Going to the Mall
“There is no weather in malls.” – Charles Baxter
As I walk toward the entrance of the Glendale Galleria, I hear pigeons nesting in the rafters of the parking structure. I look up and see feathers rustling, some feathers even flying free from the bodies of the birds. I dodge them as they cascade down. I count how many birds there might be, six or seven, probably more. I keep walking and hear them cooing from their disgusting faux nest.
On hikes in Los Angeles, I often hear woodpeckers going to town high up in a tree or I see the unmistakable red belly of cardinal, the bright azure coat of a blue bird. These birds seem like they were placed here for my enjoyment, for my awe. Sometimes at the beach, a lone seagull creeps toward my tote while I walk along the shore. The bird may have caught a glimpse of the corner of a bag of pretzels, or of some ripe fruit I’d brought along. And I have to run back to my towel and shoo away the bird before it gets at anything worthwhile.
But the mall pigeons intrigue me the most. They nest just feet away from a McDonalds, which operates at the edge of the food court. As I walk through the automatic doors, there are paper bags and empty cups and plastic lids spilling out of a trashcan. There are containers of French fries all over the floor, Chicken McNuggets strewn about the entryway — a bounty for the mall birds.
I think of the joy and ease with which they find food and eat, indulge. I find that I resonate with these birds, that I, too, enjoy the comfort of the mall, the promise of good things wrapped in pleasing packaging.
*
I meet Jasper on Myspace. We find each other in a Boca Raton group for teenagers. In his profile picture, he looks like a young Justin Theroux. He’s got jet-black hair and his brown eyes smolder in his mirror picture.
I take my own picture with a digital camera. I wear my brother’s oversized flannel shirt and nothing else, just a quiet nod to sex, the sex I’ve never had and don’t yet know.
I’m fifteen and Jasper is sixteen. He lives about thirty minutes north of me and works at a Hollister in the Wellington Green Mall. During our late night chats, he tells me that he’s looking for a girlfriend. His ex is “crazy” and he wants someone who is “chill” but still “sexy” and “hot.”
My parents take my dad’s car down to Miami to watch my brother receive an award. It’s a school night, and I say I have homework, papers to write, tests to study for. I’m allowed to stay home alone and given $20 for pizza. But my mom leaves her car keys on the hook by the door. I have my driver’s permit, but no license. I figure the drive to Wellington is just a straight shot north on State Road 441. I do my hair and makeup and get in the car without thinking.
I drive my mom’s car every day to school for practice. She switches places with me when we pull up to my campus, and then at the end of the day when she returns, we switch back again. But the drive to and from school is so boring. I’ll be sixteen in a few months and my parents will get me my own car if I keep my grades up, and I will be free and no longer restricted by their rules.
The drive to the Wellington Green Mall is uneventful. The sky is still light and I stay at least five car lengths behind the car in front of me. I park by the entrance to the food court and make my way inside. I have no plan for what I’ll say to Jasper, but I hope that when he sees me here in the flesh, no longer just text on a screen, but a real face in front of him, that something romantic will happen. I want Jasper to want me, to want me to be the “chill, sexy, hot” girlfriend that he’s been looking for.
I have bad luck with the boys at my own school. They are shallow and mean and tire of a girl so quickly. They want sex and nothing else. There is no longer any room to camp out in the land of kissing. They want to have all of you, all you have to offer, and if you won’t do it, they find someone who will. There is always someone who will.
I ride the escalator up and think about how maybe Jasper could be my first, how it would be cool to date a guy who goes to another school, lives in another city, has a job, a car, and best of all, who loves me.
I enter the Hollister and don’t see Jasper. When we had chatted the night before, he told me he’d be working tonight. I hadn’t told him about my plan to visit, but I hope he’s not on a dinner break or has left early for some reason.
I press on and browse the store. I could be a customer, just like anyone else here shopping and perusing the distressed denim and summery dresses. An employee greets and stops me in my tracks. She’s a tiny blonde with the physique of a gymnast, and she wears the tightest pair of jeans I’ve ever seen and a pink lace tank top with flip-flops. Her hair is in a high ponytail and she wears too much bronzer. She asks if I’ve tried their new skinny jeans.
“No,” I say. “But is Jasper working tonight?”
She gives me a funny look.
“Yeah, he’s in the back room.”
I smile and walk past her to the back of the store. There he is, Jasper, folding t-shirts on a table. He’s much shorter than I’d imagined. I guess it’s hard to tell from a little square of a photo online. His hair is buzzed, unlike his picture where it’s boyish and messy, but his eyes are the same. He looks up from his folding and sees me.
“Hey, can I help you?” Jasper asks and I’m not sure if he’s playing a joke on me.
“It’s Brittany,” I say. “From Myspace.”
“Oh,” Jasper says and his face registers no emotion. He stops his folding and I wonder if I should give him a hug, a kiss, something. But I stand there, motionless, waiting for him to do something instead.
