The Foreseeable Future Page 15

  HEROIC TEEN SAVES FRIEND’S LIFE BY PERFORMING CPR

  The small, scenic town of Crescent Bay is particularly proud of one of its citizens after recent high school graduate Audrey Nelson jumped into action and saved the life of her friend and classmate Cameron Suzuki.

  Nelson (18) and Suzuki (18) were enjoying an Independence Day picnic when Suzuki suffered sudden cardiac arrest at the ocean’s edge. Nelson, a Certified Nurse Assistant trained in First Aid and CPR, rushed to Suzuki’s side and began chest compressions. Nelson’s efforts led to the ‘successful resuscitation of Suzuki, whose arrhythmia had gone undiagnosed all her life.

  “I just thought we were going to go down to the beach and hang out until the fireworks started,” said Nelson. “My boyfriend wanted to build a sand castle, but I told him no.”

  After witnessing her friend’s collapse, Nelson knew Suzuki wasn’t playing a joke. “I could just tell, the way she fell down, it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t like she’d tripped or collapsed for fun. It was just like her heart had stopped working.”

  Authorities have confirmed that Suzuki will make a full recovery. The victim’s mother, Violet Suzuki, wants parents to be aware that “a cardiac rhythm disturbance like Cameron’s is not likely to be caught by your child’s pediatrician during a routine checkup. Cam had told us the day before that it felt like her heart was fluttering. We assumed she was too young for it to indicate anything serious.”

  Dr. Terrance Dashwood, a cardiac surgeon at Steeds Memorial, confirmed that if your child complains of a similar “fluttering” sensation, “it wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring him in for some tests.”

  Violet Suzuki also added that she is “so, so grateful that someone was there who knew what she was doing.”

  Nelson herself admitted that CPR is not something just anyone can do. “Most people who haven’t had a lot of experience doing it get it wrong. You have to have a lot of upper arm strength.”

  When asked about the future of her friendship with Suzuki, Nelson said, “She doesn’t really owe me anything. I wouldn’t call myself a hero.”

  But the community of Crescent Bay, California, is calling her just that.

  I dropped the newspaper on the nightstand. Tamora’s room was free of clutter—no framed photographs or glass grapes or jars of potpourri.

  “Upper arm strength, huh?” she said.

  “Shut up.”

  “Let’s see those guns.”

  “Only if you show me yours first.”

  Tamora’s smile was subtle, one edge of her lips tugging downward. “No.”

  “Oh, in that case,” I jerked my thumb toward the door, “maybe I should go? Let you get some sleep?”

  She ignored me. “What’s a girl like you doing with a boyfriend?”

  Normally people wanted to know what a girl like me— or a girl like Sara, or any girl with limbs and teeth—was doing without a boyfriend. “What do you mean?”

  “You seem smart. Good at what you do. Trying to save money to get the hell out of Dodge, am I right?”

  I hesitated. “Something like that.”

  “Why waste your time with this . . . sand castle–building buffoon?”

  “He’s not a buffoon! The reporter asked me about our Fourth of July plans, and I was trying to explain that we hadn’t really made any. Seth had floated the idea of entering the sand-sculpting contest. I didn’t think the woman would quote me on that.”

  Tamora considered my defense of Seth before concluding, “You don’t need a boyfriend. Trust me. And also, they never quote what you think they’ll quote. If you’d come to me for some media training, I could have prepared you.”

  “Media training?”

  “Mmm.” Tamora examined her fingernails, which were perfectly manicured. I could imagine her at the age I was now—popular, proud, quick on her feet.

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What are you, some kind of expert in Internet fame?”

  “Internet fame?” Tamora scoffed. “Not Internet fame. Real fame. I was a talent manager in Los Angeles for forty-five years.”

  “Oh yeah?” I perched on the foot of her bed. “Did you ever meet anyone famous?”

  Tamora narrowed her sea glass eyes at me. “You think I might have sustained a career in the entertainment industry for half a century without meeting anyone famous?”

