PRESENT TENSE
Chapter One Hundred Sixteen
June 3, 2009
Perris, California
Jack and Rose did not quit their jobs or tell
Mari of the offers they had gotten until they received the paperwork in the
mail two days later, confirming that the phone calls were legitimate. That day,
they both quit their jobs at the pizza place and began preparing to leave.
Mari came home from work that afternoon,
surprised to find both Jack and Rose there. Usually, Rose went off to work in
the early afternoon, with Jack heading out at around 5:30, leaving Lizzy in her
care.
Rose was on the phone, an aggravated look on
her face as she pushed one button after another, trying to get a live person on
the line. Finally, she gave up, slamming the phone down in frustration.
"I’ll try again tomorrow," she
declared. "I swear, social services loves voice mail."
Mari gave her a confused look, then took in
the stack of boxes they had gotten from local businesses to pack their
belongings. "What’s going on?"
"Well…" Rose sat down on the couch
next to Jack. Lizzy climbed up next to them, almost bursting with the secret
she had promised not to tell.
Jack leaned forward, explaining what had
happened. "Rose got a great job offer from a newspaper in my hometown of
Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, as a local feature writer, and I have been accepted
into the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, which isn’t far away from there,
with a partial scholarship and a full time internship with Counseling Services.
These are great opportunities for both of us—we’re finally getting back on our
feet—and so we decided to accept them."
Mari was silent for a moment, looking at
them. "When did you find out?"
Rose looked a little sheepish. "Two days
ago, actually. We both got phone calls, but we decided to wait until we got the
paperwork to be sure that the offers were legitimate, and not from people
trying to sell something or make fake offers for whatever convoluted reason was
in their minds."
"I take it you’ll be moving, then?"
"Yeah. Wisconsin’s too far away to
commute."
"Obviously." Mari tapped her
fingers on her chin. "When will you be leaving?"
"That eager to get rid of us, huh?"
Jack teased her.
Rose elbowed him in the ribs. "In a
couple of days, probably. We need to pack up and cancel our social services. My
new job starts June twenty-second, but we’ll be going to Wisconsin the slow
way—driving. We can’t afford airfare or any other way of shipping our
belongings. We could make it in two days if we pushed hard enough, but we’ll
probably take three or four days to get there."
"Where are you going to live?"
Jack shrugged. "We’ll have to find a
place when we get there. We don’t have enough money now to rent a place, even
though the cost of living is lower there than here. We’ll have to wait until
after Rose gets her first paycheck to get a place to live, but this is summer.
We can camp out."
Mari shook her head. "I’m jealous. I
wish I could go with you guys. What an adventure!" She paused, thinking.
"Are you going to stay in Chippewa Falls or Eau Claire?"
"We haven’t decided yet. It depends upon
what we find and what’s available."
Mari nodded. "I’ll miss you guys."
Lizzy tugged on Rose’s arm. "Mommy,
isn’t Aunt Mari going with us?"
"Well…no, Lizzy. Aunt Mari lives
here."
"We live here…"
"But we’re moving. We’re going to
Wisconsin."
"Is that a long ways away?"
Rose nodded. She wouldn’t lie to the child.
"Yes."
"Why do we have to move?"
"Because your daddy and I have new jobs
there, and your daddy is going to go to college."
"Why can’t he go to college here?"
"Because the college he wants to go to
is in Wisconsin."
"But I don’t wanna go!"
"It won’t be so bad, Lizzy," Jack
assured her, leaning over and cupping the little girl’s chin in his hand.
"I grew up there. It’s a nice place, and you’ll make lots of new
friends."
"I wanna stay with Aunt Mari!"
Rose could see that a temper tantrum was
about to begin. "Lizzy, we’re moving. All the crying in the world won’t
change that. You can still talk to Aunt Mari on the phone, and when you learn
to read and write, you can send her letters and e-mails."
Lizzy wasn’t soothed. "No!" she
howled. "It’s not fair! I wanna stay here! Why can’t Aunt Mari come?"
