The Foreseeable Future Page 25

  “Yeah, and he showed me one of the units. Full disclosure, the place smells pretty moldy. Probably from people hanging out in their wet swimsuits all the time. But if they don’t replace the carpets before we move in, I can do it myself.”

  “Before we move in?”

  “The rent will be cheap. Between my job and yours, we can totally swing it.” Seeing my shock, my hesitation, Seth turned to address my parents. “I know you guys wanted Audrey to live at home and go to Whedon. And I realize you think I’m this brainless janitor who shouldn’t be dating someone as smart and ambitious as Audrey—”

  “We don’t think that,” Iris assured him.

  Nelson looked at her as if to say, We don’t?

  “I just think we’ll both be happy,” Seth said, facing me. “I mean, it’s within walking distance to the nursing home. We could go to work together every night, wake up together every afternoon.”

  As always, the idea of sharing a bed with Seth made me smile. Beds were central to my Seth-based fantasies.

  My smile encouraged him. “We’d have a balcony with an ocean view. Easy access to the Fish Shack for takeout. I’ll build you a campfire on the sand whenever you want one.”

  There was so much hope in Seth’s eyes.

  Softly, I said, “We’ve never even talked about it.”

  And then disappointment settled over his features. He looked like someone who had run out of energy halfway through a performance—like Sara when she’d used up all her fake tears before the cop had finished writing her a speeding ticket.

  Big announcements and grand gestures were not really Seth’s style. Did he think this was what I wanted? For him to be spontaneous, and impulsive?

  A little bit reckless, like me?

  All I knew was that I wanted to calm him down. I wanted him to know that I loved him, that everything would be okay. And because we had an audience, each member on the edge of his or her lawn chair, there was only one thing I could say.

  “All right. We’ll check into the Surfside Inn. Permanently.”

  I ignored my brother burying his face in his hands, my friends exchanging one of their patented looks—we tried—and my father asserting, “We’ll discuss this later,” as if Seth and I weren’t eighteen years old and in possession of our own futures.

  Enduring their live reactions was worth the return of the O’Malley grin. There were no seats left, but Seth grabbed the Igloo cooler Tamora had stocked with bottles of white wine and he sat on that instead. Lacing his fingers through mine, he whispered, “I know it’s not Seattle. Or Shanghai. But we’ll have the whole place to ourselves.”

  Part of me wanted to laugh. Part of me wanted to sob.

  Accidentally, I locked eyes with my mother. She was looking at me like she wanted to check my vital signs.

  Clyde reached for a mason jar of what appeared to be pond water. “Would anyone like some kombucha?” he asked. “It’s home-brewed.”

  Dad took the jar and inspected the liquid. “Is it safe?”

  “Not likely,” Tamora said, just as Jackson strummed a random minor chord. Irritated, she smacked him on the shoulder. “Either put that thing down or play us a song.”

  I took for granted that Jackson, who had been silent since the start of the party, would settle for option A and return the guitar to its battered case. When instead he began to play, I was too surprised to immediately recognize the song—too surprised, and too busy ensuring that my pop culture junkie of a brother kept his phone buried deep in the pocket of his shorts.

  Then, Jackson began to sing.

  When your dad grabbed his shotgun

  I didn’t have a choice

  but I still can’t stand

  the sound of your voice.

  Jackson was a good singer, but he took himself too seriously. The playful lyrics turned maudlin in his mouth.

  The wedding was simple

  if simple means drunk.

  Your family’s prized moonshine?

  I’m through with that junk.

  My parents were squirming, staring into their drinks. Even Tamora looked pained, as if Jackson had forgotten everything she’d ever taught him about pleasing a crowd.

  And then you were moody,

  calves swollen and blue.

  You screamed until the nurse passed out

  and now there’s two of you

  Jackson sang the entire ballad, narrating the couple’s first tumultuous year with their daughter, the wife’s affair with some scoundrel in town, and the slow death of the family’s beagle. By the time the song was finished, only Clyde appeared enamored with his husband’s talents. The rest of us were eyeing the house, wondering who would be the first to make a beeline for the bathroom, if only for a moment free of secondhand embarrassment.

  “Wow,” Sara said finally. “That was special.”

  “Sure was,” Seth agreed.

  Jackson’s smile was tight. Accustomed to his legions of boot-stomping, whiskey-shooting fans, he was obviously disappointed by our lack of enthusiasm.

  Iris said, “I guess there’s a reason that’s our song.”

  She was talking to Nelson, and only a trace of regret prevented the comment from sounding flat-out flirtatious. Tamora, unfamiliar with the nuances of my mother’s voice—and also a little bit tipsy—said, “You two are still young. You have the rest of your lives to work things out.”

  Dad pointed to her as if she’d said something profound. “Thank you. That’s exactly why Iris should just come home.”