  I shrugged. “Okay, so tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “About your famous clients.”

  “You’ve never heard of my clients. You’re a fetus.”

  “Try me.”

  Folding her arms, Tamora looked toward the darkened window. “Milan Lorca, Blake Dunne.” She paused. “Jackson Moon. I managed his career from start to finish.”

  “Jackson Moon?” Excitement lifted my voice. “The ‘Shotgun Wedding’ guy?”

  Tamora looked skeptical. “You’re a country music fan?”

  “My parents really liked that song.” I refrained from adding ironically.

  “Your parents really liked a song about two hillbillies in a mutually abusive relationship?”

  “Yup.”

  Tamora accepted this. “Everyone did. Well, almost everyone. Jackson hated it.”

  “Didn’t he write it?”

  “We wrote it together.”

  I tried, but was unable to imagine Tamora penning lyrics like: I saw you in town, girl / lips stuck on a scoundrel.

  “Jackson never meant for that song to define him,” Tamora went on. “But really, the boy has nothing to complain about. We made out like bandits. ‘Shotgun Wedding’ paid for all of this.” She gestured sweepingly to the contents of her room, and I couldn’t tell to what extent she was kidding.

  “So did you, like, discover him?”

  “Of course. I was new to the game and so was Jackson. He sent me his head shot, his résumé. What he wanted originally was to be an actor. He thought he was going to play the preppy romantic lead. The Lothario. But then I met with him. Heard him sing in this gentle, Floridian accent. We came up with a new concept.”

  “You made him change what he wanted to be?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Just the details.”

  “So, how does a Florida prep become a cowboy overnight?”

  Tamora looked at me like it was a stupid question, but one she’d been asked a hundred times before. “By changing his shoes.”

  In the minutes we spent talking, before my pager finally interrupted us, Tamora gave me the lowdown on Jackson Moon’s career. She told me about booking his first gigs in dingy Los Angeles bars, where no matter how many Townes Van Zandt covers he played, people still scream-requested “Stairway to Heaven” and chucked peanuts onto the stage. She described staying up all night in a rented recording studio off Ventura Boulevard, telling Jackson over and over that he needed to sound more like Johnny Cash and less like Johnny Rivers. Later, they had gone to every awards show and industry party arm in arm. They’d vacationed together. For the past ten years—since their mutual retirement— Tamora and Jackson had even been living together, down in Sacramento.

  “Until he fell in love and finally kicked me out,” she told me, glossing over the part where she became elderly and, by some measure, sick.

  “He kicked you out?”

  Tamora waved a hand, dismissing her own exaggeration. “It was time. Letting him move on with his life was the least I could do, after . . . after everything. At least if I’m stuck in here, Jackson doesn’t have to worry.”

  I looked around the unadorned room. “Do you have any pictures of him?”

  “Get out your pocket watch.”

  I studied her face. As a nurse assistant, I was trained to identify the first signs of dementia, but Tamora was inscrutable. “My what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Your iPhone.”

  Relieved, I produced my phone a
nd searched the Internet for Jackson Moon. Perusing his Wikipedia page, my real-life surroundings were temporarily blurred by Jackson’s past. The article confirmed Tamora’s account of his humble beginnings, referencing the seedy bars and the Ventura Boulevard recording studio. The article also revealed details Tamora had omitted—Jackson’s struggle with cocaine during the late eighties, and the long list of country music starlets he had dated.

  And then, toward the bottom of the page, under “personal life”: While linked to dozens of women over the course of his career, Moon never married. For many years he cohabitated with his manager, Tamora Sinclair, who was twenty-five years his senior and known for managing several major acts in the 1970s.

  There was a picture of the two of them on some red carpet. Tamora stood with her arm draped through the crook of Jackson’s elbow. His Stetson looked weird with his tux, and her dress resembled the kind of overly ornate Christmas tree you’d find in the lobby of a cheap motel.

