Wish You Were Here

by Barbara Shoup

She’s back!” Dad says, when Steph appears the next afternoon. He glances over at me. He looks like he’s about to wink.

  Don’t, I glare at him.

  He just grins.

  Steph unzips her backpack and starts pulling stuff out of it. Two tie-dyed shirts, one each for me and Dad. Some flat, pretty scary-looking homemade cookies with M&Ms on them. The latest Enquirer. There’s a mix tape for Dad that she’s titled “Get Up, Stand Up” after the Bob Marley song. And one for me that has “Destiny” printed on it. I stick it in my jeans pocket and hope to hell she won’t go off on all that garbage about the psychic with Dad. Fortunately—or unfortunately—Layla arrives before she gets the chance. She throws her arms around me and says, “Honey, you’re a sight for sore eyes! And Stephanie! You come over here and give me a hug, too.”

  “Party!” Dad says.

  Layla laughs and pulls a six-pack of beer out of the huge canvas bag she carries everywhere. She pops a tab on one and hands it to Dad. “Jax?” she says.

  I look at Dad and realize he assumes I’ve been drinking all along.

  I shrug. “Sure.”

  Later, Dad says, “So, Jax, what do you think about Layla?”

  “What’s to think?” I say. “I’ve known her since I was five.”

  “About me and Layla,” he says. “What would you think about us, you know, getting together?”

  “Kim told me she’d been around,” I say. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Kim told you?”

  I shrug.

  “Goddamn it,” he says. “She had no business telling you that.”

  “It was true, wasn’t it? So what’s the big deal?”

  “No big deal. It just wasn’t her place to tell you, that’s all. But what do you think, Jax?”

  “I’ve always liked Layla,” I say.

  What I think is, God, what a great TV sitcom this could be: Like Father, Like Son. The real-life adventures of a dad, a son, and their flaky girlfriends. Over the next few weeks, lots of possibilities for episodes present themselves in real life. Dad and son double-date, smashing the generation gap myth. Dad and son smoke a little evil weed together: nice bonding theme. The son bravely parties on for days, worrying about whether his girlfriend is pregnant because they were both drunk the night they got back together and forgot to use a condom: would he insist on an abortion? Of course, it’s television, and everything turns out all right, so he doesn’t actually have to make the decision. I imagine an episode in which the prodigal son, Brady, comes home and discovers that his mom and his best friend’s dad are getting it on.

  He’d be ecstatic! I can just see him, wiggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. Grinning his knowing grin. He’d say, “Jax, bro!” He’d cook up a fantasy about how Dad and Layla would have a baby together that would turn out to be a weird blend of the two of us. A perfect child with only our best traits.

  Yeah, it would make a great episode in the sitcom my life’s become. But I’m glad he’s not really here to get obsessed with them and suck us both into playing family. The truth is, the whole scene disgusts me. Dad and Layla are as ridiculous as adolescents, the way they act. Life is one big party.

  We blast some music, drink a few beers. Dad and Layla do the sit-down dance together and fall back on the pillows of the hospital bed, gasping for air. That’s the cue for Steph and me to exit left and give them some privacy. We go to her house, smoke a little weed, listen to more music. Sometimes we talk about Brady. Steph’s been dreaming about him again. She’s convinced he’s trying to send her some kind of message, and she thinks we should sneak into Layla’s house, where, with his things all around her, she’s bound to be more receptive.

  “If he wanted to tell you something, why wouldn’t he just call you?” I say. “I mean, don’t you think this telepathic shit is kind of pointless when all he really has to do is pick up the phone?”

  She gives me this look, lights a joint, and offers it to me. I take a long drag, then another. We pass it back and forth a couple more times, then I lie back on her bed and look at her. She’s sitting beside me, Indian style, her head moving in slow motion to the Jefferson Airplane. A thin ribbon of smoke curls up from the incense that’s burning in a little clay pot on the table. Her hair looks like smoke, gauzy—like the hippie blouse she’s wearing. The more I look at her, the more I like the idea of going to Layla’s. Why not go? The key to the house she gave me ages ago is still on my key ring. I imagine Brady, who-knows-where, all of a sudden getting a mental fax of the two of us in his bedroom—in his bed, not in the one I slept in when I stayed over. To hell with him, I think. Who needs him?

