The Foreseeable Future Page 9

  “You said it felt like home and also like the opposite of home, all at once.”

  “Oh.”

  With a wistful sigh, she confessed, “That’s how I’m starting to feel about Naples.”

  She had opened the door between the party and wherever she was hiding. The roar of fun in a foreign language crackled through the phone. Given my own nocturnal schedule, plus the nine-hour time difference, I wasn’t sure if we should say good night or good-bye.

  Instead, she told me to be safe.

  * * *

  * * *

  Normally when I thought about that trip to Seattle, it was the city I remembered. The tall buildings on the edge of the ink-blue water. Slick sidewalks, steep hills, buses barreling down narrow streets. I’d loved the hectic, unpolished feel of Pike Place combined with the fresh scent coming off the Puget Sound. I’d loved the view of Mt. Rainier from our hotel room—how the city didn’t force you to forget its wilder surroundings.

  As I got ready for work that night, I remembered something else about our Seattle trip. It was on the interminable drive north, across the entire state of Oregon, that I had first heard Jackson Moon.

  Mom’s preference had actually been to fly. She was slated to present at a conference in Seattle and always got nervous before any public speaking event that took place outside of a classroom. “I don’t want to stew in my own anxiety for the twelve hours it takes to drive,” she’d told Dad. But, for our father, nothing could ever diminish the appeal of a family road trip.

  He even chose the scenic route.

  We were on Highway 97, bisecting the Willamette National Forest, when Dad began scanning the radio for something he could mock. He passed by classical, mariachi, and a man reading aloud from the New Testament without inflection. Then, two notes into a cheesy country song, Mom and Dad both hooted with surprise and began to sing along. At first, the singer—who sounded like Johnny Cash without the edge—seemed to be crooning a ballad about his one true love. But when I actually paid attention to the lyrics, I realized he was listing all the reasons his marriage was a disaster.

  When your dad got out his shotgun

  I didn’t have a choice

  but I still can’t stand

  the sound of your voice.

  And,

  You’re always hoping

  I’ll fall down that well,

  but my wish for you

  is too gruesome to tell.

  Our parents did not explain why they knew every clumsy word of that song, or why it delighted them so much. They didn’t have to. In the backseat, Rosie and Jake and I were hysterical with laughter, our seat belts cutting into our necks as we doubled over. The song was funny because we’d been in the car for hours. It was funny because our coastal parents had adopted Southern twangs. It was funny because they were singing like they hated each other, when it was the opposite of the truth.

  On our second day in Seattle, while Mom attended her conference, Dad allowed Jake and me to wander from the hotel and explore Capitol Hill. Rapidly, I fell in love with that neighborhood. I liked the sidewalks cracked by enormous tree roots, the restaurants and bars already crowded on a rainy afternoon. I liked the telephone poles plastered with flyers for upcoming shows and poetry readings. A neon sign flashing WASH! DRY! FOLD! above a Laundromat made me think that even laundry would be more exciting in the city.

  To escape a sudden downpour, Jake and I ducked into a used record shop. The music playing through the speakers behind the counter was country. This time, the lyrics were conventionally sweet, but we recognized the guy’s voice, which had the strange quality of being both scratchy and syrupy.

  The girl manning the register wore dreadlocks twisted in a hive atop her head, and she beamed when we asked what she was listening to. “Jackson Moon,” she said. “It’s so retro.”

  She tossed us the empty CD case. In his photo, Jackson looked like James Dean if he’d been forced into a pair of overalls. The plastic case bore a five-dollar price sticker. We bought it, and presented it to our parents at dinner.

  Their reaction had been more amused—less overjoyed, less stunned by the coincidence—than my brother and I had hoped. But they kept the disc in the minivan’s glove compartment, and listening to “Shotgun Wedding” became a tradition. On long drives, when our collective mood began to slip—when Ro was on the verge of asking “How much longer?” and Jake mere moments from announcing he had to pee, again—Dad would slip Jackson Moon into the stereo and skip to track seven.

