The Foreseeable Future Page 5

  “I doubt it. I was a baby once, you know.”

  “Yes,” Dad confirmed, “but you were bald and prone to rashes.”

  “Gross,” said Rosie.

  For dinner we got takeout from the Fish Shack and carried our order down to the beach. In my life, I’d consumed more fried clams from the Fish Shack than was probably safe. Even before Dad passed me my food, I could taste the bland, rubbery shellfish, the lemon-soaked breading. It was the taste of Crescent Bay, the taste of boredom. And at the same time, the food was delicious—especially with some extra salt and the wind whipping my hair into my tartar sauce. As my family ate, we leaned against a log and watched the sun sink into the ocean, flares of orange visible through the clouds. Dad said, “I can’t believe two-thirds of my children now boast high school diplomas!”

  “We would never boast about our diplomas,” said my brother, tearing open a packet of ketchup.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “that would be hella uncouth.”

  Rosie giggled some more.

  Ignoring us, Dad said, “What do you think you’ll study, Aud?” as if the question was brand-new, a topic over which no one had ever fretted.

  Jake answered through a fake cough: “Poli-sci.”

  “Maybe I’ll study business,” I said lazily, knowing Whedon offered no such degree.

  “Perfect,” Dad said. “You can support me in my infirmity.”

  “That’s the eldest child’s burden, I think.”

  Jake scoffed. “Please. I won’t even be done with my PhD by the time Dad’s demented.”

  Our father dipped his chin to conceal a combination of amusement and dismay. “We’ve talked about this, Jakey,” he said, recovering. “Five years. Nelsons write their dissertations in five years flat.”

  “Nobody cares what I want to study,” Rosie whined.

  “That’s because you’re the youngest,” Jake explained. “By the time you’re eighteen, Mom and Dad will be so worn out from raising me and Audrey, they’ll let you join the circus.”

  “I don’t want to join the circus,” Rosie said. “But maybe I want to major in Marine Biology.”

  The rest of us stared at her. She wiggled her butt deeper into the sand. “Or else English,” she amended.

  Dad retrieved his phone from his pocket. “Let’s wake up Iris.”

  “Don’t do that,” Jake protested. “Let her sleep.”

  But Dad was already scrolling through his contacts. His eyes brightened when Mom answered on the first ring. “Say hello to Whedon’s most promising incoming freshman!” he shouted before passing the phone to me.

  I reached across my siblings. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, honey.” Her voice was thick with sleep. “Congratulations. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there.”

  “That’s okay.” I raked my fingers through the cold sand. Even when I hadn’t been actively missing my mother, the sound of her voice always drilled a hole in my heart. I wondered if it was a permanent weakness or something I’d grow out of.

  “You start at the old folks’ home tomorrow, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, unsurprised that she remembered. My mother could probably recall the date and duration of my last head cold, along with the precise circumstances under which I’d lost my final baby tooth.

  “That’s great. That’ll be such an interesting experience to have before college.” I knew my mother was bluffing. She thought that if she objected to my choice of a summer job, the work would only appeal to me more. Not because I was so rebellious, constantly scheming to piss off my parents, but because my mother was a woman of theories.

  Sometimes, I wasn’t sure she could see me through all those theories.

  “Yeah, I think so,” was all I said. Because even if her support was contrived, it still felt good. The way ice cream still tastes like ice cream, even when you’re five years old and someone’s bribing you to behave.

  “When does your shift end?”

  “Five a.m.”

  “Well, if you want to talk afterward, you know who to call.”

  Beside me, my brother was staring intently at the ocean. Allusions to my new job always made him uncomfortable. That I wanted to be a CNA was confusing to him, and Jake had that big-brother inability to cope with confusion. It was like he needed to know me better than I knew myself.

  “Thanks,” I said to Mom.

  I could hear her yawning. “I better let you get back to your celebration.”

  “Want to talk to Dad again?” I tried to catch his eye, but he had joined Jake’s staring contest with the Pacific.

  “No thanks,” she said. “I’ll catch up with him later.”

  The speed with which she hung up unsettled me. It wasn’t normal for my parents to decline a chance to exchange last-minute good-byes, reminders, instructions. Even when they weren’t separated by half the world, just a mile or two, their communication tended toward constant.

  “Okay, Ro,” I said, in need of distraction. “Tell us about your future as a marine biologist.”

  The tips of my sister’s ears turned pink. “I heard that you get to swim with dolphins. I was mostly kidding.”

  Dad jostled her shoulder. “Pick English. One of my kids should write a best-selling memoir about what it was like to be reared by the aloof-yet-charming novelist Hunter Nelson. The opportunity is my gift to you.”

  Rosie took a noisy slurp of her soda, sucking up the dregs from beneath the ice. “Work on the charming part, and it’s a deal.”

  Dad grinned at the three of us, like he had never been so proud of his sandy, salty brood.

  * * *

  * * *

  When I turned fifteen, Sara and Elliot came to my backyard birthday party. They were the only guests to whom I wasn’t directly related by blood. Afterward, the three of us were alone in my room when Elliot said, appalled, “Your family is so mean.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, looking from Sara to Elliot, wondering who had hurt them and how I’d missed it.

