Saj barely seemed to notice his absence and carried on talking, unabated. She described the last interview as a chatty midmorning panel show aimed at stay-at-home moms and retired women.
“This one is a good way to end, energy-wise,” she said. “I know you’re getting tired of the same questions. But this is a panel. Which means more interplay between the panelists, and you won’t have to be on, on, on. You can relax and enjoy it. Laugh at their jokes. Be your kid-next-door selves.”
Savannah sort of knew this show, in that she’d accidentally watched it on days she was home sick from school. Saj said she booked it because she knew the panel was likely to lean heavily on the “innocent kids stuck in a mess they didn’t create” angle, and that the sympathy it generated would play well with the mostly female audience.
“Moms love you,” she said.
“Not all moms love us,” Savannah argued. “Brynn’s a mom. And she hates us.”
“Actually, Brynn’s had quite a bit of radio exposure, thanks to this. I would venture she loves you a lot more than she lets on.”
Saj leaned over and smoothed a stray hair on Savannah’s head. The morning’s initial round of hair up or hair down debate was settled when her stylist added a few easy waves around her face.
“Well, even if I don’t learn anything else from this whole experience,” Savannah said, “I know that wearing my hair up makes me look like a corporate attorney. Yech.”
Thomas and Maggie laughed, but not Saj, who said, “Actually, with hair as thick as yours, you’d be best off with a blunt-cut bob for a corporate attorney look.”
The correction should have stung, but Savannah’s heart was full—from the adrenaline, from surviving all but one last interview, from her mother’s visit, still glowing through.
It just felt so good to talk about her. To have permission. It didn’t take long for Savannah to learn that when your mom dies, nobody wants to acknowledge her ever again. Maggie and Thomas, of course. Nadine sometimes. But not other people. Not friends. They all had living parents who signed permission slips and attended softball games and annoyed their kids by yelling, “Love you!” out the car window in the school drop-off lane.
But once you lost your mom, you were in the Dead Parents Club, which meant nobody wanted to talk about their own parents because then they would remember your mom is dead.
“I have my mom’s hair,” Savannah told Saj. “You can probably tell from looking at Maggie.”
Saj smiled. “You’re like Kanga and Roo, the two of you.”
“Except the cleft in my chin,” said Savannah. “That’s all mine.”
Saj turned to Thomas and examined him. “You should keep your hair at a length where the wave just begins to curl. Any longer and it will look like a helmet. Any shorter and it will look unkempt. Where do you get your strawberry blond from?”
He shrugged. “We’re not sure. Could be one of the missing links to my dad. My mom was tall, though, unlike Maggie and Savannah. I might get my height from her.”
Saj tilted her head and considered the two of them. “You two amaze me. So alike and so different all at once.”
The car pulled to a stop in front of the studio and they all piled out.
“A quick touch-up in makeup,” said Saj, “and we’re on. We’re B block, I believe, unless something has changed.”
The crash course in TV-speak taught them that “B block” meant they were appearing during the second segment. That meant no sitting around waiting—done and out.
Finally.
Savannah could hear the warm-up comedian preparing the audience as they walked down the hallway at the back of the set. The makeup woman only needed to layer a little bit of concealer under Thomas’s eyes, and a touch of gloss to Savannah’s lips. As soon as she spun their chairs around and declared them ready, the segment producer appeared and announced they were up next.
“One quick change to today’s panel,” she said. “Our scheduled guest panelist canceled, so, seat five is Eaton Holmes today. She’s a blogger and YouTube personality.”
Savannah looked to Saj for a reaction, but she was buried face-first in her phone. By the time she looked up, the producer was leading them onstage.
The segment started just like all the others, but with a lighter midmorning touch. There were a few brief audio clips from the podcast and a mostly vanilla introduction.
Savannah was actually familiar with the panelist taking lead on the interview. Sasha Greer was a former reporter turned globe-trotting children’s rights advocate with an incredible smile and an ability to make the khaki field jacket she was wearing look chic. She opened by saying, “Welcome, Savannah and Thomas. Tell us everything.”
They laughed, just like they’d done four times already that morning. “Where do we begin?”
But they knew exactly where, and that was by talking about their wonderful mother.
Then they talked about striving for grace and professionalism in their search.
They asked the public to respect their father’s privacy.
They accepted a few compliments about their bravery and maturity.
Then, they got their first question from Eaton Holmes.
“How do you address the evidence that you have, in fact, been in touch with your biological father but continue acting as if you have not? Anyone with a curious brain would be left wondering who’s funding you.”
What? The transition was so abrupt, Savannah didn’t think she’d heard what she thought she’d just heard. There’s no way Thomas would be in touch with their dad and not tell her. She looked at Thomas, but he was looking back at her with exactly the same confusion.
“No one is funding us,” Savannah started. “I mean, it’s a Guava Media podcast sure, but—”
Eaton didn’t wait. “So, you deny your grandmother Maggie’s connection to the feminist and antimen’s rights activist, Lonya Day.”
Who the hell was Lonya Day?
