Wish You Were Here

by Barbara Shoup

  “Well, that’s something,” she said. “That would favor the no-big-deal approach, wouldn’t it? What I think we ought to go for is a kind of no-threat charm.”

  “Good plan,” I said. “First we get some Valium—”

  “Jackson!” she said. “Be serious.”

  But she looks so mellow when she comes to Grandma’s door to let me in that I’m not so sure she hasn’t gotten some Valium, after all.

  “How’s it going?” I whisper.

  She beams and gestures for me to follow her into the kitchen. Once there, it doesn’t take long to figure out that Grandma has taken charge of suckering Ted’s kids into loving us. She does it in her usual way, partly with presents and special treats, partly by sleight of hand. She’s put a wrapped gift at each girl’s place at the dinner table. She’s rented tapes for them to watch on the VCR. On the kitchen counter, there’s a big glass jar full of Gummi Bears. The sleight of hand part is how she acts as if none of this is a big deal, how she catches them off balance by already knowing who they are.

  “You like Gummi Bears, honey?” she says, sounding so surprised when she sees Amy eyeing them. As if she keeps two pounds of Gummi Bears around all the time, to snack on herself while she’s watching Oprah. “Here. Let’s put some in this little dish for you.”

  “Is that right?” she says when Mom mentions that Kristin takes ballet lessons. “Well, isn’t it funny that I happened to pick out that Swan Lake tape to treat myself for doing all this cooking? Kristin, maybe you’d like to watch it.”

  I happen to know that she’s talked to Ted a dozen times in the last week, trying to get a fix on the girls. Kristin, the oldest, is thin and long-legged. “She grew three inches over the summer!” Grandma whispers, coaching me out in the pantry. “She hasn’t gotten used to it yet, so don’t mention it. Tell her that she looks just like a ballerina. Or that she has pretty hair; Ted says she’s vain about her hair. That’s what’s in the packages, you know. Barrettes and those ruffly bands girls are wearing now to hold their hair back.”

  Kristin does have pretty hair. It’s silky blond, like Ted’s—long and straight. Amy’s hair is pretty, too. Also blond. But thick and boingy, like Shirley Temple’s. But I don’t say so. I figure Kristin and Amy probably hate my guts already; they probably think I’m stealing their dad away from them, so, at least right now, it seems better to say nothing than to risk saying something wrong. I’ll just watch them a while; that’s what I’ve decided. Take my cues from what they do.

  So far, they’ve ignored me. Ted introduced me right when I came in.

  “Hi,” they said. That’s all.

  Ted gave me this look like jeez, I’m sorry, but I just smiled at him.

  I’m fine, really. I can be patient. I graze on the hors d’oeuvres on the kitchen counter, leaf through a couple of magazines. When Mom asks about the Trot, I tell her about beating Dad, and everybody laughs. Well, the adults laugh. Kristin has disappeared into the den to lose herself in the ballet. Amy’s there in the kitchen, leaning against Ted’s leg, but she keeps her eyes downcast. Ted keeps his big hands on her shoulders. Now and then, distractedly, he combs his fingers through her curls. Mom watches them.

  Grandma’s like that Hindu god with eight arms, taking things out of the oven, putting other things in, basting the turkey, checking to make sure that each serving dish has its silver spoon. If anyone tries to help her, she says, “No, no. Out of the way!” She won’t let us into the dining room until everything is in place: the turkey looks as if it were cut out of a magazine ad, the steaming vegetables, the mountain of mashed potatoes. The good china, the sterling silver, the starched lace tablecloth.

  I think of Dad and Kim, and wonder whether they really are having tofu for dinner. It would be perfect in a way. It would serve him right. I mean, it certainly would be untraditional—nothing at all like what Dad calls the Doris A. Boyles Annual “Over the River and Through the Woods” Holiday Burlesque.

  “Why can’t we have our own Thanksgiving?” he used to say when he and Mom were still married. “Cook a bird, have a few friends over. Be laid-back for a change. Why do we have to put on church clothes and go over to your mother’s?”

  Mom always said the same thing. “It’s a family tradition, Oz.”