  “Not to us,” Sara clarified. “You’re mean to each other.”

  At fifteen, I vaguely understood that my family members had the potential to strike outsiders as rowdy and rude. I knew, also, that our behavior was extra abrasive on special occasions, such as birthdays, and that my mother—who didn’t even participate in the aggression—provided the security we needed to proceed with it. Because even if someone started crying, Iris would be there to bandage his or her wounds. What I hadn’t realized was how purely heartless we seemed, until my friends began listing examples.

  First, ten-year-old Rosie had emerged from the bathroom having blow-dried her hair for the first time ever, and Dad had said, “Whoa, who invited Tom Petty?”

  Jake challenged our father to name a single Tom Petty song and, when he couldn’t, tried to call Dad a dilettante but accidentally said debutante. Dad guffawed and feigned concern over my brother’s soon-to-be-released SAT scores. And I, bored of the vocabulary mishap, asked the group, “Who do you guys think would win if Mom and Dad arm wrestled?”

  Mom won, and the rest of us made sure Nelson never lived it down.

  But I didn’t really believe we were mean. On nights like tonight, when we shared dinner in the sand, lightly ridiculing one another in a way that proved we knew one another—then coming home and drifting wordlessly, comfortably into our respective corners—I wasn’t sure I’d ever completely belong to anyone aside from the Nelsons. Our meanness was a by-product of our closeness. We strove to offend one another just to prove it wasn’t really possible; we were indivisible.

  Before bed, I checked my phone one last time, curious to see if I’d been tagged in the background of any graduation selfies captioned, We did it! or What a wild ride!

  My only notification was for an unread e-mail. It was from a blogging platform I had signed up for years ago
and never used. I would have dismissed the message as junk if not for its subject line: Someone you know (Iris Cox Nelson) has started a blog!

  Automatically, I followed the link. In general my mother was blind to the nuances of the World Wide Web; she couldn’t have defined meme or troll or clickbait. But even Iris made the occasional attempt to get with the times. For instance, she had a Twitter account featuring a single tweet—Enjoying a night off w/my girls!!—referring to the time she and Rosie and I drove forty miles to see The Hunger Games, and also a Facebook profile with a picture she hadn’t changed in seven years.

  I was expecting to find unorganized bits of her research, or else a dumping ground for photos of the Mediterranean. The blog’s title, SPRUNG FREE IN ITALY!, didn’t bother me until I read the subhead:

  An anonymous account of my trial separation from my husband of twenty-five years.

  It was a joke. A prank.

  I reminded myself that the Internet was not real life—that anyone could impersonate anyone. Meanwhile, my chest tightened uncomfortably and my eyes skimmed the post. It was a list. A list of reasons.

  He still hasn’t forgiven me for being the first to get tenure.

  Claims to be a feminist but doesn’t pull his weight with the kids or housework.

  I felt dizzy, even though I was leaning against a dune of pillows. Apparently I’d made some kind of noise; Rosie had been reading a book on the top bunk, but now she was leaning over the edge of her mattress, her hair waterfalling, demanding, “Audrey, what happened?”

  Last summer, when I wanted to go out to dinner to celebrate a forthcoming publication, he advised me to “choose my celebrations as I would my battles.”

  Insists upon working at the kitchen table but groans theatrically anytime someone tries to use the room for food prep.

  At conference last year, introduced me as “Wife” rather than “Professor N.”

  I struggled to think of a response for my little sister. She didn’t need to know about the separation because it wasn’t real. She didn’t need to know about our mother’s blog because it would be gone by morning—like when a celebrity accidentally tweets something offensive.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Mom’s just bugging me.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Rosie relaxed. “Did she forward you that article about how kids who do a shitload of extracurricular activities end up making more money?”

  Needs me more than ever. Loves me less.

  Chews ice.

  “Yup,” I managed.

  “So annoying!” Rosie commiserated. “Like, can we live?”

  I powered off my phone, breathing a sigh of relief as the screen went black.

  “I wish,” I told her.

  SEVEN

  My supervisor was an RN in her early twenties named Maureen, who wore scrubs patterned with flamingos and seemed to hate me. For the first few hours of my shift, she’d lulled me into a false sense of security, playing with my hair and regaling me with anecdotes starring her twin toddlers, Evan and Eve. Then, as our midnight break approached—mysteriously, it was still called lunch—Maureen’s veneer of friendliness began to crack. I was helping Mrs. Goldstein brush her teeth when Maureen chirped, “We don’t have all night, here!” with an aggressive trill of laughter.

  I could have worked faster. The issue was that brushing another person’s teeth was just as awkwardly intimate as you would expect—particularly the molars—and it didn’t seem right to speed through the task as if scrubbing grime from a toilet bowl. Toward the end of our rounds, Maureen lost it when I failed to pull Mr. Leary’s blanket all the way up to his chin. “Try not to give anyone pneumonia on your first night,” she snapped, right over Mr. Leary’s sleeping body.

