Everybody Knows Your Name

by Andrea Seigel

  After what seems like a whole minute, he says, “Gardener.”

  Wonderful! Gardener! I think. I can beat Gardener for worst in show. I know I can. He’s had his own problems with approachability because he’s got the vibe of a long-haired magician, except he can’t do any illusions. And his song was really bad this week. But I think I have the upper hand because I actually pissed people off.

  Still, if America wants him out, I’ve got my backup plan. I can feel the silver Superstar where I’ve tucked it in the back waistband of my silvery pants.

  Gardener walks over to the music and stands next to me. The PVC of his trench coat smells like wet paint.

  I look to Lance, his bronzer visible up close; I’m jittery and waiting for him to make the announcement about which one of us is going home. But he says to the audience, “You thought I was done calling names? Well, I’m not done. Because . . . this is a double elimination week! We have a bottom three, ladies and gents!”

  The music switches to something more ominous than sad, the beat still pounding, though. There are surprised reactions across the board onstage. The judges swivel in their chairs like the shock in the audience has created some weird quaking field of energy.

  I’m telling myself, Great, two eliminations. You’ve got this.

  “Who’s the third contestant in danger of leaving tonight?” Lance asks, twisting to look at the contestants on the stools. He pauses. Of course he pauses.

  He says, “Ford, man, I’m sorry, but come on down here.”

  The look on Ford’s face when his name is called is so raw that I don’t know how they can put it up there on the projection screen behind us. Who wants to have to stare into his eyes, which are blown up times fifty, and linger on how hard he’s taking this? You can see what going home would do to him. I mean, you can see this moment threatening to break him. Even if we’re still not talking, that doesn’t make me want to see him like this as he’s walking across the stage to take his place.

  “Here’s your bottom three, America. Two of these singers will be going home!” Lance moves so he’s standing behind the three of us. A spotlight whips around the stage to create suspense.

  I can’t believe Ford is in this line. Gardener separates us. Ford’s votes stumbled a little after his family reveal, but the producers have done a pretty good job of smoothing that situation over. He sang well on Wednesday. So it has to be the stuff that his mom said about him, that the driver said about him.

  I can’t look at Ford anymore. I’m only going to worry about myself. My mom is the only mom I’m going to be angry with. I give my attention back to Lance, who is pressing his tie against his chest. He’s looking sort of gaunt in the cheeks. I think he’s been trying to lose weight even though he shouldn’t.

  “Our first contestant going home tonight is . . .” Lance waits for the lights shining down on the stage to turn white then green then blue.

  “Gardener,” he says.

  I take a breath. One spot left for elimination. Gardener flips up his coat collar and hangs his head, then Lance puts his hand on Gardener’s back and gestures for him to leave the stage. Gardener does, to audience applause and the good-bye song of the show. It has a chorus that goes, “Got to find another light, if I can just make it through the night.” In my opinion, it’s a little melodramatic and bleak.

  Ford and I are now standing together in the middle of the stage. We’re not looking at each other.

  “Ford and Magnolia, Ford and Magnolia,” says Lance, shaking his head. “Former show lovebirds, and now one of them is the next contestant eliminated from this show.” A clip package of us kissing starts running on the screen behind us.

  I thought I would be up against Gardener or Nikki, because of what my mom had said. And I was totally enthusiastic about giving the Superstar over to either one of them. I tried to give it to Mila last night in our room, but she wouldn’t take it.

  “Why don’t you hold on to it, just in case? Just keep it wrapped up in a sweatshirt,” I told her.

  “Don’t want it.” Mila shrugged.

  “What do you mean, don’t want it? I’m the one who doesn’t want it. But you want to win. So take it.” I was packing my bags, and I shoved the statue across our floor toward Mila like it was something gross or a hot potato or a gun.

  “I went on this show to beat my sister for once. It has to be real. So if America votes me out before her, I screwed up. That’s the only competition I care about.” She shoved the statue back at me.

  I threw the statue onto her bed. “But what about if Felicia’s already gone and America tries to vote you out? Don’t you want to use it then?”

  Mila went to her bed and picked up the Superstar, tossing it back at me. “I would respect the decision. This isn’t between me and America. This is between me and my twin.”

  When she wouldn’t take it, I decided that I’d take it onstage with me just in case something weird happened. I felt confident that I’d done enough to lose, but just in case.

  I didn’t think through whether I would want to hand it over to Ford.

  The screen goes dark. “For one of you, this is the end,” Lance says.

  Magnolia, I think, like I can actually plant an idea into Lance’s mind. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia. Magnolia.

  “Ford,” Lance says.

  I glance over at Ford. I’m still angry with him for not letting me know I was the only one of us with a dead parent.

  But as I’m looking at him, I can’t ignore the haunted expression on his face. I don’t see a fake. In fact, as we’re standing here, I think I see him even more clearly than I ever have.

  Oh, Jesus Christ.

  “Uh, hold on a second, hold on,” I say, leaning over so I can be heard in Lance’s mic as I pull the statue from behind my back.