“I’m working,” he says and I feel bad suddenly, like this was all a big mistake.
“I’m just here doing some shopping, wanted to say hi,” I try to fix it with a lie.
“Okay, well, I have to get back to work, but thanks for coming in,” Jasper smiles fake like he knows the security cameras are watching him. He probably doesn’t want to get fired for being rude to a customer, even if that customer is a girl he met online who just showed up randomly at his work as a surprise. I leave the store and try not to cry.
I had told Jasper about my brother’s problems, about the fights I have with my mom, about how high school is terrible and I have no friends, about how I think often about ending my life. Jasper had listened so intently to my messages, had been there for me, a name lighting up on a screen, words to mend my pained existence.
Inside the mall, there is no way to tell what time of day it is. When I exit the mall to the parking lot, it’s already dark out. I’ve never driven a car at night and I start to get nervous about making it back home. My mom texts that they are on the way home and will be back in an hour. I rush to the car and drive, speeding the whole way, worrying I’ll get pulled over but equally worried that I’ll get home after my parents.
I end up making it back in twenty minutes but my mom calls and says they are stuck in terrible traffic, probably another hour until they get home.
I figure I have time to stop quickly at McDonalds to get something to eat. I eat a hamburger and fries with a large Coke. I eat standing outside the car so it won’t smell like fast food, my back against the car so I can look out at the dark sky above me.
I never speak to Jasper again, and a few weeks later I delete Myspace entirely. It’s not until years later that people discover old Myspace profiles cannot be permanently deleted, that the data and images are still floating around the Internet. Everything you put online remains there forever in some way, and in that way I suppose it’s comforting to think whatever I shared with Jasper had its time and place on the web, that in some way it still lives on forever, what could have been.
*
As a kid, my favorite stores were FAO Schwartz, Warner Brothers, and the Disney store. At FAO Schwartz, I loved the giant bear with the alphabet blocks balanced on his arms and legs that greeted me upon entry. I loved the stuffed bears dressed as soldiers, the tall plush giraffe overlooking and protecting us all, the lollipops bigger than my head.
The mall felt like a place where dreams came true. The mall promised new shoes for school each year, a new toy if I was “good.” The mall was a place where I could have ice cream at 2:00 pm, could walk for miles without seeing a tree or a bug or anything close to natural. The mall was freedom in an enclosed space, the feeling of independence inside of a three-story structure. I lived for the escalators and elevators of my youth, the magic of ascending and descending at my leisure.
But the mall can bring pain, too. The first tantrum I can remember was at a mall in New York, specifically at the Warner Brothers store. There was a digitized painting game that kids could play for free, a game where you selected colors from a sidebar and pressed the screen with your finger to color in drawings of Yosemite Sam bashfully holding a bouquet of flowers. There were other characters you could paint, too, all within the Warner Brothers franchise in various poses. The game was contained in a fake box made to look like wood, the Acme Paint Co. logo displayed big and proud.
You had to wait your turn in line to play. There were other games in the store, other interactive things to do so you could blow off steam and tire yourself out before the car ride home. There was a life size Marvin’s Rocket where you could crawl inside of Marvin the Martian’s spaceship and press a bunch of buttons and hear a myriad of phrases from the cartoon. I didn’t like the rocket though. It was cramped and scary. I had once pushed a “Warning” button that told me “Your cosmological clock is ticking!” I wasn’t sure what it meant and I didn’t want to find out.
You could watch Superman fly though the store in a plastic tube. You could gaze at animation stills from the network’s shows, signed and priced in the thousands.
But one time, another little girl cut me in line for the touch screen paint game and I lost my temper. I could not be consoled. My mom had to drag me out of the store and sit me down on a bench because I was shaking so hard. It was the first time, perhaps, that I’d realized life wasn’t all fun and games. It wasn’t all infinite ice cream cones and magic picture games. I remember sitting on that bench in my mom’s arms for a long time.
A few months later, the Warner Brothers store was gone. I don’t remember what took its place, but I do recall that the big statue of Bugs Bunny dressed as Lady Liberty was gone. Never again would I see Elmer Fudd and the Tasmanian Devil driving up the wall in a yellow taxi cab, nor would I hold a plush Tweety Bird in my hands and beg my mom for another stuffed animal I didn’t need.
I still go to the mall once a week. I like to get a hot pretzel and a Coke Zero, sit on a bench and people watch. I like to call my mom while I’m walking and hear her on the end of the line. A mall can feel like an answer to a question I’m not sure how to ask. So I find myself getting into the car and driving toward the mall, parking and walking, entering through the food court. I find myself riding the escalator up and up and perusing stores I’m known to frequent. I recognize the faces of cashiers, of janitors, of families that come often for a nice day’s outing.
Sometimes I am looking for nothing. Other times I hope to find everything I need.