  “Bull,” he’d say. “You weren’t so hot about traditions when I met you. We were going to make our own traditions, remember? What happened to that?”

  It was the same thing at Christmas, on Easter Sunday. Mom never argued with him, but we always ended up at Grandma’s, and it was always a disaster. Dad in a foul mood. Mom a nervous wreck, worrying about what he was going to say or do next. I suffered in my own way for being the traitor I was, for letting Grandma sucker me in every single time, just the way she’s suckering in Kristin and Amy today.

  “Do you want Jackson to be like your parents, Ellen?” I’d hear Dad say after I’d gone to bed. “Do you want him to believe in what they believe in? God, didn’t we say we wouldn’t raise him the way we were raised? Didn’t we say we wouldn’t subject him to all that crap?”

  I’d put my hands over my ears and lie there, my stomach churning with too much turkey, my whole system surging with sugar, and the room would start to spin. It was just a matter of time before I’d throw up and start to cry.

  “See?” Dad would say. “It isn’t good for him to be there.”

  Mom would tut-tut over all that rich food, but it wasn’t that simple. Something inside me knew that the only way to feel better about having sided with Grandma was to purge myself of the whole day.

  It’s depressing to think about it. I watch Grandma charm Ted’s daughters now. She tells them how sweet and pretty they are. She asks them questions in her polite, persistent way, and they answer her as if she’s a queen. Of course, once Grandma’s out of the picture, things immediately start to go down the tubes. On the way to our house after dinner, the girls start bickering over the invisible line they’ve drawn down the middle of the seat in the van.

  “She’s touching me,” Amy whines. “Mommy says she’s not allowed to touch me when we’re riding in the car.”

  “Not a car, stupid,” Kristin says. “A van.”

  “I’m telling Mommy you called me stupid,” Amy says. It’s the first time I’ve heard either of them mention their mother all day, and even I know Ted should read it as a signal. He should take them back to his apartment and spend the evening with them, alone. I glance at Mom, whose smile keeps looking more and more anxious.

  “Hop to, kiddos,” Ted says when we get to our house. He slides the van door open. “Let’s go, hey?”

  Inside, Kristin parks herself on the couch, drawing herself into the corner of it, as if trying to disappear. Ted sits down on the easy chair, and Amy climbs onto his lap.

  I thought I was prepared for things getting uncomfortable; I told Ted it was no big deal. But now I see I’m not prepared at all. I felt like a stranger, odd man out, at Grandma’s all afternoon. Now I feel that way in my own house. What I’d like to do is to go up to my room and put on some music—Stop Making Sense would be good, since nothing does anymore. Or maybe Dark Side of the Moon. But I don’t want Ted to feel any worse than he does, so I stick around. I can’t stand just sitting there, though, the tension gathering around us like smog. So I get up and turn on the television. “You guys want to watch The Simpsons?” I ask. I spin the dial to find the station. “I’ll bet it’s a Thanksgiving special.”

  “We’re not allowed to watch that show,” Kristin says. “Our mom says it isn’t good for us.”

  “Turn it off, Jackson,” my mom says.

  Jeez, I’ve never seen a more miserable group of people in my life. I can’t be mad at Kristin, she looks so sad. Ted is mortified. Both Mom and Amy look like they’re about to cry. Me? I feel like I’m about eighty years old. I wish I could say to Kristin, Listen, I’ve b
een through this. What you’re doing is only going to make things worse. But kids don’t listen. They can’t. Kristin will have to work it out herself, like I did. Like everyone does.

  I hope she has someone to help her through it, though, like Brady helped me. He was there. No matter how mad or hurt I am about the way he ditched me, no matter what he’s like when he comes back, there’s always that. I’ll never doubt that that part of our friendship was real. I’ll never forget it.

  “Hot chocolate, everyone?” Mom says in a hopeful voice. “With marshmallows?”

  “Sure, great,” I say.

  Ted and I talk about IU basketball while she’s in the kitchen. Well, Ted talks. I let him. Amy and Kristin sit so still they might pass for a couple of the dolls in Mom’s collection.

