My name is Wanda Calloway, and the day my family decided to remind me exactly where I belonged, Portland was doing what Portland does in late October — raining in that quiet, persistent way that feels less like weather and more like the city is thinking something it hasn’t decided to say yet. I had been ready for an hour before I needed to leave. This is a thing I do before events with my family: I give myself extra time, which I then spend second-guessing whatever I’ve chosen to wear.
I’d bought the dress specifically for today — navy wrap, mid-length, the kind of thing that says I tried without saying I’m trying too hard. I’d borrowed pearl earrings from a box in my closet that I only opened for occasions where my mother’s voice was likely to be louder than my own internal one. I’d spent forty minutes on my hair and another fifteen talking myself out of going back to the store and hiding behind my inventory until the whole afternoon passed.
I’d told myself I was going because I loved my sister. I told myself that every time. I kept going, and I kept telling myself that, and somewhere in my chest I was always aware that these two things were not the same as being loved in return.
Elmeander occupied a building on the kind of downtown Portland block that looks like it was assembled by someone who had very specific feelings about exposed stone and ambient lighting. The valet who opened my car door had the composed, slightly apologetic expression of someone accustomed to performing equality for people in vehicles of very unequal distinction. My Honda Civic was eight years old and the color of a decision made quickly.
He took my keys with the practiced grace of someone who has never let a flicker of judgment show. The shoes were protesting the wet sidewalk before I’d made it to the door. Across the street, O’Sullivan’s Pub sat in the rain with the comfortable indifference of a place that has never needed to prove anything.
Its green sign was modest, the brick darker from the wet. Someone had propped the door open, and warm light spilled through it along with the faint smell of onions on a grill and something frying in the back — the smell of a place where people stayed longer than they planned and didn’t feel obligated to explain why. Elmeander was the opposite.
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