Pasha Malla: People Park

After breakfast, packed up and ready to go, in the parking lot Kellogg took Pearl’s hands and said, Hey, we okay? Just kidding around, I can put on a different shirt if you want. Pearl said, Kellogg, hey, no, I know. Just feeling a little stressed, a little weird is all. Coming back is weird. With Harry’s door ajar and dinging, Kellogg corralled his wife into his arms. I love you, he whispered into her neck. I know, said Pearl. I know.

Come on, screamed Gip from inside the minivan, it’s past seven o’clock!

Elsie-Anne had wandered off down the boardwalk. Kellogg found her leaning over the railing at the Scenic Vista. A drainpipe jutted from the cliffs twenty feet down, she claimed an eel lived in its depths, she’d named him Familiar. Gently Kellogg pried her away, and as he folded her into Harry’s backseat she whimpered, But I loved Familiar and he loved me .

Kellogg followed the ISLAND signs down to the water, where they hit a jumble of cars queued at the Guardian Bridge onramp. Pearl’s allergies were acting up, she blew her nose, discarded the tissue on the dashboard, punched an antihistamine tablet from a blisterpack, swallowed it dry.

Just a little traffic, folks, no big deal, said Kellogg, grinning into the backseat.

Dorkus is talking to her purse, said Gip. It’s weird.

Gip, why not try a trick from your book? suggested Pearl. Else, hey, wouldn’t you like to see your brother do some magic?

While Pearl readied their documents Gip leafed through Raven’s Illustrations: A Grammar . Tapping a page, he announced, Situation Thirteen, in which Dorkus picks a card, any card. Cunningly he fanned a deck on the backseat. Kellogg smiled at Pearl: how sweetly their kids played together, what lucky parents they were, and he reached over and squeezed his wife’s arm as though testing a fruit. She regarded him with confusion — a look that suggested she didn’t, for a moment, know who he was.

Hi, it’s me, Kellogg — is that who I am, according to those things?

You’re fine. It’s the kids: Gib Bode, and his lovely sister L.C.N. Goode.

But you have proof you’re from here, which gets us in — right?

Let’s hope, said Pearl.

After a rambling, theatrical process that required Gip to consult Raven’s Grammar four times, Elsie-Anne refused to admit, with a shake of her braids, that she’d chosen the nine of clubs. What? Gip said, brandishing it at her. This is your card, Dorkus. No it isn’t, Stuppa, said Elsie-Anne, mine was jack. Impossible! her brother screamed, and swept the rest of the deck onto the floormats.

Gip, barked Pearl — but Gip only gazed out the window, while the minivan crawled onto the lip of the bridge.

Why are we going so slow, he said. We’ve barely moved at all.

Just a little backup, said Kellogg. Got lots of people heading over probably just as excited as you, pal. We’ll get there, don’t you fret.

Gip leaned into the frontseat. But gosh, it’s nearly seven-forty a.m. in the morning, Raven’s arriving at nine o’clock sharp, and what if we don’t make it for eight, which is when I said we needed to get there, if you remember. Don’t you even listen to me?

Oh hush up, said Pearl. We’ve got plenty of time.

We’ll get there, said Kellogg. Everyone’s going the same place, traffic’s got to go somewhere. Just likely making sure everyone’s got their tickets and permits in order, and Mummy’s from here so we’ll just whip on through. Okay?

No response.

One spot ahead of Harry was a maroon pickup truck with a bashed-in taillight. Its driver, a wild-looking man in a dirty blond ponytail and prospector’s beard, leaned out the window to spit. The spit, even from this distance, was goopy and brown.

Disgusting, said Pearl, and sneezed.

Ten minutes passed, traffic barely budged, the pickup driver spat four more times. Gip ignored his dad’s suggestion to try the trick again. Instead he began humming, a sound somewhere between the whine of a cicada and the bleating of a distant car alarm. Kellogg and Pearl exchanged a look. The driver of the pickup hawked out the window again, pulled forward eight inches. Harry followed, stopped, and Gip kept humming.

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.