The Foreseeable Future Read online

There were five years between us. By now, shouldn’t I have had more options than my little sister?

  “I mean, if you don’t get that job in Seattle,” Rosie clarified.

  I stood back and studied my made-up face in the mirror. My family didn’t know that I’d been offered the job on the spot. Technically, I still had until tomorrow morning to call Greg and claim the position. But I knew I wouldn’t, and sometimes I wondered whether I’d made a mistake, going straight from the airport to Seth O’Malley’s bed. If I had given myself a day to think it over objectively—Sethlessly—would Seattle have stood a chance?

  “Sure, Ro,” I said, trying not to sound as despondent as I felt, promising, “I’ll stick with you.”

  Her sigh of relief was audible. It wasn’t the worst sound in the world.

  And then our father was knocking on the door. “Girls?” He spoke with all the confidence of a man interrupting his teenage daughters in the bathroom. “Do you think we should maybe . . . go?”

  I checked the clock our mother had hung on the wall, years ago, after a recurring hot-water shortage inspired her to suggest that Rosie keep her soaks to fifteen or fewer minutes. We were, in fact, running late—but it was unlike Dad to care. He was normally the one who needed to be literally dragged from his work, his fingers still twitching against an imaginary laptop’s keys.

  I vacated the bathroom, allowing Rosie her privacy. Dad was pacing the hallway, dressed in pressed khakis and a button-down shirt that didn’t advertise a single university— an ensemble that typically meant he was on his way to a seminar. By the time the three of us were buckled into the MINI, Dad’s anxiety was palpable. It took him three tries to insert the key into the ignition.

  “You’re acting unhinged,” Rosie pointed out.

  With a sigh, Dad pressed his forehead to the steering wheel. “I know it.”

  I had figured he was nervous to shake hands with Jackson Moon, or that he doubted his ability to adhere to social norms after spending the entire summer alone in our kitchen, laboring over an unpublished manuscript that was, technically, old enough to be enrolled in the third grade.

  Now, I realized, he was terrified to see our mother.

  My sister had already caught on. “Mom’s your wife, remember? You’ve known each other for a hundred years?”

  “Twenty-nine years,” Dad said, as if Rosie’s exaggeration had been a mathematical error.

  “So. What do you think she’s going to do? Throw her drink in your face?”

  The color drained from Dad’s cheeks as he considered the possibility. Desperately, I wanted to help him. I thought about suggesting that he book one of the long-haul flights Seth was too scared to take, whisk Mom away to someplace she’d never been, and show her that she wasn’t really as trapped as she felt. But I didn’t know if a vacation would be enough to change my mother’s mind. And I didn’t know exactly what had happened between Iris and the guy in Italy—whether their lips had touched, whether they’d slept together. Or if their courtship had been only aesthetic, tailor-made for an anonymous blog. Sunsets and shellfish. Sandals half buried in sand.

  No part of me wanted to know these things.

  “Don’t worry,” I told Dad. “She wants to see you. She misses you.”

  The engine was running, but we hadn’t left the driveway. “She said that?” he asked. “Verbatim?”

  It was typical of my family to insist upon knowing whether someone had said something verbatim. What had Mom said, exactly? Outside the nursing home, she had called Nelson infuriating. But she had also admitted that he’d never left her mind. The two sentiments, I figured, could easily amount to missing a person.

  Unable to resist editing my mother’s words—giving my father more hope than was strictly warranted—I lied and said yes.

  Tamora had sent me her new address, which I entered into my iPhone and mounted to the dashboard. Getting there was the same as getting anywhere; we turned onto the 101 and followed the curves of the highway. The exit sign for Tamora’s neighborhood was about ten miles south of Crescent Bay proper and said only, COMMUNITY OF SLAB CREEK, POPULATION: 167.

  Even without the address, I would have recognized her house instantly. The vintage mint-colored Thunderbird parked outside was perfect, the vehicular version of Tamora herself. I flashed upon the night I met her—how she had rejected the nursing home’s meat loaf in favor of a more delicious memory.

