Wish You Were Here Read online

  For Ralph Bedwell

  and the Rockets

  Woodbury, Minnesota

  Copyright Information

  Wish You Were Here © 2008 by Barbara Shoup.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover models used for illustrative purposes only and may not endorse or represent the book’s subject.

  First e-book edition © 2011

  E-book ISBN: 9780738724966

  Book design by Steffani Sawyer

  Cover design by Gavin Dayton Duffy

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  one

  After the divorce, my dad’s shrink told him it was important for the two of us to do things together, so he bought this book called Amazing America and arranged our vacations so that we could visit some of the strange places it described. He took me to the Tupperware Museum of Historic Food Containers, the Etch-A-Sketch factory, and the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. We’d see Dollywood, he promised. The Museum of Drag Racing, with the top fuel slingshot dragster that exploded and blew off Big Daddy Don Garlits’ foot. And, of course, Graceland.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him I hated going away. After the disastrous vacation our family had taken right before the divorce, I’d made up my mind that the safe thing was to stay put. To be normal. I was happiest in the hours between the time school let out and my mom came home from work. She felt guilty leaving me alone, but I liked it. I’d eat whatever snack she’d left and watch reruns of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show. Those people never went anywhere; they hardly left the kitchen. They were happy. Which made me even more certain that our vacation had caused the divorce. I know that sounds stupid. But I was only nine.

  When I told my best friend, Brady, about how Dad got so mad at Mom while we were in the Ozarks that he hitchhiked to the airport and flew home two days early without us, Brady said, “Maybe that’s why they got divorced, Jax; maybe it isn’t. The important thing is, don’t ever tell them what you think.” He was an expert on divorce; his parents had been divorced since he was five. I paid attention to him when he told me, “What you want to do is figure out what they want you to say and say that. Otherwise they’ll freak out and send you to a shrink.”

  “Sometimes people love each other, but they just can’t live together.” That’s what Mom and Dad told me the night they sat me down and explained why Dad was leaving, so that’s what I repeated every time Mom got worried and decided we should talk.

  “You really understand that, Jackson?” she’d ask.

  I’d say yes, even though I didn’t understand it at all.

  Sometimes she’d leave it at that; sometimes she’d say, “But how do you feel?”

  Brady had coached me on this, too. “Don’t act like you think the divorce is no big deal. Act, you know, kind of stunned. Like you haven’t exactly figured it out yet, but you’re working on it.”

  So I’d tell Mom, “I’m sad about the divorce. I really miss Dad. But I love you guys, and you love me, so I guess things will work out okay.” I’d try to look hopeful, trusting. “Won’t they?”

  She’d get all teary-eyed and hug me. “They will, honey. I promise you. You’re such a good boy, Jackson,” she’d say. “You really are.”

  My biggest problem according to Brady: being good.

  “People think I’m good,” I always told him when he said it.

  “No. You are good, Jax. Face it, man.”

  I can hear him laughing his wild, hooty laugh, and it makes me wish I’d told him, “You face it; you’re the good one.” Because it’s true.

  Last year—junior year, when we’d all go over to Hardee’s after school, Brady was the one who talked for hours about the way the world should be, the one who cared about making it better. If people weren’t so obsessed with being comfortable, they’d think twice about trashing the earth the way they do, he said. And if they weren’t so greedy and paranoid, they wouldn’t let little kids starve because they read once that some person on welfare cashed in his food stamps and bought a Cadillac.

  Once we were walking through Military Park downtown, and this old black guy sitting by the fountain said, real polite, “You boys got any change to spare?” It was November, just starting to get cold, and the guy was wearing this grody, ripped-up windbreaker. Brady gave him five bucks and said, “Stay right there, man. We’ll be back.” We went over to Ayres then, and he bought the guy a down parka with his dad’s charge card. He got into all kinds of trouble for it.

  See, that’s the difference between me and Brady. People think I’m good, but really, I’m just too scared to risk getting in trouble. Brady has the guts to do what he believes is right.

  Like leaving.

  I guess it’s the fact that Brady really did it, that he’s really gone, that’s got me thinking about my parents’ divorce.

  two

  The thing is, Brady and I had made this plan. First, he psyched out his mom. He refused to get a summer job, and lay around the house all day with the stereo blaring. He got drunk every night. It worked like a charm. When the first of August rolled around and he told her that he wanted to get an apartment for his senior year, she thought it was a great idea and talked his dad into paying for it.

  Our senior year was going to be so cool. “The beginning of the end,” Brady said when we talked about moving into the apartment. It would be a place where all our friends could hang out, one place they’d always feel welcome. Where, he assured me, one way or another, both of us would get ourselves laid before the lease was up. He’d be in charge of music and conversation. I’d make sure that things didn’t get too wild.

