The Foreseeable Future Page 17

Seth rearranged his mock-offended expression into one of actual confusion.

  “It was just an article,” I rushed to explain. “I made a joke about how you wanted to enter the sand-sculpting contest and I wouldn’t let you. It was dumb, but the journalist printed it anyway. They always do.”

  “Huh.” Seth gulped his coffee. “I’m sorry I missed that one.”

  Slicing a fork through her quiche, Tamora asked him, “You were there that day, yes? But not in the video?”

  “I think my feet are in the frame,” Seth said.

  Until now, I wasn’t sure if Seth had ever seen the clip. The Wi-Fi signal at his house was too weak for video-streaming.

  “And have you also been indulging the media?” Tamora wanted to know. “Granting interviews left and right?”

  Seth answered with a firm “No.”

  “Good boy,” Tamora said. “So then, what’s your story?”

  “My story?” The pocket of his jeans vibrated, and the sound took me by surprise; Seth hardly ever used his phone when we were together. Most of his friends didn’t even have the number.

  Tamora chose to ignore the interruption. “You heard me.”

  “Well.” He swallowed a bite of muffin and offered up a piece of information I had never heard. “My parents got divorced when I was seven because my mom fell in love with her boss.”

  “Where did she work?” Tamora asked.

  “Bureau of Land Management. They counted wild horses together.”

  “Romantic.” Tamora nodded her approval. “Good for her. Go on.”

  “She and her boyfriend eventually moved out to Twentynine Palms, and my brothers grew up and got married, and now I live with my dad.”

  The food I had practically inhaled became a rock in my stomach. I didn’t want my mother to move to Twentynine Palms, let alone to Italy’s version of Twentynine Palms—if Italy even had deserts, or trailer parks. When I had finally gone home, the night of the disastrous dinner at Beachcomber Bill’s, Mom and Jake had already transferred their prized possessions to Professor Hale’s beach house. Rosie had strewn a collection of books, clothes, and sweat-stained flip-flops across the floor of our brother’s room and was sound asleep in his bed.

  I had found my father in the kitchen, nursing another beer.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said gently.

  Iris would have yelled at me for skipping out on dinner. Nelson, I knew, could only focus on one conflict at a time. “I’m sorry,” he said right away. “I’m sorry I was so fantastically hostile to your mother. She doesn’t deserve that.”

  It was possible Mom deserved much worse, but I wasn’t going to tell him. I felt overly self-conscious; my clothes were slightly loose from having been pulled off and put back on. Remembering Seth’s body against mine induced a rush of vertigo, and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek.

  “She never asked me to go to Italy,” Dad said, then waited for me to confirm.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  “She didn’t. I mean, how would that have worked?” Locking eyes with his reflection in the door of the microwave, he released a note of high-pitched laughter. After a few more awkward exchanges, I had gone to bed.

  “Plans for the future?” Tamora was asking Seth.

  “You don’t have to answer that,” I said, horrified. Bringing Seth to Tamora’s room was almost as bad as introducing him to my parents.

  Seth frowned at me, like I was the one being rude. “Just saving money for now,” he told her. “My dad and I have some . . . debts. Next year I might start at the community college, but I’m not in any rush.”

  “You’re happy here?” Tamora asked. “By the seaside?”

  “I love the seaside,” Seth said.

  “Uh-oh.”

  Tamora shot me a look, and I felt my eyelids close, as if in response to a sudden headache. “What?” I argued. “I like the seaside.” My hometown had its charms. Besides, Crescent Bay was a temporary affliction; someday I would sleep between sheets that were not always, no matter how recently laundered, gritty with sand.

  “I thought you were plotting your escape,” Tamora said.

  Seth furrowed his eyebrows and stared into his coffee. Tamora had made it sound like she knew something he didn’t. Desperately, I wanted to assure him that she was making stuff up—just a crazy old lady, taking a stab in the dark. But the truth was that I had begun to plot, a little. At least I’d sent an e-mail to my instructor from night school, asking if she had any connections to retirement homes in bigger cities. Just out of curiosity.

