The concierge provided a street map and we set off on foot as Mularski stuffed himself with Scooby-dos while graham cracker crumbs spilled from his mouth.
The air from Puget Sound was invigorating, though this alone could not explain the energy that pulsed through my very being. Until this moment, I hadn’t noticed, nor remembered, what it felt like to be eight years old. You never get tired.
Someone had left a football stamped Denver Broncos on top of a trashcan and I grabbed it, tossed it to Mularski.
“Go out for a pass,” he called.
I ran, he threw, and I caught it in my solar plexus.
“Me! Me!” cried Nebraska.
I threw the football at her, a wild throw that she ran and caught. And we continued to toss the football amongst us as we skipped along Alaskan Way, passing the Argosy cruise ship station and Antonio’s Seafood.
A sign directed us to an old elevator, which ascended to the arcaded downstairs part of Pike Place Market.
A parade of shops welcomed us: colorful, vibrant, including a display window of old coins and Topps baseball cards.
I stopped, frozen, heart beating fast. “Oh my God, a 1962 Roger Maris. I had that card. I had all these cards!”
I bolted inside, perusing my old collection in glass display counters, looking for Duke Snider, my favorite player—and could they possibly have my favorite card as a kid?
There it was, a 1957 Dodgers Sluggers with Carl Furillo, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella and the Duke. The closest I ever got to this card was a kid across the street, who wouldn’t trade it for anything. Price tag: $99.95.
“I’ll take it,” I said to the old geyser watching me with amusement.
Mularski tugged at me. “Are you nuts?”
“No. I’m eight years old.” I grinned. “With money.”
“Say,” I said, “What other Duke Snider cards do you have?”
By the time I walked out ten minutes later, I had every Duke Snider between 1955 and 1961.
“What are you going to do with them?” asked Mularski.
“You kidding? I would have killed for these cards. Just having them makes me feel great!”
In my excitement, my reading glasses slipped off Le Loop around my neck and hit the hard floor, shearing the right temple clear off. I picked it up, did a quick inspection. “Shoot.” It was a break rather than a screw job.
“So what’s the problem?” posed Mularski. “I bet you didn’t need reading glasses when you were eight.”
I removed a 1958 card from the envelope, flipped it to the reverse side—and easily read the small print about Duke Snider’s batting record. “Unbelievable!”
We journeyed on upstairs to the fish market where marketers threw large freshly caught salmon from one to another, until they landed upon a large bed of ice.
We watched—Mularski, Nebraska and I—wide-eyed with wonderment.
Fabulous aromas of cookies and cakes wafted from a hole-in-the-wall bakery and, with it, a sudden realization that we were in the coffee-drinking capital of the world.
And this place—according to a sign—brewed what was said to be Seattle’s real best: Caffe Vita.
A punkish young woman with a lip piercing, tattoos and spiky purple hair served three cups.
“Bitter,” said Mularski. “Needs more sugar.”
“No, it’s your eight-year-old taste buds.” I turned to the server. “What’s the best pastry you make here?”
“Hmmm. My favorite is our cinnamon bun.”
“Is it still hot from the oven?”
“I could heat it up.”
“Do it. And can you cut it in three?”
She did, took payment. “Have a great day,” she said. “And watch out for the crazies.”
This worried Nebraska; she tugged at my elbow. “Who are the crazies?” she whispered.
I shook my head. “Right now, nothing’s as crazy as us.”
The taste of sweet cake made us hungry; we hadn’t eaten all day and it was already mid-afternoon.
In Frommer’s guide I’d circled a restaurant close to Pike Place Market called Etta’s and we skipped two blocks to find it, quiet but open between lunch and dinner.
The guide recommended crab cakes. And though “fresh smoked sturgeon on a bed of escarole” would normally appeal to me, the thought of fish and leafy greens made me gag. So along with Mularski I ordered a pulled pork sandwich with fries and a chocolate milk shake.
Nebraska studied the menu. “I’m vegetarian,” she said.
“Ah,” said Mularski. “So that’s why you like mushrooms.”
“Doesn’t matter any more that you’re a vegetarian,” I said. “Eat what you like when you were eight.”
Nebraska remained defiant. “I was seven when I became a vegetarian.”
“Why seven?”
“That’s when I figured out where meat came from. As soon as I understood, I wanted nothing more to do with it.”
“That must have been tough growing up in Nebraska and not eating meat,” I said.
“An understatement,” said Nebraska. “My parents thought there was something wrong with me mentally. Took me to doctors, tried to force me to eat meat or be punished, and when that didn’t work, they tried to sneak it into my diet by disguising it as other stuff. Finally, my grandfather stepped in.” She paused. “He died a couple months ago. I miss him.” Nebraska’s eyes welled with tears.
