The Bad Decisions Playlist

by Michael Rubens

  There is an old sofa out there too, and Shane says, “Why don’t you guys sit?”

  “No, you sit,” says Josephine, and then we do the whole back-and-forth negotiation, going through every possible permutation of who sits and who stands, and finally Shane practically shoves me and Josephine into the sofa’s marshmallow embrace just as Amy is saying, “Hey, everyone!”

  It’s small​—​a love seat, really​—​and the instant our butts hit the cushions we both casually lean away in opposite directions like magnets repelling each other. But it’s almost impossible to sit without some part of our bodies touching, the sagging U-shape of the frame and the soft cushions colluding to bring us toward the center and each other.

  “Thanks for coming!” Amy says, and everyone cheers and claps, and I swear the next is directed right at me and Josephine: “So glad you’re here.”

  I’m so glad one of us is glad.

  “I’m gonna get started in juuust a few seconds,” Amy is saying, doing some last-minute tuning tweaks. Low murmurs of conversation from the others, the rhythmic pulse of crickets. I can feel the heat radiating from Josephine, feel it along my left flank and especially along my leg, our thighs half an inch apart. She shifts slightly and our hips bump and we both try to readjust without making it obvious that that’s what we’re doing. We’ve both got our outside arms draped over the armrests, squeezing ourselves to them like we’re clinging to life rafts. This is not going to work. I could say I need to use the bathroom or that I’m going to get a drink. “I think I might​—”

  Then Amy starts to sing, and I forget all that.

  Her voice . . . a voice that glows, a voice filled with heartache and longing and all the sad and happy things that life has to offer. Everyone goes hushed quiet, church quiet, no one wanting to move and mar the loveliness.

  I feel transported. Enthralled. I’m embarrassed that Josephine is going to catch me all starry-eyed and weepy, and I feel a surge of resentment toward her for being here, even though her being there is my fault. I fight against and then give in to the urge to look at her, knowing my glance will be met by an arched brow and an eye roll.

  But no. When I look at her, I get a jolt of recognition because I see she’s captivated too. And I want to touch her on the shoulder and say, I know you now, I know you. We understand each other.

  At that moment she must sense my gaze, because she glances at me and our eyes meet and we both quickly look away, like we’ve walked in on each other naked.

  I don’t know how many songs go by with us sitting like that, each fighting the sofa’s gentle encouragement to lean against each other. When we applaud, our arms touch. We don’t look at each other except a few times, and when we do we trade quick shy smiles and both look away.

  Amy sings songs about falling in love and about falling out of love and about wishing someone loved you and wishing they didn’t. She switches between a guitar and a mandolin and a baritone ukulele, which you would think would sound silly but in her hands sounds spare and solemn and powerful.

  I’m aware that Josephine smells nice. I hope I don’t smell bad. I try to surreptitiously smell my own breath, jutting my lower lip out to direct my exhalation toward my nostrils, but does that even work?

  Amy says, “C’mon, Shane Tyler, come on up here and sing a song with me.” Shane says, “Oh, I’m coming, Amy Adler,” and rests a hand on my shoulder as he passes by, turning to wink at me and Josephine. Now I look at Josephine, and she smiles at me, still shy, but this time with something approaching delight.

  They play one of Amy’s songs together, and halfway through I realize that Josephine and I have both given up our battle with the sofa, that we’re leaning against each other. When they finish the song, Amy says, “Can we sing one of yours now, Shane Tyler?”

  “Well, certainly, Amy Adler,” he says, “but can we bring a third up here?”

  She laughs, like a shimmer of bells. “Why, sure. The more the merrier. Who you got?”

  Everyone in the crowd is twisting again, looking around curiously. Josephine whispers, “He means you.”

  “Austin, you want to come join us for a song?”

  I’m suddenly embarrassed, aware of everyone looking at me. I shake my head at him. Please, let me be.

  “Go on!” says Josephine. “Go!” and she nudges me forward. I look at her, and she nods at me encouragingly​—​go!—​so I get to my feet and make my way to the front.

