Editor Note: Audrey Van Buskirk has been an observer and chronicler of the Portland scene for more than two decades. She's working on a book of stories about how the city has evolved over that time, along with some of its inhabitants.
“Who wants to Ouija?” asked Jill, holding up the box. It rattled like a toy. A noisy girl, Jill had a bigger personality than you expected from her thin brown hair, watery blue eyes and doughy face.
“Ouija boards are stupid,” answered Sabine, not looking up from the latest rendition of Cosmo sex tips—which all seemed to amount to “don’t just lie there.” She lay sprawled across Missy’s pillow-strewn bed.
The five friends had meandered over to Missy’s house after school. Missy's parents subscribed to dozens of magazines, which provided reliably cheap and easy entertainment. Missy’s dad even got Playboy and kept it next to Glamour, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker and all the rest. The girls weren’t quite bold enough during the day to pretend they wanted to read the Playboy articles, but Cosmopolitan was nearly as fascinating, and Sabine always grabbed the latest issue.
She had looked the same since kindergarten—regular features, long straight honey-toned hair, eyes almost the matching shade—but, depending on her mood, she could be unnoticeable, or unforgettable.
“I’ll play,” said Missy. She was sitting at her old fashioned dressing table, trying on lipsticks and flicking through the settings on her new make-up mirror: comparing ‘cherry blossom’ and ‘pouty pink’ under the light of ‘day,’ ‘evening,’ ‘office’ and ‘home.’ She was a small for a teenager with oddly big features. Shelby often joked to the others that if times ever got tough, Missy could slap on a little white face paint and find work as a clown. The other, kinder girls, thought she resembled a wide-eyed marsupial.
Shelby, on the other hand, would never shop in a petite section. She had Disney princess hair—perfect cascading red waves—but the rest of her didn’t match. She wasn’t fat, but she suffered under a linebacker’s frame and a lumpy face that might have done time at the bottom of a dog pile.
“Oh whatever," Sabine gave in. “I guess it’s better than this stupid quiz. I don’t really care which Bond Girl I am.
‘At first sight of Jaws, would you
a) Call ‘James, James’
b) Faint,
c) Bat your eyelashes and throw yourself on his mercy, or
d) Pick up an Uzi and start firing?”
“That’s the quiz this month?” asked Shelby. “You remind me of the one who dies in the end.”
“Isn’t that all of them?” Missy said, her cherry blossom lips puckered for evening.
Among their group of high school juniors, Shelby said wildly mean things, but she made the comments so matter-of-factly, her so-called best friends didn’t always notice the rudeness right away. And they mostly laughed it off—Sabine enjoyed reminding people about the time she had told Shelby she was moving to a more advanced math class and Shelby replied, “Wow. I didn’t know you were that smart.”
In later years, when they’d become adults, and mothers of teenagers, they’d realize that Shelby had been insecure. She didn’t have a dad as far as anyone knew, and her mom wore micro-mini skirts, inhaled Virginia Slims, and colored her own hair. But now, at 16, Shelby’s random nasty remarks seemed shocking, annoying, and kind of funny—like catcalls from construction workers. Sometimes it felt nice to get noticed. Even in such a backhanded way.
“Where’s Karen?”
“Downstairs. Playing Boggle with my mom,” Missy said. “She’s so weird.”
Karen loved games and regularly asked to play cribbage or Scrabble with her friends’ parents. Of all of them, she was the least interested in celebrity gossip, makeup tips and irrelevant sex advice. But they knew she’d never turn down a spin on the Ouija board. She liked anything magical—obsessed by Lois Duncan novels and tales of medieval witch burning, she also insisted that she could talk to her parrot. “Well, you can, of course,” Sabine would say. “We all can.”
With the bland good looks of an androgynous Sasha doll, Karen nearly always wore shrink-to-fit Levi’s (27x27), fair isle sweaters and Keds or penny loafers (prepped with quarters in case she needed to make a call). She looked more like a farm girl than the daughter of a banker and a construction equipment heiress.