  We would laugh, as a family, at the doomed country couple.

  * * *

  * * *

  At work that night, I met the new resident in room 64. She was not happy. Earlier she had refused to eat in the dining room with everyone else, and now, because it was her first night, I was supposed to give her a second chance. But when I set down a tray, the woman just poked at the food, then let her fork fall into her mashed potatoes.

  My supervisor hovered over the table while I pretended to be busy counting clean towels and rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom. After a few minutes had passed and the woman was still staring morosely out the window, Maureen cleared her throat.

  I glanced at the clipboard dangling from the bedframe, craning my neck to read the patient’s name. “Can you take a few more bites, please, Tamora?”

  Unsure of how to pronounce Tamora, I had put the emphasis on the first syllable, which was wrong; I could tell by the way she glared at me. The lower half of Tamora’s face was slack, not just with age, but maybe with an effort not to cry.

  “No,” she said.

  I shrugged at Maureen, who crossed her arms and extended her neck, birdlike, as an alternative to scolding me. Tonight was my last shift as an unpaid trainee. To escape Maureen’s constant supervision—to interact with my residents without her frequent scoffs, snorts, and interjections— was all I really wanted.

  “Uh,” I said, lacking conviction, “just try to take a few more bites.”

  “Or else . . .” Tamora rotated her hand in the air, reminding me of particular teachers from Crescent Bay High, to whom you could never speak quickly enough, whose time you always seemed to be wasting.

  “Or else . . . nothing. But if you do, you can have two puddings!” This tactic always worked on Mr. Leary, down the hall.

  Tamora narrowed her eyes, which were greenish blue, like sea glass. “You’re going to be a terrible mother,” she informed me. “You can’t negotiate with your children. They have to understand that your word is final.”

  “Uh.” I looked at Maureen, who was suddenly and conveniently captivated by something on TV. The volume was up way too high, which I somehow doubted was Tamora’s preference. “You’re not a child,” I told her.

  “Then stop treating me like one,” she snapped.

  For a moment, the three of us were silent. Tamora turned back toward the window and watched the waves crashing against the rocks.

  Maureen gestured for me to try another strategy. When desperate for a resident’s cooperation, we were encouraged to invoke their health directly and, less directly, their dwindling life expectancy. But before I could try, Tamora said, “Do you know what I had for dinner last night?”

  “Nope,” I said, relieved. “What’d you have?”

  “Two In-N-Out Burgers, animal-style, and a chocolate milk shake. Which I consumed in the driver’s seat of a Ford Thunderbird that no longer belongs to me. So—”

  “Hold up.” My voice lifted with excitement. “Isn’t the closest In-N-Out Burger, like, a hundred miles away?”

  “Yes, it is.” She made withering eye contact. “So if you don’t mind, I’d like to preserve my memory of that meal a while longer, before I tarnish it with your—” She waved her hand above the untouched tray—“meat loaf.”

  Normally, residents who were admitted directly to the Assisted Living wing of
the nursing home were not capable of driving, or of eating anything animal-style. I wondered why Tamora hadn’t qualified for Independent Living, where she would have been allowed to park her car outside the private entrance to her own apartment. I gave Maureen a look, like, Are you sure this lady’s in the right place?

  Maureen stared meaningfully at Tamora’s care plan. I grabbed the clipboard and skimmed the resident’s long list of symptoms—dizzy spells, shortness of breath, migraines, blurred vision, decreased appetite—which, mysteriously, did not culminate in a diagnosis.

  “All right,” I said, dropping the clipboard and letting it swing from the bedpost. “You can wait until breakfast.”

  “Really?” Maureen asked. “That’s your solution, Audrey?”

  I shrugged. “I’m siding with Tamora on this one.”

  I was careful to pronounce her name correctly this time, earning me a glimmer of approval from Tamora herself.

  Maureen rolled her blue-shadowed eyes and jerked her head toward the door, indicating that she wanted to yell at me in the hallway. That was when I heard a familiar name blasting from the TV speakers.

