The Bad Decisions Playlist

by Michael Rubens

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did any of this happen?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you see me here?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You have a good flight.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  We wait until Todd has made it through the metal detectors.

  “All right,” says Rick. “We’ve got a long drive ahead.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  A long drive with no words. West through the ugly industrial tangle that rings the city, west into Pennsylvania. We eat lunch at a rest-stop McDonald’s. We stay that night in a nondescript Holiday Inn just off a cloverleaf. Rick pays for two adjoining rooms.

  Before closing his door for the night, he says, “If you run out like you did last night, I’m leaving you here.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  When I come down for breakfast the next morning, he’s already at a table, eating. He glances up briefly from his paper and says, “I paid for the buffet breakfast,” so I go and fill up a plate and join him.

  I sit there for a bit, my eggs getting colder and rubbery-er. There are only a few other people in the restaurant. Rick reads his paper, sipping his coffee.

  “Rick,” I say.

  Still reading, he says, “Yes?”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why this? Why’d you come for me?”

  “Wanted to make sure my car was okay.”

  I don’t say anything.

  He sighs and puts down the paper. “Austin . . . first off, you’re a thoughtless little asshole. I mean, you do some absolutely ridiculous, inconsiderate things. I don’t think you have an ounce of malice in you​—​and believe me, in the D.A.’s office I dealt with some pretty malignant young men. But still, your behavior’s hard to forgive, especially because you end up hurting your mother so much.”

  He sips his coffee while my face burns.

  “But of course I came. You’re Kelly’s son. I love her, and she loves you. Of course I came. I had to. I may not be your father, but I had a responsibility to come for you.”

  He picks up his paper, and I think he’s done. Then he puts it down again.

  “And you know, there’s something else. I’m aware that my opinion doesn’t carry much weight with you. But, Austin, I think you have a real light in you. I’m hoping that you can bring that light, bring Austin, to the world, because the world could use it. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, whether it’s through music or art or being the world’s best lawyer​—​that’s a joke, by the way​—​but whatever it is, it’s going to take hard work and effort on your part, not just gliding by on talent. But I have faith, Austin, that you can make it through, that you can find your way. And the world will be better because of it. That’s why I came for you, Austin.” He picks up the paper. “Eat your eggs.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  We both go up to our rooms to get our bags. When we reconvene in the parking lot, I say, “Rick . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Yep.” He tosses me the keys. “You drive.”

  So I do. Rick even falls asleep for a bit, then wakes up, and we listen to music on satellite radio, settling on an alternative station, Rick asking now and then about who we’re listening to. Other than that, we go long stretches without talking. We stop at a gas station, and Rick takes over driving.

  At one point, guess what comes on the radio: “Good Fun.”

  I change the station.

  After a minute, Rick says, “This may sound weird to you.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t take it the wrong way.”

  “Um . . . can I make that decision after you say it?”

  “Sure. You can reserve that right. The thing is, I actually really enjoy your father’s music.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I have both his albums. I used to listen to them all the time. I saw him play live once.”

  I absorb that.

  “What are you thinking?” he says.

  “I’m thinking, yeah, that is really weird.”

  “Agreed. But it’s true. I think your dad is, well, he’s sort of a genius. Is a genius.”

  He checks the mirror and changes lanes.

  “I’m about the least creative person I’ve ever met,” says Rick. “So maybe I have more respect for it, I’m more awed by it, than other people. I sometimes think that real artists​—​like your dad​—​their job is to go to the edge and sort of report back to the rest of us. But you know what Nietzche said about the abyss.”

  “I do?”

  “He said something like, You stare long enough into it, and pretty soon it stares back at you.”

  I think about what Shane said about being on good terms with the devil without being his friend.

  “So, yes, I think your father is a genius.”

  “I’m sorry I ever met him,” I say quietly.

  Rick doesn’t answer.

  A hundred miles later he says, “I’m not sure exactly how you regard my relationship with your mother.” Sounding more like his old stiff self. “You said some rather harsh things about it, but I assumed it was because you were upset.”

  “Sorry. I was being an asshole.”

  “You sure were. But again, I understand. You know that we plan to get married.”

  “You asking for permission?”

  “No. But I’m hoping that even if it doesn’t make you happy, it’s something you can at least accept.”

  A mile goes by before I say anything.

  “Yeah, it’s all right. I think it’s good.”

  He nods, then sticks his hand out. I shake it.

  And that’s pretty much all the talking we do until we get home, my mother running out of the house to greet us as we crunch into the driveway.

  I can see us better now that it’s all in the past tense /

  it was all good fun / from a safe distance

  I made it into twelfth grade. Squeaked in. A 67 on my final math exam. Rick helped me study, strings were pulled, tests retaken.

  Josephine refused to speak with me for the rest of the summer. I called her, I texted her, I emailed her, I stopped by her house. Her sister answered the door and told me to go away, using language you’d never believe could come out of that beautiful face.