  “Here we are,” Mom says, breezing back in with a tray of mugs. She passes them around and sets a plate of cookies on the coffee table. She turns on the stereo: music from The Nutcracker, which she and Ted plan to take the girls to see tomorrow. Even so, it feels awkward, too quiet. We all sit like game pieces waiting to be moved.

  Then Ted starts babbling about what a great person my mom is, how swell I am, and what a great time we’re all going to have in the future. Oh no, I think. Don’t do this. I rack my brain for some way to shut him up or turn the conversation in another direction, but I can’t think of a single thing to say to him that wouldn’t seem rude.

  “Ellen and I are going to buy a new house,” he says, digging himself in deeper. “A nice big one, with a room for each of you in it, your own room that you can fix up however you want. Ellen will help you. And we’ll take neat trips together; we’ll have a good time.”

  Amy gets up to use the bathroom, and when she comes back, she goes to sit next to her sister on the couch, as near as she can get without touching her.

  “And look,” Ted says. “Ellen’s gotten us all these travel magazines to help us pick a place so we can all go on the honeymoon together at Christmas.” He flips the pages of one. Beaches, cities, deserts, mountains, forests blur, all making one place: not home.

  Amy says in a small voice, “We can’t go away at Christmas, Daddy. What if Santa Claus can’t find us?”

  “Oh, you are so stupid,” Kristin says bitterly. “There is no Santa Claus.”

  “Kristin!” Ted says.

  Mom looks stricken. And I feel pretty bad myself. Poor Amy. Does she need to know this on top of everything else? And poor Kristin, too. She’ll probably feel guilty all her life for what she just did. Not yet, though. Now she just needs to keep hurting Ted, and she does.

  “Well, Daddy, there isn’t any such thing as Santa Claus, and you know it,” she says. “You’re Santa Claus. Mommy told me that a long time ago—why can’t Amy know? You buy the presents. And now we have to go wherever you want us to go on Christmas or we won’t get any.”

  “Ah, Kristin.” Ted goes to her, kneels so that their eyes are level. But she flinches when he tries to draw her to him, pulls away. Amy sits at the very edge of the couch cushion, her little back perfectly straight, no doubt waiting for her father to assure her that Kristin was lying.

  Just then Mom motions me to follow her into the kitchen, to leave the three of them alone, so I don’t know exactly what Ted says or does next. But soon I hear Kristin’s voice saying, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”

  Then Amy’s high, reedy voice. “Daddy, please, can we go home?”

  Mom and I don’t say a word, just look at each other. What could we say? We stand there, exiled in our own house. We hear the front door close; we hear Ted start the van; we hear the gravel in the driveway crunching as he pulls away.

  eleven

  Ted calls after midnight, and he and Mom talk a long time. I can hear Mom’s voice, I can pick up the rhythm of her speech, but I can’t understand what she’s saying. It’s like listening to a person speak in a foreign language. It reminds me of lying in this same spot, falling asleep to the sound of Mom and Dad talking, laughing long, long ago. Later, their angry voices keeping me awake. Now when I hear the click of the receiver, I wait five minutes, then go downstairs, as if on my way to the kitchen. I act surprised when I see Mom sitting in the living room, wrapped in her favorite afghan.

  “I woke you, talking,” she says.

  I give her my best blank look.

  “You didn’t hear me?” She nods toward the phone. “Ted,” she says. “We were talking about the girls. Honestly, Jackson. Sometimes I think your dad’s right. Life’s cheerleader, he used to call me. Here I was perfectly willing to believe that everything was hunky-dory just because Thanksgiving dinner went okay. Thanksgiving at my mother’s house. Like it hasn’t taken me my whole life to realize that nothing that happens there is exactly real. And Ted’s just as gullible as I am,” she says. “What a pair we’ll make. Oh, my God.”

  “Come on, it wasn’t that bad,” I say. “They were tired and they got cranky, that’s all. Ted should’ve taken them home right after Grandma’s. Believe me, about this part, I am an expert. I know.”

  She gives me a weak smile.

  “Mom, you told me just yesterday you knew it wasn’t going to be easy. That it would take a while. Remember?”

