Ivan's Birthday
By Heather Ryan

I pick up Tiffany at Powell’s Burnside and it takes me forever to get over to the right side of the road where she’s waiting in front of the door. It’s always like that. A million times around the block and then turning turning turning because the street you think you can go down is going the wrong way or you aren’t allowed to turn there or there’s construction and yellow hats and beams in the way.

But I get there, finally pull the car over in front and in the right spot and then she’s there, opening the door and smiling, in the car with Ivan and me, a hundred bright colors, none of them really matching, but together, on her, they always do. A really truly unexpected day because she had only emailed me 36 hours before and told me she was coming to Portland suddenly and would have a few hours free to traipse about the city and did I want to go downtown and come with?

I did. I always do because Tiffany is my oldest friend and she remembers the years when I tried to tame my brown wavy hair into straight blond locks and the horrible glasses I used to wear and she knows that I used to sneak out at night for the sheer pleasure of running through the park sprinklers in my bare feet in the dark and that I love Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and she still loves me. And it’s funny and a little strange how we both ended up here, in the Pacific Northwest so far from Central California.

But today is Ivan’s birthday. And we’re heading back down Burnside, and over to 9th and…Yamhill I think. Wait. Is it Yamhill? Yes. We drive and talk and chat and Ivan’s in the back seat laughing and smiling because he knows we’re downtown and he’s finally alone with me - no sister flanking either side of him or sucking up the attention he craves.

We park at that garage there, across from the toy store. Fifth floor - it’s the green one - which is what I tell Tiff to remember, because I almost always forget. The floors are all different colors but this never helps me - it makes it worse because they don’t seem to come in the right order. But Tiff says she will remember and I park near the elevator, the one with the big glass wall looking out onto the street by the public library. We get in and go down, all alone in the elevator and look out to the street with the leaves falling and coloring the day as we glide down like fairies to earth. There’s a tea shop just outside that I always promise myself I will try but I never do because I’m only down here when we go to Finnegan’s and then the kids are always with us and the tea shop looks like the kind of place with real china like your grandmother had for visitors and those little cakes and the creamer and sugar bowl together like a little old married couple on the old silver tray and I’m sure if we went within ten feet of the place with Chloe or Ivan or Giselle something would spontaneously break.

But today is for Ivan anyway, his third birthday, and he gets to pick out what he wants from the store, within reason, I say, as though he even knows what that means. But the priciest stuff is always up higher and he can’t see it, so we’ll be fine. A truck or a train or a game or something that makes noise but not too much noise and doesn’t require an odd number of batteries because I hate the spare floating around in the junk drawer, always in the way of the screw drivers or the flashlight or the candles or the tape. You never use the spare; it just hangs out there, forever, useless. I mean, who remembers that there is an extra “C� battery in the junk drawer when you need one?

We cross the street and go into Finnegan’s, light and happiness and toys everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, stuffed into corners. I feel like I’m ten again because it’s a real toy store and there aren’t Disney characters singing from a wall of televisions or cheap plastic crap toys or Barbies. They have costumes up front since Halloween’s so close and then a wall of board games and a sticker counter and the small toys - the party gifts and prizes you buy for the cellophaned bags, and then over in that corner puzzles and posters and legos and blocks. Ivan runs to the back straight away because he remembers the Brio table and the train set and that he can play with it and I won’t stop him or hold him away like at the other stores.

Tiffany watches Ivan for a bit while I look around. I find the Hello Kitty displays and smile and think how cool I am because I still love Hello Kitty and I know all the characters names by heart. I put a Keropi pen in my hand basket. And they have Colorforms - remember those? - and felt boards and hand made wooden toys and wind up toys like my great uncle used to bring me when I was old enough to love such things but young enough not to be embarrassed to admit it.

But I can’t find anything for Ivan because all the good stuff is so expensive and I know he really wants a train set, like a Brio set, but it will be hundreds of dollars and we can’t afford it - not now, maybe not ever because I know I’d start off small but these things snowball and before you know it there would be a Brio train table and electric cars and themed Brios and thousands of dollars in credit card debt, so I don’t get the Brio set. But Ivan is still at the table, and there are other kids there and from a short distance I can watch him and see how well he fits in. He looks at another little boy and smiles and hands him an engine. Another mother comes up to me and asks me questions, makes small talk and it feels so normal and pedestrian and we talk about Thai food and the weather and how much our little boys love trains and how Finnegan’s is caught in time, an anomaly, and how well it fits into Portland, with their pierced and tattooed staff who glibly wait on kids as though they were kings.

I take Ivan’s hand and pull him away from the table and walk him through the front of the store to pay for our things. Tiff’s buying wind-up toys and stickers in the back - she may, or may not, have something for the sticker-counter guy, who says things like, “These ghosts are my favorite stickers ever…� through a pierced lip, and manages to come off as hetero-sexy rather than unobtainably-gay. We’ve been here at least an hour, maybe longer, I think. But Ivan’s smiling, he’s holding my hand and he’s doing so well. A year ago - at his last birthday - he didn’t last ten minutes in this store.