  She had been beautiful, though. With long, stick-straight hair, high cheekbones, a strong jaw. The differences between then and now were striking—but it wasn’t just that her hair had turned to a dull white. On the red carpet, she looked happy, thrilled. The way my friends and I looked in the selfies we took, messing around on the beach.

  Lately, Tamora never seemed thrilled. Whenever I entered her room, I found her staring out the window, or up at the muted television screen, looking sleepless and sad and—above all—bored.

  Putting away my phone, I refocused on present-day Tamora.

  “What are you doing here?”

  If she found the question invasive, her expression didn’t show it. “It was Jackson’s idea. What choice did I have?”

  “You’re seventy-eight years old. You can do whatever you want.”

  Tamora smirked at me. “Says the girl with her whole life ahead of her.”

  NINETEEN

  After surprising us with her early return from Italy, Mom spent a week cleaning every inch of the house. Aggressively, she pushed the vacuum into previously cluttered corners, vanquishing tumbleweeds of dust. When I passed her in the mornings—still in my scrubs, on my way to bed—she would be crouched in the kitchen, scouring the inside of the oven or polishing a cabinet door until it gleamed. And she would be muttering. Some refrain or admonishment I could never quite catch, because the moment she sensed my presence she would crane her neck and give me a beatific smile.

  She was scaring me.

  Because I worked nights, I had no idea if she and Nelson were sharing a bed, or if Iris had been sneaking downstairs and curling up on the couch after my siblings were asleep. Maybe she stayed up late, texting sweet nothings to her Italian suitor, or maybe she had started a brand-new password-protected blog.

  I was almost relieved, one afternoon, when she asked me to set aside my next night off for a family dinner. Either she and Dad would reveal their plans to resume their separation, or else the dinner was purely symbolic, an effort to restore their marriage to factory settings.

  I hoped for the latter, until Mom informed me that we were going to Beachcomber Bill’s.

  “What?” I asked. “Why? You hate it there.”

  At Beachcomber Bill’s, families who were waiting for tables were corralled through the labyrinth of the gift shop. Little kids squealed over pale pink conch shells and dehydrated starfish—assorted ocean paraphernalia you could find in the sand, or for which you could pay $6.99 plus tax. We had last been there on Rosie’s ninth birthday. After our bread bowls of clam chowder and our flaming Baked Alaska, Mom had heaved a sigh of relief. Beachcomber Bill’s wasn’t a place you would choose for your birthday celebration once your age hit double digits.

  “Yes,” Mom acknowledged. “I do.”

  “So, why would we go there?”

  She leaned back against the counter, a blue-striped dishtowel draped over her shoulder. “Nelson agreed to a family dinner . . . he agreed to come clean . . . on the condition that we go to Beachcomber Bill’s.”

  In her faded Whedon College T-shirt, she appeared exhausted.

  There were about a thousand questions I could have asked.

  * * *

  * * *

  On our way to the restaurant, Friday night, I endeavored to set a mood that would make my parents change their minds about coming clean. I didn’t want Jake and Rosie to know about the separation. I was dreading pretending to be as blindsided by the news as everyone else. Part of me knew it was childish to imagine that the right combination of inside jokes would inspire Mom and Dad to fall back in love. But another part of me thought, why not? Whatever had come between them couldn’t have been all that profound. I hadn’t even noticed it happening.

  “Guess who I’ve been talking to?” I began, wedged between my siblings on the middle bench seat of the minivan. The seat farthest back was folded down to accommodate two surfboards Jake had meant to sell on eBay before leaving for college a year ago.

  “Everyone,” Rosie said, referring to the frequency with which my phone buzzed in my pocket. Whenever the video was posted anew by an online magazine or person with a lot of Facebook friends, I received a fresh batch of notifications. So far, I had been glad to hear from Joan—the instructor of my CNA training course, who complimented my flawlessly executed chest compressions—and then baffled to hear from Vanessa, the freshman who had shown me around Whedon and was now really pumped to see me in the fall.

  “Besides everyone,” I said.

  “Oh, call on me.” Jake raised his hand, flattening his palm against the ceiling of the van. “I have a guess.”