  The first time I saw the video, I was impressed by its quality. Whoever had stood in the sand and filmed me performing CPR on Cameron had clearly just purchased a new phone. Maybe they’d even studied some cinematography. You could see my face, sweat-slicked and tense with concentration, and the muscles flexing beneath the soft flesh of my upper arms. The film proved that Cameron’s lips were not blue, like I remembered, but practically purple—her mouth open and disturbingly slack. A wider shot revealed the crowd of people surrounding us, the water rolling toward the horizon, a sunset so vibrant it almost looked fake.

  The newscaster managed to sound both vapid and alarmed. “Cameron Suzuki, an eighteen-year-old graduate of Crescent Bay High School who suffered sudden cardiac arrest at a Fourth of July picnic, was lucky to be in the company of fellow teen and Certified Nurse Assistant Audrey Nelson, whose expert administration of CPR saved Suzuki’s life. The two girls were on a double date, looking forward to their town’s annual fireworks show, when Nelson witnessed her friend’s collapse. If not for Nelson’s training and uncanny ability to stay calm under pressure, Suzuki would have died.”

  The footage was replaced by a trio of newscasters sitting at a long desk in front of a generic beach background.

  “Where is Cameron now?” asked the less bald of the two men.

  The woman who had delivered the voice-over answered, “She’s recuperating at Steeds Memorial.”

  “Holy smokes,” said the unambiguously bald guy. “Imagine anyone, let alone a teenage girl, jumping into action like that. Do you think it was just a burst of adrenaline, telling her what to do?”

  Here, I was vaguely aware of Tamora interjecting, “Imbecile.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think, Don,” said the female newscaster. “I think some of us are just natural caretakers. Some women excel at First Aid and keeping calm, no matter the emergency. This girl is a born nurse, is what I think.”

  In unison, both men repeated, “Wow.”

  One of them jerked his head toward the camera and made urgent eye contact with his viewers. “When we return . . . a grizzly bear at the Sacramento Zoo gives birth to not one, but two healthy cubs.”

  A commercial for orange juice filled the screen.

  At my side, Maureen stood with her mouth agape. Tamora was frowning at the name tag hanging from my neck, as if not totally convinced that the teen godsend from the news and the awkward CNA who bartered with pudding cups were the same person.

  “Maybe you won’t be such a bad mother,” Tamora said finally. “You’ll keep the kids alive at least.”

  My first impulse was to wonder if my dad had seen the story. When I concluded that no, there was no way—the TV in our house was only ever used as a vehicle for Netflix—I wondered if I could call the station and ask them to send me a copy of the video. I wanted my family to see it. My brother had been class valedictorian; he had won essay contests, surfing competitions, scholarships. I had never won anything, but now, my expert CPR skills had been praised on the evening news. The story wasn’t entirely factual—whose idea had it been to say we were on a double date?—but still.

  “Just so we’re clear,” Tamora said, “if I go down, you can just let nature take its course.”

  I released the nervous laugh of someone trying to avoid chitchat at the gas station. The contrast between Tamora’s amusement and Maureen’s disbelief was a lot to handle.

  “I’m taking my break,” I announced. It was early, but I wanted to find Seth.

  “Wait,” Tamora demanded. “Did you decline to comment?”

  I was already halfway out the door. “What?”

  “When they called you,” she explained.

  “Nobody called me.”

  “Oh.” She nodded grimly. “They will.”

  In that moment, it was easy to dismiss a vague projection from an old woman. I flashed her what I hoped was a warm smile and left the room.

  * * *

  * * *

  I texted Seth and asked him to meet me by the Dumpsters outside the kitchen, a spot that had the best view during the day. As I pushed through the main doors and rounded the stucco corner of the building, the darkness exaggerated the sound of the waves smacking against the bluff.

  Seth was already waiting. He stooped, slightly, as if to hug or kiss me hello—and I was so unprepared for a romantic greeting, I skidded to a halt, emitting a series of fractured sentences. “Someone filmed it. Cameron and me. Then sent it to the news. One of the anchors, bald, he thinks girls can’t do CPR.”

