The Alaskan Laundry (3 page)

“You a big drinker?” Fritz asked. She shook her head, unable to take her eyes from the boat.

“Good.” He started up again.

Farther on they passed a smaller harbor at the bottom of the hill. Through the dirty glass and fog she made out a quadrangle of dilapidated shingled buildings. Keta raised his head as Fritz coasted to a stop and set the emergency brake.

“What about dogs?” Fritz asked, sliding out. “You a fan?”

She hauled her bag, damp now, from the flatbed. Dogs. She had inherited her mother's dislike of the creatures, and generally crossed to the other side of the street when she saw one approaching. They were dirty, chewed through the plastic coverings of the couch, and kept people up with their barking.

“They're fine,” she lied. The dog grunted as he hopped out of her open door. He had a long body and furry chest, a black nose with a smudge of pink at the end.

“You sure that's not a wolf?”

“Wolves don't look you in the eye like that,” Fritz said. It was true—the dog wouldn't stop staring. It almost seemed as if he had come out of the truck to get a better look at her. “German shepherd, Aussie, Lab, malamute. Maybe a smidge of arctic wolf? Who knows.”

“He's got no tail,” Tara observed. The dog's sleek white head jerked up.

“Don't say that too loud,” Fritz said in a stage whisper. “He's gets self-conscious.”

“Jesus.” Tara looked down into the dog's mournful eyes. “Sensitive guy.”

“C'mon. I'll show you your new home.”

The dog trotted ahead, leading the way across a small bridge. The air reminded her of Oregon Avenue at Christmas, spruce trees trussed up against a chain-link fence strung with oversized lights. Life on this “Rock,” as the man on the ferry called it, wouldn't be completely unfamiliar. Her mother's first memory had been sitting atop a barrel of sardines brining by the water, where she had been set to keep the gulls away. This same blood ran in her veins.

They entered a door at one end of a long, single-story building, and went down a dreary hallway. Fritz stopped in front of a door, and the dog leaned against her thigh as he sifted through his key ring. “You grew up in Philadelphia?”

“Yeah. But my mother was from Sicily.”

He nodded. “Worked in your folks' bakery? That what Coozy said?”

Not if you ask my father, she thought. “Yeah.”

“Well, I am a fan of the baked goods, as you can probably tell.” He patted his stomach. “Wife's always trying to get me to cut down, but I tell her I need to put on hibernation weight. Lack of sunlight bother you?”

“I guess we'll find out.”

“That's right, soon enough now.”

He pushed open the door and extended a hand. There was a single electric burner in the corner, a bed beneath the curtained window, pendant light over a table, and a shower and toilet on the other side of a wood-planked wall.

“You got cockroaches, rats, and all that back in Philly?” Fritz asked from the doorway. He turned the knob on the thermostat.

Was he an idiot? “Sure. It's a city.”

“Well, none of that crap here.” He pulled a plastic package from his back pocket and tossed it onto the bed. “There's dinner if you like. I'll see you in the
A.M.
, eight sharp down at the hatchery. Five-minute walk. Head back out across the bridge, between those old brown buildings to the concrete bunker by the water. Basement. Get some sleep. C'mon, buster. It's our feeding time.” And then he was gone. The dog watched her for a couple seconds, blinking his blond eyelashes a few times before Fritz whistled, and he bounded off.

She sat on her bed, looking around, her mind bright with exhaustion. She had made it. From the living room sofa in front of the television, from scraping the bottom of the barrel of lemon water ice, to this bare bones room on an island in Alaska. Right now she needed sleep.

From her duffel she took a framed, washed-out photo of men standing by boats, mending nets, and taped it above her bed. How fragile, even feminine, these dark-skinned cousins of her mother, the men of Aci Trezza, appeared compared to Fritz, with his rainbow suspenders framing his stomach, or the white-bearded man on the ferry with the wrinkles. For all her mother's talk about work, how it kept a person right in the world, Tara was beginning to think work in Italy meant something different than it did in Alaska.