  Now that she had her car, and her freedom, she could drive the hundred miles to the nearest In-N-Out Burger whenever she pleased.

  Among the cars already parked along the road was my family’s aging minivan. With its museum of Whedon College bumper stickers and its dented side door—the result of Jake procuring his learner’s permit at the first legal moment—the minivan looked incongruous behind the shapely BMW that could only have belonged to Jackson Moon.

  The absence of Seth’s Jeep made me nervous. We were a little bit late, and Seth was almost always on time.

  As we approached the house, Dad unbuttoned the collar of his shirt, suddenly clued in to the evening’s lack of dress code. No wind chimes hung from Tamora’s porch, and no driftwood dragon guarded her door, which she’d left wide open. We could see through the kitchen and the dining room—both spaces a maze of boxes—and straight into the backyard, where Mom and Jake were sitting with Tamora and Jackson, plus a stranger in white linen pants.

  Tamora waved and welcomed us. The patio had been cracked by tufts of sea grass. An old concrete birdbath was crumbling into one corner of the yard—but Tamora looked at home and at ease, seated around a glass-topped table with half my family and all of hers.

  Something compelled my mother to stand and give my father a formal kiss on the cheek. Most likely she was trying to set a precedent for good behavior. Still, my heart ached for Dad. Did he really deserve to be greeted the way she greeted guests at faculty parties?

  As Jake got up to hug us, he eyed his chair nervously, as if someone might steal the prime spot beside Jackson Moon. Taking the hint, I seated myself on the opposite edge of the table.

  The retired country legend was the first person to say anything of substance.

  “Audrey, I have to admit, the last time we met I didn’t realize you were such a celebrity.”

  I stared at Jackson, feeling distinctly like the butt of a joke.

  “I showed him your video,” Tamora explained.

  “Oh.” My cheeks burned. In the presence of his tenured fame, I had forgotten about my video. “I’m not a real celebrity. I mean, it’s just YouTube.”

  “It’s a viral sensation!” said the stranger in linen pants. “I’d seen it long before Jackson put two and two together. I’m Clyde, by the way.” Jackson’s husband extended his hand and I reached to shake it. His pants were paired with a matching linen shirt that begged to be ravaged by red wine. But unlike the rest of the adults, Clyde wasn’t drinking wine. Instead he clutched a murky, greenish concoction pierced by a bendy straw.

  “She’s not famous,” my brother said hastily, “I mean, not like—”

  “Of course she’s famous!”

  Sara’s voice rang out across the backyard. She was carrying a massive tray of shrimp cocktail, Elliot hovering shyly at her shoulder. Beyond grateful for the interruption, I jumped up to relieve Sara of the shrimp. I delivered the tray to the table and introduced everyone as fast as possible.

  “Where’s Seth?” Sara asked, claiming a spare chair beside Clyde.

  “Not sure.” I tried to sound flippant, unconcerned.

  “I thought he was coming,” Elliot said.

  “I thought so, too.”

  “Why don’t you text him?” Sara suggested. “Find out where he is.”

  “He’ll be here,” I promised, because I was unwilling to send a message and receive bad news. I needed him here.

  A lengthy silence was interrupted
only when Clyde whispered, “Who’s Seth?”

  “Boyfriend,” Tamora mouthed.

  Prolonging my time in the spotlight, Sara cried, “Audrey, I haven’t talked to you since Seattle! Are you taking the job?”

  From across the table, I gave her a look: Please don’t.

  “Wait a second,” my mother said. Deep lines creased her forehead. “I was under the impression that you hadn’t heard back.”

  “Same here,” Dad said.

  Tamora snapped her fingers. “I knew you weren’t really sick last week.”

  Sara was guiltless, already admonishing me. “Audrey! It’s your dream job!”

  “It’s exactly the same as the job I already have,” I argued.

  “Except that it’s day shift, pays twice as much, and it’s in Seattle!”

  “You turned it down?” Elliot caught on. “Why?”

  “Yeah, why?” Sara demanded.