So we get in line and then it starts. There are pinwheels near the door and they’re silver and red and white and blue, holdovers I’m sure from July. And every time the door opens they shimmer and spin a little in their basket on the floor. Ivan wrenches and turns and is free in a second - the illusion of parental control falling. It’s always a little shocking when the trick seizes mid-show. I put down the hand basket at my place in line and run to get Ivan. It’s just three steps away. Three big steps, but not far and I grab him and I tell him no gently, gently and then take him back to the line.

But as soon as I’m back he’s wrenched free again and it’s the basket on the floor and three big steps and back in the line and this time he’s mad, yelling and kicking and screaming and hitting himself in the head because he wants that pinwheel. That stupid dollar pinwheel that will last for half a day before it’s snapped in half, but it’s all he can think about, not his birthday gifts or the stickers or the tubes of glitter I’m buying for art supplies. Nothing can distract him and all he wants in the world is the pinwheel, his own little fourth-of-July spinning on a stick.

So I grab him back and forth and I look back to the sticker counter for Tiffany and I see her head but that’s it and I know it’s much too far for me to yell for help and then what kind of person yells for help with only one child in the middle of a toy store? Then it’s our turn up and I put my basket on the counter and I’m pulling out my checkbook and wallet and already Ivan’s gone to the pinwheels and he’s pulled one out, and then a second one. And by my second step he’s knocked over the whole pinwheel tub and there are twenty, thirty pinwheels on the floor, spinning and Ivan’s trying to pick them all up because really, really he wants them all.

And then Tiffany’s there, and she’s got him and she’s smiling. She takes him gently, gently, and I pull away and go back to the counter to finish writing my check and asking for validated parking and Tiff is apologizing for Ivan graciously to the clerk who’s cleaning up the mess. Ivan’s calmed down a little - he’s stopped yelling and crying and he’s holding on to one pinwheel. And I motion to Tiff to bring it to the register because there is a victory here and a year ago we’d never make it through an hour in the toy store and he’s calmed down and he deserves the stupid pinwheel even though it will break by nightfall.

I write the check, finally, for everything, the toys, the stickers, the glitter, the pinwheel and out of the corner of my eye the woman behind me in line rolls her eyes to her companion and purses her lips together hard.

I know what she’s thinking. I know that in her little world there are two kinds of parents and two kinds of kids and that we are the lesser of the two kinds, the parent who buys off their obviously spoiled child with toys or gifts and can’t even manage him by herself in a toy store. Ivan’s next to me now and is holding up his hand for the pinwheel. He’s motioning to me, looking at me with his eyes and smiling, understanding that I have the stupid fucking pinwheel and that he wants it and it’s something that he doesn’t always do, that’s impossible to force or initiate and I’m so happy I hug him and give him the pinwheel.

The woman behind me shakes her head. She’s angry and she’s thinking bad thoughts about us and I’m paralyzed here because I can’t say anything to her, can’t initiate the exchange that would give her the truth that may change her perception. I can tell from her fine leather handbag and cashmere scarf that she’s not the kind of person that will say anything to me but will go home and over coffee tell someone about the horrid child and his parent that she encountered at Finnegan’s whilst buying something or other for one of her well-behaved grandchildren.

Tiff’s gone to the back of the line now to pay for her things and Ivan and I are waiting by the door and he’s wanting to go outside and so he makes this little whining noise, high-pitched and whispery and he pulls on my arm, and throws himself against the floor for no apparent reason.

I pick him up and whisper in his ear and he’s dropped his pinwheel, so he’s crying now and quick, just like that, he’s a wreck again and he’s flailing his arms around and he manages to hit me a few times and I’m still trying to be calm. I put him down and grab the pinwheel and put it in his hand. And I can see them all, the whole line practically, staring at me and thinking the same awful things. And I’m mute again, against the window, pretending not to notice them.

I take Ivan outside because it’s too hard in there and I’m angry now and I don’t want to be angry. It’s Ivan’s birthday and he did so well, it was amazing, really, I mean a year ago, six months ago even he wouldn’t have made it. An entire hour and I want to be happy but I feel the pull of them and even though I’m fighting it, my heart breaks. I want to go back inside and yell obscenities at that woman, fuck explanations. It’s a toy store - it’s not fucking Nordstrom’s.

Ivan’s holding my hand and running around me in circles and I’m switching from one hand to the other over and over again. There’s a homeless man in a doorway watching us and he smiles. He tells me Ivan is the sun in this half-crazy voice and I must look at him strangely because he points to him and tells me again that Ivan is the sun and I’m the sky and then I notice that Ivan’s wearing a yellow shirt and I a blue one. Ivan’s still orbiting me, and he’s laughing now, peace again here, and I smile at the man, at this small beautiful truth, one of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me, I think.

I hear Tiff and turn around and over her shoulder I see the other woman walking down the street. She’s walking next to someone and in the store it was hard to tell but now, on the street, I can tell it’s her daughter. As they cross the next street the woman puts her hand against her daughter’s back - so lightly that I wonder if the girl feels it at all - this small sacred guiding. The woman’s straight blond locks flip in the wind and she doesn’t look so mean anymore. Understanding always gives people a soul, whether you want it to or not. The obscenities fall away and I soften and Tiff smiles at me and we cross the street with Ivan. It’s his birthday, after all.