  Just so I could consider my options.

  “Not necessarily,” I said, reaching for Seth’s hand. I was relieved when he laced his fingers through mine, and even more relieved when he changed the subject.

  “So what’s your story?” he asked Tamora.

  “I fainted twice,” was her blunt response.

  “What?” I dropped Seth’s hand and sat up straight. “When?”

  “Relax, Nurse Nelson. It was a while ago. Before I arrived. Once on the couch and once on the stairs. When it happened the second time, I bruised my tailbone, which became Jackson’s excuse for enrolling me in this preschool. That’s my whole story. The part that ended up mattering, anyway.”

  Carefully, I said, “Falling can be really serious as you get—”

  Tamora arched an eyebrow.

  “As your bones lose density,” I finished.

  She asked, “Are you people too young to know Joni Mitchell?”

  We shook our heads, Joni Mitchell being the preferred songstress of every mom in the state of California. Again, Seth’s phone buzzed in his pocket. Again, he ignored it.

  “Jackson always said he was gonna make a lot of money and quit this crazy scene. I didn’t realize he considered me part of the scene, but there you have it. He met someone, and I agreed to move into a facility so long as he found me someplace nice, with an ocean view. No bingo, no karaoke.”

  Folding his arms across his chest, Seth studied her. “That can’t be the whole story.”

  Tamora—who, I realized, had applied lipstick and blush for this occasion—leaned toward us and said, “You’re right. Here’s how it ends: I die. And then Jackson and his lover are left to deal with the mess I leave behind. Currently I’m paying eighty dollars a month to store everything I’ve ever owned in a garage in Arcata. Or else I’m paying eighty dollars a month to ensure my revenge, depending on how you look at it.”

  She chuckled.

  Tamora’s was the most sterile room in the Assisted Living wing. Everyone else had their own bedding, their own vases and chess sets and bowls of polished rocks. The only thing mounted to Tamora’s wall was a dispenser of hand sanitizer.

  “I can’t believe he kicked you out just because he met someone,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Would you want to spend your prime years shacking up with an old woman?”

  “You were his best friend!” I protested.

  “I suppose. For a while. But you have to understand, back then, it was hard for Jackson to be close to people. He was so famous. Everyone wanted him to be Jackson Moon, country legend, every second of the day. By the time he finally hung up the Stetson for good, he craved real intimacy. Not a stand-in.” Tamora heaved a sigh. “Anyway, there’s a point at which even your best friend gets a free pass, don’t you think?”

  Seth wrinkled his nose. “A pass on abandoning you?”

  “No.” Tamora stared at the smoke detector on the ceiling, as if she’d grown bored with this conversation. “On selfishness.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Outside of room 64, with a few minutes of our break to spare, I meant to tell Seth about the e-mail I’d sent to my old teacher. If the message amounted to anything—an application, or an interview—I didn’t want to blindside him with the news. But Se
th was preoccupied, holding on to the heavy tray of dishes, struggling not to tip our half-drunk cups of coffee.

  His jeans vibrated again.

  Seth winced. “A little help?”

  I took the overloaded tray. The screen of his phone was so clouded with water damage, I couldn’t even sneak a look at who was calling.

  A male voice erupted from the speaker.

  “Um,” Seth said, a moment later. “I’m kind of busy right now. I’m at work.”

  I could hear the octave of the other guy’s frustration.

  “How much did he drink?” Seth asked. “Can’t he just stay with you and Sophie tonight?”

  Sophie was his brother’s wife, I remembered.

  “Okay, okay. Chill. I’ll be there in a second.” Seth hung up, exhaling through his nose. He was more agitated than I’d ever seen him.

  “I’m sorry, Aud, but do you mind taking that stuff back to the kitchen and telling Tony I’m going to be late? Say it’s a family emergency. He’ll be a dick about it, but you can just run away afterward. Do you mind?”

