Wish You Were Here

by Barbara Shoup

  “So what happened?” Ted asks.

  “We got an honorable mention,” I say. “Layla was pissed. Practically everybody got an honorable mention. But we got on TV. Channel Six. This feature story on kids and science. As far as Layla was concerned, that proved we should’ve won. She was sure Brady was the next Einstein.”

  Ted just laughs. He’s cool. I know Mom’s told him about Brady running away and how freaked out I’ve been about it, but he doesn’t use what I told him to segue into emotional territory and try to weasel anything out of me about how I feel. We just drive on a while longer, grooving to Steppenwolf, until we exit the highway and the stone gates of the university come into view. We have lunch at Mother Bear’s, then spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around the campus.

  “I always feel strange when I come down here,” Ted says. “Like I’m the person I was when I was in school. Like I could actually be that person again if no one could see I’ve gotten older. I suppose that sounds crazy.”

  “No,” I say. “Anyway, no crazier than the way I feel.”

  Ted cocks his head, waiting for me to go on.

  “Like, just now, I’m already the person I’m going to be. You know, when I come here.”

  “Déjà vu in reverse,” he says, and smiles.

  Later, when I told Dad I went down to see the campus, he said, “So did Ted get you one of those dork driving caps, like the one he wears?”

  In fact, Ted bought me a sweatshirt that cost forty-two dollars and a cool red wool baseball cap, but I knew if I told Dad he’d say Ted was trying to buy me. He’d have acted like he was kidding, said something like, “Your price is too low, Jackson. You should have held out for a red Jaguar, with IU plates.” But his feelings would have been hurt. It’s bad enough that Ted’s a successful businessman, a successful businessman who graduated from the college my dad flunked out of. Dad says he dropped out, but Mom told me that he took off for California because his grades were so bad, he knew it was just a matter of time before he got the letter telling him it was all over.

  I dread telling him what happened tonight. I was doing my homework at the kitchen table when Ted came to the door. I said, “Sorry, Mom’s gone to the PTO meeting at her school.” But he just stood on the porch, his hands in his pants pockets. He said, “I know. Jackson, could I talk to you?”

  Ted is a big man. Not fat. Stocky. “Beefy,” Dad says. However you want to describe him, it was disconcerting to see a man Ted’s size, dressed in a suit and tie, looking anxious about whether or not his girlfriend’s kid was going to invite him in.

  I opened the screen door, and he stepped into the kitchen. “Want a beer?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah, great,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

  I pulled the tab on a Michelob and handed him the cold can. He took a long drink, then twisted the can around and around in the palm of his hand. He looked at my homework spread out on the table. “I’m interrupting you—”

  “My pleasure,” I said. “I hate physics.” I snapped my book shut and laughed, hoping he’d laugh, too. He didn’t, though.

  “Listen, Jackson,” he said, “what would you think about my girls coming over from St. Louis for a visit. Say, Thanksgiving?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  He cleared his throat. “The thing is, I don’t exactly know how they’ll act. They’re still so upset, you know. Just nine and five. They’re still, well, they’re still upset—”

  “About the divorce,” I said.

  “I guess you know how that is,” Ted said.

  “Yep,” I said.

  “So, if they acted … lousy at first, you’d understand.”

  I said I would.

  He said, “Good. Good. It really matters to me how it works out, you know, in the long run.” Then, out of the clear blue sky, he said, “Jackson, I want to marry your mom.”

  I looked at him for some clue to what he expected me to say, but he looked as stupid and in-over-his-head as I felt. I said, “You’re asking me if you can?” My voice cracked like an eighth grader’s.

  Ted didn’t laugh, though. He didn’t want me to feel like the fool I was; I could tell. He sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, set his beer on the table. “I guess I’m asking you what you think.” He paused. “What do you think, Jackson?”

  “Does my mom know you’re here?” I asked. If he said yes, I was going to kill her.

  He shook his head. “We talked about Kristin and Amy coming. We both wanted to be sure you’d feel okay about it. A holiday and all. She probably wouldn’t be surprised to know that I dropped by to see what you thought about that. I don’t know. Maybe she would be surprised. Maybe she’d have wanted to talk to you first. Or maybe she has mentioned the girls coming?”

  Ted went on before I could answer. “Listen, I had no idea I was going to say that other thing to you. About wanting to marry Ellen. It just came out. I haven’t really talked to your mom about it yet. Not seriously.”

  He heaved a big sigh. He put his head in his hands. “God, I just don’t want to screw this up,” he said. Then he told me all about his ex-wife, how unhappy they’d been together right from the start. She was a painter, he said. An abstract painter. He had an MBA. They should’ve known it wouldn’t work out. Apparently, everyone else knew. When they told their friends they were splitting up, every single one of them said, “I can’t believe you guys hung in there as long as you did.”

  “My own parents said it,” Ted said. “They never could stand Susan. She was too … unusual for them. I loved her, though. When I was with Susan, I felt like a more interesting person. When we were younger, that is. The last few years I was with her I felt like a nerd. When she left me, she said I was an embarrassment.”

  He said, “For a long time, I wanted to kill her.”

  What was I supposed to say to that?

  “Oh, Christ, I shouldn’t be talking about any of this with you, Jackson,” he said. “I know that. It’s just—I really do love Ellen. You’ll probably think this is stupid, but I fell in love with your mom on our first date. She’s so—I don’t know, she’s so good. I know how she feels about your dad. I mean, I know she still loves him. I know she’ll never really get over it—”

  He paused and looked at me, as if to make sure I knew that piece of information about my mom. I shrugged to show him that I did.

  “I can handle that,” he said. “But, Jackson, do you think maybe she could be happy with me?”

  I had to tell the truth, even though I knew it meant kissing off the life it had taken Mom and me so long to get used to, starting all over again. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I do.”

  “You do? Really?”

  Brady probably would’ve said something silly like, “Yes, my son,” to break the tension. I just nodded.

  Ted took a deep breath and let it out. He laughed then, a kind of weird laugh. “This is ridiculous, isn’t it? Talking to you this way. As if you were Ellen’s father.”

  “It’s okay.” I felt the heat rush to my face, heard my voice go a little out of control again when I said, “I appreciate, you know, that you care what I think.”

  Ted leaned over and punched me on the shoulder. “You’re one in a million, Jackson,” he said. “You’re not like other kids.”

  How true, I thought. Depressing. If only he knew what that actually meant: Jackson, you’re a loser. But I must be getting used to it because, at least right then, I felt perfectly comfortable sitting there at the table with Ted, the King of the Dweebs.

  He took out his daughters’ school pictures and showed them to me. “They really are good girls,” he said. “Just upset, you know?”

  “It’s hard,” I said. “I remember that.”

  He nodded. “I think you’ll be good for them, Jackson. I think you’ll be a help to them.
But, believe me, I know it’s been just you and Ellen for quite some time now, and I’m counting on you to let me know if Kristin and Amy bug you or if they get in the way of your privacy. Or if I do, for that matter.” He blushed. “Assuming Ellen agrees to marry me, that is.”

  A kind of awkward silence fell between us then, until Ted grinned and said, “So, what do you think about those Hoosiers?”

  We were still talking IU basketball when we heard Mom’s car in the driveway. She walked in and looked at us with a puzzled expression.

  Ted glanced at me, then he stood up. “Ellen,” he blurted out, “will you marry me?”

  “What?” she said. “Oh, my God. Yes.” And burst into tears.

  When she calmed down, Mom called Grandma to tell her the news, and then she cried some more. Ted grinned goofily. The three of us sat around in the kitchen a long time. Ted’s normally a fairly quiet guy, but tonight he couldn’t quit talking. He told Mom how great their life was going to be, starting now. He told her all the things he was going to do to make her happy. We were all going to be happy, me included, he said.

  He didn’t mean anything by it, I knew, but it depressed me. Mom, yeah. Ted has a good shot at making Mom happy, and I hope he does. But me? Sometimes I think I won’t ever be happy again. I’m not even sure I want to be happy. I mean, I was once, when I was little, and look what happened. But I figure things aren’t going to get worse with Ted around, and I’m satisfied with that.

  When I got up and said I’d better be getting to bed, he said, “Jackson, I don’t exactly know how to say this, but—well, you know—I’d like you even if you weren’t Ellen’s kid.”

  Mom cast me a grateful glance when I reached out, shook his hand, and said, “Ted, as stepfathers go, I couldn’t think of a better person for the job. Plus, you might let me drive your van sometime, with the random CD player.” That made him laugh.

  “Absolutely,” he said. We shook hands again; he clapped me on the back.

  “He’s some kid, Ellen,” I heard him say to my mom as I headed upstairs.

  I crawled into bed with my clothes on. I was so tired from all that had happened this evening, I felt like I was dying. I thought I’d conk out right away, but I couldn’t sleep. So here I am writing in the notebook again, trying to make sense of my life.

  Why can’t I just be happy for my mom? I am happy for her. God, I’ve known for a long time that she and Dad were never going to get back together. So why am I getting all bent out of shape about the divorce again—as if Dad had just left yesterday?

  There’s no answer; there never is. Why try to make sense of it? What I really want is out of my life for a while. Or I want Brady back in it.

  If he were here, he’d dream up some weird, amusing plan to make me see beyond my own small, pathetic life. Hell, if Brady hadn’t run away, I’d be at our apartment right now, living a real life. What’s happening between Mom and Ted wouldn’t affect me at all.

  nine

  Dad’s blasting the horn at eight forty-five on Thanksgiving morning for the Turkey Trot, an event Dad and his friend Tom cooked up a few years ago when they started running. The idea is if you run five miles on Thanksgiving, you can eat whatever you want the rest of the day. Like most things Dad has anything to do with, it’s gotten slightly out of hand. Last year the theme was “America: The Cornucopia,” and Dad and Brady and I went as a bunch of carrots, dressed in orange mechanics’ jumpsuits and orange stocking caps with plastic ferns stuck on top. This year’s theme is “Your Favorite American Freedom.”

  “Too bad Brady can’t make it,” Dad said when he told me. “He could’ve been a road.”

  It annoyed me. When he said, “So what should we be, pal?” I said I had my own idea for a costume, thinking it would hurt his feelings. But if it did, he didn’t let it show.

  I get in the car this morning, and there he is dressed in regular running clothes, with the brown hairy arms of a grizzly bear costume fastened over his own arms and a little sign hanging around his neck that says “The Right to Bear Arms.” Kim shows off her pink Lycra suit plastered with bumper stickers——she’s freedom of expression.

  I wait for Dad to turn and say, “What, no costume?”

  Then I whip a red bandanna out of the waistband of my sweatpants and tie it across my mouth. I hold up an index card that says “The Right to Remain Silent.”

  “Perfect,” he says, just the tiniest bit edgy.

  It is perfect. I feel weirdly happy. I like having annoyed Dad. I like wandering around Tom and Mary Beth’s yard without feeling like I have to make conversation.

  “Where’s your friend Brady?” Mary Beth asks.

  I give her the hitchhiker’s thumb.

  Like always, the costumes are cool. Tom’s made a sandwich-board American flag with flames painted at the top of it. Now and then he lights up a cigarette to get the effect of smoke. Mary Beth is dressed as a fountain pen: black sweats with a gold band around her shoulders. She’s made a nib out of gold cardboard that sits on her head like a crown. She’s the Declaration of IndePENdence. Each of their three kids is dressed in red, white, or blue sweats, “We The People” emblazoned on their chests, one word per kid. A bunch of their friends are there, too. They have poster board printed with phrases from the rest of the preamble to the Constitution hung around their necks, and with a signal from Tom they make a long line, each one reciting his or her part.