  Three

  Weeks

  Later

  Ford

  45

  I feel like I’m forgetting something. Bags are packed. Voices echo in the mansion as production people shout about cleaning it out and shutting it down. Every few minutes I’m hearing the beep of a walkie-talkie bouncing off the hallway. In the two hours since elimination, this place has already gone from home to the county fair on its last night in town.

  “Car to the airport will be here in five.” I look over my shoulder, and Jesse is in the doorway wearing his usual stressed-out expression, but tonight he’s even more wound up. He doesn’t wait for a response before he splits.

  I look around my room one last time.

  Don’t know what I feel like I’m forgetting since I brought almost nothing with me, and I’m leaving with the same. The sheets with the high thread count aren’t mine. The big terry cloth robe in the closet isn’t mine. The spa slippers at the foot of the bed were there when I showed up, and I’ve decided they’re staying. I’m just not a spa or a slipper kind of guy.

  My lone new item is the expensive leather jacket I’m wearing that Robyn gave me to travel home in for good luck. She said it was for luck, anyway—I realize that mostly it’s so I look less like a hobo if anybody takes a photo of me.

  Somebody should shake me, I think, turning around in this room that’s been mine for the past couple of months. I’m not getting it. I mean, look, I know what’s happened, I’m not a total idiot. I understand that tonight I’ve made it to the final three. I, Ford, am in the final three. Ford Buckley is included in the final three. That’s me. Ford Buckley, finalist.

  I know I’m supposed to be packing up, getting on a plane within the hour.

  But I only ever pictured leaving in defeat. I never really thought about how I’d feel if I made it through.

  Just three weeks ago I thought I was done for. When my mom called the radio station to talk about me being an awful son, and America wanted me out during double elimination week,
I was sure that was it. Without Magnolia, it would have been over.

  I expected my parents to keep talking and dragging me down. I fully expected to be booted the following week. But then things went quiet on that front. Mysteriously quiet. And a few days after they left town, I found out that my mom, dad, and Cody were in a Texas jail. Sissy called me to break the news.

  They had been chugging down the highway in that RV loaded with weed, living their version of the old American dream of striking gold in California, when two officers pulled them over for speeding. It was a drug corridor. The officers got suspicious. They smelled something, did a search. Fortunately for Sissy, she’d hopped out at a truck stop near Vegas because she wanted to do some gambling. She took a Greyhound home, and on the way she received a collect call from an inmate in Amarillo.

  So that was that. They were back inside. You can expect to be disappointed by certain people, and you can tell yourself they’re always going to do what they’re going to do and it’s time to learn to accept that you can’t do a damn thing about any of it. But it’s just not so easy.

  Family has a weird power over you. They implant something way down inside while you still have that wide-open little kid heart. They’re in there somewhere, chiming in with their opinions all through your life, whether you like it or not. They can hurt you worse than anyone, and then make you feel guilty about it.

  Yet here I am, still standing in this contest.

  So I’m just a little bit stunned.

  You’re going to go to the airport and get on the plane, I tell myself, thinking maybe the way around being stunned is to take baby steps. Mental baby steps. Forget figuring out what it all means and just do the next thing on the list.

  But the next baby step goes to hell because next on the list is fly to Calumet. You can’t even fly right into Calumet, though. The only airstrip we have is for dusting crops. So now I’m attempting to picture the production crew driving a long line of white rental vans all the way from Memphis and past that airstrip, with its sad orange wind sock flapping over the cotton fields. And then picturing them whipping onto Main Street, turning sleepy Calumet into the crazy beehive that is a Hollywood production. All with me at the center of it.

  My brain just can’t fit those two worlds together.

  I wonder if the production crew understands how small Calumet is. If they’re expecting a big crowd, they’re going to be disappointed. They could probably rouse, like, thirty people to stand with their arms crossed in a half circle, hanging back as far from the stage as possible. That’s how things at home usually go. Maybe the producers could pay some extras to show up and look alive.

  I check under the bed just to make sure that the nagging feeling isn’t due to something I’ve left there, and I spot a squashed trash bag between the bed frame and the wall. It’s one of Cody’s “luggage” pieces. He left it here that afternoon before we went to the party and never came back for it.

  I guess he doesn’t need any of this stuff now that he’s back in a jumpsuit. I consider dragging his stinky clothes onto the plane with me. But then I think, Why would I do that? Why would I want to go out of my way to watch out for his stuff when he didn’t even give a second thought to destroying mine?

  I’m reminded of my pile of dirty laundry waiting in the corner of my bedroom back in Calumet and all the other little things I left unfinished. Bills in the mailbox, dishes in the sink, the stray cat I always feed (I’ve got Leander refilling a huge butter tub with kibble, just in case the little guy’s still coming around): that’s my real life. There’s no way people back home are going to buy into me as some kind of wannabe celebrity. Although they might line up just to laugh in my face.

