Now Is Not the Time to Panic(33)

“Are you going to tell your mom?”

“I am definitely going to tell my mom,” I said. Aside from what I’d done this summer, I was a very good girl. I never wanted my mom to worry about me. She had been screwed over, so why would I make it worse for her?

“Well, I think I won’t tell her, and as long as we don’t die on the drive to Memphis, it should be okay.”

“How many posters should we bring?” I asked.

“Fifty?” he said, but I could tell he was thinking about that Huey Burger or whatever the hell it was called. He wanted to show off how cool Memphis already was, not bring what we’d made in Coalfield to it. But do you think I cared about that?

“Let’s bring a hundred,” I replied. “Just to be safe.”

I ASKED MY MOM THAT EVENING, AFTER THE BOYS HAD GONE out to meet up with friends. I’d made some brownies from a mix, because I knew she liked sweets, and we were watching Jackson Browne on VH1 Storytellers, a singer she loved so much, she had taped it earlier in the summer and would watch it while she drank a beer at the end of the day. Right after “Doctor My Eyes,” her favorite song, I asked her if I could go with Zeke to Memphis.

“What now?” she asked, still humming the last song, but then she snapped to attention. I could tell she was a little irritated that I had messed up her moment of peace after a long day. She put her can of beer down on the coffee table and turned so she was facing me. “Memphis?” she repeated.

“Yeah, it’s not really that far. Zeke wants to show me the city. Like, you know, the zoo? They have a zoo. Or . . . Graceland?”

“You want to drive all day to go see Graceland?” she asked.

“Well, not Graceland exactly. Like, not a specific place. Maybe we’ll see a Memphis Chicks game.”

“None of the things you’ve mentioned are things I’ve ever heard you say you like,” she said. “Honey, I’ve been to Graceland. It’s, you know, smaller than you think. It’s really garish, but it’s not worth driving that far to see it. I mean . . . he’s no Jackson Browne.”

“Okay, Mom, it’s not what we’ll do. It’s just going somewhere. We haven’t done any kind of summer vacation, like no beach or Disney World—”

“Now you want to go to Disney World? Honey, you would hate it, the crowds. You know your dad took me there for our honeymoon? Our honeymoon? The Magic Kingdom? My god, I should have known.”

I realized that maybe the nearly empty beer on the coffee table had not been my mom’s first one. She had mentioned the honeymoon at Disney World a dozen times since my dad had left us.

“It’s not important what we do,” I said. “I just want to get out of Coalfield for a day and have fun with Zeke. He wants me to see where he lived.”

“Oh, honey,” she said, smiling. “This is all very sweet. But that’s so far. Why don’t you just go to Chattanooga and see the aquarium. You love the fish there.”

“Mom? Zeke wants me to go with him. He’s excited. His dad has ruined his life, you know?” Was this too obvious, to talk about men who had messed things up for everyone else, all the good people left behind?

“You like him, don’t you?” she asked. “Zeke?”

“I mean, he’s my friend,” I stuttered.

“Okay,” she said, touching my face, like she was remembering something, but I didn’t know if I was involved in the memory at all. “You’re growing up so fast.”

“It doesn’t feel like that fast to me,” I replied.

“It goes slow and fast at the same time,” she told me. She looked so beautiful, my mom. I hadn’t gotten what she had, the genes necessary to be that pretty, but I knew that I came from her. It made me so happy. This was maybe the moment when I could have told her that I’d made the poster, but why would I ruin this?

“You have to call me every few hours? Find a pay phone and let me know you’re okay.”

“I can go?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure,” she said. I hugged her, and she laughed. “Okay, now let me eat these brownies and watch my man sing.”

The next song was “Rosie” and I listened as Jackson Browne explained to the audience that it was about a guy he knew, the sound mixer, and how this girl in a green leotard had sat with him for the show and then left him for the drummer. It made me sad. It went on that the guy got drunk and tried to accost the drummer, and, right before the story ended and Jackson Browne started the song, he said that the girl had been sixteen.

“Sixteen?” I said, “Jesus, Mom.”

“Don’t mess this up,” she said, waving her hand at me.

And then I listened to the song, which was so beautiful, so sad. And it hit me. I’d heard the song so many times, but who listens to Jackson Browne that closely? Like, what teenager in the nineties is reading the liner notes of a Jackson Browne album? When he sings that “it’s you and me again tonight, Rosie,” I realized he was singing about masturbating.

“Mom?” I said, just as the song ended. “Is he?”

“Is he what?” she said, shaking her beer can, making sure there was a little left.

“Is he talking about, you know, touching himself?”

“What? Ha, my god. Your mind. No, honey, I don’t think so. I mean, this is Storytellers, right? He would have mentioned that. This is his chance.”