Wish You Were Here

by Barbara Shoup

  “It’s not your fault,” I say.

  “I didn’t say it was my fault, Jackson,” she says, and I almost smile. She’s back, I think. The old Mom. No way she’s going to let me get away with this shit anymore.

  “Now,” she continues. “First things first. Even aside from the fact that you’re being reckless with your own future doing what you’ve been doing—if you don’t love Stephanie, it’s not right to stay with her. The longer you wait to tell her the truth, the longer it will be before she begins to put her own life in order.”

  “But she’s a mess,” I say. “She doesn’t know how.”

  “That may be,” Mom says. “But you’re a mess yourself. And Stephanie is going to have to learn to take care of herself sometime, whether she’s ready or not. It might as well be now. She’s not your responsibility, Jackson. That’s where you’ve gotten in over your head here. You can’t save another person; you can only save yourself.”

  “But I can’t just—”

  “Yes, you can,” she says. “You can and you will. I’m still your mother, remember? And I’m telling you that you’re grounded until you get caught up with your schoolwork and until I see some evidence that you’re getting your act together. I don’t care what you tell Stephanie. You can tell her I made you break up with her, or you can tell her the whole truth. But whatever you tell her, I want you here in this house every evening, every weekend, working your butt off and acting like a normal human being for a change. Is that clear?” She stops and gives me this funny look, as if to say, are you really going to let me get away with this?

  I mutter, “Yeah, yeah, okay,” like I’m pissed out of my mind. But both of us know I’m not. I’m the one who has to take control of my life. For the first time in months, I feel like maybe, maybe I can.

  forty

  I figure I might as well tell Steph right off and get it over with. She gets in the car, coffee sloshing, as usual. She turns the mirror so she can see herself. She groans.

  “I’m grounded,” I say.

  “What?” Her hand slips, and the mirror tilts even more so that I don’t have to look at her to see her reaction. I can see her face in the mirror. She looks scared.

  “From now till graduation,” I say. “I’m going nowhere. My mom—”

  “I can hang out at your house,” she says. “We can do our homework there, watch the tube, you know. I don’t care if we don’t go anyplace. Your mom can’t—”

  “My mom figured out what we’re doing, Steph. That’s why I’m grounded.”

  “How?” she says. “How could she find that out, Jax?” She pauses. I can feel her looking at me, but I keep my eyes on the road. “Unless you told her. You did, didn’t you? You told her. Boy, am I stupid, or what?” she says. “Duh. You’re breaking up with me, aren’t you?”

  “I’m grounded,” I said. “There’s no point—”

  “Are you breaking up with me or not? Because if you are, just do it, okay? I knew you were going to do it. You’ve been acting weird ever since you got busted. Things aren’t the same.” She starts to cry. “Well, are you?”

  “I have to,” I say. “Yeah, I am.”

  “Bullshit you have to. You know, Jax, you could at least tell me the truth.”

  And I know she’s right. I should. So I drive past school, past the mall, out toward the reservoir. Neither one of us says a word until I pull into the secluded place where we used to go. It’s a beautiful May morning. The water’s like glass, shining, until a speedboat trailing a skier disturbs the surface.

  “Okay,” I say finally. “You’re right; I’m full of shit. I am grounded, but only because I’m too messed up to ground myself. Steph, I can’t keep on. It’s wrong. I knew it was wrong from the beginning, what we did. I mean, me doing it when I knew I didn’t love you.”

  Steph shrugs; she won’t look at me.

  “I do love you,” I say. “I care about you. Just not—”

  “So you don’t love me that way,” she says in a small voice. “So what? I knew that. I told you I knew. I told you I didn’t care.”

  “You should care, Steph. You deserve somebody who loves you the right way. You’re—”

  “A wonderful person, oh yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Jesus, Jax, give me a break. I mean, big deal. I’m a wonderful person, just not the right wonderful person for you. I don’t need that, you know? You want to break up? Fine, you did. It’s over. So just quit being a dickhead and telling me how wonderful I am, okay? Just take me home.”