  Back when I used to get dragged to Sunday school by my grandma, they told this story about Jesus returning to his hometown and preaching. Everybody there was like, “Isn’t that Mary’s kid? Who does think he is, coming back here and acting like a big shot?”

  I’m pretty sure it’s going to be worse for me. I haven’t even performed any miracles.

  I lean against the windowsill, looking out. It’s not like I’m cocky about my chances of winning this thing—I know it could all still amount to nothing. I know singers come and go all the time. They get forgotten. I know I haven’t won anything I can take to the bank. But I suppose I’m the kind of happy you get when you feel like you proved something to yourself, something you can always keep with you. Even if I turn out to be the only one who remembers it.

  Even so, something is bothering me. I always thought if I could just win this thing, my life would line up straight and make sense for once. Instead I feel like there’s a missing component.

  In this momentary stillness, I know what it is. I can’t stop thinking about Magnolia. This whole spectacle feels borderline empty without her.

  I remember how hard it is to find someone in this world who really understands you. And how hard it is not to be afraid once you realize that means they can see right through you.

  Catherine yells from the hallway, “Ford, I swear to God if you don’t get in the car right now, I’m giving you ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ in the finale!”

  “Coming,” I say, and head out of the room.

  There are lots of people on the first floor already working on getting the mansion back to its original state. The recessed lights are on their brightest setting, like a bar that’s turned up its lights at closing time. A production assistant is removing some giant neon letters from the wall they brought in for filming to make the house look younger and cooler. Another girl is tagging the furniture for storage.

  “Don’t forget to empty the fridge!” Catherine calls to the staff, her voice vaulting off the high ceiling.

  Mila and McKinley, the other two finalists, have already left in their limos, headed back to their hometowns. I’m the last one out. It’s odd, the mansion coming undone like this, like seeing something you’re not supposed to. Or seeing something that never really existed.

  Catherine continues out to the front, but I stop for a second in the entryway and just look back at the house. I was here. This is where I first really kissed her, just the two of us alone. I make myself walk out, leaving the big doors open behind me.

  Whatever happens now, I went into this house one person, and I’m leaving a different one.

  Urgent honking blares from the limo. Catherine is over there, holding the back door open. She gestures like she wants to strangle me. “Chop, chop, let’s go!”

  As I walk toward her, the headlights of the limo wink off metal in the open garage. It’s the chrome of my motorcycle propped against the wall. I hadn’t stopped to consider how I would get it back home. I think, Maybe that’s what I felt like I was missing.

  But it isn’t that, I know it.

  “What about my bike?” I ask.

  “Don’t worry, it’ll get to you.” Catherine’s a woman of her word, so I don’t doubt it. I head over to the limo, and she gives me the rundown. “I thought I was going to die before I got you off this property. Anyway, Tiffany will be accompanying you to Arkansas—”

  I look in the limo and Tiffany, who’s a junior producer, is already sitting in there, typing on her iPad. She gives me a tired smile.

  “And I’m staying here to set up the LA performance, but I’m reachable. Do you have everything you need?”

  Catherine’s asking that as a joke because I’ve taken so long to get out of the mansion, not really expecting that I’m going to pause and consider if I do have everything I need.

  Her face starts to go from impatient to alarmed when she sees the look on mine. “Ford, no.”

  “But I don’t,” I say, and I start to back away from the limo.

  “Ford!” she calls.

  “It’s true! I really don’t.”

  Her increasingly loud threats turn into background noise as I turn and walk toward my motorcycle.
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  Magnolia

  46

  I’ve been back in school for three weeks now. At first I kept going through the same three interactions. The first was that someone I’d never talked to before would pass by my locker and say, “You seem to be glowing. . . . Is there a spotlight on you?” And I’d say, “Hey, good one,” even after I’d heard it for the hundredth time.

  The second one was specific to Mrs. Corinthos. When she’d see me in the English building hallway, she’d say something along the lines of, “That Superstar was yours. Not his! You didn’t have to give up your power!” And I’d say, “Got to run, late for class!”

  The third was that every time I passed near one of the American flags on campus, another fellow student I’d never talked to would stick a thumb out at me and make theatrically nervous eyes, or tell the teacher that she should take it down before I made the flag a picnic blanket. I would also say, “Good one,” to that. So in the beginning, it was basically “Good one, got to run, good one” for a few days straight.

  It’s always people I didn’t really know making the comments. Acquaintances and former friends just watch me carefully, like I’ve come back from TV as something else, like I’m only in disguise as myself. It’s been very weird.

  In the midst of this heightened scrutiny, there have been three saving graces. The first has been the Xanax that my new psychiatrist, Dr. Turnbull, prescribed me after I came home from the show and had my first panic attack. My mom still isn’t especially speaking to me, so I had to find him myself.

  But the thing I’ve learned about modern psychiatrists is that they only want to give you medication, and they don’t actually want to talk to you beyond checking that your dosage is effective. So my second saving grace has been Lucien. We video-chat a few times a week about how my script is coming along, but there’s always time for him to go into his mode of fatherly analysis.