  “That’s me,” she says. “Worrying about the wrong thing again. I put in all that time and effort worrying about Thanksgiving dinner and forgot there was the whole rest of the weekend to worry about. Not to mention the whole rest of our lives. Kristin and Amy are still little children. They’re going to be around, they’re going to need Ted for a long time—”

  “As opposed to me needing anybody?” I say. “Does this mean that since I’m not a little kid anymore, since I’m practically out of here, you’re transferring all your worry to those two?”

  “Oh, Jackson,” she says, and starts to cry.

  I feel like a real jerk then. “Mom, I’m kidding,” I say. And I was. Or at least I thought I was when I said it. Boy, I can just imagine some shrink drilling me. Are you feeling threatened, Jackson? Do you feel that having stepsisters will cost you some of your mother’s love? But now’s no time to think about that.

  “Mom! Get a grip,” I say. “Come on, I was kidding. Really. I always thought it would be cool to have a little sister. Now I’ll have two.”

  Mom dabs at her eyes with the afghan and sniffs. “Did you wish you’d had a sister, Jackson?” she asks. “You never said so.”

  “Oh, sometimes … ” I say. I don’t tell her that it was only after the divorce that I had even considered it. Until then, just the three of us together, life seemed perfect. After the divorce, though, I wondered sometimes whether having a sister or brother would have made things easier. Someone to split the pain with. But I don’t want to upset Mom more, getting into that, so I turn the tables on her. “Did you?” I ask. “Want more kids, I mean.”

  “I’d’ve liked another child,” she says slowly. “I—your dad and I decided that having more than one wouldn’t be good for us.”

  “For him.”

  She gets that look she’s always gotten when I’m treading on territory she wants to avoid. She’s always been careful not to criticize Dad in front of me, she’s always tried to be matter-of-fact about what happened between them, not to lay blame. That’s good, I know. But sometimes it makes things harder because it means that I can’t get pissed off about Dad in front of her. I have to work a lot of stuff out just watching and thinking, which takes a long, long time.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “About Dad. I know he didn’t want any kids. I’m over feeling bad about that.”

  “Your dad loves you, Jackson.”

  “I know that, too,” I say. “It’s okay. I know who Dad is.”

  “You do, don’t you?” she says. “That’s good. Sometimes I think I’ll be sorting that out for the rest of my life. Who he is, who he was, who he might have been. What w
e might have been together. And I hate it when he’s so damn nice. You know what he said to me the other day? We were talking about the schedule for this weekend, when he might spend some time with you, and he said, ‘Don’t worry, Ellen. This thing with Ted’s kids will work out fine. They’ll be crazy about you; they’re lucky to have you.’”

  “They are lucky,” I say.

  “It’s not that, Jackson. Whether or not what he says is true. It’s just that he said it. That it was even on his mind. Oh, I should quit thinking about him. I know it.”

  “Yeah, I’d stick to one worry at a time,” I say. “You started out worrying about Kristin and Amy. Be consistent. That’s what you’re always telling me.”

  I thought she’d laugh, but she looks like she’s about to start crying again.

  “I just feel so bad for them,” she says. “Those poor little girls. If they like me, they betray their mother. If they don’t like me, they lose even more of their dad than they’ve already lost.”

  We sit in the dark living room a long time—her on the couch wrapped up in her afghan, me in the rocking chair, cold, but pretending I’m not. The porcelain faces of my mom’s dolls are white in the moonlight. Pretty little children, I think. Without problems.

  In a little while, she sighs. “Here I go, Jackson,” she says in a wobbly voice. “Looking on the bright side again.”

  “Oh no,” I say, and roll my eyes.

  Finally, she laughs. “Seriously, now—it was nice at Mother’s, wasn’t it? Kristin and Amy can’t help but admit that, at least inside, even if they don’t say so. And what happened later certainly wasn’t as bad as it might have been. I mean, it wasn’t, or didn’t seem to be, a reaction against me.”

  “It wasn’t,” I say. “You’re right about that.” Which is, of course, a flat-out lie. It had everything to do with her. And with me. And the whole stupid concept of people getting divorced in the first place. But she doesn’t want to hear that.