  “Steph—”

  “I said, take me home, Jax. Will you just do that one thing for me?”

  She sits quietly the whole way back, her eyes closed. I want to say something to her, so she’ll know I’m sorry. So she’ll know I care about her. But my mind is blank. I let her get out of my bus, walk up the sidewalk, and go into the house alone. I feel awful when, finally, she’s out of sight. And at the same time, lighter. Relieved that it’s over. Okay, incredibly relieved. If I’m really done lying, and I am, I might as well admit that that’s true.

  Next time I see her, a few days later, she’s with one of the punks I’ve seen hanging around in the Village. His bleached hair is cut in a Mohawk tipped with pink. He has on black jeans and black motorcycle boots with chains on them.

  “Yo, Jax,” she says in a dreamy, stoned voice. Then she goes on by as if I’m just some person she met one time, no one special.

  I feel like I should go after her and say, “Steph, let’s talk.” Maybe if I explained again why I had to quit seeing her, I could help her figure out what she needs to do to get herself together. I could make her see that this weird guy can’t be good for her. But I know if I tried I’d get sucked right back into her life.

  Mom’s right, anyway. I can’t save Steph; I can only save myself—which I’m trying to do. In some ways it’s fairly easy. I mean, I’ve totally lost the urge to do the really stupid things I was doing before. I really am done with all that. I just feel sad all the time.

  I spend a lot of time in my room, staring at the photograph of me and Kristin and Amy. Mom thinks it’s nice that I keep it on my desk. I’m sure she assumes that it’s one of the pictures Ted took. How would she know that Amanda had sent it to me? How would anyone know that it’s Amanda I see when I look at it? The ghost of her, the ghost of that day, the ghost of what might have been.

  Amy and Kristin do matter to me, though. I’m still trying to make up for being mean to them. One Saturday night, I drive them downtown, buy them ice cream. It happens to be the night of my prom, and we sit on the steps of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument watching the girls in their formals, the guys in their tuxedos get out of the limousines and go into the Columbia Club. I remembered my mom telling me once that she and her dad used to do that when she was a little girl.

  I point out people I know. “Tom Cruise—oops, I mean Tom Best,” I say. “He just thinks he’s Tom Cruise. And that’s his girlfriend, Kate. She hated boys when she was your age, Amy. Even when our teacher said we had to give valentines to every person in the class, Kate only gave them to the girls.”

  I tell them about Brady, who probably would’ve found something outrageous to wear if he’d been here: a Day-Glo tux, a squirting bow tie. I point out Mrs. Blue, whose husband drops her off and goes to park the car. She waits under the canopy, smiling, studying everyone who walks by, the way she always does. I shift sideways so she won’t see me if she glances across the street. That’s another thing I feel lousy about: disappointing Mrs. Blue, letting my grade in her class drop to a D, then avoiding her, even though she’s told me point-blank at least five times that she knows who I really am and will never be convinced otherwise.

  “How come you didn’t go to the prom, Jackson?” Amy asks.

  “Costs a fortune. More than a hundred bucks by the time you buy the tickets, rent a tux, go out to dinn
er. And flowers. That’s probably another thirty bucks down the drain. That’s a lot to spend just to take some girl to a dance. Unless she’s your girlfriend.”

  Kristin looks up from her dish of ice cream. “You could’ve taken Amanda, you know. She could be your girlfriend. She still likes you, Jackson. She told me so in a letter. She thinks you don’t like her.”

  It’s almost too much to think about: Amanda here with me right now. The two of us all dressed up; Mrs. Blue smiling as we walk under the canopy into the dance. She would’ve come, too. If only I had called her. But she’d have thought she was coming to be with the person I was those few days we were together.

  “How come you didn’t invite her?” Amy asks. “Amanda would look really pretty in one of those long dresses.” She looks stricken when Kristin says, “Maybe Jackson doesn’t like her.”