“Karen, come up here please,” Sabine called, “and ask Mrs. Partridge for a candle.”
“Let’s do it in the sewing room.”
~
In Missy’s generally well-ordered Colonial on a Northwest Portland hillside, the sewing room functioned as an extra finger, sort of cool, but out of place, and ultimately useless. Missy’s mom Elaine Partridge called it a sewing room, but she didn’t sew as far as anyone knew. She didn’t seem to do much of anything other than organize and re-organize the giant stacks of magazines piled around the house in glossy heaps. She was forever cutting out articles and pressing thick packets onto her daughter and her friends: five fresh summer hairstyles; 10 best careers for women; how to get perfect skin in three minutes a day.
Even though the girls had been to Missy’s dozens of times, they often confused the sewing room door with that of the linen closet. They’d speculate about what it had been intended for—Bad servant? Fixing an architect’s mistake? Turn-of-the-century séances? A tiny windowless space with an uneven curved ceiling, it just fit the card table that Mrs. Partridge used for piling up things she didn’t want to deal with.
Ignoring her mother’s arrangement, Missy swept the papers under the table, and unfolded the chairs propped around the walls. Karen came in with a candle and matchbook and had to slither along the wall to squish on the chair next to Jill.
She lit the candle and turned out the lights.
“This is ridiculous. We can’t even see the board.” Sabine resented having to put down her magazine, and she wanted something to eat. Her mom had forgotten to pack her a lunch again. Or, possibly, she had left it on the kitchen counter. She couldn’t be sure it was her mother’s fault.
“Just give it a minute and your eyes will adjust,” Missy intoned, using the eerie psychic voice she brought out for this, and for Karen’s other favorite spooky game: Stiff As A Board, Light As a Feather. As she weighed even less than skinny Missy, Karen usually got to be the one who they’d all try to lift using just their fingers. And chanting.
As the candle burned, the letters slowly came into focus.
“I really don’t understand why it says ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’,” Sabine asked for the 100th time. “You’d think spirits would have better things to say.”
“There is nothing more important than hello and goodbye. These are how we pass in and out of worlds.” Missy continued using her voice-from-beyond. “Now everyone put your fingers on the board.”
Missy insisted that she could feel the vibrations the best, so she dominated this game even when they played at other girls’ houses. “Sprits? Are you there?”
Sabine couldn’t accept that any of her friends truly believed that the spirits existed, and even if they did exist, that they’d bother to move the heart-shaped thing around to share silly bits of gossip. It was obvious that one of them, or all of them, made the board say what they wanted it to say. Which wasn’t much.
On this afternoon, as always, the little disk moved first to ‘yes’ and then to ‘hello.’
“Of course.” Sabine muttered.
“Oh Sabine,” Shelby said, her red hair looking especially witchy in the dim light. “Let’s ask it what numbers will win the lottery.”
“You know you can’t ask it things like that,” Karen said. “The spirits will think you don’t believe in them.”
“Well I don’t. And even if I did, why should I care what some random old spirit thinks? Why should they know anything, just because they’re dead?”
“Oh please, it’s not fun if you don’t try.”
“Fine. But I don’t have anything to ask,” Shelby said.
There was something otherworldly about sitting in the dark, pressed close together, fingers resting on the fortune-telling token. Thin fingers of shadows tickled the walls. They waited for something to happen.
“Everyone breathe together, synchronize your breath,” Missy intoned.
“Maybe if we stay in here long enough, we’ll get our periods on the same day,” said Shelby. “Come on. This is boring.”
“I have something,” said Jill. “Why is my grandmother so angry?”
The other girls exchanged confused glances.
“What do you mean she’s angry?” Missy asked.
Jill’s grandmother lived in the biggest house they knew—it had a pool, a tennis court and an elevator. They had been there for highly-organized swim parties where uniformed staff passed around warmed beach towels, and equally posh holiday dinners, where the same workers offered stuffed mushrooms, poached shrimp and chicken livers wrapped in bacon on silver trays.
“Why is my grandmother so angry?” Jill said, ignoring them. “What should I do? Why is she so mad?”
The token started sliding. Karen read out the letters.
“a-s-k y-o-u-r-p-a-r-e-n-t-s”
“Ask Your Parents?”
“Is your mom moving it?” Sabine asked.
Jill sighed. “C’mon Sabine. That’s not helpful. I really want to know. What does it mean?”
Suddenly, the door opened. The five girls stood up in a hurry, as if caught with a boy or a beer or both. Mrs. Partridge stood in the doorway, her hair a fluffy, back-lit halo.
“What are you girls doing? It’s a beautiful day, you should get outside. You can help me in the yard if you can’t think of something better to do.”
Mrs. Partridge was confusing for a mom. She read all the multitudes of magazines, devouring articles about fashion, beauty and celebrities, but she remained careless about her own style, favoring drab, natural fabrics and loose drawstring bottoms. Conversely, she was fanatical about dieting and often in the thrall of some grand new scheme. She had recently lost a lot of weight following the Scarsdale rules, and under her lavender shorts, her skin hung around her legs like stretched-out tights.
“Mom,” complained Missy, “you scared the spirits away.”
“Don’t be silly, girls. You know that only says what you want it to.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I don’t either,” echoed Jill.
Though light flooded the room, something still felt dark.
“I’m hungry. Let’s go to Macheezmo Mouse.” Sabine suggested the new and healthy Mexican restaurant that aspired to make customers feel that eating organic chicken nachos would heal the ozone layer.
“Don’t get too full, Missy,” Mrs. Partridge said. “I’m making a nice dinner for us to have with daddy.”
“It’s fine, Mom. The food there is good for you.”
~
The suburban pulled into the lot of the convenience store and spilled across two parking spots.
“I’ll just wait here.”
Since Karen had gotten her license and her car—she was the oldest among the five despite being the smallest—the five friends made weekly Friday night pilgrimages to the 7-Eleven (which was open 24 hours a day) on Northwest 23rd Avenue.
Karen always wanted to wait in the car. Her huge SUV dwarfed her small body—she made a funny little hop to reach the driver’s seat—but her parents thought she’d be safer than in a Rabbit, the more typical car for a teenage girl.
The other girls moved in, a swarm of lip gloss-smeared bees.
Visits to this brain surgery-bright, junk food Mecca had become a Friday night routine. While Jill and Missy headed for pizza-flavored Combos and watermelon Blow Pops, Shelby marched to the cooler and snagged two Rolling Rock six-packs. At the counter, she added Lucky Strikes. She had a fake-looking fake I.D. she’d laminated at Kinko’s, but she hadn’t had to show it yet.
Sabine sidled up to lone clerk.
“Hi Hamid. Can I use your bathroom?”
He always said yes, but she asked anyway, allowing him the power to decide.
“Sure, but be quick.”
She flashed her popular one-sided smile, and slipped past the curtain behind the counter.
It was dark but she could see the opened boxes of merchandise lying around in heaps. Drawing on the experience of several of these Fridays, Sabine headed toward the far wall. She took three thick magazines wrapped in brown paper, without looking first to see which style they were—it didn’t matter—and stuffed them into the pockets of the yellow coat she’d worn especially for this.
In the miserable bathroom, she stared in the blurry mirror, wondering how she’d look with short hair, and flushed the toilet before going back out into the light.
“Thanks, Hamid,” she said, heading to the car where the other girls were already dividing their unhealthy and illegal loot.
Sabine knew he was a Portland State student, an immigrant from Iran, and unmarried, but that was it.
“Hey, girl,” he said. “What do you want with those magazines?”