  “No, I don’t mind, but—”

  “Thanks.” He was already turning from me. The heels of his boots squeaked against the freshly mopped floor.

  “Seth, what’s up? Where are you going?”

  Begrudgingly, he spun back around. “My dad spent all day at my brother’s, and I guess he’s wasted. They got into a fight about something. Not sure what. Now Cory doesn’t want him there, but my dad’s too drunk to drive himself home.”

  “Can’t your dad just, like, crash on your brother’s couch?”

  “You would think. But Cory has little kids, and . . . I don’t know. I need to run.”

  “Seriously? You’re ditching work?”

  It shouldn’t have bothered me. If Seth wanted to piss off his boss, that was his own business. But I had never known my boyfriend to be frantic, or distracted, or stressed. A phone call had undone his essential Sethness, and I didn’t like it.

  “I’m sorry, Aud,” he said again, “but I don’t have a choice.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  In the first week of August, my instructor from night school sent me links to a handful of jobs on the West Coast. It was easy enough to pass up positions in Fresno, or Bakersfield—medium-size cities in California, neither of which had ever entered my fantasies. But a listing for a job in Seattle caught my attention. Full time, day shift. The list of required skills matched everything I already knew how to do. Shoot them your résumé, Joan wrote. Drop my name and a certain video, and I’m guessing you have a good shot!

  The job would start on the first Tuesday in September, at an assisted living center in Capitol Hill—the downtown neighborhood with which I’d fallen in love when I was fourteen. I did not, as Joan had suggested, include the viral video with my résumé, but I submitted an application before I could think twice.

  Around the same time, Tamora started feeling sick. Her symptoms matched those already listed on her chart— her head ached; she had no energy; she didn’t feel like eating. The dizzy spells that had worried Jackson were worse than ever. Now she could hardly stand long enough to wash her hair without blackness encroaching on her field of vision and, still, she wouldn’t let me help her in the shower. But despite her complaints, Tamora’s vitals were fine. Every night I asked her what was wrong, and she just kept repeating, “I don’t feel well,” until, it was clear, the question was getting on her nerves.

  One night, after I had made her a cup of chamomile tea, I pressed her: “Just tell me what’s really wrong and then I’ll stop asking.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, beyond irritated.

  “Then just tell me the truest thing you know.”

  It was a tactic Sara’s mother always used on her and that, over the years, Sara had also used on me. The demand always lessened the pressure to come up with the correct answer, leaving you with something that usually came close.

  It worked on Tamora, too. “I screwed up,” she said. “I wanted to die in my house. I let Jackson convince me this place isn’t about dying—it’s about living. But I was being moronic.”

  “You’re not going to die anytime soon,” I told her.

  Her face was half hidden behind her mug of tea. “You’re not going to die soon. I’m going to die quite soon.”

  I had no argument. Tamora held my gaze until a sigh broke her focus. “I miss Jackson,” she admitted.

  “Do you want to watch him on YouTube?”

  “I try to stop myself from looking up old friends on there.”

  “Why?” If my friends had been famous, I was sure I would have searched their names all the time.

  “It’s never really them. Just some show they put on a long time ago, for an audience of strangers. Turns out that when people kick the bucket, you don’t miss the famous parts of them; you miss the parts nobody bothered recording.”

  “That’s very profound,” I told her, “except that Jackson’s not dead.”

  Tamora examined her nails impassively. The one nursing home luxury of which she took advantage was the weekly visits from a professional manicurist named Maxine. “Fine,” she said. “Put him on.”

  Pulling up the YouTube app on my phone meant bypassing a screen full of my mother’s texts. She had sent me Professor Hale’s address, begging me to stop by after work—sweetie, you know we need to talk—and then, for good measure, she’d attached a photo of the view from her new backyard, as if I would find the prime beach access irresistible.