  “Austin Methune, everyone,” says Shane. “You know ‘Seeing by Starlight’?” he says.

  “Sure, yeah.”

  “You could play it on the mandolin?”

  I do some quick chord conversions in my mind.

  “Sure.”

  The three of us crowd together, Amy in the middle, the two of them on guitar and me on mandolin. I sing the middle harmony on the song and add some mandolin fills that suggest themselves to me, no effort on my part. Josephine is watching me, her eyes shining wide and luminous, her lips parted, and I feel a tiny explosion inside and have to hide from that gaze.

  We finish the song, everyone applauding, Amy hugging me, and when I go back to the sofa there’s the shy smile again from Josephine, and I sheepishly return it before sitting.

  “All right, who’s next?” says Amy, and everyone here seems to be a musician, and so she sings with another person, and then that person with Shane, and Shane with someone else, everyone joining in on the sing-alongs or listening respectfully to the quiet, sad ones.

  I’m once again aware how close Josephine and I are sitting, our sides touching, and it’s okay, but then she adjusts her position and pulls away a bit, so I do the same so as not to give her the impression that I’m trying to touch her, and she maybe pulls away a bit more, and we get stuck in that loop of What is the other person thinking/doing? Or maybe I’m stuck. I don’t know. I think this is how wars start.

  Shane is leading us in “Let It Be” when I realize that Josephine is singing along. And has a nice voice. Not beautiful and polished like Amy’s, but simple and on-key and pleasant. Unadorned, I think. Then she notices me looking at her and blushes and clamps her mouth shut.

  “Come sing another with me,” says Amy, so she and I sing Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.”

  When we finish, I see something in Shane’s expression, the same inner entertainment I saw earlier in the evening, and just as I’m thinking, Wait, what is he up to? he points to Josephine and says, “Your turn!”

  Her eyes widen. “No no no no no,” she says, waving her hands.

  “Yes yes yes. I heard you singing.”

  “No no no, I don’t know any songs.”

  “Everyone knows a song. Austin, I bet you can figure out at least one song for the two of you to sing.”

  “How about ‘Time After Time,’” I suggest, and I know she knows it, because they sang it in choir.

  “I’m too embarrassed.”

  “You have a beautiful voice,” says Shane.

  “I can’t.”

  “You can!”

  And so on back and forth, but it’s Shane, see, irresistible and wholehearted and sincere, and the night is magic, it’s magic, and it’s inevitable that she’ll say yes, and all the guests are saying, C’mon, you can do it! and Amy closes the deal by linking arms with Josephine and saying I’ll sing with you too.

  So it happens. Amy and Josephine and I sing “Time After Time,” Shane on guitar, Josephine restrained and hesitant at first but gaining strength, and I’m aware of Amy smiling at me as she gradually eases back until by the second half of the song it’s just Josephine and me singing. I can feel everyone focused on us, everyone listening. It feels like the whole universe is listening. We’re singing, harmonizing, but Josephine won’t even look at me, keeps her eyes downcast like the lyrics are on the ground before her. Then just when we get to the part about finding the other person if they’re lost and catching them if they fall, she looks up and our eyes lock and it’s searing and so in
tense that my voice falters for a moment and we both have to search for the words somewhere on the lawn.

  When we finish, we end up back on the sofa and can hardly look at each other. A few more people sing songs, a big rousing finish with “All You Need Is Love.” I can barely hear any of it. Everyone is standing and hugging and shaking hands, and I feel a light touch on my shoulder and it’s Josephine, pulling her hand back hurriedly.

  “I should go,” she says.

  “Right Yes. Of course. Uh, let me figure out what we should do,” I stammer.

  “Why don’t you take the truck,” says Shane. “Bring it back to me whenever.”

  Amy does a quick field-sobriety test, consisting of her grabbing both my ears and saying, “Breathe on me.”

  I breathe on her.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “No! Not a drop!”

  She lets go of one ear but starts twisting the other.

  “Austin, I will beat your ass if you’re lying to me.”

  “Not a drop! Ow! Let go!”