  By the time we walk the half mile or so to his house, drinking the beers we swiped from the bar refrigerator, I’m feeling crazy with the idea of doing it there. We slip in through the front door, making a single shadow as we pass through the lighted hallway. In Brady’s dark room, I pull her to me.

  “Jax,” she says. “We have to find totem things. You know, to bring Brady—”

  I press against her, hard.

  “Jax, I mean it.”

  “No you don’t,” I say.

  She laughs then and lets me move her hand down to the zipper of my jeans. She lets me lead her to Brady’s bed.

  When we’re through, she whispers, “He was with us.”

  For me, there was just the black void, the not-hereness I always feel with her. But I say nothing, just watch from the bed as she gathers some of Brady’s things—the glitter yo-yo he carried all through sixth grade, the statue of Elvis he bought at a flea market, the old, beat-up cowboy holster with a cap gun in it. She arranges them in her lap. She closes her eyes and whispers, “Brady, Brady, Brady.”

  I want out of here. Brady never threw anything away, Layla hasn’t touched his room since he left, and being here without him depresses me. We built that plastic dinosaur skeleton together one rainy Sunday; we raced the Hot Wheels cars on the orange track we propped against the back of his desk chair; we bickered over whose turn it was to sit on the beanbag chair. To tell the truth, it scares me. All those things, and the things Stephanie’s touching, trying to call Brady back with, make me think of Grandma going through all Grandpa’s drawers and closets after he died.

  Brady’s not dead, I tell myself. He sent me those postcards. He’s not dead. And even if he were, we wouldn’t find out about it by gathering totem objects and trying to commune with his soul. I don’t believe in that crap. I came here with Stephanie because I wanted to screw her in Brady’s bed. It was a crappy thing to do all the way around, and I knew it while I was doing it. Nonetheless, I keep going back. But after that first night I go alone.

  It’s easy, now that Layla has started staying over with Dad. I climb out my bedroom window at two, maybe three in the morning, and head over. I walk. I like walking in the dead of night; the empty streets look like I feel. Sometimes a car cruises by and I get scared. What if it’s an undercover cop? But it never is. I walk on and cut into Layla’s backyard from the alley. Once inside, I go straight up to Brady’s room and just sit there in the dark. Sometimes I turn his stereo on real low or open his closet and look at his shirts hanging there. Sometimes I sit on his beanbag chair and try to convince myself he’s just gone to the kitchen for food. Any minute, he’ll come back and I’ll say, “I’m so sick of this shit, man. I get up at dawn to go work out, I do my schoolwork, take care of Dad—he’s driving me crazy. And what am I going to do about Steph?”

  He’ll grin at me, toss me a Coke and a bag of Doritos. “Jax,” he’ll say, “Jax, Jax, Jax,” in this mournful voice, and I’ll start laughing because I already know he’s going to spout his favorite line from this poem we read in lit class: “‘Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.’”

  The nights I don’t go to Brady’s, I drive to a hidden place I know near the reservoir and drink a few beers. I skip stones ac
ross the water and watch it ripple. I stare at the houses across the lake.

  I feel like I did that time Mom decided it would be a great idea for me to go to camp and I got so homesick she had to come and get me. But how can I be homesick now? I mean, I’m living with my dad. His house is home, too, isn’t it? I guess I’m just a weenie kid like I was at camp, missing my mom. I do miss her. I might as well admit it. I miss her taking care of me; I miss the way she used to keep me in line before she fell in love with Ted—that sixth sense of hers that honed in on me like radar when I so much as considered doing something I wasn’t supposed to do. I even miss the stupid little things about her that usually drive me insane: the way she sings while she’s working around the house, the way she’s always so damn cheerful in the morning. If I could just go home, I think. But home isn’t home anymore, not really. The new house is Mom and Ted’s house, not mine. Jeez, I think. Get out the violins.

  But being melodramatic and overly emotional is normal at my age, I tell myself. Not to mention that things have been weird as hell for a long time. All in all, I’m not doing so bad. Then one afternoon, I’m driving home from school and I see a guy in jeans and a jeans jacket walking past the library. From the back, for a split second, I think it’s Dad.

