shift in my clothes,
working to find comfort.
My shorts feel tight,
and l lift my legs slightly up
so that fat doesn’t spread
on the seat.
I hate how it looks.
Lisa meets her halfway
down the steps,
blue dress cut low, white sandals,
her blond hair wet
from a shower.
In my chest, I feel the excitement
of seeing my friend,
but also I feel fire
in my body,
and I don’t know how to put it out.
She hugs my mother
until she folds,
her face pressed into
my mother’s shoulder.
They stand together on the stairs
for a long time.
My mother is talking to her.
Lisa is nodding,
her eyes full and wet.
I watch them until
she looks toward me, and I see
an unexpected little girl, quiet.
I put Def Leppard on the radio,
turn it way up,
roll the window down
enough for her to hear.
Joe Elliott sings “Photograph.”
I make it louder.
She smiles
just a little.
Silly
I let her ride in the front seat.
When we pass Muir Woods,
my mother talks to us about
redwoods, but we are
busy saying Muir
over and over,
lengthening it …
mmuuuuiiirrr, meeeeuuuuuiiirrr
until finally,
mannurrree.
She smiles. We laugh.
Kids again.
A Tour
When we get there,
we run from one end to the other,
my voice racing
to explain every nuance,
the driftwood piles,
wooden spool tables,
the studios in the back,
the archery range Pick
and I put in the mulch pile,
and the bows we made.
She picks one up and fires an arrow.
Me and Pick worked hard
on this. He’s a good shot.
He can show you when
he gets here. She smiles.
Let me show you the trolls!
On the way
she stops,
stares at a sculpture
of a giant woman,
her eyes wild,
and there are figures coming out of her hair,
their tiny clay hands
on the woman’s neck.
The longer Lisa looks,
the more she sees.
I walk to her and set down
one of the trolls we made
holding a tiny wood sign
that reads THIS WAY TO THE BEACH
while he flexes a tiny troll muscle.
But she just stares into the eyes of the sculpture.
Meet Melinda, I say.
Then in a low voice I mutter, Creepy.
She laughs, then looks across the road
and up toward the mountain.
We should climb to those trees, she says,
and points to a forest near the highest peak,
where the Dipsea Trail cuts over
the mountains.
Yeah, we should, I say.
Lisa takes me by the hand.
Show me where you make the trolls.
Breakfast
I
I wait at the table in the garden
for Lisa to wake up,
so we can go to breakfast.
I sit near Melinda,
my mother’s creation,
an eight-foot-tall
terra-cotta sculpture.
She leans forward.
One clay hand reaches
for the sun.
The other presses the earth.
One foot is forward,
the other placed firmly
along a metal armature.
One day, a magazine will come
and write a story about
what a feat this sculpture is,
how each section
was fired separately in the kiln,
about glue and hoses,
metal bars and pipe threads,
about movements in art,
about rising and falling.
For now, Melinda
watches me
waiting for Lisa.
Lisa walks into the garden,
makes a face at Melinda,
and sits down, her hands in the pocket
of her gray hoodie.
II
At the Coast Bar and Grill,
my mother explains
the diet,
and Lisa tries to take it in.
We order bacon and eggs
with extra bacon.
We order a side of cheese.
Sometimes it’s just easier
to show someone how this all works.
When the food comes,
Lisa is eating her blueberry pancakes
with a river of syrup.
My mother puts her arm around me,
smiles to comfort
me away from the smell of the syrup,
and without thinking,
she slides her hands down to my love handles,
a normal, loving gesture.
She turns to Lisa,
We’re going to work on this mensch,
and she squeezes.
She’s forgotten the wound.
I cry out
because it still hurts.
I pull the linen napkin
over my mouth.
She remembers right away,
takes her hands off.
I feel her body stiffen.
I feel weak,
but I feel something else too,
that things have to be different,
that I need to change.
The names, the pokes, the looks
pile in every glass and jar,
cup and bowl
in the restaurant,
and at last I feel
the weight of my body.
Too heavy to be me.
In the middle of the restaurant,
I spill tears into my breakfast,
aware that there is no promise,
no magic pill, no work
except my work.
I make fists
in the tablecloth,
whisper
quiet prayers,
Please help.
Before the Opening
Mom says
today is about work,
because tonight is about
the opening,
for the world to see
the nursery-turned-gallery.
Pick’s mom drops him off
to stay for a few days.
Just in time for the work! I say.
Did you show Lisa everything? he asks,
and we run around the nursery,
everything new again
until we hear the yell
to get to work.
We walk from corner to corner,
pick up broken arrows,
dried clay, water balloon
shreds, and everything else.
We rake piles of
ashen leaves, and our breath
fills with dust.
We carry paintings two by two,
stretch canvases across
wood beams,
hang metal wires
and awkward hooks.
We swing on ladders
and go on the roof.
Pick carries in a new shipment of clay
bag by bag.
Lisa folds linens with my mother,
helps to paint new tiles.
My mother
is teaching her brushstrokes,
hatching, scrambling, glazing.
Lisa is a good student.
My mother has been changing since
the morning, and by two p.m. she is
completely transformed into the Artist.
She holds a brush in one hand
and a glass of champagne full of grapes in the other.
She is painting the air with directions,
calling out commands
until our ears break.
Lisa and Pick string white Christmas lights
across the beams above the patio.
My mother sets out the wine and the champagne,
the cheese boards, bowls of almonds and olives.
Is your dad coming? Pick asks.
No, I say,
but I don’t really know.
The Opening
People flow into the nursery,
some to look at art,
some to meet the eccentric
Artist from the city,
some to drink free wine.
When the crowd dies down a little,
we sit on the roof,
beneath the beach stars,
watch the Artist come and go
while people talk, eat cheese,
and stare in front of sculptures,
nod in front of paintings.