Outside the curtained windows, branches waved in the dark. The baseboard radiators made a ticking sound as they heated. She picked up the package, still warm from Fritz's pocket. Among gimcrack cookware in a kitchen drawer she found a serrated knife and sawed open the plastic. The soft, dark meat tasted of liquid smoke—fish, she realized, picking a filament of bone from her teeth. The springs beneath the thin mattress squeaked as she flopped on the bed.

She tore off another piece, chewing slowly. When she left Wolf Street it had been with not only anger but also relief at not having to trail any longer in her father's dark wake. Not to be shocked out of sleep each morning by the knock of the filter against the rim of the sink as he dumped stale espresso grounds. No more shuffle of his slippers with the collapsed heel on the kitchen linoleum.

Her father's eyes, magnified behind the lenses of his glasses, froze people. It happened with Gypo, her boxing coach, when her father arrived at the gym with sixteen-year-old Tara in tow. Even Urbano's closest friend, Vic, who ran the barbershop up the block from the Italian Market social club, fidgeted under his gaze. And when gifts appeared at their row home—pepper shooters stuffed with provolone and prosciutto, squid marinated in garlic and olive oil, bottles of home-distilled grappa—they were left on the front stoop. No one wanted to risk looking Urbano in the eye.

Connor, on the other hand—how many hours had she spent on the edge of sleep thinking about how they weren't right for each other? Or maybe their timing was off. Her thoughts orbited around him, never coming to rest. It was exhausting.

From her bag she took out a notebook. He hated telephones. Back home, he'd hiss up at her window and they'd meet in the alley, then sit atop air conditioner compressors, kissing, while the rest of the neighborhood slept. Letters. He was old-fashioned like that.

27 September 1997

Dear Connor,

I made it! Writing now from this cozy room with log rafters and wooden walls and a kitchenette. You should have seen me boarding that plane in Philly. I kept flipping the ashtray cover in the armrest until someone told me to stop. Then the wheels left the ground, and I could see the city stretched out below, shadow where Passyunk cut through, blip of aircraft warning lights on the radio towers by the Schuylkill River.

As she wrote, she could see him at a New York City post office, the faintest impression of crow's-feet appearing at the corners of his gray eyes. A lightness in his stride as he walked to the coffee shop. Finding his favorite corner, using the blade of a knife to slice open the envelope.

I slept most of the plane ride, then woke to my ears popping, trying to recall this dream I was having of my mother ahead of me on this pebble beach, pushing through the waves. No matter how loud I shouted she wouldn't turn. Like she just wanted me to follow.

At the Bellingham ferry ticket counter this guy with a tattoo on his neck said, “Don't get eaten alive up there. By mosquitoes, bears, or men.” I told him to fuck off. He was surprised and laughed. People seem much less serious here than in Philly. And the sky so much bigger and the trees tall and thick. These wide-open spaces, I've never seen anything like it.

And the ferry! Twice the size of the tugs on the Delaware, a smokestack painted with the Alaskan flag, and everyone on the top deck duct-taping tents to the cement. Chains clattered as the loading hatch banged shut, smoke went up, water churned with the propellers. As the buildings grew small behind us it hit me hard what I was doing. I could hardly breathe, I was so excited.

The first night there was this storm, and that did it for me sleeping in the tent. But on the third day the sun came out, and this land, Connor! Snow-covered mountains and sand beaches and trees stretching as far as the eye can see. The air so clean and salt-scented. We saw otters on their backs, seals with long whiskers barking as we passed. And the mountains, I can't get over them, these glaciers jutting out from jaws of rock like swollen blue tongues. Ropey waterfalls falling from cliffs.

As she wrote she wondered when he would get over his annoyance at her leaving. Sometimes she wished he'd just lose his temper. But that wasn't Connor. When she told him she was going to Alaska, his face grew pinched. In her family people said their piece, then moved on. Although, when she thought about it, her father stewed—until he raged.

She looked back down at the letter. It would be a peace offering, she decided. Not an apology, but something close.