“I don’t know who that is—”
“Because she was featured on your previous podcast, the McClair Dinner Salon, episode eight. The episode in which you discussed castrating men for sexual harassment. For even minor allegations.”
“I—what?”
“It’s online. People can listen to it right now if they want. They can also listen to episode twelve during which you argue for the complete feminist takeover of all media.”
“I never—”
“Is that your goal, Savannah? A systematic dismantling of men’s rights? But disguised as a personal quest for connection and family?”
Syllables. Suddenly, that’s all there was. No words or sentences or thoughts. Just disjointed groups of syllables. And a woman snarling at Savannah through white teeth. And Thomas saying, “Whoa, hey, whoa.”
Nothing real. Nothing to make sense of. Just jumbles and jumbles of sound.
And that knot in her stomach, twisting, twisting, twisting.
Finally, Sasha Greer broke in. “Easy there, Eaton. Let’s not get off track—”
Okay, yeah. All right. Savannah could understand Sasha Greer. She’d get everyone to make sense again. She looked at the other panelists. The black woman with the gorgeously perfect skin. The Asian woman with purple tips in her hair. The Hispanic woman who looked like America Ferrera. They were all looking at Sasha Greer, too. This was going to be fine.
Everything was going to be fine.
Savannah looked at the studio audience. They were smiling. There was a woman in the front row wearing a #McClairWonderTwins T-shirt.
She was laughing.
Then, Eaton again. “I’m asking honest questions of two people who, themselves, have built a public platform on doing the same. Asking honest questions. So, why won’t you tell us who John James Thorson is?”
Oh my god. Those syllables added up to a very clear and underst
andable name.
She’d just said his name.
John James Thorson.
On air. For the whole world to hear.
But maybe Sasha Greer would move on. Distract. Maybe if they moved on right this second, they could salvage it. No one really heard what they thought they’d heard, and they’d forget it all and move on.
Yes, everyone would forget. She was sure. They just had to move on. Right now.
But then, Thomas. “How did you—”
Twenty-Six
Jack
The next day, Jack stopped off on his way home to see Ford’s assistant, Janie Tyson. He’d sobered up enough by morning to make his charters, but by the time he rolled off the water, he was spent, every ounce of energy gone to ignoring the hurricane inside his head. He felt pummeled—not just with beer and bad clients, but with regret. He couldn’t believe he’d slammed the door on those kids with a drunken, half-assed excuse. I’m out. Such a coward.
Heading to Janie’s was the only option he could think of.
Janie managed Ford’s website and bookings during high season from an office tacked onto her garage. She peeked through the window, smirked and cracked the door open. “Thought I might see you today,” she said, clearing a piece of dinner from her teeth with a long, orange fingernail.
Jack had come loaded with a weak excuse about not having kept his antivirus program up to date.
“A computer virus, huh? That why you trashed yer place last night?” People liked to say there were no secrets on an island, but that wasn’t true. There were plenty. And Janie Tyson knew Jack had one.
She pushed the door open to him and walked the few feet to her computer. It lit up as soon as she touched it. “You know Ford’d rather have you come clean with whatever is going on than have you string him along. No one I talk to thinks you have it in for him, but no one thinks you have the money to help him retire none, either.”
Jack ignored the inquisition. “Who’s taking Ford’s charters while he’s in Atlanta?”
“Threw a few to Slush. But mostly he’s just had me telling people we’re booked up.”
He opened his email but didn’t find anything except spam and late-night forwards from his mother. If Janie weren’t hovering, he’d have taken a minute to decide what the radio silence from Thomas meant, and what he ought to do about it. Stupidly, he hadn’t even considered that the kid wouldn’t have replied, wouldn’t have called him out for being a sorry excuse for a human being.
But he hadn’t. And Jack knew that could mean one of two things: he either had a narrow window of opportunity in which to apologize, or something had gone very wrong.
He made the uncharacteristic choice to remain optimistic.
Hey, T, he wrote.
Please ignore that last email. I’m not proud of it. Mostly, I’m getting worried. Everything ok there?
He clicked Send.
“You might be careful, Jack.” Janie came around from where she’d been looking over his shoulder and sat down on the edge of the desk. She’d lived her whole life on Tybee and still looked like she could manage a bikini as well as anyone twenty years younger. Even so, she’d had a bad marriage at too young an age, and while she was happy now with a decent boyfriend and a good business, a person could still read those years on her face if they knew where to look.
She leaned in to make sure she had Jack’s attention. “I think Ford might be talking to a lawyer.”
“Of course, he’s talking to a lawyer.” The good thing about not hearing back from Thomas, he realized, was not having to explain it to Janie. “How do you think he’s handling the sale?”
“No, I mean besides that. For options. If you try to screw him.”
“I’m not.”
“Not intentionally,” she said, with whatever kindness that sort of charge deserved. “But you might end up doing it anyway.”
Not might, he wanted to say. It was guaranteed.
He closed out his email without letting Janie catch his eye again and said goodbye.