  No, I realize. It’s not him.

  And suddenly I’m shaking because all I can think about is how awful it would have been to have seen this guy who looked like Dad—to have thought for a second he was Dad—if Dad had died. I have to pull into the Kroger parking lot and sit there. I don’t know how long it is before I stop crying.

  thirty–eight

  Outside, it’s getting to be spring. The sky is blue, with big white clouds floating in it. The trees have a green haze on them. There are yellow and purple crocuses poking up through the grass. Inside the hospital, it’s your basic antiseptic white, dotted with ugly-colored plastic furniture, like always. But it looks great to me because I’m here with Dad, who’s getting the casts off his legs. He’s his old self, joking with the nurses, making outrageous remarks. He’s even happier when we get home and the men are there to take the rented hospital bed away.

  “Good riddance,” he says, as we watch them wrestle it down the driveway and into the truck. “That goddamn bed made me feel like a sick person. Things are looking up, pal. Another week, I’ll be driving. I can think about getting back into the gym big-time, maybe even having a real life again.”

  He reaches over and messes up my hair. “Jackson, buddy, I couldn’t have done this without you. But you’ve got to be getting tired of this crap. And I know your mom wants you back home … ”

  “I don’t mind staying a while longer,” I say.

  “Well,” he says, “actually, I’ve been thinking maybe I’d take off for a while. Layla’s got some time coming. She’s got this wild idea to dress me up in a Hawaiian shirt like Ratso Rizzo and drag me down to Florida. Sit me in the sun. Christ, look at these legs.” He yanks up his sweats and reveals them—dead white and flaking, from the casts. “I could use a suntan.”

  I shrug like I don’t care. I don’t tell him that I turned down a trip to Florida with Mom and Ted and the girls to stay at home with him. I must do something to give myself away, though, because he says, “Hey, you could go with us. Spring break’s coming up, isn’t it? I’ll talk to Layla—”

  “Can’t do it,” I say. “I’m going with a bunch of guys from school. I just hadn’t gotten around to mentioning it. You know, waiting to make sure you were okay.”

  The truth is I turned them down, too. But it’s easy enough to get back in, especially when I say I can drive. Dad thinks it’s a great idea, spends a whole evening telling me stories about trips he took to Florida when he was in college. Mom’s leery, though.

  “You don’t trust me?” I say.

  “It’s not that, Jackson,” she says. “It’s just, if something goes wrong—”

  “Jesus, Mom. We’re going to drive down to Florida, camp, drive back. Big deal. What’s going to go wrong?”

  “Nine times out of ten, nothing. It’s that one time I worry about. You haven’t had any experience traveling alone … ”

  “I’m not traveling alone.”

  “Well, that’s the other problem,” she says. “I trust you, Jackson. I don’t know about those other boys. Some of them are pretty flaky.”

  “Excuse me if I’m confused,” I say. “Aren’t you the one who’s always saying, ‘Jackson, why don’t you go out and do something with your friends?’ Now I want to, and you’re acting like they’re a bunch of criminals.”

  “Honey,” she says. “What’s wrong with you? You’re not yourself lately.”

  “Jesus, Mom,” I say, “you get married and drag us to a new house. Dad nearly offs himself. But I have to act like I always have or everybody freaks out. Give me a break, will you? Let me live my life for a change.”

  Bingo. Guilt does the trick. I’m gone.

  We cut Friday afternoon classes so we can leave by four. Guys in my bus, girls in Tracy Perry’s van. Once we get out of town, we stop and regroup. Stephanie, Kate Levin, and Beth Barrett get in the bus with Tom Best and Eric Harmon and me. Kevin Todd and Matt Morris go with the other girls. This is just one of the things our parents don’t know about: that the guys and girls are really going together—the guys camping near Beth’s parents’ condo, where the girls are going to stay.

