Everybody Knows Your Name (13 page)

I jump off the stage at the preshow rehearsal. Instantly the anxiety I've been keeping at bay comes raging back.

Magnolia's been taking up so much of my brain, there's been little room for the fear to hang out. But now that we're hours away from Wednesday's show, the importance of making it through is closing in like an unstoppable reality. It rolls right over my little fantasy world like a tank.

I need air.

I walk out into the alley behind the stage where a weathered New York street set has been left to rot. I sit down on the stoop outside a brick building that's really only six inches deep. Behind the front door, there's a whole lot of nothing.

I'm just not feeling as prepared to go up there as I did last week. I feel less focused. The joke of it is if being distracted by Magnolia gets me voted out, I don't just lose the show, I lose her too.

Sure, we could talk on the phone. E-mail. But then what? She's going to come to Calumet and throw rocks at the water tower on Friday night? Right now we've only spent time together in music fantasy camp.

“Hey,” I hear from behind me, and I turn around. It's Magnolia's mom. She's about to go in the stage door.

“What are you doing lurking around out here?” she asks.

“I just like to be alone sometimes, when I'm thinking.”

She gives me a puzzled look that I think means she finds it highly unlikely that any human would choose to be alone. She blocks the sun from her eyes with her hand, and her bracelets jangle. “You're not avoiding Magnolia, are you?”

Now I'm the puzzled one. “Why would I be avoiding her, ma'am?”

She gets a visible shiver. “Oh God, don't call me ma'am. Di, Ford. Di.”

“Sorry, ma'am. I mean, sorry, Mrs. Anderson. I mean, I guess I'm used to calling my friends' moms by something besides their first names.”

“Is that what you guys are: friends? So the whole romance thing is for the show?”

The way she carries herself, it's more like I'm talking to Magnolia's suspicious friend than her mom.

“What does she say?” I ask, surprised to find a little doubt sitting in my chest.

“Oh, we haven't really had a chance to talk about it in depth. Mag's a pretty private person. You know. Sometimes she can get a little touchy about this kind of stuff.”

I just nod. “Oh.”

Di's energy picks back up. “Listen, I wasn't born yesterday. I wasn't born
superlong
ago either, but it definitely wasn't yesterday. I can tell there's chemistry. And Magnolia's not stupid. She knows that a show relationship is a ticket to the finals. So don't worry, this stunt totally has my blessing. It's cool. I'm not trippin'.”

“You think it's all about the show?” I ask.

“That's not a bad thing,” she says.

My phone vibrates from my pocket. I pull it out. It's a text from my sister.

Watz up, kid? Buckleys r in Cali.

Can we sleep on ur floor?

I swear, my heart stops.

If I thought I was feeling anxiety before, I didn't know what I was talking about. Now blood pounds in my head like a drum. I wave down the stage manager, Patty, to ask if she's seen Catherine, and she points toward the control booth without so much as a pause in the conversation she's having on her headset.

You're always in someone's way backstage. The grips are pushing massive pieces of staging around on wheels, and I have to press myself against a wall to avoid them.

I have no idea what I'm going to say when I find Catherine: “You're not going to believe this—it's a miracle! My dead parents have come back to life. Can you pay for their hotel?”

Right now I can't even understand why I had to go so far as to lie and say they were dead. It's not that I don't have love for my family. It's just that family love is supposed to feel like a warm embrace, but for me it's more like being wrapped in a heavy chain. The weight makes it hard to feel anything but the weight.

I stop and stare at the control booth. They keep the air cool in here, but I'm sweating.

Where did it all go wrong? It's tough to say exactly when things went south for the Buckleys, but the fortunes of my hometown and the fortunes of the family have been declining hand in hand since before I was born. Not that we ever had a family crest or a grand estate somewhere, but things used to be better.

My grandparents owned a farm and a grocery store, but that's all gone. The grocery store burned to its foundation, and the farms had to get big to survive. Ours was just regular size.

The town is vanishing anyway—banks are gone, the theater is gutted, you have to take a bus to another town to go to school now. The only things downtown that aren't vacant are Leander's music shop and the liquor store, and only one of those makes any money.

I see small American towns in movies sometimes, and they look all quaint and lively, but I've come to believe those towns must be a complete fiction. On my bike ride out west I did not see one small town that wasn't peeling, rusted, and shrinking, that didn't look like its best days were behind it.