  “Okay, then.” She leans in close and whispers, “I like her a lot. Go.”

  On the ride to Josephine’s it’s a whole new variety of wordless awkward. Like by singing that song together we’d somehow gone way too far, experienced something far too intimate. More intimate somehow than, well, being intimate.

  Two frozen centuries into the ride, she finally says, “So . . . tell me about Shane,” and I’m grateful to have a way to fill up a few miles and minutes. I tell her everything that has happened since he first showed up on the doorstep, everything I know about him, about my mom lying to me all this time since I was a kid.

  “Austin, that’s incredible.”

  “Yeah. Of course, it’s possible that he’s not really my dad.”

  She’s quiet.

  “No,” she says, “he’s your dad.”

  More silence.

  We get to her house and I park.

  “Well . . .”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  “That was really fun.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks for inviting me.”

  “Yeah, sure, of course. Thanks for coming.”

  The radio is on, so at least the silence isn’t silent.

  “You want to hang out again sometime?” I say.

  “Sure, yeah.”

  “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  She laughs softly. “Can’t tomorrow. Phone calls. Raising funds.”

  “Right.”

  Well.

  Well.

  It’s time for her to go.

  The song on the radio is ending.

  She has to go.

  She’s not moving.

  The song ends. The song “Heirloom” by Sufjan Stevens starts, and I’m about to say, I never liked this song, but suddenly it’s the most beautiful thing ever, and it’s like the song is showing me the way, the song is saying, Now, the moment is now, don’t wait, and it’s like Josephine and I both know and we turn to each other and we’re kissing.

  We’re kissing and her lips are soft and my hands are on her face and I can feel her warm hands on me and I’m thunderstruck, I’m trembling, and we kiss more and kiss more, my eyes closed, the heat of her body, her breath, the smell of her hair, the feeling of floating in a sea of stars.

  Then suddenly she stops. She stops and pulls back, a hand on my chest. She pulls back and pushes away and looks at me, then wait she’s turning to open the car door and wait she’s climbing out and closing the door and wait she’s walking up the path toward her house​—​“Wait,” I say​—​and her walk goes faster and turns into a run and then she’s at the front door​—​“Wait!”​—​and the door opens​—​“Josephine, wait!”​—​and she’s inside and the door closes and she’s gone.

  I believe in things I cannot see /

  I believe in you and me / I believe /

  I believe that we’ll be together

  “Where is he?!”

  “Whuh?”

  “WHERE IS HE?!”

  Really bad way to wake up: My mother shaking me violently by the shoulders and screaming in my face.

  “What? What’s happening? What’s going on?”

  “Where. Is. He?”

  The various components of my consciousness that go off and do their own thing when I’m asleep are still struggling to return to headquarters so that my brain can function.

  “Mom, whuzzuh . . . What’s going on? Where is who?”

  “Don’t give me that crap! Where is Shane!”

  “Shane? He’s not here! What are you talking about!”

  “Why is his goddamn car here?!”

  Oh, crap. The car. Right. I drove home from Josephine’s, dazed, three-fourths baffled, one quarter love-dopey, and parked in front of the house, figuring I would wake up before dawn and drive it to math class and then to work before my mom was the wiser. Fail.

  “I said, why is his goddamn car here?!”

  Lesson number one: Don’t plan tactics when you’re baffled and/or love-dopey.

  “What time is it?” I say, then look over at the alarm clock​—​“Oh, crap!”​—​and leap out of bed and rush out of the room and down the hall, my mom in hot pursuit.

  “What the hell is going on here!”

  “Mom, shut the door! I’m peeing!”

  “Why is his car here?!”

  “Mom, I will pee on you!”

  Really shocking statement from my mom about what she, in turn, will do to me.

  “Jesus, Mom!”

  “I’m serious! Where is he?”

  “He’s not here! I just have his car!”

  “Have you been hanging out with him? You have been hanging out with him! I’m going to​—”

  Truly harrowing, scrotum-puckering description of the traumatic punishment that awaits Shane.

  “Mom!”

  “What the hell happened yesterday! Where were you last night? What have you been doing!”