"Because my job is here, Lizzy."
Mari sat down next to her and tried to hug the girl, but Lizzy wouldn’t have
it. Scrambling to her feet, she burst into tears and ran down the hall,
slamming the door of the room she shared with Mari.
Mari watched her go, looking sad. Rose
sighed.
"She’ll get used to the idea eventually.
This isn’t the first time we’ve moved, though I’ll admit that five moves in
four years is a lot."
"I’ll miss her, too." Mari leaned
back against the couch. "You guys are like family."
"Don’t your parents still live here in
town?"
"Yeah, but not for long. They’re moving
to New Mexico."
"If you don’t want to stay here, you
don’t have to."
Mari shook her head. "I’ll miss
everybody, but I’m staying. My work is here, at least for now." She grinned
wickedly. "I love having the opportunity to thwart developers by finding
endangered species on the land they want to develop."
"That’s part of why I’m eager to
go," Rose told her. "I don’t like the way things are going in
California. There’re too many people, too much crowding, and no one seems to
pay much attention to the lack of things that people need, like roads, schools,
water, fresh air…"
"You and I pay attention!" Mari
reminded her.
"And so do I," Jack added.
"Yes, but it seems like we’re in the minority.
People can be so apathetic. The world can fall apart around them, and they’ll
ignore it, at least until something shocks them out of their apathy for a
while."
"The Bubble Society," Mari said.
"You wrote it at the end of college."
"I still think it’s one of my best
songs, and it hasn’t gotten any less true. People go around in a little bubble,
never noticing what’s going on around them, until something happens to burst
that bubble. Then, they scream in shock—and after a while, they forget, and go
back inside their bubble. But every time, the bubble gets weaker, and one day
they won’t be able to ignore things any longer—but by then it may be too late
to fix things."
"I hate to say it, Rose," Jack told
her, "but part of the reason why your music career has stalled might be
that you use it to speak out. A lot of people think that entertainers should
just do one thing—entertain—and anything else is out of their scope."
"But not all of us are that shallow, and
if a person has the ability to speak out, and doesn’t use it—they’re just as
guilty of apathy as anyone else. We all have a responsibility to speak out, no
matter who it offends. That’s one of the great things about being an
American—the ability to speak our minds. Just because I can reach more people
than someone else doesn’t mean that I should speak out less. In fact, my very
ability to reach all those people makes it my responsibility to speak
out."
Jack threw his hands up in the air in
surrender. "I’m not arguing with you, Rose. I agree with you. But there
are people who get upset about your speaking your mind."
"So what else is new?" Rose
shrugged. "I won’t sell out to those who would silence me and others. We
all have the right and responsibility to speak out. Besides, I’ve noticed that
if people agree with what you’re saying, they’re all for you saying it, but if
they disagree, they think you should shut up. You both know that as well as I
do."
"I know." Jack picked up his
portfolio from the coffee table. "I’m an artist, too, just a different kind
from you. I’ve seen how upset people get when they’re shown something they
don’t want to see. I don’t know why that is."
"Maybe because it makes them
think?" Mari suggested. "Because it challenges the beliefs that they
cling to, even when the evidence tells them that they’re wrong? I think that’s
why people get so angry at the artistic people like you two. It’s not because
life reflects art, it’s because art reflects life, and it isn’t always a pretty
reflection."
"I think that’s affected both Rose and I,"
Jack commented. "We’re both artists, and neither of us is content to look
only at the surface. We both feel the need to go deeper—and that makes some
people really uncomfortable."
"But discomfort turns to comfort and
even habit after a while," Rose told him. "Sweeping problems under
the rug won’t get rid of them—it just gives you a dirty, lumpy rug, and after a
while, the dirt comes right through the rug."
"I think you’ll make a great reporter,
Rose," Mari told her. "You know what to say to catch people’s
attention, and I can’t see you bowing down to anyone. I wish you both the best
of luck."
"Thanks, Mari. I’ll do my best. We all
will."