* * *
Wouldn’t you know, Carter Allman was on Jack’s porch when he pulled into his driveway.
Carter was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off that said Check Your Girls Every Month in curlicue pink lettering, a breast cancer ribbon in the middle. It was either a handout from the Goodwill, or that kid had guts.
“Sandra Beals over at the daiquiri stand says she was walkin’ home past yer place last night and you were in here havin’ a fight with the devil hisself.”
He eyed the bandage on Jack’s wrist.
“That why yer bleedin’?”
“You’re not old enough to be hanging out at the daiquiri stand.” Tybee, and most of this part of Georgia, had a tradition of frozen daiquiri bars and open carry laws, meaning, you didn’t have to go anywhere in low country without a drink in your hand and a gun on your hip.
“Ain’t no crime if I don’ buy.”
He had him there. Jack pulled his tools from the truck with his good arm.
“Who were you fightin’ with, anyhow? Cap’n Slush says you avoidin’ Cap’n Ford like a scaredy lil’ kitten. But I said I never seen you run from anybody. So, which is it? You fightin’ with Cap’n Ford?”
Jack shooed past him, like always, and unlocked the door. He stopped at the threshold. The disaster on the other side was worse than he’d remembered it.
“Whoa—” said Carter, peering in from behind. “Sandra Beals ain’t tellin’ no lie.”
“Nope.” Wasn’t any point in denying the evidence.
Most of the wreckage fell along the northeast wall where two cement pillars stood like bookends, one at each end, drywall in the middle. Whoever built the place hadn’t bothered to plaster, just slathered the drywall with cheap yellow paint the color of mouse pee. Compared to that, the dreary gray of the pillars looked almost stylish.
For Jack, the cement also proved to be impressively destructive.
“Someone sucker punch you, Jack? That how you done yer place up so good?”
“You could say that.”
“Was it Cap’n Ford?”
“Nah. Not exactly.”
“Cap’n Slush?”
“Nope.”
“Randy Stripe from over at the Pig ’n’ Whistle?”
“Not him, either.”
“You sure? ’Cuz Randy got my brother Cal real good in the face one Fourth of July even though Cal said he weren’t payin’ him no mind. Randy’ll sucker punch you, all right.”
“Wasn’t Randy.”
“Well, who then? I’m sick o’ guessing.”
Jack brushed a few shards of glass away from the floor near the doorjamb with the toe of his boot. He hadn’t set foot in the apartment and already he felt tired enough to drop right down on the front lawn and sleep.
I thought I’d let you know that we’re going to do a bunch of TV interviews on Friday.
“You still looking to earn some money?” He didn’t even turn around, knowing without looking at the kid that Carter would take him up on what he was about to offer.
“What you got?”
“You know how to operate a VCR? Make sure it records and all that?”
“’Course.”
“You know where you can still buy a new tape? A blank one? To record on?”
“Sure. I saw ’em at Sara Chen’s shop last week. Behind the register.”
He looked down at Carter’s bare toes and thin rubber flip-flops. “You got a pair of sneakers to wear? Or something to protect your feet?”
“Yeah.”
He ran through a quick list in his head. That was probably everything.
“All right. You come back here first thing tomorrow morning. Like first thing—before I leave, even. Wear your sneakers and bring a brand-new tape with you. I’ll give you a f
ew bucks to buy one tonight. I’ll leave you a list of shows to record all morning. And while you’re recording them, you can sweep up all the glass. You get it done by the time I come back home, and I’ll pay you twenty dollars.”
“Twenty-five,” he said.
“Twenty. And I’ll let you stay and watch TV until I get back.”
Carter nodded. They had a deal.
* * *
By the time Jack got back to his apartment the next evening, Carter had swept the place clean and was on the couch watching an old Warren Miller bootleg with a box of Froot Loops on his lap. No one who grew up in Colorado ever dared start the ski season without watching Warren Miller’s latest film. Especially not Jack.
“You ever skied like that? Like off a cliff an’ such?”
Jack smiled, unable to resist the nostalgia, then lowered his toolbox to the floor and headed for the fridge, where he found one last beer.
“Ever cause an avalanche and let it chase you down the mountain?”
“You know those are professional skiers in those films, right?” He cracked open the beer and sat down next to Carter on the couch. The scene unfolding featured a montage of skiers carving deep, swooping lines down a mountain of fresh powder. He pointed his beer at it. “That I can do.”
He hadn’t done it for over a decade, but his legs remembered, feeling suddenly restless and eager to move.
“Makes me cold jes lookin’ at it.”
“Notice the jackets?”
“Still.”
They watched a few minutes more. He hadn’t kept in touch with anyone from his Breckenridge days. Or his Colorado life, really. He wondered where they’d all ended up. Most of his resort buddies had been Kiwis. The ones he’d planned to stay with when he traveled. On the trip Bess had encouraged him to take.
“Life is short, Jack,” she’d said. “Go live it.”
His list of failures seemed to be getting longer by the second. “You tape those shows I listed?” he asked.
The Kids Are Gonna Ask Page 17