  I closed my eyes. To my friends, Seth O’Malley was still the guy with the ponytail who wore cowboy boots to places other than the rodeo. In their minds he was forever occupying the hall at school, forever hugging one Crescent Bay girl after another; there was no reason for me to get in line.

  “Come on,” Sara said. “I saw your face when we were standing in that apartment.”

  “What apartment?” Rosie asked, reminding me of the casual promise I’d already made her. Soon I’d be nineteen, then twenty, and still staring at the sagging underside of my little sister’s top bunk.

  To Sara, I said, “I was looking at the mattress someone had left behind. I was thinking about Seth.”

  My father cleared his throat, lest I expand on the connection between my boyfriend and mattresses.

  “Audrey,” Elliot said suddenly, causing more than one person to straighten their posture. “Remember junior year, when your Environmental Science class took that overnight field trip to Mount Shasta?”

  “I didn’t go,” I reminded him.

  “Right, but remember how weirdly excited you were to go?”

  I shrugged. “It’s an active volcano. It might have exploded.”

  “Right, and you missed an active volcano maybe exploding because the night before the trip, you let Sara drag you to Cape Defiance for the seniors’ end-of-the-year bonfire and Sara got so drunk that you had to drive her home and make sure she didn’t inhale her own vomit in her sleep. Then, in the morning, you told Mrs. Quintero that Sara had been poisoned by a bad batch of clams at the Fish Shack and you skipped the field trip to spend all day administering her Tylenol and holding back her hair.”

  Remembering his audience, Elliot glanced at my parents and added, “Sorry.”

  “Our innocence, forever shattered,” Dad said.

  “Mount Shasta’s not likely to erupt for another four hundred years,” Jake said. “Just, for the record.”

  “Phew,” said Clyde.

  My mother continued to frown, while Sara gazed at me with affection, her chin resting in her hands. “I’m going to miss you. My own personal nurse.”

  “That’s not the point!” Elliot said.

  “We get the point.” I sighed.

  “Do you?”

  “You’re comparing my boyfriend to a bad hangover Sara had one time.”

  “I’m just saying that you have a tendency to put other people before yourself.”

  “That’s true,” Sara admitted. “You do.”

  Both Tamora and my mother murmured their agreement. I looked between the two of them, stunned. Mom, of all people, knew exactly how selfish I’d been this summer, whereas Tamora hardly knew me at all.

  Jackson Moon took the opportunity to lift the guitar I hadn’t realized was roosting beneath his seat. My future forgotten, Sara grabbed a bottle of Coke from the assortment of beverages on the table and poured herself a drink. Her eyes were trained on Jackson, like he might, without warning, burst into one of his hit singles.

  All he did was strum a few chords, aimless and angsty. For the first time I noticed the pearl buttons on his fitted flannel shirt. He had dressed to please Tamora, I realized—like a kid decked out in the clothes his grandmother had given him for Christmas.

  Under my breath, I told Elliot, “I really don’t think I’m making a mistake.”

  He shrugged. “There will be other jobs, other cities. You can always change your mind.”

  My phone remained dormant in my pocket, and I still hadn’t heard the rumble of Seth’s Jeep. His lateness was getting to me. My throat tightened when I thought, irrationally, through all of the worst case scenarios.

  Tamora leaned back in her chair and said to my parents, “How did you two kids meet, anyway?”

  Dad’s cheeks caught fire and Mom winced. My siblings and I traded looks of alarm. Our parents had met in a bar during grad school. They had always led us to believe it was a harmless story, as benign and conventional as the Connecticut town they’d lived in.

  “We were at school in New Haven,” Mom began.

  “Just say Yale,” Jake advised. “It’s less pretentious.”

  She shook her head, but made the correction. “We were both at Yale, halfway through our PhDs. Nelson’s in English, mine in political theory. Two blocks from my apartment there was a bar. Not a nice establishment, more of a . . .”

  “A dive bar,” Nelson said, lifting his wine to his lips.

  “Right. And the bartender there—”

  “Lou,” Nelson supplied.

