The Bad Decisions Playlist (6 page)

Damage control. What do I do? Tutor! Fix the tutor thing!

I turn on the shower to help block out the sound and call Josephine.

“Nope” is the first thing she says.

“Josey​—”

“Josephine.”

“Josephine, please, I'm really sorry about what happened today. I was a total jerk. I was hoping you'd​—”

“Austin, I can't be your tutor. I made a mistake. It's not you, it's me.”

“You know, I hear that from girls a lot.”

“Fine. It's
not
me, it's
you.
I don't want to be
your
tutor. You specifically.”

“Josephine, I just​—”

“Sorry, I have to go.”

She cuts off the call.

I cry in the shower. I cry partly because most of my body is either a bruise or an abrasion and it hurts so much. But mostly I cry because of
everything.
It's actually just a follow-up to lots of earlier weeping, the first occurrence being a few hours ago when I was at the bottom of a ravine, soaking wet, bruised, bleeding, and draped over a commercial-grade lawn mower that was refusing to start. This after an hour of yanking fruitlessly on the starter cord, until my hands were blistered and my arms so weak I had to stop. If that's not a low point in one's life, I'm not sure what is.

Which is an even better metaphor.

Yes, Josephine. Thank you.

I kicked the thing. I hugged and stroked the engine and murmured pathetically like it was a wounded animal. I sang it several songs.

And, yes, if anyone asks, I can say I've kissed a lawn mower, because following the tears and stroking and singing it finally roared to life after a single feeble pull, and then it was one long mow of shame up a side path to continue my work.

Then, when I was done, Kent fired me.

He was waiting for me by his pickup truck, checking his watch. Nearby, Todd Malloy and Brad Zohlner were leaning against a car, grinning in anticipation. Brad being the third member of the close-knit and harmonious crew of Rick's Lawn Care. My strongest memory of Brad is that he likes heavy-metal T-shirts and that he was good at using a spot welder to fuse two triangular pieces of sheet metal into throwing stars in eighth grade shop class, which was about the limit of his achievements.

“Austin!” said Kent. “I told you. We have to finish by six. It's nearly six twenty. That means you're fired.”

I instantly burst into tears again, babbling through sobs and snot about contracts and losing my tutor and begging him not to fire me, while Todd and Brad fell all over each other, the hilarity too much for them to handle.

“Please,” I said to him. “Please, please, please.”

Kent stood there, arms crossed, not saying anything.

“Please,” I repeated.
Bloop,
said a snot bubble as it burst after ballooning from my right nostril.

Silence. Then Kent nodded.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You passed.”

“I w-w-what?” I blubbered.

“Austin,” said Kent, “I will take this passion that you're showing right now as evidence of your commitment to this team.” WHERE DO PEOPLE LEARN TO TALK LIKE THIS? “Are you truly committed?”

“Yes.”

“You're committed to this team?”

“Yes, I am truly committed to this team.”

“Can you apologize to your team members for letting them down and making them late?”

Arrraaarrrraarrrr. . . .

“I'm really sorry, team members, for letting you down and making you late.”

“Excellent. All right, Austin, if you are truly committed to this team, I will give you one more chance. One more.”

Okay, I exaggerated. Kent didn't fire me. He fake-fired me as a humiliating loyalty test.

I was still sniffling while I loaded the push mower onto the flatbed trailer hitched to Kent's pickup, and was just stepping off when a convertible Mercedes eased past and stopped, its top down.

“Austin! Hey!”

Holy crap. It was Alison. Of course​—​Todd famously lost his license after only three months, DUI. She must have come by to pick him up.

“How
are
you?” she said.

“Uh, I'm
OOOF!
”

Shoulder check from Todd as he passed by. He turned and walked backwards a moment. “You're not gonna last,” he said, and winked. Then he pivoted and sauntered the rest of the way to Alison's car, jumped over the door into the passenger seat, and looked straight at me as he turned Alison's head with his paw so they could kiss, going at it for
juuust
a bit too long.
Yeah, I get it. You're back together.

∗  ∗  ∗

When I finish my shower, I stay up in my room as long as I dare, taking a few drags from a pinch hitter and blowing the smoke out my window as I review this shipwreck of a day and the larger shipwreck of my life.

Here's the real secret of my Big Secret Plan: The secret is that even
I
know it's a joke.
I'm
a joke. I won't be going to New York. I won't be writing songs that will make people think and feel and performing those songs onstage. I won't be going anywhere. I'm stuck at the bottom of a ravine, totally alone, useless, unable to get the lawn mower of my life started. And it's never going to change.

My mom and Rick are already seated at the dinner table when I get downstairs, and they turn in unison to smile creepily at me.

“C'mon, the food's getting cold,” says my mom.

I sit, easing myself cautiously into my chair. There's a fresh salad, bread, and a big bowl of linguine with clam sauce that Rick made, my mom's favorite food. I do a quick scan to make sure there's no sharp knife within easy reach.

“Linguine?” she says.

“Sure,” I say, and she serves me.

Salad?

Sure.

Bread?

Sure.

She and Rick serve themselves, trading little glances. I catch a whiff of exotic herbs from the infusion my mom is drinking out of her big Renaissance festival earthenware mug, a calming potion prescribed to her by her wicca/Reiki/ovary-magic psychic, Terry. It must be effective, because she's so uncannily relaxed right now.

“So,” Rick says, “how was work?”

I stare at him.

“Really good,” I say. “Really”​—​I make a little rah-rah punching gesture​—​“good.”

Rick smiles and nods, apparently pleased that I'm gathering precious life lessons by virtue of manual labor.