The island is strange, though, not what you think of when you imagine Alaska. It's a rainforest, and you can feel it and smell it. When I got here my boss picked me up with his dog, quiet and watchful. Kind of looked like a wolf.

Anyway, I know there's more to talk about, but I'm so tired. I'm sorry you feel bad. But I miss you very much.

More soon.

Youse,

Tara

As she addressed the envelope she imagined the snicker he'd give at “youse.” He never broke into full-throated laughter. They were different that way. Although, thinking about it, she couldn't recall the last time she had really laughed either.

She licked and stamped the letter, then set it on her nightstand. Turned off the light and pulled the covers to her chin.

When she closed her eyes she saw South Philly encased in a plastic bubble, one of those snow globes you shook, flakes sifting between the blocks of brick row homes. Vic cutting hair, Connor's mom at the library scanning barcodes with her red wand. How lucky she was, she thought, to have escaped. Perhaps patience wasn't her strong suit—but what the hell, impatience had gotten her this far. As grim as the island had appeared out of Fritz's dirty windshield, shrouded in fog, she still considered her decision a good one.

A year. Time enough to prove to her father, to Connor, to anyone who doubted her, that she didn't need another person's roof. She would find her own home.

As for her mother, even if the idea of her daughter taking off for Alaska would have frightened her, surely Tara's larger effort to crack open this world of fish and boats, life on the water, would have pleased Serena.

Then her mind darkened and she saw her father in his billing office, smoking his cigars one after the other. His yellow highlighter hovering over orders for more milk, more butter, more flour.

You told me to get out. Now you do the same
.
Just get out of my head and leave me alone.

OPENING HER EYES
, she patted the sheets for her watch. A pale strip of light ran down the center of the curtains. “FUUUUCK!” she yelled into the rafters. It was 8:17
A.M.

She threw off the comforter, hauled on her jeans, grabbed her Eagles hat, and ran. At the bottom of the hill she saw a door propped open with a cinderblock. Green tanks surrounded a bunkerlike building. She headed down a set of narrow wooden stairs and saw Fritz talking to a few workers slouched on stools. He crumpled a wax muffin wrapper, shot it into the trashcan, then rapped his knuckles against the glass clock above him.

“I thought bakers woke early.”

Breathing hard, she looked over his shoulder. It was 8:36. Not such a big deal.

“Now, I don't know what you thought it would be like up here, but I can tell you one thing. We get to work on time.”

“The four hours mixed me up.”

“If that was true, you should have been here four hours early.”

The other workers shifted. After a moment, he continued—something about the importance of recording data in the logbook: water temperature, antibiotics, and sample growth rates of salmon. “All right, to work, then. Newt, you fill our newest addition here in on what she dozed through.”

Fucker,
she thought, watching his brown boots disappear up the stairs.

From a shadow in the corner a small man emerged. She made out layers of clothing—a soiled thermal, T-shirt, outline of a wife beater—beneath his overalls. Knobs of bone showed along the back of his neck. With his wispy white-blond hair spinning off his skull, and moon-pale skin, he reminded her of an albino rat—or, more generously, a newborn chick.

She moved to the side as he went for the coffee machine behind her. He filled his stainless-steel mug, shook a cigarette from a pack, and turned. “Late your first day. Classy.”

“I'm a classy girl.”

He wiped his nose with the back of his wrist. “Follow me.”

They went into a concrete room packed with white plastic bins, water cascading between them. He walked like a featherweight boxer—on the balls of his feet, hips thrust forward, shoulders pulled back. Outside in the sunlight she followed him between circular vats of gurgling water, stopping on a knoll, the flat blue-gray ocean stretched out beneath them. Waves lapped on the rocks below. Islands dotted the horizon, and behind them mountains, which appeared cut out from the blue sky, the peaks delicate, like the tips of drip castles she had made on the Jersey Shore as a kid.

A briny, spruce-tinted wind shivered the grass. Newt cupped his hands around a cigarette, squinting as he exhaled. “You do that yoga shit?” he asked, his eyes roaming her body.