  “I like her,” I say. “I like her. You guys don’t understand—”

  “Oh, you are so dumb, Jackson,” Kristin says. “Just because you got arrested—”

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  “I know what’s going on,” she says. “I’m not a baby, you know.”

  I am flooded with shame. I hate Kristin knowing; I hate the way Amy’s looking at me so confused. But I wouldn’t even begin to know how to explain to them what happened. I still can’t even explain it to myself. I just turn back to Kristin and say the one simple thing that I know is true. “Then you ought to have figured out that it wouldn’t have been right for me to call up Amanda and ask her to the prom.”

  “You are dumb, Jackson,” she says. “You got arrested. So what? I told this girl at school about it, and she said her brother was arrested five times. He was in jail, too. It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “It is, too,” I say. “You’d better think it’s a big deal, Kristin, or you’re likely to get in trouble yourself.”

  She flips her long hair back over her shoulder, her favorite gesture.

  Brother, I think. Had she said “my brother” to the girl when she was talking about me? “Well, no sister of mine had better end up in jail,” I say, testing her. “If you do, I’ll spring you myself and lock you up somewhere else until you promise to be careful.”

  “Like Sleeping Beauty,” Amy giggles.

  Kristin rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t say, “I’m not your sister.” When she says, “Well, I still think you should’ve taken Amanda,” she just sounds wistful, kind of sad—the way I feel myself, looking across the street at all the happy, laughing people dressed up for the prom.

  forty–one

  Memorial Day I go to the airport to meet Dad and Layla, who’ve spent the weekend in Las Vegas. They get off the plane holding hands, grinning. Dad’s got on new cowboy boots and a bolo tie. He’s still thin from the accident, limping a little, but he looks good, tanned. Layla’s tanned, too. She’s wearing jeans and a black leather jacket with fringe on it.

  “Well?” Dad glances at her, and she blushes and kind of shrugs. He throws his arm around my shoulder, squeezes hard, and says, “Hey, pal, what would you say if you found out your old man got married?”

  “Very funny,” I say.

  “We didn’t plan it,” Layla says. “We just did it. Jackson, it was too bizarre the way it happened. It’s, like, after midnight and Oz and I are playing the quarter slots at Caesars Palace—oh, my God, you wouldn’t believe that place! Everything gold or neon. Slot machines everywhere, all of them making these weird noises. And blackjack tables, roulette wheels. And the people, well—

  “It was a trip, but anyhow, like I said, we’re playing this quarter slot machine with these stupid clown faces on it: I’m feeding the coins, your dad’s pulling the arm, and we win the goddamn jackpot! Six thousand dollars, can you believe it? The coins start pouring out, bells go off—”

  “So you decided to get married. Yeah. That makes perfect sense to me.”

  Layla giggles and gives me a hug. “Oh, Jax, I’ve always been like a second mother to you—now I really am. Honey, you know I’ve always been crazy about both you and Brady.”

  I look at Dad. “You’re kidding, right? You guys are playing with my mind.”

  “No way,” he says. “We really did it.”

  “You actually went to Las Vegas and got married.” My voice comes out louder than I meant it to, and a couple of guys who are walking past us burst out laughing. They leer at Layla and give Dad the thumbs-up sign.

  “He’s upset, Oz. Oh, I was afraid this would happen just telling him, bam, like that. I mean, after all, getting married—”

  “I’m not upset,” I say. “But—”

  “We honestly didn’t plan to do it, Jackson,” Layla says. “Honey, we never would’ve purposely left you out of the wedding if we’d known. It was a dumb wedding anyhow, in one of those tacky little places—at three o’clock in the morning. Honey, I know it’s a shock. Believe me, I’m shocked myself. Your dad’s shocked. Last night, after we did it, we looked at each other and said, ‘Holy shit!’ and drank two bottles of champagne. God, I’m still hung over.”