  “I just want to talk to her.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you. Go away.”

  “No. Can you please just go get her?”

  She pulls out her phone.

  “If you don’t leave, I’m going to video you, and I’m going to put it online.”

  I left.

  I did more calling, texting, emailing. No response. I’m more or less friends with Devon again, and I showed him all the drafts of my emails to get his advice. Finally he said, “Austin, face facts. She’s gone. You’re not going to pathetic your way back to her.”

  Josephine and I finally ran into each other in the hall about two weeks after school started​—​okay, I did a little recon and figured out her schedule and planted myself at a spot where I knew I’d see her​—​and we talked.

  Hey.

  Hey.

  You good?

  Yeah.

  Good.

  Yeah.

  Shuffle shuffle throat clearing.

  Then she said, “I’m still so angry at you.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m just . . . I’d like to be friends, at least.”

  “Nope,” she said. “Not yet. Maybe never.”

  “Because of that one time?”

  “One time’s plenty.”

  “Yeah.”

  More shuffling.

  “I think about you every day,” I said.

  She sighed. “That still doesn’t fix it for me.”

  She walked away and I watched her go.

  A few weeks later, I started seeing her in the hall with Gary Eichten, who wears collared shirts and nice sweaters and is probably
Ivy League bound. Sometimes we’d see each other and she’d smile at me or give a little wave, but whatever happened between us had been wrapped up and packed away somewhere very deep.

  I’ll think about that, and about her, and about everything that happened, for the rest of my life. Sometimes I’ll be feeling good, and I’ll wonder why, and I’ll realize that it’s because I’d forgotten about her for a bit. Then I remember and feel bad again.

  I told you I was true, she said. She did say it, and I said it too, and then . . . It’s the lowest thing I’ve ever done. I blamed it on drinking. I blamed it on Shane. I blamed it on Josephine. But it was me. Whenever I think of what I did, and the pain in her eyes when she found out, it stops me dead in my tracks like I’ve run smack into a wall of shame.

  Alison: dating a new guy, football player, someone even larger than Todd. She winks at me sometimes in the hall. No thank you.

  My mom didn’t punish me for the whole New York thing. It’s like she knew​—​better than I did, really​—​that whatever Austin had run away, a different one had come back. All she said was, “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  She and Rick got married in late September at the Lake Harriet Rose Garden. A tiny ceremony, a few of her friends, a few of his. I didn’t bring a date. Devon lent me a guitar, and I played and sang “The Book of Love” for them and my mom bawled. I didn’t do a much better job of keeping it together. It’s hard to sing while there’s snot streaming down your upper lip.

  The mandolin: When I told Rick again that I would definitely pay him back, he shrugged and said, “I’m really not that concerned about it. But you will need a job.”

  And so Rick’s Downtown Grill gained a very dedicated new dishwasher. There are team meetings. I’ve never missed one.

  I’ve stopped smoking weed. Well, not stopped. It’s a special-occasion thing, now, once a month. Haven’t really been drinking, either. Whenever Devon’s around, he won’t let me: “Austin, think about it. Between your mom and your dad, you pretty much hit the genetic lottery for addiction. Give whatever brain cells you have left a break.” I’ve been smoking a lot, though. Those burning-stick things are hard to put down.

  And the music.

  After a break, I started hearing it again. I still can’t catch up to it. But sometimes I can get ahead of it. Because I’ve been writing songs, whole songs that have a beginning, middle, and end. Mostly about having your heart mushed, or having someone you love hate you. And be justified in hating you because it’s your fault. Most of the songs suuuuck. But now sometimes at night when I hear the music, I recognize it, because I wrote it, and I say, Aha! I got you, I got here first!

  Maybe the weirdest thing is Todd. It’s sort of like we’re friends now, as much as you can be friends with someone who doesn’t talk much. He bought himself a cheap drum set, which he set up in my basement. He comes over a lot and we play stuff together. Sometimes he drops by when I’m not here to pound on the drums by himself. I figure he’s just getting away from whatever awfulness is going on at home. Also, I think he lost a lot of friends when he up and quit the hockey team.

  “Why’d you quit?”

  “Piss off my dad.”

  We rarely discuss what happened in New York, or mention Shane. Once when his name came up I muttered something about what an asshole he turned out to be.

  “Yeah, well, there’s worse,” said Todd.

  As for the thing with Alison and me, I didn’t think Todd knew about it, seeing as how I still have all my teeth. But then one day out of nowhere he stopped in the middle of a song and said, “You know what I don’t get?”

  “What?”

  “You had Josephine. Why would you ever bother with someone like Alison?”

  Which was sort of worse than him punching me.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  If you watched the Grammys, you probably saw Amy perform. And if you search “Amy Adler boyfriend” you’ll see pictures of her with a well-known singer who is not Shane Tyler. She sent me a nice email​—​Let’s not lose touch, all that, said she’ll always appreciate Shane. But he’s like the song, isn’t he, she wrote. He’s good fun from a safe distance.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  As for Shane, I’ve never heard anything from him.

