great great-granddad and grandma had left for the US when my great-great-great-grandparents had found out that my great-great-grandma was pregnant with a married man (needless to say—not very popular in the early nineteenth century.) They never set foot on Danish soil again, and they never tried to contact their family overseas either. Denmark had become a foreign country.
Sometimes my granddad would burst into these weird Danish songs, which he—often fueled by Mom’s C
hristmas punch—all of a sudden got the urge to share with everyone. Somehow his “I recall nothing of the Danish my mother used to teach me,” had different wings to fly on, and even though we didn’t understand a single word (Danish is a very strange language with lots of words starting with the letter k) we always liked the somehow-universal language of joy and clapping hands, which apparently is a big part of these old Danish songs.
Mom would always say that it was all just an act. Granddad just made up every single word as he went along. But we didn’t care; Danish or not, it was Danish to us and a part of our history as a family. As a kid I often imagined myself walking down the narrow (fairytale) streets of Denmark, dressed like a little princess—with straight blond hair, little white socks, and a basket of flowers—singing the apparently not-so-Danish songs.
I looked down at all the letters. So, he was in Denmark, but why hadn’t she come with him? There had to be some reason. Maybe she was pregnant or something? I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Just one more letter, I told myself as I reached for the next letter. Just one, the last one, I promised myself, which couldn’t have been further from the truth.
A midget in the house
Monday afternoon there was a knock on the front door—not a firm knuckle knock but a gentle almost silent knock. Mom and I were in the kitchen eating homemade cookies, right out of the oven (we always do this: eat the cookies before they have time to cool off. Dad calls it a bad habit. Mom and I call it our habit. The first couple of bites hurt, but then after four or five cookies, your mouth toughens up a bit).
“The door is open,” we both said at the same time, chocolate chip cookie steam coming out of our mouths.
The first thing we saw was a giant pitchfork taking up a fight with the hallway, then followed the tiniest little old woman on earth. “Well, knock knock.” The little thing could speak.
Lost in Seattle (The Miss Apple Pants series, #2) Page 6