  “Lou played this game with her customers. The game was that if you could correctly identify five consecutive songs from her very eccentric playlist—”

  “It wasn’t a playlist,” Dad said. “It was the nineties.”

  “Then what was it?” Mom asked him. “A jukebox?”

  “Probably a collection of mixtapes,” Dad said.

  “Well, either way, I was there with a girlfriend one night and we were on a roll. Between the two of us we had named four songs, and we were one tune away from winning ourselves a free pitcher of PBR.”

  “Classy,” Rosie said.

  “I love this story.” Clyde spoke dreamily, leaning closer to my parents.

  Mom glanced at Jackson and blushed. My brother’s eyes widened with panic as he realized where, exactly, this story was headed. Clenching his jaw, Jake sent Mom a silent message: Don’t you dare insult the most famous person at this party.

  “What were the four songs you had already guessed?” Tamora wanted to know.

  “Oh, you can’t possibly remember,” Dad said, issuing a challenge.

  Without missing a beat, Mom recited, “‘Wild Horses’ by the Rolling Stones, ‘Stars Fell on Alabama’ by Louis Armstrong, ‘In Bloom’ by Nirvana, and ‘Africa’ by Toto.”

  My brother’s jaw dropped. Dad sported a proud smile and my friends sat back in their chairs, as entertained by my family as ever.

  Carefully, Mom continued her story. “So the fifth song comes on, and it’s a country song. Neither of us know it. We’re openly despairing, because we’re—”

  “Drunk,” Dad said.

  “Because we’re poor, thirsty graduate students!” Mom argued.

  “You were never poor in grad school,” Dad said. “You won every single grant.”

  Iris shook her head, but her pleasure was obvious. “Well, to make a long story short, a boy from the booth behind us slid in next to me and whispered the name of the song in my ear.”

  “What was it?” Clyde asked, giddy.

  Those with the last name of Nelson already knew the answer, but Dad confirmed it. “The song was ‘Shotgun Wedding’ by Jackson Moon.”

  A wave of appreciative laughter swept over the group. Almost imperceptibly, Dad raised his drink in Mom’s direction and took a sip of his wine. Even Jackson seemed charmed; a wry half smile worked its way up his left cheek. And finally Tamor
a’s party felt like a party—like an event that could warm a house, make it safe and habitable for years to come.

  Someone’s hands pressed down on my shoulders.

  “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  At the sound of his voice, I shouted with relief. “Seth!”

  “Audrey!” he shouted back, equally jubilant. And the way he proceeded to embrace my friends, my parents, even Jackson and Clyde—you would think they had all played for the same football team or fought in the same war. He apologized a second time as he greeted Tamora, but she just waved away his regrets.

  “Pour yourself a drink, Seth. Have some shrimp.”

  “I’d love that, and I will, but first—”

  Seth dropped to his knee in front of my chair.

  My mother gasped. Rosie clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling her own scream.

  “Um.” This could not be happening. I wanted to grab Seth by the armpits and hoist him back into a standing position before he ruined everything that had ever been good, forever.

  Finally, he became aware of his own posture. His cheeks turned crimson and he shut his eyes. “Everyone thinks I’m about to propose, don’t they?”

  Mutely, I nodded.

  “I’m not proposing.”

  My heart unclenched as my dad muttered, “Thank God,” his long exhale like a tire losing air.

  “But I do have an idea,” Seth said.

  I nodded, receptive. Now that marriage was off the table, I was sure I could handle whatever he had in mind.

  “Okay. You know that old motel in town? The one right on the beach, with the freezing cold pool everyone’s always breaking into?”

  “Sure,” I said. “The Surfside Inn.” It was one block west of the Fish Shack, two blocks south of the arcade. Guests of the motel were always leaning over their balconies, exhaling cigarette smoke toward the sea.

  “They’re turning it into apartments. I was on my way to the Qwick Mart and I saw the NOW LEASING sign. I went inside and talked to the manager. That’s why I’m late.”

  “You talked to the manager?” I clung to my confusion, unwilling to follow Seth’s train of thought.

  Maybe it wasn’t a proposal, but it felt uncomfortably close.