“And the tutor?” asks my mom.

They're toying with me.

“So great,” I say. “So, so great.”

“Fantastic,” says my mom. “Austin, we​—”

“Mom, I know. I
know.
It's just that I​—”

The doorbell rings.

We all look at each other.

“I'll get it!” I say, and practically leap out of my chair.

Save me save me save me.

It's a UPS guy. I dart past him and sprint across the lawn and dive into his truck and roar away to a new life in Yuma, Arizona.

It's a cult recruiter. I say,
Yes, yes to all of it, where do I sign, let's go now, now, now!

It's a Girl Scout selling cookies.
Quick! Let's swap clothes! You go inside!

But when I open the door, it's none of those.

It's the least likely option of all, an option that drives every thought out of my head other than
I must stop smoking weed,
which is clearly damaging my brain and causing hallucinations.

Because facing me is Shane Tyler.

∗  ∗  ∗

As in Shane Tyler the singer-songwriter Shane Tyler.
Blue Limbo Blues
Shane Tyler,
Good Fun from a Safe Distance
Shane Tyler. CD in the garbage disposal Shane Tyler. That Shane Tyler. Standing at my door.

I goggle at him, no words coming out.

He's got his hands in the pockets of his faded and torn-up jeans, shoulders a bit hunched, his face squinted into the kind of half grimace you make when you're prepping yourself to get stung by bad news.

He clears his throat diffidently. “Uh . . . hi,” he says.

“Guuh,” I say, goggling at him some more.

“Um . . .” he says, like he's weighing whether to ask the question he came to ask. He fidgets, looks away for a second, then back at me. I'm aware of how loud the evening crickets are.

“Uh . . .” he says again, then scratches his head and takes a deep breath, evidently having decided to be a man and tear off whatever the internal Band-Aid is. “Sorry to bother you,” he says. “Um . . . does Katie Methune live here?”

“Katie? No,” I say automatically, thrown by how close his question slices to real life while just missing the mark.

“Oh,” he says. Relieved, I think.

Sudden inspiration as I realize the obvious. “Wait,” I say. “Did you say Kay-Dee? Like, Kelly Dean Methune?”

“What? Yeah. Yeah, Kelly,” he says, perking up. “I'm a . . . friend of hers. I'm just in town a bit for this thing, and I thought​—”

“Austin, who's at the door?”

My mother's voice, coming from inside. When Shane hears her, his expression changes, like he just got a big mainline shot of adrenaline.

“Austin,” repeats my mom as she approaches behind me. “Who's at the​—”

She cuts herself off. Shane is looking past me at her, his face a mixture of hope and uncertainty, like he's got a gift to offer and isn't sure how it's going to be received. And then he smiles.

“Hey, KD. How have you OW, CRAP! OW OW OW! WHAT'D YOU DO THAT FOR?” he shrieks, frantically shaking his head and wiping at his face, because she's just dashed her scalding-hot herbal infusion right at him,
splat
on his shirt and neck and right cheek. I can't even get a word out I'm so astonished, staring at him wide-eyed as he dances on the front porch, swearing, pulling his steaming black T-shirt away from his chest to escape the burning. “KD! Are you out of your fricking​—” Which is as far as he gets before
BONK
her heavy mug rebounds off his forehead, snapping his head back. The rest of his body follows that momentum, his rear foot missing the edge of the porch and finding air, and he flails his way backwards to land ass first in the hedge, moaning.

“Mom!” I say, finally able to force some words out. “Do you know who that is?!”

“Of course I know who it is!” she says. “It's your friggin' father!”

I got off at the wrong station of the holy cross /

and I was lost / the light too bright to see my way

“You told me he was dead!”

“I never said that!”

“What?! Mom, you told me​—​it was my fourth birthday, we were at the frigging nature preserve​—​and you told me that he died in a car wreck!”

“Oh my God, Austin, I can't believe this. You know, Terry was completely right. She predicted this month would be full of drama. She said, ‘The coming month will​—​'”

“Mom, are you going to explain​—”

“Do you have any weed?”

“Mom!”

It's twelve thirty at night and we're in the kitchen, and I swear we've been arguing like this since MY DAD showed up on the front porch earlier NOT BEING DEAD. My mom has her elbows on the tiny kitchen table, her face in her hands.

“I know you have weed somewhere, Austin.”

“I want you to explain to me how you could tell me all these years that​—”

“I need. Some. Weed.”

“Mom, you're not supposed to​—”

“I'm not supposed to
drink,
Austin. And right now it's either drinking or
smoking some goddamn weed.
Get me some weed.”

∗  ∗  ∗

You ever hear someone shriek at someone else with such rage and volume that you're worried their vocal cords will rupture and explode out of their mouth? And the shrieker happens to be your mom? And have that barely coherent uber-shrieking happen on your front yard, so that all the neighborhood can enjoy it? That's what I got to see tonight as my mom assaulted my still-alive dad with the contents of her mug and then the mug itself, followed by her fists and feet and then nearly one of the logs from the front porch woodpile as he scrabbled backwards on the lawn, trying to shield himself.

She had the log raised up, ready to do to my nondeceased father what Todd had done to me, except I finally shook off my paralysis and ran up behind her and grabbed her arm so that my continuing-to-be-alive father could continue to be alive. Up until that point, I had just watched in stunned silence as she assaulted him physically and verbally, screaming a mixture of really bad words and “Get out! Go! Never come back!”

While I was tussling with my mom and trying to get the log out of her hand, Rick came running out of the house, saying, “What's going on? What's going on?”