She stopped and turned. And thought of the perfect comeback.
“Trust me, Hamid. You don’t want to know.”
~
Jill’s dad Bob had moved into a condo that overlooked the downtown skyline. In classic mid-life crisis fashion, he kept a hot tub on the deck and a hefty black motorcycle in the garage.
At least he hasn’t gotten a tattoo, Jill would joke. “Yet,” Shelby would say, embarrassed by the ring of dolphins that chased each other’s tails around her mother’s right ankle.
Bob had a big job at a fancy downtown department store, but didn’t seem too busy. He was always around, picking up after school, chaperoning at dances, shuttling to the Valley Theater, Pietro’s Pizza and glow-in-the-dark mini-golf.
The separation made him even more present. Jill’s mom Susan, an estate lawyer at her father’s firm, had stayed part of the “adult/parent” cohort post-separation. Bob had switched teams. He could talk Duran Duran and “Back to the Future” and “Saturday Night Live.” He stocked his “party fridge” with cherry popsicles, diet coke and vodka, and didn’t care how the girls in bikinis filled their red plastic cups.
He dressed in cartoon-character preppy style—pink and green, socks with ducks, L.L. Bean boots—and had the red skin of a sailor. Sabine in particular thought he sat a little too close; he often told her how pretty her hair was, when they watched movies on his squishy leather sectional.
This night he had gone out—“I’ve got a date, girls. Be good. Have fun.”
Did he really think Jill wanted to hear this? Living with her long-divorced mother, Shelby had had plenty of experience of being disappointed by adults, especially those who wanted to believe that everything was fine with their kids, so they could go out and leave them. Some parents think the worst. Others insist on the best.
In a nondescript navy Speedo, Jill bounced between her dad’s steaming hot tub and packed fridge, filling her cup over and over. Most of the girls sipped beer or diet coke gently laced with booze, slowed by puzzling through each rebus in the Rainier bottle caps. Only Shelby, whose mother could drink like she was getting paid to do it, noticed Jill with the vodka. The others were delving into who had done what, with who, and when and why and how.
The girls dipped themselves in and out of the hot bubbles to stay comfortable in the crisp October air.
Perched on the tub’s edge, Jill turned her gaze from the flickering city lights back to her friends.
“Are you good?” she asked no one in particular.
Missy answered. “Yeah, fine.”
“No, I mean are you really good? Missy? Are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you good? You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should Ask. Your. Parents.”
Jill got out of the water completely, and wrapped herself in towel.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Missy asked, stepping out of the tub too.
“You were the one who was supposed to ask your parents. Does this have something to do with your grandmother? I’m going inside.”
No one else said anything, dulled by the alcohol, the heat, the strangeness of Jill’s behavior. And Missy’s unexpected rage.
“I think I want to go home,” said Missy, stomping inside.
Jill turned and under the floodlights a flipbook of emotion whipped across her face: distraught, sick, crazy, delirious. She picked up a beer bottle and instead of taking a sip, dropped it on the concrete. The glass shattered, and spread like a wave.
“Hold still! You don’t have shoes on,” Karen said, always the most practical.
“So what.” Jill started to walk toward the lounge chairs, over the bits of glass sprinkled like confetti.
Shelby, accustomed to dealing with the out-of-control drunks her mother collected, rose from the water in a slow-moving instant, and tossed the contents of her cup into Jill’s face.
Jill froze and clutched her eyes, in visible pain as the alcohol burned. But she had stopped walking over the glass.
The other girls clucked around. Sabine, her lovely long thick hair twisted in a knot, slipped out of the other side of the hot tub and went inside to find cleaning supplies. Karen carefully eased Jill through the broken glass.
Missy sat on a kitchen stool as Sabine rummaged in the barely functional kitchen until she found a dustpan and broom.
“I’m going to go for a ride,” said Missy, fingering the thick set of motorcycle keys, lying on the counter.