  Dad and Tom pass out Styrofoam cups of champagne to the runners. Mary Beth serves powdered doughnuts on silver trays. Near starting time, they herd us all onto the front porch for the pageant, which consists of everyone singing “Old Mr. Turkey” at the top of their lungs. Then it’s time for the Blessing of the Shoes.

  I’ve never run the Trot before. I’ve always hung out at the house with Brady. Kim talked me into doing it this year. “Surprise your dad,” she said a few weeks ago. “You’re in shape; you can do it.”

  “Go for it,” she says now, and gives me a little push toward the starting line.

  “You’re running?” Dad asks.

  I nod.

  A guy dressed up like a Catholic priest invokes God and Notre Dame to help us run fast. Tom’s littlest kid shoots the ritual popgun, and we’re off.

  “Go, Jax!” Kim yells. She’s not running herself. She hates being sweaty anywhere but the gym.

  The pack of thirty or so runners spreads out after the first block. Dad and Tom stay with the front group, leaving me to jog at an easy pace near the back. I click off the first mile, my body warming, loosening. It’s easy to quicken my pace—so I do, passing people now and then. I like that. I’ve never been into sports much, but now, running, it occurs to me that maybe it’s because when I was a wimp I was never any good at them. Kim’s right: I like my new body. I like feeling strong. I catch up with Dad and Tom at the four-mile mark and stay with them right to the finish.

  “Yes!” Kim yells, her bumper stickers flapping as she jumps up and down. “Jax, you did it! You did it!”

  “Christ,” Dad says to her. “Whose side are you on? I buy the kid a goddamn health club membership, and you train him to use it against me.” He grins and tries to give her a big sweaty hug, but she screeches, “Oz!” and makes him chase her across the yard.

  Mary Beth rolls her eyes. “Isn’t Kim a trip?” she says. “God love her. She’s so—”

  “Enthused?”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly it. Terminally enthused. Apparently, she’s got you spending all your spare time over at the gym, too.” She holds me at arm’s length. “Well, it’s working. You look different—older, better. All grown-up, I guess. And what’s this I hear about your mom, hon? Oz says she’s getting married.”

  “Next month,” I say. “Christmastime.”

  “So soon!”

  “That’s what Grandma says,” I say.

 
Mary Beth laughs. “She probably still wants the wedding she had her heart set on when Ellen married Oz.”

  “I guess so.”

  “A hippie wedding. God, she was so mortified! I remember her wringing her hands and saying, ‘Honey, you can’t want this. A dress like a nightgown and a garland of weeds in your hair!’ Ellen looked so beautiful that day, though. Oh, Jax, do you think she’s going to be happy?”

  “I think so. Ted’s nice. They have a nice time together.”

  “Oz said that, too.”

  “He did?” I say. “I thought—”

  “You thought your dad didn’t like Ted.” Mary Beth sort of smiles. “Oz said, and I quote, ‘He’s a real Neil Diamond kind of guy, what can I say? But he’s good to Ellen. I think she really loves him.’”

  “Yeah,” I say. “She does love him.”

  “Good,” Mary Beth says. “I’m happy for her.” She gives me a quick, fierce hug, then she hurries away, leaving me to Dad, who looks at his watch, grimaces, and says, “Go change your clothes, pal. We’re outta here. No way am I risking the wrath of Doris, getting you back late for the bird.”

  Driving to Grandma’s, I want to say something to him about what Mary Beth told me; I want to say I’m glad you feel okay about Ted. And I am glad. But I don’t speak. I can’t risk getting all emotional about Dad right now. I have to concentrate on how not to blow it with Kristin and Amy.

  ten

  Mom and I have been through this a million times in the last few weeks. Do we make a big deal of their visit? Do we go for a more low-key approach? Mom regards me as the expert, even though I tried to explain to her that this is not like anything that ever happened between me and Dad’s girlfriends.

  “Even so,” she said. “What did they do that you hated most? What made you like them?”

  I said mainly I liked them if they didn’t obviously resent me or try to compete with me for Dad’s attention or treat me like some generic kid. I hated to be fussed over, though. I liked to be respected as a person but at the same time left alone.