A waitress hovered over us.
“Two pulled pork,” I said. “Nebraska?”
“Red curry coconut broth, tofu, not tuna.”
The waitress scooted.
“I only had one grandparent growing up,” I said. “She died over 20 years ago. I remember, just a week before she passed away, I was in LA, at a bookstore called The Bhodi Tree, which specializes in metaphysics and personal growth, and I opened a book—I can’t remember what it was about—and the page I just happened to open at said that a falling star symbolizes the death of a grandparent. A week later my grandmother died, unexpectedly, and I flew to London for her funeral. I’m laying in my old bed in my old room, gazing out my window at the night sky—and what do I see for the first time in my life?”
“A falling star?” said Nebraska
I nodded. “I think it was my Nan’s way of saying goodbye. She comes to my mind often, in everyday situations, and I realize how things she used to say have stuck with me.”
“Like what?” said Mularski.
“Let’s make this a game,” I said.
Mularski rolled his eyes.
“Three things you learned from a grandparent,” I said. “I’ll go first. First thing, when you’re walking behind a parked car, always check to see if there’s someone in the driver’s seat about to back up, and give yourself as much distance as possible. My grandmother realized that all is takes is one reckless second to become incapacitated. You can cast blame, and exact cost, but you can’t un-do the need to heal.”
“Thing two,” said Nebraska.
“Don’t waste,” I said. “It wasn’t a think about all the starving children in China thing. This was about electricity and toilet paper. Only use what you need. ‘Waste not, want not,” was her mantra. And number three, mental illness is all around us in varying degrees, and nothing to fear.”
“Your grandmother was mentally ill?” said Nebraska.
“I bet it was genetic,” Mularski added.
“She suffered depression,” I answered carefully, solemn, even. “It went untreated, and it led to paranoid delusions from too much spare time. My grandmother was Armenian. As a teenager in Turkey, she may have witnessed atrocities against Armenians at the hands of the Turks, who attempted genocide against the Armenians in 1915. Fast-forward 55 years. My grandmother thought the Turks were on her trail, hunting her down.”
“So how does that translate to not being afraid of mental illness?” asked Mularski.
“It was a lesson about how fragile the mind is. We are all scarred in some way or another, and maybe just one traumatic event away from mental illness. When you understand something, it’s not so scary any more.” I paused, not wishing to mention how pissed off I felt about this, about my grandmother having to fret about Turks hunting her down. “What three things did you learn from a grandparent, Mularski?”
“I’m not doing this,” he said.
“I’ll go,” said Nebraska. “My grandfather. The one who just died. He had enormous hands, but was missing his left index finger from a farming accident. His hugs were like the arms of God wrapped around you. I learned from him the importance of a firm handshake.
“Two, his spirit. As a farmer in Iowa, he knelt down and let that rich dark Iowa soil run between his fingers, and he’d say, ‘It doesn’t matter what happened the year before, Spring comes and you get the chance to start all over again.’ So it doesn’t matter how terribly you fail—you can always make a fresh start.”
“That reminds me, Nebraska—you’re a farmer, aren’t you?”
Nebraska giggled nervously.
“What are you talking about?” said Mularski.
I looked at Nebraska. “I can tell him, can’t I?”
She nodded.
“Nebraska grows weed for medical marijuana dispensaries.”
“I though you said you grow mushrooms?” said Mularski.
“Mushrooms grow wild.” Nebraska winks. “Especially the ones I like.”
“Is that a real business?” said Mularski.
“You kidding?” said Nebraska. “It’s the best business I know. My problem is that it’s all cash.”
“That’s a problem?” As an artist, the Mularski’s problem was lack of cash.
“Yes it is if you want to buy a house. I want to buy one in Malibu, cash money, no mortgage, but these days trying to buy something expensive in cash is practically a crime.”
“Cry me a river,” said Mularski, pretending to hold and strum a violin.
“Don’t mind him,” I said. “What was your grandfather’s third lesson?”
“He didn’t judge.” Nebraska threw Mularski dagger eyes and stuck her tongue out at him. “It was deep and pure and thoroughly genuine. Love with all your heart; let nothing get in the way. I saw very little of him my entire life. I regret that. But you did not need to be his constant companion to feel his love. I read some of the letters he sent my mom when I was a child—about eight, I think. I’d never seen his handwriting till then. I wanted to hold those pieces of paper and never let go. He is the only family member I ever really loved, and his absence has had a profound effect on me.” She paused. “The lesson is unconditional love.”
A moment of silence ensued while Mularski and I absorbed this.
“My parents were too busy raising my four older brothers and a monkey to provide much love,” said Mularski.