  What was I doing last night? Did all that really happen? It can’t have. It’s impossible. It was a dream. I made it up.

  “I’m talking to you!”

  “Mom!”

  It goes on like this for the next several minutes as I yank my clothes on​—​“Answer me!” “I’m trying to put my pants on!”​—​and head downstairs​—​“Where are you going!” “Breakfast!”​—​and pour myself some cereal and shovel it into my mouth while standing at the counter, my mom at my elbow, harrying me.

  Mom (pulling cereal bowl away; milk and cornflakes slopping on the linoleum): “Look at me when I’m talking to you! How come you have his truck?!”

  Me (pointing to mouth stuffed with cereal): “Mmmm! Rmmph mmph mmmm!”

  Then I grab the box of cereal and scoot out the door​—​“I gotta get to class and then work! It’s in the contract!”​—​and hop into the truck, my mom banging on the window.

  “We are gonna talk, mister!”

  “I love you!”

  “You tell him he’s dead!”

  “I love you bye!”

  SCRREEECH!

  I Fast & Furious it backwards out of the driveway and accelerate away before my mom can leap on the hood, punch through the windshield, and pull my heart out of my rib cage.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Last night when I got home, I texted Josephine:

  Is everything okay?

  It was the only text I sent. I’d like to say it was self-control, but what really happened is that the music came flooding in and I fell asleep while I was waiting for a reply. Now I’m late to math class, but the anxiety is growing so intense that I have to pull over to send another text:

  All ok?

  I wait on the side of the road, hoping she’ll get back to me. Minutes pass. She doesn’t. I swear and put the truck in gear.

  Math class is special agony because I desperately want to check my phone, but there’re only seven of us in the class, all known troublemakers, and Mr. Westph
al’s gaze never wavers.

  Class ends. No communication. I arrive at the office park we’re mowing today, everyone else already out there fighting the good fight against grass. No texts.

  I pull a mower off Kent’s trailer of fun and get to work.

  My back-and-forth progress across the lawn is herky-jerky, my forward motion interrupted every thirty seconds when I check my phone. I know I shouldn’t do it, but I can’t resist: I start sending more texts:

  Are you angry?

  All okay?

  Can we pls talk?

  I see Kent in the distance, observing me, and so I start forcing myself to wait until the turnaround point at the end of each row to check for responses, but a good acre goes by with nothing, and then another acre, my misery growing with every swath of freshly mown turf.

  What has happened is clear: Josephine, having realized she’d lost her goddamn mind, fell asleep last night midscream and woke up this morning to finish screaming, and now she can’t shower enough to rid herself of the repulsive memory of my touch, completely Lady Macbething it, probably brushing her teeth with obsessive ferocity at this very moment as she tries to scrub away my kisses.

  I replay over and over again the moment she pulled away from me, her expression worse with each iteration, a scene shot ten different ways: Confused. No. Scared. No. Angry. No. Furious. No. Barely contained nausea-inducing revulsion.

  “She hates me!” I shout, a squirrel in a nearby tree watching in consternation. “Hates me!” I repeat to the squirrel. Oh, dear, thinks the squirrel, or whatever it is squirrels think, then evidently decides it would be wiser to put several more trees between him and the screaming human.

  More mowing, the sun rising higher, the temperature and my despair climbing with it.

  My phone buzzes. YES!

  Yank it out, fumble and bobble it, nearly dropping it under the mower.

  NO! IT’S JUST MY MOM!

  i expect you here for dinner you have lots of explaining to do

  mom ok ok it’s all fine don’t worry

  I mow angry. I mow bereft. I mow with denial. I mow with four of the five stages of mourning, skipping the acceptance part. During the lunch break, I seat myself on a bench away from the others to eat my boloney sandwich, which tastes of a very complicated mix of emotions that add up to WHY GOD WHY DO YOU HATE ME WHY WON’T SHE CALL. I cling to my phone, stare at it, issuing high-level, threat-of-death orders to myself not to send another text, no no no, do not, will not, won’t, no way, I’d rather die than okjustthisone: