My Not-So-Still Life Read Free

for a baseball team who just can’t get it together?”
    “No idea.”
    “Ha!
Mariners.
” I walk up next to the couch.
    “Attagirl.”
    “He asks me that every time he watches a game,” I tell Nick.
    I can’t help but think that lately Grampie looks like a little old man. He’s retired, and he’s obviously the grandfather of a teenager, but when did he start looking old? And smaller? He’s grayer. Not just his steel-wool hair, but his skin, too. He moves more slowly.
    There’s a photo of him and my grandmother that sits on the mantel. It’s how I picture him in all the days before I was born, before even my mom was born. Grampie stands, laughing as she strikes a pose; she’s sitting on the hood of his Chevy, the one that still lives in our garage.
    My grandmother was a beautiful woman, and this is by far my favorite photo of her. She’s so full of life. She radiates energy, you can tell just by looking.
    “Nicolai says you’re off to Fremont for the art walk,” Grampie says.
    “Yep,” I say. “We’re meeting up with Holly. I’ll be back by eleven.”
    “I’ll tell your mother.”
    “Where is she, anyway?” I ask.
    As if on cue, Mom walks out of her room and slumps down next to Grampie, looking just as tired as he does. “Right here.”
    Mom works so hard at the docks. She insists on being called a
longshoreman
. She deserves to sit behind a cushy desk in some office filing her nails and listening to the radio, instead of checking in the cargo coming off boats andinto Ballard. Instead of worrying about manifests, and stacking crates, and sometimes driving the forklift. She should get to take it easy.
    Whenever I try to talk to her about that, she says how well the docks pay, and then I clam up because I know that her having me is the reason she doesn’t have the education to get other good-paying jobs.
    “I’ll never understand why you would rather sit on the couch than get out there on the weekends,” I say.
    “Talk to me after you’ve been out there working for fifteen years,” Mom says. One of her favorite lines.
    “Grampie did it for almost fifty years. And he still has a social life.”
    He keeps his head down, as he always does when this line of conversation comes up. Nick does too.
    “I’m happy, Vanessa. I’m fine.”
    “You haven’t even had a date in months and months, Mom. The docks are your whole life.”
    Mom just shakes her head.
    Nick tugs on my arm.
    I kiss Grampie’s cheek, grab my faux-leather motorcycle jacket, and head out. I decide to try to live enough life for both me and my mom.
    Nick skips ahead, oblivious to the fact that anyone’s even aware of him. He doesn’t know it, but I admire that about him. He lives moment by moment.
    I walk behind him, let him shine.
    In Ballard, there’s salt in the air, just a hint. You know the water’s not far away, and you know that fish are swimming out there, and that this world is not a new world. It’s as old as the ocean and everything in it.
    Our street is lined with small shingled houses and messy yards, tulips in every garden, though they’re not in bloom quite yet, and cherry trees near the sidewalk. Those trees will burst into color soon. When they do, the city will feel fresh.
    With all that salt from Puget Sound in the air, Ballard can feel worn-in. Comfy, but not squeaky clean. It’s a fantastic place to call home.
    Nick’s house is three blocks away from mine and farther from the stores, much bigger than my house. When they moved here a few years ago, his parents tore down the little house on their lot to build this ultramodern thing that looks like a bank or a mini office building.
    My family has lived in the same tiny house since Grampie was a boy. He grew up there. Grampie fixed up the basement when I was twelve, to give Mom and me more space.
    My grandmother was already gone by the time I was born. We keep all the photos of her on the fireplace mantel. I think Mom looks a lot like her, but I don’t see