“Don’t be so harsh on yourself,” I said. “You’re not a monkey.”
“Not me!” Mularski screeched like a monkey. “We had a real monkey. She was like a sister to me.”
Nebraska giggled.
“What about your grandparents?” I asked.
“What about them?”
“Unconditional love—or something you learned from one of them.”
“What are you driving at here?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just a game.”
“Life’s always just a game to you,” said Mularski. “Well, how about this: Right now, we all look to each other like we’re eight years old. And we’re acting like we’re eight. Someone’s playing a game on us.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Let’s add it up, see if we can make sense of this.”
“Shrooms,” said Nebraska.
“Shut your trap,” said Mularski. “This is about me, too, and I’ve never had mushrooms in my life.”
“Want some?” said Nebraska.
“Ha! Maybe that’s the way out of this,” said Mularski.
“Let’s focus,” I said. “We see each other as eight years old, but everybody sees us as adults. We seem to have our memories and knowledge up to our real age, yet we’re behaving emotionally like we’re eight.” I glanced at Mularski. “Which is normal for you, of course.”
“Very funny.”
“I still don’t understand what’s happening, and I doubt I ever will,” I said, “but I actually feel real good. I got up at six this morning. Usually, by this time, I’d be dragging, a snooze, down time. Not today.”
“Oh, I see,” said Mularski, his voice laced heavy with sarcasm. “So now you wanna stay like this forever?”
“I’m just saying, for right now it works.”
Nebraska looked at us in amusement, as if we were simply part of her hallucination. “We come to Seattle, known for clouds and rain, and the sun comes with us.”
Mularski ignored her. “What if this is our new reality.” A string of pulled pork dangled from his lip. “Shouldn’t we be looking for a way out instead of joking about it?”
“That’s a contradiction,” said Nebraska. “If it’s our new reality, there isn’t a way out.”
“I got it,” I said. “You’ve heard of Jung’s collective subconscious? This is a collective conscious!”
“You mean,” said Nebraska, “the three of us subconsciously wanted to be eight again, and our consciousnesses cooperated?”
“But I thought you said it was mushrooms, Nebraska.”
“Which only pertain to you, Nebraska,” added Mularski.
“Me, too,” said Nebraska. “But the dose I took this morning would never last this long.”
“Oh, so you finally figured out we’re part of in this, too?” said Mularski. “That it’s not just about you?”
“It’s always about me,” said Nebraska. “I bet you’re aggressive because you eat too much meat.”
“Mmmmm,” said Mularski. “Pig.” He took a huge bite of his pulled pork sandwich.
“Yes, you are,” said Nebraska.
“You still haven’t told us what you learned from a grandparent,” I said.
“What are you up to with that anyway?” said Mularski with suspicion, before oink-ing like a pig. “Goddam aboiement,” he added.
“Why are you so touchy about the subject?”
Mularski slurped his milkshake empty and considered this. “I had to be when I was eight, always on guard with four older brothers.”
“And a monkey,” added Nebraska, smirking.
“Ya see? Everything I say is being used against me!” Mularski had a new thought, which he drilled directly into Nebraska’s eyes. “Say, you must be some kind of a witch, and you cast a spell on us.”
“If I’d cast I spell on you,” snapped Nebraska, “you’d be croaking like a toad right now.”
Which, of course, caused Mularski to involuntarily croak like a toad.
“It’s the other way round,” Nebraska continued. “I join you two on a trip and this is what happens. For all I know, you put something stronger than mushrooms in my drink on the plane.”
“Whatever it is, I think we need to stick with it rather than trying to analyze it,” I said. “One, because we have no choice, and, two, let’s see where it takes us.”
“To nine?” said Mularski.
“Indeed.”
“Indeedism,” said Mularski.
“I think,” said Nebraska, “this may have something to do with unresolved issues.”
“What unresolved issues?” Mularski demanded.
“All three of us?” I said.
Nebraska nodded. “Clearly, the three of us are tied together in a strange situation…”
“Ya think?” said Mularski.
“… and it seems to be turning into some kind of surreal odyssey. Which means we’re supposed to resolve our issues from when we were eight.”
“Got an issue? Here’s a tissue.” Mularski passed his dirty linen serviette across the table to Nebraska, who ignored it. “I don’t got no issues to resolve.”
“You kidding?” I said. “You already told us you were neglected, the fifth of five brothers. And a monkey. Ring a bell?”
“You two are getting on my nerves. I’m done, let’s boogie.”
Nebraska settled the tab with cash and we generously stuffed our pockets from a bowl of mints near the door.
“We got the Art Walk at six o’clock,” Mularski suddenly remembered.
Our main reason for choosing this date was Seattle’s First Thursday Art Walk.