  For a second, my mother appeared to consider it. Her eyes rolled skyward and her finger skated along the rim of her wineglass. Then she shook her head, returned her gaze to earth. “The problem, Nelson, is that you’re not the only one who’s made mistakes.”

  Later, it would occur to me that Mom had been referring to her Italian suitor, about whom Dad still knew nothing. Soon, before my parents could officially settle the score—either calling it even or calling a divorce lawyer—Mom would have to confess to Nelson that she’d cheated on him.

  But in this moment, I thought she meant a different mistake entirely.

  Seth had just finished pouring himself some Coke and was offering the two-liter bottle to my little sister, who appeared as panicked as she always did when addressed by my boyfriend. Giving up, Seth set the bottle down and sipped his soda. I was asking too much of him, subjecting him to my family’s ongoing drama. Our arguments, insults, and sudden revelations. Our unpredictability.

  I was asking too much of him, and I wasn’t going to stop.

  At the exact moment he reached for some shrimp, I said, “Seth, I can’t live in a water-damaged motel with you.”

  He blinked. He retracted his arm. “You can’t?”

  Sara’s lawn chair squeaked as she inched it closer. I ought to have pulled Seth into the privacy of Tamora’s house; privacy was what he would have preferred. But what I needed to say to him felt both urgent and fleeting, like if I didn’t spit it out, this instant, I might permanently lose my nerve.

  “I’m moving to Seattle.”

  There was no way they’d already given the position to someone else. I was Audrey Nelson. I was California Teen Hero Saves Life of a Friend, and I was damn good at my job.

  “I need to get out of this town, because if I stay here another year I will come to loathe absolutely everything we both love about it. I’m tired of driving up and down the same stretch of highway. I’m tired of knowing about every speed trap and pothole and blind corner. I’m tired of never meeting anyone I haven’t met before. I’m tired of sand in my sheets. And I swear to God, Seth, I cannot eat another clam strip.”

  I was running out of breath. He was looking at me the way you look at someone who is suffering from a clam strip–induced crisis.

  Also: the way you look at someone who is breaking your h
eart.

  “I just need to figure out who I am, apart from this place, apart from my friends, apart from”—I gestured haphazardly to our audience—“all these people.”

  Several minor protests came from Sara, Dad, and Jake. Nothing from my mother or Tamora.

  Seth had his hands behind his head, fingers buried in his hair. It was his way of saying I don’t know, and slow down, and let me think.

  I wasn’t sure what was more unlikely—that I had fallen for the most popular boy in Crescent Bay, or that I had managed to thoroughly overwhelm him.

  Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing I could do to the love of my life.

  “So you’re taking the job,” he said.

  “And I need you to come with me.”

  I tried to make my need sound as indisputable as the weather.

  Seth’s cheek twitched. “What?”

  “I will be miserable if I go without you. I will be miserable if I stay, and I’m pretty sure you’ll be miserable, too.”

  Dropping his voice, Seth said, “Is this how we’re going to make all of our decisions? Assemble your friends and family and blindside each other with plans?”

  “I hope so,” Jake said.

  “No,” I said to Seth, unsure if he was more mad at me or amused by me. “If you hate Seattle, we’ll come back. And anytime you’re worried about your dad, we’ll visit. The second you need something as bad as I need this, I swear, I’ll make sure you get it.”

  Seth angled his chin toward the clouds. I could see the patches of scruff on his neck, the stubble that felt more abrasive against my skin than he probably realized. Seth wasn’t perfect. He loved unconventional flavors of beef jerky and asked me, too frequently, if I felt like tossing a ball around. He was overly friendly. He smiled too much.

  He had been a Boy Scout from the ages of ten to seventeen.

  “Okay,” he said, dipping his chin. “I’ll go.”

  Someone emitted a single inappropriate cheer. I wasn’t willing to tear my eyes away from Seth, but my money was on Clyde.

  “You will?”

  “It’s a pretty good offer. You should have made it months ago.”

  “I barely knew you months ago.”

  Seth grinned and took my hand. He pulled me to my feet. “You barely know me now.”

  We kissed in front of my best friends, my entire family, a rebellious senior citizen, a retired country music legend and his kombucha-drinking husband. We kissed amid the sea of chairs and empty glasses, the uneaten shrimp, the weeds and the crumbling birdbath. It was mortifying. It was exhilarating. And maybe it should have bothered me, Seth’s idea that I barely knew him after everything we’d been through this summer. Everything I’d almost given up for him.

  The idea didn’t bother me at all.

  I suspected I would love him, whoever he turned out to be.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Seth left the party early, anxious to talk to his dad and his brothers about his now imminent move to Washington with a girl from school. Jackson urged the rest of us out the door when Tamora’s eyelids began to droop, and it became clear that she might, for once, be persuaded to retire before midnight.