  Seth stared at me, bewildered. “Someone filmed you?”

  “Yeah. Performing CPR on Cameron Suzuki.”

  He frowned, and I regretted calling Cameron by her first and last name, like she was someone we barely knew.

  “Wow.” He heaved a colossal sigh. “That sucks.”

  I blinked. Seth had mistaken my excitement for panic. It was possible we didn’t know each other all that well.

  “But it’ll be okay,” he went on.

  “It will?” I asked, cautious.

  “Yeah. I mean, maybe they’ll run the story a few more times. But then a whale will wash up on the beach, or someone will get themselves killed on the 101. . . .” Seth’s cheek twitched as he trailed off, formulating a question. “Does the video show Cameron’s face?”

  I nodded.

  “Is it . . . bad?”

  “A little,” I said, shame washing over me. Anyone’s face drained of blood and oxygen—let alone the face of someone you cared about—was bad. “It was the Steeds County News,” I said. “She might have seen it.”

  “Nah,” Seth said. “She’s still recovering. She had her pacemaker put in today.”

  “Oh.” Clearly he’d been in touch with Cameron, or her family. Of all the feelings to which I was not entitled, jealousy topped the list.

  Seth was standing at a distance, tightening his ponytail. “I can’t believe someone filmed it.”

  I shrugged. “People film things. It’s like a reflex.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Never?”

  From the pocket of his jeans, Seth produced a beat-up flip phone. “See? No video camera.”

  “Whoa.” I grabbed it, grateful for the distraction. “This thing is sort of pathetic.”

  “It works fine.”

  “Does it, though?” The phone’s outer shell had a small, cloudy screen that I assumed was supposed to tell the time, but didn’t.

  “It makes calls. What do you need that fancy one for?” He nodded at my iPhone, the shape of which was visible through the breast pocket of my scrubs. My phone, its face a spiderweb of cracks, was two years old. Mom and Dad had given it to me for my sixteenth birthday.

  “Everyt
hing,” I said. “Music, pictures, maps. What do you do if you get lost?”

  “We live on the coast. How would you ever get lost?”

  I thought of all the times I had entered Sara’s address into my GPS app, just to see the familiar section of the road highlighted, the ocean a static blue mass on one side of the screen.

  Seth had a point. “Okay,” I said, “but what do you do if you need to know something fast? Like, how to pick a lock, or whether the spider in your shower is poisonous?”

  “I’ll just stick with you,” he said. “You’re full of unexpected skills.”

  “I am?”

  “Yeah. CPR, late-night rescues . . . other types of things . . .”

  This time, when Seth dipped his chin, I lifted mine in response. He aligned his fingertips against the base of my neck, and sensations from the night before—my whole body liquefying—came back to me as we kissed.

  “We should have done this earlier,” I mumbled. The weeks we’d spent working all the same shifts, never pausing to make out, suddenly seemed like a waste.

  His lips curled into a smile. “Like, earlier tonight? Or earlier in our lives?”

  “Both,” I said, even as I considered how readily our younger selves would have laughed at the idea.

  “Maybe if I’d known,” Seth said.

  “Known what?” I asked.

  “That you weren’t going anywhere.”

  By the end of our midnight lunch break, neither of us had eaten. We had barely come up for air. Seth promised to meet me in the parking lot at five a.m., armed with a feast of pilfered breakfast foods.

  Before he went back inside the kitchen, he angled his face skyward and said, “Hey, Audrey. What was it like seeing yourself on TV?”

  Somehow, being with Seth had caused me to forget all about the condescending anchors on the evening news. And the truth was that I hadn’t looked my best on TV, with my face flushed, sizable circles of sweat spreading beneath the sleeves of my shirt. But, watching the clip, I had been transfixed by the determination in my own eyes. It was the same expression my dad wore when he was writing, scribbling words as fast as ideas entered his head.