There's a lonely feeling that lives under your skin when you grow up in a town like that.

I can even feel it now, as I'm walking up to the booth. I take a breath and step in to find Catherine ripping into Jesse over a mix-up on her lunch order. Something about a missing salad. I try to help him out by lightening things up.

“Should I call the salad police?” I joke.

She spins around. “Try to imagine how you'd feel if your fried Twinkie sandwich didn't show up, or whatever the hell it is you people eat in that mayonnaise-and-corn-dog state you're from.”

Jesse takes the opportunity to sneak away. I have a pang of bad longing because it's what I wish I could do too.

Instead I manage to go on with it. “I need to talk to you about something,” I say.

“Well, walk with me back to the office.” She sighs, already walking before she even knows if I'm coming along.

I follow her as she heads out through the elephant doors—the giant doors that stages have so they can fit big set pieces through—and out onto the asphalt of the lot.

So far there have been fewer actors walking around dressed like gladiators or superheroes at the studio than I thought there would be, but today we walk past a group of people in creature makeup out for a smoke break. The sight of them makes me happy, just for an instant.

“What is it, Ford?” Catherine asks as I catch up to her side. “You and Magnolia break up? I don't have time to play summer camp counselor.”

You could tip me over. “What? No. I mean, we haven't even actually discussed if we're boyfriend-girlfriend.”

“Good, stay together. Hector was quick enough to get you guys kissing on his phone camera, which saved our asses because you two are way
zzzzzzzz
talking about the romance in the game room. The phone footage isn't supersharp blown up, but we slowed it down and now it eats up twenty seconds of the package.”

I'm not sure how Magnolia's going to feel about the clip, but what does it matter when my reveal is going to make her feel worse? “No, it's nothing about that relationship. It's about my family.”

“I think we'll work that angle more as we get near the final vote. Don't want to overplay the sympathy ‘little orphan Andy' card too early. No offense.”

“None taken.” I feel an actual adrenaline rush when she talks about the final vote, like she thinks I'll be around for it. “But that's just it,” I say. Here goes. I loosen my shirt from my chest. “I don't think people are going to be too sympathetic when they find out my family isn't actually dead.”

“What?” Right away Catherine stops and makes certain eye contact with me. “How not dead are they?”

“They're all the way alive. And they're on their way here.” I wince at the thought of it. My stomach churns.

She puts her fingers to her eyebrows and stares at me, wide, out from under her hands. “You lied to me? When there's been all this trust between us? Here I thought you were a sweet hillbilly, and instead it turns out you're a cynical media manipulator!”

I take slight umbrage to the former description. “I'm not a hillbilly. I'm from the delta. Anyway, it's complicated with my family. I wasn't trying to make anyone feel sorry for me. The truth is, we're estranged. I haven't lived with them since I was sixteen.”

“You shouldn't have lied to me. I don't care if they abandoned you in diapers at a fire station doorstep and just came back the day before you left for LA! I could have helped you.” Catherine shakes her head. “Now, I don't know. Maybe I should just go get a margarita, decide this isn't my problem, and throw you to the wolves.”

I feel awful, I really do. She gave me that shot after I messed up in the beginning, and now I've just proved to her that she shouldn't have. “I'm sorry I caused you trouble,” I say. I reach out and put my hand on her elbow because I want her to really hear this. I want her to know it's true. “Thank you for everything you've done. Thank you. When you put me on the show, it felt like a chance. I only wanted to make a new start.”

Catherine still has that stare on me, but something about it is changing. She doesn't say anything for a moment.

Then, “Impromptu life lesson for you, Ford: it's not that easy. Your past will follow you whether you like it or not. The best thing you can do is learn to live with it.”

I wait for her to tell me to get lost while she goes for that margarita, but she stays.

“You're going to need an angle on this reveal so everyone in the country doesn't want to strangle you. Let's go back to the office, and this time I want to hear everything about your screwed-up bumpkin childhood. After I fire the guy who did your background check.”

It's an hour before show time, and my reflection in the dressing room mirror is as pale as a ghost. I try to shake out the nerves through the ends of my fingers. Catherine has decided that the best plan is for me to come clean about my family, live, on camera tonight, in front of millions. First I'll sing, and then Lance will hold me onstage as he calls up the Buckleys. To make time, they're going to trim my video package down to nothing much more than the kiss.