  “I’m pretty happy, pal,” Dad says. By this time, we’re halfway down the concourse. He’s still got his arm draped around my shoulder. “I never thought I’d get married again, but it’s the right thing, Jackson. Layla and I—”

  “Who else could live with either one of us, right?” Layla says. “That’s what made us finally decide.”

  For the next half hour or so, waiting for the bags, driving home, they never quit talking at me—for the most part, simultaneously. For two people who haven’t been married twenty-four hours yet, they have a hell of a lot of plans.

  Dad will move to Layla’s house. It’s bigger than his house, nicer. “I’ll tell you what,” he says. “One thing I realized when I was down and out was I want a real home again, someplace that feels nice inside—”

  “He just doesn’t want to stay in it all the time,” Layla says, leaning forward from the backseat.

  Dad grins. “Yeah, a real house. Uh-oh. Sounds a whole lot like a real life, doesn’t it? Pretty damn scary!”

  He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m not saying anything, that I’m stunned. In fact, he doesn’t really seem to be talking to me at all. Neither one of them does. They talk and talk, but, in fact, they’re talking to each other—and in a private, electric way that makes me uncomfortable, as if I’m witnessing something between them that I’m not really meant to see.

  “And Oz is going out on the road again,” Layla announces. “As soon as the doctor says he can. I made him call from Vegas—the road manager for the Moody Blues. You know, that guy who’s always bugging him to go out. I mean, why not give it a try? He used to love it years ago. Jackson, don’t you think it’s a terrific idea? Go out a couple of months at a time. Then when he’s home, we’ll be together—”

  “You know me,” she says. “I’m no good in the long stretch, anyhow. I never could keep a boyfriend more than a few months at a time. So Oz starts to think I’m a pain in the ass, and goodbye. When he comes back, it’ll be exciting. Like starting all over every time. But without all the hassle of getting to know each other.”

  “Jesus, Layla.” Dad laughs. “Don’t explain things like that to anyone else but Jackson, okay? It sounds weird as hell.”

  “It is weird as hell,” Layla says. “But it’s exactly right for us, isn’t it? It’s what we want.”

  Dad reaches back and pats her knee. “Yep, it’s what we want,” he says.

  “Oh boy.” Layla sighs. “Can I really be happy?” She whacks herself on the side of her head with the palm of her hand a couple of times. “Yeah, I am. Now if I just knew it was really okay with you, Jackson—”

  I’m not lying when I tell her that there’s nobody I’d rather see my dad marry. I do like Layla; I probably even love her. And although I’d never have drea
med she and my dad would end up together, I can see the logic of it now that they have. I’m glad for them; I want them to be happy. But it scares me a little. I can handle one more change, yeah. I’ve got my life under control, and that’s good. But it isn’t the same as being happy. That’s the thing that scares me: sometimes I think that I’ll never be able to be happy again.

  The truth is, I can’t even remember the last time I was happy. Those few days with Amanda, of course. But I see now that that wasn’t really happiness. It was joy. It couldn’t have lasted. What I can’t remember is when I last felt happy with myself and my life, day to day. I guess at some point after the divorce I just accepted the fact that I was never going to be one of those perky people, like Kate Levin and some other people I know. I was sad a lot, but I got used to it. I got by. I knew who I was. I knew more or less what I wanted; I knew what I couldn’t have. And we had fun, Brady and I. But now that he’s gone, there’s not even that.

  God, I thought I’d gotten over his being gone. After I got arrested, I quit sneaking up to his room. I told myself, fuck him, you don’t need him. He doesn’t give a damn about anybody but himself. Now, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because graduation’s so close—just days away—that I miss him again. I get up in the middle of the night and pace around my room like some cartoon guy whose wife is having a baby. Back and forth. Back and forth. Every time I get to the end of the room where the window is, I look out and see the same dead scene. Dark houses, black shadowy trees. Streetlights like a long line of targets.

  I imagine myself shooting them out, one by one. I imagine how it would feel to have power over something.