  He never doubted that my mom would let me move in with him. “She’s in love, Jax,” he said. “Impaired. She’ll let you do anything.”

  As usual, it turned out he was right. Mom wasn’t crazy about the idea, but her boyfriend, Ted, had spent a few nights at our house lately, and I knew she felt guilty. I guess she figured that if I wasn’t living there, I couldn’t get wrecked by what she was doin
g. Plus, there’d be no excuse for Dad to show up and make his usual wisecracks about the situation, to act amused by the idea of Mom with someone else in their old bed.

  Then the week before we were supposed to move in, Brady and I were vegged out in the living room at his dad’s house, making plans. We could borrow his mom’s boyfriend’s truck to move our stuff, Brady said. We’d have our beds from home; we could use those plastic crates instead of dressers. His mom, Layla, had an old couch in the basement we could have, a couple of beanbag chairs. She’d promised to tie-dye some sheets and make them into curtains. My mom would donate kitchen things.

  “Can you dig it, Jax?” he said. “One week from today, we’ll be grooving in our own pad. Totally jerk-proof.” He laughed this kind of heh-heh-heh cartoon laugh and looked over at his dad’s stereo system—an incredible setup, top of the line. “All we need now is the Great Wall of Music.”

  “Right,” I said. “Just ask him nicely. Dad, sir, could I please have your stereo?”

  “Ha, ha,” Brady said. “He won’t even let me use it when I’m here. A boom box is good enough for me.” He looked over at the Great Wall again. “Want to hear the new R.E.M.?” he said.

  “Sure.” I got up to head for his room, where the boom box was.

  “No, man. Here. Deluxe sound.”

  “Brady,” I said, “jeez, don’t piss him off now. What if he says he won’t pay for the apartment?”

  “He won’t know,” Brady said. He put the CD in, turned the volume way up.

  That’s why we didn’t hear Mr. Burton come in early from work. Brady and I were stretched out on the white couches, totally into the music, our eyes closed. Mr. Burton got all the way over to the stereo and hit the stop button on the CD player before we realized he’d come in. He stood there in the sudden quiet, probably counting to ten in his head. He prided himself on being a rational guy.

  “Brady, I believe I asked you not to use my stereo,” he said.

  “Hey, I’m your kid,” Brady said. “Remember? What’s yours is mine.”

  “No,” Mr. Burton said. “What’s mine is not yours. My stereo system is certainly not yours. You may remember that I gave you a stereo of your own to use when you’re here.”

  “Boom box,” Brady said. “Big deal.”

  “A very expensive boom box,” Mr. Burton said. “And you’re damned lucky to have it. This may surprise you, Brady, but the very best of everything isn’t owed you simply because you exist. If you don’t figure that out pretty soon, you’re going to be in sad, sad shape when it’s time to face the real world.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Brady said. “The real world. Your real world. Hey, old man, what makes you think I’m ever going to have anything to do with that?”

  Mr. Burton raised his hand, as if he might hit him. Then he just lowered it, as if in surrender, and shook his head. “You know, Brady, you’re absolutely right. On this issue, I defer to you. You’ll never have anything to do with the real world. You can’t hack it.” He walked out the front door and drove away.

  Brady said, “Do you believe this, Jackson? Do you believe he dissed me like that?” He started pacing back and forth across the living room, muttering, “Asshole, asshole.”

  “This is news?” I said. “So your dad’s an asshole. So what?”

  He kicked the leg of an end table, and a Chinese lamp teetered on its base.

  “Come on, Brady,” I said. “Chill out.”

  For a second I thought he would. He walked over to the picture window and pulled back the curtains as if to look out. Then suddenly he yanked them so that the brass rod pulled away from the wall and hung at a slant across the window. Plaster rained down onto the end table.

  “Brady!” I said. But it was as if I weren’t even there.

  He started pacing again, and now every time he crossed the room, he wrecked something. First a blue ceramic ashtray on the coffee table. He just picked it up and dropped it, shattering it on the wood floor. Then he ripped up an Architectural Digest.

  I’d never seen him like this before. He was the one who always told people, “You want to freak out your parents? Don’t get mad. It drives them insane.” Now it was as if he’d drunk some kind of potion. The truth is, it scared the crap out of me. Watching Brady trash his father’s living room, I felt paralyzed—exactly like I used to feel when I was little and something I was watching on TV suddenly turned scary. Just get up and turn it off, I’d tell myself. But I never did. I’d stare at the screen, all the while a dark place opening wider and wider inside me, just like it was now.