People can really stare
at a painting for a long time,
Pick says.
Lisa laughs. That’s how you’re
supposed to look at art.
She points down to where
an older woman stands
by a painting of Icarus
staring out across the wide sea,
her eyes filled with tears.
See, Lisa says.
First you look at the scene,
let it hit you
however it does.
Then you look
at one thing at a time,
try to see each figure,
each shape and how it’s made.
Streaks of color,
hard strokes or washes,
the way the figures
in the painting
connect or don’t.
I look at her
examining the painting,
her face beaming with joy.
She’s where she’s supposed to be,
and I get to be here too.
We see a few people who want to buy trolls,
and we jump down from the roof
to help the trolls go home.
At the end of the night, my mom
rests in the tall peacock chair.
The first of many! she says.
It takes us the whole next day to clean it all up.
Night in the Nursery
We all sleep
in one of the old planting rooms.
It’s big enough for each
of us to have plenty of space,
high beams
and a skylight in the center.
Sunlight and moonlight
fill the room.
We make it ours for the summer.
We paint the slatted walls
with heavy acrylic,
blues, greens, yellows, and browns,
smoothed into river mud,
a thick-pasted canvas.
We hang our drawings of robots,
landscapes, and cartoon trolls,
animated versions of the sculptures,
the Lotus Keeper, the Ice Priest,
surfing in the waves
or climbing into the hills.
I hang a poster of the Big Three—
Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster,
and the Abominable Snowman—
with the word Believe.
Lisa spreads out her books
and her journals.
We build beds
from foam rubber pads,
sleeping bags, old pillows.
Sleeping mats, we call them.
This is where we want to be.
Before Picture
The Diet Book
suggests I take a before picture.
It makes sense to me,
even if I hate photos of myself.
Lisa suggests we go down to the beach,
stand near the lifeguard,
with the beach in the background.
Pick suggests we hike up a small hill.
I choose the nursery,
just to get it over with.
I stand on the deck,
the sky blue like crystal,
and the air smells
like brine.
Last night, millions of anchovies
washed onto the shore.
The beach is thick with sand crabs.
The seagulls pitch and dive
from the mountains to the beach
like I’ve never seen before,
lunging into the sand,
out of control.
I feel every cell swirling around,
my metabolism churning
starving, fighting.
So, in some moment of foolishness
or bravery or maybe both,
I step onto the deck,
take off my shirt,
and hold it over my head.
My pale skin
absorbs the naked sun.
Pick and Lisa laugh,
but not at me, I think.
They are in the moment,
me with my shirt off,
swinging it around my head,
the chaos and screech of the seagulls.
My body shudders
in the sudden wonder
of a decision finally made.
What if I’m not alone?
What if Pick and Lisa
and maybe others might help me?
What if all this matters less than I think it does?
Let’s do this! I cry out.
I pump my fist in the air
because I don’t know what else to do.
Without asking,
Pick and Lisa step onto the deck with me,
stand next to me on either side.
My mother snaps the photo.
gets the phone from my mom,
stares at it, and makes a funny face,
then she runs across the deck
while we chase her.
In the photo,
my friends are on either side,
Pick, his smart, handsome face beaming,
Lisa, her chin lowered, eyes wide,
born for the camera,
and me, so much wider
than both of them.
It’s not fair, I think,
how my sides overflow my shorts,
or the way my legs
always rub together.
I’m not sure I can do this.
We print the photo
and pin it to a shelf
beneath two trolls,
one holding a tiny flowerpot,
the other a hatchet.
Then we go to the beach,
run the whole way
until our toes reach the shore,
lay our bodies down
in the warm sand.
At the nursery,
the seagulls land on the fence,
stuffed or tired.
Level 1 Induction
I miss apples
pizza
French toast
sandwiches
candy
watermelon
hamburger buns
cake
pizza
doughnuts
spaghetti
chips
pizza
It’s been a week.
The Kid Who Draws at the Beach
At the beach
we meet this kid named Jorge.
He is often by himself,
building sandcastles
or sketching something
inside a b
rown journal.
He says he takes the bus a few miles
from Bolinas.
He likes the feel of traveling.
We like him right away.
Loch Ness Monster
Pick holds up a drawing
of a tentacled creature,
a giant, mutant squid
rising out of the bay.
Our game needs more enemies,
he says. What do you think?
The robots need
to face a real threat.
I reach for Mysterious World,
flip it open to chapter 6,
“Creatures of Lakes and Lochs,”
hold it up in the air
like I just found the answer
we’ve been looking for.
Something like this? I ask.
Pick nods. Maybe?
But isn’t that the Loch Ness monster?
Yes! I say. What if—I turn the page—
in the game, Earth is filled
with these creatures,
but they aren’t enemies.
They are just lost,
isolated, angry, afraid,
creatures that just don’t
quite fit in?
What if part of the game
is to help these creatures
stop destroying things
and become allies?
Pick looks at me.
I’m not sure that makes it fun, Ari,
but you really like that one, don’t you.
It’s true. The Loch Ness
monster is one of my
favorite mysteries,
my first cryptozoological research
into something out there
beyond our explanation.
In fourth grade, we watched
a movie about unexplained phenomena
that showed in never-been-seen-before animation
four adorable, long-necked aquatic dinosaurs
swimming freely from the ocean
and up a long canal
inland to the mountains,
swimming, playing, living.
Gradually, as they make their way home,
the water changes, the earth shifts,
mountains turn into the sea.
Slowly the land closes,
until finally
it swallows itself
and forms the lake.
The dinosaurs are cut off
from their species.
Isolated, a few families
alone in a giant mountain lake.
In the cartoon,
their smiling faces turn upside down.
A graph of fish types
pops up on the screen,