Emerald City by Chris Nickson Page A

the car. A fine drizzle had begun, the kind of weather Seattleites barely noticed. The joke was that it rained here all the time; down at the Market they sold t-shirts that read Seattle Rain Festival January 1 – December 31. What we didn’t tell outsiders was that from the middle of July all the way to October there was rarely any precipitation. And rain was always better than snow in winter. I’d been in Chicago in January; I knew.
    Instead of heading home I took the road under the end of Aurora Bridge, past the stone troll some sculptor with a sense of humor had placed beneath the supports, then drove up Greenwood. At the top, hidden away in the suburban no-man’s land that was just beyond Fremont and not quite Phinney Ridge, was the house where I’d grown up. We’d moved there when I was three, and I could remember that it was so new it still smelled of paint. For a month I’d been scared to touch the walls in case they were wet.
    My dad had loved that place. Over the years he fixed up the basement, first into a ratskeller, back when that was the fashion, then a den with a television, pool table and big old couch before it was transformed into my teenage hangout, posters on the walls, a big stereo and my record collection. I’d discovered music with the Beatles; my dad took me down to the old Coliseum to see them in 1966, sitting patiently while I crouched in the aisle and tried to hear what they were playing above all the screaming girls. After that I’d beenlost to rock’n’roll. He never really understood, but he accepted it.
    He’d grown up in Seattle and seen it grow from a raw place into a modern city. He graduated high school and went off to war, came home and married the girl he’d dated since ninth grade. It sounded like a storybook to me, but it worked, and they were happy together. I always felt closer to him, though. My mom took me shopping until I was old enough to head off to Northgate on the bus alone, but my dad and I did stuff and went places together, just the two of us. There was always an excitement about getting into the front seat of that blue Delta 88 next to him, a sense of adventure. And I admired the way he was always busy. He looked after the yard, kept the grass and the bushes faithfully trimmed, and he fixed things, the way men of his generation did, always with a sure touch that worked the first time. He loved his hometown, he was proud of the place and made me feel the same way about it.
    And finally, when the cancer came and hollowed him out in his late fifties, all he had left of the house that he’d treasured was the bedroom, until he finished his days in the white emptiness of a hospital, everything around him sterile and as devoid of life as he was becoming. My mom only kept the place for a couple of years after that. It seemed too big for one person after a family had once run through it, every inch full of memories. Instead she moved in with her sister and died not long after.
    I was an only child, and I’d been orphaned in my twenties. That was the way it felt, anyway. I’d never been close to most of my relatives, happy to keep a distance between us, and I rarely saw any of them. At least my father had lived long enough to see me published and to take his quiet pride in that.
    I turned into our old street, parked so I could see the house and switched off the engine. What had once seemed so magical, what had been ours, nowjust looked anonymous, another ranch style place from the 1950s, duplicated on other blocks, other neighborhoods, other cities all around the country. Over the years I’d driven through so many towns and done a double-take because I thought I’d seen my parents’ house.
    I felt a strange calmness sitting somewhere I knew every bump in the pavement, where I’d skinned my knees falling off bikes, had my first kiss and enjoyed all the milestones that built a life. I’d been happy here.