  I didn’t know how to say good-bye to her. The two of us had never hugged, and even though she followed me out to the driveway—where she rested a hand on the hood of her Thunderbird and looked at me like, Your move, Nurse Nelson—I didn’t feel capable of wrapping my arms around her small frame, or of insulting her with a perfunctory kiss on the cheek.

  In front of my friends and family, I said to Tamora, “Thank you for not dying this summer.”

  My mother cringed and Rosie dissolved into weary giggles. Sara and Elliot took the opportunity to pat me on the shoulder, climb inside of Sara’s pickup truck, and quit this whole scene.

  Tamora was the only one who took my gratitude in stride. “Thank you for not attempting to save my life,” she countered.

  “I would never. I heard your Do Not Resuscitate order loud and clear.”

  Tamora’s smirk soon yielded to a yawn. “Whose clown car?” she asked, nodding to the MINI Cooper parked across the gravel road.

  “My dad’s.”

  “Then what is he doing, unlocking the door to that utility vehicle?”

  I followed Tamora’s line of sight. My father was taking his old place behind the wheel of the minivan. Mom had claimed the passenger side while Jake and Rosie, presumably, had already loaded themselves into the back.

  Had my parents forgotten they were supposed to be separated?

  Were they drunk?

  Iris, I knew, rarely had more than a drink in a sitting. Dad, too, had a penchant for respecting his limits.

  “All right.” I was confused, and a little annoyed. “I guess I’m driving home alone.”

  Tamora shook her head. “Ride with your family. You can come back for your car in the morning. Bring Seth with you. I have some advice for that boy.”

  Wary, I asked her, “What kind of advice?”

  She rolled her sea glass eyes. “Fashion advice. What else?”

  The Nelsons were waiting for me to get in the van. Whether my parents were making a statement or an absentminded error, I played along.

  As I squeezed in beside Jake and Rosie, they both stared straight ahead, seat belts fastened and hands in their laps. None of us so much as glanced at the MINI as we left it behind. None of us said a word until the turnoff for Tamora’s neighborhood was firmly in our rearview mirror.

  When we were safely on the 101, Jake heaved a sigh. “I bet you’ll make so many new friends in Seattle.”

  “Oh, really?” I asked, not falling for it.

  “Yeah. You’ll play bingo, catch the early bird special at Denny’s. Did you know that cups of coffee are only a buck if you’re fifty-five or older?”

  “That’s a really good deal,” Rosie deadpanned.

  To my brother, I said, “You were the one who begged me to meet Tamora Sinclair. Did I not come through for you? Plus, I got you into a party with the two most famous people in Crescent Bay.”

  “Was that man in the white pants a musician?” Dad asked. “I missed that. I thought Mr. Moon was the only celebrity guest.”

  “Um, I think Audrey was counting herself as famous,” Rosie explained.

  “Oh!” Dad said. “Interesting.”

  All of us became simultaneously aware of Mom’s silence. She wasn’t attempting to rein in our ribbing, to act as referee, or assure me that I’d always be a celebrity guest in her heart.

  “Hey.” Dad reached over the center console to nudge her knee. “What did you mean, before, when you said I wasn’t the only one who’d made mistakes?”

  “Yeah, Mom.” Rosie’s attempt to lean forward was so abrupt that the seat belt locked, pinning her to the seat. “What did you mean?”

  Mom turned to Dad. I studied her profile, unable to tell if her eyes were damp or just reflecting light from the dashboard. “I’ll tell you, but not in front of the kids.”

  “Back at the house?” Dad asked. We had already missed the exit for Professor Hale’s beach cottage. We were denying its existence, the same way we were denying having arrived at a party in separate cars.

  “Back at the house,” Mom confirmed.

  I wasn’t necessarily expecting them to forgive each other. I wasn’t even expecting my mother to stay the night. But in that moment, I felt as I always had, pressed against my siblings on the backseat of the minivan. Like we were five people with nothing in common. Five people too weird to belong to anyone else. Five people who defined home by the same house, the same stretch of ocean, the same highway—for another few miles, at least.

  Acknowledgments

  Endless thanks to my agent, Susan Ginsburg, who could not be kinder, smarter, or more generous with her time. I’m also grateful to the amazing team at Dial, especia
lly to my editor, Namrata Tripathi—whose thoughtful notes and compelling questions improved this book on every level—and to Stacey Friedberg, whose comments on an early draft were invaluable. More thanks to Stacy Testa at Writers House for years of swift communication and publishing prowess.

  I also want to thank Vikki VanSickle for her encouragement at a crucial stage, and for all those conversations over all those blueberry pancakes.

  Thanks to Wes, who can’t read yet, but whose arrival has served as a crash course in patience, multitasking, and astonishing love.

  And to Dan Schillinger, who is the reason I remember everything.

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