Sabine raised her eyebrows. “Do you know how?"
“Bob’s showed me,” Missy said, staring straight at Sabine with her big brown eyes.
“Really? When did that happen? Does Jill know how too? Why do you want to go now?”
Sabine hadn’t learned that if you ask a bunch of questions in a row, you’re only going to get the easiest answer.
“I just feel like it.”
“Well, have fun I guess. It’s not going to be too much fun here. What is wrong with Jill? She’s such a mess. Do you know?”
“I think it’s her parents.”
“Do you know that?”
“I know. I just don’t know if she knows.”
Missy left and Sabine went back out to patio and started sweeping up the glass. She heard the roar of the bike—god, it was so loud—and wondered idly what time it was and if it was safe for Missy to go out into the night. Did she put a coat on?
The other girls huddled around Jill, as collapsed as a pile of dirty laundry, worried by her blood-streaked feet. Shelby dabbed with a damp towel.
“Should we call her mom?” Karen asked. “Or Bob?”
“Are you kidding?” Shelby couldn’t imagine calling her mom for anything.
“She’ll be fine.”
~
Jill was fine—after spending most of the night wrapped naked in towel, lying on the cool tile bathroom floor, waiting for the walls to stop spinning. Shelby came in about 4 am and forced her to drink a glass of water and take two aspirin.
But Missy broke her leg.
Distracted by thoughts of Jill, Jill’s grandmother and her own parents, and with Bob’s enormous bike rumbling beneath her, Missy snaked up and around the hills to her house. She was really too small to control the bike and, even after all her lessons, she couldn’t stop it in time. It bumped up over the curb and into the stone wall in front of her house. The bike crumpled a bit, like a cockroach whacked too weakly, but it didn’t look mortally wounded so Missy decided to deal with it the next day.
She took the spare key out from under the flowerpot and eased the front door open, creeping up the stairs in the dark. She almost made it, but Mrs. Partridge had left a pile of People near the landing and when Missy stepped down, the slick paper didn’t catch. She grabbed for the banister and somehow her left foot caught between two poles as the rest of her dropped down.
~
Once Missy was out of the hospital and cleared for leaving the house, the girls met up at Jamie’s, one of the those fakey ‘50s-style diners, designed to capitalize on the popularity of “Happy Days” and “Grease.” Mostly the girls would order milkshakes or fries and diet cokes, but sensing they needed extra ballast this afternoon, they all ordered both the stiff ice cream drinks and the baskets of skinny fries.
It had been an awkward few weeks. Missy’s and Jill’s parents had had tense words about the relevant liability. The bike needed work, but not as much as Missy. Jill’s mom Susan, the estate lawyer, found someone in her firm with the experience to sort things out with Missy’s parents. But nothing would be the same. Missy limped for one thing. And they couldn’t spend time at Bob’s condo.
The girls knew Missy had needed surgery after the fall, and she described her appearance as “hideous” on the phone, but they were still shocked when her mom’s silver Volvo pulled up in front of the restaurant, and Missy eased herself out.
It had been a dreary day of unrelenting rain, with puddles that bested the sturdiest boots, but under a rubber raincoat, Missy wore Guess jeans with one side cut off. A gothic cage surrounded her bare leg. As she hobbled on crutches, the girls couldn’t look away from the black metal spikes poking into Missy’s flesh at regular intervals, holding her bone in place. Karen remembered watching her uncle butcher a deer at their summer place on the Columbia river. It gave Sabine a life-long aversion to anything vaguely S&M related.
And Jill thought of the gray cone of gyros meat rotating around a spit at the Soulvaki Stop in the Galleria downtown. She would soon become a vegetarian, spending the following summer at Outward Bound camp, which, she bragged, culminated in three days of survival training alone in the woods, foraging for nuts and berries to eat, and leaves to use for toilet paper.
“Oh my god,” said Shelby. “You should have stayed with us.”