  I took a breath. I could feel my composure unraveling. Part of me wanted to tell Maureen that it was difficult to focus on every single rule I’d learned in night school when, more recently, I’d learned that my parents were secretly separated. That my mother hadn’t been drawn to Italy by the promise of work so much as she’d been driven from home by the presence of Dad. These were facts that broke every rule, every assumption I’d ever made in my life.

  But whining to my supervisor about my newly shattered innocence—as if she were my friend, or my guidance counselor—would have felt hopelessly juvenile. I didn’t know a lot about being an adult, but I knew it meant not crying on the job.

  I apologized. We moved on to the next resident’s room.

  By lunchtime, I was conflicted. I needed a break from Maureen’s hawk eyes, a chance to assess whether I could actually do this job or if my incompetence was a permanent thing. But a break would mean a chance to confirm that my mother’s blog had not, in fact, vanished into thin air. Since this morning, she had already updated with a fresh post entitled Reasons, Part II.

  In the end, I didn’t get a choice; Maureen followed me into the break room. The moment I sat down, she sent a clipboard skidding across the table.

  “What is this,” she demanded.

  I swigged from my Diet Coke and answered, “That would be Mrs. Lu’s chart.”

  Maureen massaged her eyelids. Her frustration clashed with her flamingo scrubs. “Please see what you wrote under oral intake.”

  “One hundred and fifty milliliters of apple juice,” I recited obediently.

  “Is that how much you think she drank before bed?”

  “Yes. That’s why I wrote it down.”

  “Audrey? Sweetie? I’m going to need you to start paying attention. Because I was in Mrs. Lu’s room with you, and it was obvious to me that she consumed one hundred and eighty milliliters of juice. Do you think maybe you were distracted by the TV?”

  “Uh.” The television in Mrs. Lu’s room was tuned to the Home Shopping Network, but Maureen had been the one captivated by gemstones and exercise machines—not me.

  “You have to stay focused, all right?” She paused. “Are you hearing my feedback?”

  I forced myself to meet her eyes for a single second. When I looked away, I was horrified by the presence of Seth O’Malley, hovering in the doorway. He was wearing his bleach-stained jeans, his hair in a sanitary knot at the nape of his neck. My heart raced as my cheeks burned. I wondered how long he’d been standing there, and how much he’d heard.

  Oblivious to our audience, Maureen sang, “I need to know you’re hearing my feedback. . . .”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, staring down at the linoleum, willing Seth to leave. “I heard you.”

  Maureen nodded, satisfied, and went to the freezer to retrieve a Lean Cuisine Hot Pocket.

  When I finally looked up, Seth was gone.

  * * *

  * * *

  I found him after work, leaning against the trunk of his Jeep. Sunlight was just starting to seep through the clouds. In one hand, Seth clutched two small bottles of apple juice—in the other, a brown paper bag.

  I hadn’t planned on acknowledging what had happened in the break room, now or ever, but as Seth passed me a juice, brushing his knuckles against mine, I found I was too exhausted to be embarrassed. Nothing mattered except that I hadn’t gotten fired, and that I’d soon be in bed.

  “I don’t have to tell you how many milliliters are in this, do I?”

  Seth scoffed. “Are you kidding? I won’t stand for that metric nonsense. I’m an American, and that there is eight fluid ounces of naturally flavored juice beverage.”

  Next he presented me with the paper bag, still warm. Inside were two muffins with fresh blueberries and cream cheese centers. I knew about the cream cheese centers only because these muffins were a hot topic among the residents; even on my first night, I’d heard them referenced more than once.

  “Courtesy of Chef Tony,” said Seth.

  I reached into the bag. “Tony’s a good man.”

  “Tony’s an as
shole,” Seth corrected me. “But he makes good muffins.”

  It was subtle, Seth’s way of letting me know that he, too, had a boss who used his minuscule amount of power for evil. I appreciated the solidarity almost as much as the free breakfast.

  When I had swallowed the last bite, Seth slumped against the car, pressing his shoulder into mine. I didn’t want him to ever move. “Let’s walk on the beach,” he said.

  “It’s raining.”

  “It’s not raining. It’s just wet.”

  The distinction only made sense on the coast, but I knew what he meant. Drops never really fell. Instead, humidity and ocean mist mingled to form a constant wall of moisture. You felt nothing and got soaked anyway.

  “Okay,” I agreed. The muffins had given me a fresh surge of energy, and now I felt like staying close to Seth. I was starting to realize I was happier when he was near me.

  We both had cars parked at the nursing home, but I willingly climbed into Seth’s Jeep. It meant that later he would have to drive me back up the bluff, but I didn’t point this out. The Jeep, I noticed, no longer smelled like Rusty Tillman’s puke. It smelled primarily like fresh-cut firewood, and just a bit like dirty laundry.

  Dangling from the rearview mirror was a picture of a little kid, his chubby arm thrown around a black lab. When I asked, Seth said, “My nephew.”

  We parked in the dunes. Predictably, the beach was empty, cold, and decked with fog. My hospital scrubs were a poor shield against the wind and the water. I only had to shiver once before Seth unzipped his hoodie and gave it to me.

  “So, how was your first night?” he asked. “Aside from the juice fiasco?”

  Before we’d started talking in Mr. Longo’s class, I would never have expected Seth to use words like fiasco.