  Liquor is the other thing our parents don’t know about. We’ve been collecting it for a couple of weeks, pilfering what we could from basements and refrigerators and liquor cabinets. Then we pooled our money and gave it and a list of the rest of what we wanted to Tom’s brother, who just turned twenty-one. The hard stuff we’re saving. It’s our plan to mix a bunch of it together, pour in some fruit juice, and have a Hairy Buffalo the first night on the beach. For the drive down, we have beer.

  I’m careful. But I’ve drunk enough lately to know I can drink a couple of beers before I start feeling any serious effects. Tom pops one and hands it to me. I make it last. When I finish it, I’m just the slightest bit buzzed. Pleasantly buzzed. Mellow. I turn up the stereo.

  Stephanie’s having a sixties fantasy. She’s decided we’re only going to play music from the sixties the whole trip down. We listen to the Mamas and the Papas, Buffalo Springfield, Simon and Garfunkel. When we go through Atlanta in the dead of night, she puts in a Motown tape and starts telling us about her dad driving the very same highway we’re driving now on the morning after Martin Luther King was shot.

  “It was, like, barely dawn,” she says. “And there were people everywhere. All along the highway fences and on the overpasses. Black people. My dad said it was really, really weird.”

  “You mean, spooky,” Tom Best says from the middle seat, and cracks up.

  “Jesus, just be a regular asshole, Best,” I say. “Okay? There’s no need to improve yourself by being a racist asshole.”

  “Really, you are disgusting,” Stephanie says. The other girls agree.

  “Oh, screw you guys,” Tom says. “Don’t be so goddamn politically correct. Where’s your sense of humor?”

  “Some things aren’t funny,” I say.

  He shrugs and rolls his eyes.

  “So anyhow,” Stephanie continues, “my dad and his friends, they’re, like, driving along, going, what the hell is this? And all of a sudden they hear on the radio that the plane carrying Martin Luther King’s body has touched down at the Atlanta airport. Then, no lie, here comes the hearse toward them. This big black hearse. My dad could see Coretta Scott King in the front seat—”

  “Oh, please,” Tom says. “How could he see Coretta Scott King?”

  “He saw her,” Stephanie says. “She was all dressed in black. She had on this black veil. Her kids were in the hearse with her.”

  “That is such a bunch of bullshit,” Tom says. “Your dad’s
driving probably seventy miles an hour, he’s on the opposite side of the highway from this alleged hearse with Martin Luther King’s body in it, there’s a split second when the two cars are next to each other—and he knows it’s Coretta Scott King wearing a black veil? Plus all her kids—

  “Hey, how many kids, Steph? What were they wearing? And what about old Martin’s girlfriends? Weren’t they there? He had plenty of them, you know. Him and JFK.”

  “Why are you so cynical?” Steph says. “No matter what anybody says, you can always find a way to make fun of it. Is there anything you believe in?”

  “Myself,” Tom says. He pops the tab on another beer. “Bud, here. Yeah, I believe in Bud. That’s it, though. I figure, if you believe in nothing, nothing can hurt you.”

  “I know,” Steph says. “Life’s a bitch, and then you die. I hate that.”

  “Prove it’s not true then,” says Tom.

  “Oh, come on, you guys,” Kate Levin says. “Quit. It’s spring break, remember? We’re supposed to be having fun. And pull over, Jackson. You’ve been driving since we left home. You’ve got to be getting tired.”

  We argue for a while about who’s competent enough to take the wheel. Tom’s been drinking steadily since Chattanooga. Kate can’t drive a stick shift. Steph’s a terrible driver, period. We wake up Eric Harmon, who’s been sleeping and doing who knows what else in back with Beth. I pull over, and Steph and I wade through the empty potato chip bags and the chicken bones on the floor of the bus to trade places with them.

  It’s cold back there. We pull a blanket around us. Stephanie rests her head on my shoulder. “It did happen, Jackson,” she says. “Why would my dad lie about a thing like that? He saw the hearse carrying Martin Luther King’s body. He saw Coretta Scott King. It was like history coming alive, like being right in the middle of it for just one second, he told me. Like he was an important person himself.”

  “I believe you,” I say.

  “Don’t you think it’s weird,” she says. “This? Now, I mean. Driving the same highway our parents did, taking the same trip they took when they were young. God, this is depressing, but what if we end up like them?” Then she falls asleep.