  Nothing.

  No email, text, call, letter, nothing.

  What did you expect? says my mom.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Shane’s new album came out in early December.

  I saw references to it on Pitchfork and in Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone giving it five out of five stars. The label released it online but also did an old-school version for the audio hipsters and elderly snobs, a vinyl version like they used to do decades ago, liner notes and all that. Other than glancing at the headlines​—​seeing them took me by surprise, gave me a stomachache​—​I made sure to ignore everything else about the album.

  A few days after it comes out, I’m down in the basement, going to the edge of the abyss and creating mediocre music out of the experience. I hear a polite ahem.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” says Rick, standing in the doorway. “I thought . . . I thought perhaps you should see this.”

  The vinyl version of Shane’s record. The cover is a moody, high-contrast concert shot of Shane, blue lighting.

  “Why’d you bring that?”

  “I was at the record store, poking around”​—​Rick being one of the elderly snobs with a turntable​—​“and saw it, and​—​well, you should take a look.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Okay,” he says. He doesn’t move.

  I sigh. “Oh, all right.”

  He brings it to me. “Don’t tell your mother I got it.”

  I take it from him, give it a quick once-over, and try to hand it back to him.

  “No, read the other side,” he says.

  I flip it over. It’s got the normal stuff, the track listings, credits, fine print. I don’t absorb any of it.

  “Congratulations,” he says.

  “What?”

  He points to the track listings.

  Among the song titles is “Rosalie.”

  Cowritten with Austin Methune.

  I’m quiet for a second.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says. “Also, look here.” He points.

  In small type at the lower right-hand corner of the album it says, Dedicated to Austin Methune, my son, who helped me more than he can ever know.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Yes.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The album did pretty well, and “Rosalie” was the single. It’s not the version we recorded with him that day​—​someone else is singing the harmony, and there’s more production on it. You’ve probably heard it a few times if you listen to any podcasts or radio that’s actually worth listening to. You might also have seen him on NPR, doing one of their Tiny Desk Concerts. Or maybe you heard the interview where he talks about his confessional new album and about kicking heroin and being clean for the first time since he was fourteen and all the people he hurt who will probably never speak to him again. I think I know some of them.

  In January I received a check in the mail with a printed note from the record label, explaining that the figure represented a mixture of royalties from radio and online play, as well as live performances. Not a huge amount, but an amount. Certainly far more than the zero I had earned from music before.

  I got checks in February, March, April. So when Rick’s birthday came around, I pooled the money with some from my mom, and we bought him a 1919 Gibson A2 mandolin, a real thing of beauty.

  When he opened it, he nodded gravely and thanked me, and then said, “I’m going to give you custodial responsibility for this. That means taking care of it and playing it a lot. Do you accept?”

  I accepted.

  I had an ocean of words to say to you /

  but they’ve drained away / and now I’m through

  I’m neither lazy nor a coward.


  Okay, fine, that’s not entirely true. I’m still a bit of both, although now I’d say they have much smaller roles in the clown orchestra that is Austin Methune. The third bassoon and, I don’t know, the triangle, for example.

  I will, however, still do pretty much anything if a girl is watching.

  But that’s not why I’m doing what I’m doing now, riding my motorcycle with a mandolin strapped to my back, a mandolin that technically belongs to Rick the Lawyer. There are no girls watching. Although I am on my way to another encounter with Todd Malloy.

  I graduated today. Another squeaker, but I did it, stood up there and got my hand shaken by the principal, and I waved at the crowd, my mom going nuts and embarrassing me. Also, I got into a real college, the University of Minnesota, with a music scholarship, a recommendation written for me by well-respected music producer Ed Verna.

  After the graduation ceremony, when everyone was milling about, I saw Josephine with her family, including first-term state senator Gerald Lindahl. Josephine got into Yale, and I heard she was leaving in a few days for a summer program in Paris, and I’d never see her again.

  When we spotted each other, she came running over and gave me a big hug.

  “I knew you could do it,” she said.

  And I said, “I still love you and I’ll always love you and this makes me so sad.”

  And she said, “Oh,” in the way you say that about something that is adorable but painful, and she gave me another hug. Then she squeezed my arm and smiled at me, the heartbreak smile, the smile you give someone when you’re okay and they’re not, and said, “Will you promise to keep in touch?”

  I murmured something​—​yes, sure, of course​—​and she said, “Great,” and gave me a third hug, and then she was gone, her receding figure getting blurrier as my eyes welled up.

  I saw Mrs. Jensen. She gave me a literal pat on the head and said, “Good job, SmartTard.”

  There was Alex, with his parents​—​“We’re so proud of you, Austin!”​—​and Devon with his​—​“We’re so proud of you, Austin!”​—​who were chatting with my mom and Rick​—​“We’re so proud of you, Austin!”​—​and yes, okay, I get it, no one expected this particular special-needs student to graduate please stop already.