  “Jacob,” I allowed.

  “My guess is you’ve been talking nonstop to your improbably handsome boyfriend, Seth O’Malley.”

  I ignored him. “Jackson Moon’s manager. That’s who I’ve been talking to.”

  Everyone sank into perplexed silence. Only my brother caught on fast. “Jackson Moon’s manager is a resident at the nursing home?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Her name is Tamora Sinclair and she’s awesome.”

  “Jackson Moon was popular decades ago,” Mom said.

  “We know that,” I said. “He’s incredibly famous. Tamora managed a bunch of other people, too. Milan Lorca. Blake Dunne.”

  “Those people are actors,” Dad said. “I’ve heard of them.”

  “Um, yes. Everyone on earth has heard of them.” Jake was exaggerating. Most of Tamora’s clients had ceased to be stars a long time ago, but Jake’s knowledge of pop culture was encyclopedic. He turned to me. “Do you think this lady knows if Jackson Moon truly had an extramarital affair with Dolly Parton?”

  This time, Mom remained sitting forward in her seat, her eyes on the highway.

  “Probably. Jackson is like a son to her.”

  Rosie mused. “If Jackson is like her son, why doesn’t she live with him instead of in a nursing home?”

  “Sometimes relationships change over time,” Mom said sagely—as if we might contemplate this wisdom and conclude that it would be refreshing if our parents filed for divorce.

  “Can I meet this lady?” my brother asked. “Please, Audrey? Please?”

  “Maybe,” I said, not even knowing how that would work.

  “Why do you want to meet her so bad?” asked Rosie. “It’s not like she’s famous. She just knows a bunch of famous people.”

  “Even better,” said Jake. “She’ll tell me all their secrets.”

  “Can we listen to that song?” Rosie asked. “The one about the shotgun?”

  Nelson flashed Iris a look. I couldn’t tell if it was anxious or hopeful.

  Mom pressed on the glove compartment, letting the door fall open. “The CD’s not in here,” she said, slamming the door shut before any of us could see for ourselves. “I must have accidentally thrown it away.”

  Judging by the number of napkins that fluttere
d to the floor, no one had cleaned out the glove compartment in years.

  As we approached Beachcomber Bill’s, Mom and Dad grew quiet. Dad thrummed his knuckles against the steering wheel while Mom tugged on the short locks of hair at the nape of her neck. By the time we turned into the parking lot, their faces were ashen.

  My insides flipped. Suddenly, my stomach did not seem like a vessel I should fill with large amounts of chowder.

  After our mandatory tour of the gift shop, our server—a boy whose face I dimly recognized from the halls of Crescent Bay High—led us to a varnished picnic table. On the wall above the window hung a life preserver. The restaurant had been built on stilts at the edge of the bay; our view was of seagulls perched on the bows of fishing boats bobbing in the murky, agitated water.

  Our server returned with Cokes for me and Rosie, an iced tea for Jake, and two Heinekens for our parents. Dad took a long swig of his beer and nodded toward the tank of live Dungeness crabs stationed outside the kitchen. “Hey, Jakey, remember when you realized what goes into your crab burger?”

  Nelson family legend had it that Jake reached the ripe age of seven before connecting the crustaceans behind the glass to the food on his plate. He’d wept. As a kid, my brother had been a prolific crier.

  Jake looked at Dad and shrugged. Clearly, Nelson was trying the same trick I’d pulled in the car—delaying the inevitable with references to the past—but Iris still refused to engage, and my brother and sister could tell something was up. They were both sitting with their shoulders slumped, their stares hollow.

  Probably, I realized, they thought this dinner was about me. Damage control for my unmapped life.

  “I think we should talk,” Mom said.

  “I think we should order first.” Dad flagged down our server. He’d been a grade or two below me in school—the sort of kid who kept his raincoat on all the time, even during lunch. Without consulting anyone else, Dad asked him for the exorbitantly priced Pirate’s Platter. Mom exhaled through her nostrils and locked eyes with me.