  I did try to calm him down once. He stopped in the middle of the room, looking a little confused. He was drenched in sweat, breathing as hard as if he’d just come in from a run. I went over to him then, spoke his name, and put my hand on his shoulder. But he shrugged me away. For a second I thought he might hit me. Instead, he turned to the shelf of tapes behind him. Methodically, he pulled each cassette from its plastic case, then ripped the tape from the cassette. Pretty soon the room was covered with what looked like brown ticker tape. As if there’d been some kind of weird parade.

  Finally, he threw himself down on one of the couches and stared at the mess he’d made.

  “You are in deep shit,” I said.

  “Screw it,” he said. “Screw you. Screw everyone.”

  “Come on, man,” I said. “Don’t be a jerk. I’ll help you clean up what we can. Then let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “No way,” he said.

  “Okay, let’s just leave then.”

  “You leave, Jax,” he said.

  I didn’t think I should leave without him. But when I tried to convince him to go with me, he grabbed me and pushed me to the front door. “Go,” he said. “I mean it. Just leave me alone.” So I did. There was no arguing with Brady once he’d made his mind up. Plus, by then I was pretty pissed off myself, and disgusted by what he’d done. I figured Mr. Burton was going to come back any minute, and I didn’t want to deal with that.

  Two days passed before I found out Brady had run away. Ted went to visit his kids in St. Louis, and my mom came out of her rosy fog long enough to realize that the grass hadn’t been cut for weeks and my room was a pit. She put me to work. Then, in a fit of nostalgia, she decided we should go school shopping. Like I was a fifth grader, thrilled to buy a couple of pairs of jeans and the three-ring binder of my dreams. I humored her. I didn’t want her to get mad at me and change her mind about the apartment. We were supposed to move that weekend, over Labor Day.

  Friday I called him.

  “Brady?” his mom said. “Haven’t you heard? He took off in his dad’s Chevy—you know, the car Jerry keeps to drive to the airport so he doesn’t have to leave the BMW in the parking lot. I figured you knew. He left the day he trashed Jerry’s living room—you were there then, weren’t you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Layla hated Mr. Burton’s guts. She couldn’t quite keep the serves-him-right tone out of her voice when she said, “Jesus, what a mess. You were there, weren’t you, Jackson? Jerry said you were.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He’s pissed out of his mind,” she said cheerfully. “You know what a chintz he is. It’s killing him that he’s already put down that three-hundred-dollar deposit for your apartment. God, he’s so predictable. So gettable. I said to him, ‘Jerry, it’s not like this is the first time Brady’s pulled a stunt like this. Just cancel the credit cards and he’ll be back. Why get bent out of shape? That’s exactly what he wants you to do.’”

  She laughed. “Anyhow, I figure he’ll run out of money pretty soon. He’ll get hungry. When he shows up, I’ll have him give you a call.”

  She hung up then, but I sat there for a long time with the phone receiver in my hand. My room was spotless. My stuff was packed to move. I thought, she’s right. He�
��ll be back; don’t sweat it.

  I remembered the time Brady got mad at his mom and spent a week holed up at his dad’s cabin in Michigan. Another time, he and this kid we knew from junior high decided to take off for California. They ran out of money before they got to Kansas City, and turned back.

  But the whole weekend went by. Tuesday, the first day of school, I woke up to the sound of my mom’s voice. “Up and at ’em, Jackson,” she said. God, there she was at the foot of my bed, terminally perky, exactly as she had been every school day since I’d started kindergarten.

  “Oh, man,” I said, and it hit me like a Mack truck: I’m stuck in this house, this life. Brady’s gone.

  three

  Mom felt bad for me, sure. But the truth is, she’d always thought Brady had a bad attitude. And though she didn’t come right out and say so, I knew she wasn’t all that sorry he was gone. She wasn’t sorry that the apartment deal had fallen through, either. She admitted it not long after he left, when we were talking and watching Saturday morning cartoons in the kitchen—something we’ve done together since I was a little kid.

  “I have to say I’m glad you didn’t move to the apartment, Jackson,” she said. “This time next year, you’ll be off to college. That’s soon enough. I’m not exactly in a hurry to get rid of you, you know.” She gave me a funny look. “Honey, you didn’t think of running away with Brady, did you?”

  I said, “I wasn’t invited.”

  She shook her head and sat there for a while, running her fingertip around the rim of her coffee mug. She said, “You know, Jackson, Brady—” She paused. “Brady has a lot of problems.”

  “Oh, really?” I said.

  “His parents—”

  “They’re screwed,” I said. “He’s better off without them.”

  “But he isn’t ready to be without them, Jackson. It’s dangerous out there for a person like Brady, who—”