We didn’t have enough money for first and last month’s rent and security deposit, so we moved into the guest bedroom of my parents’ house, which doubled as a doily-infested showroom for my mom’s first edition American Girl doll collection. Under the glassy eyes of Samantha, Molly, Kirsten, and Felicity, Wendy and I lay next to each other, not making love.
“We really need to get an apartment,” I said.
“I thought Portland would be different,” said Wendy.
“This isn’t Portland,” I said. “This is the inside of my mom’s brain.”
There was a knock on the door. My mom appeared, holding a tray with glasses of milk and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
“YES! Snack time!” said Wendy.
“Don’t,” I said. “It’s a trap!”
Wendy ignored me. She ate her sandwich and then my mom brought graham crackers and marshmallows and hot chocolate.
“I feel safe,” said Wendy.
“This isn’t the real world,” I said.
“Can we live here forever?”
“Most of literature was written to warn us about this moment. Remember Goldilocks? Hansel and Gretel?”
Wendy pretended she couldn’t hear me, licking the bottom of her ice cream bowl.
Wendy got a job at a coffee shop in the city, but no matter how many applications I submitted, nobody called me back. My dad repeated his offer to get me a job at his electrical contracting company on the condition that I cut my long red hair. Reluctantly, I agreed. I went into the bathroom, took a lock of hair between my fingers, and waited for the phone to ring. I waited and waited, but Angela didn’t call asking me to go to Montana with her. Nobody interrupted or told me not to do it or said, “Hey, let’s run away from this ridiculous place.”
I squeezed, and a lock of hair fell into the sink in the shape of a bright orange question mark.
My job at Maloney Electric Co. consisted of driving a one-ton pickup truck to various job sites throughout the city, delivering tools and copper wire. I was bad at it. Even though I’d lived in the greater Portland area most of my life, I didn’t know where anything was because I’d never paid attention to street names and landmarks because I assumed that when I grew up, I’d work as a writer or filmmaker or some other job where I spent my time being a reality-ignoring genius. Yet here I was, part of the actual world, a slave to the dollar, which I needed to liberate my girlfriend from her American Girl doll jail.
Every morning the shop manager loaded the truck with tools and handed me a list of parts to pick up from the electrical supply store, along with the job site I was supposed to deliver them to.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” I said.
I hopped in the truck and zipped around the city, ferrying wire cutters and MC cable to half-built office buildings in Gresham and Hillsboro.
Most of the time I found the job site after 30 minutes of driving around, but occasionally a Buffalo Springfield song came on the radio and I started thinking about the beautiful mountains and forests covering the earth, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on a park bench next to the Willamette River, watching tugboats and oil tankers float by, thinking about how all of this used to belong to the American Indians.
It was around this time that I read J. Krishnamurti for the first time and started praying without ceasing, hoping to attain enlightenment. It made it difficult to drive a car, let alone a massive truck loaded with pipe benders and 500-pound job site boxes.
“OM,” I said. “Shantih shantih shantih…”
“What’s that?” asked the job foreman.
“I—uh. Here are your objects,” I said, gesturing toward the back of the pickup truck.
“Hey, you’re Wayne Maloney’s son, aren’t you?”
“I—I don’t…”
I focused on my inbreath and mouthed the supplication of my guru. The foreman shook his head and returned to his blueprints.
On the drive back to the shop, mumbling my prayer, I watched the white line lift off the freeway and transform into a snake that slithered into my lap and tempted me to leave the Path of Knowledge.
“I will never abandon the Truth,” I said.
“You already have,” said the Highway Snake.
I reached out to strangle the malicious viper. A car honked, and I swerved back into my lane.
While I was fighting for my soul on the highways of greater Portland, Wendy was taking the bus back and forth to work and otherwise hiding from my mom. The initial joy of having her every need met had recently given way to paranoia that she was losing the ability to do things for herself.
“Cookie,” Wendy said one day, extending her hand, expecting a cookie to magically appear. When it didn’t, she became frustrated. She walked around the house saying, “Cookie! Cookie! Cookie!” over and over until she found a note from my mom explaining that she was at a doctor’s appointment.
The idea of having to get a cookie for herself filled Wendy with rage, which made her realize that my mom had cast some sort of spell over her. She tracked down the cookies and made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and stood in front of the mirror, saying, “You are a strong and capable woman. You are a strong and capable woman. You are a strong and capable woman.”
Portland, Oregon, was an incredible place in the year 2000. Artists priced out of L.A. and San Francisco were astonished to discover that a room in a North Portland bungalow cost as little as $250 per month. They arrived in a mass exodus that eventually gentrified the city and displaced a historically Black neighborhood but, for a few years, gave birth to a thriving arts community featuring lumberjack-clad hipsters, tall bikes, and a Northeast Portland Craftsman occupied entirely by clowns.
We’d stumbled into all of this by accident and should have been out there staking our claim in this freakshow bonanza, but Wendy had fallen into a depression inextricably bound with the gray skies and endless rain of the Rose City.
We’d been in Portland for about two months when I came home from work and announced, “Hey, babe! We finally have enough money saved up. We should start our apartment hunt!”
Wendy peeked her head out of the closet. “Is your mom home?”
“She’s at the grocery store.”
“What about Molly?”
“Who?”
Wendy pointed to the doll shelf above our bed. Samantha, Kirsten, and Felicity were in their usual positions, but Molly was missing.
“What did you do with Molly?” I asked.
“Me?” said Wendy. “I didn’t do anything. That bitch wouldn’t stop staring at me!”
I searched the room and found an American Girl doll under the bed, mummified in duct tape with a dozen fondue skewers plunged into her abdomen.
I joined Wendy in the closet. There were candles burning and a dozen tarot cards arranged in the shape of a cross.
“I asked the deck what we should do,” said Wendy. “It says we moved to the wrong Portland. We’re cursed. To lift the curse, we have to move to Portland, Maine, and live by the ocean and eat lobster rolls and gaze at Canada all day, or whatever it is they do in that backwoods moose kingdom.”
I said, “Are you being serious right now?”
She said, “You like lobster, right? Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t move to Maine.”
I could think of a thousand reasons, but this was my first real relationship, and I assumed it was my duty as boyfriend to agree to Wendy’s every whim.
Recommended reading: Teenager by Bud Smith, Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier, Duplex by Mike Nagel, Tell Me I’m an Artist by Chelsea Martin, Norwood by Charles Portis, Gutshot by Amelia Gray, and The Red-Headed Pilgrim by Kevin Maloney