The mere thought of this event makes me want to disappear off the earth. Change my name, bleach my hair, hop on a train like a dust-bowl hobo and ride it to Timbuktu, or wherever is farthest away from here.

I'm supposed to say that I lied about my family being gone because they're very private people from a quiet town, and I didn't want anyone to come bothering them. That's the story that Catherine has decided is most sympathetic.

The light bulbs around the mirror reflect off the lacquered surface of my guitar as I distractedly practice my song for tonight, “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. This show's theme is a song that represents “who you really are.” The truth is, I have no idea.

But I like the country stomp of “Home,” and it seems right for what I'm feeling tonight. Maybe because it gives Arkansas a shout-out right in the first verse—Arkansas doesn't get too many shout-outs. And maybe because the song is asking, Where is your home, really? Is it the place you were born? What if that place is fading right off the map—well, where is it, then?

The song is a duet, but we're not allowed to sing with anyone else, so Stacy has coached me on doing both parts. Lately I feel like two people anyway. There's the person I thought I had to be, and the new person I'm trying to become. Split right down the middle.

In my mind, as I picture it, home is where you feel like you belong. Like there's an empty space in your exact shape already there, and you just fit right into it. In the song, home is when Edward's with that one right person. I haven't had that feeling with my family for a long time.

The truth is there are only two places I feel like that: one is onstage, playing music, and the other is new. It's when I'm with Magnolia.

Magnolia. Shit, shit, shit.

Magnolia.

A knock comes at the door. I stop playing. I get up and open it. Jesse is standing there carrying a bouquet of flowers.

“Came for you,” Jesse says, pushing it into my arms.

“For me? Who sent them?”

“Don't know. A fan? I get fired if I read the cards. Good luck tonight.”

He hustles off, and I close the door. I open the card on the flowers. They're from somewhere called the Children's Relief Association. A brochure inside the envelope explains that they're an orphan aid society. The card itself reads,
You've been a great role model for orphaned kids everywhere. We're all cheering for you!

My face goes all hot. Now I'm going to disappoint a bunch of orphans? I might as well grow a thin black mustache and tie a girl to a railroad track. The night ahead of me suddenly seems even more impossible than before, and it already seemed intolerable.

I think about all the people out there hearing my confession, the orphans and the associations and anybody who ever believed even a little bit in me. But mostly I think about Magnolia.

She's going to find out on TV like everybody else.

I put down my guitar and pace the carpet. The dressing room has no windows, and it's making me feel like I'm in some kind of mirrored trap. No matter where I look, I only see myself looking back. A sham. That's the real me. I don't know why everyone hasn't seen it already.

I sit down in the chair and put my face in my hands. So what if it all falls apart now? Everything will return to normal, I guess, and I'll go back to my proper place. Just go back where I really belong.

But there's this other voice inside telling me if I can just talk to her first, explain everything, maybe then things could be okay.

Then I'm running down the hall, dodging between people in headsets and backup musicians on their way to the stage. At her dressing room door, I knock maybe a little too hard, waiting with my hands resting on the doorframe.

Maggie first looks surprised when she opens the door. She's wearing a top with cut-out parts so I can see glimpses of her skin down the sides. Then she looks concerned.

“I needed to see you,” I say.

We're kissing before we even have the door closed. I back her into her dressing room and we're unsteady, our brains neglecting basic functions like balance. I just hold on to her to keep from kneeling to the floor. She picks up on my desperation, and we grab at each other like we have to stay tight or risk being pulled apart by the vacuum of space.

I take off my shirt with one arm bent around the back of my neck, and then I'm unzipping hers and pulling it up over her head. She doesn't seem to care about being ready for the show. Then we're falling down on her couch, me on top of her. Her warm skin against mine sends that electricity up my spine. I feel like we're going to pull each other right through our skin.

I slide my hand down to her hip, the most beautiful hipbone I have ever had my hand on in my life. The silk type pants they've got her in dip underneath the bone. I look up at her.

There's one knock at the door, but before we can tell whoever to get lost, it swings open.

Jesse averts his eyes to the floor, but he doesn't leave. We all freeze in place, waiting for someone to make a move, like a Mexican standoff with no guns. I'm personally waiting for Jesse to get embarrassed and shut the door.

“Sorry, guys. I didn't know, you were . . .” He trails off. “But, Ford, there's someone named Cody here to see you. And he's making a pretty big scene about it.”