  YouTube recommended a lot of videos based on my personal taste. YouTube was under the impression that I was obsessed with both California teens and small town heroes. Ignoring the array of sensational thumbnails, I searched for Jackson Moon and tapped the first link that came up.

  Tamora’s eyes were wide as she repositioned my phone for a better view of Jackson’s 1983 appearance on Late Night with David Letterman.

  The band played a raucous, mocking cover of “Oh Susannah!” as Jackson made his way across the set. A still-brown-haired Letterman rose from his desk to shake the country star’s hand. Jackson formed a gun with his fingers and pretended to shoot Letterman, who, in turn, pantomimed being mortally wounded. The whole thing was hard to watch.

  After Jackson sank into one of two leather armchairs, the audience’s applause died down. Behind the host’s desk was a shelf of reference books leaning in all directions, plus a framed photograph of a German shepherd, as if Letterman had invited Jackson into his pleasantly disorganized home office.

  TV had been weird back then.

  Letterman proceeded to quiz Jackson about the success of his latest album, his house in Beverly Hills, the Golden Globe he’d won for writing a song that played over the ending credits of a biopic about Waylon Jennings, and then, naturally, his love life.

  “So you’ve had an incredible amount of success . . . winning awards, selling millions of records. Answer me this, Jackson—the question I think we’re all wondering—do you have someone to share it with?”

  Sheepishly, Jackson lowered his hat, as if to cover up the blush spreading across his face. “I can’t really be tied down, if you know what I mean, Dave.”

  Inexplicably, the audience cheered again.

  “You must have friends, though. Are you one of those celebrities with a collection of pals, each more famous than the last? Or is your loyalty with the folks you left behind in Chattanooga?”

  To Tamora, I said, “I thought he was from Orlando.”

  “A technicality,” she mumbled, entranced.

  Jackson drawled, “To be perfectly honest with you”—he paused like he was about to reveal a great secret—“my best friend is my manager.”

  The audience was quick to hoot and holler in response. When I turned up a hand, confused, Tamora admitted, “Our relationship, while strictly professional, had become some
what . . . notorious.”

  On-screen, Jackson protested, “Nah, it’s not like that! She’s old! Ancient! She’s the same age as my ma!” He winked at the camera. The scruffy beard growing down his neck made me think of Seth.

  “Well, both your ma and your manager must be so excited,” was Letterman’s final line.

  Tamora was silent for a second. Then she asked, “Are there more?”

  “Sure. You want to watch another?” I was already navigating back to the search results, hoping to find something in which Jackson actually performed. I wondered if anyone had ever uploaded a live version of “Shotgun Wedding.”

  Tamora surprised me, asking, “Can we watch the one of you?”

  “Uh, sure.” I hardly ever watched California Teen Hero Saves Life of a Friend—mostly, I just obsessed over the comments—and still I’d managed to become more or less desensitized to the video. The footage felt disconnected from the event itself. On-screen, Cameron and I might as well have been actors performing in one of the many instructional movies I’d seen in night school.

  Tamora interrupted my line of dialogue—I have to stop—to point at my phone and say, “What’s this number here?”

  “The number of times people have viewed it,” I said.

  “You’re telling me two million people have seen this movie of you?”

  “Well, some people have probably watched it more than once. Like me. Or my mother.”

  “Jackson’s number was only thirty thousand!” Tamora was dismayed.

  “Well . . . it was kind of a boring interview.”

  I had said the wrong thing. Tamora lifted her chin and informed me, “Jackson was a real talent. He was a celebrity.”

  Her implication being that I was a talentless hack. Not wanting to upset her, I tried to explain the difference. “First of all, we watched one of a hundred Jackson Moon videos. Second, the clip of me and Cameron went viral. Like the flu. Everyone gets it and then everyone forgets about it.”

  Tamora was narrowing her eyes at me.

  “People will be listening to Jackson’s music for the rest of time,” was my bold promise.